Are you for or against gaining experience points only for completing objectives?

[terryrayc]

XP, or experience points should be gained for doing things that make aid you in bettering your skill or class. For example a fighter should earn XP for fighting, it's the only real way they will learn to get better and that is what XP really stands for, EXPERIENCE. If XP is going to be tied to earning levels and levels is a way to view just how skilled you character is in their class then XP should be only earned for doing things that increase their skill. For example a fighter that is focused on using a sword and shield would need to go out and use that sword and shield to get the practice needed to better their skill.

 

I understand why people want XP for quests and I'm all for that, but experience comes from doing pretty much anything and if you're a fighter you should get more experience from fighting.

[Kecaw]

Well im for geting experience from all the sources (quest/mobs etc.) because its always been like that, yeah sure there were some games that gived you xp for doing quest things only but to be frank they were more of a segment game (pass segment X you get an overall exp pool, like ME2), here? im all in for geting exp for mob kills quest hell even for lock pincking if its possible, but yeah i would not mind if you would get less and less exp from killing monster (when your character is geting stronger) to the point when you would not get anything or only 1 xp.

[GrandMasterJR]

I can understand why you would want to grant experience for completing objectives only... but in the same way that there are flaws to granting experience for killing npcs/etc, I believe there are flaws in not granting experience for killing them.

 

I don't have to kill those evil monsters who are terrorizing this forrest because I don't have a quest to do so. So why should I care?

 

I guess that "flaw" can be mitigated through solid game design though. Either way I guess.

[Enfermero Torero]

In my humble opinion (always the wisest, take note) if random enemies do exist in the game, there should be a small reward in XPs if you manage to kill them. A varying amount of XP. This should depend on the enemy´s level compared to yours, if you´ve fought that type of enemy often before, etc. If it´s agains the narrative, (killing the lady after getting XPs for finding her wedding ring), then no XPs should be awarded for making that kill.

[Hassat Hunter]

I don't think "random combat" should give XP unless it has a good reason.

 

An ambush shouldn't become 'fun' or 'profitable', it's a bloody ambush for crying out loud.

If the feeling gets "Yay, I want to get ambushed for XP and loot" the game fails.

[Gatt9]

I don't think "random combat" should give XP unless it has a good reason.

 

An ambush shouldn't become 'fun' or 'profitable', it's a bloody ambush for crying out loud.

If the feeling gets "Yay, I want to get ambushed for XP and loot" the game fails.

 

So you don't think you'd become more experienced at fighting if you were ambushed? You don't think you'd learn anything at all from it? You believe you'll only learn from doing things that have a good reason to be done, and as a consequence, the concept of "Practice" is pointless since you cannot become more experienced by engaing in that exercise since it doesn't have a good reason?

 

The biggest problem in this thread is that people are not stating what their reason is for not wanting experience from combat, and I'd imagine that's because if there was full disclosure the reasons wouldn't hold up well to cross examination.

[Avaruz]

Gaining XP only for completing objectives make more sense, as you may want to play a character who tends to avoid combat, but still gets stuff done.

 

I just hope they have a high (or no, I wish) level cap, as I will probably do a lot of side quests, and I don't like to hit the level cap when half the game is still out there.

[Elerond]

I don't think "random combat" should give XP unless it has a good reason.

 

An ambush shouldn't become 'fun' or 'profitable', it's a bloody ambush for crying out loud.

If the feeling gets "Yay, I want to get ambushed for XP and loot" the game fails.

 

So you don't think you'd become more experienced at fighting if you were ambushed? You don't think you'd learn anything at all from it? You believe you'll only learn from doing things that have a good reason to be done, and as a consequence, the concept of "Practice" is pointless since you cannot become more experienced by engaing in that exercise since it doesn't have a good reason?

 

The biggest problem in this thread is that people are not stating what their reason is for not wanting experience from combat, and I'd imagine that's because if there was full disclosure the reasons wouldn't hold up well to cross examination.

 

experience points and experience leves are abstractions, which hide how and where characters get their knowhow to do things. And when those things are abstracted then it also quite logical that gaining experience is also abtracted, which means that objective based experience will probably work better than task based as in objective based sytem game master or designer has more easier time to point out when your character has gained enough experience to get some advance from it. Although I think that surviving from ambush is pretty good objective.

 

But in systems that use straigth skill development (meaning that if you use a skill it gets better) it is more logical to use task based experience gain than objective based.

 

This are of course only my opinions about subject.

[PieSnatcher]

I think that the system that was in the IE games worked fine, but I voted for.

 

Not for realism's sake- I wouldn't want to practice lockpicking for an hour to be more proficient at it (I feel that's more elder scrolls territory). I do like the idea of growing at a pace that is fairly predictable; it might make it easier to design a well-paced game (not that the BG series wasn't). Although, if we were given xp only for completing objectives, it might make it somewhat harder for new/rejoined party members to be on equal footing with the rest of the gang. Meh.

 

And I do like the idea of being encouraged to keep moving with objectives rather than be tempted to search for random encounters for xp. But I wont cry either way.

[Ninjamestari]

Rewarding XP only for completing objectives allows the most flexibility when it comes to play style. Being punished for not being a fighter is just dumb, rewarding you for first sneaking and then letting you gain extra xp for killing the NPCs afterwards is retarded, as no one does that. The goals of the character should be the goals of the player; if the character's goal isn't to kill everyone, then the player shouldn't be rewarded for doing so.

[Nanakamado]

Well, I'm against.

I like playing with non-combatant characters, but still, no xp from killing monsters is not like cRPG. And objective "get out alive from ambush" sounds a bit weird... It's like "you don't get XP for killing each enemy, but you get XP for killing all enemies". It' would work in, some linear game, but if we would have open, waste world no combat-xp will ruin all map roaming fun.

 

Being punished for not being a fighter is just dumb, rewarding you for first sneaking and then letting you gain extra xp for killing the NPCs afterwards is retarded.

 

I don't agree. But maybee it could be good idea to have two xp pools - combatant and non-combatant. That could be used absolutely independent (I know, that would be imposible if we would have some D&D like levels.)

 

The goals of the character should be the goals of the player; if the character's goal isn't to kill everyone, then the player shouldn't be rewarded for doing so.

 

As long as you are free to choose aligment, you can play chaotic evil homicidal maniac. More experience, but harder live, beacuse evryone will kill such a public enemy. With no xp from killing, such character have no sense.

[Silentsigil]

I don't like the idea of ONLY gaining exp from objectives... That kind of creates a railroad for players, unless these objectives are placed all over the place. Maybe my idea of 'objectives' is off from what the designers are thinking.

 

Let's say that you are exploring. If you find a curious assortment of humanoids or something in a lived-in cave, murder them, and then you get xp for finding the treasure cache, and a small bonus for finding the jewelled ring hidden in the third orc on the left's wooden clog (perception?), then maybe it would be fine, if done right.

 

If there are no rewards like this in the envrionment, then there is little reason to try to explore. It all becomes you pushing your character from point a to point b, and this destroys replayability. You also miss out on any cool stuff that is around just a couple feet off that road you just charged blindly down to get your next level at noob town B.

 

If the objectives are all mission based, or all story based, or all only accessible from certain locations, then to make fighting and exploring interesting you might be forced to put unnecessary loots on corpses (which would lead to the same kind of 'genocidal activities' you are trying to avoid), or put focus on 'sneaky sneaky' instead of 'hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle' gameplay, when both should be feasible in a game like this.

[Continuum]

If a game is open-world at all, then I think it's a bad idea to have objectives be the only way to gain XP. Example - Fallout: New Vegas. If I gained no XP for killing things, that would mean that an awful lot of my time in game generated no progression, because I spend lots of time exploring.

 

If it's a fixed objectives that basically only have one path through them, then it doesn't really matter. Example - Mass Effect 2/3. There is no point in awarding XP per kill there because you have to get through everything to complete each objective, and all your characters are the same level. Even at that, thought, ME2 went too far in ONLY awarding XP at mission end, which ME3 rectified by awarding XP at multiple objective points in mission.

 

If a game is closed-world, multiple path to complete, XP per kill is counterproductive. Example - Deus Ex: HR or other games where you have multiple options to completely avoid combat. XP per kill would penalize the more creative solutions.

 

I'm assuming P:E will be somewhere in the continuum between Torment and Fallout: New Vegas - not one continous open world like F:NV, but that there will be open areas of the game. I'd like to be able to explore for the sake of exploring, and I'd like to still improve my characters when exploring outside of the set quest lines. I'm fine if many or most areas of the game are scripted instances, but I assume there will be some aspect of open world to it. I'd like to gain XP for a wide variety of activities, from quest conversations to skill use to quest goal completion to monster kills.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Continuum

[wanderon]

I think people are taking the concept the devs have stated about getting experience for objectives and not for body counts to be far more extreme than it's likely to be. If you are traveling and come upon an encounter of some sort your objective is to get past it through whatever means are available to you.

 

The idea that the game is going to be full of combat opportunities that will provide no experience is pretty silly - (and typical internet over-reaction to anything)

 

More than likely they just mean that the game is NOT likely to just have random attacks and that pretty much every encounter or possibly group of encounters (like a band of thugs or rabid racoons vs getting through a level of the mega-dungeon or a stretch of dangerous highway or forest) will have experience attached to it -

 

It just won't be based on the body count - it will be based on completing it in whatever way you choose to do so - if you turn around and walk away and don't engage in it at all - THEN you will not get the experience but otherwise you will no doubt get anything that is coming to you -

 

If the experience is not based on body counts - why would they have encounters that could mount up body counts with no experience attached to them - there would be no point to them being there - instead it's likely all encounters or groups of related encounters will come with experience for completion.

 

Sounds fine to me...

[Nanakamado]

If the experience is not based on body counts - why would they have encounters that could mount up body counts with no experience attached to them - there would be no point to them being there - instead it's likely all encounters or groups of related encounters will come with experience for completion.

 

Sounds fine to me...

 

You're right... Partialy... But, it sounds fine if I run PnP and players(gamers? I'm not very keen with english PnP RPG nomenclature) have only one fight for 10 hours of playing. They won't get xp for body count. I don't see this working in cRPG.

 

But at least, I know only one good cRPG not made by people curently working on P:E, so I trust, that whatever they decide to implement it will be good.

[wanderon]

If the experience is not based on body counts - why would they have encounters that could mount up body counts with no experience attached to them - there would be no point to them being there - instead it's likely all encounters or groups of related encounters will come with experience for completion.

 

Sounds fine to me...

 

You're right... Partialy... But, it sounds fine if I run PnP and players(gamers? I'm not very keen with english PnP RPG nomenclature) have only one fight for 10 hours of playing. They won't get xp for body count. I don't see this working in cRPG.

 

But at least, I know only one good cRPG not made by people curently working on P:E, so I trust, that whatever they decide to implement it will be good.

 

I'm not saying there won't fights or even that there won't be as many fights - I'm saying whatever fights are there will be a form of encounter one way or another that will generate some sort of experience and I suspect these will be broken down into fairly small segments rather than one large block of experience for an entire dungeon level for instance.

[villain of the story]

My position, which might have been voiced by others in 26 pages:

 

For creatures:

Limit XP you can get from killing one type of creature. Beyond that limit, you will no longer get XP for killing that type of creature.

 

For races:

(1) Limit XP you can get from killing with one type of weapon, with the exception of (2)

(2) Give XP only for killing those with superior levels, skills and abilities.

 

If the system doesn't distinguish between such fine details, I'd rather not get any XP from kills at all.

[Ninjamestari]

 

As long as you are free to choose aligment, you can play chaotic evil homicidal maniac. More experience, but harder live, beacuse evryone will kill such a public enemy. With no xp from killing, such character have no sense.

 

Why should the game reward a player for playing a character that makes no sense whatsoever? Sure, you should be able to play an evil homicidal maniac, but why the hell should you be rewarded for it beyond what a normal character gets?

 

Oh, yeah, you're not really roleplaying an evil homicidal maniac, you're power gaming.

 

 

If a game is open-world at all, then I think it's a bad idea to have objectives be the only way to gain XP. Example - Fallout: New Vegas. If I gained no XP for killing things, that would mean that an awful lot of my time in game generated no progression, because I spend lots of time exploring.

 

Exploring doesn't mean you have to kill every one of the monsters you encounter. There can be other ways to reward exploration, such as additional treasure and XP rewards for finding secrets. You might find additional side quests even, that let you get even more XP out of your exploring. No monster XP required, and you can play as a character who would rather avoid combat than spend his whole day killing monsters without feeling like you're being punished for wanting to make a non fighter character.

[Gatt9]

I don't think "random combat" should give XP unless it has a good reason.

 

An ambush shouldn't become 'fun' or 'profitable', it's a bloody ambush for crying out loud.

If the feeling gets "Yay, I want to get ambushed for XP and loot" the game fails.

 

So you don't think you'd become more experienced at fighting if you were ambushed? You don't think you'd learn anything at all from it? You believe you'll only learn from doing things that have a good reason to be done, and as a consequence, the concept of "Practice" is pointless since you cannot become more experienced by engaing in that exercise since it doesn't have a good reason?

 

The biggest problem in this thread is that people are not stating what their reason is for not wanting experience from combat, and I'd imagine that's because if there was full disclosure the reasons wouldn't hold up well to cross examination.

 

experience points and experience leves are abstractions, which hide how and where characters get their knowhow to do things. And when those things are abstracted then it also quite logical that gaining experience is also abtracted, which means that objective based experience will probably work better than task based as in objective based sytem game master or designer has more easier time to point out when your character has gained enough experience to get some advance from it. Although I think that surviving from ambush is pretty good objective.

 

But in systems that use straigth skill development (meaning that if you use a skill it gets better) it is more logical to use task based experience gain than objective based.

 

This are of course only my opinions about subject.

 

I would disagree that objective based experience works better.

 

Objective based experiences purpose, especially in a CRPG, is to try to address an issue that is created by traditional CRPG design. CRPG's traditionally rewarded experience only for killing things, or if they did reward alternative solutions, did so poorly resulting in slow or non-existant chracter progression. Objective based experience is an attempt to address that shortcoming by saying "I don't care how you did it, everyone gets the reward!", which sounds like it works on the surface, but really starts falling apart under examination because it introduces all kinds of new problems.

 

-First, as we've talked about numerous times in this thread, it makes combat a chore rather than a potential reward. Since combat no longer has any reward to it, and since CRPG combat is predictably monotonous, it makes it extremely disinteresting. CRPG combat suffers from numerous technological limitations in AI and design that preclude the introduction of anything really compelling, at this stage, it cannot approach the dynamic combat seen in PnP. Really, it's "Click on guy, watch". Since most PnP approaches are unimplementable at present, such as casting an arbitrary illusion to distract an enemy and surprise him, combat in a CRPG is really uninspired when left to stand on it's own merits.

 

-Second, objective based solutions suffer from "Doesn't matter what you did to get here, or how you did it, here's a lump sum". If you achieve something nearly impossible, like talking a dragon out of his sword, or sneaking it out of his lair, doesn't matter. Every solution is equal, and so, there's no motivation for the Player to try anything except the most direct solution.

 

-Third, it really breaks suspension of disbelief. The Player kills 100 critters and doesn't improve with his sword, or in his spell casting, but hands a guy a magic marble he collected and suddenly he's better.

 

As I said earlier in the thread, this is just a generic solution instead of implementing the obviously better correct one: Give reasonable experience rewards for anything that solves the event based on the difficulty of the solution. Or in other words, reward combat, stealth, diplomacy, etc, on a sliding scale based upon how difficult it would be to achieve that solution. It's *really* easy to implement, *really* effective at solving the problem, and doesn't have any of the pitfalls of Objective based or pure kill-based systems.

[Bacon Pancakes]

I think it's worth noting that an objective based experience system doesn't mean that you get no reward for killing enemies. It just means that you get that reward indirectly, and that you could get that reward even without killing them.

 

For example: There's a group of guards in front of the building you want to get into. If you get into the building by killing the guards, you get experience points. If you get into the building by sneaking past them or tricking them into leaving, you get just as many experience points.

But if you trick the guards into leaving, sneak up behind them, pick their pockets, then chop their heads off before going in the building, you still get the same amount of experience points, not four times as many.

 

I understand why some people don't like that idea; If you use four skills to accomplish something, your experience points should reflect that, right? But at the same time, that would be rewarding you for insane behavior. Role-playing as a psychopath is all well and good, but that doesn't mean that role-playing as a sane individual should give you a penalty to experience.

[jethro]

I don't like the idea of ONLY gaining exp from objectives... That kind of creates a railroad for players, unless these objectives are placed all over the place. Maybe my idea of 'objectives' is off from what the designers are thinking.

 

Let's say that you are exploring. If you find a curious assortment of humanoids or something in a lived-in cave, murder them, and then you get xp for finding the treasure cache, and a small bonus for finding the jewelled ring hidden in the third orc on the left's wooden clog (perception?), then maybe it would be fine, if done right.

 

This type of free roaming is the definition of an open world game. PE will be a story driven game and making this exploring possible will not be a design priority. Just keep that in mind when you expect a reward for that. But wait, you think you didn't get a reward? Lets look closely:

 

* You already get the stuff you find there and maybe even a unique item.

* You get the satisfaction of finding this hidden cave all by yourself and isn't that the purpose of "exploration"?

* But it doesn't end there: You might have the chance to talk to them, they even might have a quest for you. Or you hear some rumor from them.

* If not, the chances are really good that someone else had and still has a quest for you that involves this cave. When you talk to this person and he laments that some orcs stole his jeweled wedding ring you can smile knowingly, tell him how lucky he is and give him the ring. Oh, and get the xp.

 

Why should exploring get an extra reward? I had so much fun exploring in Fallout 3, just getting into the role and scouting the area. xp is something a role player should have no knowledge about, it is just a mechanism to level up at appropriate moments. If you hunt for xp in a game you are not role playing any more, you are meta gaming. You have fallen into the instant gratification trap. The design goal of an RPG is to immerse you into the world, let you role play. If you want to meta-game most MMORPGs will accomodate you better.

 

If there are no rewards like this in the envrionment, then there is little reason to try to explore. It all becomes you pushing your character from point a to point b, and this destroys replayability. You also miss out on any cool stuff that is around just a couple feet off that road you just charged blindly down to get your next level at noob town B.

 

You say it yourself: "You miss out on any cool stuff that is around". Exactly, there is cool stuff there! What more reason do you need to look for it?

 

By the way, I just realized that xp could be viewed as a sort of generic micro-achievement system.

Edited November 4, 2012 by jethro

[Hassat Hunter]

So you don't think you'd become more experienced at fighting if you were ambushed?

Not really. Reflex and instinct survival methods don't really learn you as much as actual training.

Realism aside, it was mostly about gaming design for me. It's pretty counter-productive to have a "bad encounter" (ambushed!) for the player, and they get insanely rewarded for that. That way, it's not really bad is it?

You believe you'll only learn from doing things that have a good reason to be done, and as a consequence, the concept of "Practice" is pointless since you cannot become more experienced by engaing in that exercise since it doesn't have a good reason?

No. Gameplaywise though, it's the best design, since it does reward the player actually doing something, and doesn't reward it for playing the system, doing stupid stuff, being a murderous ass for no reason or just grind the same monsters 2 hours.

The biggest problem in this thread is that people are not stating what their reason is for not wanting experience from combat, and I'd imagine that's because if there was full disclosure the reasons wouldn't hold up well to cross examination.

SERIOUSLY?

Dude, I've posted COUNTLESS posts on this topic with full disclosure on why it should be the case. If you don't read them, don't blame us on not giving all the reasons right up there up front for all to see and judge...

unless these objectives are placed all over the place.

Yes, they are.

It's called rewarding exploring, doing quests. Instead of random wanton-slaughter. And allowing gamedevs to only reward exploring with loot or more monsters to kill for XP.

You also miss out on any cool stuff that is around just a couple feet off that road you just charged blindly down to get your next level at noob town B.

Remind me again why good incentitve to explore (cool stuff) isn't a good incentitive to explore anymore if monsters give no XP, given that the same cool stuff is the same coolness. And stuff.

???

it makes combat a chore rather than a potential reward. Since combat no longer has any reward to it, and since CRPG combat is predictably monotonous, it makes it extremely disinteresting. CRPG combat suffers from numerous technological limitations in AI and design that preclude the introduction of anything really compelling, at this stage, it cannot approach the dynamic combat seen in PnP. Really, it's "Click on guy, watch". Since most PnP approaches are unimplementable at present, such as casting an arbitrary illusion to distract an enemy and surprise him, combat in a CRPG is really uninspired when left to stand on it's own merits.

Seeing how both with XP and without XP this is the case, I don't see why it makes a difference. Only the really-OCD crowd would suddenly find combat "awesome and great and worthwhile" if it give 5XP per kill and suddenly thinks it's the biggest waste of time when giving 0XP. Seeing how it's EXACTLY the same. But without arbitary silly number.

Does such a small bonus really make it that easy to overcome bad design? Let's add in that the player needs to send his files online each hour for checkup. It totally sucks. Everyone knows that. But we give them 100XP for doing so. Yay, everyone think it's the best thing ever!

Last time I checked, in reality, it doesn't work that way...

I don't particularly saw Deus Ex's combat as being really bad. And all the complains about it where about aiming, none said that it would have been so much better if downed enemies gave XP per kill.

Second, objective based solutions suffer from "Doesn't matter what you did to get here, or how you did it, here's a lump sum". If you achieve something nearly impossible, like talking a dragon out of his sword, or sneaking it out of his lair, doesn't matter. Every solution is equal, and so, there's no motivation for the Player to try anything except the most direct solution.

If the player is a powergamer with a guide and a distinct need to rush the game, probably.

As stated before in the thread though, this "fallacy" has even more fallacies to itself. To summon up quickly;

* What would be the most direct solution? What is the fastest option? How do you know?

* What about resolution differences other than XP?

* What sudden force compels player to forgo their character and play like this, forced as though by godly powers?

As seen, the 'this WILL happen' has so many "but how the heck can that be" applied to it, it's pretty hard to see it happening on a massive scale.

Third, it really breaks suspension of disbelief. The Player kills 100 critters and doesn't improve with his sword, or in his spell casting, but hands a guy a magic marble he collected and suddenly he's better.

I'll answer this question once you tell me how killing 100 critters makes me better at lockpicking and bartering.

Apparently if thinking this way a TES-system would be the best to use, as it allows realistically to upgrade what you're using. In practice, it doesn't however, and a levelbased with XP system is much better in this type of game.

You'll have to take it with a bit of "it's abstract" though. And instead of only looking at "but I should learn when swinging my sword" also look to the gameplay designer point of view. Where you may see it can really give you so much more options using an objective based system, more control. More everything.

Give reasonable experience rewards for anything that solves the event based on the difficulty of the solution. Or in other words, reward combat, stealth, diplomacy, etc, on a sliding scale based upon how difficult it would be to achieve that solution. It's *really* easy to implement, *really* effective at solving the problem, and doesn't have any of the pitfalls of Objective based or pure kill-based systems.

Nope, not really.

If diplomacy is always easiest (as it usually is in RPG's) the diplomatic char gets duped with much less XP. Making his build lack behind, and thus less viable. Kind of the current system we are trying to avoid.

Apparently everyone somehow agrees combat is the hardest, so this "fix" is basically the same system of old, unchanged, unfit for the changes to make less combat-prone builds viable.

So efficient at solving the problem? I don't think so...

[jethro]

Objective based experiences purpose, especially in a CRPG, is to try to address an issue that is created by traditional CRPG design. CRPG's traditionally rewarded experience only for killing things, or if they did reward alternative solutions, did so poorly resulting in slow or non-existant chracter progression. Objective based experience is an attempt to address that shortcoming by saying "I don't care how you did it, everyone gets the reward!", which sounds like it works on the surface, but really starts falling apart under examination because it introduces all kinds of new problems.

 

-First, as we've talked about numerous times in this thread, it makes combat a chore rather than a potential reward. Since combat no longer has any reward to it, and since CRPG combat is predictably monotonous, it makes it extremely disinteresting. CRPG combat suffers from numerous technological limitations in AI and design that preclude the introduction of anything really compelling, at this stage, it cannot approach the dynamic combat seen in PnP. Really, it's "Click on guy, watch". Since most PnP approaches are unimplementable at present, such as casting an arbitrary illusion to distract an enemy and surprise him, combat in a CRPG is really uninspired when left to stand on it's own merits.

 

Strange, so you fight without having fun just to get xp. Lets define "farming": Doing repetitive boring tasks to get something. Lets define "meta-gaming": Doing things you normally wouldn't do to get rewards outside of the game world(*). So it seems to me you want Obsidian to design its RPG for meta-game farming.

 

I played all the infinity games and other RPGs and I had fun with the fights. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Trivial fights are boring everywhere, I played some in PnP as well. Hard fights are fun. Or tactical fights like ToEEs or the mage duels in BG2 or Torment where you had to peel of the protections spells were fun. If they were not I would have stopped playing or played on easy or god-mode.

Naturally fighting is only one part of an RPG so there is a limit to how tactical you can make it without the player spending 95% of his time in fights. So fighting is a compromise. But fighting for xp is not the solution, really

 

(*) I say xp is outside the game world because you get your advancement/level-up in any case if you play the game (which entails solving quests), just the exact moment you get some of the xp is different. So if you absolutely need an xp reward directly after the fight to do the fighting then your motivation is solely for the xp and not for the later level-up.

 

-Second, objective based solutions suffer from "Doesn't matter what you did to get here, or how you did it, here's a lump sum". If you achieve something nearly impossible, like talking a dragon out of his sword, or sneaking it out of his lair, doesn't matter. Every solution is equal, and so, there's no motivation for the Player to try anything except the most direct solution.

 

Motivations to not use the direct route (which often is killing everyone):

* Curiosity. Hey, what happens if I do the other thing?

* Role play: My priest wouldn't do that

* Fun: Hehe, I got a great idea that will make that sorceror look like an idiot

 

By the way, nothing prevents Obsidian to grant more XP for exceptionally difficult solutions. This would still be an objective-based xp system.

 

-Third, it really breaks suspension of disbelief. The Player kills 100 critters and doesn't improve with his sword, or in his spell casting, but hands a guy a magic marble he collected and suddenly he's better.

 

Wait, he isn't better if killing the 100 critters didn't push him over the level-boundary. Or do you think the PC sees a holy number before his eye that changed from 11583 to 11593 after he killed one critter? No, he seems to kill 100 critters and doesn't get better at all. Then he kills critter number 134 and WHAM, suddenly a level-up and he really is better. "What was so special about critter number 134?" he asks himself. He also wonders why his alchemy skil did improve as well, without him doing anything else but killing critters. What does that do to your suspension of disbelief?

 

If you want a system were doing something improves that skill a small bit and only that skill, get a Bethesda game. Not that skill-use leveling is more fun to play (it isn't IMO) but it definitely is more realistic.

 

As I said earlier in the thread, this is just a generic solution instead of implementing the obviously better correct one: Give reasonable experience rewards for anything that solves the event based on the difficulty of the solution. Or in other words, reward combat, stealth, diplomacy, etc, on a sliding scale based upon how difficult it would be to achieve that solution. It's *really* easy to implement, *really* effective at solving the problem, and doesn't have any of the pitfalls of Objective based or pure kill-based systems.

 

How do you reward stealth? By giving 10 xp for every second you are in stealth or not seen by anyone? Oh wait, that is skill-use leveling like in Bethesdas RPGs (although I doubt they give xp for being just stealthed). No thank you. Everyone would just get stealthy, leave the computer for an hour and have a fully developed master thief.

Got any better idea how to reward the stealth solution? If you don't have a *really* easy implementation idea let me give you one:

 

Just use objective-based XP. It is really easy and solves the problem ;-)

Edited November 4, 2012 by jethro

[GrinningReaper659]

I think that idealy there could be a system that combined objective-completion xp and some sort of diminishing task-oriented xp, which could decrease depending on the number of times you've done a particular task, such as killing a goblin or picking a lock, while still attempting to not imbalance the xp in favor of or against a particular playstyle, such as all combat.

 

However, as I'm certainly in no position to make such a system, I'm very much looking forward to the objective-completion xp system they're building, I'm sure they'll do it well and am excited to see how it plays out.

[Atreides]

Killing for items is still an incentive though xp's taken away.

 

An idea for discussion - what's to discourage the player from killing for (high level?) items though a non-combat resolution's been achieved and its rewards been paid out?