Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Less experience for being good?

We've both said our peace on the exploit. You and others think double-dipping on both persuasion and combat XP is totally legitimate, and I do not for reasons I've already articulated.

I'm not particularly trying to convince YOU. I'm content to just offer my perspective and let Larian decide what, if anything they wish to do about these situations.


You have some decent ideas even though we disagree on a few points here and there. So you want to know my thoughts about Karma? Well, it's really hard to say without understanding what exactly is the effect it will have.

Is it something which only gives a reward later on for maxing out a meter? (And if you're not either pure evil or pure good, there's no big reward?)

Or is Karma a system to restrict quests and NPC reactions? So do too many evil things and whoops a several quests are locked out? That might be an issue in games with limited quests and opportunities to change your morality. All the games I've seen with such meters have respawns as part of those games, although I might not remember or be aware of some others.

I do not find "Just add Karma, problem solved" to be a convincing solution, at least not without defining what Karma is and what role it plays to solve such problems.




I don't agree with a "shut up, it won't matter in the full game" stance. You don't KNOW that, and it's completely legitimate to bring up concerns now and let Larian decide if they are valid or not.

You're point on just giving feedback to Larian is fair, but I was hoping discussion in this thread would make headway to a unified opinion/feedback that everyone could stand together behind united. This would make it so the feedback had a much higher chance of being listened to and taken into consideration and all parties walk away satisfied.

Which is why most of my responses are targeted to the posters in the thread, instead of just leaving my input and walking away.

And what I want to know is input on:
*karma system
*non-exp reward ideas for 'good' player that are more pacifist
*changing NPC combat level to match level and exp value
*ideas to give non-combat NPCs the ability to defend themselves other than swinging fists ineffectually
*ways to define 'good' vs 'bad' action impact on the world

- 'bad' in this case refers to all decisions to kill any innocent NPC in something other than defense, so double dipping would count

The karma system, as I imagine it:

- Reputation would represent karma level and span both into positive and negative direction

- Reputation would effect NPC interactions and available quests and loot and ect... There would be both a minimum karma level the NPC would require to interact with in certain ways

- Evil would be more about getting direct, selfish power. Most law-abiding NPCs wouldn't give loot, handouts, and free quests to mass murders. This would also help stop double dipping in some instances. Some notable NPCs might appreciate the evil PC and give memorable quests.

- More neutral NPCs might give quests with exp but less loot. Desperate ones, the missing child, would remain unaffected because of setting

- Good would be more about helping others and receiving gratification in happy things in happening and unique loot and interactions

- Karma specific loot and skills

- Maximizing karma (one way or the other) would net unique rewards (ie Talent named Savior/Lucifer, unique loot, and/or unique skills)

- All quests would have both a good, evil, and inbetween options. Thus, if someone got locked into good quests they could tailor there actions to change karma and change sides.

- Limited reputation/karma rewards would direct whether someone went more evil or good or bounced between them for more neutral play-through. Someone shouldn't be able to do all quests after all.

- There could also be actions that always give reputation to a limited degree if it was needed. Giving up exp by praying to god for forgiveness or killing someone/something innocent, for example.


This an understandable stance. I'm mostly basing my reasoning off D:OS. While we can't know for sure that things will work out the same, we can reasonably take an educated guess. There's nothing in 2 that implies they wont follow the same limited exp concepts and many things that support it, so I'm working under the assumption that things will work out the same as game one.

*shrug* I could be wrong, but I don't think it's wrong to use game one as a good example to how some mechanics can/will look in the full picture vs specific situations.

Does bad have to mean more exp and good more loot? It could go in both ways. If you are good enough a quest giver perhaps gives a follow up quest, yielding more XP in total. If you kill him you get perhaps some of his special stuff but less XP.

Or a quest giver could offer you access to his vault, if you are famous enough to have him impressed. If you are infamous he will have his troops enforced, because he is afraid of you. The fight would yield more XP but the vault would be locked behind a magical impenetratebal field. Of course it could aswell go the other way, evil guys are more afraid of you and will gather more troops to keep them safe of you.

Killing someone could offer a body part teaching a rare skill, but perhaps this would be to elf focused.

Being good or evil can influence persuasion. Some people are more open to a good guy or more easily threatened. Other people will immediatly fight you, because you are that evil or that good. Meaning some quest will be only available for either side.

If you stay neutral, you perhaps will earn more money instead of loot or XP like an mercenary.

Honestly I think a simple solution is to just try and give nonviolent solutions an equivalent amount of EXP for killing everyone in the encounter. You should be able to roleplay how you want and think with your head for the smartest/best solution. Sometimes that might involve slaughtering everyone, sometimes it might not be fighting at all. You shouldn't be objectively penalized for not killing everything that moves.

You are not penalized. Several posters have in fact demonstrated (in game) that you get more experience by not killing everything that moves. So this is a non issue.
The current debate revolves around the concept of double dipping. i.e. getting the quest exp (more than you would by just killing) and then killing the guys.

It doesn't matter which side has the advantage, they should both be the same. It's not really a hard sell, but people seem to hate everyone being treated equally in this thread... :-/

I don't think it's that at all.

"They should both be the same" doesn't negate the problem of "double-dipping" as this thread is about, meaning you complete the quest the "right" way and then kill everyone for more experience points.

The counter-argument is that "double-dipping" shouldn't be a concern for the developers because there's more than one way to play a single-player game like this.

I'm a role-player at heart, which means I will generally complete quests the way I picture the character I'm playing would. If I'm playing an upstanding knight-type character, for instance, I'll try to avoid stealing and murdering to get what I need. It also means that I'm not really concerned with obtaining all the possible experience points the game has to offer.

Another person may prefer to play the game more like a testing ground for their builds and pushing every corner of a character's limitations by getting as much experience as possible and pushing themselves to the absolute limit the game will permit.

Neither way is "wrong," and neither way has an "advantage" over the other because they're both simply ways to play the game how you enjoy it.

The arena uses premade characters with predefined abilities and gear sets, so it's not like the number-cruncher is going to have a statistical advantage in arena PvP (at least not by virtue of having a character that "double-dipped" in the campaign). And in multiplayer, assuming you can import characters into other players' games, if you don't like the fact that someone "double-dips" or it impedes your enjoyment of the game because they're so much more powerful than your character at the same point in the game, then simply don't play with that person. Instead, find someone or a group of someones that enjoys the game the same way you do.

It really is a non-issue for a single player game like this.

If it were a real issue, several viable solutions have been proffered and the developers could easily just flag quest-givers and quest-related NPCs as "indestructible" once their related quest is completed so a player has to choose between slaughtering them or completing the quest the non-violent way. The problem here is, however, that you're forcing a player to play a single player game a certain way, which is inherently a bad design philosophy in this day-and-age.

I agree with most of your points. Double dipping is basically a non-issue for most players, but I strongly dislike the idea of making any npcs invincible, outside of plot reasons as to why someone might be invincible. I am not saying because they are needed for the plot, but actual story justification as to why they would be.

This is actually good feedback and I'm honestly not really disagreeing with anything you said.

Traditionally, though, 'evil' characters are the ones that would be power hungry. They would be the ones to double dip in a quest for the sake of power and betraying the quest giver. It makes a sort of intuitive sense that 'evil' would playthroughs would revolve around attaining greater direct personal power for a PC.

'Good' PCs generally care less about personal power, but the trade off is influence that can be used to get things. Of course, infamy does the same to a limited degree, but it makes more intuitive sense that more people would be willing to help a 'saint' and that they would be more giving when they 'help.'

As you said, I imagine neutral PCs as those who make more money and gear and might have slightly more combat power than 'good' PCs. A more mercenary playthrough, as you called it. Intuitively, a mercenary generally stronger than a 'good' guy, weaker than the straight up 'evil' one, but also focuses more on material gain and balancing influence, rather than the more lopsided balances of 'good' vs 'evil.'

As you said, depending on how things work out, XP differences per playthrough can change based on quests in such a way that doing the 'evil' quest line or 'good' one nets similar rewards. In this case, double dipping would be the only thing that unbalances things but I already pointed out why I don't think that should be an explicit concern and it matches the 'evil' archetype.

i don't think he was suggesting the method as something that should be done, but pointing out that it was a developer solution in MP games to stop double dipping cause of balance concerns.

In MMOs this is quite common, actually. It's, obviously, hamfisted, but the problem there lied in that the devs are working with too many things at once, with too many players at once to do anything more elegant with the system.

Your complaint still does not make sense. I assume you mean that you have information of how the parts of the game which we have not played yet are designed and that the XP balance deals with the issues under discussion. Is that so?

Do you know that the XP awards for killing vendors etc. in later zones do not increase exponentially as well? This seems to be a hidden assumption.

If you read my comment on time again, you will see that I gave an UPPER BOUND for the time taken. I would in fact be surprised if many lasted more than a few seconds unless other NPCs join in, but if you intend to kill them all anyway this could make the process even more efficient.

I would also be grateful if you could point out where I have complained about the time spent in repairing gear. You are in fact ascribing views to me which I do not have. Weapon repair can be dealt with efficiently so that it does not take up too much time.

As for the charge of hypocrisy, I will only point out that when you point the finger at someone, three more are pointing at you.

Double-dipping will most likely make you evil anyway over time. So some stuff will get automatically locked away if you try to double-dip. And even if you could manage to stay 'neutral', really good and bad stuff would stay locked away.

Questing for a evil one makes you infamous, killing him afterwards perhaps gives you bit good back, but will it compensate the bad influence from the quest? On the other hand helping someone with something good will give you fame, but killing him afterwards will be most likely worse. Evil acts have always bigger influence than acts of good.

The hipocrasy was a general point made at others in the thread. If it doesn't apply to you, don't worry about it.

Also, on this point, I've never complained about time taken to do a task in game. I like tedious tasks. I spend hours grinding, picking up junk items, messing with the crafting system, ect...80 hours in D:OS on is me basically just doing tedious tasks back and forth. Thus, I can't be a hipocrate.

The exponential gains of killing NPCs isn't a thing. All XP values are based off NPC level and some other factors, but is in fact static.

My basis of reasoning is logical application of looking at game one, looking at game two, and seeing that XP works the same way for all intents and purposes.

While, I could be wrong and a level 1 NPC XP reward on kill might change over the course of the game I find it highly unlikely.

My points on exponential costs for leveling can be seen in the EA and further supports the idea that leveling and xp gains work the same as in game one.

Further, you seem to miss the fact that I readily agree that NPC combat level, actual level, and XP value should all be aligned. It currently isnt.

As for your Upper Bound.....it doesn't really matter. If it takes one second to kill any non combat NPC...and there are 120 in the final game. Then someone who killed them all, spent 2 minutes more than you on combat. Those 2 minutes should feel rewarding for the time spent. Obviously this as an extreme case, but still. Maybe the extra 2 min = 200 gold. Realistically, killing all the NPCs takes a good bit of time and effort. Have you ever attempted it in game one? You'll be there for an hour or two at the extreme lower bound, but a couple hours on average.

**Please read everything I write on th thread before hashing at specific points. It's possible you overlook the fact that I do in fact address them

I agree with just about all of this :P

Maybe you could try and flesh out the karma system idea? You seem to have a much better handle on it then I do and it seems what your saying might actually make everyone happy or at least need very little tweaking for all parties to be satisfied.

I guess the basic concept would be like this:

Good:
- People trust you more easily, opening 'good' quest lines and giving bonus on persuasion in some case I guess.
- Good and neutral vendors will offer better prices, at least if you helped someone they know perhaps.
- Everyone evil will be hostile on sight, some evil will have enforced their groups or locked away their treasures.

Slightly good aka Neutral aka Slightly evil:
- You always get the option to demand rewards.
- Neither side will be automatically hostile just because of your 'fame'. There still can be other reasons like 'Magisters'.
- You have access to all vendors. Being 'slightly' might have positive or negative effect on the prices tough.

Evil:
Same as good, just the other way around. Gives of course other persuasion effects because you are more intimidating and less trust worthy.

Pure evil:
- You are so infamous, even the evils are afraid of you. Both good and evil forces will enforce themselves against you and be hostile on sight.
- Only few vendors will still be available for trade, because they don't bother being undead, demonic or whatever.
- Normal NPCs will flee your presence.
- Perhaps pure evil questline from the chaos god or so?

=> Evil deeds are always of bigger impact, than good ones. Fullfilling a good quest line but later killing the quest giver will mostlikely give you more evil than the quests gave you good for example.

The alignment does not depend on reaching a specific number of good or evil, but on the comparison between 'good' & 'neutral' & 'evil' deeds you did.

But I guess, it will be hardly implementable in the actual game without heavy overhaul.

I noticed 2 specific examples. If you smash the annoying gits jar you get 12500XP (as opposed to zero if you suck it up). The other jars make no odds either way. If you manage to talk your way out of fighting the sulky blinded soldier you get nothing but if you kill him you do.

There is no logic really. Sometimes being nice gets you XP, sometimes not. If you got the same XP whatever choice you made it would make it all rather pointless of course.

There is certainly some accounting of behavior though - the rat by braccus shrine said he wouldn't talk to an evil bastard like me on one playthrough rather than telling me about the levers. Perhaps I killed his mum by mistake - who knows.

Perhaps it is possible to maximize XP on each encounter (I'm trying it now as I want to see if I can get to level 9 - I'm not sure if it is possible but maybe). To do that you have to be inconsistent though - I normally prefer to play nice and forgive people and not kill them etc.

My feeling is it is fairly balanced. If you play normally you'll get to the end of act one at level 6 or 7 and level up in the last fight irrespective of your choices. I don't think you can get to the last fight being level 8 before you start and I've had a fair few goes at it.

None of it makes any odds though as after level 6 or 7 there are lots of items with +7 or more stats so I find balancing the random stuff I get more of a challenge than choosing for a character.

Being a villain is so much fun and pleasure.

I got to level 9 on the playthrough I did with the latest patch, and that's with a bug that prevented the final boss from spawning (and it's worth a lot). I didn't murder any civilian/passive NPCs even, just all the guards.
Getting the extra XP from a couple of companion dialogs helped, and I did explore everywhere and do every quest.

Edit: On second thought, I did kill all of the silent monks.

What do you get if you "absorb" the jars? When I did it, I got nothing...

I think you get a Source Point if you have had your collar removed and aren't already at 3.