The XP for Combat Megathread! DISCUSS!

[Bubbles]

Wait, can't you use stealth to explore without combat, asks the critic?

Well, with regard to stealth, I think people are overestimating the applicability of that. First of all, it's unlikely that your entire party will be stealth masters. Typically you're going to use stealth to bring one or two of your characters into a position before springing an ambush, or something like that.

More importantly, however, stealth is unreliable. What happens when one of your six stealthed party members fails a roll and suddenly that enemy you were stealthing by sees you and all hell breaks loose? It's not really safe to leave a living enemy behind, especially in a non-linear area where you're likely to pass by him several times as you wander about. I believe most players will dispatch all enemies and that bypassing all encounters using stealth will be reserved for so-called "gimmick playthroughs".

Wait, are they planning on removing unlimited quicksaves?

 

[Infinitron]

Wait, can't you use stealth to explore without combat, asks the critic?

Well, with regard to stealth, I think people are overestimating the applicability of that. First of all, it's unlikely that your entire party will be stealth masters. Typically you're going to use stealth to bring one or two of your characters into a position before springing an ambush, or something like that.

More importantly, however, stealth is unreliable. What happens when one of your six stealthed party members fails a roll and suddenly that enemy you were stealthing by sees you and all hell breaks loose? It's not really safe to leave a living enemy behind, especially in a non-linear area where you're likely to pass by him several times as you wander about. I believe most players will dispatch all enemies and that bypassing all encounters using stealth will be reserved for so-called "gimmick playthroughs".

Wait, are they planning on removing unlimited quicksaves?

Nope. But now you're saying people would rather savescum then just kill some motherfuckers and get it over with, which is highly unlikely in this sort of game.

 

[Bubbles]

Well, trash mob fights cut into your limited amount of rests. If you have to walk back five maps to the nearest inn, it might be faster to save scum.

 

[Roguey]

How do you know? There's no official number.

The number of maps make it clear it isn't.

"And, hey, it also didn't have hit point bloat with characters of 100+ hp by level 5. LMFAO The absolute max was 75. And, that was with a dwarf warrior with con of 19. FFS"

HP's just a number. The ratio of damage:stamina doesn't seem all that different from the IE games.

"XP should be sued to suitably reward the player for accomplishing task, over coming challenges,a nd role-playing. PE (so far) fails to do that."

The mewlings of a junkie. XP in and of itself is nothing. You can pretend some numbers went up and the result would be the same.

 

[Volourn]

"HP's just a number. The ratio of damage:stamina doesn't seem all that different from the IE games."

L0L tell that to the anti JRPG league. And, the rate of damage:stamina is different. Stamina goes down quick but it's VERY easy to heal it since every class has at least 2 or 3 ways to heal it and that's not counting the food. The main problem here is actual health damage which means you have to rest every 2-3 battles most likely and not ebcause of runing low of abilities. That needs to be twinked since I'd rather not rest inbetween battles as that is lame.


"The mewlings of a junkie. XP in and of itself is nothing. You can pretend some numbers went up and the result would be the same."

Such idiocy. I was fine with no combat xp in SRR. Even BL handles it better. PE just doesn't handle xp awards well at all - combat, quest, or otherwise.

\Don't be a loser. Don't be a roguey.

 

[roshan]

"By gamers, for gamers me."

It is quite obvious that many people have a problem with this mechanic, so it would be better to a.) return to the old system or b.) create something different that pleases everyone. A NPC that rewards the player with XP and gold/items for killing creatures could possibly work.

It's utterly stupid to produce a game, the only purpose of which is to massage the ego of a particular designer.

This was marketed to fans as a return to IE gaming, but instead such fans are being called "grognards" and there doesn't even seem to be an attempt at replicating the mechanics that made those games fun to play.

 

[Roguey]

"Such idiocy. I was fine with no combat xp in SRR. Even BL handles it better. PE just doesn't handle xp awards well at all - combat, quest, or otherwise."

It's the illusion of an award. The only thing that matters is the level-up, and that's not going to happen with frequency.

This was marketed to fans as a return to IE gaming, but instead such fans are being called "grognards" and there doesn't even seem to be an attempt at replicating the mechanics that made those games fun to play.

"Some players will chime in and say they adore everything about the old Infinity Engine games -- except those core design tenets that identified them." Care to provide more details? What core design tenets do they not like?

Real-time with pause combat, isometric view, D&D mechanics like classes and levels, fantasy settings and races. I think the only major one I haven't seen criticized is that you can have a party.

XP-per-kill: Not a core design tenet that defined them. That's just something included in nearly every RPG because D&D did it and developers are cargo cult as hell. Doing something just because D&D does it is bad when it encourages behaviors you don't want players engaging in.

 

[DraQ]

That's what you said. But for now people have to go through beetles and other agressive wildlife spawning all around, and nobody can say for sure if it will really change or not, and how fun will it be.

Are we addicted to character progress, or something?

Yes? Because it adds options, as new enemies pop with new abilities, and the party should get too, to keep combat fresh and interesting.

I'd say it's the opposite way around.

All this sort of general progress adds is power inflation and opportunity to surmount obstacles via dumb level advantage, devaluing actual thinking and creative solutions and wreaking havoc on cohesive world design.
Vertical progression is naturally uninteresting and XP-based systems are naturally vertical.
Therefore it makes sense to limit vertical progression to what is necessary to make good storytelling.

Cross-posting some of my posts from the Obsidian forums. On the argument that quest-only XP "encourages players to avoid combat":

What sort of combat will it encourage players away from?

"Random encounters" and wilderness "trash mobs"? You can't uncover all of the fog of war and explore the entire map unless you've defeated all of those. This isn't a first person game, you can't "go around" if you really want to see everything. As I stated earlier, for many players, probably the majority of them, this alone will provide sufficient reason not to avoid that variety of combat.

Quest-related encounters? You will typically get XP for defeating those, if not immediately then at the end of your quest chain. You might say that this system incentivizes pacifist solutions to quests, but my impression is that in quests players usually role play, especially since this is an Obsidian game where some degree of long-term choice & consequence may be involved. Also, quest-related encounters usually come with interesting loot, providing another reason to choose the violent solution.

1. The point isn't to encourage players away from combat, the point is to stop encouraging them to specifically seek it. Lack of combat XP isn't some hippie anti-combat solution to character growth it's the one that is neutral as far as combat is concerned and doesn't try to push the player either way in regards to quest choices. This is what makes it *the* superior XP based system.

2. Again, hands off approach. The goal isn't to incentivize pacifism, it's to not disincintivize it with reward system that operates above and beyond the actual gameworld and could be seen as an indicator of what you're supposed to do. If the player decides to kill something motivated by material gains or tactical considerations, then so be it - they have actual, in universe reason to do so. Of course, this being Obsidian game I wouldn't be surprised if going for pacifist solution and forgoing some loot would open up quests with opportunities to get loot or other sorts of benefits later on.

Wait, can't you use stealth to explore without combat, asks the critic?

Well, with regard to stealth, I think people are overestimating the applicability of that. First of all, it's unlikely that your entire party will be stealth masters. Typically you're going to use stealth to bring one or two of your characters into a position before springing an ambush, or something like that.

More importantly, however, stealth is unreliable. What happens when one of your six stealthed party members fails a roll and suddenly that enemy you were stealthing by sees you and all hell breaks loose? It's not really safe to leave a living enemy behind, especially in a non-linear area where you're likely to pass by him several times as you wander about. I believe most players will dispatch all enemies and that bypassing all encounters using stealth will be reserved for so-called "gimmick playthroughs".

Scouting ahead with those party members who were stealth capable was definitely a viable tactics even in highly random BG1.
Even with a stub of a stealth system (like the one in BG) it didn't promote stealth failure to a total one, as you simply were forced into combat on less than optimal terms. OTOH since it didn't happen often, you were fighting less overall, which might be a fair trade off without combat XP even discounting specific quest solutions.

Also, leaving enemy behind is a risk, but OTOH engaging in dangerous, resource consuming combat that could be avoided isn't necessarily desirable, and nonlinear areas also give more opportunities to bypass hostiles completely if you scout ahead, without necessarily missing out on material or tactical advantages.

Then there might be organic-feeling in-universe consequences to killing hostiles or not. Sometimes keeping low profile pays off, sometimes someone can shift sides which means weakened (yay!) or pissed off (u mad?) enemy could become weakened or distrustful ally and therefore a disadvantage, etc.

If the game needs to be a skinner box to be fun, then it's not actually fun.

If side-quests aren't fun with no XP, then you can either play a different game where side-quests are fun, or you can skip the side-quests you don't find fun and find ones that are. You can just beeline straight for the main quest objectives if you don't like them.

I would love to see a flat progression RPG, don't test me.

Actually, why the fuck not?

If we have some sort of overarching storyline/main focus of the game (as opposed to the whole game effectively being about derping around in the wilderness for which any XP based system is ill suited) then shouldn't players decision to take a break from what they are supposed to be doing and go gather 20 bear asses be based strictly on the expected in-universe benefits of such action rather than universal reward currency? Maybe introduce some randomization and randomized timing to sidequests as well as opportunity cost, so that there is no clear trade off between content and loss of content either.

And I definitely wouldn't object to seeing RPG without statwise progression of any sorts. RPGs should be about distinct characters and in-game decisions, not incrementation.

These days even dudebro popamoles that
play have the ++ operator,
so any delusions regarding it being a core part of RPG experience should have long since waned.

 

[Shadenuat]

All this sort of general progress adds is power inflation and opportunity to surmount obstacles via dumb level advantage, devaluing actual thinking and creative solutions and wreaking havoc on cohesive world design.
Vertical progression is naturally uninteresting and XP-based systems are naturally vertical.
Therefore it makes sense to limit vertical progression to what is necessary to make good storytelling.

That is a problem of poor scaling (or rather, no scaling as leveling exists in modern games, where HPs start at 20 and end at 2000). If system is carefully topped after particular levels, and everything is scaled to a medium, the world design would not be harmed, characters will still feel growth, yet even weak creatures, properly used in encounters, would remain a threat. That is why people agree there is a particular "golden" period of growth in D&D, generally between levels 3 to 8-9, before things become ridiculous with all the "epic" stuff.

The point isn't to encourage players away from combat, the point is to stop encouraging them to specifically seek it.

The point was to make multiple approaches to problems viable, but if general game design, like maps, encounters and permanently hostile creatures does not support it too, it would be for nothing.

 

[imweasel]

No longer can you "roleplay" a sociopath who kills people after helping them or sparing them because doing so makes you stronger.

I've read a lot of legit arguments in favor of dropping combat xp. This is not one of them.

-> Quest givers are only worth 1 XP after you you help or spare them.

Problem solved.

What if quest givers give more than one quest? What if they are involved in a more elaborate quest structure where killing them is one of *expected* outcomes?

It is up to the designer how he rewards (or doesn't reward) XP for killing a quest giver. You are acting like it is really complicated and unsolvable problem, when it isn't.

If the player kills the the quest giver before he has done all of his quests, then just give him the kill XP. He will be missing out on a lot of XP anyway in that situation, so who cares. If one of the expected outcomes is to kill the NPC, then only give the player the kill XP and not the objective XP, which he would have received if he would have finished the questline (which is to kill the quest giver).

This Kill XP problematic really isn't a problem anyway. Who gives a flying fuck if a gamer refuses to roleplay and prefers to powergame by killing everything for the last drop of XP. In his OWN game. This is especially true if the game has a hard xp cap.

It is different, because it only applies to quest givers and only after you help or spare them.

Why?

Because that is what a DM would do. I wouldn't reward a player for XP double dipping.

 

[roshan]

"Such idiocy. I was fine with no combat xp in SRR. Even BL handles it better. PE just doesn't handle xp awards well at all - combat, quest, or otherwise."

It's the illusion of an award. The only thing that matters is the level-up, and that's not going to happen with frequency.



XP-per-kill: Not a core design tenet that defined them. That's just something included in nearly every RPG because D&D did it and developers are cargo cult as hell. Doing something just because D&D does it is bad when it encourages behaviors you don't want players engaging in.

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

 

[Bubbles]

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

Had a nice nap, Mr. van Winkle? That school of thought hasn't been relevant since the 90s.

 

[imweasel]

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

Had a nice nap, Mr. van Winkle? That school of thought hasn't been relevant since the 90s.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

What I don't really get is why powergamers, who use diplomacy and then kill the quest-giver are the reason to remove killEXP altogether.

You've got it ass backwards.

The question is why would you possibly *keep* the kill XP if not including it makes for much cleaner and saner solution without losing either verisimilitude or gameplay complexity.

The question isn't how to make kill XP more palatable or whatever. The question is why not fucking ditch it.

Holy quote salad, Batman. I already answered this question, and a few others as well. At length. But oh well.

tl;dr version: I don't think that there is a single right way of making a RPG game. Combat XP worked reasonably well as a mechanic both in IE games, and in ADnD in general. I'm not saying "if it ain't broke - don't fix it", I'm saying that ditching a mechanic which, judging by poll on Obsisian forums, was well liked by a significant part of the target audience isn't really a good idea. I still haven't seen ITT convincing arguments for ditching it, except for Zombra 's posts. Most of other arguments here were a matter of personal preference. Or, in Roguey's case, the usual Sawyer cocksucking.

 

[tuluse]

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

You're right they should leave it up to the player instead of creating incentives for playing in a certain way.

 

[Infinitron]

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

You're right they should leave it up to the player instead of creating incentives for playing in a certain way.

tuluse is broken

 

[Lhynn]

People ITT forget that half the fun of an RPG is vertical character progression, and claim that if you take away that character progression nothing is lost.
Some people ITT are fucking retarded.

XP directly attached to everything i do instead of attached to some fucking goalpost makes me feel like i got the freedom to play the game the way i want to, instead of just having to go along for the ride. Also DraQ get the fuck out of my genre, go play adventure games or RTS, they seem to be so much more suited to your refined taste.

And someone please make these people understand that situations in which you avoid combat by hiding should not be rewarded with XP, certainly not nearly as much as facing the combat directly.

Also finite XP and level cap are fucking disgusting, i feel like im being touched in bad places by the designer every time i play a game where one or both of them are present. Stop fucking telling me what i cant do without a suitable explanation in the narrative you fags.

Edited: Sorry grunka, i just grunked, should have clarified.

 

[Grunker]

People ITT forget that half the fun of an RPG is character progression, and claim that if you take away character progression nothing is lost. [...] people ITT are fucking retarded.

No, people who claim that that the removal of combat XP has anything to do with the removal of character progression are fucking retarded.

 

[thesheeep]

People ITT forget that half the fun of an RPG is character progression, and claim that if you take away character progression nothing is lost. [...] people ITT are fucking retarded.

No, people who claim that that the removal of combat XP has anything to do with the removal of character progression are fucking retarded.

Yup.

And someone please make these people understand that situations in which you avoid combat by hiding should not be rewarded with XP, certainly not nearly as much as facing the combat directly.

Uhm, no?
I'd say sneaking through a zone is as hard for a thief as fighting through the same zone would be for a fighter. If at all, a warrior should get more XP for sneaking and vice versa as it is harder for them. But that would really screw with balancing, making it a nightmare. A general amount of XP for "you have cleared this situation" is just the best solution.
What makes you think sneaking is any less hard than fighting? One mistake while sneaking means the death of the thief. Same thing with a face character talking his way through. One accidental insult - death. The warrior can make a shitload of mistakes before dying, but that is balanced by having to do more checks while fighting than the thief while sneaking.
I think you were just fooled by the action going on while fighting vs. seemingly nothing going on while sneaking. But that does not mean anything of it is harder or easier for the acting characters.

Also finite XP and level cap are fucking disgusting, i feel like im being touched in bad places by the designer every time i play a game where one or both of them are present. Stop fucking telling me what i cant do without a suitable explanation in the narrative you fags.

Well, actually, that's right. Level caps are seriously annoying.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

You're right they should leave it up to the player instead of creating incentives for playing in a certain way.

tuluse is broken

*Whoosh*

 

[Infinitron]

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

You're right they should leave it up to the player instead of creating incentives for playing in a certain way.

tuluse is broken

*Whoosh*

Yeah, I thought it looked like a joke too, but I couldn't actually spot it. Explain?

 

[Grunker]

Who the hell are these perverse designers to decide what players should or shouldn't do? Their purpose is to come up with FUN content and systems and then let players have FUN playing the game how they want. Not to dictate what players should or shouldn't be doing.

You're right they should leave it up to the player instead of creating incentives for playing in a certain way.

tuluse is broken

*Whoosh*

Yeah, I thought it looked like a joke too, but I couldn't actually spot it. Explain?

Removing combat XP = leaving the choice up to the player, because kill XP incentivises one playstyle over all others. In other words, roshan is contradicting himself. That's how I understood it anyway.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

Yeah, I thought it looked like a joke too, but I couldn't actually spot it. Explain?

Combat XP incentivises combat over stealth or dialogue.

 

[Infinitron]

OK, that makes sense, but probably too subtle for roshan to get. Well, that's fixed now.

 

[roshan]

Removing combat XP = leaving the choice up to the player, because kill XP incentivises one playstyle over all others. In other words, roshan is contradicting himself. That's how I understood it anyway.

WRONG! Combat XP provides an alternative means of developing your character aside from doing tasks that Sawyer wants you to be doing. It is not about incentives, it is about actually having the choice to PLAY not DO.