How hard is the difficulty check for winning the argument (the number your opponent has on his side of the rock-paper-scissors interface that determines how many pips are filled every time they win a round) ?
I think the amount of XP rewarded would depend on that. For example, when you obtain the missing teleporter pyramid and have a verbal joust with the bathing mayor's wife, she gets 8 pips for every won round of rock-paper-scissors, where as the player gets 2. Obviously that's a very difficult argument for the player to win, requiring either a lot of luck or a significant investment in social skills on the player's behalf.
So you're basically saying that a warrior without many points in charm should just skip every dialogue/RPS game because he would be always better off while fighting?
Sorry, but that's the complete opposite of freedom and exactly how it should NOT be. If I invest points in charm I expect to be able to avoid combat encounters because I haven't invested the points in combat abilites. That doesn't mean that fight or dialogue win should offer more rewards. It just means that one way is easier for me because of my leveling/character build decisions. Same is true for someone who puts all points in fighting ablities. Why should someone who invested all points in combat abilites be over the top rewarded for choosing the "easy way" and fight each and everyone? He shold have a fair chance in the RPS game as well but it's of course harder for someone without many points in charm.
So I completely disgree with you. The reward for both outcomes should be exactly the same no matter the difficulty. The game shouldn't motivate the player to always choose one way. The player himself should decide how to play and he should be rewarded as equally as possible no matter how he decided to tackle a sitution. That sounds difficult on paper but in many situations (like the one in my example with only two results) it's very easy and there is imo no reason why the difference in reward should be THAT big.
@Hiver
Well, that's just an excuse. Of course you need XP to level up and gain new abiliites and stuff. Or course it's not a grinding/farming game but that's not the point here. The point is that the game mechanically favors one type of gameplay/approach above another for no apparent reason.
I agree that C&C can result in different outcomes, even mechanically wise. But why should anybody try to win that specific dialogue if the reward for fighting the stone warriors is always the "better option". It's not like the stone warriors were the most dangerous enemies in the game which can't be defeated. They are not harder to defeat than the mob exactly before them and a lot easier to defeat than the enemies that come after them. I agree that in a "true" C&C situation this would be a lot different. But that's not a C&C situation with let's say something that results in different storylines, or different quest outcomes. The only result is a mechanical reward (in XP). There is no difference in story or whatsover...
