As a counter-point to your statement about choice, I believe it's not that the choice is defeated if all choices are practically equivalent. It changes the practical choice into an aesthetic choice or a choice of enjoyment.

Even beyond that, stealing can be worth more money, and the people who steal will also get monster loot benefits etc. that the characters that don't want to steal will get. They will end up with far more money per level regardless, so the choice isn't defeated in this sense.

Everyone who plays RPGs though, as far as I've met, loves the feeling of finding at least some gold on most corpses, if not also looting the enemy's weapon or using its body for crafting components.

So the choice that I think was better, in the context of this new (hopefully) understanding on it, is deciding between some money and loot while bashing up monsters and keeping one's hands off of stolen property (which I am sure many find unbefitting for Source Hunters, who appear to carry public trust and authority, at least to some degree. Also note the dialogue upon first theft), and deciding to steal a lot of things and have a lot of spare money (which can then be used to afford the greens and blues arhu and others sell to boost their effectiveness instead of the combat levels). Theft is so unbelievably easy at this point it requires no investment and is just outright "do it or you will suffer poverty".

So to briefly summarize what I'm getting at is that while they both complete the game similarly in effectiveness, the game probably feels significantly different aesthetically and both parties did not feel punished for sticking to their preferences. I feel like it's a little punishing when you can loot hundreds of gold and dozens of health potions basically on a whim, however out-of-character it is, and if you don't you tend to be skating the lower end of the gold pool if you buy 1 or 2 spells per character per level in the beginning. Probably 1 at best, honestly, if one uses companions (which really appears to be the way to go at this point... and I'm fine with having that be the "optimal" choice, so to speak).

I should stop bothering writing brief. I am not brief, but I am thorough!

Last edited by YoungFreshNewbie; 27/01/14 05:58 PM.