Raw experience, or experience that scales with your level?

[Rabain]

It depends how you think of XP, killing a rat at level 10 might seem like it doesn't offer any new experience but you could ask yourself why you need to kill a rat at level 10. Perhaps the reason for your action is what provides the XP.

 

At level 1 I kill rats because the Innkeeper needs his cellar cleaned out and its about all I can manage, at level 10 I kill rats because the Lord I'm looking to get a job from wants me to kill rats.

 

Either way I still learned something worthy of XP, at level 1 I learned some combat, at level 10 I learned Lords are ****.

[AGX-17]

The ever-increasing experience requirements for additional levels naturally makes the "x" experience received for the most basic enemies irrelevant. When it takes you 30,000 exp to level up, 10 might as well be the same as 0. On the other hand, from a believably standpoint, after your first 3-odd rats you should be pretty much a master rat-smasher and no longer learn anything about the practice until you encounter the rat king.

[ogrezilla]

The ever-increasing experience requirements for additional levels naturally makes the "x" experience received for the most basic enemies irrelevant. When it takes you 30,000 exp to level up, 10 might as well be the same as 0. On the other hand, from a believably standpoint, after your first 3-odd rats you should be pretty much a master rat-smasher and no longer learn anything about the practice until you encounter the rat king.

except I'm not a rat smasher, I'm a fighter. So I still practice swinging my axe when I swing it at a rat. Not much, but a little.

Edited October 7, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Moriendor]

Since -according to my understanding at least- PE isn't suposed to become some kind of open world behemoth like the TES games, I firmly believe in a static solution. It should be fairly easy for the devs to predict at what level(s) a player is going to get to what content so keeping it static should not pose much of a balancing challenge (at least for regular play... I wouldn't seriously want to be the one balancing that hardcore permadeath stuff TBH ).

If the game had "true" 360° freedom then scaling encounters to a certain degree would seem like the more viable approach but since PE will at the most probably offer BG-like "open" world exploration, I think that static will simply make more sense.

[harhar!]

Scaling is basically always bad. This time around it's useless, because we will surely have that we need more and more exp to gain a level, so killing a rat at lvl 10 is pretty meaningless already. Mixing in scaling makes it more complicated to balance imo. I also get annoyed when I have to fight monsters that don't yield nearly anything, it's just such a waste of time.

[Hypevosa]

Scaling is basically always bad. This time around it's useless, because we will surely have that we need more and more exp to gain a level, so killing a rat at lvl 10 is pretty meaningless already. Mixing in scaling makes it more complicated to balance imo. I also get annoyed when I have to fight monsters that don't yield nearly anything, it's just such a waste of time.

 

that's the point. don't take a quest that's a cake walk when the harder quest will yield the extra experience to cover what was lost not killing the easy monsters. Give players the option to ignore easy quests - unlike BG where you feel the need to take every quest that comes along to ensure you get all the exp to level that you can. The experience it takes to level there scales, but teters off once you reach level 20 so you don't level so irregularly that there's no more sense of progression. If you just have exponentially increasing markers for experience, you end up making player progression come to a halt or start giving out insane numbers for experience for level equivalent challenges.

[Sensuki]

STATIC EXPERIENCE

 

That said, I don't think we'll be getting experience for kills ?

Edited October 8, 2012 by Sensuki

[ogrezilla]

that is possible.

[Ieo]

That said, I don't think we'll be getting experience for kills ?

 

Wait.... I thought I read something about this too.... somewhere. Anyone have a cite? Or maybe it was just an idea Josh was tossing around?

[Gatt9]

That said, I don't think we'll be getting experience for kills ?

 

Wait.... I thought I read something about this too.... somewhere. Anyone have a cite? Or maybe it was just an idea Josh was tossing around?

 

It was a vaguely worded comment about non-combat skills, that was later clarified. Xp/kill is present.

 

I voted static xp, sliding scale levels achieves the same effect, so this is squaring the complexity, with no real benefit.

[nikolokolus]

STATIC EXPERIENCE

 

That said, I don't think we'll be getting experience for kills ?

 

Good point.

[nikolokolus]

That said, I don't think we'll be getting experience for kills ?

 

Wait.... I thought I read something about this too.... somewhere. Anyone have a cite? Or maybe it was just an idea Josh was tossing around?

 

Tim Cain said it in the first reddit Q&A if I recall? "We aren't going to reward you for your body count" or some such.

 

EDIT:

 

Correction, I think it was actually his first video update

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/314089

Edited October 8, 2012 by nikolokolus

[ogrezilla]

I think they meant that killing wouldn't be the only way to get xp. not that killing wouldn't give xp.

Edited October 8, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Ieo]

That said, I don't think we'll be getting experience for kills ?

 

Wait.... I thought I read something about this too.... somewhere. Anyone have a cite? Or maybe it was just an idea Josh was tossing around?

 

Tim Cain said it in the first reddit Q&A if I recall? "We aren't going to reward you for your body count" or some such.

 

EDIT:

 

Correction, I think it was actually his first video update

 

http://www.kickstart...ty/posts/314089

I think they meant that killing wouldn't be the only way to get xp. not that killing wouldn't give xp.

 

Thanks. Ah, I see, it was just tangentially alluded to, but probably not what he meant on its face. A few ways to interpret that, so I'll just leave it alone...

 

 

It was a vaguely worded comment about non-combat skills, that was later clarified. Xp/kill is present.

 

I voted static xp, sliding scale levels achieves the same effect, so this is squaring the complexity, with no real benefit.

 

Right, I was thinking of scaling mob xp in relation to more static level requirements, so it makes sense alone, but loses value when taken together with other mechanics. Assuming PE will be using that model where higher levels require more and more xp, then this is a bit redundant..

[sollus]

I dont think it matters either way - ultimately the devs will balance the game so that you start out on level x and end up around level y (plus or minus depending on amount of optional content you do) by the end. Some people may be in the school of thought that it is more realistic and enhances immersion to have experience scaling, which does make sense from a learning perspective.

 

Keep in mind that the devs have hinted that they may be providing experience rewards based on objective so that fighting enemies or persuading them or sneaking past are equal in terms of experience reward.

 

If exp per enemy defeated is in I would opt to have it hidden from the player, thus this becomes a non-issue.

 

Edit: If xp/kill is in and there are also options for getting xp without killing, doesnt this lead to the inevitable scenario where a player takes a non-combat route, gets the xp, then goes back and kills all the enemies and gets essentially double the amount of xp. The devs have also expressed they want to avoid this scenario, it will be interesting to see how they go about fulfilling these requirements.

Edited October 8, 2012 by sollus

[teknoman2]

static for me.

the 10xp i get for a rat are a blessing in the begining, when i need 500xp to get from lv1 to lv2, but when im lv19 and need 320k xp to go to lv20, that 10 xp are meaningless anyway so i wont bother killing the rat

Edited October 8, 2012 by teknoman2

[DocDoomII]

If the enemies do not scale with us, then neither should the xp reward.

[Larkaloke]

Static XP. It evens out in the end anyhow, as while 10 XP means something to begin with, after a few levels it begins to mean very little. I've never really liked the idea that you reach a point where killing, say, a goblin gains you nothing whatsoever -- it may not be a particularly skillful foe, but it does still require some technique and fight to kill, so it makes sense to me that it should gain you at least some experience. That even moreso with tougher opponents that also eventually slide to gaining you nothing with a scaling XP system.

[TrashMan]

There are no rats.

Only bandits and monsters that lost little of their deadliness regardless of player level.

 

Fair enough. Wolves? (j/k) I would argue that any field-seasoned adventurer will be able to dispatch enemies of less experience more easily than they would some seasons prior to the encounter. Unless what you want is enemy encounter scaling.

 

Not really. What I want is a conservative power progression. Ho HP inflation. Proper battle mechanics where numbers and flanking do make a big deal. AI that fights at least somewhat intelligently.

That way, no matter what level you are, the lvl1 bandits won't ever become an afterthought. tehy will still be able ot deliver a world of hurt upon you if you're not carefull.

 

 

And no, I don't really care much for killing wolves. Leave the poor wolves alone.

[max8472]

XP per encounter (my best choice however is XP only for doing quests), not per monster/enemy, so scalable encounter equals to scalable experience.

[Sensuki]

XP per encounter (my best choice however is XP only for doing quests), not per monster/enemy, so scalable encounter equals to scalable experience.

 

If it's done like Baldur's Gate

 

Extra enemies = extra XP

A Greater Mummy yields more XP than a Mummy

Edited October 9, 2012 by Sensuki

[Andron]

My two cents: If xp scaling is used, it should only be for enemies, not for quests. I hate doing quests in games (like Borderlands) and not getting jack for it since I'm too high level. I'm pretty sure this thread has been focusing on xp/kill, but I wanted to throw that out there.

[Ieo]

My two cents: If xp scaling is used, it should only be for enemies, not for quests. I hate doing quests in games (like Borderlands) and not getting jack for it since I'm too high level. I'm pretty sure this thread has been focusing on xp/kill, but I wanted to throw that out there.

 

Obsidian did say that they wouldn't award for "body count," which implies they won't award for only kills and/or the main bulk of xp is coming from quests, or something. I'm curious how they're going to balance things out between level/xp/questing, but I'm sure Obsidian will look for something fair---they have a lot of experience by now.

[Ywerion]

I had a pleasure to play Drakensang game, where there was great implementation of your suggestion, when party killed lets say Giant Spider for a first time, they was rewarded by fittingly huge amount of XPs, yet after getting more of these slain the XP reward was lesser because party got more used to this type of enemy. Which simply meant that with higher skill became killing known enemies rutinous and less rewarding, which was a nice touch and I loved the idea and I would not mind to see something similar in PE.

Edited October 9, 2012 by Ywerion