Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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Originally Posted by Aurgelmir
In my tabletop games I generally give XP for "encounters" not combat. You get the same amount of XP for making the bandits run away, that you'd get from killing them.
This encourages clever thinking.

But as KainLexington points out, you have to avoid double dipping.

But I do think you get XP for some social encounters. I leveled up after I talked to Kagha for the first time.



There are some milestone / conversation xp, but I agree it would be a fine balance to avoid double dipping and allow it when it is legit. Here we are assuming each "encounter" only happens once, but it is very plausible that you talk your way through one scenario with a person, but have another encounter with the same person, in which you kill them. If you spoke your way through it twice you would get xp for both encounters, but you also should get xp for both if you spoke to them the first time and killed them for the second. It makes sense, but could be tricky to implement.

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Originally Posted by VhexLambda
This game has the same problem divinity original sin 2 has where you get no experience for peacefully resolving conflicts.

What is the point of actually trying to decieve and persuade people when you only get experience for killing enemies?

Lots of 5E campaigns have milestone experience gains.

DOSII had the problem where you would HAVE to just kill everyone in order to play on harder difficulties because if you didn't you would be very underlevled.

Please don't make the same mistake with this game, and allow our player choices to matter. Thank you


Agree 100%

Stop shoehorning people in your linear thinking.

Violance should never be the only solution, it has to be a option.

Last edited by xMardeRx; 15/10/20 01:24 PM.
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+1

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+1


Necromancy is just recycling...
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A big +1 to the OP and everyone else. Totally agree.

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Originally Posted by VhexLambda
This game has the same problem divinity original sin 2 has where you get no experience for peacefully resolving conflicts.

What is the point of actually trying to decieve and persuade people when you only get experience for killing enemies?

Lots of 5E campaigns have milestone experience gains.

DOSII had the problem where you would HAVE to just kill everyone in order to play on harder difficulties because if you didn't you would be very underlevled.

Please don't make the same mistake with this game, and allow our player choices to matter. Thank you



COMPLETELY AGREE!!!!

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Actually I think there are already a few situations in which you do get XP for social interaction. But it doesn't feel like it's being followed through. Just like with fighting, I would like to have consistent and transparent XP gain through social interactions.

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+1

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On the one hand, I certainly think it sucks you don't get xp for talking things out. On the other hand, I did that with my first playthrough and still capped just before I hit the goblin camp. I think they need to reduce combat xp if dialogue checks/dice rolls give xp

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Already discussed elsewhere, but just to reiterate: any modern RPG should have GOAL-based exp, rather than rewarding single actions/kills.
Your goal is getting rid of gnolls? Set a reward for that goal and then give it to the player regardless of how it is achieved.
And yes, you can reward a more sophisticated resolutions or blatantly better outcomes with bonus exp. That's fine.

Last edited by Tuco; 15/10/20 04:19 PM.

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+1

Why are we only getting experience for fighting? Did the developers even play the original Baldur's Gate games... or D&D, for that matter?

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It's probably worth point out that we are getting XP for various bits of conversation.

The problem is that the display for the XP doesn't always come up due to still being in dialog when you get it. You can only tell you have it by either noticing you have leveled up or reading the combat log.

I did a zero kill dialog based warlock run and managed to get to level 3 before getting bored and triggering the end of the EA. (full disclosure, I did get some small bits of XP from combat where a neutral or friendly character killed an enemy before I could run away)


So between dialog and exploring, i think you can stay on target. They really need to improve the XP display though, it's very easy to not notice that you have gained XP

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I don't remember: Does completing the moon and stars puzzle result in XP?
Good to know that there is XP for at least some dialogues. It would be nice to see it displayed somewhere.


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Agree..

I am playing a chaotic good ranger.. and every time she avoids battles and saves innocents etc. she loses the experience and the loot of killing in battle.. getting a successful roll should be rewarded with experience too.. Just my opinion.. But, then I am not a god.. Yet.. LOL


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Originally Posted by Azurinna
Agree..

I am playing a chaotic good ranger.. and every time she avoids battles and saves innocents etc. she loses the experience and the loot of killing in battle.. getting a successful roll should be rewarded with experience too.. Just my opinion.. But, then I am not a god.. Yet.. LOL



Yeah does not feel good to get good rolls and then feel cheated on the XP and loot department.

I can understand loot, but I mean in actual D&D most groups award the milestone xp and offer other ways to get the loot from important enemies than just killing.

Last edited by VhexLambda; 16/10/20 12:05 AM.
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Originally Posted by VhexLambda
This game has the same problem divinity original sin 2 has where you get no experience for peacefully resolving conflicts.

What is the point of actually trying to decieve and persuade people when you only get experience for killing enemies?

Lots of 5E campaigns have milestone experience gains.

DOSII had the problem where you would HAVE to just kill everyone in order to play on harder difficulties because if you didn't you would be very underlevled.

Please don't make the same mistake with this game, and allow our player choices to matter. Thank you



Basically you want this game to lean more toward Planescape:Torment.

How could I not agree ?

Last edited by Hachina; 16/10/20 12:06 AM.

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I'm probably going to get murdered for playing Devil's Advocate, but...

Is it really the "I'm feel like I'm losing XP" that's bothering you? Or is it that you feel there is no reward of *any* kind and decades of computer games have ingrained into you a feeling that you _must_ be rewarded for every little thing you do?

If they add in "social XP", the murder hobos will just say "oh yay! I can double-dip" and they'll do the peaceful thing to get that social XP and then they'll turn around and murder the NPC anyway to get the kill XP. And then they'll post a video of being level 10 in the middle of Act 1 and everyone playing "normally" will feel bad that they're still just level 3 and wonder what they're doing wrong. smile

One "trap" that I realized I was falling into is the "fear of failure" trap. There are quite a few high-DC skill checks and I felt really bad when I missed them. But after playing a while, I adjusted my attitude to "well, if I fail, one door may close, but another may open" and to just go with it. Larian has done a pretty good job of not punishing you too badly for failure. (And there have been a few cases where a successful check was actually worse than failing!) So if they also don't unduly reward you for "success", I think it balances out. Besides, there is an (intangible) reward for social play -- the NPCs are still there to talk to and interact with! There's been a bunch of situations where I saw a group and just assumed they would be hostile so I attacked from stealth, only to have a short cut-scene start and then go straight to a "oh, that's how you want to play it? Attack!" option. It might still have ended in combat, but now I've got FOMO about "what if they had something important to say?"

I would hope that Larian has balanced the game assuming that the player will fight X% of the creatures in the game and that they've balanced their levelling up around that. There are fights you can't avoid (brain doggies, gnolls). Now, if Larian pegs that % too high (e.g. they assume you'll kill 50% of the creatures and yet you manage to kill only 20% and talk your way out of the rest...) then yeah, there's a problem.
But again, I would hope that this is part of why they're doing EA. How fast are people levelling? Is it too quick, is it too slow? Are people finishing EA with roughly the same XP as everyone else? If the average "good" playthrough ends with 3500XP but your average "evil" player ends with 2500 or 4500, they'll want to fix that.

One final example: Lots of games (original BG, iirc up to Pathfinder: Kingmaker) reward you (with XP) for successfully disarming traps. But not BG3! At first, I was disappointed. But then I thought about it and the reward is there -- not having the trap blow you to pieces. Sure, they could also reward you with XP because it's more tangible and obvious than "not getting blown up", but it would also be redundant. If they give out too much XP, people will just power through the levels and then they'll complain "I'm only on Act 2 of 3, but I've already hit the level cap... WTH?".

So yeah... compared to lots of other games (Fallout, etc.), not getting XP for taking the social route seems like a dumb implementation. But it's also (I think), partly expectations that people have been trained into having and maybe need to let go of (like my expecting XP for disarming traps).

I'm not going to complain if they do add it in. But I also believe that it's not the end of the world if they don't. EA is likely going to be a long time (my guess... 6 months to a year or more before final release) and so they'll have plenty of time to tweak and balance and make sure that everyone is able to level at a decent pace.

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Originally Posted by Hachina

Basically you want this game to lean more toward Planescape:Torment


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