Do you want experience from combat?

[Stun]

"PoE is a role-play game that allows sneaky and diplomatic. give xp awards for individual kills, and individual lockpicks and individual whatever inevitably leads to an ideal approach for maximizing xp by making the right gameplay and character development choices. quest only xp avoids the need to devise a fair an balanced calculus. quest is simple and guaranteed to result in every player getting exact same XP rewards for completing quests regardless o' how they chose to complete the quest."

Several problems with that.

 

1) This does not take into account Forced combat encounters (of which Josh assured us there would be many.)

2) This system does not reward intelligent character building over non-intelligent character building since it's designed to reward all builds equally (Hello Casual gamer! Hello, dumbed down, idiot-proof game design!)

3) This system renders 80% of the game pointless.

4) This system doesn't actually address the legitimate gripe from players that receiving no xp for kills will make combat feel pointless (see #3 for emphasis)

5)This system does not factor in Loot placement and the effect it will have on players making game play choices.

 

This system is Garbage. Stop defending crap game design.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Stun

[Stun]

 

And... No rebuttal. You've just spouted out a simple "nuh-uh!". You haven't demonstrated what's wrong with it and why.

is so difficult to tell if you is being intentional obtuse for effect, or not. perplexing.

 

*sigh*

 

is not a "nuh-uh" argument. is axiomatic that NOT making any attempt to balance is easier than attempting to balance a myriad different xp award types. quest xp does not make any attempt to balance. it is therefore less resource intensive than ANY xp mechanic that attempts to do so. this should be so obvious that it is beyond question, but somehow it ain't.

 

Explain how Kill XP imbalances PS:T... instead of DODGING the question again for the 3rd time Edited August 29, 2014 by Stun

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

It's not a one off thing as regards XP. If the entire system uses combat XP, then it has an impact on everyone. I wish folks advocating combat XP would stop pretending that their method has no effect on folks that don't want combat XP whereas quest only XP places an undue burden on folks who oppose that view. The fact is, there is a profound impact on either side in choosing one or the other.

*sigh*

 

I find that the XP threads are getting worse than the romance threads ever were.

 

The two systems are incompatible due to philosophical reasons. Kill-XP(or XP for doing everything from scribbling scrolls to lockpicking) rewards what the player does, while Objective-XP rewards what the player gets done. Obsidian is using Quest-XP because they want many party configurations and playstyles to feel viable and that doesn't take much effort when you tie XP to getting stuff done without factoring in how it got done. Trying to accomplish the goal of reasonably equal viability while rewarding XP for most skill based actions becomes very difficult, because you now have to figure out a way to provide enough XP for many different playstyles and parties so that no one feels like they're making a mistake by not taking a certain course of action.

 

This isn't aimed at Cantousent, BTW.

[Gromnir]

 

 

And... No rebuttal. You've just spouted out a simple "nuh-uh!". You haven't demonstrated what's wrong with it and why.

is so difficult to tell if you is being intentional obtuse for effect, or not. perplexing.

 

*sigh*

 

is not a "nuh-uh" argument. is axiomatic that NOT making any attempt to balance is easier than attempting to balance a myriad different xp award types. quest xp does not make any attempt to balance. it is therefore less resource intensive than ANY xp mechanic that attempts to do so. this should be so obvious that it is beyond question, but somehow it ain't.

 

Explain how Kill XP imbalances PS:T.

 

that has been done literal hundreds o' times in multiple threads, and Gromnir is simply repeating. folks who don't kill get less xp than those who do.... but you is the guy who couldn't understand why the absence o' stealth xp were a problem for those playing stealth characters. your inability to see the obvious is literal astounding, and keep in mind Gromnir has witnessed these boards since the late 90s. to be genuine surprised by a poster's inability to grasp simple concepts is noteworthy in and of itself.

 

 

"Several problems with that."

 

well, you got us-- this time we will say "nuh-uh." you just ain't worth the effort. if we can't explain that no work is requiring less effort than any amount o' genuine work, particularly when a developer describes the task in question thus: "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."

 

1) no work

 

v.

 

2) hard to balance for designers and qa staff 

 

yet you can't grasp that 1 is easier than 2?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Stun]

 

Explain how Kill XP imbalances PS:T.

that has been done literal hundreds o' times in multiple threads, and Gromnir is simply repeating. folks who don't kill get less xp than those who do....

 

Since we're discussing PS:T's system, I'm not sure you realize just how hilarious that argument sounds. Doing the Drowned Nations "XP Double Dip" will net you an extra 4000 or so XP.....in a game where a 3 minute conversation with Ravel a few hours later can net you 750,000 XP + 2 points of Wisdom.

 

but you is the guy who couldn't understand why the absence o' stealth xp were a problem for those playing stealth characters.

I made no such claim. I specifically said we shouldn't get XP for stealthing past encounters, since you ALSO cannot solve quests in the POE beta via stealth.

 

 

As for your system being easy for the developers and mine being harder.... Yeah so what. I'm not a developer. I'm a gamer. Tell me why I should care. I'm a patient guy, I'll gladly accept a 6 month delay in return for a NON CRAP XP system.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Stun

[Lord Wafflebum]

I'm fairly new coming into this, but isn't it tough to gauge the impact no-kill xp will actually have?

 

Currently the xp system is inflated for an idea of how leveling will work and is not indicative how the final game will work, or how quests will be structured. Perhaps there will be smaller quests that, say, reward you for ridding a bandit camp that indirectly is kill xp (with an option for talking them into leaving or something)? 

 

I guess I'm not certain we know enough about quest structure to make a good argument for OR against kill xp...

[Helm]

PoE is a role-play game that allows sneaky and diplomatic.

No, it's a combat oriented roleplaying game that passively encourages the player to avoid the completely optional combat. I guess you could call it a pseudo combat oriented RPG... or an isometric fantasy party-based uh... sneaky game? I'm not really sure what you should call it, because it feels like a new genre... I think i'll just call it isometric hybrid-crap or a Sawyer RPG for now.

 

BTW the BG series had diplomatic and non-violent solutions too. They had a lot of flavor just without the completely borked core design.

 

give xp awards for individual kills, and individual lockpicks and individual whatever inevitably leads to an ideal approach for maximizing xp by making the right gameplay and character development choices.

Gromnir, you don't need to do every possible activity in an RPG just because it rewards the player with XP. You also don't need to always take the choice that gives you the most XP or loot and you don't have to finish every quest.

 

My roleplaying choices are more important to me than XP or even loot in many cases anyway. I will abstain from huge chunks of XP or good loot if I think that my choice is meaningful. I do however also enjoy being rewarded with extra XP or loot for making smart choices, like somehow exorcising a graveyard full of skeletons so that I don't have to engage them directly in combat.

BTW you can't even do that in PoE. These Sawyerisms like balance and all choices matter equally amd always-on super stealth mode make me cringe, I hate it when a game designer removes choice from the equation.

 

fallout is an example. is not a handful o' folks exploiting. is the fallout community as a whole quickly realizing that there were clear best builds.

"Oh noes, I can powergame in Fallout by metagaming because of the wonders of the Internet. Game sux."

 

That is real smart Gromnir.

[GreyFox]

sawyer and cain consider past xp mechanics failures is not the least bit helpful to your possible ‘cause o’ bringing about future change and improvements. you is gonna need come up with something new, ‘cause old is what is considered the fail, and is too late to change for this game anyway.  

 

**** man if they consider past xp mechanics to be failures this game is worse off than I imagined. Thank god they have a partnership with Paizo as a Pathfinder cRPG will no doubt have combat as well as other XP...not to mention popular/established mechanics already in place.

 

This is especially true considering the IE games didn't try to have what you consider equal rewards for different resolution of quests so it's rather silly to judge it as if it did. Besides not everyone thinks there was an issue nor do they think of this as an improvement.

Sure two of the head guys on PE think there was an issue but we've established that one didn't do too well when left to his own ideas....so yea cause for pause is very much warranted.

 

For me I think people are completely in the right to challenge their opinion and implementation and "point to the scoreboard" as it were...no reason to come up with anything new when what was old works perfectly fine. It's understood that it won't likely change it's also understood that the "scoreboard" will tell the tale so for the sake of a PE2 (franchise) I sure hope they did it "right".

 

And by right I, of course, mean that it resonates well enough with the masses to actually sell.

Edited August 30, 2014 by GreyFox

[Gromnir]

 

sawyer and cain consider past xp mechanics failures is not the least bit helpful to your possible ‘cause o’ bringing about future change and improvements. you is gonna need come up with something new, ‘cause old is what is considered the fail, and is too late to change for this game anyway.  

 

**** man if they consider past xp mechanics to be failures this game is worse off than I imagined. Thank god they have a partnership with Paizo as a Pathfinder cRPG will no doubt have combat as well as other XP...not to mention popular/established mechanics already in place.

 

This is especially true considering the IE games didn't try to have what you consider equal rewards for different resolution of quests so it's rather silly to judge it as if it did. Besides not everyone thinks there was an issue nor do they think of this as an improvement.

Sure two of the head guys on PE think there was an issue but we've established that one didn't do too well when left to his own ideas....so yea cause for pause is very much warranted.

 

 

*chuckle*

 

it would be hard for stun's example to be any worse as an example o' past failures. ps:t? 

 

A Wisdom of 12 and lower, no bonus

13 gives you about a 2% bonus to experience earned.

14 5%

15 8%

16 10%

17 13%

18 15%

19 18%

20 20%

21 23%

22 25%

23 27%

24 30%

25 35%

 

the game was so skewed in favor of wisdom it were ridiculous. intelligence and charisma also were receiving superior xp rewards, but as we noted in another thread, ps:t were the prime example o' th schadenfreude josh were talking about in his recent balance article. you could not active play as a cleric in ps:t, so no class had wisdom as a prime attribute, but wisdom not only got you the best xp awards, it gave you a freaking BONUS beyond the awards. and unlike other ie games, you could level as a thief, mage and fighter, so you were smartest to do all three if you wanted as much xp to get as much wisdom a possible.

 

stun example o' the best is perhaps the worst freaking example we can recall, and clearly the most arse-backwards ie game as far as experience were concerned.

 

is ironic that stun edited from bg2 to ps:t, 'cause he backpedaled his way into a complete ridiculous xp mechanic that made so that anybody who played through ps:t as a high wisdom mage character knew very well that playing as a low int/wis/charisma fighter as were oh-so-common, in other ie games were a functional punishment, particularly as combat... sucked.

 

schadenfreude, and stun actual edited his way into it. tickles our sense o' whimsy.

 

we loved ps:t, but stun points to it most farked mechanic as the guide for PoE?  we couldn't have scripted this to make stun look more foolish. honest.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

edited out oh-co-common... as if the c is all that close to the s on keyboard. sheesh

Edited August 30, 2014 by Gromnir

[Gromnir]

"Oh noes, I can powergame in Fallout by metagaming because of the wonders of the Internet. Game sux."

 

is never good to put into quotes something somebody didn't say nor has ever claimed. makes you look like a schnook.  that being said, we did observe that Developers has observed that fallout functional encouraged folks to metagame and they (sawyer and cain) seems to think that is a bad thing.

 

personal, we don't mind occasionally playing a gimped character... particular after we has played the game a few times, but developers seem discouraged that a game they built with limitless seeming build potentials resulted in a very small number o' actual character builds getting played.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[GreyFox]

 

 

sawyer and cain consider past xp mechanics failures is not the least bit helpful to your possible ‘cause o’ bringing about future change and improvements. you is gonna need come up with something new, ‘cause old is what is considered the fail, and is too late to change for this game anyway.  

 

**** man if they consider past xp mechanics to be failures this game is worse off than I imagined. Thank god they have a partnership with Paizo as a Pathfinder cRPG will no doubt have combat as well as other XP...not to mention popular/established mechanics already in place.

 

This is especially true considering the IE games didn't try to have what you consider equal rewards for different resolution of quests so it's rather silly to judge it as if it did. Besides not everyone thinks there was an issue nor do they think of this as an improvement.

Sure two of the head guys on PE think there was an issue but we've established that one didn't do too well when left to his own ideas....so yea cause for pause is very much warranted.

 

 

*chuckle*

 

it would be hard for stun's example to be any worse as an example o' past failures. ps:t? 

 

A Wisdom of 12 and lower, no bonus

13 gives you about a 2% bonus to experience earned.

14 5%

15 8%

16 10%

17 13%

18 15%

19 18%

20 20%

21 23%

22 25%

23 27%

24 30%

25 35%

 

the game was so skewed in favor of wisdom it were ridiculous. intelligence and charisma also were receiving superior xp rewards, but as we noted in another thread, ps:t were the prime example o' th schadenfreude josh were talking about in his recent balance article. you could not active play as a cleric in ps:t, so no class had wisdom as a prime attribute, but wisdom not only got you the best xp awards, it gave you a freaking BONUS beyond the awards. and unlike other ie games, you could level as a thief, mage and fighter, so you were smartest to do all three if you wanted as much xp to get as much wisdom a possible.

 

stun example o' the best is perhaps the worst freaking example we can recall, and clearly the most arse-backwards ie game as far as experience were concerned.

 

is ironic that stun edited from bg2 to ps:t, 'cause he backpedaled his way into a complete ridiculous xp mechanic that made so that anybody who played through ps:t as a high wisdom mage character knew very well that playing as a low int/wis/charisma fighter as were oh-so-common, in other ie games were a functional punishment, particularly as combat... sucked.

 

schadenfreude, and stun actual edited his way into it. tickles our sense o' whimsy.

 

we loved ps:t, but stun points to it most farked mechanic as the guide for PoE?  we couldn't have scripted this to make stun look more foolish. honest.

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

edited out oh-co-common... as if the c is all that close to the s on keyboard. sheesh

 

 

I get what you are saying in that regard and I wasn't referring to Stun's post specifically. I was more talking about combat xp AND other xp working together.

 

Your point above is valid and can be improved upon for sure as it doesn't really mean the system as whole was a failure just that some of its short comings can be reworked and the nonsensical parts removed. Sorry I should have further clarified I guess.

 

Hell that is if I'm even in the right thread hah! So many XP threads I forget what we are talking about in which one sometimes.

 

Good Fun indeed!

[GreyFox]

EDITED: quoted wrong person/wasn't referring to me.

Edited August 30, 2014 by GreyFox

[Gromnir]

 

 

"Oh noes, I can powergame in Fallout by metagaming because of the wonders of the Internet. Game sux."

 

is never good to put into quotes something somebody didn't say nor has ever claimed. makes you look like a schnook.  that being said, we did observe that Developers has observed that fallout functional encouraged folks to metagame and they (sawyer and cain) seems to think that is a bad thing.

 

personal, we don't mind occasionally playing a gimped character... particular after we has played the game a few times, but developers seem discouraged that a game they built with limitless seeming build potentials resulted in a very small number o' actual character builds getting played.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

I quoted that as something I said/referenced not you...in regard to selling units....more of a thing we say in sports.

 

we played d-1 football. always hated when somebody "quoted" us with what they thought we meant. that kinda thing would get any journalist seriously skewered. though, admittedly, by the time we got to University, we were no longer quotable as an athlete seeing as how we only ever got one start and that were due to injuries.

 

as an aside, we saw "oh noes" nonsense in a post by helm, which kinda figures.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps is a complete aside, but our one start were the kinda thing that were so complete epic fail that nobody would believe how bad we performed if we didn't still have video o' it. "nobody could be that bad," is actual responses we heard from friends who called us up after the game. 

Edited August 30, 2014 by Gromnir

[GreyFox]

 

 

 

"Oh noes, I can powergame in Fallout by metagaming because of the wonders of the Internet. Game sux."

 

is never good to put into quotes something somebody didn't say nor has ever claimed. makes you look like a schnook.  that being said, we did observe that Developers has observed that fallout functional encouraged folks to metagame and they (sawyer and cain) seems to think that is a bad thing.

 

personal, we don't mind occasionally playing a gimped character... particular after we has played the game a few times, but developers seem discouraged that a game they built with limitless seeming build potentials resulted in a very small number o' actual character builds getting played.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

I quoted that as something I said/referenced not you...in regard to selling units....more of a thing we say in sports.

 

we played d-1 football. always hated when somebody "quoted" us with what they thought we meant. that kinda thing would get any journalist seriously skewered. though, admittedly, by the time we got to University, we were no longer quotable as an athlete seeing as how we only ever got one start and that were due to injuries.

 

as an aside, we saw "oh noes" nonsense in a post by helm, which kinda figures.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Yea I thought you were talking about my "scoreboard" thing but you weren't that was my fault I miss quoted you.

 

I fixed the other post.

Edited August 30, 2014 by GreyFox

[Metabot]

I don't get what is wrong with experience being awarded for completing quests. I think the only change I might make is awarding experience for completing stages of quests.

[Helm]

I don't get what is wrong with experience being awarded for completing quests. I think the only change I might make is awarding experience for completing stages of quests.

Because quest only XP makes many of the core activities of the game pointless. Like combat, exploration, etc. It should be rewarded additionally and not solely.

[Metabot]

 

I don't get what is wrong with experience being awarded for completing quests. I think the only change I might make is awarding experience for completing stages of quests.

Because quest only XP makes many of the core activities of the game pointless. Like combat, exploration, etc. It should be rewarded additionally and not solely.

 

 

It doesn't make those things pointless at all. Do all games give you experience points for every little thing you do? No. I think that quest exp is the proper way to focus the game. Exploration is a part of completing quests and there's always loot as well and lore, etc.

[Helm]

It doesn't make those things pointless at all. Do all games give you experience points for every little thing you do? No. I think that quest exp is the proper way to focus the game. Exploration is a part of completing quests and there's always loot as well and lore, etc.

I don't know why you think that engaging in unrewarding and risky combat is not pointless. We might as well just remove XP from another core activity of the game, which is questing, if XP rewards are not required to give the player an incentive to do stuff.

 

Just let the party level up while you advance through the main storyline. Questing, combat and exploration are all "just for fun". Sounds great. GOTY I think.

[Marceror]

The more I think about the quest only xp mechanic, the more bummed I'm becoming about it.

 

I'm envisioning being able to play the game in such a way that my equipment doesn't matter, because I won't ever have to use it. Where having a party won't matter, because I just need a single character to talk my way through the game. Where combat doesn't matter, because I can get the exact same rewards by playing as a diplomat and stealthing my way past the situations I can't talk my way out of. One of the pillars of the I.E experience is real time with pause? But does that even matter if you can get through the game without combat?

 

We've still got the isometric game and the story, but that third pillar, seems to have been neutered. And that gives me serious cause to be bummed. It's feeling like we've ended up pretty far afield from the I.E. experience.

 

I hope I'm wrong, and that the final game will feature combat much more prominently. But based on what I've heard from the devs, that's simply not looking likely.

[Silent Winter]

I'm envisioning being able to play the game in such a way that my equipment doesn't matter, because I won't ever have to use it. Where having a party won't matter, because I just need a single character to talk my way through the game. Where combat doesn't matter, because I can get the exact same rewards by playing as a diplomat and stealthing my way past the situations I can't talk my way out of. One of the pillars of the I.E experience is real time with pause? But does that even matter if you can get through the game without combat?

 

I hope I'm wrong, and that the final game will feature combat much more prominently. But based on what I've heard from the devs, that's simply not looking likely.

You can't avoid/talk your way out of all the combat - it will be combat heavy - lots of mandatory combat - you just won't get xp for the combat so you'll still have to do the quests.

[Marceror]

 

I'm envisioning being able to play the game in such a way that my equipment doesn't matter, because I won't ever have to use it. Where having a party won't matter, because I just need a single character to talk my way through the game. Where combat doesn't matter, because I can get the exact same rewards by playing as a diplomat and stealthing my way past the situations I can't talk my way out of. One of the pillars of the I.E experience is real time with pause? But does that even matter if you can get through the game without combat?

 

I hope I'm wrong, and that the final game will feature combat much more prominently. But based on what I've heard from the devs, that's simply not looking likely.

You can't avoid/talk your way out of all the combat - it will be combat heavy - lots of mandatory combat - you just won't get xp for the combat so you'll still have to do the quests.

 

Hoping so. Seems like you can pretty much get through the beta without combat, which is definitely setting a tone that I'm growing disturbed by.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

I'm envisioning being able to play the game in such a way that my equipment doesn't matter, because I won't ever have to use it. Where having a party won't matter, because I just need a single character to talk my way through the game. Where combat doesn't matter, because I can get the exact same rewards by playing as a diplomat and stealthing my way past the situations I can't talk my way out of. One of the pillars of the I.E experience is real time with pause? But does that even matter if you can get through the game without combat?

 

 

I hope I'm wrong, and that the final game will feature combat much more prominently. But based on what I've heard from the devs, that's simply not looking likely.

You can't avoid/talk your way out of all the combat - it will be combat heavy - lots of mandatory combat - you just won't get xp for the combat so you'll still have to do the quests.

 

Hoping so. Seems like you can pretty much get through the beta without combat, which is definitely setting a tone that I'm growing disturbed by.

 

I blame that on the Beta being buggy as ****.

 

IIRC, some XP was supposed to be tied to stuff like clearing levels of the megadungeon or exploring. Would be nice to get some clarification on that.

[ManifestedISO]

Like shooting fish in a barrel, full of monkeys. 

[Mayama]

I blame that on the Beta being buggy as ****.

Today on radio PoE: Beta has bugs! All is lost!

 

I cant count the number of betas that I had to crawl through here at work. You guys are lucky that it doesn crash every minute.

[prodigydancer]

I want to keep a neutral stance but at this point I'm rather tempted to vote "no" just because all that pro combat XP whining is unbelievably childish. And it spills over to other threads which makes it even worse.

 

You guys are worse than promancers.

Edited August 30, 2014 by prodigydancer