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

[evdk]

But then aren't we then limiting you to having to CLEAR dungeons? What about just offing that party of hob goblins and moving on?

 

Again, it makes doing little extra things less rewarding. Why bother clearing the crypt of undead if I just need to kill 5 to get to where I want to go? How would getting much less battle experience equate equal leveling experience?

 

There's an unspoken assumption here that you really, urgently NEED that granular level of experience you'd get from only partially clearing the dungeon. But I don't think you do, not really.

 

Not everything in a game needs to reward you. As long as the game is built around its experience mechanic effectively, it shouldn't really bother anyone.

 

Or possibly you could use subquests.

[Larkaloke]

I voted against, because I find that -- of the various games I've played where either system is used -- I prefer kill-based experience. However, I'm hardly fanatical about it, and I expect that I'll be happy enough with it however it ends up panning out (I don't mind getting all the XP at the end of a campaign in a pen-and-paper game, so certainly the delayed aspect of it I wouldn't mind). Most of the games using encounter-based experience systems that I've played have probably not been the best examples of the system, so I'm certainly willing to give it a chance. Still, my preference is towards kill-based systems.

 

I suppose, partly, this may be because I've never really been tempted to game the system with kill-based experience. I don't go kill anything my characters wouldn't want to be killing anyhow, and I'm perfectly fine with it if I lose out on some XP because that's not what that particular party would do. So, I don't really see that either way would change how many creatures most people would go around killing.

 

Objective-based experience systems tend to feel odd to me for much the same reason that the CR system does: I would think that you would always gain some skill and experience from killing creatures, even though the small amount of it might not mean very much after a while. The idea of killing, say, ten goblins and not having learned anything at all from the experience is strange to me. That said, I also like quest XP and XP from things like learning spells and disarming traps and picking locks, it just seems that only quest XP is odd. Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly what this would be.

 

In any case, the method of gaining experience points isn't particularly important to me in the grand scheme of things. It's not one of the most important things about a game to me, and it certainly doesn't make the difference between a game being enjoyable and not being enjoyable. I'm sure it'll be enjoyable either way.

[Troller]

Ive noticed this in Fallout New Vegas, you faced some tough enemies, and they give very low XP points, to balance this out, like in the Deathclaw part in the cement manufacturer, there were some very small deathclaw babies, that were easy to kill, but awarded the same XP as the bigger ones.

 

[Hormalakh]

It's completely nonsensical. I can kill 100,000,000 goblins and not get better with my sword. Hand a guy a magic marble and suddenly I'm better with my sword.

 

It's terrible design.

 

 

This should help not putting 100.000.000 of bloody trash mobs in the game. And, as has been previously pointed out, murdering umptillion of gobbos helping you become more persuasive is equally retarded, because the system is only a abstraction of reality.

 

How about being better at taking the specific enemy down? By taking down 15 Goblins you get +1 to "thaco" towards that specific creature.

 

How about putting learn-by-doing TES style where it belongs... in the trash bin.

 

Good point. I was just thinking about Final Fantasy II (which is the reversal of gaining experience from journeying, and it's utterly utterly utterly horrible. Although the story is great, it really suffers because of this).

 

Now this isn't what I'm aiming for with my suggestion, TES in the trash bin. If you and I discussed for a while you'd find my weak points and strong points in terms of discussing, right? If I fought a Goblin a couple of times I would do the same, the first few times I might even lose and have to run away because I have no idea what the crap I'm facing, it's patterns and what it does, can it cast Magic? Is it a Shaman in the Goblin population?

 

Things like that make the character's combat attitude grow. Read Vagabond, please.

 

I wasn't sure was TES was, but now that I've read your description I think I understand it and I agree with you. Perhaps a challenge rating for each skill would determine the amount that skill increases if a certain method is used. For example, using a speech skill on someone who is easily influenced might gain you speech experience at lower levels of that skill, but as you get better, the experience becomes either negligible or non-existent. The challenge ratings of these speeches (you need higher skill points to succeed for example) would help determine whether you gain experience or not due to that particular action.

 

Experienced thieves no longer gain lockpicking experience by locking and unlocking their own doors (the challenge rating is too low). They also don't gain experience by unlocking that flimsy lock.

 

Diplomats no longer gain experience unless the discussion was a particularly difficult one.

 

Fighters no longer gain experience unless the challenge rating was high enough.

[Hormalakh]

Not all zombies are located in abbeys.

I need to kill it because it's standing in our party's way and it's a good target to practice our swords on. After we defeated the group of zombies (or a group of skeletons or whatever) we felt to have improved our combat skills and would like that to be reflected with an xp reward.

 

"Really Conan? That was the 600th zombie you've killed since I left the adventurer's hall with you. You just cut his head off with one stroke. You really think that you learned something new by what amounts to you stretching your arms out a little?"

 

Edit: Of course little old shrimpy here definitely learned a few things or two fighting what was his 20th or 30th zombie. He's still young, that chap.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Hormalakh

[ArchBeast]

I think that exp should be gain only by completing quests, subquests or making large stepps to completing them, or doing some extras like finding a new way to use their abilitis let's say you find a way for new healing potion, or new armor.

This type of exp gaining were se in Vampire Masquarade - Bloodlines

 

I think that guy that kills 1000000000000000 rats, is less experienced then a guy that saved someons life, or done something great. I think that multikilling way to gain experience is overused and boooooooring.

 

Let's imagine a situation, we have a Super-Hero an he is asked "Were did you gain you power ?" and hi is saying "I killd 100000000 wolfs by running in the woods" that's dump. they should also gain exp by useing their abilitis lets say 2 exp for making a critical hit or not getting distracted by blow or hit casting spell.

 

And all party members (eventualiy even same from the base camp) should gain experience for that becouse teir participating in thous events.

 

Of cours if obsidian will do standard boring and dump exp-gaining like "Kill rat gain 25 points" i will still buy this game but it will by big fall ....

 

Ehm, getting XP for criticals still allows you to gain on massmurder. Just saying..

 

that depends on terms when critical may occur yhe system on exp gaining, lets say tat only after 15 hits you will have chance gain critical, and if you fight with this enemy before you will gain only 1/2 of exp from criticals.

 

In this terms when you encounter a RAT an kill him only mayby at first battle you will gain +2 exp (if critical occurs), 2 rat, 3 rat, 1000000 rat will propably give you nothing. When you encounter dragon you have chance (long battle) for even 40 - 100 criticals so this meand 80 to 200 exp (if we count 1 critical as +2 exp), but when you encouter a secound dragon you will have for killikng him 40-100 exp, another 20-50 another 10-25 and after that even afret killing 10 dragons you will get nothing only exp from Quest.

 

In spellforce we have this type of exp gaining 1 goblin gives you lot of exp but secound gives you less exp than first and 100 gives you only small numer of exp point.

 

Heres some of my quetes fron other topic

[aVENGER]

The idea of killing, say, ten goblins and not having learned anything at all from the experience is strange to me.

 

There may be other ways to award the player for killing large quantities of enemies.

 

For example, there was a small detail that I really liked about the original Diablo (first game in the series). When you encounter an enemy of a certain type for the first time, you don't know anything about it. You mouse over it, and it just diplays the enemy's name. After killing a few of these enemies, you get some basic information like average hit points. By killing more of them, you eventually learn their resistances and weaknesses (i.e. vulnerable to fire, resists cold). Finally, after killing dozens of them, you get their full stats on mouse over. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in Project Eternity.

[Gatt9]

what the hell, isn`t the point of an rpg to be able to roleplay the character the way you want to?

You can still roleplay your character the way you want to. The only difference is that the game will not be rewarding you for doing things for which no sane DM would ever reward a player.

 

Actually, a sane DM would reward experience, because the Player took seperate actions which would make him more experienced.

 

This is just trying to dictate playstyle, instead of making a solid RPG system. This is "I don't want anyone to have more experience than me because they did more stuff", there's no logical reason behind it. If I go write code, I get better at writing code, even if I didn't give the code to some random person.

 

If my character kills critters, he should get better at killing critters, not by reporting back to someone and saying "Yup, I killed 5 critters!".

 

Can anyone give me a single reason for this system that does not amount to "I don't want people to play that way"?

[Hormalakh]

The idea of killing, say, ten goblins and not having learned anything at all from the experience is strange to me.

 

There may be other ways to award the player for killing large quantities of enemies.

 

For example, there was a small detail that I really liked about the original Diablo (first game in the series). When you encounter an enemy of a certain type for the first time, you don't know anything about it. You mouse over it, and it just diplays the enemy's name. After killing a few of these enemies, you get some basic information like average hit points. By killing more of them, you eventually learn their resistances and weaknesses (i.e. vulnerable to fire, resists cold). Finally, after killing dozens of them, you get their full stats on mouse over. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in Project Eternity.

 

Maybe it becomes easier to get critical hits on enemies you've killed many times before.

[Osvir]

Not all zombies are located in abbeys.

I need to kill it because it's standing in our party's way and it's a good target to practice our swords on. After we defeated the group of zombies (or a group of skeletons or whatever) we felt to have improved our combat skills and would like that to be reflected with an xp reward.

 

"Really Conan? That was the 600th zombie you've killed since I left the adventurer's hall with you. You just cut his head off with one stroke. You really think that you learned something new by what amounts to you stretching your arms out a little?"

 

Edit: Of course little old shrimpy here definitely learned a few things or two fighting what was his 20th or 30th zombie. He's still young, that chap.

 

Haha, when you meet a boss "I've already killed 15 like you before!!" (and he wouldn't be lying) xD

[Larkaloke]

The idea of killing, say, ten goblins and not having learned anything at all from the experience is strange to me.

 

There may be other ways to award the player for killing large quantities of enemies.

 

For example, there was a small detail that I really liked about the original Diablo (first game in the series). When you encounter an enemy of a certain type for the first time, you don't know anything about it. You mouse over it, and it just diplays the enemy's name. After killing a few of these enemies, you get some basic information like average hit points. By killing more of them, you eventually learn their resistances and weaknesses (i.e. vulnerable to fire, resists cold). Finally, after killing dozens of them, you get their full stats on mouse over. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in Project Eternity.

 

Maybe it becomes easier to get critical hits on enemies you've killed many times before.

 

Both those things would be pretty neat, I think. So, yeah, basically as long as it doesn't seem as if you learn nothing at all from defeating oppponents unless they were part of a quest it won't feel odd to me.

[Captain Shrek]

XP when finishing objective like Bloodlines was PURE AWESOME. <3 And it is a far better cRPG mechanic.

 

What an intelligent comment! It is overflowing with the light of reason!

 

As to the argument:

 

An important issue is, should you be given points for completing objectives (goals) or successfully engaging in non-goal encounters along with completing objectives. I personally believe that the question is of game-design again. If the game focuses on Combat then the latter is the chief way of distributing the points. If the game has more encounter resolution elements than combat then probably it should depend on the BOTH but adjusted for the sake of balance.

 

BUt to be honest, balancing everything is a hassle. Best to stick with what is not broken than invent retarded systems that have never been tested and appear weak right from the get go. This is not a point against innovation. But against being insensibly confident of your abilities to manage such things.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Both systems can be done well and both can be done poorly, both have advantages and drawbacks. I prefer a compromise between the two, but I can enjoy either system.

[Tsuga C]

I'm generally for the practice of awarding XP for completing objectives. This lets the party go about their business as they see fit and doesn't force the player into needless killing sprees for the sake of leveling up. If extra XP are awarded for particularly difficult or clever options chosen by the player, so much the better. But I don't want to have to take my party out head hunting for fear of not being high enough level in time to face down a particular opponent I'm supposed to be tracking down.

[Hormalakh]

I'm generally for the practice of awarding XP for completing objectives. This lets the party go about their business as they see fit and doesn't force the player into needless killing sprees for the sake of leveling up. If extra XP are awarded for particularly difficult or clever options chosen by the player, so much the better. But I don't want to have to take my party out head hunting for fear of not being high enough level in time to face down a particular opponent I'm supposed to be tracking down.

 

I think that ultimately this was the goal anyway. I always hated having to kill certain creatures just so I could gain some experience. What if I didn't think that the druid I was playing should be killing bears and wolves just so he can get experience?

[Kuroiryuu]

Voted 'for' here. While personally I'm more a fan of systems that improve skills based on use (TES games come to mind, though they certainly had their quirks), I'd far prefer to have greater freedom in how to approach an objective than to feel compelled to kill everything in my path like a bloodthirsty psychopath. While combat is fun and all, you shouldn't be punished for approaching a problem in a more diplomatic or stealthy way, if that suits the type of character you're trying to play.

 

Besides, like others have noted, having situations like "survive the ogre attack" are perfectly plausible. Does anyone seriously think that they'd put in encounters where you had to wade through an army of monsters and not get rewarded for it? Have a little faith.

[Infinitron]

Can anyone give me a single reason for this system that does not amount to "I don't want people to play that way"?

 

You are assuming that's an invalid reason. But Josh is the game designer and he can indeed dictate to you how to play his game.

 

Luckily, strict rules and limitations aren't necessarily unfun.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Infinitron

[Hormalakh]

Voted 'for' here. While personally I'm more a fan of systems that improve skills based on use (TES games come to mind, though they certainly had their quirks), I'd far prefer to have greater freedom in how to approach an objective than to feel compelled to kill everything in my path like a bloodthirsty psychopath. While combat is fun and all, you shouldn't be punished for approaching a problem in a more diplomatic or stealthy way, if that suits the type of character you're trying to play.

 

Besides, like others have noted, having situations like "survive the ogre attack" are perfectly plausible. Does anyone seriously think that they'd put in encounters where you had to wade through an army of monsters and not get rewarded for it? Have a little faith.

 

Survive the random encounter. That's actually a pretty good way of doing it. My druid can sooth the bears and wolves and my fighter can kill them instead.

[Tsuga C]

What if I didn't think that the druid I was playing should be killing bears and wolves just so he can get experience?

 

As the first class I usually play in a cRPG is a druid, I've faced this unpalatable scenario more times than I care to remember. I've never gotten any satisfaction out of killing simple animals that are, bizarrely, always suicidally hostile.

[BR4ZIL]

Voted For, when i DM i usually award experience once the gaming session is over, not only its much better to manage the storyline/campaign but you dont people going "lets kill those guys we just worked for, the experience will be good!". Fighting shouldnt be something you would be going for, but actually trying to avoid if there wouldnt be any significant reward (item-wise).

[jvempire]

what the hell, isn`t the point of an rpg to be able to roleplay the character the way you want to?

You can still roleplay your character the way you want to. The only difference is that the game will not be rewarding you for doing things for which no sane DM would ever reward a player.

 

Actually, a sane DM would reward experience, because the Player took seperate actions which would make him more experienced.

 

This is just trying to dictate playstyle, instead of making a solid RPG system. This is "I don't want anyone to have more experience than me because they did more stuff", there's no logical reason behind it. If I go write code, I get better at writing code, even if I didn't give the code to some random person.

 

If my character kills critters, he should get better at killing critters, not by reporting back to someone and saying "Yup, I killed 5 critters!".

 

Can anyone give me a single reason for this system that does not amount to "I don't want people to play that way"?

Did you read the thread?... I don't understand the point of ignoring what people are saying.

 

The reason for making it objective based is that it's easier to balance the game. Since the devs are handing out the xp they can see what levels people will be at throughout the game, and they can balance they see fit to make mostly everyone's gaming experience fun. With grind though, while it's not impossible, it's much more difficult to balance the game out. It generally ends up with the player having to kill enough enemies to get an orbutrary amount of xp so they can catch up with the pace of the game, or they exploit the system and become overpowered and make the game dull since there's no challenge. Of course you can figure out some balance to this, but it can get convaluated (see oblivion, fo3, new vegas, skyrim).

 

We can also assume that since the game is being designed around objectives, there won't be massive amounts of enemies that won't give xp to you. Of course this part is only my speculation.

 

Now I really want to hear some examples people have of systems that use grinding well.

Edited October 16, 2012 by jvempire

[Ieo]

Well, since it's better to move the discussion here, I'll just drop the comments I had made in the update thread here too.

 

 

For the world monsters per exploration--

 

There could be different enemy types granting different xp as well. "Epic" class enemy wouldn't be linked to any quest, for example, but give good xp for the challenge. "Common" enemies could give minimal world-kill xp. "Trivial" creatures, even NPCs, would give no xp and must be linked to quests. Not sure how that would work out in the UI, though, in terms of identification--or perhaps it's something discovered only after the fact.

Well, I like the general idea but I would like to see some rare world monsters like Firkraag that a player could optionally challenge... although now that I think about it, the reward needn't be xp either, but rather loot. Hmmm.

....

And then some people insist that the removal of xp doesn't make sense from a single-player standpoint, like "who cares if someone gets a lot more mob kill xp to level?" which could be a valid argument. But here's another problem---balancing difficulty levels.

 

Tuning the difficulty levels requires more control over in-game balance with respect to a bell curve of playstyles. If, say, on default mode, killing all the enemies for a given quest nets 25% more than using noncombat options for objective completion, eventually the game difficulty by level will drop to 'easy'. Same applies upwards. Does the designer opt to balance against a 50% required mob kill for xp, or what? Would the split xp gain between combat/noncombat eventually defeat some of the purpose of difficulty levels?

 

Now, what I'm seeing in this thread is very similar to the whole cooldown hysteria--I highly doubt this would be implemented in base form as it is, in a vacuum. Obsidian knows that people like the rare big monster threat in classic RPGs, for example; even if xp isn't rewarded, there are other ways to make the difficult combat more "worthwhile" as well (especially considering we're going to have how many epic backer-created things in the game). Overall, there's definitely room for additional mechanisms and tuning.

[NerdBoner]

I voted FOR.

[Gatt9]

what the hell, isn`t the point of an rpg to be able to roleplay the character the way you want to?

You can still roleplay your character the way you want to. The only difference is that the game will not be rewarding you for doing things for which no sane DM would ever reward a player.

 

Actually, a sane DM would reward experience, because the Player took seperate actions which would make him more experienced.

 

This is just trying to dictate playstyle, instead of making a solid RPG system. This is "I don't want anyone to have more experience than me because they did more stuff", there's no logical reason behind it. If I go write code, I get better at writing code, even if I didn't give the code to some random person.

 

If my character kills critters, he should get better at killing critters, not by reporting back to someone and saying "Yup, I killed 5 critters!".

 

Can anyone give me a single reason for this system that does not amount to "I don't want people to play that way"?

Did you read the thread?... I don't understand the point of ignoring what people are saying.

 

The reason for making it objective based is that it's easier to balance the game. Since the devs are handing out the xp they can see what levels people will be at throughout the game, and they can balance they see fit to make mostly everyone's gaming experience fun. With grind though, while it's not impossible, it's much more difficult to balance the game out. It generally ends up with the player having to kill enough enemies to get an orbutrary amount of xp so they can catch up with the pace of the game, or they exploit the system and become overpowered and make the game dull since there's no challenge. Of course you can figure out some balance to this, but it can get convaluated (see oblivion, fo3, new vegas, skyrim).

 

We can also assume that since the game is being designed around objectives, there won't be massive amounts of enemies that won't give xp to you. Of course this part is only my speculation.

 

Now I really want to hear some examples people have of systems that use grinding well.

 

I've read the thread. I've also read the intent behind it, because as I said earlier, there's no logical reason to choose a nonsensical implementation over one that makes sense. Not trying to flame, but you're illustrating that the intent is exactly as I said, "I don't want people to play that way".

 

-It does not make it "Easier to balance the game", balancing the game is trivial. The developers can easily add up the experience attained by following the primary path, and the primary path + side quests, and compute the min/max xp range. All they have to do is add each xp reward for each possible action to a spreadsheet as it's added. Then all they have to do is make minor tweaks to the xp rewards in order to get everything to where they want it.

 

-"make mostly everyone's gaming experience fun" is a strawman arguement. You're determining what makes a game fun for everyone.

 

-It's not harder to balance the game with people grinding, if they choose to grind, let them. It's their problem. There's no reason to dictate to people "You cannot play that way, it's wrong!".

 

-Your next statement is another strawman. You don't force people to grind. You balance the game for a point in between "Main path only" and "Full completion run".

 

-Then you are dictating what's fun for everyone again. You cannot say whether or not it makes it dull for people who choose to grind, in fact, logically it's quite the opposite. People grind because it enables gameplay they find fun, some people enjoy being overpowered.

 

-Using anything from Bethesda as an basis isn't a good arguement, they've demonstrated time and again they don't know what RPG's are. One of the most glaring examples is their inability to add any meaningful dialogue or noncombat skills. Additonally all of the games you note are Player Based skill, and by definition, not RPG's.

 

-You are making multiple false assumptions. Just because xp/kill exists doesn't mean that grinding exists, and if grinding exists, that doesn't mean it's mandatory. I can easily design a dungeon for you using any edition of AD&D/D&D that rewards xp/kill, and xp for actions, that does not include grinding. I can even do so with an entire campaign. You are equating xp/kill to grinding, and that's a false assumption. One does not logically lead to the other.

[mstark]

Well, since it's better to move the discussion here, I'll just drop the comments I had made in the update thread here too.

 

 

For the world monsters per exploration--

 

There could be different enemy types granting different xp as well. "Epic" class enemy wouldn't be linked to any quest, for example, but give good xp for the challenge. "Common" enemies could give minimal world-kill xp. "Trivial" creatures, even NPCs, would give no xp and must be linked to quests. Not sure how that would work out in the UI, though, in terms of identification--or perhaps it's something discovered only after the fact.

Well, I like the general idea but I would like to see some rare world monsters like Firkraag that a player could optionally challenge... although now that I think about it, the reward needn't be xp either, but rather loot. Hmmm.

....

And then some people insist that the removal of xp doesn't make sense from a single-player standpoint, like "who cares if someone gets a lot more mob kill xp to level?" which could be a valid argument. But here's another problem---balancing difficulty levels.

 

Tuning the difficulty levels requires more control over in-game balance with respect to a bell curve of playstyles. If, say, on default mode, killing all the enemies for a given quest nets 25% more than using noncombat options for objective completion, eventually the game difficulty by level will drop to 'easy'. Same applies upwards. Does the designer opt to balance against a 50% required mob kill for xp, or what? Would the split xp gain between combat/noncombat eventually defeat some of the purpose of difficulty levels?

 

Now, what I'm seeing in this thread is very similar to the whole cooldown hysteria--I highly doubt this would be implemented in base form as it is, in a vacuum. Obsidian knows that people like the rare big monster threat in classic RPGs, for example; even if xp isn't rewarded, there are other ways to make the difficult combat more "worthwhile" as well (especially considering we're going to have how many epic backer-created things in the game). Overall, there's definitely room for additional mechanisms and tuning.

It's strange to me that less people appreciate & join the actual discussion when someone makes good points, and go on bickering about what they want/do not want, without offering solutions. Or start talking about which systems are their favourites, even though they stray far from what PE is guaranteed to be all about. I hope the devs will be able to find the actual suggestions to [improve] their suggested (and already awesome) system in this verbal pit of sewage . Edited October 16, 2012 by mstark