Considering oversaturation of XP

Every once in a while I read a comment that expresses a concern about XP oversaturation. What a hell is that about? I have never gotten my team further than level 18. Now with my team of 5 PC and 3 NPC I have done everything else my CG alignment allows me to do (I don’t randomly kill things that do not pose any threat to me, like the swamp thing or Ikian, nor do I do quests that cause my NPCs to turn against me, but I have done a helluvalot of REs to gain XP for crafting) but the Slavers and the WotGS and my four warriors are still at level 16 and the three crafters are at levels 13 – 14. Zaxis, who I picked up just before I went to slay Zuggy is now in level 11. I know that there is no way, at least without hours spent on REs, to get most of my team to level 20 before the final boss fight. In conclusion: I see all the commotion about the NC causing XP oversaturation as a huge exaggeration, or more bluntly, a load of BS. :evilgrin:

 

I Agree.

I think it's because so many on this forum often run with much smaller groups, that accumulate XP faster as a a consequence - but like you i always have 5 party members and 3 NPC's in my adventuring party as quickly as i can hire them. I like having a large, skilled adventuring troupe for delving dungeons. And i feel characters should be powerful, as heroes, and not fighting to barely stay alive through each encounter. More levels, means more opportunities to come up with unique strategies, not the same standard stratagems for every encounter. a sufficiently powerful large group also can roleplay easier, in my mind.

It would seem the standard for a lot of the regular posters, is to use 3 - 5 characters, total. I don't understand how the game is fun limiting your options that way, but hey i have never tried it myself so i can't really judge that. I suppose it definitely provides more challenge in the beginning!!! Some have even used only 1 playing character, and occasionally adding NPC's... Well, with how unstable TOEE can occasionally be regarding savestates, and unforgiving combat can be in the early levels, that sounds too diehard for my tastes. But hey, that's why we get to play the game the way we want to. To each his own, you know?

My opinion is that the game should be treated more like a open sandbox type world, which it KINDA is as a DnD environment... with ALL original XP included, no stripping it down, or whatever... so that you could play the way you wanted to. I know there is more or less a path everyone follows, but i try to play this game as much like a "open world" as i can. If you are the exploring type, who has to find EVERYTHING you could do that. if you try to get into as little combat as possible, you could sneak and avoid encounters. You could pick and choose among the vast buffet of NC and Vanilla and it would be ...
GREAT!!!!!:headfoneseace::coffee:eace::rock: :clap: :help:

As it is, i dislike the reduced XP earnings forced on the party (i think it is now 60% of original XP ??, and less in some cases as experience rewards are further tweaked in specific circumstances for perceived game balance issues), and I often console in a few levels at some point to even things out to where i imagine the party should be at the point in their adventure. Or, i make everyone LVL2 to start out the adventure. I'm the kind of person that would not mind if in the Moathouse you discovered Lareth had a 200 HP demon chained in the basement - from a roleplaying perspective, YOU NEVER SHOULD HAVE OPENED THAT DOOR. Lubash to some extent is kinda like that, but everyone has strategies now for countering his rage capabilities and high HP that early in the game. LOL i guess i'm trying to say i'm not really interested so much in overall game balance per se, just that it makes sense as a story element. The new combats added by Co8 in Verbobonc are AWESOME, and just what i'm looking for! but yeah, i don't see why everyone always complains about the game being too easy, and too much XP... either. :shrug: i guess, if you CLEANSE every area with a small party, you could get that impression.

Oh well. Thanks Rocktoy for bringing this up. Opinions, ... everyone??

 

Amen brother!!! You said it even better than I could with my limited linguistic skills.!

Edit. Let those who wish to power play reap the fruits of their actions, and please do not punish us who wish to roleplay, by their demands.

 

Thanks Gaear! ummm, i hope i did not sound like i was flaming particular playing styles, or the fine work of the community and the Co8 modders. Not my intention! I had just noticed like Rocktoy had pointed out that there are many who like to state the argument that there is just too much XP, game is "too easy" etc. and i wanted to show some support for another perspective. Glad to hear that the XP modification did not stay in and yeah i understand the XP overhaul to mitigate the inclusion of the NC and the attempt to keep Zuggtmoy and the temple assault a little closer to Vanilla range of difficulty.

In the "open world" concept though, i meant i did not mind if the difficulty changed, personally. It's a result of the party becoming stronger after all! Other than achieving various story-states as required to open up new areas, the player does not HAVE to wipe out everything, though. I have always liked situations like in Emridy Meadows where you have a "real life" assortment of enemies - the powerful Giant and the bear, the various brittle average skeletons, the "uber" skeletons around the treasure cache... A party experiencing this kind of area blindly for the first time, could just blunder into either higher level encounter foolishly. You need to roleplay the area instead, and scout around. Many other areas of the game share this mix of levels of various difficulty in enemies, which is what is so cool with this game. Hickory Branch, various levels of the temple - the weak mixed in with the strong. it lends a reality, instead of the "tunnel" linear effect many games have where everything just slowly scales in difficluty with the player.

A good example of the open sandbox style game i love is Mount & Blade: Warband, and especially the excellent mod for it called Brytenwalda. There are varying difficulties of combats from the very start of the game - if you run into the wrong situation you could have a very short career! but that is what lends the reality, and challenge to the game. the player is made to be more observant about every choice they make as the game world grows and evolves constantly around the player. I wish that could be possible with TOEE, but i know the engine is not built for that sort of thing. i guess from a DnD perspective, the closest game to that would probably be Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir. Or, on a console game, just one example - the much maligned Final Fantasy 12 - it kind of simulated a MMORPG experience supposedly, but i liked how enemies of various levels were distributed about the game ecosystem. sometimes they fought amongst each other, sometimes there were hidden enemies (rare) to be hunted and discovered, and often high level and low level foes were mixed like they might be in real life. If you were not paying attention you could easily be dragged into combat against a foe MUCH more powerful than you were ready for, and thus you had to always pay attention while you explored new areas. some didn't like this balance "disparity" but i felt it was what gave the game depth.

so, i'd love any NC that makes it's way into the game in the future - as it gives more options to "go another way" through the game.

I certainly appreciate all Co8 has done to improve and extend this game. just wanted to say i don't mind XP as it is. thanks for all your hard work, Co8!!!:yes::beer:

 

Touché! To my very great surprise my non-crafters rise up to level 20 before Daemons and Demigods. The crafters did too, only Zaxis who I picked up so late in the game was left behind. But with this experience, I really can’t say if the amount of XP one gets from WotGS is really balanced with the effort. Most of my WotGS was fought under the effects of Jerkstop (yes, my melee fighters could keep fighting, no-one else could not though), so I really cannot say whether I earned those XP or not. But this I know: the four Balors were a joke.

Nevertheless, I see the current XP saturation satisfactory, or maybe a little downscaled. Can’t really say for sure, since haven’t yet played the WotGS as it was intended. I guess I have to stand yet again corrected.

 

Myself I can't remember the last time I thought what can I do to gain xp, that's just not how I enjoy TOEE.

To me TOEE is a fantastic story and a fun adventure, especially if you let yourself get caught up in the story and interactions with the npc's.

Very few things are as awesome as when you encounter a challenging battle that you had forgotten all about and had no idea it was coming up, you just played along and BAM!!

I try to spread my gaming out among a few different games with this result being my goal in all of them.

If you just let it flow, it's pretty sweet the way things happen.

 

Well said sirchet and I have been restarting my games as I have wanted to try something new or allowed myself to power game too much and take away the fun.

 

Couldn’t agree more, especially with all the great new stuff 7.0 brought with it. But I have walked through the game so many times; it just became a goal an sich to achieve everything that is theoretically possible, for even once. Just like with one run I managed to slay Iuz before St. Cuthbert intervened, but never ever have I reached the XP cap before. My point being: the XP saturation is just as good as it gets atm. No need to meddle with it.