My complaints about your hamfisting attempt to solve something that's only a possible issue cause of the limited content available has far reaching impact.
So, yes, the fact that levels don't/won't differ much in the end cause of exponential req to level up is important to note.
Those fights you say last a couple minutes will be adding up if someone really wants that extra level at the end cause he'll be having to repeat that for a good long time during the final release.
Seriously? That's pretty a ridiculous complaint. People aren't likely to be fighting everyone all in a row, but if they do, that is their own choice.
I could gather every crate and vase and sell them for the 1 gold each, but complaining that it takes time and isn't very profitable would just be silly because it would be my own choice.
In fact, anyone who's saying that those couple minutes adding up isn't important should aslo not be complaining about the time wasted repairing items...it's only a couple seconds, eh?? -_- And yet they feel it's important. That's the definition of being a hypocrite.
Wrong. The complaints about repairing are less about the time it takes and more that it is a pointless mechanic which adds nothing interesting to the game.
Then we move onto the fact that you apparently want meta gaming to be a developer concern in an rpg....that's asking for the world on a silver platter. It's infeasible, impractical, and everyone here seems to be targeting a specific playstle cause its in direct contrast to their own and these solutions hold little impact on them overall.
Game balance is, in fact, a developer concern. In a game with no respawns, if a developer allows players to kill everyone on the map including those who would not normally die, that does have to be looked at, even if they decide "nah that's maybe one or two extra levels by the end and doesn't need changing".
The only point anyone here has been able to reasonably make is that the NPCs are too weak for the xp value they give. Either their combat ability should match their level and exp value or the other two should be lowered to match their combat ability. That's it.
Aside from that, making it so the NPCs have some kind of fallback to actually defend themselves well so that murdering an entire town isn't super simple would be nice as well. Whether in the form of more monsters from divine intervention or the guards being alerted and doing their jobs would be nice.
This is a reasonable position.
1. Don't change core mechanics to fill meta game exploits
That depends a lot on what specific mechanics and exploits are being discussed.
It was possible to save-scum for loot in D:OS 1, but Larian decided that was not good for a few reasons (I think largely because it made balancing the loot tables harder), so in the EE, they made it so that loot was generated on first level load and fixed.
I could make the argument that using charisma to convince guards to return to the fort to get the peaceful resolution XP and then before they can leave, triggering combat and murdering them for the combat XP is an unfair exploit.
4. Player choice should never be infringed upon and all choices should feel rewarding in some manner
This depends completely on what you mean by choice. Choices have consequences, and the consequences will inevitably infringe on the player in some manner.
12. If the goddamn difficulty is balanced around a particular level (cause we all know level scaling would be horrendous) and a player wants/desires to break that by leveling up elseswhere and coming back to kill everyone or double dipping cause they know which quests/rewards they want need for ultimate power and who/when to kill or cause being evil in a specific area has gains that reach across a few fights...that's called meta exploits. WHICH SHOULDNT EXPLICITLY BE A DEV CONCERN.
Completely. False. (See above about balance being a valid issue.)
