The exploit still exists, however...
I'm still curious to know your ideas on the rewards, though. I've thought about it before but kept running into the issue of capping the player to a certain level per major plot point. They could try adding interesting sub-plots tied to certain random encounters but they would only be able to do so many of those. In general the encounters would be formulaic, right?
I imagine that, especially on subsequent play-throughs, the encounters would feel like they are getting in the way if the rewards aren't satisfying enough or if you've already encountered all the unique encounters.
