Experience Point Mechanics - Fighting Enemies

[Silent Winter]

This ruthless killing of NPCs has to be STAWPED NAO!!

As an aside - my 2nd playthrough will involve the ruthless killing of as many NPCs as possible.

(First will take a 'look and see' approach to best RP options for the druid I'm almost certainly rolling)(...after playing character creator for an hour...)

Edited August 17, 2014 by Silent Winter

[Logos]

 

I simply disagree with the premise that rewarding xp upon enemy kills encourages behavior that is 'boring'. In fact, receiving xp upon killing an enemy is exciting, because it's the game telling you you've just overcome a significant challenge.

You don't find repetitively killing the same enemies over and over boring? Then we're just going to have to disagree about it.

 

 

What you describe is called "grinding", and it (and my opinion of it) has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, because we were discussing xp upon enemy death. You can grind in Dark Souls; you can't grind in Baldur's Gate 2. You can grind in Diablo; you can't grind in Mass Effect. Not all games with xp upon enemy death have grinding, and not all games that have grinding are boring. The fact that having the xp upon enemy death mechanic in your game can sometimes lead to a situation in which a player ends up (either willingly or unwillingly) grinding is a different discussion altogether.

 

Distributing xp upon killing an enemy incentivizes a certain player behavior: to kill more enemies. Overdoing it can result in grinding. Not distributing xp upon killing an enemy also incentivizes a certain player behavior: to not always kill all enemies. Overdoing that can result in boring gameplay just as well. The issue is not xp upon killing an enemy, the issue is overdoing it, misapplying it, or otherwise designing your game badly.

 

PoE will not have xp upon killing an enemy because its designers think that they can more effectively give their players the experience they want to have that way. That's really all there is to it.

[Immortalis]

Combat won't be rewarded with XP because the developers want to encourage the player to avoid combat as much as possible. Obsidian Josh Sawyer is going to great lengths to make combat as unrewarding as possible, a substantial amount of item drops will contain useless vendor trash, so that people who strongly dislike combat (which is basically everyone who didn't like the IE games) don't whine about being deprived of good loot.

 

Combat will always be an answer, although it will make more sense to minimize risk and effort by avoiding it if possible. I really hope that the combat which we are better off avoiding will be fun, because that is real important.

 

Just out of curiosity and I'm not trying to argue I'm simply curious why this matters in a single player game and it comes up a lot. Why does it matter in the slightest if a player desides to go around and gain a bunch of xp and lvls from doing side objectives thus making him very powerful and allowing him to complete the story with greater ease? I don't understand why people care about that. What am I missing?

Because Sawyer has terrible nightmares about players abusing his game by slaughtering everything and getting rewarded with XP for doing so.

 

This ruthless killing of NPCs has to be STAWPED NAO!!

 

The first time I read this post I thought you were in favor of removal of kill-xp.. now I think you missed your [sarcastic] tags.. either way I laughed..

 

I wanna point out something else from this post that just dawned at me...

 

Under this new system combat choices are now penalized because we have to use consumables and spells and health to succeed where someone else just has to click their toes and roll a dice to get past an encounter.. meaning you have less time to adventure before you need to rest up.. with minimal camping supplies.

 

By removal of any advantage to combat, you have now made dialogue trees the optimal route to beat the game. Good work!

 

Replace one poor design with another.

 

 

 

 

I simply disagree with the premise that rewarding xp upon enemy kills encourages behavior that is 'boring'. In fact, receiving xp upon killing an enemy is exciting, because it's the game telling you you've just overcome a significant challenge.

You don't find repetitively killing the same enemies over and over boring? Then we're just going to have to disagree about it.

 

 

What you describe is called "grinding", and it (and my opinion of it) has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, because we were discussing xp upon enemy death. You can grind in Dark Souls; you can't grind in Baldur's Gate 2. You can grind in Diablo; you can't grind in Mass Effect. Not all games with xp upon enemy death have grinding, and not all games that have grinding are boring. The fact that having the xp upon enemy death mechanic in your game can sometimes lead to a situation in which a player ends up (either willingly or unwillingly) grinding is a different discussion altogether.

 

Distributing xp upon killing an enemy incentivizes a certain player behavior: to kill more enemies. Overdoing it can result in grinding. Not distributing xp upon killing an enemy also incentivizes a certain player behavior: to not always kill all enemies. Overdoing that can result in boring gameplay just as well. The issue is not xp upon killing an enemy, the issue is overdoing it, misapplying it, or otherwise designing your game badly.

 

PoE will not have xp upon killing an enemy because its designers think that they can more effectively give their players the experience they want to have that way. That's really all there is to it.

 

 

Nailed it.. Thank you for taking someone's gross over exaggeration / simplification and breaking it down into reality. This is like the guy who said Icewind Dale sucked cause he had to spend days grinding yeti's.. what are you talking about...?

Edited August 17, 2014 by Immortalis

[BrokenMask]

 

We were talking about where the fun comes from in combat, and you(Among others) have consistently argued that combat will be extremely boring Pointless, Unrewarding without being rewarded with XP.

Fixed.

 

Go burn your straw man in someone else's face.

 

So can I just ask, why exactly the combat is pointless without exp rewards?...

 

And if its pointless without exp rewards, why the hell combat isn't pointless in Shadowrun, VtM Bloodlines, Deus Ex, etc?

Edited August 17, 2014 by BrokenMask

[PrimeJunta]

@Logos: Systemic XP rewards use of the systems whenever possible, whether it makes sense for any other reason or not. All the IE games I've played except BG2 had respawning enemies. BG2 didn't have grinding, but it had other ways of farming XP by doing boring and repetitive things, some of which Hassat Hunter listed earlier in his excellent post.

 

Systemic XP makes sense only in games where the game is the system -- roguelikes for example. In plot- or quest-based games, it doesn't.

 

This is a problem that's inherent to systemic XP. You can slap Band-Aids on it in ways Stun has described above, but it remains a problem even so. I do not see why you'd want it since it's so easy to avoid the problem in the first place.

 

All the IE games except the IWD's would have been better with hand-placed XP only. Nothing you guys can say will convince me otherwise.

[Logos]

 Nothing you guys can say will convince me otherwise.

 

Exactly.

[Immortalis]

 

 

We were talking about where the fun comes from in combat, and you(Among others) have consistently argued that combat will be extremely boring Pointless, Unrewarding without being rewarded with XP.

Fixed.

 

Go burn your straw man in someone else's face.

 

So can I just ask, why exactly the combat is pointless without exp rewards?...

 

And if its pointless without exp rewards, why the hell combat isn't pointless in Shadowrun, VtM Bloodlines, Deus Ex, etc?

 

 

Bloodlines isn't a combat focused game. *Please Read Thread From Beginning For your Answer*

 

Shadow Run is an episodic game. There is no open world. You are on rails fighting the same things before the same event happens. There is no fork in the road. Wether each mob gave x amount of xp or the end of the level gives x amount xp doesn't matter. There's only one direction to go and there's no turning back.

 

Deus Ex? you may wanna play that game again.. You get XP for everything.. Bad example for your case. Just like the guy who used Mass Effect as an example when you actually DO get kill xp in the ME games.

[BrokenMask]

 

 

 

We were talking about where the fun comes from in combat, and you(Among others) have consistently argued that combat will be extremely boring Pointless, Unrewarding without being rewarded with XP.

Fixed.

 

Go burn your straw man in someone else's face.

 

So can I just ask, why exactly the combat is pointless without exp rewards?...

 

And if its pointless without exp rewards, why the hell combat isn't pointless in Shadowrun, VtM Bloodlines, Deus Ex, etc?

 

 

Bloodlines isn't a combat focused game. *Please Read Thread From Beginning For your Answer*

 

Shadow Run is an episodic game. There is no open world. You are on rails fighting the same things before the same event happens. There is no fork in the road. Wether each mob gave x amount of xp or the end of the level gives x amount xp doesn't matter. There's only one direction to go and there's no turning back.

 

Deus Ex? you may wanna play that game again.. You get XP for everything.. Bad example for your case. Just like the guy who used Mass Effect as an example when you actually DO get kill xp in the ME games.

 

Huh, I guess I remembered Deus Ex wrong.

 

Also, Bloodlines combat was still pretty fun if you ask me

 

And point was that there are examples of games were combat isn't pointless just because you don't get exp per enemy. Besides, in Shadowrun returns you CAN sometimes avoid enemies, but yeah, I admit that most of levels, especially in main game, are rather linear. But yeah, I'm not sure how the fact that most of enemy encounters are mandatory changes the thing.

[Immortalis]

 

Huh, I guess I remembered Deus Ex wrong.

 

Also, Bloodlines combat was still pretty fun if you ask me

 

And point was that there are examples of games were combat isn't pointless just because you don't get exp per enemy. Besides, in Shadowrun returns you CAN sometimes avoid enemies, but yeah, I admit that most of levels, especially in main game, are rather linear. But yeah, I'm not sure how the fact that most of enemy encounters are mandatory changes the thing.

 

 

I actually didn't feel anything about combat in Shadow Runs.. the Sega version is far superior.. and guess what that games stance was on kill xp.. Again.. Shadow Run gets a pass because the game is on rails in episodic chapters.. If PoE is like ShadowRun.. I would never have backed it.. I would be waiting for the Christmas steam sale and bought it for 5 bucks.

 

Combat will always be fun when it's new, affects the story or is epic in some nature. Unfortunately trecking through a forest unrelated to any storyline or quest means combat will consist of wood beetles and grizzly bears and when I am fighting these things on my third play through I want more reward for it then a beetle horn worth 3 silver and some bear fur to make a scarf that is worth... wait for it.. 5 silver.

 

Kill XP allows me to feel like I am making headway and progressing even when I am not on a quest. It doesn't hurt your game play at all so why not?

Edited August 17, 2014 by Immortalis

[Valorian]

Would a semiofficial XP-for-kill mod, by an Obsidian developer, anger proponents of the 'killXP-is-the-devil' line of thought?

[Immortalis]

Would a semiofficial XP-for-kill mod, by an Obsidian developer, anger proponents of the 'killXP-is-the-devil' line of thought?

 

I feel very confident that this type of mod could be done.

 

- Scale down all quest xp by some value that feels right..

- Give a bonus in xp to any quest resolutions that don't use combat (to keep quest rewards semi balanced)..

- There you go..

- Me and stun get xp for killing wood beetles

- People who wanted PoE to be isometric alpha protocol will still get rewards stealthing past the whole game and one shotting the boss.

 

EDIT:

I know your post wasn't directed to me.. but I don't see anything wrong with this.. everyone's happy..

Edited August 17, 2014 by Immortalis

[PrimeJunta]

Would a semiofficial XP-for-kill mod, by an Obsidian developer, anger proponents of the 'killXP-is-the-devil' line of thought?

Not in the least. Why would it?

[BrokenMask]

Would a semiofficial XP-for-kill mod, by an Obsidian developer, anger proponents of the 'killXP-is-the-devil' line of thought?

Dunno why anyone would be angry with it unless it comes at expense of resources used at game

[Elerond]

This seems to be romance thread 2.0. 

[Immortalis]

This seems to be romance thread 2.0. 

 

Romance is hardly a game Mechanic..

Arguing about romance plots is like arguing what mage robes look like or what the plot of the game is about.

 

AKA.. It's not that important and highly subjective. This topic is more important IMO

[Ganrich]

 

 

This seems to be romance thread 2.0.

Romance is hardly a game Mechanic..

Arguing about romance plots is like arguing what mage robes look like or what the plot of the game is about.

 

AKA.. It's not that important and highly subjective. This topic is more important IMO

Agreed. This debate does affect the game much more prolifically than romance.

 

Also, a kill xp mod would be cool. I will never bash a mod for giving the player base more options than the developers were able to give.

[BrokenMask]

 

This seems to be romance thread 2.0. 

 

Romance is hardly a game Mechanic..

Arguing about romance plots is like arguing what mage robes look like or what the plot of the game is about.

 

AKA.. It's not that important and highly subjective. This topic is more important IMO

 

Dunno, so far this topic IS very subjective.

Has anyone said anything that in the end doesn't amount to "No, I like exp for killing enemies, here's why you are wrong" "No, I like exp for objectives better, here's why you are wrong"?

 

And reading through this thread gives me headache since lots of time people ignore what other people have actually said in order to nitpick something or just say same thing over and over <_< This argument has become really cyclical and its annoying since nobody is saying anything new. I'd just agree to disagree, but I'm addicted to debates it seems xP

[aluminiumtrioxid]

People who wanted PoE to be isometric alpha protocol 

 

 

You say that as if it was a bad thing

[Hassat Hunter]

 

Edit: never mind, I'm done with this discussion.

 

And the winner by knockout, Stun...raises hand in victory...

 

To be fair, it's rather hard to win a discussion with a wall...

Bloodlines isn't a combat focused game. *Please Read Thread From Beginning For your Answer*

The amount of combat seems to prove otherwise. And yes, I also found combat fun, except for the Sewers. XP wouldn't have changed that... it was going down levels of exactly the same looking area killing enemies till eventually you got through.

The Obsidian equivelant would be... Malachor V. Did kill XP made that sufferable. Nope...

So if area design is bad and forcing massive loads of enemies without any suitable roleplaying XP wont fix it at all, only area redesign will.

Or do tell me how fun you thought Malachor was...

Deus Ex? you may wanna play that game again.. You get XP for everything.. Bad example for your case. Just like the guy who used Mass Effect as an example when you actually DO get kill xp in the ME games.

Someone seems to use SHIFTER. But no, vanilla DX did infact not. Exploration was rewarded, moving forward with quests was rewarded... it didn't matter how you did so, or get to the area in question. Exactly as PoE will do.

Like DX PoE wants to offer Stealth, Diplomacy and Combat. None of those are clearly better than the other in DX. If stealth didn't give anything (go ahead, say your "you can reward XP for sneaking past foes" without any tecnhical information about how the game detects that since it would be impossbile to do proper anyway) combat would be better.

But no, no combat XP doesn't automatically makes talking better, or stealth. Infact all 3 would be possible. Why oppose this and instead shoe-horn it into how the IE-games where, potentially ruining 2 very good additional approaches adding much replay.

But no, why care about other people's play. Combat must rule all, right? You don't think that far...

 

Also, as you were wrong on DX, you're semi-wrong on ME. ME1 did, ME2 replaced it for giving an overall XP in the end. I really don't recall ME3.

So yeah, much like ME itself, the XP-system in ME totally changed each game and had no correlaction or seemingly planning between.

[Helm]

Also, Bloodlines combat was still pretty fun if you ask me

Zelda is also really fun, although the games don't reward the player with experience points at all. You need to collect items to advance through the games.

 

Just because a game is good and handles xp in a different way (or not at all) doesn't mean that it would be good for an Infinity Engine style game like PoE. People should stop mentioning Bloodlines, it is a completely different type of RPG just as the Zelda series is also completely different.

 

(BTW, Thank god Sawyer isn't a huge Zelda fan, a Zelda/Baldur's Gate hybrid called "Pillars of Hyrule" is the last thing I would want to play)

[Helm]

Dunno, so far this topic IS very subjective.

Has anyone said anything that in the end doesn't amount to "No, I like exp for killing enemies, here's why you are wrong" "No, I like exp for objectives better, here's why you are wrong"?

 

And reading through this thread gives me headache since lots of time people ignore what other people have actually said in order to nitpick something or just say same thing over and over <_< This argument has become really cyclical and its annoying since nobody is saying anything new. I'd just agree to disagree, but I'm addicted to debates it seems xP

It isn't really about combat xp anyway, the thread is more about why the player only gains XP for overcoming specific obstacles dictated by the developer and absolutely no XP for overcoming any other obstacle that the player might run into (which of course makes the latter an extremely unattractive thing to do, especially if it is a high-risk task).

 

In the demo we were shown how the player receives exploration xp for finding the ogre's cave, then he could kill the ogre or choose a peaceful solution to receive some more xp. This is very Infinity Engine-esque, which is great. I have no problem with it.

 

But what about the beetles? What if have the ability to communicate with them and make them my buddy beetles who help me in some way? WHY shouldn't I get XP for that? WHY shouldn't I get XP if I decide to kill them instead because they are extremely dangerous and kill civilians hunting or looking for food in the forest? Why should I only get XP for the Ogre, why should I only get XP when I am told where to go and what to do?

 

I hate this lack of choice and only being rewarded for doing what I am told that I must do in order to get xp. It is like playing a playing a PnP session with a really bad DM: "LOL, NOOB, you didn't do it my way so you GET NOTHING."

Edited August 17, 2014 by Helm

[BrokenMask]

Just because a game is good and handles xp in a different way (or not at all) doesn't mean that it would be good for an Infinity Engine style game like PoE.

 

 

And neither it means it wouldn't be good.

 

And dang it, don't reply to same person in two different posts you post twice in row It makes it harder to reply

Edited August 17, 2014 by BrokenMask

[Immortalis]

 

People who wanted PoE to be isometric alpha protocol 

 

 

You say that as if it was a bad thing

 

 

Wasn't what was kickstarted. You might be happy with that.. A lot of people putting money in this game expected a IE Game adaption. If they said FROM THE DEVELOPERS OF ALPHA PROTOCOL.. COMES... AN ISOMETRIC ALPHA PROTOCOL..

 

I doubt the game would have a budget of 4+ Million..

 

 

 

Bloodlines isn't a combat focused game. *Please Read Thread From Beginning For your Answer*

The amount of combat seems to prove otherwise. And yes, I also found combat fun, except for the Sewers. XP wouldn't have changed that... it was going down levels of exactly the same looking area killing enemies till eventually you got through.

The Obsidian equivelant would be... Malachor V. Did kill XP made that sufferable. Nope...

So if area design is bad and forcing massive loads of enemies without any suitable roleplaying XP wont fix it at all, only area redesign will.

Or do tell me how fun you thought Malachor was...

Deus Ex? you may wanna play that game again.. You get XP for everything.. Bad example for your case. Just like the guy who used Mass Effect as an example when you actually DO get kill xp in the ME games.

Someone seems to use SHIFTER. But no, vanilla DX did infact not. Exploration was rewarded, moving forward with quests was rewarded... it didn't matter how you did so, or get to the area in question. Exactly as PoE will do.

Like DX PoE wants to offer Stealth, Diplomacy and Combat. None of those are clearly better than the other in DX. If stealth didn't give anything (go ahead, say your "you can reward XP for sneaking past foes" without any tecnhical information about how the game detects that since it would be impossbile to do proper anyway) combat would be better.

But no, no combat XP doesn't automatically makes talking better, or stealth. Infact all 3 would be possible. Why oppose this and instead shoe-horn it into how the IE-games where, potentially ruining 2 very good additional approaches adding much replay.

But no, why care about other people's play. Combat must rule all, right? You don't think that far...

 

Also, as you were wrong on DX, you're semi-wrong on ME. ME1 did, ME2 replaced it for giving an overall XP in the end. I really don't recall ME3.

So yeah, much like ME itself, the XP-system in ME totally changed each game and had no correlaction or seemingly planning between.

 

 

I don't see how your refuting my comment on Bloodlines other then saying, "well that's just like, your opinion man"

 

Which Deus Ex are we talking about? I assumed the most recent one. Anyone trying to compare an IE game to Deus Ex as similar styled games I assumed wasn't an RPG veteran..

 

http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Praxis

 

 

I don't remember Mass Effect 3 either.. (I just have a scar on my brain from the pain)

 

I will admit I don't actually remember Mass Effect 2 that well either.. If it didn't have kill xp then let me correct myself.. the original poster was still wrong.

 

However I will also point out that none of these games are even close to an IE game so the point is moot. I just thought it was funny that people held these games up as a bastion of hope for non-kill xp when many of them aren't. I wasn't trying to make an argument in reverse..

 

P.s. While we are having a pissing contest on games unrelated to IE.. can we talk about that Watchers Keep Mega Dungeon debate we had 4 pages back? After me and stun kinda smacked your argument in the dirt you sorta disappeared for a week.

Edited August 17, 2014 by Immortalis

[BrokenMask]

 

But what about the beetles? What if have the ability to communicate with them and make them my buddy beetles who help me in some way? WHY shouldn't I get XP for that? WHY shouldn't I get XP if I decide to kill them instead because they are extremely dangerous and kill civilians hunting or looking for food in the forest? Why should I only get XP for the Ogre, why should I only get XP when I am told where to go and what to do?

 

I hate this lack of choice and only being rewarded for doing what I am told that I must do in order to get xp. It is like playing a playing a PnP session with a really bad DM: "LOL, NOOB, you didn't do it my way so you GET NOTHING."

 

 

I don't really get what is the problem here.

[Tartantyco]

 

We were talking about where the fun comes from in combat, and you(Among others) have consistently argued that combat will be extremely boring Pointless, Unrewarding without being rewarded with XP.

Fixed.

 

Go burn your straw man in someone else's face.

 

 

Oh, I'm sorry. Was it not you who made this post? Or this post? Or this post? Do we have another member on this forum called Stun, using your avatar?

 

(Also, if combat is fun, then it does have a point, and it is rewarding)

Edited August 17, 2014 by Tartantyco