Experience for Killing Enemies

[Aedelric]

I am not convinced by your arguments Luckmann.

[Luckmann]

I am not convinced by your arguments Luckmann.

You just can't offer any counter-arguments?

[Rabain]

Which is what would make perfect sense.

 

It would only make perfect sense in the context of that particular encounter i.e. sneaking past the guards to get the whatsit was the fastest and easiest way to get the XP from MrX for completing that particular quest.

 

If the entire game rewarded no XP for combat except perhaps Boss combat then every player would feel railroaded into non-combat solutions just as much as you say previous games have railroaded players into combat. Why would anyone waste 5 minutes fighting a group of guards for no XP when the rogue could go get the whatsit in 30seconds or less? You meet a bunch of bandits on the road, you sneak past them, here is 1000 XP...boring. You meet a few assasins in a dark alley, /cast Blind, run away, hide...here is 1000XP...boring.

 

These things would be interesting to me as occasional alternatives but if the entire game was more rewarding and faster to play through by just avoiding everything combat related I think we would have a pretty bad game that felt frustrating to play as anything other than a non-combat focused character.

[Thulean]

I vote yes. Combat is the most important aspect of RPGs to me and I will most likely ignore the majority of the non-combat skills unless they also help in combat in some manner. Armor or weapon crafting for example. If we get xp for avoiding fights I really hope there is a way to turn that function off.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Thulean

[Aedelric]

I am not convinced by your arguments Luckmann.

You just can't offer any counter-arguments?

 

No, I am not here to argue, just offer my opinions.

[morhilane]

If we received no exp from kills we would be constantly avoiding combat.

 

Untrue. I killed every enemies I encountered in some of the my Deux Ex (1) play-through despite them not giving me any XP. Killed enemies might not give you experience, but they can give you loots, money, quest items and/or alternate quest resolutions.

 

Example:

A mighty barbarian might not be able to coerce the prison warden to get a key. Killing him to pick it off his not yet cold body might be a simpler solution for him. Especially if he can't pickpocket him or pick the lock on the prison gate. A wizard might be able to confuse or mentally control the warden to open the gate, while a "thief" might be able to pick the lock or pickpocket the key from the warden to get the key.

 

Why would the barbarian get more XP because he killed the warden, when the goal was to get inside the prison?

[Luckmann]

Which is what would make perfect sense.

 

It would only make perfect sense in the context of that particular encounter i.e. sneaking past the guards to get the whatsit was the fastest and easiest way to get the XP from MrX for completing that particular quest.

 

If the entire game rewarded no XP for combat except perhaps Boss combat then every player would feel railroaded into non-combat solutions just as much as you say previous games have railroaded players into combat. Why would anyone waste 5 minutes fighting a group of guards for no XP when the rogue could go get the whatsit in 30seconds or less? You meet a bunch of bandits on the road, you sneak past them, here is 1000 XP...boring. You meet a few assasins in a dark alley, /cast Blind, run away, hide...here is 1000XP...boring.

 

These things would be interesting to me as occasional alternatives but if the entire game was more rewarding and faster to play through by just avoiding everything combat related I think we would have a pretty bad game that felt frustrating to play as anything other than a non-combat focused character.

If you award goal-oriented experience, the scenarios you present are the problem, not the mechanic. Why would sneaking past random bandits on a road be considered a goal? What have you achieved, apart from saving your life, when you run away from a group of assassins? Neither of those are in my opinion "Goals" and it would be regrettable to see experience handed out for such tasks, just as much as it would be regrettable to hand out experience if you fought them, just because you are to incompetent to avoid the combat.

 

Furthermore, it is a party game. This would only be an issue if you are soloing, since it is unlikely that the entire group can sneak (but it would be awesome if you could build such a group). After all, while the rogue might run off into an adjacent alley and hide, he'd do so leaving all his friends to be torn apart by the assassins.

 

As for the scenario of sneaking in and taking the whatsit, that is again an extremely simplistic scenario. What - for example - stealthing should offer isn't some kind of MMO-like invulnerability button. If a single rogue is able to sneak into a guarded fort, casually walk past all the guards, open all the doors, and then either engage an "end boss" in conversation and "beat" him or steal the whatsit, that is a terrible, badly thought-out scenario - entirely an issue of a GM being terrible, rather than anything that has anything to do with the doling-out of experience points.

 

The amount of effort exerted and the risks involved should be about the same, regardless of what route you take. With combat experience, you have ensured that the most profitable way to resolve a situation is by adding to your bodycount, regardless of what solution would make sense to your character(s). With goal-oriented experience, you still have the option of doing it whatever way you please; whether that way is faster or slower is entirely a matter of encounter design, and one being better in one instance doesn't mean that it's not the worst the next.

 

I doubt the rogue will be much help when you have to kill a Worg for it's fur, or when there's a dragon at the end of a dungeon.

 

I am not convinced by your arguments Luckmann.

You just can't offer any counter-arguments?

 

No, I am not here to argue, just offer my opinions.

"Opinions" without arguments are as baseless as they are useless. Simply saying "I am not convinced" is like saying "I can't win this, but I refuse to admit defeat". It's weak, insincere and pathetic. There's only one thing I hate more than such slackjawedness, and that's "Let's agree to disagree". Blech. Edited September 23, 2012 by Luckmann

[TrashMan]

No.

 

XP for solving problems, not straight up killing.

[Elerond]

In Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines where you don't get experience from killing your enemies, I played playthroughs when I did kill every enemy and ones where I killed only some and then I played those where I did my best to not kill anybody. And that was great and I mean great gaming experience, IMHO.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Elerond

[Valorian]

Yes. Combat is a big part of an RPG. All those stats, equipment, tactical & strategical decisions (possibly).. are tied directly to combat. I want it to be awarded with a good amount of XP. I don't want edless respawns and endless random encounters though, so in a sense I want it to be limited, but ample.

[Aedelric]

"Opinions" without arguments are as baseless as they are useless. Simply saying "I am not convinced" is like saying "I can't win this, but I refuse to admit defeat". It's weak, insincere and pathetic. There's only one thing I hate more than such slackjawedness, and that's "Let's agree to disagree". Blech.

 

You are entitled to your opinion, I disagree though, it is not really worth my time arguing with you I do have better things to do with my life. :D

[eimatshya]

My experience from having played a ridiculous amount of Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines (my second favorite game of all time), is that I still tend to kill a lot of stuff. The difference is that the mentality behind it changes. I no longer feel compelled to kill stuff so that I don't miss out on XP. Instead, the decision to enter combat is based on other considerations. For example, in an early mission, you are tasked with infiltrating a warehouse run by a group of violent and chaotic vampires. It is quite possible to sneak in and out without confronting all of the guards, but since this faction is characterized as being a bunch of blood crazed psychos, I often feel that it's safer not to leave any alive. Regardless of your bodycount, you get the same amount of XP at the end of the mission, so there is no intrinsic reward to killing the guards. I do it because (1) in many cases it's easier than sneaking around them and (2) from an RP perspective, I generally don't want to have a bunch of violently crazed nutjobs based right down the street from my apartment.

 

In other situations, were I may not want to kill anyone, I do not miss out on XP for doing so. For example, another mission has you breaking into a museum to steal an ancient artifact, and the museum is guarded by a surprisingly large staff of security guards. Unlike the previous group of crazed psychos, I don't want to kill a bunch of security guards for just doing their job, so I try to get through without killing any of them. I don't lose out on any XP for doing this since whatever approach I use, the XP I get will be from retrieving the artifact. This gives me the freedom to kill or not kill the security guards based on RP considerations, rather than based on what will level me up the most.

 

Having a goal-based system just gives you have a lot of freedom on how to play the game. If you are confronted by assassins, your goal becomes "survive the assassins." But the how is left up to you. If you think talking your way out of difficult situations is fun, you won't feel like you're gimping your XP by using a persuade check to convince the assassins that you aren't the people they're looking for. Likewise, if you like killing assassins, you won't feel like you are missing out on the XP reward for solving the situation diplomatically. Or if you just want to run away from the assassins, you can do that too. All three approaches lead to same outcome "survived the assassins" and the same XP reward. Since you don't get any XP for kills, your concerns are what will be the most fun, easy, challenging, or RP appropriate course of action, rather than the meta-game concern of "what will net me the most XP?"

[Gatt9]

The only possible solution, which has been shown in several games (compared to there *never* having been a balanced game that awarded experience by combat) is Goal-oriented experience. The goal could be reaching a certain point in the game, finding a secret, uncovering a truth, reaching enlightenment, exploring a region or simply finishing a quest. But never, ever, should experience be awarded by the roll of a dice or by performing a feat specific to a character type (such as combat) unless that feat is mutually exclusive but equal to feats performable by all other character types and roles.

 

 

The issue with this is you just described a highly linear game. Since experience becomes Goal-based, and you can never progress without completing goals, you end up moving in a straight line. If Town A is filled with level 5 quests, and Town B is level 10 quests, you cannot do Town B without doing Town A first.

 

Further, it's just unrealistic to the point of killing the suspension of disbelief. The character could conceivably kill 100,000,000 critters, and never get better at using his sword. But handing a person a magic marble suddenly improves the character's fighting ability.

 

The correct implementation is the one that most closely mirrors PnP RPG's, where actions are rewarded with experience. Be it killing a critter, talking your way out of a fight, sneaking past an enemy, pick-pocketing, etc. Actions that would, in reality, make a person more experienced.

 

In honesty, it sounds like everyone's just trying to ignore the root cause of the issue in CRPG's and kludge in a hack to fix it. The issue isn't, and never has been, kill-based experience. It's always been CRPG's failure to reward alternative solutions and/or non-combat actions.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Gatt9

[Arkeus]

 

 

Further, it's just unrealistic to the point of killing the suspension of disbelief. The character could conceivably kill 100,000,000 critters, and never get better at using his sword. But handing a person a magic marble suddenly improves the character's fighting ability.

 

 

If you can kill all of those critters without doing anything else, it's obviously not something that gives you experience, so that makes sense.

[kirottu]

No. Bloodlines did it perfectly.

 

Agreed. Though I don't see that type of system being done in this game.

 

I really do wish more cRPG's would follow Bloodlines excellent model.

 

Bloodlines would have done it perfectly if it would have less combat. Especially near the end when you had to hack'n'slash for hours with no reward what so ever.

 

Edit: Or at least it felt like hours. It has been years since I've played it.

Edited September 23, 2012 by kirottu

[evdk]

No. Bloodlines did it perfectly.

 

Agreed. Though I don't see that type of system being done in this game.

 

I really do wish more cRPG's would follow Bloodlines excellent model.

 

Bloodlines would have done it perfectly if it would have less combat. Especially near the end when you had to hack'n'slash for hours with no reward what so ever.

 

Edit: Or at least it felt like hours. It has been years since I've played it.

Obfuscation 5.

[walkir]

Only XP to be invested in combat abilities.

[LokiHades]

Big fights only. That or completing a zone. Like say you were doing a map, and you avoided everything through wit... You should be able to kill everything and get the same exp.

[Undecaf]

If XP does indeed end up being awarded through quest completion only, I wonder how are they going to implement skillpoint distribution / ability purchase points without making the player "choose between magic missile and herbalism". Do they count in the final method with which the quest is completed -- for example, fighting your way through a dungeon, yet bribing the final boss and gaining "social XP" -- or do they keep count on what activity do you do the most during the quest(line) and base it on that; or what?

[Gurkog]

Only challenge fights that are out of the way an optional should give XP. They are test of combat abilities and as such a sort of combat skill check. Just like there should be stuff for every skill like that.

 

EDIT: @undecaf I think that there are probably levels and upon leveling up the player gets points for both combat and noncombat skills.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Gurkog

[Merin]

A big old no.

 

Rewards for winning a fight as solving the encounter, yes. Rewards being larger for tougher encounters, the amount based on how challenging the fight was, yes.

 

So, in effect, yes...

 

but in essence, no...

 

and here's an example of the no. You can't try to gain entry to a building (the goal of the encounter), shoot down two guards but flee when four more prove more than you can handle... and still get XP for the two guards. You didn't succeed - killing two of the guards wasn't the goal. No XP.

 

It should be an equal amount for sneaking past the 6 guards, bluffing your way past the 6 guards, bribing your way past the 6 guards, or slaughtering your way through the 6 guards.

 

You, in effect, will almost always get XP if you choose to kill your enemies who are obstacles to completing your goal...

but just the KILLING doesn't give the XP. Achieving the goal does.

 

This gets murky when your goal IS killing someone or a group... because, essence and effect, you are getting XP for killing, but I hope the difference is still clear. And it'd be my hope, anyway, that you would still have other options with said target (let them flee and report them as dead, recruit them into your party perhaps instead, or lie to your quest giver convincingly enough after having not even approached the target.)

[Undecaf]

EDIT: @undecaf I think that there are probably levels and upon leveling up the player gets points for both combat and noncombat skills.

 

So that you - basically - level up both combat and noncombat at the same time without any mutual exclusiveness or cost? That... doesn't sound good at all to me. In fact, I really do hope that'll not be the case...

Edited September 23, 2012 by Undecaf

[MNOne]

The only possible solution, which has been shown in several games (compared to there *never* having been a balanced game that awarded experience by combat) is Goal-oriented experience. The goal could be reaching a certain point in the game, finding a secret, uncovering a truth, reaching enlightenment, exploring a region or simply finishing a quest. But never, ever, should experience be awarded by the roll of a dice or by performing a feat specific to a character type (such as combat) unless that feat is mutually exc

The issue with this is you just described a highly linear game. Since experience becomes Goal-based, and you can never progress without completing goals, you end up moving in a straight line. If Town A is filled with level 5 quests, and Town B is level 10 quests, you cannot do Town B without doing Town A first.

 

But that's a highly artificial scenario, one which doesn't really correlate with many existing CRPGs. More normally you'd have a set of level 5 quests and level 10 quests in Town A, and a similar distribution in Town B.

You'd also find quest chains - in any XP system - that led from one town to the next (A, B, C, etc.), back-tracking occasionally (A, B, A, C, B, etc.), whilst seperate quest chains would do similar things in parallel.

 

It's bizarre to complain that any system must necessarily lead to an experience where all quests of a similar level are grouped together (not to mention the claim that any non-goal-based system must necessarily lead to a non-linear, as opposed to linear, game).

 

Goal-based XP rewards are not intrinsically associated with any particular way of distributing quest locations or the order in which you complete them.

You can augment the quest system like any other - some quests could be made mutually exclusive; some could be fetch-quests (though hopefully not many of those!) where the location of the 'whatsit' is randomised; still others could involve having a particular item in your inventory, the locations (where they can be found) of which are likewise randomised ('I found a strange-looking pebble in that cave' 'lucky you, turns out theres 3 more out there somewhere which allow you to do something cool').

Two of these lessen the linearity of a game, the first obliges you to make branching choices which bind you to a certain path in the story (at least temporarily).

Not one of them needs a certain way of doling out the XP for finishing each quest of revealing the story.

[MNOne]

In any case, XP has always seemed to me to be a way of driving/representing character development. Any system which does that in such a way that it works - which is a condition that is relative to the type of game you are playing, be it hack-and-slash, 'true' role-playing or whatever, dependant on the kinds of action which are available to you - must almost by definition be appropriate to that function.

(Plus: we're playing a game. Why is XP always spoken of as a reward? You're meant to play games for enjoyment, which is why somepeople like to try to RP the experience as much as possible. That play is the reward.)

[TrashMan]

Can't believe how man poeple insist on having to be rewarded with XP.

 

Like a good story or atmospheric experience isn't enough? Better trash games like Splinter Cell...no XP there. No levels. Worst game ever.

 

 

Seriously.. This is a problem when you are trying ot break the mold in a good way. People are so used to doing things one way that they insist that is has to be done that way and it's the only good way to do it, even if they can't even articulate why.