My complaints about your hamfisting attempt to solve something that's only a possible issue cause of the limited content available has far reaching impact.
So, yes, the fact that levels don't/won't differ much in the end cause of exponential req to level up is important to note.
Those fights you say last a couple minutes will be adding up if someone really wants that extra level at the end cause he'll be having to repeat that for a good long time during the final release.
Seriously? That's pretty a ridiculous complaint.
Not really a complaint. More a statement of fact on the effort the individual puts in. You could equate it to the same effort as picking up every stone, plate, sea shell, ect .. in game for that extra 200 gold from all the junk value.
I find it silly people are complaining that someone has the choice to do such. Would an extra 200 gold make that big a difference? Should someone not be rewarded for the tedious task upon completion? Should they not even have the option?
In fact, anyone who's saying that those couple minutes adding up isn't important should aslo not be complaining about the time wasted repairing items...it's only a couple seconds, eh?? -_- And yet they feel it's important. That's the definition of being a hypocrite.
Wrong. The complaints about repairing are less about the time it takes and more that it is a pointless mechanic which adds nothing interesting to the game.
In point of fact, it was part of the complaints concerning repairing and why the 'repair all' button was swung about a bit before discussion of just removing it or changing it came about.
I could dig up the posts mentioning such if you'd like. Hell, when I pointed out it was only a second of work and a repair all would shrink that further. The accumulated wasted time was the counter thrown at me.
Then we move onto the fact that you apparently want meta gaming to be a developer concern in an rpg....that's asking for the world on a silver platter. It's infeasible, impractical, and everyone here seems to be targeting a specific playstle cause its in direct contrast to their own and these solutions hold little impact on them overall.
Game balance is, in fact, a developer concern. In a game with no respawns, if a developer allows players to kill everyone on the map including those who would not normally die, that does have to be looked at, even if they decide "nah that's maybe one or two extra levels by the end and doesn't need changing".
That's my point: the game is balanced and that balance can be broken, but that's not necessarily a bad thing (1) since its a legit play style and (2) the difference hardly matters much in the grand scheme (refering to my 200 gold comparison).
The only point anyone here has been able to reasonably make is that the NPCs are too weak for the xp value they give. Either their combat ability should match their level and exp value or the other two should be lowered to match their combat ability. That's it.
Aside from that, making it so the NPCs have some kind of fallback to actually defend themselves well so that murdering an entire town isn't super simple would be nice as well. Whether in the form of more monsters from divine intervention or the guards being alerted and doing their jobs would be nice.
This is a reasonable position.
I'm glad you can see that.
1. Don't change core mechanics to fill meta game exploits
That depends a lot on what specific mechanics and exploits are being discussed.
It was possible to save-scum for loot in D:OS 1, but Larian decided that was not good for a few reasons (I think largely because it made balancing the loot tables harder), so in the EE, they made it so that loot was generated on first level load and fixed.
I could make the argument that using charisma to convince guards to return to the fort to get the peaceful resolution XP and then before they can leave, triggering combat and murdering them for the combat XP is an unfair exploit.
I actually saw nothing wrong with save-scumming loot. *shrug* Larian can choose what they care about or not. But I feel that had more to do with discouraging it since you can still save scum the loot seed if you know how.
Which goes back to my point of 'discourage, but not impossible.'
I also see nothing wrong with the exploit you mentioned. You worked out how to successfully do the charisma trigger and then actually had combat where they could defend themselves.
4. Player choice should never be infringed upon and all choices should feel rewarding in some manner
This depends completely on what you mean by choice. Choices have consequences, and the consequences will inevitably infringe on the player in some manner.
Yes: choice -> reward and consequence should be given in equal measure.
Evil -> reward: combat ability improved, consequence: lose out on whatever 'good' players get
I've been pointing out that simple factoid all this time.
You're arguing to unilaterally punish one play style instead of rewarding the other.
The rewards of each should be the cost that goes into each choice to decide one or the other. Invariably, double dipping is possible but thats meta and any ad hoc karma system would solve that candidly.
12. If the goddamn difficulty is balanced around a particular level (cause we all know level scaling would be horrendous) and a player wants/desires to break that by leveling up elseswhere and coming back to kill everyone or double dipping cause they know which quests/rewards they want need for ultimate power and who/when to kill or cause being evil in a specific area has gains that reach across a few fights...that's called meta exploits. WHICH SHOULDNT EXPLICITLY BE A DEV CONCERN.
Completely. False.
Now, I would refute this point. But you're not really saying anything. So refer you to my earlier point on exploits.
Now, let me draw attention to the fact that, while you seem to have had a thing for discussing meta gameplay and dev concerns over such....you didn't touch anything to do with my actual proposals to fix what ya'll seem to see as a problem
Fixes that I can't actually see anyone disagreeing with unless they just want to be anal about their moral story.
EDIT:
About game balance -> If you're just pointing out that devs have to, well, 'balance' a game....well, yeah. That's kind of implicit in game design. Whether that balance seems lopsided or even or whatever; in this context, I'm discussing the 'breaking' or 'slight tiliting' of said balance through player actions that are allowed b the mechanics given not being a dev concern
