No EXP from killing MOB?

[gamelancer]

Hi everyone,

 

I am really pissed off by one setting of PoE.

 

No EXP from killing??

 

Why? Why you have to do this? There are so many ways to prevent over-levelling...................

 

Killing mobs is so fun and should definitely be credited. 

 

Just want to know how many people agree with me.

 

A patch plz.

[Ink Blot]

While plenty of people agree with you, this is not going to change. You actually get a small amount of XP for killing a creature type until you fill up the bestiary (not sure how many creatures you need to kill to do so, but not many). Once you fill the bestiary entry, you get no more XP for killing that type of creature. This was an intended design decision and won't change in a patch (actually, the original design was no XP for kills at all).

 

*edit* It's actually easier for the devs to control how much XP a player will have at any given point in the game if they do the XP awards mostly through quest resolution than by number of kills. So this is why they went that way, apparently.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Ink Blot

[Cantousent]

Patching in kill XP sounds crazy. Frankly, this has definitely been less of an issue than some folks claimed it would be. For my part, I prefer no kill-xp but, to be fair, you aren't the only one. Now, you *do* get experience for filling in bestiary entries, which actually means you xp for kills in a way. Also, kills that are part of quest steps should yield xp also in as much as they help you finish those quests.

[DruidX]

Technically with the Bestiary system you do get XP from killing mobs, but you can't farm them for XP

Edited March 30, 2015 by DruidX

[TheUsernamelessOne]

It doesn't really matter. The level cap is very low and gaining levels doesn't do much to help you (pretty much all of the best spells and abilities are available from first level). Levels don't confer a significant advantage, so experience isn't terribly valuable regardless of where it comes from.

[LadyCrimson]

I haven't found the no-kill-XP thing to be an issue at all, the way they designed things. Don't miss it at all...and I'm someone who is definitely very used to the concept of kill=XP.

[TheisEjsing]

Hey OP, it's not to control levels. It's to make resolving problems, quests, tasks, etc.. without violence more attractive. If you get quest xp and kill xp, you get rewarded for killing stuff. Without kill xp a peaceful solution to a quest is not less rewarding.

[waretaringo]

Hey OP, it's not to control levels. It's to make resolving problems, quests, tasks, etc.. without violence more attractive. If you get quest xp and kill xp, you get rewarded for killing stuff. Without kill xp a peaceful solution to a quest is not less rewarding.

this is the logic, and it makes a lot of sense to me.

 

personally, I don't imagine you'll learn a lot more from killing your 6th gobbo than you did from your 5th, so the 'standard RPG kill things for experience' system bugs me a lot. I find the system they've implemented here pretty adequate, but overall the bestiary system is a bit rudimentary to my eye; I would have preferred 'infinite scaling' xp which decreases sharply in the level of the reward after each subsequent kill of an enemy type. (for instance 100/60/30/10/6/3/1 xp for subsequent kills of a low level enemy, and then you can continue farming them for 1 xp each)

[KingNee]

I haven't found the no-kill-XP thing to be an issue at all, the way they designed things. Don't miss it at all...and I'm someone who is definitely very used to the concept of kill=XP.

Same, I thought I would have issues with it but didn't. It's also more true to the roleplaying aspect of not having to kill absolutely everything in sight.

[averagedog]

Technically it is still more rewarding to kill monsters/people because you can loot their bodies.

[Luckmann]

Hey OP, it's not to control levels. It's to make resolving problems, quests, tasks, etc.. without violence more attractive. If you get quest xp and kill xp, you get rewarded for killing stuff. Without kill xp a peaceful solution to a quest is not less rewarding.

 

If this was truly the logic, there wouldn't be experience for the bestiary and lockpicking/trap disarming.

 

I fully support the logic of your post, but it's clearly not the reason there's no murderhobo experience in the game.

[waretaringo]

Technically it is still more rewarding to kill monsters/people because you can loot their bodies.

Just like in real life.

 

You just have to weigh the potential benefit of getting more bland gear in an economy where you already have more money than you need most of the time against the risk that this is the fight that you can't handle, or that taking it on will affect your reputation in permanent fashion.

[santanzchild]

During the KS the devs explicitly said they where designing it this way to give people more options then "slaughter everything just so you can get the most XP out of the world".

 

They have balanced it nicely doing that.  Now when I manage to finish a quest by deceiving or out smarting someone I still get the same XP as I would have had I ran in guns blazing and a fireball launching.  It is a great option to have compared to other games where I am forced to take no prisoners just to make sure I get to level up enough.

[Mashiki]

During the KS the devs explicitly said they where designing it this way to give people more options then "slaughter everything just so you can get the most XP out of the world".

 

They have balanced it nicely doing that.  Now when I manage to finish a quest by deceiving or out smarting someone I still get the same XP as I would have had I ran in guns blazing and a fireball launching.  It is a great option to have compared to other games where I am forced to take no prisoners just to make sure I get to level up enough.

 

This was one of the things I liked the most, and there are several other games that do that option just as well via stealth mechanics.  i.e. skipping enemies and finding secret paths and all that.

[JiminyJickers]

I wish they said this in the manual, I haven't followed along the kickstarter to avoid spoilers.  Well, that will definitely change how I approach some things for the better.  My next character will definitely be a sneaky one so that I can avoid combat.  Excellent.

[Aotrs Commander]

During the KS the devs explicitly said they where designing it this way to give people more options then "slaughter everything just so you can get the most XP out of the world".

 

Which, to be fair, was something that tended to be done, especially where there is essentially unlimited XP and an arbitarily high level cap. (See: Planescape Torment, where on one of my palythroughs (which I call the "Nameless Nutter" run, I basically solo'd the entire game (only having companions in long enough to talk to them for XP and then booting them out again) and squeezed every last drop out of the game to finish at level 64...)

 

So it did make a tendancy of "complete quest, kill all quest givers for a few extra XP" and/or "kill everything everywhere to maximise XP." Making killing stuff not grant XP in and of itself is, I think a good idea in that in makes people less inclinded to feel they have to kill everything or "lose out" on XP that would get then as high as possible.

 

Spoiler:

 

For example, I would likely have attempted to clear out the entire of Gilded Vale's boss' fortress of all the guards, rather than just getting on with the job at hand, which would have been a lot more combats for not a great deal of gain in play-quality, cosmically speaking.

 

[Jerm]

It doesn't really matter. The level cap is very low and gaining levels doesn't do much to help you (pretty much all of the best spells and abilities are available from first level). Levels don't confer a significant advantage, so experience isn't terribly valuable regardless of where it comes from.

Sorry to detour a little.

Anyone knows what's the max level cap?

[santanzchild]

I think people are saying 12

[Cantousent]

Yeah, I just checked and it appears to be 12. Low to mid level adventures rule!

[Hogfather]

Is the guy who is saying levels don't matter trolling? Legitimately curious because on Hard, I'm on my second 'ok its time to branch out and do more side quests cos **** is getting rough' sideways progression period at the moment.

 

I was irked by the no-kill XP but got over it and quite like the new system now to be honest.

[Gallenger]

I'm still max level well before the end of the game... without the kill xp, so it's totally doable lol. 

[Lephys]

This again.

 

"I think picking herbs should give you XP, because I like to go and pick all the herbs. Crafting should give you XP, because I prefer crafting to fighting."

 

No, the act of ending lives does not need to grant you XP. There's nothing "wrong" with an absence of kill-for-the-sake-of-kill XP.

 

That being said, could something be improved in the distribution of XP? Yes. I think so. The originally-touted plan was Objective XP. Which, they kind of have in the game, but it's not as granular as I'd hoped. It's not BAD, it's just not ideal, I don't think.

 

However, the fact of the matter is, you can run around slaughtering all the things while playing through this game, and you'll earn XP. OR, you can slaughter only some of the things while playing this game, and you'll earn XP. However you play, you don't suffer in overall XP gains/progression, which is pretty nice, actually. And, honestly, combat is fun enough that I try to kill all the stuff anyway, even though I know for a fact no amount of killing is going to level me up (well, you get a little Bestiary XP, but, I mean...). If you can't enjoy combat without getting mega XP directly for each and every kill, then you probably don't really enjoy combat all that much. You enjoy combat-based progression, like Diablo, or a lot of MMOs. And there's nothing wrong with that, but all games aren't required to be centered around sheer combat-based progression. Some of them are allowed to have combat for its own sake, and as a means to ends, rather than purely as a means to XP and progression.

 

TL;DR: The game has the right to decide what warrants character progression, and what doesn't. You can't play a game that isn't built around XP rewards and progression, and expect it to bend itself to that design. Otherwise all games would be exactly the same, and that would be bland.

[aiqidar]

This is one step towards eliminating the entire concept of "experience" and "levels" from video games. And boy will I be glad when that day comes.

 

I mean seriously, imagine this happening in real life.

 

"Why'd you kill all the children in that orphanage, criminal scum?"

"It's not my fault, officer! I needed the experience points!"

[Grand_Commander13]

I remember people screeching doom and gloom about this (among other things) during the backer beta. I told them how wrong they were then, and sure enough it's just fine without kill XP.

 

You hardly notice that it's gone. If someone like me, who's definitely not in this game for the combat, is still clearing out all of the maps then you know taking kill XP out was fine.

[Cantousent]

There is a surprising lack of clamor about the quest only XP. I figured it would be a much bigger issue than it has been.