No experience from combat

[sparklecat]

 

What?

 

A large part of this game is killing creatures.

 

Yes.  So?  I'm killing them because they're between me and where I need to go, because they attacked me first, etc.  Not because I get some reward for doing so in XP or items.  A roleplaying reward, if you will, rather than a mechanical one, is quite sufficient; I kill them because it makes sense for my character to do so.

[Labadal]

Every creature I have killed has had something to loot, so there's that. Animals have hides, etc.

[Helm]

 

Taking away experience rewards from enemies just seems like it will leave the combat a bit unrewarding.

 

Wouldn't the dropped loot from the bodies be the reward?

 

No, because Obsidian doesn't want to deprive the pacifists of good loot.

 

Some of it is helpful (for crafting), but it is more the exception than the rule.

 

As it stands, combat is almost completely optional.

 

Just let killing creatures reward a tiny amount of XP so people have a false sense of gaining something and be done with it.

This isn't the Skyrim crowd, the gamers here will notice something like that real fast.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Helm

[Cabamacadaf]

I think getting XP from combat just makes sense, and it's weird that you don't, but on the other hand I understand that removing it may improve balance and stuff, so I'm pretty torn on which way I think is better. I think I'll just trust Obsidian to know what they're doing.

[GreatGreen]

I don't understand the OP at all.

 

Giving XP for killing monsters does three things that negatively influence gameplay:

 

1. It encourages grinding. Killing enemies over and over not because you want to, not because it's fun in itself, but because you perceive that doing it will get you closer to where you want to be later on. When you're forced to slog through long parts of a game you don't want to experience in order to get to the "good stuff," that is inherently bad design. In the absolute best case scenario, per-kill XP incentivises grinding, which is bad, and worst case, makes grinding mandatory to progress in the game because the game becomes balanced around grinding out xp, which is very bad.

 

2. It encourages you to play a certain way even when you're not grinding. Here's a quest to get the goblet from the monster, do you solve it peacefully or violently? Well you get more XP for getting the goblet and killing the monster for his XP instead of, say, completing the quest by making friends with the monster and trading some item that's useless to you for the goblet, so in this case you are effectively punished for thinking creatively to solve a problem because you miss out on that extra goblin killing XP.

 

3. It makes designing balanced encounters late in a single player game almost impossible, because you have to account for both players who do and who do not grind. How much health do you give the last boss of the game when it can be encountered by a party of level 15 characters all the way up to level 25? Match it to the level 25 party and the level 15's have to grind 10 levels until they're up to snuff. Match it to the level 15 party and the level 25 party cakewalks over the last boss and the player feels like the ending is anti-climactic. At this point you could suggest level scaling the boss, but if you level scale then why have levels at all in the first place?

 

The same thing happened with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The most XP you could get from an enemy was the most tedious way to play. Sneak up to the guy, get sneak XP, knock guy out, get knock out XP, after guy is unconscious, kill him to get kill XP. Optimal gameplay was the least fun gameplay. Optimal gameplay shouldn't be punished. That game should have done what Pillars is doing... provided all XP rewards on quest completion which frees you up to actually do the quests however you want.

 

So in other words, XP per quest only is a fantastic way to distribute XP because it doesn't reward playing one way over another, it simply rewards content completion, which is how it should be.

Edited August 19, 2014 by GreatGreen

[IndiraLightfoot]

New thread on this issue is up in Combat and Mechanics-subforum, plus a sketchy poll!

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67140-experience-point-system-in-the-beta-and-onwards/

[Forkedman]

 

3. It makes designing balanced encounters late in a single player game almost impossible, because you have to account for both players who do and who do not grind. How much health do you give the last boss of the game when it can be encountered by a party of level 15 characters all the way up to level 25? Match it to the level 25 party and the level 15's have to grind 10 levels until they're up to snuff. Match it to the level 15 party and the level 25 party cakewalks over the last boss and the player feels like the ending is anti-climactic. At this point you could suggest level scaling the boss, but if you level scale then why have levels at all in the first place?

 

 

 

 

This has come up a couple of times in this thread and while I think I understand your point. I don't totally agree with it. How is the quest completion exp any different? It doesn't negate this possibility at all. Unless you remove all non-critical path exp from the game players will reach final/late game encounters are different levels and strengths with different play styles. The only thing it does potentially is give you a base level that the party will be at due to exp from critical path quests. 

 

Edit - I don't actually feel totally beholden to the idea of exp per kill. But I think per encounter/achievement is important. A sense of progress for challenging content that is not totally bound up in the questing mechanics adds a lot to the game.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Forkedman

[archangel979]

Just let killing creatures reward a tiny amount of XP so people have a false sense of gaining something and be done with it.

This isn't the Skyrim crowd, the gamers here will notice something like that real fast.

 

That is the point. They will notice it and complain less than if there is 0 XP.

[Tartantyco]

 

What?

 

A large part of this game is killing creatures.

 

 

Sarex is now demanding XP for every mile walked in the game, as well as every 100 mouse clicks.

[Bli1942]

We haven't seen much of the game. I usually prefer XP from ONLY quests because the games end up less grindy and have way better quests, they just need to make sure they don't put in too many mobs around the place. I ran into those 4 or 5 beatles going to the right of town then I died, but if there is more than another 5 beatles between there and the next quest location I'll start getting annoyed. The key is to have virtually no random pointless enemies aside from maybe a couple fights on a quest route

[neo6874]

 

 

 

Taking away experience rewards from enemies just seems like it will leave the combat a bit unrewarding.

 

Wouldn't the dropped loot from the bodies be the reward?

 

 

Unfortunately not - it's not even close, I'm afraid. See the appropriate thread where the discussion is alive and kicking right now.

 

 

I've been a part of that discussion; I do not think Prince87x has AND since the Beta is now live I was hoping testers could comment on the game directly with regards to whether the loot seems adequate.

 

ATM, because a good number of items are still using placeholder icons, it's hard to tell. I think so though (I got "Fine" armours off some of the people I got to kill in town... so... that seems pretty good by me)

[Helm]

The key is to have virtually no random pointless enemies aside from maybe a couple fights on a quest route

That is what Inxile is planning for Torment. No trash mobs, no strong emphasis on combat, driven by the narrative = quest only XP. Makes sense.

 

Once you add a strong emphasis on combat and trash mobs to the equation (= Pillars of Eternity), then quest only XP doesn't make any sense. At all.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Helm

[Bli1942]

Yeah true, but the combat for PoE needs a lot of tweaking before it'll be very enjoyable...I think world/writing/quests will be the best part. unless they can work on the combat a lot before release they'd be best keeping the random trash mobs low

Edited August 19, 2014 by Bli1942

[bob54386]

It didn't bother me too much as I was playing -- you tended to spend a long time between levels in BG anyways.

 

I'd be annoyed if I had to have the foresight of talking to everyone in town before I could go adventure just to get XP.  Sometimes I want to talk to folks, sometimes I want to punch things in the face.

 

It's hard to tell what their intent is at the moment.  I've done the ogre quest a couple different ways and found myself unable to get rewards --

1. Convinced ogre we were BFFs then proceed to attack him while he's friendly.  Unable  to turn in head to quest NPC

2. Skipped talking to NPC and went straight for ogre's lair. Attacked ogre with dialog option.  Turned head into quest NPC and got item rewards but no XP.

 

As long as I can just kinda wing most quests, I don't think I'll be too bothered by it.

[bob54386]

 

As it stands, combat is almost completely optional.

 

 

As it stands, it's near impossible to sneak through a map without aggroing stuff, and encounters at normal difficulty and higher definitely hurt.

[Amentep]

 

 

Taking away experience rewards from enemies just seems like it will leave the combat a bit unrewarding.

 

Wouldn't the dropped loot from the bodies be the reward?

 

No, because Obsidian doesn't want to deprive the pacifists of good loot.

 

Some of it is helpful (for crafting), but it is more the exception than the rule.

 

That need not be mutually exclusive concept, IMO.

[Helm]

 

 

As it stands, combat is almost completely optional.

 

 

As it stands, it's near impossible to sneak through a map without aggroing stuff, and encounters at normal difficulty and higher definitely hurt.

 

Really? The NPCs act like they are blind when you are sneaking.

 

Anyway, I said almost completely optional. You will still have to fight a few enemies and... receive a fist full of nothing as a reward.

[Ell]

In general, I like the idea of discouraging munchkin-ish way of playing.

 

However, I would not go that far. I'd prefer that the players were still given some nominal amount of XP for the battles, simply because it's logical - when you participate in fights, you become a better fighter.

[Stun]

 

It pigeon holes players into playing one specific way. What if players don't want to do many quests? The only way to play if you want to get anywhere is by questing now. There's no just going out and adventuring around killing things as a form of progression.

Well, no.  This isn't Diablo.  If you don't want to do quests, this is probably not the right game for you.

 

Apparently this isn't Baldurs Gate 1, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate 2, or Icewind Dale 2 either. It's not even their spiritual successor.

 

All those games had Combat XP and quest/objective XP. And they all gave players the opportunity to quest or not-quest for XP. And they were good enough to be name-dropped by Obsidian in order to attract backers for PoE's kickstarter funding.

 

But lets cut the naivety. Obsidian (read: Josh Sawyer) did NOT decide to scrap Kill XP because he thought doing so would make the game more fun. He scrapped Kill XP because it takes FAR less work, and FAR less number-crunching to balance a game when you can simply hand-place and lump-sum all the XP rewards from act 1 to act 3 and create a rigid, tightly controlled level advancement from beginning for the sake of convenience.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Stun

[sparklecat]

The IE games had a lot of other things that PoE doesn't, and vice versa!  That does not mean it suddenly loses all similarity to them.

 

And no.  Unless all the quests are mandatory, which they are not, you are still going to have people progressing at different paces and reaching levels at different points, and you still need to balance for the range of possibilities.  As has been pointed out previously.  Your hypothesis on why this system was chosen is, quite frankly, terrible.

[bob54386]

The lion area, sure it's easy to sneak around lions and druids.  I was able to get past the beetles and all but one wolf on the way towards the ogre area on normal difficulty.

 

Actually get into the dungeon, and this is the kind of stuff you have to put up with.  Yellow area makes mobs start walking towards you.  Get the mob's purple circle on top of your character's green circle and combat's initiated.  Photo below could easily turn into a party wipe if you were trying to sneak through it.  Can probably get to a courier to help advance the noble's daughter storyline without killing anything.  Definitely need to smash some spiders in order to get to the ogre.

http://s397.photobucket.com/user/Bob54386/media/2014-08-19_00003.jpg.html

Edited August 19, 2014 by bob54386

[Stun]

 

 

What?

 

A large part of this game is killing creatures.

 

Yes.  So?  I'm killing them because they're between me and where I need to go, because they attacked me first, etc.  Not because I get some reward for doing so in XP or items.  A roleplaying reward, if you will

 

That's a Larping reward, not a roleplaying reward. The game mechanics will not recognize that you killed those creatures. You may as well have just soloed the game and rushed past them.

 

Edit: besides, I didn't explore what's-it-called Gorge because I needed to go there for some quest. I explored it because it was there to be explored. Yet not even exploration in this game yields Xp.

 

But this misses the point. PoE looks like it will easily be just as combat heavy as the baldurs gate games. Which menas you're not going to be tangibly rewarded for something you have to do for 80% of the friggin game.

 

By definition, that makes gameplay mostly POINTLESS.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Stun

[sparklecat]

 

 

 

What?

 

A large part of this game is killing creatures.

 

Yes.  So?  I'm killing them because they're between me and where I need to go, because they attacked me first, etc.  Not because I get some reward for doing so in XP or items.  A roleplaying reward, if you will

 

That's a Larping reward, not a roleplaying reward. The game mechanics will not recognize that you killed those creatures. You may as well have just rushed past them, or cast invisibility and strolled past them.

 

I'm not really sure what you think roleplaying is, in that case.

[bob54386]

 

 

It pigeon holes players into playing one specific way. What if players don't want to do many quests? The only way to play if you want to get anywhere is by questing now. There's no just going out and adventuring around killing things as a form of progression.

Well, no.  This isn't Diablo.  If you don't want to do quests, this is probably not the right game for you.

 

Apparently this isn't Baldurs Gate 1, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldurs Gate 2, or Icewind Dale 2 either. It's not even their spiritual successor.

 

All those games had Combat XP and quest/objective XP. And they all gave players the opportunity to quest or not-quest for XP. And they were good enough to be name-dropped by Obsidian in order to attract backers for PoE's kickstarter funding.

 

But lets cut the naivety. Obsidian (read: Josh Sawyer) did NOT decide to scrap Kill XP because he thought doing so would make the game more fun. He scrapped Kill XP because it takes FAR less work, and FAR less number-crunching to balance a game when you can simply hand-place and lump-sum all the XP rewards from act 1 to act 3 and create a rigid, tightly controlled level advancement from beginning for the sake of convenience.

 

One thing a lack of kill XP does add -- this beta is the first time I've played an RPG and thought about NOT killing all the things at the end of the quest.  In BG or BG2 I wouldn't have given it a second thought.  In my mind this system is undoubtedly superior from a role-playing perspective.

 

From a rewards perspective, I think they need to make loot a little more compelling -- the spiders in my picture above don't drop anything good, and they can easily wipe my party.  I saw the argument that they 'don't want to deprive pacifists of good loot', but that begs the question: 'why does a pacifist need a +5 sword of murder?'

[Tartantyco]

 

 

That's a Larping reward, not a roleplaying reward. The game mechanics will not recognize that you killed those creatures. You may as well have just soloed the game and rushed past them.

 

 

Stun, LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing. That's people who play a roleplaying game in person. It has absolutely no relevance to the discussion here, so just stop abusing terms you don't even understand.