Do any quests give different XP depending on what choices I make? for example are there quests where if I decide to help someone would I get more/less XP then if I decided to kill him?

I believe so, but I cannot confirm.

I KNOW that winning arguments gets you XP, so if you fail to win arguments then you miss XP.

Yes. Choosing the path with the most bloodshed that still lets you complete the quest generally gives the most exp. Also, some even where your choosing between two non-violent solutions, exp rewards can differ.

Choices and consequences?

Sound familiar?

Yes.

Blinkicide is right.
Like most other RPG's here too combat XP is so excessive that it pretty much always thriumps any peaceful paths.

Which is why I look forward to Pillars of Eternity not having combat XP. A lot of people whined, complained and threatened about that, but it's really the only reason to properly give alternative solutions without putting one clearly infront of the other XP-wise...

If you want to max your XP during your encounters with immaculates and other opponents that can be reasoned with, try getting the charisma xp from the peaceful solution, trade with them and kill them afterwards.

I was surprised to see a couple of times I got a Charisma XP, was pretty nice.

That isn't true, peaceful solutions often give much more XP than violent ones in D:OS.


Not rewarding combat with XP is the most ridiculous mechanic ever. If D:OS had this mechanic then you skip half of the game. Why have an intricate combat system and not reward combat with XP? Doesn't make any sense, unless you are making a game called Pacifist: The Pacification or Stealth: Ghost Stealth.

There are many ways to prevent double-dipping of XP and to not make the violent solution the most profitable XP wise. But at least PoE is the only game that will have this stupid mechanic.

*cough*

Deus Ex, Vampire: Bloodlines.
Dang, the best RPG's ever all have this mechanic too. Must be something there.

Also look at how everyone avoids combat in those games... wait; no, they don't.
But I've discussed all those fake strawmans too much on Obsidians boards to repeat it here.

Okay, humour me. Give a single instance where XP for peace is higher than for war. Not including cheatery double-dip "get charisma XP then kill them all anyway"...

Oh right, I forgot Deus Ex and Bloodlines, those games with tactical, group based combat that don't have an extremely large focus on stealth.

OH SNAP.

Those games are a completely different beast with large focus on stealth and no tactical and strategical combat. What are you going to come up for your next strawman? Final Fantasy is great, so that is why random encounters would be great for an isometric Baldur's Gate-like game? DOOM is a great shooter, so PoE should play like a shooter?

Back on topic, yes, another example would be what to do about the guards who were supposed to check out the lighthouse. Assuming you checked it out for them, and then told them all of the details, when you get back to Captain Aureus you can either say they did it, or that you did it. If you say they did it, you get like 6k exp. If you say you did it, you get 3k exp and the Blunt trait, which imo is worth a hell of a lot more than 3k exp, especially if duo lone wolfing

Sure. If we're talking about H'n'S games. In RPGs I think it is pretty amazing idea. I always liked RPGs which let you take any approach you want, diplomacy, stealth, combat. You should get XP for finishing the quests, etc. - it shouldn't matter which way you accomplish it. And yet most of RPGs force you to murder everything, because stealth/diplomacy gives you 1/10 of the XP you would get from slaughter. I'm happy to hear that PoE will take different approach to the XP, and won't reward stupid brute force solutions more than other play-styles.

For the umpteenth time, peaceful solutions often give you more xp than violent ones and often also have other benefits. Why is this so hard to understand?

Baldur's Gate did this almost perfectly.

Lol, BG was all about fighting. Stealth and diplomacy were almost non-existent. And anyway, in most of games when peaceful solutions give you exp, you can still go back and slaughter enemies, and get exp again. Balancing combat and other approaches XP is very hard and complicated. Removing combat XP is simple and fair solution. You finish quest - you gain xp. Doesn't matter if you used stealth, diplomacy, or just slaughtered everything.

Guys, it really depends on what exact kind of an RPG a game is.

DOS is clearly one of those that are heavily focused on action and combat as its main feature.

Pillars of Eternity clearly isnt, or doesnt want to be so focused on actually killing enemies as the main source (ahem) of XP.

New Torment will do that even less. For example.

Back to OS, considering its focus on action and combat there are several quest solutions that give very big rewards for different diplomatic solutions. But this game cannot be a different type of an RPG then it is.

AND most importantly, you cannot expect that every solution and every choice will give you same amounts of XP or other rewards because that completely removes the core feature of choices and consequences - and that makes the game less of an RPG.

Because then there is no difference to anything you do (including different choices in skills and stats) and that is an action game. Not an RPG.

Of course it was mostly about fighting, because it is a combat based game. There were many dimplomatic and non-violent ways of ending quests, many of which gave the player much more XP than a violent solution.


There are ways to prevent XP double-dipping for those who cannot control themselves after turning in a quest. "Designer is lazy or incompetent" is not a good excuse.


It's only a problem if the designer is lazy and/or incompetent.

What about any combat situation that has nothing to do with a quest, will you engage in optional combat for no reward? Of course not. Will you try to slip by every single combat situation unless it is a boss with good loot? Of course you will. Will combat feel unfulfilling because the game will force combat on the player in certain situations and not reward him accordingly? Of course it will.

... But you seem to know better, D:OS can apparently never be a great game because it rewards the player for combat and in turn doesn't make half of the game completely redundant.

Basically what we have here are two different preconceptions.

Some people think that DOS is a game where any approach is valid, as long as it gets the job done.
Some people think that DOS is a hack n slash game where you can occasionally use stealth or diplomancy. (most crpgs in history have been this kind)

For the former, XP should be awarded based on results not methods. I should get XP for completing my goals. So no matter how I complete them, I get the same XP. Every approach is equally valid as every other approach.

For the latter, XP should be awarded for killing things (since that's what the game is primarily about).

Imho DOS is trying to be the former, not the latter, but that's clearly not a universal belief.

The problem is, that a lot of the enemies aren't really linked to the quests, but to the enviroment.

Yeah, I was as well quite irritated about this. Evading some guards with sneaking. invisibility, etc punish you with quite a lot xp loss and there is no real good reason for that. Actually iirc even Torment had a lot of non-combat xp for different solutions to problems that made sure that you do not fall behind in xp for being to clever for combat.

I put this into the same category as the late and incomplete translation, missing dice in my collectors edition, only 2 companion characters, which are not fleshed out much, etc: Budget and time issues.

Makes me a little sad, but I am still very, very happy with the game, so what? Could be the game even better? Jup. Is it still better than Baldurs Gate 1? Yes! So I am quite happy and hope for the next Larian game which maybe does spend just a little more time and money on the polish.

If only reward for combat is a little amount of XP, I wouldn't engage in it anyway. Enemies should be obstacles on your way to achieve something. Placing random groups to fight as a means of leveling, because devs are too lazy to think of some more interesting ways to let players get XP, is just poor design in non combat-focused RPG.




Again - if this is stupid filler fight out of nowhere, I would avoid it anyway if I could. But if these enemies look like they can have a good loot, or they are blocking some paths i would like to explore, I would fight them. And I'm talking about mindless monsters of course, because with sentient beings you can find infinite amounts of ways to make combat personal and interesting, so the players won't care about XP.





Yes, it will. If the game would force combat on the players and wouldn't reward them. But it will reward them. Rewarding will be just handled differently than in combat-focused RPGs.




Lol, I never said anything about D:OS. D:OS is great heavily combat-focused game, fighting is the main selling point, while story is less important here. So of course it should have combat XP.

PoE and new Torment, on the other hand, will be more narrative focused games, where combat won't be a goal of playing, but one of many possible approaches, a way to get things done. And in that kind of RPG, lack of combat XP makes sense.

RPG is a very wide genre, there are heavily combat-focused H'n'S-like titles, and also those focused on narrative, closer to adventure games than to combat RPGs. So of course some things which are great in one RPG, can be a very bad idea in other.

Those are choices that should be left up to the player, he should decide if he want/needs that xp or not, this decision shouldn't be forced upon him.

Not rewarding a player with combat xp is just as stupid as not rewarding a player with quest xp in a combat-focused RPG.


True for Torment, because it will hardly have any combat and will be almost completely driven by the narrative. It will only have quest xp and that makes sense.

Not true for Pillars of Eternity though, the game is combat focused, just like Baldur's Gate. Just watch the gameplay video; PoE has lots of combat, but no rewards. I can also dig out the videos where Josh Sawyer and Chris Avellone explicitly said that the gameplay will be focused on Baldur's Gate.

I'm going to bet once PoE is out you'll wonder why no other devs do this and prefer it to the current situation in future games.

And yes, PoE is more combat-centric than D:OS even. D:OS enemies are on their way to quests, or bosses of quests. There's a complete foundation for no combat XP at all, and you wouldn't notice a thing since you would still fight equal as much as now.
Just without stupid stuff like "charisma XP, then kill them all for some more XP" or "murder the entire village for XP" and all that stuff that developers now had/have to put time in to fix. It's not that easy to make all NPC's of a quest not give XP after quest resolution. Many games who've tried have many broken instances of it and other mayhem... and sometimes; who's related to a quest anyway?
And in the time it takes developers to code XP nullifiers for all quests, couldn't they better add more quests? I say yes.

Also no Combat XP will allow PoE to have ACTUAL difficulty levels, unlike what all other RPG's have nowadays (including D:OS) just affecting Hitpoints and Damage.
They can tweak encounters... easy will give less enemies or less powerful (with combat XP this would also mean less XP, eventually making Easy less easy)... Hard could feature more and stronger enemies without risking that those enemies higher XP makes Hard easy.

Sure, some people come to the forum and suggest Hard should give more XP and better items as incentive for them to play Hard... but I really think those people miss the entire point of difficulty levels, not to mention adding such boosts nullifies "Hard" in the first place.
Easy, Normal, Hard and any other levels are there so people can play their own level. It would be unfair to punish new players just because they aren't good at RPG's... nor do we want people go HARD for the boni and then come whining to the forums for massive nerfs to make game easier since they don't want to go down (something similar I've seen here simply since Easy is called Easy... facepalming material)...

No, and No.

You've fundamentally misunderstood how the mechanics of D:OS work if you think this.

The reason is simple: there is no NPC magical immunity. You can, if you want, complete all quests then massacre the entire inhabitants of cities (something I did in Beta to prove a point about the non-functioning criminal code). That achievement for killing Arhu is there for a reason.

To put this more succinctly - Quest Reward flags [Xp, Items et al] and Kill flags [direct XP] are not really entwined in a meaningful way. Look at the code if you want to know why.

And, no. BG didn't do this at all. Despite the rose coloured spectacles, BG is an incredibly limited engine. AKA - why everyone tried to kill the Drizzt character for those sweet swords / items. Yes, you know you did.

You can make an argument that by not being peaceful you miss out on certain XP / item awards, but you're not really understanding the mechanics. This only works if the game is counting a NPC as an unique NPC and not a mob. The flags don't care if you hand in a blood stained panties or a perfumed panties.


TL;DR

You need to parse out the difference between XP / Item >>Quest<< rewards for completion, and incidental >>kill<< XP. Also you'll need to parse out what exact # XP is given for winning the Paper-Stone-Scissor game via other methods.

In the beta, there was no difference to a quest if you solved it via violence, sniffing panties or whatever.



p.s.


Your Avatar is irksome.

Sure, if I realise that always avoiding combat whenever possible is fun. Which will never happen.


Killing all of the world's inhabitants for probably less than 2% of all XP in the world is game breaking because it makes your party too powerful?

*facepalm*

Anyway, yes, we already covered the xp double-dipping problematic (which really isn't a serious problem). There are many ways to fix this if the designer is competent and not lazy. This ridiculous argument is getting really old really quick.


As is your entire post.

Combat XP can also be given for the entire encounter, no matter how it is scaled to the difficulty setting, and not just per creature. Sort of like how it is done in PnP.

It's up to the designer, quite a bit is possible if he isn't lazy and is also competent.

If you would not be such a scrooge and give larian more money, I am quite sure they would have been happy to invest into more polish for the game, instead of investing more of their private money into the game. ;-)

You are aware that you acting like a spoiled brat with your insulting attitude? Until proven otherwise I will assume that you act unintentional that way and do not mean to be insulting with your constantly implying that larian is incompetent and lazy.

What?

I wasn't even talking about Larian. Larian are from from being lazy and incompetent, I love these guys.

The thread has went off topic, we are discussing games that don't reward combat with XP, which has nothing to do with D:OS.

You know, you keep talking about features that are not in the game, and mentioned that they are easy to implement if you are not lazy not incomponent. It implying something that you seemed not want to imply.

As you love larian, and are aware of resource limitations maybe other words than 'lazy' and 'incompetent' would be better. How about 'reasonable easy to implement'? ;-)

I just wrote that we are not talking about D:OS, the thread has went off topic. I was generalizing about games that don't reward players for combat at all, which has nothing to do with D:OS. I.e. D:OS does it right, some other games don't.

DO:S handeled the XP system absolutely fine, even though some guys here apparently think that it would be an even better game if there was no xp reward for combat.

Let's give you an example...

There's this area, lava-ey... the developers made 3 paths...
A lets you fight 20 dudes
B lets you stealth invincible dudes
C lets you walk over lava

Probably a lot of developertime went into this, area design, encounter design... it takes up a large chunck of the map... let's see what XP each patch gives.

A gives you... 20x 700XP and the 5000XP quest reward.
B gives you 5000XP. C gives you 5000XP.

Congratiolations, you just voided your work, and instead of 3 options, there really only is one. The only way to force people there would be cheap carrots (say, achievements) but people would still clean A afterwards since it's just too much XP to leave.

A system that would have rewarded "go from A to B, no-matter which 3 paths" would not have that. All 3 options would be equally valuable, and a beatifully crafted area would not be nullified by one of it's path being superior in every way.

And yes, I and many others would still fight... since stealthing the invincible dues is really harder, as you would know if you tried playing said area.
Just imagine how much FUN playing Luculla Mines "avoid the Death Kinght" for a full 50 hours... not so much eh. You probably would do the combat since it's much more fun... and not torment yourself playing just 'cause it gives no XP'... studies probably will show you people will go from A to B with the path of least resistance after all.

Also, look at all the fun fixing Larian had to do in beta;
* Exploit; Respawned enemies gave XP.
* Exploit; Summons gave XP. Full version still even has a few of these.
* Exploit; Killing civvies gave massive XP. Severly curved now, but it's still quite some. And yes, people will murder entire civilisations just for experience...
* Issue; Peace didn't pay off! Charisma XP was invented.
* Resolved issue-new issue; Charisma-claiming and then killing everyone was born.

Etc. etc. etc.
All that time that could have gone to better use if the system was solid from the start, as it appears PoE's will be.

The problem is
"How do you give XP to the player for achieving their goals, without making them wait a LONG time to get xp"?

I mean think about the Jake quest. It's the first quest you get in the entire game, and you don't complete it until well into act 2. Almost everything between when you get it and when you complete it is optional.
Does that mean you shouldn't get XP for these things? Because they're optional side-paths, that some builds will have a harder time discovering?

Results-based XP relies on allowing the player to get results quickly. But many of DOS' quests string the player along, with one clue leading to another leading to another, and you never actually get results until several hours later.

Well, of course you don't give XP just for completing a quest, moving it along is perfectly fine (especially for those longer quest chains). Then there's the exploration XP etc.

Enough to work with even if you disable XP per kill to grant out stuff and keep people going around in the right direction.

Having looked at this again, there are different XP rewards for different choices in quests. e.g. At the end of the lighthouse quest, if you send the troops back, then interrupt their story, you get 3,000 xp for claiming the glory, but 6,300 xp for letting them take it. This also triggers a trait bonus from each choice (and an achievement), which is kind of irritating.

This is the only dialogue one I've come across, however I've not reached the 2nd map.



Pulling up the quests via the editor will probably give you a larger list.