No XP from kills in an RPG (Pillars of Eternity)

[Raghar]

How would taking quest to delliver potatoes to a local official make a character less likely to be killed by a single blow by a dragon? With high level characters we see that when dragon attack connects and they are hit, they typically survive. With low level characters and no level soldiers, they are killed and changed into flat surface.

Obviously with killing stuff, there can be excuse of main characters eating souls. Or using black magic to strengthen theirs bodies, and theirs opponents are just sacrifices.
There is no such occurance with a potato delivery quest.

Thus why would a character in RPG get XP for mundane activity?

 

[majorsoccer]

Watching little numbers go up is the only fun part about an RPG anyway. If you are being robbed even of that, there is no point playing.

the only fun part about RPGs is reading text

 

[AW8]

XP - or rather, skill/attribute/talent points - should only be rewarded for completing quests, no matter how the player completed them. A character shouldn't get stronger than average just because they picked every optional locked door and smashed every skippable rat on the way there.

XP is mostly superfluous. Why do you lockpick a chest? To get the contents inside. Why do you kill an enemy? To get his stuff, make someone happy, or simply to get past him. Why do you talk a hostile character down? To keep him alive or avoid having to battle him.

Deus Ex did it well (with the exception of the minor exploration XP). It doesn't matter how you get through the level, you get the same amount of skill points. You make choices for the consequences, pick chests to get the contents within and kill enemies who are in the way. The new Deus Ex games give XP for all those things and it just makes it worse, arbitrarily rewarding the player more for playing a certain way and interacting with every minor inconsequential object.

Ending up with different amounts of XP at the same point in the story isn't interesting. What's interesting is the attributes/skills/talents chosen, the choices you've made in the world, the alliances you've forged, what equipment you have. That's what should define you.

How would taking quest to delliver potatoes to a local official make a character less likely to be killed by a single blow by a dragon? With high level characters we see that when dragon attack connects and they are hit, they typically survive. With low level characters and no level soldiers, they are killed and changed into flat surface.

That's a problem with progression being vertical instead of horizontal. A humanoid should always be one-hitted by a dragon, regardless of how trained he is. To fight a dragon you should instead poison the dragon to make it move slower, train agility to avoid its strikes, wear fireproof armor to endure the heat etc. Every little trick to even the odds.

Obviously with killing stuff, there can be excuse of main characters eating souls. Or using black magic to strengthen theirs bodies, and theirs opponents are just sacrifices.
There is no such occurance with a potato delivery quest.

Thus why would a character in RPG get XP for mundane activity?

If your quest is , say, to bring peace and order to a region, the XP should be rewarded only upon completion of that goal.

Helping out a farmer by delivering potatoes could net you a friendly farmer who knows a secret way into the Lord's castle. Or it's very early game and the pitchfork you get as a reward might be your first weapon that deals piercing damage.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Why do you kill an enemy? To get his stuff, make someone happy, or simply to get past him.

I kill enemies for XP, usually.And in self-defense.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Eh I don't think it is that bad in concept. It just rewarding the player more for having non-combat solution is the one that is flawed.

Basically if you want to have a controlled power levels in each step of the game for easier encounter design and balancing reason, the proper way is to reward the players the same amount of EXP. The rest of the reward can actually varies between approach, but the base EXP of solving an encounter should be the same.

Reading Adventure Path modules for Pathfinder, it such approach that the talk/fight encounters are solved, you get the same amount of EXP. Now the rest of the rewards might be different whether how you solve the combat. For example talking your way out might provide you with more information critical to solving future quests (or if you are lazy, convert them to bonus EXP) while killing through the encounter might provide you with more money through loot and may some magical artifacts/weapons the enemies are wearing you might not otherwise get.

 

[mondblut]

XP - or rather, skill/attribute/talent points - should only be rewarded for completing quests, no matter how the player completed them. A character shouldn't get stronger than average just because they picked every optional locked door and smashed every skippable rat on the way there.

XP is mostly superfluous. Why do you lockpick a chest? To get the contents inside. Why do you kill an enemy? To get his stuff, make someone happy, or simply to get past him. Why do you talk a hostile character down? To keep him alive or avoid having to battle him.

Deus Ex did it well (with the exception of the minor exploration XP). It doesn't matter how you get through the level, you get the same amount of skill points. You make choices for the consequences, pick chests to get the contents within and kill enemies who are in the way. The new Deus Ex games give XP for all those things and it just makes it worse, arbitrarily rewarding the player more for playing a certain way and interacting with every minor inconsequential object.

Ending up with different amounts of XP at the same point in the story isn't interesting. What's interesting is the attributes/skills/talents chosen, the choices you've made in the world, the alliances you've forged, what equipment you have. That's what should define you.

How would taking quest to delliver potatoes to a local official make a character less likely to be killed by a single blow by a dragon? With high level characters we see that when dragon attack connects and they are hit, they typically survive. With low level characters and no level soldiers, they are killed and changed into flat surface.

That's a problem with progression being vertical instead of horizontal. A humanoid should always be one-hitted by a dragon, regardless of how trained he is. To fight a dragon you should instead poison the dragon to make it move slower, train agility to avoid its strikes, wear fireproof armor to endure the heat etc. Every little trick to even the odds.

Obviously with killing stuff, there can be excuse of main characters eating souls. Or using black magic to strengthen theirs bodies, and theirs opponents are just sacrifices.
There is no such occurance with a potato delivery quest.

Thus why would a character in RPG get XP for mundane activity?

If your quest is , say, to bring peace and order to a region, the XP should be rewarded only upon completion of that goal.

Helping out a farmer by delivering potatoes could net you a friendly farmer who knows a secret way into the Lord's castle. Or it's very early game and the pitchfork you get as a reward might be your first weapon that deals piercing damage.

Hey, we've got our own Josh "I hate fun" Sawyer jr.

 

[Sabotin]

Dunno, I never picked fights cause of XP unless it was a truly huge difference. If anything it was for some piece of equipment or for a challenge. You're obviously gonna try to kill the big bad dragon even if you have the stats to negotiate and get double experience and money for that. I think it's standard practice or something to give better rewards for other kinds of solutions, too, right?

Found it funny the biggest xp chunks in deadfire came from bounties and it even felt it was exactly that amount that messed up level progression. After all that no-xp-for-combat stuff.

 

[JarlFrank]

do people get XP for killing IRL?

Serial killers have a lot of fangirls who send them love letters into prison, so

 

[Prime Junta]

Is somebody still butthurt about this?

The bestiary sorted the problem nicely IMO. Eliminated grinding while still giving a decent amount of XP for whacking new types of monsters.

 

[Darkzone]

XPs are Experience Points (make yourself this clear)!
XPs is experience that you gain from situations where you applicate your abilities to a task and learn from this application. Removing XPs from Combat is removing the ability to learn from a combat situation of the characters and therefore it is stupid and always a bad concept.
Levels (Character and Skills and etc) are discrete states (in opposite to a continuos development in the real world) of abilities based on experience for the sake of managebility by the Players including the GM.

There are several interesting approaches to XPs and Levels, like in Wasteland 1 and Skyrim ( i don't like the game, nevertheless it is interesting). But the worst solution is to remove the ability of the characters to gain experience from combat especially since this situations are the most intense for the Characters, where the life hangs on a line and where the reward system should be the highest (with the probable exception of sex).

Therefore any application of an ability should result in XPs, especially in combat. I will also argue that giving XPs for discovery (facts, places and etc in game level or speach with NPC ) is also good.

 

[Raghar]

Why do you lockpick a chest?

Because it was there. I typically leave contents inside, to drive owners crazy.

Why do you kill an enemy?

To satisfy my bloodthirsty entertainment. Also they typically attack first.

Why do you talk a hostile character down?

Because Judge that vindicated me because of self-defense said I should try to keep number of dead bodies down for at least half year.

Also when you kill everyone it hurts the population. Who would pay taxes, and help old grannies?

the alliances you've forged, what equipment you have. That's what should define you.

So heroes should be defined by government official they are work for, and what he gave them? That seem wrong, it's like these people in China who were hired, used as disposable object, and then executed during squabble between two rich who bought theirs education and become officials.

How would taking quest to delliver potatoes to a local official make a character less likely to be killed by a single blow by a dragon? With high level characters we see that when dragon attack connects and they are hit, they typically survive. With low level characters and no level soldiers, they are killed and changed into flat surface.

That's a problem with progression being vertical instead of horizontal. A humanoid should always be one-hitted by a dragon, regardless of how trained he is. To fight a dragon you should instead poison the dragon

Then dragon would cast cure poison, find who did that, cast tracking spells, then go to recover somewhere where poisoner can't get at him, and when he would recover enough he would cast brutal unremovable curse that would curse the the poisoner for 15 generations. Because dragons might accept they were bit wimpier by being beaten by some lowlife it was theirs own fault of going too easy, but they would definitely want revenge against some backstabber. And they have friends.

Helping out a farmer by delivering potatoes could net you a friendly farmer who knows a secret way into the Lord's castle. Or it's very early game and the pitchfork you get as a reward might be your first weapon that deals piercing damage.

Well typically you do potato delivery quest to get out of local mayor shitlist, and then in real life you still need a person who is in his office and remembers he said he would remove you from shitlist, and asks why is he not doing it.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

do people get XP for killing IRL?

Serial killers have a lot of fangirls who send them love letters into prison, so

Why do serial killers invest all their skill points into seduction?

Crazy gonna crazy.

 

[Trashos]

If there's a dialogue/diplomacy solution for getting a group of bandits to leave the area, give the dialogue check a similar amount of XP as killing them all.
If there's a way to bypass a dungeon encounter by solving a puzzle that opens a secret area, give XP for solving the puzzle.
If there's a quest for an assassin to eliminate a target, give bonus XP for not being detected. Stealth games like Dishonored have "ghost" and "non-lethal" statistics at the end of the level that check whether you were ever detected and whether you killed any innocents. Just make the game check whether the player's character was ever detected during his mission and whether he killed anyone other than his target. Award a hefty XP bonus for not being detected and not killing anyone other than his target. Boom, you just massively rewarded a stealth character for playing stealthy. And it actually feels rewarding to pass the challenge of ghosting the quest, rather than the lame "we make stealth as rewarding as combat by taking away combat XP so fighters get the same reward as sneakers - none, lol"

But coming up with ways to reward non-combat approaches, and implementing these rewards, requires more effort and creativity than just stripping away combat XP to level the playing field. If no approach is rewarding, then all approaches are equally rewarding, aren't they? BALANCE!!!!1

- Balance (to some extend, at least) is important. In many RPGs I get quickly overleveled and my fun goes out the window. For example, I quit New Vegas after my 2nd playthrough because skill points were so abundant and it was too easy. New Vegas only became one of my favorite RPGs when the JSawyer mod rebalanced it and I finally had to make build design decisions. Open world games, specifically, often have a huge problem with balance, and no kill XP is a good solution when applied properly.

- Practically, most RPGs don't spend the time to tune anything properly. In New Vegas, I can get double the XP if I both hack and lockpick one hybrid lock. In other games you can lock unlock locks for infinite XP, you can kill respawning enemies, you can kill enemies after you have already done the peaceful solution for double the XP, and generally the games push you to do boring things that you wouldn't otherwise do, just for the XP. I say enough of that.

- In many games that constantly bombard you with XP for anything, I feel the reward centers of my brain being fried by the constant XP rewards. I do not welcome this, especially since the dangerously addictive nature of this process is common knowledge by now. XP-for-anything can help with a game's pace, but it can also be used to get players addicted. I won't mention any names here, but even favorite RPGs of mine have used this trick, I am absolutely sure. In this regard, no-kill-XP is prestigious for combat-heavy RPGs.

At the end of the day, kill XP is a bit like sugar tbh. The baker often ends up pouring too much into the cake, just so that customers don't migrate to sweeter bakeries or to cover for the shitty ingredients he has used. It is not out of the question that games with kill XP can be balanced properly, although I imagine that it is a lot of work to do, and having an alternate scheme would make things much easier -if balance is important for the developers. Personally, I much prefer Underrail's Oddity system than any other system I have seen, but to each his own.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

you should get negative exp from combat to simulate brain damage/body damage

 

[Chippy]

I only played POE until the first village and the castle assault after to the north. Not only was no xp from battles one of the main reasons I stopped playing, but they made it worse by random, shit loot. I suppose your reward for playing a game with almost constant tactical battles was the amazing dialogue and story/writing?.

Also (since I know Sawyer is a bit of an autist) combat is like almost any other skill - it depreciates and perishes over time unless practiced. So having characters lose XP between fights would be retarded (don't want to give him ideas) but 2nd edition did it well with the huge amount of XP required at higher levels in relation to low levels and enemy XP value. If the tech was there - why shouldn;t you be able to fight in a war against thousands of goblins and get as much XP as killing a Dragon?.

Edit: Just realized my first year on the Codex is up. Lets see how this button stuff works...

 

[mondblut]

you should get negative exp from combat to simulate brain damage/body damage

That's why those who've never been in a fight make far better fighters than those who spent all their life fighting.

Wait...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

you should get negative exp from combat to simulate brain damage/body damage

That's why those who've never been in a fight make far better fighters than those who spent all their life fighting.

Wait...

How good are they at critical thinking after getting their head bashed in a few times?

 

[mondblut]

If anything it is quest XP that is retarded. If that was a thing, postal workers would be smartest, strongest and the most powerful people on earth. Sure, I do get the reasoning behind needing to motivate people to read through your tiresome dialogues and following your shitty stories, but let's get real, killing a lone orc teaches you far more than all the fedex quests in the world.

 

[mondblut]

Pillars of Eternity is a Obsidian masterpiece

That's pretty low bar to reach.

 

[majorsoccer]

I only played POE until the first village and the castle assault after to the north. Not only was no xp from battles one of the main reasons I stopped playing, but they made it worse by random, shit loot. I suppose your reward for playing a game with almost constant tactical battles was the amazing dialogue and story/writing?.

Also (since I know Sawyer is a bit of an autist) combat is like almost any other skill - it depreciates and perishes over time unless practiced. So having characters lose XP between fights would be retarded (don't want to give him ideas) but 2nd edition did it well with the huge amount of XP required at higher levels in relation to low levels and enemy XP value. If the tech was there - why shouldn;t you be able to fight in a war against thousands of goblins and get as much XP as killing a Dragon?.

Edit: Just realized my first year on the Codex is up. Lets see how this button stuff works...

you are just a whiny faggot who shouldn't be allowed to live.

Pillars of Eternity is a Obsidian masterpiece,POE 1 & 2 is just as good as Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape Torment.

 

[JarlFrank]

If there's a dialogue/diplomacy solution for getting a group of bandits to leave the area, give the dialogue check a similar amount of XP as killing them all.
If there's a way to bypass a dungeon encounter by solving a puzzle that opens a secret area, give XP for solving the puzzle.
If there's a quest for an assassin to eliminate a target, give bonus XP for not being detected. Stealth games like Dishonored have "ghost" and "non-lethal" statistics at the end of the level that check whether you were ever detected and whether you killed any innocents. Just make the game check whether the player's character was ever detected during his mission and whether he killed anyone other than his target. Award a hefty XP bonus for not being detected and not killing anyone other than his target. Boom, you just massively rewarded a stealth character for playing stealthy. And it actually feels rewarding to pass the challenge of ghosting the quest, rather than the lame "we make stealth as rewarding as combat by taking away combat XP so fighters get the same reward as sneakers - none, lol"

But coming up with ways to reward non-combat approaches, and implementing these rewards, requires more effort and creativity than just stripping away combat XP to level the playing field. If no approach is rewarding, then all approaches are equally rewarding, aren't they? BALANCE!!!!1

- Balance (to some extend, at least) is important. In many RPGs I get quickly overleveled and my fun goes out the window. For example, I quit New Vegas after my 2nd playthrough because skill points were so abundant and it was too easy. New Vegas only became one of my favorite RPGs when the JSawyer mod rebalanced it and I finally had to make build design decisions. Open world games, specifically, often have a huge problem with balance, and no kill XP is a good solution when applied properly.

- Practically, most RPGs don't spend the time to tune anything properly. In New Vegas, I can get double the XP if I both hack and lockpick one hybrid lock. In other games you can lock unlock locks for infinite XP, you can kill respawning enemies, you can kill enemies after you have already done the peaceful solution for double the XP, and generally the games push you to do boring things that you wouldn't otherwise do, just for the XP. I say enough of that.

- In many games that constantly bombard you with XP for anything, I feel the reward centers of my brain being fried by the constant XP rewards. I do not welcome this, especially since the dangerously addictive nature of this process is common knowledge by now. XP-for-anything can help with a game's pace, but it can also be used to get players addicted. I won't mention any names here, but even favorite RPGs of mine have used this trick, I am absolutely sure. In this regard, no-kill-XP is prestigious for combat-heavy RPGs.

At the end of the day, kill XP is a bit like sugar tbh. The baker often ends up pouring too much into the cake, just so that customers don't migrate to sweeter bakeries or to cover for the shitty ingredients he has used. It is not out of the question that games with kill XP can be balanced properly, although I imagine that it is a lot of work to do, and having an alternate scheme would make things much easier -if balance is important for the developers. Personally, I much prefer Underrail's Oddity system than any other system I have seen, but to each his own.

Yes, overleveling can be a problem, but removing combat XP is a band-aid to a greater problem. Just don't put in as many trash mobs or adjust the XP values enemies give or the XP values you require for levelups. Or make a leveling system that is more horizontal than vertical. You could, for example, do away with HP bloat by not raising HP on levelups. Use Fallout style perks or D&D style feats to diversify character abilities rather than simply raising up numbers in your skills until you're OP. You'll still end up more powerful on high levels than on low ones but the difference won't be as hugely unbalancing if growth goes more into the horizontal than the vertical.

As you said, New Vegas became better with the rebalancing mod, which means the issue wasn't with combat XP itself but with how frequently you'd level up.

As for your second point, again, exploits can be prevented with simple scripts that won't even take that much time to implement.
You did the peaceful solution for driving away the bandits by convincing them to piss off? Ok cool. After receiving the XP for that, a simple script stripped away the kill XP for all the bandits. So if you now attack and kill them, you don't get double XP.
Unlocked a door with lockpick and got the lockpick XP, but then you also hack the electronic lock control center or whatever? Well by unlocking the door you already got the XP and a script removed the XP from the hack because you already got the XP here.
Simple. Easy. Just requires a tiny bit of foresight from the quest designers and poof, exploits prevented.

Removal of combat XP is a lazy cop out. There are better ways to prevent exploits. It's kinda like how Bethesda claimed the reason they removed spellmaking and wearing armor and clothes together when they went from Morrowind to Oblivion that they did it for balance reasons. Spellmaking just allowed players to make too powerful spells. The 16 equipment slots of Morrowind where you could wear a shirt, cuirass, and robe together at the same time meant that players could combine super powerful enchanted equipment to become OP.
Those are bullshit excuses. "We don't know how to balance a feature so we remove the entire feature lol." People were legitimately annoyed at the removal of the features because they were cool. Shit decisions like that are always defended as "it's for balance reasons". Yeah maybe if you put some actual thought and effort into it, you might be able to balance the feature properly. Removing it completely is a lazy cop-out.

As for some games drowning you in XP to tickle your reward center, yeah, I grant you that this is an issue in some games, especially those focused on grinding. But giving the player XP for significant actions, successful applications of his skills, etc, does feel rewarding if it's done properly. Just design your areas and quests in a way that doesn't have dozens of tiny busywork things to give you XP for. You could place a dozen lockers in the barracks, each with a lock that can be picked which gives XP if you succeed. Or you could just lock the door to the barracks and give XP for unlocking the door, and the individual lockers are not locked. Poof, XP farming simulator prevented. Not placing endless amounts of trash mobs on your maps is also a good way to prevent XP farming grind.

Granted, I liked Underrail's oddity system. That was cool. But PoE's "no more XP for combat after killing X amount of enemy" when killing enemies is the thing you do the most of was really lame.

 

[luj1]

No XP from kills in an RPG (Pillars of Eternity)

This was one of the more controversial features of PoE.

What do you think about it?

Dumbest shit ever. I don't care why he did it, removing one of the most essential parts of an RPG that is the player-reward system. Like "per encounter" garbage and "Endurance", PoE is just a cocktail of bad, autistic design decisions made by the demented faggot Sawyer and his board of untalented SJW hipsters

 

[Chippy]

I only played POE until the first village and the castle assault after to the north. Not only was no xp from battles one of the main reasons I stopped playing, but they made it worse by random, shit loot. I suppose your reward for playing a game with almost constant tactical battles was the amazing dialogue and story/writing?.

Also (since I know Sawyer is a bit of an autist) combat is like almost any other skill - it depreciates and perishes over time unless practiced. So having characters lose XP between fights would be retarded (don't want to give him ideas) but 2nd edition did it well with the huge amount of XP required at higher levels in relation to low levels and enemy XP value. If the tech was there - why shouldn;t you be able to fight in a war against thousands of goblins and get as much XP as killing a Dragon?.

Edit: Just realized my first year on the Codex is up. Lets see how this button stuff works...

you are just a whiny faggot who shouldn't be allowed to live.

Pillars of Eternity is a Obsidian masterpiece,POE 1 & 2 is just as good as Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape Torment.

I suppose if combat XP worked for everyone, the quality of your shit posts and taste in games would go up with each attempt. You probably need Sawyer to hold your hand while you're jerking off to his games (and typing on the Codex). Comparing PST to POE is almost as bad as those modernist architects who want to stick a glass roof on the Notre Dame church in Paris.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I only played POE until the first village and the castle assault after to the north. Not only was no xp from battles one of the main reasons I stopped playing, but they made it worse by random, shit loot. I suppose your reward for playing a game with almost constant tactical battles was the amazing dialogue and story/writing?.

Also (since I know Sawyer is a bit of an autist) combat is like almost any other skill - it depreciates and perishes over time unless practiced. So having characters lose XP between fights would be retarded (don't want to give him ideas) but 2nd edition did it well with the huge amount of XP required at higher levels in relation to low levels and enemy XP value. If the tech was there - why shouldn;t you be able to fight in a war against thousands of goblins and get as much XP as killing a Dragon?.

Edit: Just realized my first year on the Codex is up. Lets see how this button stuff works...

you are just a whiny faggot who shouldn't be allowed to live.

Pillars of Eternity is a Obsidian masterpiece,POE 1 & 2 is just as good as Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape Torment.

I suppose if combat XP worked for everyone, the quality of your shit posts and taste in games would go up with each attempt. You probably need Sawyer to hold your hand while you're jerking off to his games (and typing on the Codex). Comparing PST to POE is almost as bad as those modernist architects who want to stick a glass roof on the Notre Dame church in Paris.

Agreed. At least POE had game mechanics with its walls of text.

 

[luj1]

Very bad game mechanics at that.