For what it's worth, experience isn't very valuable in the early access, anyways. Will almost certainly be different with the full release, but the level cap is so low at the moment that I reached it waaaay before being done with the area.
So avoiding a fight really isn't that bad of a reward at the moment, since you really don't need the extra experience.
That said, I still definitely agree with you in the grand scheme of things. Would be nice to get different rewards for different outcomes and not just a binary yes/no a lot of the time.
Right, sure, but in terms of payoff it's pretty important for the player to feel like they gained some form of recognition for resolving an encounter non-violently. There's a very real pay-off when you kill someone "these guys are dead, I won, I get XP and I get to loot them" and non-violent resolutions need some of that as well currently
