Seems like XP balance is out of whack

[GreyFox]

Actually, it's one of the best I've ever seen (rewards your actions, don't force you to kill everything just to level up, etc).

 

I've never played a game that forced me to kill everything just to level up.(which BTW is an action so...)

[MReed]

 

I think it would be 600 XP + 50% = 900 XP for a solo character.  I haven't tried soloing in PoE yet but that is how it would have worked in Infinity.

Yeah, that's how it would've worked in IE games (aside from IWD2, or has my memory totally abandoned me?), but why in the name of Eothas would they give you a soloing XP bonus in that case?

 

 

I'm pretty sure that the displayed award is divided by 6 regardless of how many people are in the party.  That's the amount of XP that is awarded to each character, plus the XP bonus (+10% / character less than 6).

 

So, if a quest awards 1200 xp, then the nominal award / character is 200 XP(1200/6).  If there is only one character in the party at that time, then that character gets a 50% XP bonus, for a total of 300 XP.  If there were 3 characters in the party, the XP bonus would be 30%, so each would get 260 XP, an so forth.

 

In the Infinity Engine games (with a 1200 XP award), the solo character would get 1200 XP, a party of 3 would get 400 XP (each), and a party of 6 would get  200 XP (each).  Major quest awards in the IE games awarded XP on an explicitly per character basis -- in that scenario, you would get multiple "XXXX has received YYY XP" lines, and in these situations the solo player would get 1/6th the XP as a person playing with a full party.

 

Note that I haven't actually tested it in the game, but I'm fairly confident that this is how it works.

 

The goal of this system is, I assume, to slow the progression of solo players in order to increase difficulty and reduce the amount of time that the player spends at maximum level.

Edited April 6, 2015 by MReed

[vattghern]

Mowing down dozens of copy&paste cultists and getting nothing out of it but trash loot made me sad. Removing combat XP achieves nothing in this case, you'll still mow them down to the last man in hopes they hide something interesting (they don't).

 

On the other hand, you get huge piles of XP for progressing quests in the most trivial manner.

 

Lower quest XP, make up for it with combat XP. Not like you can grind mobs forever anyway because nothing respawns.

 Lockpicking XP could be removed entirely far as I'm concerned, it leads to the very munchkin gameplay JES supposedly wanted to avoid (pick lock instead of using key to get XP).

[Wbino]

Another thing that could be done is when I level up as a Druid I get six more spells, they could have cut that in half to extend the level cap and give you something to strive for.

 

DAO did leveling great..never felt like I had to slow up leveling before I reached my end game.

[View619]

Mowing down dozens of copy&paste cultists and getting nothing out of it but trash loot made me sad. Removing combat XP achieves nothing in this case, you'll still mow them down to the last man in hopes they hide something interesting (they don't).

 

On the other hand, you get huge piles of XP for progressing quests in the most trivial manner.

 

Lower quest XP, make up for it with combat XP. Not like you can grind mobs forever anyway because nothing respawns.

 Lockpicking XP could be removed entirely far as I'm concerned, it leads to the very munchkin gameplay JES supposedly wanted to avoid (pick lock instead of using key to get XP).

 

Beastiary xp wouldn't make this ideal, once an entry is full you don't get combat xp. Also, humans never give combat xp.

 

 

Another thing that could be done is when I level up as a Druid I get six more spells, they could have cut that in half to extend the level cap and give you something to strive for.

 

DAO did leveling great..never felt like I had to slow up leveling before I reached my end game.

 

 

There's a level cap because this is early game. Anything after twelve will probably be handled in the expansions.

Edited April 7, 2015 by View619

[Stun]

 

Does anyone have the numbers for total XP earned over the entire game? You will have to base numbers off of that. To me, the level ups in this game are rather lack luster, but I guess as a group game they kind of need to be or else it would be way too easy (and it's already pretty easy on Hard Mode with Expert Option on).

 

To get to level 12 you need 66k xp for each party member.

 

Yep. Which is about 1/3 of what it should be. The amount of XP needed to advance from level 10 to level 12 should be.... A lot more than what it currently is. That would solve the problem

Edited April 7, 2015 by Stun

[Stun]

Let's take BG1 as an example.

 

Sarevok keeps sending hired killers after you. He and his forces also have lots and lots of hired mercenaries as underlings and bodyguards. Now, shouldn't your notoriety, your achievements not affect how much resources Sarevok would allocate to deal with you? Of course it should. Anything else would be stupid on his part.

But then, that wouldn't be level scaling, would it? Unless it's something like this:

 

 

Letter from Sarevok:

 

Dear Tarnesh,

 

Our reconnaissance reports on the field indicate that Gorion's ward and his party have just achieved level 5. As you know, this presents a logistical problem. You're only 3rd level. Therefore, I require that you find a way to scale yourself up to 6th level to present a challenge.

 

PS: And please do not carry on your person any gear suitable for a level 6 character, lest it fall into the party's hands when they kill you, thus making this whole exercise moot!

 

Sincerely,

 

Sarevok

Edited April 7, 2015 by Stun

[Volourn]

"Mowing down dozens of copy&paste cultists and getting nothing out of it but trash loot made me sad. Removing combat XP achieves nothing in this case, you'll still mow them down to the last man in hopes they hide something interesting (they don't)."

 

Not to mention enemies are forced on you. Everywhere you go spams enemies to kill. And, even more if you explore.  But, hey, let's give a billion xp for a 2 line dialogue where the character uses no skills and isn't in any danger. L0L

[LatisARG]

i got capped at lvl 9. My only finished play, now i'm trying other classes

 

used: Fighter, Hard difficult. Got 66k points, 6 members party.

Can't go beyond 66k points

I'm the only one?

In act II i got a cap and i can't go more Xp, i can't even touch the ADRA dragon, so, i don't kill him, just only kill final boss

 

I read so many ppl get lvl 12, why i cant?

 

Ty.

[vattghern]

 

Mowing down dozens of copy&paste cultists and getting nothing out of it but trash loot made me sad. Removing combat XP achieves nothing in this case, you'll still mow them down to the last man in hopes they hide something interesting (they don't).

 

On the other hand, you get huge piles of XP for progressing quests in the most trivial manner.

 

Lower quest XP, make up for it with combat XP. Not like you can grind mobs forever anyway because nothing respawns.

 Lockpicking XP could be removed entirely far as I'm concerned, it leads to the very munchkin gameplay JES supposedly wanted to avoid (pick lock instead of using key to get XP).

 

Beastiary xp wouldn't make this ideal, once an entry is full you don't get combat xp. Also, humans never give combat xp.

But they should. At a reduced rate after the bestiary entry is complete, maybe 50% or whatever, but they definitely should give XP all the way so killing stuff doesn't feel as pointless as it does now. If it needs to be rationalized, I'm sure you can still learn something about fighting wolves even after you've killed a dozen of them.

Edited April 7, 2015 by vattghern

[Eurhetemec]

I've been hearing people getting to the level cap way before the game is over. I'm starting to see why, when I'm level 7 already barely into Act II.

 

I think a patch needs to tone down the XP gains from quests, because there is nothing worse than playing an RPG and not getting rewarded for quests you complete later in the game.

 

There are lots of thing worse than that, frankly.

 

It's actually not at all unusual with CRPGs that have a level cap, for you to hit level cap if you do all the sidequests and so on. In fact, if Pillars had a situation where people mostly ignored the sidequests then got to endgame, and found that they were too low-level to really deal with it, that is something that would be much, much, much worse than not being rewarded with XP because you're at cap. I've played games where that happened, and it was, frankly, no fun at all, especially as in some cases you couldn't even properly go back by the time you found out you weren't leveled enough.

 

So no, absolutely not, a patch does not need to "tone down" XP gains. I'd be fine if there's an option to put in an XP penalty, because it's simple to program and would please some players, but it certainly isn't some kind of necessity. Especially as most players are not completionists.

[Eurhetemec]

 

 

Mowing down dozens of copy&paste cultists and getting nothing out of it but trash loot made me sad. Removing combat XP achieves nothing in this case, you'll still mow them down to the last man in hopes they hide something interesting (they don't).

 

On the other hand, you get huge piles of XP for progressing quests in the most trivial manner.

 

Lower quest XP, make up for it with combat XP. Not like you can grind mobs forever anyway because nothing respawns.

 Lockpicking XP could be removed entirely far as I'm concerned, it leads to the very munchkin gameplay JES supposedly wanted to avoid (pick lock instead of using key to get XP).

 

Beastiary xp wouldn't make this ideal, once an entry is full you don't get combat xp. Also, humans never give combat xp.

But they should. At a reduced rate after the bestiary entry is complete, maybe 50% or whatever, but they definitely should give XP all the way so killing stuff doesn't feel as pointless as it does now. If it needs to be rationalized, I'm sure you can still learn something about fighting wolves even after you've killed a dozen of them.

 

 

This is an example of how some people profoundly do not understand why there isn't combat XP.

 

Let me explain - the reason there isn't combat XP, per se, is so that people who avoid combat and try and find rational, safe, clever solutions to problems do not get penalized for not just murdering everything and everyone in sight. Pillars is a good game in that it rewards play that isn't a total mindless slaughter, unlike a lot of CRPGs, especially older ones. Changing it so combat always rewards XP would be completely missing the point, and would turn the game back into that sort of ridiculous "Even peasants are worth 15XP!" butchery. It promotes the sort of idiotic and immersion-breaking play where you're more rewarded for solving a quest the clever way (avoiding combat etc.) AND THEN going back and slaughtering everyone mindlessly for no reason (something common in older CRPGs), than for actually just being successful.

[Eurhetemec]

 

Actually, it's one of the best I've ever seen (rewards your actions, don't force you to kill everything just to level up, etc).

 

I've never played a game that forced me to kill everything just to level up.(which BTW is an action so...)

 

 

Killing everything is indeed an action, but it's not "actions" in the same sense as he is using the word, so zero points there.

 

If you've never played a game which rewarded XP primarily or exclusively for killing things, and not for quests or the like, you can't have played many older CRPGs, frankly. It was very common. You often had a situation as CRPGs advanced, where you could do something the smart way, and avoiding killing, and get either no XP from your success, or relatively little, or you could mindlessly butcher everything in sight and gets tons and tons of XP and loot and complete the quest, and it didn't take a genius to work out which the game promoted.

[kat7ra]

 

 

 

Mowing down dozens of copy&paste cultists and getting nothing out of it but trash loot made me sad. Removing combat XP achieves nothing in this case, you'll still mow them down to the last man in hopes they hide something interesting (they don't).

 

On the other hand, you get huge piles of XP for progressing quests in the most trivial manner.

 

Lower quest XP, make up for it with combat XP. Not like you can grind mobs forever anyway because nothing respawns.

 Lockpicking XP could be removed entirely far as I'm concerned, it leads to the very munchkin gameplay JES supposedly wanted to avoid (pick lock instead of using key to get XP).

 

Beastiary xp wouldn't make this ideal, once an entry is full you don't get combat xp. Also, humans never give combat xp.

But they should. At a reduced rate after the bestiary entry is complete, maybe 50% or whatever, but they definitely should give XP all the way so killing stuff doesn't feel as pointless as it does now. If it needs to be rationalized, I'm sure you can still learn something about fighting wolves even after you've killed a dozen of them.

 

 

This is an example of how some people profoundly do not understand why there isn't combat XP.

 

Let me explain - the reason there isn't combat XP, per se, is so that people who avoid combat and try and find rational, safe, clever solutions to problems do not get penalized for not just murdering everything and everyone in sight. Pillars is a good game in that it rewards play that isn't a total mindless slaughter, unlike a lot of CRPGs, especially older ones. Changing it so combat always rewards XP would be completely missing the point, and would turn the game back into that sort of ridiculous "Even peasants are worth 15XP!" butchery. It promotes the sort of idiotic and immersion-breaking play where you're more rewarded for solving a quest the clever way (avoiding combat etc.) AND THEN going back and slaughtering everyone mindlessly for no reason (something common in older CRPGs), than for actually just being successful.

 

While I totally agree with what you're saying here, I don't know if they've managed to do it.

 

Some places it works really well, you can sneak through most of it, but then at the end there is only the "kill" option left, or join in some cases. One instance I found actually made it viable to not fight at all and still get progress, which was great! (Even though I killed em all anyway)

But unless the whole game gives this kind of options it will make the "talkative" players feel left out when they are forced into a lot of fights, and the "fighting" players annoyed that they don't get any xp from all the fighting they're doing.

I like a balance myself, but a lot of players want to either talk or fight most of the time. and this system of a middle ground kinda works as a way of annoying 2 major RP groups I think.

[vattghern]

 

 

 

Mowing down dozens of copy&paste cultists and getting nothing out of it but trash loot made me sad. Removing combat XP achieves nothing in this case, you'll still mow them down to the last man in hopes they hide something interesting (they don't).

 

On the other hand, you get huge piles of XP for progressing quests in the most trivial manner.

 

Lower quest XP, make up for it with combat XP. Not like you can grind mobs forever anyway because nothing respawns.

 Lockpicking XP could be removed entirely far as I'm concerned, it leads to the very munchkin gameplay JES supposedly wanted to avoid (pick lock instead of using key to get XP).

 

Beastiary xp wouldn't make this ideal, once an entry is full you don't get combat xp. Also, humans never give combat xp.

But they should. At a reduced rate after the bestiary entry is complete, maybe 50% or whatever, but they definitely should give XP all the way so killing stuff doesn't feel as pointless as it does now. If it needs to be rationalized, I'm sure you can still learn something about fighting wolves even after you've killed a dozen of them.

 

 

This is an example of how some people profoundly do not understand why there isn't combat XP.

 

Let me explain - the reason there isn't combat XP, per se, is so that people who avoid combat and try and find rational, safe, clever solutions to problems do not get penalized for not just murdering everything and everyone in sight. Pillars is a good game in that it rewards play that isn't a total mindless slaughter, unlike a lot of CRPGs, especially older ones. Changing it so combat always rewards XP would be completely missing the point, and would turn the game back into that sort of ridiculous "Even peasants are worth 15XP!" butchery. It promotes the sort of idiotic and immersion-breaking play where you're more rewarded for solving a quest the clever way (avoiding combat etc.) AND THEN going back and slaughtering everyone mindlessly for no reason (something common in older CRPGs), than for actually just being successful.

 

I understand the intent, but POE simply isn't the game where such an approach makes sense. POE plays like a hack & slash, yet combat awards no XP. This is wrong.

 

Taking the Skaen temple/ruin as an example, could you name all the creative ways a player can use to get from entrance to endboss? From what I saw you can either a) slaughter every cultist as you explore the place looking for something interesting (and there is precious little to discover there); b) slaughter only half the cultists by using a different path to reach the boss. No thinking outside the box, no puzzle-solving skills involved. Just the number of dead cultists varies. There is no incentive not to slaughter them, nothing changes in the final confrontation, nobody cares in the end how many cultists died during your escapade there.

 

I do appreciate that you can deal with the foozle in an amiable way and not feel forced to kill him afterwards for XP (ofc I killed him anyway for potential loot) but that doesn't make up for the ultimately unrewarding trash massacre along the way.

[Zwiebelchen]

If you only need to do 25% of the side content to hit level cap though, that's low. I was hoping it'd be aimed at something like level 9 with no side content, level 12 at 75+% side content, with the last 25% of side content "redundant" XP-wise (but still providing stuff like cool gear).

 

This. Though I'd probably say we don't need any redundant XP at all. Remember that you get 10% extra XP for every missing party member. So why not add a special incentive for someone playing with a smaller party?

 

I think it should look something like this:

 

- 40-50% of side content will net you level 9 and will allow you to beat the game at a higher (perceived) difficulty [in other words: a game on "medium" should then feel like you play on "hard"]. This is a cRPG; I think it's fine to punish players for rushing content as much as that they don't even do half of the optional content. The IE games did that and nobody ever complained about it, so it's fine.

- 85% or more of side content for a 6 people party will net you level 11

- 95-100% of side content for a 6 people party will net you level 12

- 85-90% of side content for a 5 people party will net you level 12

 

This makes it so there's a good incentive for people to drop one or two party members to gain the last level earlier than if you had a group of 6.

Only completionists that explore every corner will reach max level with a 6-man party.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[LatisARG]

 

If you only need to do 25% of the side content to hit level cap though, that's low. I was hoping it'd be aimed at something like level 9 with no side content, level 12 at 75+% side content, with the last 25% of side content "redundant" XP-wise (but still providing stuff like cool gear).

 

This. Though I'd probably say we don't need any redundant XP at all. Remember that you get 10% extra XP for every missing party member. So why not add a special incentive for someone playing with a smaller party?

 

I think it should look something like this:

 

- 40-50% of side content will net you level 9 and will allow you to beat the game at a higher (perceived) difficulty [in other words: a game on "medium" should then feel like you play on "hard"]. This is a cRPG; I think it's fine to punish players for rushing content as much as that they don't even do half of the optional content. The IE games did that and nobody ever complained about it, so it's fine.

- 85% or more of side content for a 6 people party will net you level 11

- 95-100% of side content for a 6 people party will net you level 12

- 85-90% of side content for a 5 people party will net you level 12

 

This makes it so there's a good incentive for people to drop one or two party members to gain the last level earlier than if you had a group of 6.

Only completionists that explore every corner will reach max level with a 6-man party.

 

 

i got capped at lvl 9, the game didn't let me reach more levels

why?

[Gfted1]

Did you do the side quests? Or do you mean that the game would not allow you to earn more XP after reaching level 9?

[Hassat Hunter]

So, why did no one suggest the obvious sollution?

 

Completely eradicate mine/lockpick XP. Seriously, that stuff nerfs what you can get from quests or exploration, and I'm sure is the cause of the disrepencies seen or why some people got way too much XP early.

Once it's gone? Problem solved. It's so easy. And heck we all know it would improve the game tenfold too!

 

Why so complex people?

[Gfted1]

You should mod it out.

[Luckmann]

So, why did no one suggest the obvious sollution?

 

Completely eradicate mine/lockpick XP. Seriously, that stuff nerfs what you can get from quests or exploration, and I'm sure is the cause of the disrepencies seen or why some people got way too much XP early.

Once it's gone? Problem solved. It's so easy. And heck we all know it would improve the game tenfold too!

 

Why so complex people?

 

I think that it runs deeper than that, and trap/lockpick/bestiary experience couldn't possibly account for this big of an experience climb, but I do agree that trap/lockpick/bestiary experience should be killed off. At the very least, it'll alleviate the issue and support the ideals of goal-oriented experience rather that just being.. eh.. no-kill-experience-for-no-obvious-reason-experience.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Luckmann

[Hassat Hunter]

I've earned 1000XP (!) just by locks and traps (50% of them, the rest triggered) when doing Raedric's Hold. What's the quest completion XP? 3000 or so? That's a 33% boost right there.

 

I don't think I've seen beastiary give such big a boost to XP, though if I'm mistaken feel free to point it out to me

[LatisARG]

Did you do the side quests? Or do you mean that the game would not allow you to earn more XP after reaching level 9?

 

The game didn't allow me to get more xp, i did all side quest i found in the game.

 

say 66k - MAX in the xp meter. and i was only 9th lvl

 

was a shame, because i wasen't able to fight adra dragon at that level. I had to finish the game without it.

[Valsuelm]

The problem isn't that there's too much XP from X, the problem is that it takes too little XP to level. And at this point it would be much easier for Obsidian to change the latter than the former.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Valsuelm

[Gfted1]

 

Did you do the side quests? Or do you mean that the game would not allow you to earn more XP after reaching level 9?

 

The game didn't allow me to get more xp, i did all side quest i found in the game.

 

say 66k - MAX in the xp meter. and i was only 9th lvl

 

was a shame, because i wasen't able to fight adra dragon at that level. I had to finish the game without it.

 

 

Yikes, looks like you ran into some kind of nasty bug, but not one Ive read about yet. Did you by chance submit a bug report in the Tech forum?