Balancing Stealth vs Combat

[TRX850]

The thing that's still bugging me, is the idea that a quest is apparently something that you're expected to 100% complete before you're awarded *any* XP.

 

It doesn't take into account changing loyalties from either the players or the quest-giver, during the quest itself.

 

What if you learn part way through the quest that the quest-giver is in fact the enemy, and instead of returning the Holy Shamoly Bastard Sword of Unpleasantness to him, you want to use it against him and nick his stuff? That's not 100% completing the quest, in favour of something arguably more appropriate.

 

Conversely, you may get part way through the quest and your actions unknowingly effect your reputation as far as the quest-giver in concerned, and now he's no longer interested in doing business, and leaves. Where does that leave you?

 

And by asserting that a quest-giver will always remain neutral so that your quest can be completed, is also unsatisfactory.

 

If my company promises me a "gold pen" for 20 years service, but I leave after 15. I'm pretty sure I would have learnt 15 years of knowledge, and the pen now becomes a trivial loss.

 

This is going to keep me awake at night no doubt.

[Sacred_Path]

It doesn't take into account changing loyalties from either the players or the quest-giver, during the quest itself.

 

What if you learn part way through the quest that the quest-giver is in fact the enemy, and instead of returning the Holy Shamoly Bastard Sword of Unpleasantness to him, you want to use it against him and nick his stuff? That's not 100% completing the quest, in favour of something arguably more appropriate.

 

I've just been playing Eschalon, and it takes care of this not very elegantly but thoroughly enough. You regularly get popups asking not only "do you want to go off on this quest" (which keeps you from carrying useless trash, often) but also "do you insist on continuing this quest in this way". That's entirely a binary approach of course, not very complex but at least it ensures that your choices are recognized by the game instead of the usual 4th wall breaking ("Gee, I just turned this quest on its head and went against everything I said before. Unfortunately noone seems to realize that and nothing's really changed" [except that your quest giver is now dead]).

[TRX850]

The game has many quests. Each quest has one or more tasks. And each task is made up of one or more obstacles. Those obstacles can be enemies to fight, a puzzle to solve, traps to overcome, information to gather, objects to find, and so on.

 

The question should be: at which tier should XP be awarded? I would argue that either the task level or obstacle level, because a quest can potentially be broken too easily.

[Sacred_Path]

The game has many quests. Each quest has one or more tasks. And each task is made up of one or more obstacles. Those obstacles can be enemies to fight, a puzzle to solve, traps to overcome, information to gather, objects to find, and so on.

 

The question should be: at which tier should XP be awarded? I would argue that either the task level or obstacle level, because a quest can potentially be broken too easily.

 

Maybe I should have elaborated that you can take some XP at different stages of one quest and leave it at that, or accept to continue the quest (although in that case the quest objective might change, unbeknown to you beforehand). That's a compromise between quest XP and task XP.

[Fearabbit]

If a well-rounded party slaughtered and lockpicked their way through a quest, they should gain XP for combat AND locks IMO.

 

If they slaughtered their way through a quest, then went back for the locks, they're still overcoming individual obstacles, and should be rewarded the same.

 

The problem is that you're creating an unnecessary imbalance between different playstyles this way. Someone who does not kill any enemies, does not unlock any traps, but still manages to finish the quest misses out on both loot and XP.

In my opinion, it is not important in that scenario if he was "taking the easy way" by avoiding all this. What's important that he's crippling himself by doing this. In the future he will have less XP and less loot. And while to a certain, logical extent this is fair (you don't loot the dungeon -> you don't get loot), it's unfair for things where the reward system was abstract and arbitrary to begin with, i.e. XP.

 

There will always be an imbalance, but you can reduce it without ruining anyone's experience. It's basically a win-win situation if it's done right, while the "XP for every little thing you do" system is inherently bad for some players.

 

By the way, I think XP in P:E will be awarded for completing objectives, so you will actually get XP while you're in the dungeon and not only when you come back to the quest giver. And I hope that the game acknowledges your motivations for killing the quest giver if you find out he's the bad guy, rewarding you for that as a secret optional objective as well.

 

 

Ahh, but look at us, here we're discussing XP again. This really shouldn't be the focus of this thread.

[Helm]

If my company promises me a "gold pen" for 20 years service, but I leave after 15. I'm pretty sure I would have learnt 15 years of knowledge, and the pen now becomes a trivial loss.

In this case you should get 3/4 of the gold pen.

[PrimeJunta]

Any game creator that doesn't make fun the top goal of their game needs to quit the business.

 

I agree.

 

So treasure and the satisifaction of doing the quest are not enough incentive to do something? If picking the lock for the 150 gold pieces is enough incentive why is returning the stolen ruby of zara for 1000 gold pieces and a sweet axe not good enough?

 

They might be. In fact adventure games are predicated on the assumption that they are -- there's very little in the way of in-game incentives for advancing the plot (=completing in-game goals) other than the action in itself. In a way, a cRPG is an adventure game turbocharged with character development and incentives for it. And it's that much more effective if the incentives align with the goals than if they conflict.

 

What if my character likes small talk, gossip, and crafting. Why should I need to delve into dangerous situations just to advance my character.

 

Because the in-game goals require your character to get into dangerous situations?

 

Consider Fallout. Its in-game goals included, oh, finding a water chip, rescuing the Shady Sands chieftain's daughter from some raiders, retrieving a holodisk from The Glow for the Brotherhood recruiter, figuring out why the Hub caravans were disappearing, and so on and so forth. These involve lots of dangerous situations, from getting shot in the face by a supermutant or shredded by a Deathclaw to bleeding out of your anus from radiation poisoning.

 

So if you don't like getting your character into dangerous situations, then you probably won't like Fallout much either -- you're probably find The Sims is more to your taste. (And yes, IMO the Fallouts would've been better games without kill XP, especially with the wandering monsters in the wastelands.)

 

And that has what to do with being able to advance my character through other mean?

 

One. More. Time.

 

Questing is the core mechanic for a quest-based cRPG.¹ It. Determines. The. Victory. Conditions. Finishing the main quest is the victory condition. Everything else is a subsystem that can be used to get there. Combat. Stealth. Dialog. Crafting. This means that questing is NOT THE SAME as combat, stealth, dialog, crafting, or any of the other subsystems that make up the game, BECAUSE IT IS NOT A SUBSYSTEM. It is the CORE system driving the gameplay. It is the... thing used to structure and deliver everything else in the game.

 

Since character advancement is the main incentive that a cRPG has (beyond the content itself), it makes a lot more sense to tie it to the main system rather than any of the subsystems. ANY of them -- combat, stealth, crafting, dialog, etc.

 

Therefore, quest XP.

 

¹Emphasis on "quest-based." There are other types of cRPG's as well. Here I'm talking about games like the IE ones, the KOTORs, the NWN's, VtM:B, etc.

[TRX850]

There will always be an imbalance, but you can reduce it without ruining anyone's experience. It's basically a win-win situation if it's done right, while the "XP for every little thing you do" system is inherently bad for some players.

 

This statement is causing me great concern. Ruining a player's experience, and inherently bad?

 

How did we get to this being on the cards?

 

If you go through the game avoiding all the obstacles, but you complete the quest, then there's still quest XP for you. But another player who goes through, confronting and overcoming all the obstacles, gets XP for that AND the quest XP, which is how it should be.

 

I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just a very concerned backer of this game.

[TRX850]

If my company promises me a "gold pen" for 20 years service, but I leave after 15. I'm pretty sure I would have learnt 15 years of knowledge, and the pen now becomes a trivial loss.

In this case you should get 3/4 of the gold pen.

 

That doesn't help.

Edited January 17, 2013 by TRX850

[PrimeJunta]

The thing that's still bugging me, is the idea that a quest is apparently something that you're expected to 100% complete before you're awarded *any* XP.

 

That's not necessarily what quest XP means. I would expect quests to have subsidiary goals, and the XP to be dealt out by completing those. They pretty much have to. Consider the main quest -- it would be a leetle silly if you only got your XP award for completing it after you won the game. Also dealing out XP in giant chunks makes for an unnecessarily bumpy ride. Better to split up a 1000 XP quest into four 250 XP sub-goals, and then go with those. If you change your mind just before one of them, well, that's too bad I guess.

 

Of course if you split it up too much it can become exploitable too -- Valorian will be meticulously following every quest right up to the point where it closes off other quests, then doing the other ones, then finishing the one that gives the biggest reward. So you don't want to make it too fine-grained if you don't want to reward foolishness like that.

[PrimeJunta]

If you go through the game avoiding all the obstacles, but you complete the quest, then there's still quest XP for you. But another player who goes through, confronting and overcoming all the obstacles, gets XP for that AND the quest XP, which is how it should be.

 

This makes no sense to me. If you have two coders working on the same problem, and one of them solves it by writing 100 lines of code, and the other one solves it by writing 10,000 lines of code, and both solutions work equally well, why would the more verbose one deserve the bigger reward?

[TRX850]

Questing is the core mechanic for a quest-based cRPG.¹ It. Determines. The. Victory. Conditions. Finishing the main quest is the victory condition. Everything else is a subsystem that can be used to get there. Combat. Stealth. Dialog. Crafting. This means that questing is NOT THE SAME as combat, stealth, dialog, crafting, or any of the other subsystems that make up the game, BECAUSE IT IS NOT A SUBSYSTEM. It is the CORE system driving the gameplay. It is the... thing used to structure and deliver everything else in the game.

 

Since character advancement is the main incentive that a cRPG has (beyond the content itself), it makes a lot more sense to tie it to the main system rather than any of the subsystems. ANY of them -- combat, stealth, crafting, dialog, etc.

 

Therefore, quest XP.

 

 

Respectfully, I still think you're missing a step here. I think it's a subtle but crucial step in the hierarchy that makes up the core system.

 

Sorry, but my program structure alarm bells are going off.

 

Perhaps we've been over-simplifying or over-complicating previous examples.

 

We need some concrete examples from the devs I think. If I'm wrong, I'll eat humble pie. But there's definitely something missing.

[TRX850]

If you go through the game avoiding all the obstacles, but you complete the quest, then there's still quest XP for you. But another player who goes through, confronting and overcoming all the obstacles, gets XP for that AND the quest XP, which is how it should be.

 

This makes no sense to me. If you have two coders working on the same problem, and one of them solves it by writing 100 lines of code, and the other one solves it by writing 10,000 lines of code, and both solutions work equally well, why would the more verbose one deserve the bigger reward?

 

Because they have to provide the opportunity for all possible outcomes. If you choose a small subset of the whole, then it would appear you've only used a subset of the code.

[PrimeJunta]

Respectfully, I still think you're missing a step here. I think it's a subtle but crucial step in the hierarchy that makes up the core system.

 

Sorry, but my program structure alarm bells are going off.

 

I'm talking structure of system of game mechanics, which is not the same thing as the program architecture of the game engine. The system of game mechanics is implemented on top of the game engine. I don't know if Unity even knows about a beast called a "quest." But that's neither here nor there; I don't know enough about game programming to be able to say much about that end of things.

 

Perhaps we've been over-simplifying or over-complicating previous examples.

 

We need some concrete examples from the devs I think. If I'm wrong, I'll eat humble pie. But there's definitely something missing.

 

Yeah. Like the entire game.

[PrimeJunta]

Because they have to provide the opportunity for all possible outcomes. If you choose a small subset of the whole, then it would appear you've only used a subset of the code.

 

I'll keep that in mind and write out each iteration separately instead of putting it in a for loop then, the next time I'm working for you. Many more lines of code...

[TRX850]

That's not necessarily what quest XP means. I would expect quests to have subsidiary goals, and the XP to be dealt out by completing those. They pretty much have to. Consider the main quest -- it would be a leetle silly if you only got your XP award for completing it after you won the game. Also dealing out XP in giant chunks makes for an unnecessarily bumpy ride. Better to split up a 1000 XP quest into four 250 XP sub-goals, and then go with those. If you change your mind just before one of them, well, that's too bad I guess.

 

Ok, now we're on the same page, which is possibly something I wasn't aware you'd said before, or you've elaborated on the point I was getting at earlier.

 

Somewhere between every enemy kill xp and a small subsidiary goal may lie the answer.

 

It's a question of granularity. How far down the hierarchy do we go before all possible outcomes for a simple task can be performed without the hierarchy chain breaking. Which is I think what you were implying Valorian was looking at.

 

If the task is: Rescue the farmer's daughter from the orc raiders. That's too high.

If the task is: Reach the windmill where the farmer's daughter is being held, that's still too high.

If the task is: Clear the road of bandits on the way to the windmill, that's still too high.

If the task is: Defeat 3 x bandits on the road that leads to the windmill, we're getting warmer.

 

The question is: how far down do we go before it's simply not possible to NOT achieve anything.

 

Traditionally, the answer would have been: an enemy kill, or disarming a trap, or finding an object, etc.

 

So the lowest point in the chain that you could achieve *something* would be to kill one of the three bandits on the road to the windmill where the farmer's daughter is being held captive by orc raiders. You have to unfold the problem into the lowest common denominator first.

 

I would concede that killing 3 bandits instead of 1 could still be workable. You just gave me the impression before that your idea of an XP reward was MUCH higher up the chain.

Edited January 17, 2013 by TRX850

[PrimeJunta]

We're getting closer. I do think that I think that a lower level of granularity would be better. The higher you make the granularity, the more exploitable and trickier to manage it gets. If it was me, I'd probably design this quest something like...

 

Objectives:

Reach the farmer's daughter 250 XP

Exit the windmill with the farmer's daughter alive 250 XP

Return the farmer's daughter alive to the farmer 500 XP

 

Obstacles:

Windmill door (locked)

* Can be picked (requires lockpicking skill, expends lockpick)

* Can be bashed (alerts the orcs inside)

* Can borrow the key from the miller, who is currently at the village inn with the other refugees from the orc raiders

Bandits on road

* Can be fought

* Can be avoided by crossing through the fields rather than the road

* Can be intimidated (if your reputation as all-around dangerous guy is high enough)

* Can be bribed (100 ZM)

Orcs in windmill

* Can be fought

** but once you're down to the last one, he'll grab the daughter, hold a knife to her throat and you'll have to negotiate with him to stop him from killing her

* Can be bribed (1000 ZM)

* Can be avoided by sneaking, if you're good enough at sneaking, do it in the daytime when they're mostly inactive (orcs being nocturnal), and take care to avoid the patrols

** if you're spotted or they'll jump you, and try to kill the farmer's daughter first if she's with you.

 

This way, fighting the orcs and the bandits and picking the lock would be the most obvious way to go, and also the least risky assuming you're tough enough to beat them. It would cost resources you expend in combat. The best way to deal with the bandits is to avoid the road and cross through the fields; to do this, you need to do some scouting ahead to find that alternative route. You can bribe the orcs if you're really rich, but you probably have a better use for the 1000ZM; successfully sneaking past them is least costly, but you risk getting jumped and failing the quest (high risk, high reward).

Edited January 17, 2013 by PrimeJunta

[Sacred_Path]

If the task is: Rescue the farmer's daughter from the orc raiders. That's too high.

If the task is: Reach the windmill where the farmer's daughter is being held, that's still too high.

If the task is: Clear the road of bandits on the way to the windmill, that's still too high.

If the task is: Defeat 3 x bandits on the road that leads to the windmill, we're getting warmer.

 

It's begging the quesion why clearing out all bandits is "too high". Are you considering designing the game for people with extremely low attention span, who can't possibly concentrate on killing more than 3 bandits before they feel compelled to wander off in the other direction? Or do you think it necessary to hand out the XP for those 3 bandits (~90 XP of 2000 you need for the next level) ASAP as a tactical component (because the same player will the wander off to kill 3 boars, 3 troglodytes, 3 hellhounds etc. so they can level up before taking on the actual windmill)?

 

Of your examples, "reaching the windmill" would sound just about right, common sense and flavour-wise. Mechanics wise, it's impossible to say without knowing all specifics of this quest. Is there an entire bandit encampment blocking the road, with three waves of bandits and a witch-doctor and bandit champion at the end? Is there a way to avoid the road, but it's heavily trapped? Etc.

[Helm]

We're getting closer.

No you're not.

 

Not engaging in combat will still yield the best results.

[TRX850]

Ok, so you've arrived at XP rewards at what you're calling Objective level, which is fine.

 

The argument from myself and others is to drop that reward hierarchy down one notch to the Obstacle level. Because it's impossible to achieve all of those, only one or two options allow for potential XP from each Obstacle category. You can still achieve all the Objectives for the requisite XP reward, but why is it "silly" to deny a player individual Obstacle XP regardless of whether they complete any or all of the Objectives? Provided there is *something* possible for each play style to do (but we're talking mainly combat and sneaky things here), which comes down to a design approach that takes combat and sneakiness into consideration during level design.

Edited January 17, 2013 by TRX850

[TRX850]

If the task is: Rescue the farmer's daughter from the orc raiders. That's too high.

If the task is: Reach the windmill where the farmer's daughter is being held, that's still too high.

If the task is: Clear the road of bandits on the way to the windmill, that's still too high.

If the task is: Defeat 3 x bandits on the road that leads to the windmill, we're getting warmer.

 

It's begging the quesion why clearing out all bandits is "too high". Are you considering designing the game for people with extremely low attention span, who can't possibly concentrate on killing more than 3 bandits before they feel compelled to wander off in the other direction? Or do you think it necessary to hand out the XP for those 3 bandits (~90 XP of 2000 you need for the next level) ASAP as a tactical component (because the same player will the wander off to kill 3 boars, 3 troglodytes, 3 hellhounds etc. so they can level up before taking on the actual windmill)?

 

Of your examples, "reaching the windmill" would sound just about right, common sense and flavour-wise. Mechanics wise, it's impossible to say without knowing all specifics of this quest. Is there an entire bandit encampment blocking the road, with three waves of bandits and a witch-doctor and bandit champion at the end? Is there a way to avoid the road, but it's heavily trapped? Etc.

 

It's not about attention spans. It's about giving the player options. I dare say most of us would just do the quest in a linear fashion. End of story.

 

This is a very simplified example, but as you know, quests are often "nested" many levels down, so you may start a quest, then get diverted by some young girl who needs her cat rescuing from a tree or something. There's any number of reasonable distractions. The point is, if the quest hierarchy chain is broken by people wandering off, then you get into the mess that we're in now. If you simply rewarded players on an obstacle by obstacle basis, there's no mess.

 

Another thing is, if there's no level scaling, then there must be a known sum total of XP related to that quest, be it in the form of defeated enemies, disarmed traps, info gathered, or whatever. I'd suggest they use that value as a guide for determining the overall quest XP.

[Sacred_Path]

This is a very simplified example, but as you know, quests are often "nested" many levels down, so you may start a quest, then get diverted by some young girl who needs her cat rescuing from a tree or something. There's any number of reasonable distractions. The point is, if the quest hierarchy chain is broken by people wandering off, then you get into the mess that we're in now. If you simply rewarded players on an obstacle by obstacle basis, there's no mess.

 

This got me thinking on quests in general, and I must say I hope there won't be an inflation of quests, but more tiered and interbranching quests (so wandering off from quest location to quest location wouldn't be much of an issue). I think I've read/ watched JES reminiscing about Pools of Radiance lately, and that kind of tiered city council quests would be v. appealing to me. Of course inflation of quests is an attempt at offering choice and simulating the fact that a myriad things are going on in the world at the same time, but a few quest givers with multiple quests and more relations between them would be my preference.

[PrimeJunta]

The argument from myself and others is to drop that reward hierarchy down one notch to the Obstacle level. Because it's impossible to achieve all of those, only one or two options allow for potential XP from each Obstacle category. You can still achieve all the Objectives for the requisite XP reward, but why is it "silly" to deny a player individual Obstacle XP regardless of whether they complete any or all of the Objectives? Provided there is *something* possible for each play style to do (but we're talking mainly combat and sneaky things here), which comes down to a design approach that takes combat and sneakiness into consideration during level design.

 

Hey, good. This discussion is going places. I like that. I also like the term "obstacle XP." But I still think the concept isn't as good as "objective XP" (that's a better term than "quest XP" perhaps). Here's why.

 

If you go with "obstacle XP," you're stuck with two options:

 

(1) Always award XP for resolving anything defined as an "obstacle."

(2) Only award XP if an "obstacle" is resolved in the context of an "objective."

 

Let's consider what kinds of incentives this gives in the context of our little save-the-farmer's-daughter quest. And let's complicate it just a little, by adding an alternative approach: you can also get to [Daughter] by climbing through [Window] at the top of the windmill, which you can find out about by talking to Miller (with right dialog choices), and reach by using a Ladder you can borrow from Innkeeper.

 

We have [Orcs], [bandits], [Windmill Door], and [Windmill Window] as Obstacles, and [Daughter] [Exit Mill with Daughter] and [Return Daughter to Miller] as Objectives.

 

Suppose we pick option (1), and award Obstacle XP for each Obstacle. Always, but only once. Now, if Valorian was playing the game, what would he do? Something like:

(1) Talk to Miller, get Key, find out about window. Talk to Innkeeper, get Ladder. Go through Fields, use Ladder, climb to Window [DING! Window Obstacle XP], get to Daughter [DING! Objective XP]. Then climb back out, go to Road, Intimidate Bandits [DING! Obstacle XP], go to door and open it with miller's key [DING! Obstacle XP]. Enter, sneak past the Orcs [DING! Obstacle XP]. Then sneak back out, go up the ladder and to the [Window] and [Daughter] again, carry [Daughter] out of window, down to the fields, past the bandits, to the Farmer [DING! Objective XP].

 

As you can see, this sequence had a whole unnecessary loop with the bandits and the orcs -- the most efficient way to rescue [Daughter] would have been to carry her out of the mill through the window as soon as Valorian got to her. Your Obstacle XP will incentivize players to seek out Obstacles whether it makes sense or not.

 

In other words, this is the same problem as with kill-XP, lockpick-XP, or any other action-XP: it creates an incentive that is not aligned with the in-game goal, and therefore causes poor Valorian to run around like a rat in a maze seeking out levers to push, instead of being swept away by the epic tale of the kidnapped farmer's daughter. Poor Valorian, I wouldn't want him to humiliate himself that way. So, bad.

 

Now, what if we picked option (2), and switched off Obstacle XP if it didn't make sense? Say, you would only be able to get Obstacle XP for [Window] or [Door], but not both, and for [GoingThroughFields] or [intimidatingBandits] but not both?

 

First off, this would be fiddly. You'd have to do the extra work to connect the different obstacles, so that resolving one switches off XP for the other. More scripting, more testing, more work, more bugs. This is a downside.

 

 

And second, you can represent the same thing (or close enough not to matter) simply by defining two more Objectives: [ReachWindmill] and [EnterWindmill]. [ReachWindmill] goes DING! whenever you're within touching distance of the windmill, and it perfectly encapsulates [DealWithBandits|GoThroughFields]. [EnterWindmill] goes DING! once you're inside the windmill, and it perfectly encapsulates [Window|Door]. And it's simpler.

 

So, for my revised Rescue the Farmer's Daughter quest, I'll have

 

* ReachWindmill: 200 XP

* EnterWindmill: 200 XP

* ReachDaughter: 200 XP

* ReturnDaughterToFarmer: 400 XP

 

To complete the quest, you'll have to complete all of the objectives. If you're smart and play well, you can reach them with less resource expenditure -- whether it's because you're good at talking and investigating and find out about the window and the ladder and the fields, or you're good at sneaking and lockpicking and get past the orcs and the bandits, or you're such a badass fighter that you can slaughter the orcs and bandits without taking a scratch on your shiny armor. OTOH if you're not so clever you'll end up bribing the bandits and paying the ransom to the orcs [OK, I didn't have that one in, but why not add it?] or get badly beaten up by them and have to spend lewt to replenish your stores and heal up. Good, smart players are rewarded, poorer, dumber players... not so much. Just the way it should be.

[TRX850]

I like your analysis. It's a good argument for some kind of reward system that isn't way up the quest chain like originally thought.

 

I guess it would make more sense to take a close look at what exactly constitutes a worthy obstacle though. I originally suggested things like locked containers and traps because these skills were related to sneaky rogue classes in which we first discussed this, and I was trying to think of how you'd reward a rogue for purely avoiding combat on the way to achieving a quest or subquest. I don't think there should be a Ding for climbing through windows and sneaking past enemies as such. But I think a successful skill check that means the party has averted a non-trivial threat, or gained a non-trivial trinket (including info) should be considered as XP contenders. If we removed some of the Dings from your example, it would disincentivize a lot of the backtracking and double dipping for sure. A smart player will still try to use all available skills to win XP from a quest though, so whether it's through intimidation, combat, traps and so forth, the limiting factor should be a well designed quest that rewards credit where credit is due, so to speak.

 

As I mentioned further back, there's also the scenario of quest-nesting, another can of worms to consider, when you are actively engaged in multiple quests at once.

 

I really need to sleep right now, but I'll come back to this tomorrow.

 

Either way, we've made progress and understand a bit more about player behaviour, game design, and that there's really no help for dumb people.

 

G'night.

[IndiraLightfoot]

PrimaJunta, you're onto something neat here!

 

By having a fine-layered objective-xp system, the game can cater to and reward quite varying playstyle without letting the xp-system degenerate into farming xp in boring or meaningless repititions: Kill heaps of critters at certain easy spawns, get lots of xp, or open locks and disarm traps till your fingers fall off and get bonanza xp.

 

I've read that Skyrim's and FNV's xp system of learning by doing is getting a pretty bad rep. Perhaps this kind of fine-layered objective xp, let's call it FLOX, can rectify that too, simply by not rewarding perk-progress to simple repetitions. Just shooting an arrow all the time or sneaking around constantly shouldn't give you xp. But shooting arrows in context and quite successfully (some sort of critical hit or perhaps taking down an obstacle) should, the same goes for sneaking past a certain objective, not just playing ninja by yourself in some woods.