Originally Posted by _Vic_
I expect POE is not the model to aspire to, because the thing about "after killing X number of creatures of this type you do not get more xp" was a bummer.

I remember playing a third of the game without a single xp gain after killing ceaseless amounts of creatures in the game, specially in the expansions and the (very accurately named) Endless path dungeon. In a game where usually there´s no way to solve quests besides pure hack´n slash and spell smiting if you do not get something in return after a few fights it gets tiresome.

That and the fact that the level cap was way low. I remember playing both expansions at the level cap, without gaining xp and usually with better stuff than the one I got there so I enjoyed the story, but the endless combat between plot advancement was a pain.
After I finished it the first time never went back to the game, not even to make a new story to import the game to POE2.


I feel like this is conflating a few issues. Having quest progression as a primary method of gaining XP doesn't necessitate a low level cap (which POE1 admittedly had, but this was primarily down to resources and imitating games like BG1, where you would probably only reach Lvl 12 maximum).

It's entirely possible to implement POE's approach to XP without that.

Also, I'm a bit confused about your comment that there's no way to solve quests besides hack n' slash? You can do pacifist runs of the base game and reach the end at a decent level with less than 50 kills (I think the record is between 10-20 kills, but involves a degree of exploits).