Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Milestone XP Gains

I'd like to see all XP gains come from main quest milestones instead of defeating enemies. I don't want this game to become like DOS:2 where the best way to play is to kill everything you see. It restricts roleplay flexibility.

PERSONALLY I think what PoE1&2 (and earlier Deus Ex) did with rewarding players almost exclusively for quests was brilliant. That said, some (many?) people disliked it. Balancing various playstyles becomes trickier, if player can miss out on XP through their playstyle.

That's why I'm think binding XP to main story progress only would be great. Balancing is a lot easier of players are at predictable levels with no variance because they have all been progressing the main questline.

But players in BG3 don't have to actually complete main questlines, right? A player can land on the beach, explore the tomb, skip the grove, fight through the blighted village, and then head to any of the routes away from this first map area. This skips practically everything that can be considered a Main Quest: entering the Grove, encountering Nettie, choosing a tieflings vs goblins side, rescuing Halsin, talking to the Hag, and encountering the Githyanki, and so wouldn't level up under your system.

If, in addition to the above, the player also fights through the swamp (not entering Ethel's house), the gnolls + tollhouse, and the underdark, then they really should have gotten enough exp to level up even though they've still made ~no/little Main Story Progress.

I'd argue that a mix of exp from defeated enemies, quests, exploration, and dialogues is best for a Larian-style game. It still allows the freedom to explore wherever you want and to do/not do certain quests, while still being able to level up. It averages out the exp into many smaller chunks, which is it's own method of ensuring that most players are around the same level of exp.

Those are all sidequests. The milestones of early quest completion would probably have to be exploration as you find the way to remove your tadpole. The same quest reward could be tied to multiple different paths but they would be exclusive to each other. You could still complete all paths for story and loot but you would not gain more XP for doing so.

Agreed ...

-1 to this topic. :-/

I think xp should be tied solely to the amount of treasure you get.

I'm not a big fan of filler combat. PoE's problem was, unless they added a bunch of filler combat encounters after their "XP from defeating enemies" change, that it was too much pointless, boring combat. I didn't play it before the change (it was during development/beta testing iirc?) but I certainly wouldn't have wanted all that filler combat to be even more pointless and not even rewarding XP.

BG3 doesn't have all that much filler combat. Quest tied xp earning makes more sense for it. Could do like PoE and have the majority of XP be quest/ discovery/encounter based and only reward small slices for direct combat kills. Iirc in BG2 you eventually had such large numbers kill XP were basically insignificant and only the quest reward XP mattered.

I like the idea conceptually since it rewards diplomatic/stealth solutions. In a system with different leveling pathways with dedicated XP to each one would be really interesting.

But D&D is essentially a combat system, how your mage will learn powerful spells if he essentially talks his way through?

I agree but that’s a problem not exactly tied to XP. Kingmaker had traditional XP and was also filled with tedious, copy pasted mobs.

I think PoE2 improved the formula - more handcrafted and varies encounters, XP given by doing stuff, and rewarded player for doing optional encounters with unique items. At the same time, it went very open world, while trying to support brief crit path resulting in massive over abundance XP and very steep negative difficulty curve. Try again Obsidian :-(

I think BG3 will suffer the same issue, unless they go D:OS2 way - pretty much require players to do most of the content through regular difficulty gating - or like was suggested will introduce levels limit per chapter. In which case “skipping” XP shouldn’t matter as long as players to enough stuff per chapter, and would prevent completionists from getting too far ahead.

Just for a sake of argument: Let we say that Act 1 is 1-6 level, Act 2 is 6-10 level and Act 3 is 10-12 level.
My personal opinion is:
Bad game design: You need to complete main quest, all side quests, exploration and companions quests to be level 6 at the end of Act 1, level 10 at the end of Act 2 and level 12 at 70% of Act 3. And if you miss something you are under level for next zone. So basically game is pushing you.
Good game design: For completing main quest you are level 6 at the end of Act 1, level 10 at the end of Act 2 and level 12 at the 70% of Act 3. And side quests, exploration and companions quests are here to makes your journey through main quest easier. Like that gives you at most 1 level higher, some items, potions, enchants etc. So they here as optional thing not mandatory. So game is rewarding you.
Also I sincerely would like to play with full custom party. Only think that I’m afraid of is missing experience from companions quests.

I believe the used system will be somewhere in the middle.

You will be able to reach final level of act by just completing main quest and related sidequests ...
But nothin will stop you from exploring other zones and do sidequests there aswell ... wich would bring you a lot lot lot higher ... therefore the level cap.

I mean so far i dont see any reason for character sided with Minthara to go to Grymforge. O_o
Unless its her companion that we are suppose to meet in mountain pass will also have broken moonlantern ... and they will keep sending us in circles to each other ... and we will be forced to face the Shadowcurse in thw end no matter what. :-/
Peraonaly i hope not that would be terrible design ... even tho it would probably be the only way to force us to visit all locations.

Wich would ofcourse change the perspective of first part of my post ... since the premise here is that we will not visit them all.