I think it's more of a design philosophy difference between Larian and Bethesda.
Definitely. Sadly, Bethesda is much more well known than Larian. But the issue is respawning here.
I think changing the game to allow for grinding of infinite XP, even in small amounts, would be a huge headache to implement and an gigantic migrane to balance - look how unbalanced the XP gains are already in the alpha, and that's with limited XP and without quest XP for some quests added in yet.
You don't get my point here. I don't think the interest of respawn is grinding on infinite XPs, it is adding a sense of unpredictability (wew, that was a hard one ^^) to the world. And then, if the player wants to spend hours hanging around in a forest, that is an easy choice given to him.
I haven't seen the editor yet, but implementing it and balancing it is could be very easy, you can believe me, I created these kind of systems for all my mods.
Could be as simple as a hunting ground, where you can hunt some game (instead of stupidly finding "sinews" in random barrels...). Many ways to balance this.
IMHO, proper coherent NPC's schedule could be so much more difficult to set up (a house to create, and beds for each NPC/citizen, activities, scripts..) than random respawning. And all this to have some players kill every NPC's. Not worth the pain IMHO. And for what effect ? "Hey look, that Citizen GOES TO BED, HOW AMAZING"...
And then, some areas can be cleanable. Once again, it has to make sense. Cleaning a crypt from its undeads would make sense (but then, after some time, one could imagine that some critters settle in, or a necromancer could be back in business), cleaning a forest from its animals, mushrooms, plants, is utterlly stupid in a "realistic" way. Even then, respawning could be "fun", like "Hey, I know a place where there are special mushrooms, let's go check it." and then, you encouter bears, an orcish patrol, an undead swarm, a forest fire, whatever random spawn could be created. And make an adventure just to go get some shrooms.
Some players ARE grinders. Respawn can also offer them a cheap way to find something "fun" to do, and so kindda widen the audience to some extend.
And then, what if I miss 500 XPs to gain a level ? I could go explore the forest a little bit.
I really am for a steady flow of low XPs than for a big rush of them. It makes casual actions more rewarding, and so "everyday actions less boring".
And of course, I keep in mind that this is alpha, and only a small part of the game.
