Experience Point Mechanics - Fighting Enemies

[Amentep]

You don't award the "Stealthed by everything" Bonus experience until you reach the end of the segment

Well its not "bonus experience", its just experience in the context of PE. But the argument appears to be its okay to award kill xp for every Xvart you find, but to earn stealth XP you have to stealth past every Xvart. Seems inconsistant to me.

 

Ideally if you're not wanting to create accidental incentives for people to play a particular way than the general expectations of outcomes should be similar, I'd think.

 

at which point it becomes a point of no return. Either the previous area where you were stealthing becomes in accessable OR the units are removed.

Inaccessible would be awkward if you stealthed past something you were supposed to steal on your way out to progress through Map 2, but can't go back to Map 1. Units removed wouldn't make logical sense and people seem to dislike that sort of thing in games.

 

You can do a lot of things that don't involve changing the entire games pacing and reward mechanics.

 

And you can leave it like the IE games which meant stealthing was only good for finding traps and scouting too. Its not invalid.

 

That said, I'm not sure how it would effect the "games pacing". I can't say that when I saw a Xvart in BG1 I was pondering over carefully about how much XP I got from it (but perhaps that's just me).

 

Like this exp for kills removal feels very gamey.. I understand the problem they set out to solve but I think they didn't want the extra headaches to balance or work around it. That makes me very sad if it's true..

 

Learning from killing is very gamey anyhow, to be fair. Generally people would spend years training and then expand how to apply that training "live" but that's not really the way games work.

 

That said, I readily admit that I probably side more on a gameist side than a simulationist side. YMMV.

 

 

No doubt its the easier approach. Imo, developers shouldn't waste time programming around a very small percentage of gamers that "cants helps themselves" from breaking the game...for themselves. That's why we wind up with things like restricted resting, no kill xp, unlimited inventory, etc...

Which isn't bad, IMO, just different. The ultimate proof is in tasting the pudding, IMO.

[Kjaamor]

RE: Flagging something as unkillible - I'm under the impression this would cause all of Europe to go into outrage, like they did when kids weren't killable in Fallout.  Or so I hear.

 

Just for the record, kids in Fallout were not given unkillable tags, but were either replaced with adult representations (Oddly, most frequently the bald, yellow jump-suited peasant type) or were removed from the game entirely. So for example, without going into too much in the way of spoilers, certain quest options were disabled entirely as a result - most obviously some options when dealing with the Wrights. In order to circumvent this, some horribly unscrupulous Europeans would repatch the game using North American patches to enable children. I don't know the legality of this, but certainly it wasn't something supported by Black Isle.

 

I'm not casting any particular judgement on this, just pointing out way it worked. As for unkillable tags more generally, it hasn't bothered me in games and it wouldn't bother me in PoE.

[Failion]

As long as they don't do xp system like omerta city of gangsters. That game is the worst application of the model they using kind of like how elder scrolls oblivion the worst example of level scaling.

[Doppelschwert]

 

 You still have a loss of reward. Unless Hostiles in PoE don't drop any items at all.. you will miss out on rewards by avoiding fights.

 

 

That's not necessarily true. If you go to great lengths to propose all kind of work arounds to justify giving kill exp, then you surely could imagine that you can attain special items in conversation for being peaceful, which you don't get by killing them. Or information or better reputation or whatever, which in turn may pay off at some other point in time.

This game is more complex then the choice between exp and gear, calling the devs lazy and taking the easy way out is a cheap argument.

[Endrosz]

Like this exp for kills removal feels very gamey.. I understand the problem they set out to solve but I think they didn't want the extra headaches to balance or work around it. That makes me very sad if it's true..

 

No, it's quite the opposite. Setting a flat experience value for killing every enemy was a very, very gamey decision made some 40 years ago by people wrote the first DnD books, including the first Monster Manual. A more simulationist approach is the challenge rating (CR) introduced in 3rd edition.

 

Starting with the second half of the '80s, role-playing games have moved away from this very mechanical model of character development. Shadowrun and the World of Darkness/Storyteller games (Vampire, Mage, Werewolf etc.) are examples of this trend -- Shadowrun is also very combat-heavy like DnD, yet there are no karma rewards listed for monsters or NPCs. The Game Master simply awards XP/karma/character points however he or she sees fit, usually centered around completing tasks and good roleplaying (which is impossible to reward in a CRPG without a human GM). The decision to award task completion instead killing is just catching up to the development of role-playing games in real life. It was overdue, if you ask me.

 

In a game, the mechanics herd you toward a certain playstyle. Awarding XP mechanically for killing is appropriate for the so called action-RPGs like the Diablo series (or Dungeon Siege 3, for that matter, to name an Obsidian game), but out of place in a narrative-focused game. There's nothing stopping you from using Diablo 3 for roleplaying via chat and/or voice chat, but its systems, including how you gain XP, are not built to support that. Conversely, Pillars of Eternity isn't built to have a "kill and loot everything in sight" gameplay, and the method of XP gains reflects that.

[Gfted1]

Conversely, Pillars of Eternity isn't built to have a "kill and loot everything in sight" gameplay, and the method of XP gains reflects that.

The unlimited inventory was specifically designed to allow players to literally "loot everything in sight" without the "inconvenience" of having to walk back and forth to do so.

[Endrosz]

If you take everything: Selecting which loot to keep when your packs are full is a boring and oft-repeating minigame.

 

If you only take valuable stuff: Selecting which loot to take from the loot piles is a boring and oft-repeating minigame.

 

See? Inventory managament is a boring minigame regardless of your gameplay style. Heck, inventory management is a boring minigame even with unlimited inventory, like in Stonekeep. But in that case it's the least aggravating.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Endrosz

[PrimeJunta]

Of course, an alternative would be to have less loot. But boy would that cause howls.

[Immortalis]

 

Like this exp for kills removal feels very gamey.. I understand the problem they set out to solve but I think they didn't want the extra headaches to balance or work around it. That makes me very sad if it's true..

 

No, it's quite the opposite. Setting a flat experience value for killing every enemy was a very, very gamey decision made some 40 years ago by people wrote the first DnD books, including the first Monster Manual. A more simulationist approach is the challenge rating (CR) introduced in 3rd edition.

 

Starting with the second half of the '80s, role-playing games have moved away from this very mechanical model of character development. Shadowrun and the World of Darkness/Storyteller games (Vampire, Mage, Werewolf etc.) are examples of this trend -- Shadowrun is also very combat-heavy like DnD, yet there are no karma rewards listed for monsters or NPCs. The Game Master simply awards XP/karma/character points however he or she sees fit, usually centered around completing tasks and good roleplaying (which is impossible to reward in a CRPG without a human GM). The decision to award task completion instead killing is just catching up to the development of role-playing games in real life. It was overdue, if you ask me.

 

In a game, the mechanics herd you toward a certain playstyle. Awarding XP mechanically for killing is appropriate for the so called action-RPGs like the Diablo series (or Dungeon Siege 3, for that matter, to name an Obsidian game), but out of place in a narrative-focused game. There's nothing stopping you from using Diablo 3 for roleplaying via chat and/or voice chat, but its systems, including how you gain XP, are not built to support that. Conversely, Pillars of Eternity isn't built to have a "kill and loot everything in sight" gameplay, and the method of XP gains reflects that.

 

We will have to agree to disagree.. I feel that exploring the wilderness and killing things should make you overall more powerful if sneaking past an enemy or completing "talk to this guy in this city" quest should.

 

When I said this solution felt Gamey.. I didn't mean to start the "Realism" argument.. I meant to state that the "Every way of doing a quest is viable" solution that obsidian chose felt like a very "we need to change this game mechanic so lets do some broad stroke thing".. It felt like a better solution could have been done but wasn't.. instead the easier solution to implement from a programmers perspective was done.

 

Maybe poor choice of words.. but I still disagree with your premise that killing hostiles xp is less valid then quest xp.. if we are gonna go down that road too..

 

 

 

 

 

 You still have a loss of reward. Unless Hostiles in PoE don't drop any items at all.. you will miss out on rewards by avoiding fights.

 

 

That's not necessarily true. If you go to great lengths to propose all kind of work arounds to justify giving kill exp, then you surely could imagine that you can attain special items in conversation for being peaceful, which you don't get by killing them. Or information or better reputation or whatever, which in turn may pay off at some other point in time.

This game is more complex then the choice between exp and gear, calling the devs lazy and taking the easy way out is a cheap argument.

 

 

I have no idea what obsidian is doing in this fashion.. If you have insight in how loot is working let me know. However what has been described so far.. it makes me believe that when you stealth past an enemy.. you are completing the quest the same way another person is minus the combat. Based on Joshes SomethingAwful posts.. it doesn't appear that the conditions for how a quest was done play into the final reward Xp or Item wise.. I could be wrong but it didn't feel this was taken into account at all.

 

Which means my original argument stands... If you skip enemies you miss out on items.. That is just the reality of how this game will work so far as I can tell.

 

I have no idea though.. other then my interpretation of developer posts.

 

EDIT #4

I would never call a game developer lazy by the way. Suggesting they took an easy way out is relative. Game Developers work their ass off regardless.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Immortalis

[Amentep]

Weirdly - to me at least - the "loot everything in sight" mentality is driven by the economy of the game. Very early on you need every copper piece you can scrape up so you'll take everything that might possibly be sold so that you can buy necessary equipment.

 

The deep stash really doesn't solve the problem, it just manages it differently.

Edited July 28, 2014 by Amentep

[Gfted1]

If you take everything: Selecting which loot to keep when your packs are full is a boring and oft-repeating minigame.

 

If you only take valuable stuff: Selecting which loot to take from the loot piles is a boring and oft-repeating minigame.

 

See? Inventory managament is a boring minigame regardless of your gameplay style. Heck, inventory management is a boring minigame even with unlimited inventory, like in Stonekeep. But in that case it's the least aggravating.

I see...

 

But not to worry, the value of loot has been nerfed to the ground so the developers could kill the monster they just created (carrying unlimited loot). So we have that going for us.

[Doppelschwert]

 

 

 You still have a loss of reward. Unless Hostiles in PoE don't drop any items at all.. you will miss out on rewards by avoiding fights.

 

 

That's not necessarily true. If you go to great lengths to propose all kind of work arounds to justify giving kill exp, then you surely could imagine that you can attain special items in conversation for being peaceful, which you don't get by killing them. Or information or better reputation or whatever, which in turn may pay off at some other point in time.

This game is more complex then the choice between exp and gear, calling the devs lazy and taking the easy way out is a cheap argument.

 

 

I have no idea what obsidian is doing in this fashion.. If you have insight in how loot is working let me know. However what has been described so far.. it makes me believe that when you stealth past an enemy.. you are completing the quest the same way another person is minus the combat. Based on Joshes SomethingAwful posts.. it doesn't appear that the conditions for how a quest was done play into the final reward Xp or Item wise.. I could be wrong but it didn't feel this was taken into account at all.

 

Which means my original argument stands... If you skip enemies you miss out on items.. That is just the reality of how this game will work so far as I can tell.

 

I have no idea though.. other then my interpretation of developer posts.

 

EDIT #4

I would never call a game developer lazy by the way. Suggesting they took an easy way out is relative. Game Developers work their ass off regardless.

 

 

Well, the way I see it the game is constructed in a way that complements the exp mechanic, although I can only argue by what my impression from joshs quote is (just as you do).

 

The first thing should be that important encounters consisting of plot relevant enemies which actually do have nice magic items are mandatory.

Josh actually did say at some point that most of the combat actually is not evadable, and I'm sure this means over 75%. I would be surprised if the important battles are evadable.

 

Keeping this in mind, a lot of filler combat is probably that optional part, like patrolling guards or something. I can live with the not having their items if they are mundane anyway. So yes, maybe you miss their loot, but if its loot that you can buy at any trash vendor, then who cares.

 

Apart from that, combat is supposed to cost you ressources. It's really your choice here - lose some health and abilities for that extra loot or be better prepared for the more important battle at the end by sneaking your way through. Also, you have to increase your sneak skill in order to sneak your whole party away from combat, which then results in less skill ranks in the other skills and lost opportunities there.

 

If you can go the diplomatic route, then maybe you can persuade your enemies to help you. Maybe they tell you a password that makes the next part of the quest easier or whatever you would not have gotten if you just killed them. It's not hard to imagine a scenario like that.

 

But I'm not really sure what you are arguing for at this point. At first, you wanted experience for killing enemies. Then you argue that with quest exp, killing the enemies is still better because of loot, which implies that combat has enough motivation on its own. Now I'm arguing that it's not a simple a question between loot and exp but rather a multifacetted with different costs/outcomes and roleyplaying possibilities... What has killing exp to do with this?

 

Sorry, reread your post. I think there is a lot of stuff that is a reward for itself without granting exp. Like crafting, upgrading your stronghold, finding loot, etc. If you feel like you want to increase your exp gradually, a interesting question to ask would probably be where does this start, where does this end?

What makes fighting monsters different from upgrading your stronghold that it should have exp, besides from being a tradition?

Why should you not rather get experience for discovering interesting places, or beating skill checks?

Edited July 28, 2014 by Doppelschwert

[Immortalis]

Doppel I do somewhat agree with your post. If Obsidian could promise me tons of side quests and hidden quests off the beaten path that were worth finding and doing that could make my life enjoyable when I am out in the wild killing essentially filler creatures with no real story line.. I could give up the xp for kills.

 

Like my argument is.. when I am fighting hordes of **** in a forest and I walk out with 20 bear hides and a broken dagger.. I don't feel like I accomplished anything and the experience points I gained make it feel worth my time.

 

If I instead fought 20 goblins because some meaningful content drove that and there was some pay off at the end that session where I wasn't just left holding a bag of useless goblin body parts.. then I can live without seeing the 20xp flash accross my combat log for each thing I killed.

 

I just don't think in the time frame they have, they are gonna trump Baldurs Gate 2 in scale and scope and the easier solution would of been just give XP for killing stuff.

 

Do you see where I am coming from? Combat for combats sake isn't as fun as combat with progession. Now if they can fullfill what I just said in my post.. we are fine don't change a thing. In 2 years.. I don't think they had the time to fullfill that promise amount of content.. so the lesser version of that is xp for kills..

 

Upgrading my stronghold and awarding me xp is great.. but I want that feeling of Baldurs Gate 1.. where I am walking around in random areas I shouldn't be.. and stumbling across crazy mages with pet oozes or a bear that scares the **** out of me.. and when all is said and done.. a few gems and a short sword shouldn't be all I had to show for it because there wasn't a quest to kill that bear or wizard.. they were just there..

 

EDIT
I sort of repeat my point twice here in reverse.. give it a read and let me know if you can understand where im coming from. I don't want xp for killing stuff just because IE had it.. I want it because of how it made me feel for parts of the game when that mechanic existed..

Edited July 29, 2014 by Immortalis

[Silent Winter]

. My only argument is that I think hostiles should award experience points for outside of quest combat. I want to progress my characters and be rewarded for exploring a cave that has no quest tied to it.

 

It's come up in other threads but I'll repeat it here - 'Objective XP' doesn't equal 'Quest XP'

I too would like to get XP for exploring areas - but that can be set as an objective by developers, it needn't be a quest given to you.

Similarly, "wipe out the xvarts" could be an objective - one that involves killing in this case (poor xvarts) - but that probably would make more sense tied to a quest.

[Stun]

 

. My only argument is that I think hostiles should award experience points for outside of quest combat. I want to progress my characters and be rewarded for exploring a cave that has no quest tied to it.

It's come up in other threads but I'll repeat it here - 'Objective XP' doesn't equal 'Quest XP'

I too would like to get XP for exploring areas - but that can be set as an objective by developers, it needn't be a quest given to you.

Similarly, "wipe out the xvarts" could be an objective - one that involves killing in this case (poor xvarts) - but that probably would make more sense tied to a quest.

 

So, theoretically, this system doesn't actually do anything to eliminate kill grinding. Since murdering every hostile in the forest could be an objective.

[Lephys]

You still have a loss of reward. Unless Hostiles in PoE don't drop any items at all.. you will miss out on rewards by avoiding fights. So that problem is still in PoE.. we are just talking about experience rewards which can easily be increased for going a stealth route, nobody is arguing the rewards should be equal.. My only argument is that I think hostiles should award experience points for outside of quest combat. I want to progress my characters and be rewarded for exploring a cave that has no quest tied to it.

First of all... that's not the problem that's trying to be fixed. Rewards come in all varieties, but XP isn't just some shiny reward. It's the life-blood of character progression. So, the problem of "Oh, you like to perfectly understandably do things in peaceful ways, etc.? YOU DON'T GET ANY XP FOR THAT" is the one that's gone. Did you blackmail the bandit leader, or save his daughter somewhere or something, then talk him into stopping his banditry? Good for you. You stopped the banditry in the area, +XP! Did you just kill him? Good for you, you stopped the banditry in the area, +XP!

 

All the other "rewards" (I'd really rather just call them "consequences," if we're going to talk so generally about things affected by your choices) are always going to be very different, but "do I get like 2000 XP? Or do I get like 700 because I didn't fight a tough fight?" doesn't have to be there.

 

Second of all, objective-based XP doesn't mean you won't get XP for killing. Some objectives could be combat-only, while others aren't. That's also not a problem, because something other than "things are dead" is accomplished in an objective. It's something you achieve that's actually relevant to consequences, etc. Running out into the woods and slaughtering 73 wolves doesn't really achieve anything. If those wolves were the ones overpopulating and threatening the local villagers, then it does.

 

See, the game is centered around the narrative, and isn't "Action-to-Progression Simulator 2014!", so it's less important we perfectly emulate in-process experience gain, and more important that we actually build the system around choices and consequences, as related to the world/story/lore.

 

I don't really see the issue. I see the unhappiness, but I don't see the actual problem. If you kill things, you'll still get oodles of XP and you'll progress just fine. If you want to kill at every turn, you probably pretty much can, within reason. I don't think you can slaughter an entire city, mainly because it's probably just impossible. If you could do that, why aren't you a deity already?

 

I don't see where the "you're ruining it for the rest of us, non-combat people!" comes from, when the game still has ridiculous amounts of mandatory combat, (meaning, unless the game simply doesn't give you any XP ever and you never, ever level up, you're going to mainly be getting XP for combat-related things, simply because they're so much more frequent than non-combat options), AND still has combat achieving objectives within this objective-based system.

 

It's not like combat was removed from the "things that in any way lead to XP" pool.

[Silent Winter]

 

 

. My only argument is that I think hostiles should award experience points for outside of quest combat. I want to progress my characters and be rewarded for exploring a cave that has no quest tied to it.

It's come up in other threads but I'll repeat it here - 'Objective XP' doesn't equal 'Quest XP'

I too would like to get XP for exploring areas - but that can be set as an objective by developers, it needn't be a quest given to you.

Similarly, "wipe out the xvarts" could be an objective - one that involves killing in this case (poor xvarts) - but that probably would make more sense tied to a quest.

 

So, theoretically, this system doesn't actually do anything to eliminate kill grinding. Since murdering every hostile in the forest could be an objective.

 

Theoretically, yes - but if Obsidian were going to design such a system, they'd probably just leave in kill-xp.

This way, they can give XP once for the exploration or for the killing of the goup IF that's an objective.  So 'hunt down and kill all the xvarts in Farham Wood' is a mission from an NPC but 'Kill every last bear in Farham Wood' isn't.

'Explore and find hidden cave' is a non-quest objective, awarded with XP, but 'Kill the ogres on the way' isn't.  Killing of ogres may or may not be unavoidable on this route.  If unavoidable then their deaths are part of the objective and the xp-reward can be judged according to the difficulty.

[PrimeJunta]

Doppel I do somewhat agree with your post. If Obsidian could promise me tons of side quests and hidden quests off the beaten path that were worth finding and doing that could make my life enjoyable when I am out in the wild killing essentially filler creatures with no real story line.. I could give up the xp for kills.

Exploration is one of P:E's core gameplay planks. I'm pretty sure they want to give us exactly that. I'm also pretty confident in their ability to deliver.

 

We will see when we will see, of course, and if there are lots of wilderness areas with nothing there but wandering monsters, then I agree that they will have failed on that point.

 

As to scale, P:E is about halfway between BG1 and BG2. That's a big game.

[Immortalis]

 

You still have a loss of reward. Unless Hostiles in PoE don't drop any items at all.. you will miss out on rewards by avoiding fights. So that problem is still in PoE.. we are just talking about experience rewards which can easily be increased for going a stealth route, nobody is arguing the rewards should be equal.. My only argument is that I think hostiles should award experience points for outside of quest combat. I want to progress my characters and be rewarded for exploring a cave that has no quest tied to it.

First of all... that's not the problem that's trying to be fixed. Rewards come in all varieties, but XP isn't just some shiny reward. It's the life-blood of character progression. So, the problem of "Oh, you like to perfectly understandably do things in peaceful ways, etc.? YOU DON'T GET ANY XP FOR THAT" is the one that's gone.

 

 

It is the problem that is trying to be fixed according to Tim Cains interview.. And XP is a reward. Character progression vs new items are both increase in power. They are just two different streams to draw water from. By your logic we should just say.. No XP at all.. Instead the game will be done in chapters.. and every chapter you get one level.. PoE is 12 chapters long. Does that sound fun? You want to be on a linear rail system like that? 

 

The more certain people defend this quest only xp idea and the more I hear their justifications..really they are just saying remove freedom from gameplay..

 

In your next point.. the problem you just described was never there. Obsidian always offered alternative xp rewards for taking the dialogue option. It wasn't some kind of stream lined process offered on every quest.. but every game Obsidian has ever done.. all the way back to the IE engine has had at least one quest with a peaceful option that generally awarded a surplus in experience to offset the xp you missed in combat...

 

This isn't some kind of new mechanic or revolutionary idea.. even Arcanum did this.. It was perfectly fine. Infact I really enjoyed it. I just don't support the extra step of changing the rest of the game to balance around this option being available all the time when they obviously have other ways of dealing with multiple reward options.. I admit that my idea could lead to balance problems and would make more work for the developers.. but it can be done.. Obsidian has really smart designers working there..

Edited July 29, 2014 by Immortalis

[PrimeJunta]

This isn't some kind of new mechanic or revolutionary idea.. even Arcanum did this.. It was perfectly fine. Infact I really enjoyed it. I just don't support the extra step of changing the rest of the game to balance around this option being available all the time when they obviously have other ways of dealing with multiple reward options.. I admit that my idea could lead to balance problems and would make more work for the developers.. but it can be done.. Obsidian has really smart designers working there..

Interesting that you brought up Arcanum, because it's a perfect example of how kill XP makes a complete mess of character progression. There are a couple of pretty neat set pieces there which involve closing a portal or stopping zombies from spawning -- but due to the kill XP, the player's incentive is precisely not to do that, but rather farm them for XP.

 

That said, Arcanum's game balance is so utterly out of whack that it's not even funny; automatic XP isn't even anywhere near the top of the list of its problems. It's a testament to the game's excellence in other areas that it remains such a classic despite all this.

 

Again, it's clearly entirely possible to balance a game with combat XP reasonably well, even if the game is relatively open. It's just a lot more work than if you're only dealing with hand-placed quest/objective XP -- and for a story- and quest-driven game, quest/objective XP is more aligned with the game's overall design.

[Immortalis]

 

This isn't some kind of new mechanic or revolutionary idea.. even Arcanum did this.. It was perfectly fine. Infact I really enjoyed it. I just don't support the extra step of changing the rest of the game to balance around this option being available all the time when they obviously have other ways of dealing with multiple reward options.. I admit that my idea could lead to balance problems and would make more work for the developers.. but it can be done.. Obsidian has really smart designers working there..

Interesting that you brought up Arcanum, because it's a perfect example of how kill XP makes a complete mess of character progression. There are a couple of pretty neat set pieces there which involve closing a portal or stopping zombies from spawning -- but due to the kill XP, the player's incentive is precisely not to do that, but rather farm them for XP.

 

That said, Arcanum's game balance is so utterly out of whack that it's not even funny; automatic XP isn't even anywhere near the top of the list of its problems. It's a testament to the game's excellence in other areas that it remains such a classic despite all this.

 

Again, it's clearly entirely possible to balance a game with combat XP reasonably well, even if the game is relatively open. It's just a lot more work than if you're only dealing with hand-placed quest/objective XP -- and for a story- and quest-driven game, quest/objective XP is more aligned with the game's overall design.

 

 

I'm glad you said that immediately after your first point. Arcanum was a fantastic game but xp for kills was the least of it's problem. I can beat that game at level 2... Xp actually didn't matter at all.. That was the least of it's problems. I also acknowledge that my suggestion is harder to balance and I trusted Obsidian will be able to work around that. They are a smart crew of people.

[sb5]

The best (classless) leveling system I've seen was the one in Darklands. You got better by practice, as in there was a chance that your skills increased after successful rolls or combat encounters. Darklands is a sandbox simulation where you travel through a country full of random encounters and few fixed quests.

 

Initially I had hoped for someone to adapt this system but the way this goes could be fine too. I've been min maxing and save scumming all my life

[PrimeJunta]

Problem with Darklands-style "learn by doing" character development is that it's very hard not to make it incentivize really boring activities. Farming and grinding is repetitive and tedious, but practicing a skill in learn-by-doing is even more so.

 

Personally I prefer classless, level-less and XP-less systems. Earn character points directly, use those to develop your character. Have traits and skill/feat/spell/etc trees instead of classes and levels. Class, level, and XP just seem like so much unnecessary complication.

[Immortalis]

I read a interesting post from Josh Sawyer.. I agree with a huge percent of what he is saying except the part about "bribing players to perform actions". I don't see XP as a bribing mechanic to make up for a poor combat system.. I see the progression and combat going hand in hand. They are both fun and work together. Other then that I think he has a really good insight in how these mechanics fall short..

 

 

I used to be a big fan of "learn by doing", but in practice I think it really works best in tabletop games where the GM can adjudicate exactly what's going on.  Now I favor systems where an abstracted earned currency is used to advance the character's stats -- in other words, typical XP systems, whether level-based or not.  However, I am strongly against awarding experience points for "ways and means".  I.e. killing monsters, picking locks, scribing scrolls, etc.  Not only is it extraordinarily hard to balance for designers and QA staff, but it inevitably leads to nasty metagaming that, in my opinion, runs counter to some of the guiding principles of many RPGs.  Unless combat is the sole focus of the game, we need to keep the player's focus on achieving a goal in whatever manner he or she sees fit.  The accomplishment of the goal, not the method itself, should net the main reward.  The reward for "ways and means" is usually self-contained.  E.g. monsters drop monster bits, opening locked rooms gives access to otherwise unavailable equipment, hacking a computer gives some interesting data that can tie in with another game system.  And really, the biggest reward has already been granted to the player: you allowed him or her to play the game in the manner he or she wanted.  There's an idea I don't subscribe to -- that players need to be given tiny rewards for everything they do.  If your gameplay is actually fun, you shouldn't need to bribe them!  When gameplay simply becomes drudgery motivated by a desire to gain a bonus that makes the gameplay easier, I feel that we have failed as designers.

 

In regards to Oblivion style skill up as you use:

 

People wind up effectively “grinding skills” instead of just playing the game.  I’d like to keep people focused on accomplishing things in the setting instead of meta-gaming stats in the world.  I don’t have anything against people powergaming or min-maxing, I just want to keep that sort of activity out of the game world, if that makes sense.  When it’s time to advance your character or equip gear, go bonkers.  But flailing away with a crappy weapon skill or jumping up and down in place just to advance a skill – frankly it just seems like degenerate gaming to me.
The character systems that have most influenced me are the ones in Darklands, Fallout, Mass Effect, and Oblivion.  There are things that I utterly despised about the character systems in all of those games, but they were moving toward an ideal that I believe in very strongly: a shallow learning curve that expands into thought-provoking depth.

 

Original Interview: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=444.0;wap2

Edited July 29, 2014 by Immortalis

[Stun]

Yeah, Skyrim does the 'learn by doing' classless system. It's 'cool' I suppose, and of course, you can argue that it's realistic too. But I wouldn't choose it over a good, robust class-based system. Ever. At least not in a party based game.

 

I would, however, enjoy a system where you begin the game classless, and then have to specifically work towards one of the classes available to you in the game. Then once you get there, you advance in it till the end.