Experience points

[jamesmcm]

IMO, the traditional way of getting experience points, killing hundreds of enemies, is boring, tedious and even more so when you're doing it to train your potion-making skill or something unrelated to combat.

 

IMO, it would be best to make it so as you use a skill you get experience points in that skill and so only level up skills by using them. This prevents the tedium of grinding.

[Randomizer]

While it seems nice to gain experience in a skill by using it, I seem complaints that this can lead to grinding to use one skill constantly in a trivial manner like shooting at trees.

 

The current system works. By making experience relative to your current level it discourages going after lower monsters where you gain nothing for it.

[jamesmcm]

Sort of, but it makes the entire game based around combat and turns it into a mindless hack'n'slash of sorts.

[SevenMass]

Quote:

Originally written by jamesmcm:
Sort of, but it makes the entire game based around combat and turns it into a mindless hack'n'slash of sorts.

Doesn't have to be!
I've played NWN modules where you gain XP for learning new information, (by asking the right questions to NPC's) upon entering a new area, advancing the plot, disarming traps, even for detecting traps, picking locks, finding secret and hidden things, etc.
And where fighting doesn't get you much XP, or non at all. Though you can opt to get an NPC to talk by fighting him (if you fail your persuade check) or you have to defeat the key guardian before you can enter the next area.

Advancing the plot can be done in many ways, you can sneak through a guarded passage way, fight trough it, use magic to charm the guards, use persuasion to convince a guard to take a bribe from you. Depending on how you build your character, and how you like to play, either will lead to you getting past the guarded passage way, so the game can be scripted to simply grand you X XP for entering the area behind it.

[Aoslare]

How exactly is using a skill 5000 times supposed to be less tedious than killing an enemy 500 times?

 

I don't like the combat experience system either, to be honest, but a skill-use experience system is a giant step in the wrong direction.

[jamesmcm]

Yeah, but with the combat-based system, playing a stealthy character isn't viable. As you won't get far past level 1. Using a skill-based system fixes this.

[SevenMass]

Quote:

Originally written by jamesmcm:
Yeah, but with the combat-based system, playing a stealthy character isn't viable. As you won't get far past level 1. Using a skill-based system fixes this.

Wait, where does "combat based system" enter into this discussion. I thought it was between getting XP to gain a level, or getting XP per skill? Or maybe I'm missing something..

In any event, in A4, you already gained XP from solving quests and disarming traps...

[Ephesos]

Yeah, but I'm fairly certain that the experience from traps and quests was tiny compared to what you get from combat.

 

Also, a stealth-based character doesn't really work with Avernum as much as with Geneforge. In Avernum, sometimes the narrow tunnel you have to go down just happens to have a Vahnatai Lord in it, and there's nothing you can do about it. Also, it's hard to use stealth to deal with a megalomaniacal Crystal Soul bent on aimless revenge.

[jamesmcm]

Exactly, but the game should provide multiple possibilities.

 

At least that's what i expect from an RPG, for a hack'n'slash game of course, it's ok just to have one, linear possibility.

[SevenMass]

Well, I agree with the fact that it would be nice you can choose between bribing the guard, sneaking past the guard, fighting the guard, and casting a mind effect spell on the guard, all leading to the same objective, and all options giving a more or less equal amount of XP. Just like I stated above in my example.

I think that would indeed give the game a richer experience for the player!

 

But I think that XP should go towards gaining a level, not to leveling the indevidual skills you happen to have used for it.

[Alorael at Large]

Please stop starting dozens of copies of essentially the same topic. We got the point.

 

You're not talking about experience, really. You're talking about making it possible to play Avernum with different styles. Very different styles. As it is, the only skills you use come up in combat, disarming traps or opening doors, and occasionally casting spells out of combat. (The last opens up horrors of cast, cast, cast, rest, repeat grinding!)

 

It would be nice if Avernum had all the detail of a tabletop game, but it doesn't and it can't. Jeff has actually done pretty well with the one detailed system he has, at least to the point where there aren't widespread objections to required grinding.

 

—Alorael, who has a question to ask. Why do you object so strongly to Avernum's combat? What makes it deleterious to the game, and why do you play the games if they are, as you say, mindless hack 'n slash?

[Randomizer]

If you want stealth and mechanics go play Geneforge series.

 

Avernum actually quickly limits the value of monster killing so most experience comes from doing quests.

[jamesmcm]

It just gets tedious when you have to walk down a really long corridor, with hundreds of rats in the way.

 

It also makes the game repetitive in that, your just killing monsters so you can level up to kill bigger monsters and so on.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by jamesmcm:
It just gets tedious when you have to walk down a really long corridor, with hundreds of rats in the way.

Please point out the last time you had to do this in an Avernum game, because I really think you're tilting at windmills here.

[Dikiyoba]

I'm beginning to doubt that he even plays Spiderweb games...

 

Edit: Or rather, that he has, but keeps complaining about other games so often it sounds like he doesn't play Spiderweb games.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Kelandon]

I don't think he actually plays many Spidweb games, for sure. GF has exactly what he's talking about, so the obvious thing to say here is, "I wish A4 was more like the GF series in terms of accommodating different playing styles," but he didn't say that. Ergo, he probably hasn't played GF (or is just a troll).

 

I've never found Avernum combat tedious. I only rarely find Blades combat tedious, either (NM comes to mind), though, so I may not be the best example here.