Important thing about P&P RPGS, is that you by no mean meant to earn xp only in combat. If you can resolve the situation without engaging in combat (persuasion, threats, or simply by stealth) - you would still earn full 'combat' xp, from enemies you would fight otherwise.
Of course would later decide to attack foes from which you already earned xp - you will gain no additional xp.

As you understand in CRPG based on D&D it's just as important. If social chck would just clear area of enemies, by will not grant you xp (or not enough xp) - ppl would avoid any social checks, so they would be able to gain more overall xp. And that's unfortunately would be quiet sad experience.

As example windmill situation.
You can talk out bunch of goblins from attacking you. They all run away and you... gain nothing from it (other than avoiding combat).
"Now that sucks!" first thing most gamers would think right after. Reload. And proceed differently with killing every goblin.
And sucks it is, if game properly rewards only when you aim for killing anything that moves.

Now of course it still wouldn't be equal situation. Ran away enemies still will carry all their "loot" with them (with exception of unique encounters, where you actually might convince enemy party drop all their loot and gear).
But nevertheless you should be awarded equal amount of experience from resolving potential conflict nonviolent way.

Lots of people are pointing this out, i really hope they listen

They could even have an optional Milestone XP mode where they just level you up at certain points in the story... does away with the mentality of needing to grind xp and instead just get through the game how you like.

But even without milestone, still big agree. Losing out is already a penalty for not murder-hoboing everything, dont gimp XP too. For D&D you want to reward more interesting behaviour instead of just encouraging everyone to murder hobo everything... makes for better stories. Not saying people can't just go murder hobo if they want, but it shouldn't be the 'best' way to play and reach highest level and best gear.

yeah this is a long running issue in divinity 1 and 2 as well.
It's too common for any player in div (at least in multiplayer) to kill all the map's npc before leaving the map for good!! I mean there is hardly any downside to it!

suggestions:

as it might be hard for them to implant a calculation on kill vs quest reward xp, I suggest they give xp on the "encounter"!
so if you survive a fight encounter regardless of how it ended you will be rewarded the same amount of xp as talking it out.

also if you stealing or mugging you will get no xp for it so it will balance out the players that choose not to do it. (but you will be mugging a person for goods so that is a reward for itself! )

Currently in a situation in game which is a classic example of where this could be implemented.

Yes! It would be nice to have.

Yes there's no incentive to find a non-violent way out of an encounter if the result is you miss out on XP. Finding non-violent ways out of encounters should also be rewarded comparably.

True, but 5e also got this covered - basically everything, from non-combat and social encounters, to traps and skill checks, can be assigned a challenge rating (CR), and thus a corresponding XP value.

SOmething like this tells me they weren't actually ready to make a DnD game but another DoS game with slight rpg nods. Seems they just want us to murder hobo through the whole game

It would be nice, that you would get the same xp for talk and for fights regardless what you chose.

Although the fact that they do not have xp for conversation could have some benefits too, so nothing is influencing the way you play, so you would not reload for a success check.

Yea but the problem is that you have to kill everything that moves to get the xp

+1

True

Honestly I've always been far more of a fan of exp/progression systems based on "goals" rather than single actions.

Vampire Bloodlines comes to mind: if your sub-goal in a quest is, say, "Get rid of these thugs in the courtyard" you get your same two-three talent points by getting rid of them, regardless of how you achieve it.
And yes, you can also reward a blatantly better solution more, if you want. But it's the implicit balance of the system that works, in general.

Agreed. Encounter-based XP works the best, so that you get the a reward regardless of how you reach a resolution for the encounter... and potentially scale the XP depending on how challenging the method you chose is.

Agreed, I hope non-combat alternatives are also rewarded with XP.

I agree with this too. It could be like in the Witcher 3, where you get different xp depending on what you do, but you get some xp regardless.

Yep.

I totally agree with this, Larian please don't make me kill everything I meet just for the exp, I mean we have all these skills and it is exciting when you need a high roll to persuade someone to walk away and you succeed but instead I find myself just rushing through the talking because it has become meaningless and you just want to skip past the conversation to get to the part were you have to kill them to get exp, the writers would feel cheated for all their hard work

+1 to OP.

+1

Agree but level cap has to rise.

Agreed. Being punished for finding other ways to solve a problem isn't great.

Yeah, thought the same thing several times during my playthrough. Not sure how much one would get behind in xp if one went the diplomatic route as often as possible, but it simply feels wrong.

AMEN!!! I hate having to be forced to kill everything to get stronger. It's silly. If we can't then give us alternate means to earn exp like crafting or a small area where wildlife or monsters re-spawn so we can grind if we need.

Agreed, as a DM, it is very important to reward the players for their performance in game, whether its combat or well executed ability checks. If you only give out XP as the result of combat, you run a high risk of turning your campaign into a murder hobo setting were players will go out of their way to kill every enemy and NPC simply for the sake of more XP.

A milestone system is probably the easiest way to deal with this without having to worry about how to balance XP from successful checks vs combat. Otherwise, simply awarding some amount of XP from non-combat resolutions, even if its less XP than what you would have gotten from combat, is still preferable to getting no XP at all for resolving things in a peaceful way.

+1

I was wondering about milestone xp too. The problem I came up with though with that format is the 'open play' style of the map and exploration. As a DM, in PnP I have control as to where the players go and what they encounter. So I am able to make sure there are no TPKs. In a sandbox style of free exploration we are able to go anywhere and encounter things that are too difficult for us to deal with at our current level.

So I feel that we are kinda stuck with the XP earned system.

Larian already adressed it and said it will happen. It's not such a big deal right now, since it is extremely easy to reach level 4 in EA

Well, I wonder WHAT will happen, exactly. Because an important part of making this "fix" work is being sure that the total amount of exp obtainable is (more or less) unchanged.
If it's "Don't worry, we are giving you social exp in dialogues" and then still allowing the player to be a murderhobo and double the reward, they aren't really fixing that much.

As I said the key here (and in any other RPG, really) should be having a goal-based reward system. Give exp for kills only if the combat is the only possible interaction with the encounter.
Otherwise choose a fixed amount of exp to tie to that encounter, and once you reward it (for killing, for solving it pacifically, for fooling your opponents, whatever) any other additional interaction on top is not supposed to give any extra reward.

+1 makes total sense, i would only not out exp on crafting, unless it is based on the difficulty to make the item (yeah in case there is real crafting in final game lol)

So my first playthrough I did talk my way out of the fight. Now in my second playthrough I decided to kill all for XP. There is actually a 3rd scenario that can occur:

Yes

When did they say that? Good to know