T:ToN just published their xp system. Could this be something for PoE as well?

[IndiraLightfoot]

Well, hold on to your hats, because this is a pretty radical xp system, and it's nothing like traditional IE games or D&D.

From the latest K update for T:ToN :

 

"It's not a strictly traditional advancement system. First, as we've often said, you get XP when you solve problems, complete quests, and make discoveries—not for individual kills. Second, XP is spent, not accumulated – like cyphers, XP are a resource not intended for hoarding. Most of the time, you'll have less than 4 XP, because that's how much most character advancement steps cost. Third, you can also spend XP on short-term benefits—on things other than character advancement.

That last one raises a couple of obvious questions. Why would you spend XP on short-term benefits when you can give your characters lasting benefits like new abilities (or flipped around: what happens if you spend all your XP on short-term benefits and get to the final confrontation with a 1st-Tier character)? Also, if the game has enough XP such that players can spend some on short-term benefits and max their Tier by the end, what's to stop them from spending all their XP on advancement up front, basically maxing out their Tier halfway through the game? How could we balance the game like that without scaling?

Our answer to these questions is what we are, in Torment, calling Discovery Points (DP). Throughout the game, you will gain both XP (per character) and DP (for the party).

Experience Points are gained primarily by accomplishing critical path tasks: progressing quests and solving Crises and other major encounters. Each character gains their own XP individually, though usually if the party completes a Crisis or a quest, all party members will gain the XP. (SIDEBAR: Sometimes you can leave a Companion behind and pick them up again later in the game. In these cases, they will gain their own XP outside of your influence (they don't just sit around waiting for you, after all). So if you pick them up again, you will find them close to your level.)

Each character spends their own XP on character advancement steps, each of which cost 4 XP. These advancement steps include:

1)  Increased Stat Pool
2)  Increased Stat Edge
3)  Increased Maximum Effort Level
4)  Additional Skill Training
5)  Improved paincasting ability (Last Castoff only)
6)  Additional Class Abilities (beyond what you get for your Tier)
7)  Reduced Armor Penalties

Every four advancement steps, the character will advance to the next Tier. The first five can only be advanced once per Tier, and #5-7 are really optional steps (the Last Castoff's paincasting ability will be improved in other ways in the course of the game).

Typical character advancement might look like this: (gain 4 XP) add a new Skill, (gain 4 XP) increase Might Edge, (gain 4 XP) increase Maximum Effort Level, (gain 4 XP) distribute 6 new Stat Pool points. Then as soon as the fourth one is done, that character advances to the next Tier—they gain new abilities from their Focus and choose new abilities and Skills from their Type (glaive, jack, or nano). They can also then use XP to purchase any of the advancement steps again toward the next Tier.

We're planning on balancing the game out to 6th Tier (the maximum Tier in the Corebook), though completionists may still be able to purchase certain advancement steps beyond that if they collect enough XP.

Discovery Points are primarily gained through (wait for it) discovery: figure out how to communicate with an ancient (and alien) intelligence, access a memory abandoned by the Changing God in your brain, or decipher the tale told by an ancient set of moving cave drawings.

DP can also be gained by accepting Intrusions. These are opportunities to make an easy encounter more interesting, rewarding the player for dealing with an added complication. For example, say you're taking on the Sorrow directly (it's not a good idea, but let's say that you are). You discover it's weak against fire damage and, with the help of a flamethrowing artifact you found, are actually doing pretty well against it.

Then an Intrusion occurs. The Sorrow begins to shifts its own molecular make-up so that it's weak against something else but fire barely hurts it. This Intrusion won't always happen: most Intrusions will only trigger when an encounter is already proving easy for you, and many of them have additional conditionals that must be met. Now that this one has triggered, you have a choice: you can spend 1 DP to stop the Intrusion (how that works out narratively depends on each Intrusion, for example maybe you strike a lucky blow, doing little or no damage, but disorienting the Sorrow long enough that it can't finish the shift), or you can let it happen to gain 2 DP.

DP is gained and used by the whole party, and it is spent on short-term benefits. We haven't finalized what all those benefits will be, but some examples might include:

•  Refusing an Intrusion
•  Making a recovery roll without needing to rest
•  Gaining an extra level of Effort on a task for free
•  Taking extra movement during a Crisis
•  Performing an extra action during a Crisis
•  Retrying a failed action during a Crisis
•  Crafting special items that require a crafting cost

The goal here is to maintain the mechanics that make Numenera fun, to keep Torment balanced (so we can estimate approximately what power level characters will be in a given Zone), all while doling out frequent and exciting rewards."

 

What do you think? Provided that all encounters in PoE were treated as special encounters, this could be a drastic solution, perhaps, a slim chance?

Edited October 11, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[wanderon]

You can't really think PoE could (or would even consider) implementing this at this late stage of development can you?

[IndiraLightfoot]

This is more of hypothetical exercise, as well as a source of inspiration. What we do know is that they are indeed changing their xp system, especially now with all these extra months a lot can be changed and done, and that they're adding in some kind of discovery xp is more or less confirmed at that.

 

It's always nice to think a bit outside the box, especially when you are about to overhaul something which have been so hotly debated. Instead of adding in trap and lock xp, which almost nobody wants, Josh & Co has a chance to insert a much more RPG-friendly system.

[Quetzalcoatl]

I don't understand how this would solve any of the perceived problems players have with the current XP system. T:ToN has an objective/quest-based XP system...just like PoE already has.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Quetzalcoatl

[wanderon]

Well I haven't seen anything to indicate that the current delay is related to any sort of major overhaul  - they are talking about tweaking the XP system yes - rewriting it? I sincerely hope not. For my money it's time to work out bugs - polish up systems and get ready for release.

[archangel979]

This would not work. Numenera is a conceptually different then D&D. Combat in Numenera is supposed to be last option and you gain little from it from it but lose a lot (since your life and "mana" come from same pool).

Also it is too late for PoE to make big changes.

 

Also the TToN update didn't go into details on acquiring XP, just on spending it. Only details they gave us are GM intrusion system which cannot be implemented into PoE without adding months of additional development time because they would need to change all major encounters.

[PrimeJunta]

The twist with the Cypher system is the use of XP as in-play currency, e.g. to reroll a die, get a temporary advantage, etc. This works well in a tabletop setting and can be a quite a lot of fun. The T:ToN "two flavors of XP" system is a workaround to produce some of the same feel on a computer game. 

 

I don't see what it could bring to P:E. There are no mechanics for spending XP on other things besides character advancement, so there's no need for the two flavors of XP, and P:E has very traditional level-up mechanics rather than the Cypher system's half-level-less "tier" system. Take away those parts, and what's left is plain quest/objective XP -- pretty much what P:E started with.

 

Which part exactly would you like to see in P:E?

[Karkarov]

I think we are good with what we have exp wise, don't see the need for any changes at this point.  Also the games are so different from each other character wise I am not sure trying to cross systems over would work in the first place.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

Which part exactly would you like to see in P:E?

 

Having party-xp (Discovery points) and individual xp separated is pretty cool. I have run D&D campaigns in that vein. It could work here.

 

I think we are good with what we have exp wise, don't see the need for any changes at this point.  Also the games are so different from each other character wise I am not sure trying to cross systems over would work in the first place.

The problem is that Josh & Co aren't good with what we have now: quest and subquest xp. In fact, they plan to change it pretty radically, with discovery xp, bestiary xp and skill-use xp, so, given the big postponing, this is indeed the time to discuss what such changes could be. It would be really nice if it emphasised the RPG bit of it all much more than opening a lock or just passing a trigger in a choke point grove.

Edited October 11, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Bloody Hypocrite]

As much as I'm looking forward to Torment, this system doesn't seem right for PoE. I do appreciate the concept of broader XP rewards, though. For all those extolling the current quest xp design of PoE, I would rather a truly objective based xp system where xp nuggets aren't so closely tied to quests. I apologize for rehashing everything yet again.

[Marceror]

Instead of adding in trap and lock xp, which almost nobody wants, Josh & Co has a chance to insert a much more RPG-friendly system.

Hi, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is almost nobody.

 

The TToN xp mechanics sounds very interesting. I'm looking forward to see how these systems are fleshed out.

[Marceror]

By the way, I just checked the poll and see that 60 people out of 174 total voters want trap/lock xp. That's roughly 34% of the voters. A good deal more than "almost nobody".

[sb5]

I'm a big fan of XP spending systems, especially when you gain XP for successful skill checks as well (by skills I mean all skills, like hitting, grazing, crits, spotting, ...)

Edited October 11, 2014 by sb5

[molloy]

So the answer to the question why I would spend XP on things other than character development is that I actually can't?

 

In comparison to PoE I would say, this system isn't actually that different. PoE already has objective XP that, if you accumulate enough of them, get converted into a level-up, which can be spend for character development stuff. New would be that extra pool for special actions. But this isn't that different from collecting consumables, although a bit more versatile.

[IndiraLightfoot]

By the way, I just checked the poll and see that 60 people out of 174 total voters want trap/lock xp. That's roughly 34% of the voters. A good deal more than "almost nobody".

You may call me Exaggeration Man.

 

 

So the answer to the question why I would spend XP on things other than character development is that I actually can't?

 

In comparison to PoE I would say, this system isn't actually that different. PoE already has objective XP that, if you accumulate enough of them, get converted into a level-up, which can be spend for character development stuff. New would be that extra pool for special actions. But this isn't that different from collecting consumables, although a bit more versatile.

Indeed! This T:ToN-system is a far less drastic step from the xp system in PoE BB than good old xp tables and kill xp, skill xp, crafting xp, quest xp - xp for most stuff. This is why I reckon it may be a worth a discussion or two. In fact, it's not too hard to implement either, especially not in several months.

[Doppelschwert]

 

The problem is that Josh & Co aren't good with what we have now: quest and subquest xp. In fact, they plan to change it pretty radically, with discovery xp, bestiary xp and skill-use xp, so, given the big postponing, this is indeed the time to discuss what such changes could be. It would be really nice if it emphasised the RPG bit of it all much more than opening a lock or just passing a trigger in a choke point grove.

 

 

Why would the system be radically changed at the moment?

That would only be the case if the new sources of exp make up a lot of the total exp in the final game, which we don't know and which I strongly doubt. My personal guess would be that the amount of exp you can get from the bestiary and discoveries (and from skills, if they implement that at all) won't be more than 20% of the total exp available in the game.

Subquest exp is just the total exp of the quest redistributed to different points of time, so it's not really a conceptional change at all.

 

The introduction of these new exp sources only takes place to make the gaining of exp less discrete and more continous, so that it has a better psychological effect of rewarding the player for playing the game.

 

IMHO, the design of Torment does not apply to PoE. I think it's even questionable for the goals it wants to achieve, but oh well, I'll see how it turns out.

[Immortalis]

I feel the IE style of xp reward with a few slight tweaks is very good for a combat centric game like PoE.

 

For a story driven game like Torment.. IE really fell short.. I love InXile's ideas for torment but that game is going to have a very different pacing then PoE..

 

So no.. I don't want that system for PoE.. I want it for Torment.

Edited October 12, 2014 by Immortalis

[Matt516]

Eh... I was actually kind of apprehensive after reading that update. Looks like the kind of thing that could be really interesting or just bad. Wouldn't be easy to balance either.

 

As for putting it in PoE... Why?

[Cantousent]

I'm stoked at the idea of the Tides XP system. That looks like it could have tons of potential. Yeah, it's something that could end up completely whacked, but I'm glad they're making an attempt. Like most of the other folks, I think it'd be crazy to try it in PoE at this point.

[ctn2003]

From what i understand their taking in all the feedback on the system and their making things easier to understand or something. And making the dialog window easier to read.    God i hop so lol right now its got ADHD lol

[IndiraLightfoot]

Eh... I was actually kind of apprehensive after reading that update. Looks like the kind of thing that could be really interesting or just bad. Wouldn't be easy to balance either.

 

As for putting it in PoE... Why?

 

 

I'm stoked at the idea of the Tides XP system. That looks like it could have tons of potential. Yeah, it's something that could end up completely whacked, but I'm glad they're making an attempt. Like most of the other folks, I think it'd be crazy to try it in PoE at this point.

 

Heh! I admit it would be a bit crazy. However, I am chuffed to bits over ToN's ambitious xp system attempt, and I do feel both versions we've been "shown" for PoE are lacking: quest only xp and quest+subquest+bestiary+lock/trap. Also, the divide in the comminuty, although false, has been going something like this: Those for kill xp and the system in BG are supposedly degenerative, xp-hungry non-RPG munchkins, and those for quest xp/subquest are true RPG:ers with pure playing at their finger tips. So, why not try something that goes beyond such fallacies?

[Cantousent]

Well, I don't think that it boils down to munchkins vs. the pure of heart.  I prefer Objective only, but it's never been exactly what I envisioned in the first place, and I've always tried my best to be charitable when evaluating the arguments on every side.  I just hope Obsidz has the system now and sticks to the plan because changing on the fly will only lead to more grief and grumbling.

 

I completely agree with you about ToN's system.  I've enjoyed Wastelands 2 and I'm becoming more stoked about ToN as the days pass.  I don't want to follow the development because I want to save the game for full release.  I'm almost tempted to randomly change my password for this place to make it so I can't waste time arguing about stuff here and then reset the password if there's some new questionnaire or some such for fulfillment.  lol  Good times!

[archangel979]

 

Eh... I was actually kind of apprehensive after reading that update. Looks like the kind of thing that could be really interesting or just bad. Wouldn't be easy to balance either.

 

As for putting it in PoE... Why?

 

 

I'm stoked at the idea of the Tides XP system. That looks like it could have tons of potential. Yeah, it's something that could end up completely whacked, but I'm glad they're making an attempt. Like most of the other folks, I think it'd be crazy to try it in PoE at this point.

 

Heh! I admit it would be a bit crazy. However, I am chuffed to bits over ToN's ambitious xp system attempt, and I do feel both versions we've been "shown" for PoE are lacking: quest only xp and quest+subquest+bestiary+lock/trap. Also, the divide in the comminuty, although false, has been going something like this: Those for kill xp and the system in BG are supposedly degenerative, xp-hungry non-RPG munchkins, and those for quest xp/subquest are true RPG:ers with pure playing at their finger tips. So, why not try something that goes beyond such fallacies?

 

Kill XP people would still go berserk over Numenera XP system. It does not work in combat heavy scenarios and you lose even more per each combat you are part of while you will not even get awesome loot as best loot (Artifacts) are almost always gained through quests. At best you will get Cyphers which were not used by the enemy.

[Ineth]

That (modified) Numenera XP system works in Torment, because every single combat encounter in the game will be a special scenario ("crisis"); a spontaneous quest so to speak, with a reward for success. On the one hand this means that it's technically a "Quest XP only" system; otoh it means that all combat will be rewarded.

 

I don't see how this could be adapted to PoE's trash mobs, but the idea of "special combat scenarios as spontaneous quests with a XP reward" could certainly applied in addition to trash mobs, for non-quest bosses like the spider queen -- as already discussed elsewhere.

[archangel979]

Actually they said there will be combat outside of Crisis but only if players choose to start that combat. There will be no automatically hostile enemies.