Remember "with objective XP no one will do combat anymore, all enemies will be avoided"?

[Hassat Hunter]

So... "kill a lot of stuff" 5.3%

"kill less than 175"... 0%

 

Dear Combat-XP crowd, explain please?

 

(Also trap and lockpick XP is still the worst i... no scrap that, Enchantments on weapons/armors is the worst... so that makes that XP the second worst idea in the game)

[Trauma_Hound]

So... "kill a lot of stuff" 5.3%

"kill less than 175"... 0%

 

Dear Combat-XP crowd, explain please?

 

(Also trap and lockpick XP is still the worst i... no scrap that, Enchantments on weapons/armors is the worst... so that makes that XP the second worst idea in the game)

 

Mind actually making sense of that for those of us who don't know what you're talking about?

[MReed]

There were numerous discussions in the past about "Eliminating combat XP will cause players to actively avoid all combat due to lack of rewards" and...  That didn't happen, obviously.

[Odd Hermit]

Combat still gives loot so yeah.

 

Although smaller parties/soloers skip a lot. Or anyone who just doesn't feel like slogging through tons of the same enemy type.

[archangel979]

So... "kill a lot of stuff" 5.3%

"kill less than 175"... 0%

 

Dear Combat-XP crowd, explain please?

 

(Also trap and lockpick XP is still the worst i... no scrap that, Enchantments on weapons/armors is the worst... so that makes that XP the second worst idea in the game)

I kill stuff because it is all part of the content I paid for and because I did it in BG games. Do I like that I receive no XP for it? I still don't.

[Gfted1]

I don't know where your figures came from but lets assume they are correct. Is it possible to avoid killing less than 175 over the course of the game? My impression is that most fights are unavoidable. Correct?

[Nokturnal Lex]

Giving the player a choice is usually the best choice.

 

An option for always getting xp from combat or only getting it till your learn all the lore of a creature would be best.

[Gallenger]

I mean... It's *possible* to get less than 175 kills, but you would have to avoid a *lot* (most) of the side content. 

[Luckmann]

Combat still gives loot so yeah.

 

Although smaller parties/soloers skip a lot. Or anyone who just doesn't feel like slogging through tons of the same enemy type.

 

On that note, this directly ties into the issues of an unlimited stash and infinigold merchants, as well as the fact that the enchanting system is built around the acquisition of bodyparts.

 

Killing kith/humanoid opponents or passing on them would be quite reasonable... if things were like in the IE games, where you wouldn't pick up absolutely everything and cart it off to a merchant.

 

Passing on animal/monster opponents would be quite reasonable... if you didn't need 14 swine snouts for a fire lash, or whatever.

 

They focused so much on the experience that this completely passed them by, but ultimately, I don't think Obsidian even understood the reasoning behind Goal-Oriented Experience vs. Murderhobo Experience, since they did include the Bestiary Experience, Lockpicking Experience and Trap Experience, which runs completely counter to that. I think they did it because it helped them to keep track of the experience in the game... the only thing speaking against that if that was their motivation... well they really dropped the ball, considering how uneven the leveling is in the game.

[Gromnir]

I don't know where your figures came from but lets assume they are correct. Is it possible to avoid killing less than 175 over the course of the game? My impression is that most fights are unavoidable. Correct?

hardly.  looking just at very early game encounters, we storm that keep and coulda' avoided +80% o' the combat.  eothas dungeon had considerable rooms that we coulda simple avoided. 

 

gonna call bs on this one.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Shinae]

Loot is the reason I slaughter everyone in that famous early game keep. Even if you could avoid fighting. It's a lot of money for such early game.

 

Other areas I do play more RPish.

[Sugam]

If you got exp for every kill you could easily be level 12 before act 2. But I guess you would protest ether way no matter what they went with.

[Trauma_Hound]

I'm pretty certain the OPs numbers are off, hence why I wanted him to explain in detail what they mean rather than post some obscure quote like they were making a point. Beside's whatever the OP posted is so ambiguous you have to try and think about what they are saying.

 

Because as is their post makes no sense. (at least not the bit with numbers)

 

People kill stuff because you still get combat XP, just in a non direct way. (duh)

 

 

 

Combat still gives loot so yeah.

 

Although smaller parties/soloers skip a lot. Or anyone who just doesn't feel like slogging through tons of the same enemy type.

 

On that note, this directly ties into the issues of an unlimited stash and infinigold merchants, as well as the fact that the enchanting system is built around the acquisition of bodyparts.

 

 

Sorry I don't want the hassle of this merchant only having 500 copper for a week, and Inventory Management is something better left for the OCD. I'm certain there's more than 1 or 3 merchants in an entire city, and you could easily sell all the crap you gather upon visiting a city. Just the Devs don't want to dev 100 merchants or dev an entire city.

[NathanH]

Originally I thought I would dislike this XP system, but in fact I rather like it! This is because I want to go around every area fighting everything I can fight, and in this system I can do that without accidentally becoming ridiculously high level.

[falchen]

I don't know where your figures came from but lets assume they are correct. Is it possible to avoid killing less than 175 over the course of the game? My impression is that most fights are unavoidable. Correct?

 

Steam has an achievmeent for killing less than 175 enemies and one for killing a lot, don't remember exact number. OP is presumably reporting the % of how many people got them so far.

[Trauma_Hound]

 

I don't know where your figures came from but lets assume they are correct. Is it possible to avoid killing less than 175 over the course of the game? My impression is that most fights are unavoidable. Correct?

 

Steam has an achievmeent for killing less than 175 enemies and one for killing a lot, don't remember exact number. OP is presumably reporting the % of how many people got them so far.

 

 

Well, the OP forgot about bestiary XP apparently. Also how many monsters count as "a lot"? I kill everything that's hostile that I come across.

 

Edit: OP also forgot to mention that only 8.6% of players have completed Act 2. Nuff said on Biased and terrible stat quotes.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Trauma_Hound

[Luckmann]

I'm pretty certain the OPs numbers are off, hence why I wanted him to explain in detail what they mean rather than post some obscure quote like they were making a point. Beside's whatever the OP posted is so ambiguous you have to try and think about what they are saying.

 

Because as is their post makes no sense. (at least not the bit with numbers)

 

People kill stuff because you still get combat XP, just in a non direct way. (duh)

 

 

 

Combat still gives loot so yeah.

 

Although smaller parties/soloers skip a lot. Or anyone who just doesn't feel like slogging through tons of the same enemy type.

 

On that note, this directly ties into the issues of an unlimited stash and infinigold merchants, as well as the fact that the enchanting system is built around the acquisition of bodyparts.

 

 

Sorry I don't want the hassle of this merchant only having 500 copper for a week, and Inventory Management is something better left for the OCD. I'm certain there's more than 1 or 3 merchants in an entire city, and you could easily sell all the crap you gather upon visiting a city. Just the Devs don't want to dev 100 merchants or dev an entire city.

 

That's beside the point, really. Personally, I'm willing to accept hassle in the name of consistency and game mechanics that interact well, rather than working against eachother. But ultimately, if you want there to be no "hassle", it is not inconceivable that there is some kind of reasonable compromise.

 

I didn't say what I said because I support the idea of merchants with restricted gold (because while I do, ultimately you're right in that in relation to this particular concern, yes, you could most likely just visit a few different merchants) but merely in an attempt to explain the issues and understand them.

 

Ultimately, you could take everything in the IE games and drag it to a vendor by going back and forth 500 times, too, but people still didn't bother to do that. Why? Because it was a hassle. A "hassle" in itself can serve as a restrictive mechanic, and a pretty reasonable one at that.

[Odd Hermit]

 

Combat still gives loot so yeah.

 

Although smaller parties/soloers skip a lot. Or anyone who just doesn't feel like slogging through tons of the same enemy type.

 

On that note, this directly ties into the issues of an unlimited stash and infinigold merchants, as well as the fact that the enchanting system is built around the acquisition of bodyparts.

 

Killing kith/humanoid opponents or passing on them would be quite reasonable... if things were like in the IE games, where you wouldn't pick up absolutely everything and cart it off to a merchant.

 

Passing on animal/monster opponents would be quite reasonable... if you didn't need 14 swine snouts for a fire lash, or whatever.

 

They focused so much on the experience that this completely passed them by, but ultimately, I don't think Obsidian even understood the reasoning behind Goal-Oriented Experience vs. Murderhobo Experience, since they did include the Bestiary Experience, Lockpicking Experience and Trap Experience, which runs completely counter to that. I think they did it because it helped them to keep track of the experience in the game... the only thing speaking against that if that was their motivation... well they really dropped the ball, considering how uneven the leveling is in the game.

 

 

I still think for this game they made the right decision. Not in every instance, but in not going to far into survival territory. It's fairly linear and the game doesn't have systems to generate interesting content beyond their "hand-crafted" stuff. And trying to balance combat with resource management could just be too much considering they started somewhat from scratch on this. I'd like to see a more slow paced, open, resource management-heavy game like this but for PoE I don't think there's enough of a place for it to add much yet.

 

I agree lockpick/trap XP is just bad though.

[Grand_Commander13]

I told all of the whiners on the backer beta forum back then that it didn't matter whether there was monster kill XP or not, that the game was still fun and the combat was the main part of the gameplay so of course you'd still do the combat. I mean, are we so addicted to our Skinner boxes now that we won't play games unless the game itself incentivizes it? I remember people on the Payday 2 forums loudly, loudly telling me that if Payday 3 started you off with the best guns and you chose to use weaker guns to earn cosmetic items, it would "ruin" the game because there would be "no reason" to play if you started off with the good stuff.

 

And yet here we are in Pillars of Eternity with little incentive to do combat (the bestiary XP is miniscule and the game showers you with money anyway), and look at the Steam stats Hassat pointed out:

• 36.5% of owners have completed Act I
• 8.6% of owners have completed Act II
• 6.2% of owners have reached level 10 of the Endless Paths
• 5.3% of owners have killed 1200 or more creatures in their playthrough
• 3.6% of owners have reached level 15 of the Endless Paths
• 2.2% of owners have won the game
• 0.5% of owners have defeated the dragons (and one of 'ems a real doozy)
• 0.1% of owners have won the game solo
• 0.1% of owners have won the game with no party members reaching 0 Endurance
• 0.1% of owners have won the game on Trial of Iron
• 0.1% of owners have won the game on Path of the Damned
• 0% of owners have won the game with 175 or fewer creature kills

Edited April 7, 2015 by Grand_Commander13

[Gfted1]

Besides the 4th and last stat, what does that have to do with kill xp?

 

The drop off from Act 1 to Act 2 is gigantic! Are there only two Acts in the game?

[Trauma_Hound]

 

I'm pretty certain the OPs numbers are off, hence why I wanted him to explain in detail what they mean rather than post some obscure quote like they were making a point. Beside's whatever the OP posted is so ambiguous you have to try and think about what they are saying.

 

Because as is their post makes no sense. (at least not the bit with numbers)

 

People kill stuff because you still get combat XP, just in a non direct way. (duh)

 

 

 

Combat still gives loot so yeah.

 

Although smaller parties/soloers skip a lot. Or anyone who just doesn't feel like slogging through tons of the same enemy type.

 

On that note, this directly ties into the issues of an unlimited stash and infinigold merchants, as well as the fact that the enchanting system is built around the acquisition of bodyparts.

 

 

Sorry I don't want the hassle of this merchant only having 500 copper for a week, and Inventory Management is something better left for the OCD. I'm certain there's more than 1 or 3 merchants in an entire city, and you could easily sell all the crap you gather upon visiting a city. Just the Devs don't want to dev 100 merchants or dev an entire city.

 

That's beside the point, really. Personally, I'm willing to accept hassle in the name of consistency and game mechanics that interact well, rather than working against eachother. But ultimately, if you want there to be no "hassle", it is not inconceivable that there is some kind of reasonable compromise.

 

I didn't say what I said because I support the idea of merchants with restricted gold (because while I do, ultimately you're right in that in relation to this particular concern, yes, you could most likely just visit a few different merchants) but merely in an attempt to explain the issues and understand them.

 

Ultimately, you could take everything in the IE games and drag it to a vendor by going back and forth 500 times, too, but people still didn't bother to do that. Why? Because it was a hassle. A "hassle" in itself can serve as a restrictive mechanic, and a pretty reasonable one at that.

 

 

Okay, I can concede that it's a reasonable mechanic, and I would do it if I had to, fact is I don't and it's something I was certainly grateful for. They just need more money sinks in the game perhaps?

 

 

 

I told all of the whiners on the backer beta forum back then that it didn't matter whether there was monster kill XP or not, that the game was still fun and the combat was the main part of the gameplay so of course you'd still do the combat. I mean, are we so addicted to our Skinner boxes now that we won't play games unless the game itself incentivizes it? I remember people on the Payday 2 forums loudly, loudly telling me that if Payday 3 started you off with the best guns and you chose to use weaker guns to earn cosmetic items, it would "ruin" the game because there would be "no reason" to play if you started off with the good stuff.

 

And yet here we are in Pillars of Eternity with little incentive to do combat (the bestiary XP is miniscule and the game showers you with money anyway), and look at the Steam stats Hassat pointed out:

• 36.5% of owners have completed Act I
• 8.6% of owners have completed Act II
• 6.2% of owners have reached level 10 of the Endless Paths
• 5.3% of owners have killed 1200 or more creatures in their playthrough
• 3.6% of owners have reached level 15 of the Endless Paths
• 2.2% of owners have won the game
• 0.5% of owners have defeated the dragons (and one of 'ems a real doozy)
• 0.1% of owners have won the game solo
• 0.1% of owners have won the game with no party members reaching 0 Endurance
• 0.1% of owners have won the game on Trial of Iron
• 0.1% of owners have won the game on Path of the Damned
• 0% of owners have won the game with 175 or fewer creature kills

 

 

If there's an achievement for killing 1200 monsters and NPCs then I would suspect that you have to go out of your way to kill 1200 MONSTERS AND NPCs ... You're still rewarded with XP and Loot from killing monsters. It's not "a lot" of monster like the OP said. It's probably the majority of the living things in the game?

[Grand_Commander13]

Besides the 4th and last stat, what does that have to do with kill xp?

 

The drop off from Act 1 to Act 2 is gigantic! Are there only two Acts in the game?

 

They're there for context. (There are actually three acts, but I didn't include its completion number since its end is so close to the end of the game.)

 

There are actually only three achievements with 0.0% right now: Explorer (which was only recently fixed), PotD Solo, and Relative Pacifism. So it seems that pacifist runs aren't very popular yet.

 

If there's an achievement for killing 1200 monsters and NPCs then I would suspect that you have to go out of your way to kill 1200 MONSTERS AND NPCs ... You're still rewarded with XP and Loot from killing monsters. It's not "a lot" of monster like the OP said. It's probably the majority of the living things in the game?

That's why I have all the other stuff in there for context: more people have killed 1200 enemies than have cleared out the Endless Paths. Way more than have completed the game.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Grand_Commander13

[Archaven]

I don't care about the XP. It's the combat that what i enjoyed most. I chose certain fights even it's 0xp. The satisfaction of the combat!

[KingNee]

Unlocked: 4 Apr @ 3:15pm

Super Murderer Complete the game killing 1200 or more creatures and NPCs.

 

Yeah I didn't get less than 175.

[Hassat Hunter]

I don't know where your figures came from but lets assume they are correct.

 

Steam achievements... they aren't exactly secret, you can check them yourself. The number of 1200+ is rising, but 175- has been steadily at 0 as of yet...

http://steamcommunity.com/stats/291650/achievements