Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[GarfunkeL]

Quest or objective based XP takes away grinding from the game. You can still get XP for killing that dragon if Obsidian puts in a quest/objective "Kill Firkraag". But for C&C and multiple-approaches crowd, it's better to instead have a quest "Get rid of Firkraag" and then implement several ways how the player can achieve this goal, one of which is to kill him. Additionally, Obsidian doesn't have to worry about assigning XP to each and every monster in game. The classic Fallout exploit of filling a quest in multiple ways to gain double or even triple XP is also plugged.

 

[jewboy]

FFS, diminishing returns!

They are called EXPERIENCE points for a reason. They are MEANT to be a numerical representation of your character's life experiences. Highly intelligent life forms gain knowledge, and by extension power, through experiences.

Fighting is an experience. Fighting something for the first time and surviving is of much more value than fighting it for the 100th time. Naturally then, the points gained for fighting the same things over and over again, should have diminishing returns.

Another way to combat this is to set the levelling bars at continually higher and higher points, and then basically setting some kind of cut off for actually getting experience points. So a level 5 should get like 1 exp for killing a level 1 goblin, but get the right amount of points for killing something much stronger.

Of course gain EXP for quest related non combat stuff as well as skill checks etc., but removing it from killing things is retarded and betrays the actual concept of experience points entirely.

Look at it from a gameplay perspective. You have a quest to "retrieve" a certain item from a misbehaving merchant. There are several approaches you could take: you might intimidate him, you might beat him up, or you might steal the item. Each one of these approaches befit a certain kind of character, and reward you for your playstyle. You get the satisfaction of appropriately roleplaying your character. The game rewards your character build and the choices you made.

Now take a different quest - enter a drake lair to kill a powerful dragon matron. Suppose you have three options to complete the quest: you can pay or convince an experienced band of adventurers to clear the dungeon for you, you could sneak past the enemies and cleverly activate a trap that collapses the entire lair into rubble, or you could straightforwardly challenge the matron and her minions. Presumably here too we have the option of three distinct playstyles, and the game rewards your character build etc. But the truth is, that in this scenario there is one crucial difference - one option is substantially more rewarding than the others. Challenging the lair straight-on is the option that gives you the most exp and loot. So what do you think the player's gonna do? Well, you bet your fucking ass both the charismatic, manipulative merchant and the clever thief are gonna be donning platemail tonight. Characterisation gets thrown out the window, enter a shitty min-maxing metagame.

Okay. I think I see the argument now. Although I don't play to get XP. I would choose what I consider the most interesting course even if it resulted in fewer XP. I still see this as lots of excitement over nothing. So what if you level up faster with one style of gameplay over another? Does getting less XP make the game less enjoyable? If anything it probably makes it more enjoyable. In BG2 you also got most of your experience through quests. With the exception of major opponents and major battles like Firkraag or Kangaxx comparitively little XP resulted from just going around killing monsters. It would take forever to level up that way. I don't recall Icewind Dale or Torment being much different. Yes, you could get marginally more XP by killing everything you see, but in the end it didn't really matter very much. You'd still be at approximately the same level by the end of the game.

 

[Arkeus]

3.3 Millions reached!
Today was a good day for eternity (and still is!).

 

[aVENGER]

$3.3M on Kickstarter guys.

 

[Digital Monocle]

That Second City stretchgoal was pure genius, I don't see why they don't ask for a third city at 4+ Million

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

It would be cool if we could choose a side of a city and become its king or something.

 

[Nigro]

not getting xp for killing enemies
man try to go outside and get into a few fights, winning or losing, you will always learn something new, you can`t improve your combat skill just by talking to people.

 

[Roguey]

Going to requote that paragraph from Sawyer from earlier

However, I am strongly against awarding experience points for "ways and means". I.e. killing monsters, picking locks, scribing scrolls, etc. Not only is it extraordinarily hard to balance for designers and QA staff, but it inevitably leads to nasty metagaming that, in my opinion, runs counter to some of the guiding principles of many RPGs. Unless combat is the sole focus of the game, we need to keep the player's focus on achieving a goal in whatever manner he or she sees fit. The accomplishment of the goal, not the method itself, should net the main reward. The reward for "ways and means" is usually self-contained. E.g. monsters drop monster bits, opening locked rooms gives access to otherwise unavailable equipment, hacking a computer gives some interesting data that can tie in with another game system. And really, the biggest reward has already been granted to the player: you allowed him or her to play the game in the manner he or she wanted. There's an idea I don't subscribe to -- that players need to be given tiny rewards for everything they do. If your gameplay is actually fun, you shouldn't need to bribe them! When gameplay simply becomes drudgery motivated by a desire to gain a bonus that makes the gameplay easier, I feel that we have failed as designers.

He's not going to change his mind just because a couple of people are upset about it. After all, a bunch of people raged about his wish to combine small guns/big guns/energy weapons in Fallout 3 and he did it anyway in New Vegas (though minus energy weapons and only because Fallout 3 already made them viable from the start, and even now he's decided that he'll fold them in as well and remove the plink-plinky lower tier EWs should he ever get the chance to work on another Fallout).

Also to the idiots: Games are not a simulation of reality.

 

[jewboy]

Why does it matter, Nigro? I mean who cares about XP anyway? I don't fight Kangaxx for the XP. I fight him because it is fun. In the IE games at least XP for killing monsters was only a small fraction of what was available for completing quests. I admit that not getting XP for killing a dragon or demi-lich or whatever does seem to lack some narrative justification, but it doesn't seem like a big deal. Kooldowns and a possible lack of inter-combat attrition are the real problem. Not how XP is doled out. It's not like a Bethesda game where the storyline is so awful that the only thing you can really do is go out hiking and killing monsters. With both MCA and Ziets on board as writers I think we can expect some pretty interesting stories. So in the end you'll end up with around the same amount of XP anyway.

 

[CrustyBot]

not getting xp for killing enemies
man try to go outside and get into a few fights, winning or losing, you will always learn something new, you can`t improve your combat skill just by talking to people.

The inverse is true for the basic XP for killing systems though. You whack people with swords to level your stealth/persuasion skills.

Hell, it even applies to different forms of combat. Aforementioned sword whacking to grind your bow and arrow skills.

wat

It's the big issue with manual skill allocation over raise-by-use systems. It's not inherently a bad thing, just mechanics that work using abstractions. But you can't argue from a point of realism when it comes to these things. Shit doesn't hold up.

 

[Infinitron]

Nigro aka Troller is just being himself.

 

[Nigro]

not getting xp for killing enemies
man try to go outside and get into a few fights, winning or losing, you will always learn something new, you can`t improve your combat skill just by talking to people.

Mechanics is not always about realism.

I know man, but still, realism is good, specially in games, I just hate when I shoot people in the head in FPS and it`s the same thing like shooting them in the foot :/

 

[Tigranes]

It's interesting - from what I remember (and I can be wrong), Arcanum and Fallout gave you a lot more profitable monsters. That is, it was possible to, esp. in Arcanum, level up once or even twice purely from killing a few difficult enemies, compared to which the quest reward XP became modest. I think it was a bit more even in FO. Compare that to BG2, where the only monsters that really dropped huge chunks of XP were quest-bound dudes like Firkraag anyway. I don't think even beholders were that good for it.

On one hand, I can understand people who want kill XP to be significant, and I'm partly in that camp as well. There's a lot of satisfaction to levelling up from killing something, and if you were to switch completely from a granulated system where you get chunks of XP every kill or every hit to a system where you get a huge bundle of XP every 15 minutes, the whole experience changes. XP gain just isn't very satisfying because it goes too far away from 'grinding'. There's a reason grinding can be 'fun', and that's because of the pleasure of accumulation; it's only bad when it goes too far.

On the other hand, I can see Sawyer's point about balance, and certainly from that perspective the more emphasis on quest/objective XP the better. I just don't know if balance in a SRPG is that important to get rid of kill XP altogether (or make it trivial). To me, the best solution is to to have a character development system that depends on more than one type of currency, so that solving objectives gets you XP to unlock new skill tiers but killing/lockpicking increases skills by doing, etc.

Edit: We've got so many Eternity threads now I'm not up to date on this one, so mea culpa if I'm beating dead horses by the dozen.

 

[Nigro]

not getting xp for killing enemies
man try to go outside and get into a few fights, winning or losing, you will always learn something new, you can`t improve your combat skill just by talking to people.

Mechanics is not always about realism.

I know man, but still, realism is good, specially in games, I just hate when I shoot people in the head in FPS and it`s the same thing like shooting them in the foot :/

Great. Then it means that Casting spells using soul makes no sense to you right? Neither does resting to heal wounds in a day! Or even permanent injuries. How about taking a shit/piss? Managing a balanced diet?

Casting spells using souls make no sense - It makes sense because it`s in the context of the game, souls have power and etc.
Resting to heal wounds is lame, but it makes a bit of sense, because if you are hurt, you gotta rest a lot, try to go into the hospital, and go into a surgery room, they arent playing soccer most of the time, they are sleeping.
Permanent injuries exist, and no game that I saw used shit\piss mechanics lol
balanced diet would be cool, and educational, if they would implement in an rpg, like FNV didnt had milk to drink man..wtf...

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

ha ha.

 

[IDtenT]

It's about realism in the given setting, so magic works.

 

[Roguey]

Since you guys keep mentioning Firkraag I'd like to point out that the reward for killing him was fucking Carsomyr, red dragon scales to make armor, a cloak of the shield, a flesh to stone scroll, and 1500 gold. And killing him was tied to a paladin stronghold quest that awarded you 33,000 xp after you turned it in (on top of what you get for killing him).

 

[Nigro]

not getting xp for killing enemies
man try to go outside and get into a few fights, winning or losing, you will always learn something new, you can`t improve your combat skill just by talking to people.

Mechanics is not always about realism.

I know man, but still, realism is good, specially in games, I just hate when I shoot people in the head in FPS and it`s the same thing like shooting them in the foot :/

Great. Then it means that Casting spells using soul makes no sense to you right? Neither does resting to heal wounds in a day! Or even permanent injuries. How about taking a shit/piss? Managing a balanced diet?

Casting spells using souls make no sense - It makes sense because it`s in the context of the game, souls have power and etc.
Resting to heal wounds is lame, but it makes a bit of sense, because if you are hurt, you gotta rest a lot, try to go into the hospital, and go into a surgery room, they arent playing soccer most of the time, they are sleeping.
Permanent injuries exist, and no game that I saw used shit\piss mechanics lol
balanced diet would be cool, and educational, if they would implement in an rpg, like FNV didnt had milk to drink man..wtf...

SHIT.

I got trolled.

Nope, you just asked me some questions and I answered them.

 

[evdk]

SHIT.

I got trolled.

 

[jewboy]

They could always make monster XP optional, at least for difficult, higher level monsters. Just in case removing it ends up being less fun somehow. I don't think I would mind not having it, but then I don't think I've ever played an RPG that didn't give you at least some XP for killing monsters, small as it may be. Still seems like a trivial game mechanic to me though.

In some cases in BG2 I hated the XP rewards for killing monsters. I have this habit of getting my ass over to Watchers Keep very soon after Chateau Irenicus, but the problem with that is all that XP ends up making you too high of a level for the Underdark stuff and then the Underdark ends up being too easy. Obviously SoA was not balanced for Watchers Keep, but being able to optionally turn off the XP rewards might allow you to go to Watcher's Keep first and still allow you to enjoy the Underdark etc.

 

[evdk]

That Valorian fella is an exceptional retard.

 

[jewboy]

We're getting awfully close to the DFA record of $3,336,371. I wonder if the whole point of setting that 3.5 mil goal was to beat Double Fine's record. A bit of competitiveness between devs.

 

[Stokowski]

Guys, can you post slower?

I'm typing as slowly as I can.

 

[wormix]

Stamina and Health

Although I thought he'd stated he wasn't going to use this system. Guess he changed his mind.

How long are they going to play D&D for?

 

[Minttunator]

That Valorian fella is an exceptional retard.

I think he just hopes to gain some forum XP from "killing" you. I did report him, though - I'm sure the Obsidian mods don't think that kind of tone should be acceptable when referring to fellow posters.