...then Larian is going to...
Right now nothing in the story requires the player to utilize those tactics. Doing so makes the game more fun for some folks, but it's in no way necessary to get around any challenges or progress the story.
What you seem to be doing is making a slippery slope argument. And it's a very shaky argument. You're essentially saying, "If this exists then I'll have to use it at some point down the line even if I don't have to use it now."
That's not a strong argument. It's making a prediction while pretending at logic.
Why would a feature exist that you don't have to use? Simple. Because Larian offers multiple ways to get past challenges. And it's there because some people enjoy it. It literally makes the game more interesting for them.
To bring up an example, in numerous games with lots of items that do varied things, the difficulty levels often point out specifically that at higher difficulty levels good use of items will be necessary for success. But at lower difficulties you can usually just ignore items. In the pathfinder games, at low difficulty you can more or less ignore the specifics of equipment, but after a certain point you need to nickle and dime every benefit you possibly can. My argument is that if these are features that are meant to exist, then Larian is going to take them into account because why wouldn't they? And if these are exploits, happy accidents that Larian simply are allowing to continue existing, they either should be removed unless their removal would make the game as a whole tangibly worse, or it should be understood that the onus for them being disliked should be on Larian for leaving them, and not on the players who dislike their presence.
Why should we assume that at higher levels, difficulty isn't going to be balanced around various exploits?
Bcs that is litteraly
not what exploits are for?
I was mainly arguing against JandK's claim that these are features rather than mistakes, since my understanding of an 'exploit' in a video game context is that they're inherently mistakes of some description.
Why wouldn't they think "hey there should be a sneak puzzle here," thus forcing players to engage in the exploitable stealth system?
There allready is sneak puzzle ...
Two of them actualy.
One is in Druid passage, those statues.
And second is in the Underdark, Turrets around mage tower.
How you exploited either of them?
Fun fact, I've only encountered the druid statues in one playthrough. I did not understand what was going on at all and Gale died and it was a whole mess and I just ran away. I don't think I even fully understood it was meant to be a sneak puzzle. My party just started getting damaged and I think one of them died before I understood the statues were causing it, I panicked and everything just got weird. I've also never been to the Underdark in any playthrough. Even in the one playthrough where I got into the chamber under the selunite temple, I couldn't figure out how to get the door open and it didn't make sense RP-wise for my character to just randomly jump down crevicies until she by chance found a different way down.
Why would they create all these systems and then forget about them when designing the rest of the game?
Why would they tho?
Look, i like you uncolored spirit ... but reading this, i cant help the feeling that your fear clouded your judgement ... i hope it was just purposefully written this way and it dont reflects your actual expectations. :-/
But this is path to madness ...
You cant go out, bcs car *could* drive over you ... but you also cant stay home, bcs "most accidents happens at home" ... etc.
Yes, bad things *can* happen ... but what is reason to fear them if there is litteraly nothing pointing out that their probability is at least average? :-/
(Hint: There is none.
)
My posts the other day did get pretty passionate. My prior post about feelings towards exploits started getting a bit of "purge the heretic" energy that I hadn't intended, based on my insistence that the default approach with any mistake in game design should be to remove it unless it definitively would make the game worse not to. As for the fear you're talking about, I like to think it's not refective of how I am. I think these exploits are all just mistakes and because of that Larian isn't actually going to plan things around them. Even if they were, I'm gonna be playing this on the lowest difficultty level anyway so I'd probably be safe. In life generally, I'm self aware enough to know that I probably do live with an unhealthy amount of fear, but not to the level of your examples. I can go out, but I do get pretty nervous about crossing roads, and I will never actually drive a car because the danger and responsibility there are far too great for me to shoulder. But that's all an aside. I do appreciate your concern though, thanks.
