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

[Mangoose]

I think he's talking about out of depth encounters instead of 'exhausted quest givers genocide' or griding..

But that's a red herring. There is no reason that a objective that is harder for some reason (including harder combat encounters), shouldn't give more xp anyway.

We're talking in the context of a game that has no xp and no character advancement during all of gameplay.

No. I said EITHER. Everybody is not in the same level in the second case, where an ogre or a dragon is 10x your level and you will never be able to beat it.

Obviously you couldn't simply barge into an ogres cave and attack it (That's assuming an ogre is actually stronger than a coordinated group of human fighters, nobody is saying that these characters will be the equivalent of 1st level)
If you really want that ogre/dragon dead you'd have to plan ahead, decide on the best time and place to fight it, get hold of proper gear for fighting a much larger enemy, perhaps set a trap or recruit mercenaries for backup.
Wouldn't that be more exiting than bashing in rats until you have enough levels that you can attack the ogre head on?

You'd have to do this for every single encounter that is stronger than you. The ogre is an example of a huge power difference. Even minor differences will require you to make up for your power level difference with such tactics, which means you'd have to script that in for every single encounter.

That sounds good to me. Just say no to trash combat. You wouldn't necessarily need scripted solutions to every encounter though, just a basic system that's flexible enough that you can make up for the power difference by adapting your tactics to the encounter.

Yes, you just need a basic system that would take a miracle of design-work.

I really don't think it would be all that hard. Not making separate content for 30 different character levels would free up a lot of designer time for other parts of the system.

It's easier if you switch to a genre that allows the player to put more of the his twitch and reflexes into the game. But the closer you get to a turn-based-tactics/strategy model the more significance gaps in power level become.

 

[SCO]

Uh, i was replying to the last Draq post, ignore that. The thread is moving quickly.

 

[Stelcio]

And where exactly will you find a even partly-realistic setting that every single enemy equal to the PC? The only way you can do that is scale all the powerful enemies in a setting down, and scale all the weaker enemies up.

Let me rephrase it:

You think every enemy should be either better, worse or the same as player. Now tell me can you create a more or less accurate ranking of best AIM mercenaries from JA2? And if you create your custom mercenary in JA2, can you tell which AIM mercenaries are better and which are worse? Is this a static ranking? Or does a classification change if we consider things like: best mercenary for assault, best mercenary for covert actions, best mercenary for long range extermination, best mercenary for night operations, best mercenary for rampage, best mercenary for certain squad role, most universal mercenary, best price mercenary, mercenary with best equipment, etc.

 

[Mangoose]

And where exactly will you find a even partly-realistic setting that every single enemy equal to the PC? The only way you can do that is scale all the powerful enemies in a setting down, and scale all the weaker enemies up.

Let me rephrase it:

You think every enemy should be either better, worse or the same as player. Now tell me can you create a more or less accurate ranking of best AIM mercenaries from JA2? And if you create your custom mercenary in JA2, can you tell which AIM mercenaries are better and which are worse? Is this a static ranking? Or does a classification change if we consider things like: best mercenary for assault, best mercenary for covert actions, best mercenary for long range extermination, best mercenary for night operations, best mercenary for rampage, best mercenary for certain squad role, most universal mercenary, best price mercenary, mercenary with best equipment, etc.

Not every enemy, every enemy encounter.

 

[DraQ]

No one is stopping them from doing it now.

How about the fact that it's a fake choice? Like "you can get a million of dollars or a shit sandwich - you're free to choose whichever you want".
You don't choose shit sandwich unless you larp, or speaking less drastically, limit yourself.
I don't mind self imposed limitatons in broken, but otherwise good game, but game shouldn't be *designed* broken.

Also, if the base form of the game is itself already more linear than a sandbox game, shouldn't they be looking into ways to make it less linear?

No, because that would mean redesigning it into a sandbox game. What I can do is work within the limit of this linearity, which can be convenient, for example because it allows projecting power curve directly onto game's story, without resorting to either scaling or sandbox-like challenge landscape, except without content to drive the gameplay, should player need some extra oomph before they can proceed wherever they want to.

1. You can't possibly give XP for every *solution*. In any reasonably complex system player will be able to come up with perfectly valid solution that you have not forseen.If you reward individual solutions, you penalize thinking out of the box.

I did say action, not solution. You can keep quest xp for those still.

That's why I also wrote 2.

If you reward every action, optimal gameplay will involve maximizing the number and difficulty of actions performed.
This was exactly the case between DX1 and DX:HR. In DX:HR hacking gave you XP, stealth gave you XP bonuses and taking down enemies, preferably in melee, in pairs and nonlethally also gave you XP. Result was that the best way to play the game was hacking every single hackable thing, taking down every single enemy, and staying undetected for XP bonus.
Comparatively speaking, DX1 had no such problems despite relatively similar gameplay.

Sure, DX1 could be improved even further by removal of exploration bonuses (loot, information, paths and tactical advantages should be rewarding enough) and by introducing consequences for disruptive actions (logically speaking all those dead or unconscious dudes are going to be found eventually, resulting in heightened security measures and more suspiciousness, which you don't want if you're at all interested in playing stealthily), but fact remains that introducing per-action XP and combat XP yielded immediate and clear deterioraton of gameplay.

And, the funy thing is that by rewarding all the actions you're still penalizing some solutions, because not all solutions have to involve what game understands as actions (luring mutually hostile monsters into each other to clear the way, for instance).
Thank you for thinking out of the box - enjoy your shit sandwich.

Use-based bypasses the issue by shifting focus. First, it no longer concentrates on rewarding player, but on simulating how doing stuff makes you better at it. Second, the XP gained in use based system is only circumstantially useful so lockpicking XP won't help you fight. Third, it's easy to conceive ways to make such XP ambiguously rewarding, for example skill XP mayh only contribute to its respective skill, but every skill up makes subsequent increase of any skill progressively more difficult so using and developing skills you don't need will make your character overall less powerful by slowing down their growth.

Or you could just make it like in fallout, which was fine.

Systemically FO was far from fine.

You take the idea too far, I think, Draq.If you have xps as a resource, like I mentioned earlier, they aren't about driving the player, but giving him an opportunity.

Except XPs are universal opportunity that can be accummulated and carried around without limitation - a wise player will mine all such resource.

If you have them as a reward, as a form of "congrtulating" the player for doing something, then the player deserves congratulations for doing stuff you think will advance the game.

If player needs to be told that he did something impressive, then why not drop all the pretence and just add achievements?

But that doesn't mean you have to treat the player as a mouse in a labyrinth, xp being the cheese you put there so he learns what you want him to learn. In fact, when you do it this way, it seems the player is the least deserving of xp, after all, all he did was do what you wanted.

Sometimes "how" matters more than "what".
And since you're rewarding player anyway, it beats rewarding player for stuff you don't really want him to do.

Look at it like this: would you still be against combat xp if the game was played in iron man mode?

Yes, although ironman mitigates the issue somewhat.

My point is that if you leash the player around with xp, it is almost like if everything is a safe combat where you can reload. You can't break the game, and thus there is no ral risk. You are always at the correct level range to wherever you are, and you always have enough combat power to do what you need to do.

Wait, what.

And if your game, even in correct level range can be won by walking up to enemy and clicking until effective then it simply isn't an interesting game. At least mechanically.

If you want neither scaling nor quest only XP, you want a more controlled system than standard XP based one and world that is big enough for character development to drive progression rather than having progression drive the character development - this means sandbox and use based.

It occurs to me that you want to have an inordinate amount of control over how the player plays the game, Draq.

Yes, arguing for sandbox is a tell tale sign of someone wanting to drag player through thoroughly controlled experience.

Early D&D was as snadboxy as you could want and it didn't have use based xp.

PnP.
Having someone to screw you over if your derpy shenanigans grow tiresome really helps.
Unfortunately there is no GM in cRPGs so the whole point is irrelevant.

Having a rest option makes perfect sense in a game like Baldur's Gate, where you are frequently exploring the wilderness or some strange ruins. In some situations, it doesn't always makes sense, though, and it is an option without any risks or consequences.

Or costs.

Of course the game would be made better if this was worked somewhat, specially since it is a bit of an open hole, in that the player might over-rest or under-rest without being aware he is breaking the game. But if the player decides to rest after every single encounter, he is breaking the game purposefully. It ain't a very fun thing to do, but but a dev's time of making sure this specific behavior doesn't happen would be much better put to use adding a new dungeon, or putting some extra options in a quest.

Except by avoiding obviously broken design instead of working around it later you save time. Dungeon? You'd be lucky to make a single room in that time.

Well, a good enough system would work with the player refraining from doing obviously stupid actions.

Obviously stupid actions that reward you systemically are no longer obviously stupid.

 

[DraQ]

I think he's talking about out of depth encounters instead of 'exhausted quest givers genocide' or griding..

But if a game allows you to go in out of your depth (for instance, it has you revisit areas or has challenges you're not really supposed to fight - I'm thinking in quest driven terms here) then it can still reward you for succeeding, the most obvious reward being loot.

You don't need combat XP.

*A perfectly reasonable suggestion*

I sometimes wonder why I even fucking bother.

So in other words, you want 100% level scaling. Either that or you're facing the same groups of humans in every encounter, as you'll never be able to face an ogre or dragon.

What's the point of having powerful enemies if they can be just outleveled?

Besides, why should you, as some noob adventurder be able to outlevel a millenium old dragon or a wizard who has spend several centuries practicing raping the reality with his mind?
I'm speaking of typical cRPG timeframe which is usually under a year.

Approaching them on equal footing you should be fucked and remain equally fucked throughought the entire game.

And static build still doesn't imply no build. It's a perfectly valid proposition for an RPG.

 

[SCO]

I think he's talking about out of depth encounters instead of 'exhausted quest givers genocide' or griding..

But if a game allows you to go in out of your depth (for instance, it has you revisit areas or has challenges you're not really supposed to fight - I'm thinking in quest driven terms here) then it can still reward you for succeeding, the most obvious reward being loot.

You don't need combat XP.

I don't disagree. But if you take into account the idea that a the expected path until that content went through X quest xp and a out-of-order pipelining/sequence breaking took you there with Y quest xp which is a fraction of X; you'll have a magnified harder time if the objective/quest xp doesn't appreciably increase too (it doesn't need to, although it did on bloodlines) because you won't be getting bloated combat reward Z.
I think the key is giving rewards and reasons for that pipelining (besides than for the joy of it of course). Bloodlines had some of those (finding the books; getting the salucept, which increased your xp gain; getting money for the net university, etc). Inflating the quest xp rewards seems like a horrible way to do it btw (still less wrong than grinding).

 

[Lancehead]

I don't really have any problem with starting with "finished" character and no levelling. But considering how there's incongruity between system and content in many RPGs with useless skills, lack of transparency in rules and whatnot, I really wouldn't trust any designer (except for JES, obviously) to get it right, and not punish me for making a particular choice at chargen.

 

[Alex]

No one is stopping them from doing it now.

How about the fact that it's a fake choice? Like "you can get a million of dollars or a shit sandwich - you're free to choose whichever you want".
You don't choose shit sandwich unless you larp, or speaking less drastically, limit yourself.
I don't mind self imposed limitatons in broken, but otherwise good game, but game shouldn't be *designed* broken.

That isn't an unreasonable position, but myself, I would prefer a broken, but otherwise great game than a good game all around. Specially if the broken part is something that will bother you only if you go after them.

No, because that would mean redesigning it into a sandbox game. What I can do is work within the limit of this linearity, which can be convenient, for example because it allows projecting power curve directly onto game's story, without resorting to either scaling or sandbox-like challenge landscape, except without content to drive the gameplay, should player need some extra oomph before they can proceed wherever they want to.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "(...)except without content to drive the gameplay, should player need some extra oomph before they can proceed wherever they want to". Still I would be more interested in a story based game that allows you to approach its plot from many places and with many different places and progress in different ways, instead of limiting the game more. I thought F:NV was a good step in this direction, for example.

Systemically FO was far from fine.

Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it allowed you to approach the game from many different positions. You could travel anywhere, and with good equipment, you could survive in areas above your level, although you might not be able to kill the enemies there. If this comes at the expense of a few exploitable holes (or a lot), that seems like a small price to pay. And I do think a game as complex and open as Fallout would need a few holes like that by its very nature.

Except XPs are universal opportunity that can be accummulated and carried around without limitation - a wise player will mine all such resource.

My point is that if XP is to be a real resource, it can't be tightly controlled. The player should be have good opportunities to get more or less of them, they should have opportunites to put them to good use, etc.

If player needs to be told that he did something impressive, then why not drop all the pretence and just add achievements?

Look, this is one xp philosophy. The idea is that you have a reward cycle driving the game. When the player does something worthy of being rewarded, he earns the resources to go even farther. As the game develops, this cycle allows the player to go farther and farther along, eventually accomplishing some great objective, possibly ending the game. Now, the designer determines what is reward worth, and...

Sometimes "how" matters more than "what".
And since you're rewarding player anyway, it beats rewarding player for stuff you don't really want him to do.

This might actually seem to be an argument in favor of what you are defending. But if the way you are rewarded is too restricted, if the way you use the said reward matters little, the cycle loses all its importance. The idea of the cycle is to give weight to the decisions of the player, to allow him to interact with the game in a meaningful way. The question here isn't even rewarding anything noteworthy the player might do. The question is that if the game is a (more or less) straight line, where the designer always expect the player will have x amount of xp at each juncture, the player never got to really interact with the system. He just followed along with the dev's plans.

Wait, what.

My point is that if xp progresses in a straight line there is no risk or accomplishment involved with them. That earning and spending them feels empty, like getting xp for "hard" fights you are going to win anyway thanks to save and reload. The reason it makes more sense to reward combat in a iron man game is because combat there truly has risk. But in a tightly controlled game, there isn't risk anywhere. Well, there might be risk to your choices in the storyline, but that has nothing to do with xp.

And if your game, even in correct level range can be won by walking up to enemy and clicking until effective then it simply isn't an interesting game. At least mechanically.

Do you mean, if you get to a level that breaks the game? I agree with you, playing the game after you get powerful enough that there is no challenge is boring, but it might have been fun getting to that point. Besides, if you have quests where how you perform is very important, this might be mitigated somewhat.

Yes, arguing for sandbox is a tell tale sign of someone wanting to drag player through thoroughly controlled experience.

Well, you were the one saying we would need a more controlled system for xp. It just seems to me that your approach to design is to make sure there aren't any "edges" left unworked, so the player can never go wrong, that is, he can never experience the game in a way you didn't intend.

PnP.
Having someone to screw you over if your derpy shenanigans grow tiresome really helps.
Unfortunately there is no GM in cRPGs so the whole point is irrelevant.

I don't really see how this relates to use based xp systems.

Except by avoiding obviously broken design instead of working around it later you save time. Dungeon? You'd be lucky to make a single room in that time.

I don't need to work around them. If the player wants to rest before every encounter and break my design, that is his problem.

Obviously stupid actions that reward you systemically are no longer obviously stupid.

They are obviously stupid because they obviously break the game. My point was that I can agree with you we should avoid situations like where the player might break design by acting in good faith. If the game is too easy if you rest, say, every three hours, we might have a problem, because a player could do that because he is being cautious. A player that rests every encounter, however, is being malicious. And if you worry about making sure a player can't be malicious, you will remove a lot of freedom from people who would use those options for legitimate uses.

In the case of xps we, for instance, we might be able to give the player a far more interesting plot structure, where a character who had a lot of xp could do things another couldn't and change the hwole outcome of the main story, for instance.

 

[tuluse]

Alex you seem to think that removing kill XP is the developer somehow creating a linear experience, but I don't see why this is the case. It's already been promised that the world would be mostly open. So you can travel to other areas and be out of your depth. You can leave one area unfinished and come back over-leveled and just clean it out if you want. None of these things are prevented with kill XP.

 

[Sensuki]

I was outraged at the removal of kill XP when it was first stated, although over time I've grown to accept it. It might actually be better - we'll see.

 

[SCO]

What i find frustrating about PE is that they had to innovate on this, and many other things, like world map text encounters but not on TB

 

[Arkeus]

What i find frustrating about PE is that they had to innovate on this, and many other things, like world map text encounters but not on TB

The pitch is to get a IE 'feel'. TB kinda makes that utterly impossible.

 

[Jaedar]

I never cared for XP per kill systems. It was always something that happened in the background while I was having fun/trudging through combat. Glad to see it gone.

 

[Alex]

Alex you seem to think that removing kill XP is the developer somehow creating a linear experience, but I don't see why this is the case. It's already been promised that the world would be mostly open. So you can travel to other areas and be out of your depth. You can leave one area unfinished and come back over-leveled and just clean it out if you want. None of these things are prevented with kill XP.

I take kill xp removal as a symptom, not the problem itself. I tried to go through all the symptoms that make me feel this might be the case in an earlier post. Still, I would say him promising that world will be open as a good sign, although it remains to be seen how this is done.

 

[Arkeus]

I take kill xp removal as a symptom, not the problem itself. I tried to go through all the symptoms that make me feel this might be the case in an earlier post. Still, I would say him promising that world will be open as a good sign, although it remains to be seen how this is done.

I think a lot of us see Kill XP as a symptom of a problem though, as it seriously limit alternative gameplay

 

[Jasede]

The point of CRPGs is to level up, optimize your build and relentlessly crush the enemies that used to give you trouble with your now powerful party.
mondblut

 

[Infinitron]

The point of CRPGs is to level up, optimize your build and relentlessly crush the enemies that used to give you trouble with your now powerful party.
mondblut

And hear the lamentations of the kobolds.

 

[Arkeus]

The point of CRPGs is to level up, optimize your build and relentlessly crush the enemies that used to give you trouble with your now powerful party.
mondblut

And hear the lamentations of the kobolds and the admiration of their women.

fixed.

 

[Azarkon]

Sawyer is just trying to tackle the ludonarrative dissonance of modern RPGs

But I wonder whether PE is going to have the pacifist gameplay to back up its lofty goals when combat is no longer motivated.

Choosing [diplomacy] *hugs and kisses* is not exactly engaging gameplay.

 

[Roguey]

Sawyer is just trying to tackle the ludonarrative dissonance of modern RPGs

But I wonder whether PE is going to have the pacifist gameplay to back up its lofty goals when combat is no longer motivated.

Choosing [diplomacy] *hugs and kisses* is not exactly engaging gameplay.

Yeah, Josh agrees. Into the dustbin that goes.

 

[DraQ]

That isn't an unreasonable position, but myself, I would prefer a broken, but otherwise great game than a good game all around.

That is irrelevant when broken stuff can still be easily excised without harming what makes the game great.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "(...)except without content to drive the gameplay, should player need some extra oomph before they can proceed wherever they want to". Still I would be more interested in a story based game that allows you to approach its plot from many places and with many different places and progress in different ways, instead of limiting the game more. I thought F:NV was a good step in this direction, for example.

I need to play FNV, apparently, it's been sitting on my HDD for some time.
Still, I can wager that it's core character development system, along with the rest of the machanics, is probably not one of its highlights.

What I'm saying here is that in a story oriented game there is insufficient auxilary content to fuel gameplay alone.

You can play a TES game just delving into various places and having fun without really progressing the MQ or any quest. You can do so for tens of hours. OTOH you can't really do it in an IE game, you will effectively be forced to do the MQ sooner than later because there is just not enough things for you to do.

In a TES like sandbox being unable to progress due to being a wuss is not a tragedy, because there is more than enough content to keep you entertained while you grow out of your wussiness. In an IE like game OTOH it's a serious problem because of scarcity of content. You effectively have two options here - doing quests and dying of boredom killing shit for XP again and again. Removing the latter is more than fair trade for being able to ensure that the MQ and possibly the former ensure the right amount of character growth.

And if you do want a proper sandbox, you'll really benefit from something more precise and exact than an XP system, even at the cost of having to make it more complex and 'heavier'.
Failing that, you can just throw XP into treasure chests or something, since they represent a rather obvious goal.

Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it allowed you to approach the game from many different positions. You could travel anywhere, and with good equipment, you could survive in areas above your level, although you might not be able to kill the enemies there. If this comes at the expense of a few exploitable holes (or a lot), that seems like a small price to pay.

Holes where systems meet and interact may be hard to avoid in a complex games, but this doesn't excuse holes that manifest readily in a single system working in isolation - those are independent of game's complexity and a result of poor design. They may even work to damage game's actual complexity.

My point is that if XP is to be a real resource, it can't be tightly controlled. The player should be have good opportunities to get more or less of them, they should have opportunites to put them to good use, etc.

Actually, any actual resource must be controlled, because otherwise it's a nonresource - you can always just make more. In any case, the last thing you want to do is reducing NPCs and creatures to the role of disposable resource containers.

Look, this is one xp philosophy. The idea is that you have a reward cycle driving the game. When the player does something worthy of being rewarded, he earns the resources to go even farther.

This stuff is called loot and other stuff you can get.
If the player does something impressive for no actual in-universe reason, then it isn't worthy of beign rewarded, it's either just stupid or a reward in itself.

This might actually seem to be an argument in favor of what you are defending. But if the way you are rewarded is too restricted

How so? The alternative to scripted/pre-placed XP rewards is engaging in repetitive grinding anyway. That's already restrictive. You're just throwing out unwanted and tedious artificial gameplay (I will kill everything! I will pick every lock! etc.) but at the same time ensure that it's no longer potentially needed. Win/win.

Another way out is focusing on action but weakening the rewards by limiting their usefulness or even potentially making rewards not suited to given gameplay style counterproductive, but that's use based and is intended to simulate natural growth of skills without interfering with a gameplay.

A strong universal reward system is by its very nature goal oriented and thus requires care for not systemically providing players with stupid goals.

if the way you use the said reward matters little, the cycle loses all its importance

And who said that it matters little?

The way you get the reward matters little, the way you spend it matters a lot, if only because it will determine how the next iteration of the cycle will play out.

The idea of the cycle is to give weight to the decisions of the player, to allow him to interact with the game in a meaningful way. The question here isn't even rewarding anything noteworthy the player might do. The question is that if the game is a (more or less) straight line, where the designer always expect the player will have x amount of xp at each juncture, the player never got to really interact with the system.

Not necessarily. Consider revisiting an area and getting a mcguffin from a high level area connected to it resulting in loot and XP. If player, through good build and smart tactics manages to do it on their own the first time around, they will reap XP and loot geared for high level early in game which is a substantial reward. More meaningful than just farming XP too.

Note that this pretty much invalidates all your arguments for kill XP from plot structure.

The reason it makes more sense to reward combat in a iron man game is because combat there truly has risk. But in a tightly controlled game, there isn't risk anywhere.

See above. In an iron man game tackling a situation out of your league is a risk no matter the exact method. If you're tackling it for any actual reason you still get rewarded by loot and/or XP. If you don't have actual reason for getting into such situation you deserve no reward.

Do you mean, if you get to a level that breaks the game?

No, I mean gameplay where the main method of tackling challenges is outlevelling them. It's boring and not actual challenge anyway.
If a game is properly designed, OTOH, the notion of proper level loses much of its meaning since the game is more about broadening your repertoire and preparing for situations than grinding to be able to click things to death.

Well, you were the one saying we would need a more controlled system for xp. It just seems to me that your approach to design is to make sure there aren't any "edges" left unworked, so the player can never go wrong, that is, he can never experience the game in a way you didn't intend.

No. For less controlled experience I need a more controlled system and vice versa. The responsibility for game wroking as it should is simply shifted between macro level layer and underlying mechanical layer. If I can't say how will macro layer look in advance, then I need the mechanics to bear the load, otherwise, I can shift it on game's macro structure - quest design and whatnot.
Funny how it works, no?

I don't really see how this relates to use based xp systems.

Try farming XP by setting a city on fire in a PnP. Necessarily tell GM that based on number of people dying you should get so and so XPs. Observe the results carefully.

I don't need to work around them. If the player wants to rest before every encounter and break my design, that is his problem.

LARP LARP LARP LARP LOVELY LARP! WONDERFUL LARP!

They are obviously stupid because they obviously break the game.

Except you designed the game this way so the joke is on you.

 

[Lancehead]

I need to play FNV, apparently, it's been sitting on my HDD for some time.
Still, I can wager that it's core character development system, along with the rest of the machanics, is probably not one of its highlights.

Well, for one Fallout never had a great character development system, but NV does do a good job of streamlining the useless clutter and making sure stuff in the system is useful (well, mostly). The game is very open for an Obsidian game and for such a strongly story-driven game. They did manage to find a nice middle between sandbox and scripted experience. The game has a good faction system, and can be completed without killing a single creature (including in DLCs, I believe).

 

[Mastermind]

What's the point of having powerful enemies if they can be just outleveled?

Besides, why should you, as some noob adventurder be able to outlevel a millenium old dragon or a wizard who has spend several centuries practicing raping the reality with his mind?
I'm speaking of typical cRPG timeframe which is usually under a year.

Approaching them on equal footing you should be fucked and remain equally fucked throughought the entire game.

And static build still doesn't imply no build. It's a perfectly valid proposition for an RPG.

While I fully support having nearly (or actually) invincible opponents that the player has to navigate around with more than his sword, I think having every enemy be a challenge can take away from the fun in some RPGs. It could work adequately in a party based tactical RPG, but in a game like elder scrolls I like the feel of actually getting stronger and squashing previously challenging enemies. As long as the game provides me with adequate end game challenges I don't really see the problem.

 

[Alex]

That is irrelevant when broken stuff can still be easily excised without harming what makes the game great.

Maybe we just disagree on what makes the game great then?

I need to play FNV, apparently, it's been sitting on my HDD for some time.
Still, I can wager that it's core character development system, along with the rest of the machanics, is probably not one of its highlights.

What I'm saying here is that in a story oriented game there is insufficient auxilary content to fuel gameplay alone.

You can play a TES game just delving into various places and having fun without really progressing the MQ or any quest. You can do so for tens of hours. OTOH you can't really do it in an IE game, you will effectively be forced to do the MQ sooner than later because there is just not enough things for you to do.

You could play a lot with the optional quests in BG 2. The same could be said of Fallout, and I would consider neither of these games sandbox, although fallout might blur the line somewhat. I think how open (or sandboxy) or closed your game is is kind of a slider, not a boolean variable. And I don't think that story based games, ones that have a pre-planned plot that is supposed to engage the player, benefit much from staying near the closed side of the scale, except in being easier to make.

In a TES like sandbox being unable to progress due to being a wuss is not a tragedy, because there is more than enough content to keep you entertained while you grow out of your wussiness. In an IE like game OTOH it's a serious problem because of scarcity of content. You effectively have two options here - doing quests and dying of boredom killing shit for XP again and again. Removing the latter is more than fair trade for being able to ensure that the MQ and possibly the former ensure the right amount of character growth.

If by being a wuss, you mean the PCs are too weak to win the game, I really don't see the problem with forcing a player who choose badly to reset his game and start again. At least it adds a real risk to the game. Alternatively, you might make your game open enough he is capable of progressing, but his ability to influence the outcome of the quests is limited.

And if you do want a proper sandbox, you'll really benefit from something more precise and exact than an XP system, even at the cost of having to make it more complex and 'heavier'.
Failing that, you can just throw XP into treasure chests or something, since they represent a rather obvious goal.

That is kinda what old D&D did, where you got 1 xp for each gp you got, and th xp you got from slaying monsters was minimal. It worked well, but only because you weren't assured at all to get all (or even most, heck sometimes even a little) of what a dungeon had.

Holes where systems meet and interact may be hard to avoid in a complex games, but this doesn't excuse holes that manifest readily in a single system working in isolation - those are independent of game's complexity and a result of poor design. They may even work to damage game's actual complexity.

I don't know, DraQ. It seems to me it would be a tall order to design a system as open in so many ways as Fallout or Arcanum without at least a few systems that could end up abused. Also, sometimes some systems make sense only in their context. For example, resting in fallout worked because you had a ticking timer. By providing more choices with that counter (like the water traders one), it could be that the system would be better yet. Thus, a system that might seen broken in isolation might end up working well. Worse yet, a system that was planned to be something that worked might not work well after all because the designers ran out of time and the content that would link with it was never added in.

Actually, any actual resource must be controlled, because otherwise it's a nonresource - you can always just make more. In any case, the last thing you want to do is reducing NPCs and creatures to the role of disposable resource containers.

It must be controlled in that you must have some rules as to how you get them, and a certain amount of scarcity and/or risks. But that is very different from the designer planning when the player is going to earn XP and planning his game with that in mind.

This stuff is called loot and other stuff you can get.
If the player does something impressive for no actual in-universe reason, then it isn't worthy of beign rewarded, it's either just stupid or a reward in itself.

Then you disagree with the philosophy. Personally, I think it works pretty well, and I would greatly prefer it as to the xp as "story marker" I fear they may be planning (whether it is the case or not). Maybe it is just a taste issue?

How so? The alternative to scripted/pre-placed XP rewards is engaging in repetitive grinding anyway. That's already restrictive. You're just throwing out unwanted and tedious artificial gameplay (I will kill everything! I will pick every lock! etc.) but at the same time ensure that it's no longer potentially needed. Win/win.

First, if this kind of gameplay is so tedious, why have it at all? RPGs should be based on a kind of gameplay people find fun, and if it isn't, then the problem with the design lies further below. Of course, I guess the problem lies with the game having the PCs get to such a point where combat isn't fun because you are overlevelled, or because you just did so much of it. Second, as I explained before, you can have all the XP in place befre hand for this system to work, as long as getting it isn't straightforward and the designer relies on an expected level. Or course you could expect the player to be more or less powerful in a certain part of the game, but if you plan your game so it is almost or really impossible to break those assumptions, then you are doing it wrong, according to this philosophy.

Another way out is focusing on action but weakening the rewards by limiting their usefulness or even potentially making rewards not suited to given gameplay style counterproductive, but that's use based and is intended to simulate natural growth of skills without interfering with a gameplay.

A strong universal reward system is by its very nature goal oriented and thus requires care for not systemically providing players with stupid goals.

I don't disagree with you there, but I don't see the problem of using soft limits either. Killing a 1HD NPC in 2nd edition AD&D gives you very little experience. In particular, if you are past, say, level 9, when you need hundreds of thousands of xp to level again, ad killing a 1HD creature gives you 10xp, if anything at all (most people don't award xp in their games if the party was in no danger).

And who said that it matters little?

The way you get the reward matters little, the way you spend it matters a lot, if only because it will determine how the next iteration of the cycle will play out.

My comment about the way you use the rewards mattering little wasn't so much about how you level up your char, which I expect to at least be somewhat engaging, but about the game possibly not providing out of level content, if its content is indeed optimized for a specific level range as I fear. About how you get xp not mattering, I am trying to discuss that under the light of the philosophy I was trying to explain in that paragraph. If you are going to get more or less the same amount of xp, or at least equivalent rewards (with level scaling), for doing what you need just to get through the game, there is no risk associated with the xp. The xp isn't acting as a real reward because all actions and accomplishments are alike.

Not necessarily. Consider revisiting an area and getting a mcguffin from a high level area connected to it resulting in loot and XP. If player, through good build and smart tactics manages to do it on their own the first time around, they will reap XP and loot geared for high level early in game which is a substantial reward. More meaningful than just farming XP too.

Note that this pretty much invalidates all your arguments for kill XP from plot structure.

Indeed, man. If it is possible to do the very stuff I am afraid we won't be able to do, or won't be able to do in any significant amount, then I am indeed worried about nothing. That is kinda what I was trying to talk about having xp as a "story marker", or having unnecessarily tight control over xp acquisition.

My whole point is that you should, through smart playing, be able to get more xp and for that play the game differently. He shouldn't be penalized for going out of his level range, but instead, there should be challenges that are geared for all kinds of levels strewn throughout. That quests should have special objectives you wouldn't be able to accomplish unless you were higher lvel. Or player really smart. Or preferably both. Better yet, they should run through several elements of the spectrum, with certain outcomes only possible if you really work for them.

See above. In an iron man game tackling a situation out of your league is a risk no matter the exact method. If you're tackling it for any actual reason you still get rewarded by loot and/or XP. If you don't have actual reason for getting into such situation you deserve no reward.

I don't really see the need for the designer to control whether you have a reason or not. I mean, if the player is taking a real risk unnecessarily, and if he keeps doing that, he will just die anyway. I do think they should get better rewards for doing stuff that your game was made for, but that is why we have quest xp.

No, I mean gameplay where the main method of tackling challenges is outlevelling them. It's boring and not actual challenge anyway.
If a game is properly designed, OTOH, the notion of proper level loses much of its meaning since the game is more about broadening your repertoire and preparing for situations than grinding to be able to click things to death.

I am not sure this is "proper" design, in that it is necessary. although computer games do have trouble representing characters of very different power levels. But at any rate, I don't really disagree with anything here besides that.

No. For less controlled experience I need a more controlled system and vice versa. The responsibility for game wroking as it should is simply shifted between macro level layer and underlying mechanical layer. If I can't say how will macro layer look in advance, then I need the mechanics to bear the load, otherwise, I can shift it on game's macro structure - quest design and whatnot.
Funny how it works, no?

Oh, I think I kinda get you better now. Sorry for the misunderstanding in this part.

Try farming XP by setting a city on fire in a PnP. Necessarily tell GM that based on number of people dying you should get so and so XPs. Observe the results carefully.

Well, if players in my games managed to get away with it, they probably would get more xp for it than the individual values of the killed people...

LARP LARP LARP LARP LOVELY LARP! WONDERFUL LARP!

Call it whatever you want. I don't disagree this is a problem, I just think its importance so small that players can ignore it easily and designers can afford to leave them in to take care f other stuff.

Except you designed the game this way so the joke is on you.

Well, the player is the one playing... I mean, if I as a designer made it clear enough something would break the game (and in the case or resting before every fight, I think it is self evident), the it is the player's responsibility if he wastes his time playing the game in a way that isn't fun.