The XP for Combat Megathread! DISCUSS!

[Untermensch]

This whole argument, that doing tasks the difficult way should net more xp, is stupid.

 

[Damned Registrations]

And where have I claimed such thing (outside your head, that is)?

"Therefore doing something difficult that in no way helps you reap your rewards is just plain retarded" (In reference to killing ogres to complete a quest.)

Clearly you didn't mean it was a waste of time, just retarded and in no way helpful. How could I possibly confuse the two things.

I'm trying to invision Draq's ideal RPG and all I'm coming up with is the main character working as a cobbler, and upon hearing of a band of goblins plundering merchants outside the city, reporting it to the town guard. Truly realistic. +20000 xp for intelligently not confronting dangerous foes.

Would make even more sense when, instead of a cobbler, the player is controlling an entire party of seasoned warriors who are more than a match for any local authorities. "Trouble with ogres you say? I'll send a letter to the king! He should send the royal army down to take care of things within a few weeks. I can has quest xp now for being teh smartz?"

 

[Lhynn]

Motherfucking statistics.
If sn extremely powerful wizards exactly n are old farts and exactly 0 are young adventurers it probably signifies something.

Because all the young ones get dead you asshole! you defy the odds every time you survive a fight in your adventuring career. Which provides you with field experience, resources to pay for your investigations, and samples to study.

It took them centuries to millennia of intense focused magical research, with access to instruments and infrastructure (mage tower or whatever the mages in the setting reside in) and without distractions like having to find somewhere to rest, something to eat, and not getting brained by a goblin.
Who would you consider more likely to be a better physicist - a guy working at CERN on daily basis or some hobo running around making molotovs and macgyvering contraptions out of junk to stop people trying to kill him?
Wizards are naturally academic, except the setting itself allows direct conversion of knowledge into power, without necessity for pesky intermediate steps like technology.
Militant vagrant lifestyle doesn't exactly help one's academic pursuits, so no, taking risks generally doesn't go in your favour and even when it does, a dude sitting in his tower and sipping tea with stimulants has better freedom identifying and picking worthwhile risks and organizing expeditions minimizing the actual risk part while reaping all the benefits.

What setting? what motherfucking setting? tell me right now the setting you are refering to. because this was a separated from the thread of the game where magic and farts are alike, you need to push with all you "might" for them to come out.
Anyway, a traditional mage doesnt "get stronger" when he levels up, not really, he gains some hit points, maybe a better chance at hitting the broad side of a wall. but he does gain understanding of how magic works and how he can take advantage of that. It then stands to reason that field testing is the only way a mage is ever going to move forward when hes done reading his library. Especially when said mage is poor and cannot afford safe experimentation.

BTW that comparison is not really fair, what you should be asking is who would you consider a better arqueologist, one that

Yeah, most adventurers tend to get dead or otherwise out. A small bunch however are successful through combination of wits, luck and badassery.
If non-adventurous wizardry was the low-effort lifestyle you try to cast it as, the profession of mage would be much more common and adventurous wizards (the handful that survived, that is) would be both younger and more powerful than their sedentary colleagues.
Yet, you generally don't have powerful wizards born this way aside from %pcname.
Derp.

Dude, its fucking expensive, it takes more money to afford that low effort but high progress life style in a month than the money that a city makes in a fucking year. The materials are extremely expensive, the bibliography is both rare and expensive, and getting live samples? for fucks sakes DraQ, are you trying to come of as ignorant? Why do you think court wizards are a thing? you need the fat clown with a crown to give you money, preferably while leaving you the fuck alone. But those opportunities are few and far between. and above anything else, while risk free it takes a LONG time and a lot of effort, while adventuring is quick, cheap and risky, but is also the only option for most that chose or were imposed with this profesion. You constantly take shortcuts while adventuring, its do or die, so your understanding of magic grows faster than most or stops completely once you are a corpse(not always tho).

Of course, there are settings where magic is an innate gift more than result of studies.

Well, thats PoE for you.

 

[DraQ]

Has anyone attempted to defend tying character progression to sidequests yet, or is the argument still "eh, it's convenient"?

I merely attacked it.

This whole argument, that doing tasks the difficult way should net more xp, is stupid.

At least we both realize that.

And where have I claimed such thing (outside your head, that is)?

"Therefore doing something difficult that in no way helps you reap your rewards is just plain retarded" (In reference to killing ogres to complete a quest.)

Clearly you didn't mean it was a waste of time, just retarded and in no way helpful. How could I possibly confuse the two things.

Maybe I should try typing slowly so that you can keep up?

 

[DraQ]

Motherfucking statistics.
If sn extremely powerful wizards exactly n are old farts and exactly 0 are young adventurers it probably signifies something.

Because all the young ones get dead you asshole! you defy the odds every time you survive a fight in your adventuring career.

Why?

How is the PC so different from every single NPC?

Even if you defy the odds in every fight there should be a handful of adventurers who used their wits to even the odds as much as they could (as player should) and had their dumb luck carry them through the rest.
Those are the adventurers who got powerful instead of dead, unlike all the dead ones and like player is supposed to.

Which provides you with field experience, resources to pay for your investigations, and samples to study.

That merely puts you where those all fucks with towers have essentially started.

If the power curve is flat afterwards you should get a lot of powerful middle-aged startups.

What setting? what motherfucking setting? tell me right now the setting you are refering to. because this was a separated from the thread of the game where magic and farts are alike, you need to push with all you "might" for them to come out.

Keyword: separated.

Anyway, a traditional mage doesnt "get stronger" when he levels up, not really, he gains some hit points, maybe a better chance at hitting the broad side of a wall. but he does gain understanding of how magic works and how he can take advantage of that. It then stands to reason that field testing is the only way a mage is ever going to move forward when hes done reading his library. Especially when said mage is poor and cannot afford safe experimentation.

Just like by throwing a lot of grenades you don't necessarily gain a lot of insight into designing better explosives, by throwing magic missile at goblins a lot you don't necessarily gain a lot of insight into magic.

And that's despite of how I like my field testing (see about half of my Morrowind posts).

Dude, its fucking expensive, it takes more money to afford that low effort but high progress life style in a month than the money that a city makes in a fucking year. The materials are extremely expensive, the bibliography is both rare and expensive, and getting live samples? for fucks sakes DraQ, are you trying to come of as ignorant? Why do you think court wizards are a thing? you need the fat clown with a crown to give you money, preferably while leaving you the fuck alone. But those opportunities are few and far between. and above anything else, while risk free it takes a LONG time and a lot of effort, while adventuring is quick, cheap and risky, but is also the only option for most that chose or were imposed with this profesion.

It's only cheap and risky. Where court wizards don't have much to do most of the time, an adventurers is constantly distracted by stuff like survival.

A court mage wakes up, presumably has meals made for him, then most of the time is free to engage in his hobby, and I presume that it takes a dedicated person to do something that yields you recognition no sooner than when you're an old fart.
An adventuring mage wakes up in cold after not necessarily a night of sleep, need to fix a meal (if lucky), kill and fix a meal (if somewhat lucky), or run around hungry, then it's trekking around, fighting shit, running away from shit, negotiating environmental hazards and maybe getting off mundane combat or utility spell or two.

Yay, much magic, very wizard.

 

[Lhynn]

DraQ, you are not even trying anymore:

1)The average wizard (which should make the vast mayority of them) has above average intelligence, something like a 13, theyll never amount to anything special. NPCs can certanly survive, and be very powerful magicians and dangerous and shit, its just not common. im not sure what we are even arguing here, you can find young powerful wizards in literature.
My first character died on his second story, my second character died on his first, my third character survived for 7 years until he was forcefully retired for being too powerful.

2) The power curve IS flat afterwards doe, after level 9 spells theres not that much to gain unless you get creative, which you should, but its outside of the scope of most rulebooks.

3) Using explosives gives you a better insight on how to use explosives, throwing grenades gives you a better insight on throwing. stop being fucking retarded, but you can still learn a lot aboutthe timing, the power, how the explosion works, how you can direct it, etc. by chucking a few. and i can tell you something, you learn a lot more by doing than by reading about it.

4) a court wizard gets his studies paid for, expensive books, libraries and with any luck free access to test subjects. unless hes a lazy fuck, which he can be, not gonna amount to much more tho.

An adventuring wizard reads that book of ancient elven magic lore he found last week in some ruins after using his new found "ghostly assasination" on some trolls, poor fucks never stood a chance, fine way to get around that pesky regeneration (make note, visualizing their deaths on your head seems to make that particular spell somewhat more effective, need to experiment on this), wondering what effects it will have on that succubus that has been ambushing us the past few months.
Then he goes to play with that broken phylacteria they found on the dukes mansion a couple months back, even broken that shit oozes powerful magic, im sure i have read about this when i was in the academy,
The fighter keeps asking for haste, at this rate he will die of old age soon, we need him, but the battle prowess the spell grants him has saved us more than once, i have to figure out a way to prevent losing him. All of this is abstracted into XPs.

Also i thought this was about the benefits xp rewards for quest grants to the narrative over the ones use/xp grants, we have already stablished there are none, and that it has about as many cons if not more.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, I think the original premise was that adventuring wizards would be getting two things the old dude in a lab is not;

A: Encounters with various magic creatures/objects/places, which cannot simply be purchased.
B: The chance to ransack the laboratory of another (evil) wizard, taking his spellbook and cribbing off of years of research that would never be shared otherwise.

Those two things could afford a lot of rapid study compared to someone working on his own. Presumably the vast majority of the time those greybeards spend is researching individual spells and crafting potions/magic items. Which isn't analogous to learning so much as working as an engineer. They'll have those spells and skills gained from that work, but it'd be less efficient than time spent purely learning their craft by studying the works of others and travelling.

There's also the problem where adventures shouldn't be non stop affairs that rocket you from level 1 to 16 in the span of a few months. There should be significant time lost to things like rest, travel, and simply time consuming activities that yield little. If an adventure that gains you have a level worth of xp involved traveling the world for a full year to track down the location of a powerful magic item, then several months more travel and preparation to get there (and then more time to get back) the adventurers would be greybeards by the time they're powerful enough to settle down in a nice tower and make fun of the level one idiots wanting their magic sword identified. But video games skip all that shit and put everything within walking distance and cram an army's worth of powerful monsters into a single location.

 

[xxxCatholicKillahxxx]

There is another way to disincentivise the player from killing many quest related npcs/quest givers after completing their quest other than removing combat xp. Making sure there are consequences for such actions.

Numerous npcs belong to a community or a group and I doubt their deaths would go unnoticed. Granted the player could just desolate town after town and city after city but that would hardly go unnoticed either. I am aware there are faction relations which can affect this but such relations are often inefficient because of the limited amount of npcs they affect. There should be npc interaction on a more grand level for the consequences, whatever they may be, to work.

Grinding monsters for xp is another thing entirely. The above can be implemented with sentient beings but for it to work with non-sentient creatures a game would need to have cohesive ecosystems. Then when the player destroyed entire groups of monters it would cause problems in the system as a whole.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Has anyone attempted to defend tying character progression to sidequests yet, or is the argument still "eh, it's convenient"?

I merely attacked it.

I can respect your position here. What I don't respect is the Sawyerist solution of handing out XP after every objective. It's the worst of both worlds as far as I'm concerned.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I'm trying to invision Draq's ideal RPG

 

[imweasel]

I'm trying to invision Draq's ideal RPG

You forgot the hikeable mountains.

 

[DraQ]

D&D is a shining example of setting consistency and logic.

Lolno.

3) Using explosives gives you a better insight on how to use explosives, throwing grenades gives you a better insight on throwing. stop being fucking retarded, but you can still learn a lot aboutthe timing, the power, how the explosion works, how you can direct it, etc. by chucking a few. and i can tell you something, you learn a lot more by doing than by reading about it.

You still don't learn how to construct better explosives by chucking them pineapples.

Casting standard sleep, fireball and magic missile can be compared to tossing a 'nade. Even if you had to learn and comprehend the spells you're not learning anything new by casting them on goblins and shit.
What does make mages stronger is learning or creating new spells - designing new explosives or getting their blueprints.

An adventuring wizard reads that book of ancient elven magic lore he found last week in some ruins after using his new found "ghostly assasination" on some trolls, poor fucks never stood a chance, fine way to get around that pesky regeneration (make note, visualizing their deaths on your head seems to make that particular spell somewhat more effective, need to experiment on this), wondering what effects it will have on that succubus that has been ambushing us the past few months.

Well, I think the original premise was that adventuring wizards would be getting two things the old dude in a lab is not;

A: Encounters with various magic creatures/objects/places, which cannot simply be purchased.
B: The chance to ransack the laboratory of another (evil) wizard, taking his spellbook and cribbing off of years of research that would never be shared otherwise.

Those two things could afford a lot of rapid study compared to someone working on his own.

Actually those are good points, but they are arguments for completely divorcing caster progression from any sort of generic XP mechanics, kill XP in particular, and either have it handled by scripted, caster specific XP gains, or have it tied to specific in-game objects.
Generic XP mechanics definitely doesn't abstract this sort of stuff well, because it's well, generic, while the argument is for tying caster progression to highly specific kinds of places, items and situations, which, being highly specific, are not generic.
For example killing a bunch of generic wolves in a generic forest doesn't really involve realistic prospects of finding and deciphering an ancient inscription of power.

Presumably the vast majority of the time those greybeards spend is researching individual spells and crafting potions/magic items. Which isn't analogous to learning so much as working as an engineer. They'll have those spells and skills gained from that work, but it'd be less efficient than time spent purely learning their craft by studying the works of others and travelling.

Presumably they can also arrange for works of others and other intersting stuff to get in their possession. If you have a lot of gold to blow on your expenses you can organize a proper expedition or hire a band of murderhobos.

There's also the problem where adventures shouldn't be non stop affairs that rocket you from level 1 to 16 in the span of a few months. There should be significant time lost to things like rest, travel, and simply time consuming activities that yield little. If an adventure that gains you have a level worth of xp involved traveling the world for a full year to track down the location of a powerful magic item, then several months more travel and preparation to get there (and then more time to get back) the adventurers would be greybeards by the time they're powerful enough to settle down in a nice tower and make fun of the level one idiots wanting their magic sword identified.

And that's an argument for either having a huge gamworld and spend most of the time offscreen travelling, resting and so on, or breaking a tighter, more constrained game into chapters with significant amount of time passing in between, and base progression on that structure.

HERP.

DERP.

Has anyone attempted to defend tying character progression to sidequests yet, or is the argument still "eh, it's convenient"?

I merely attacked it.

I can respect your position here. What I don't respect is the Sawyerist solution of handing out XP after every objective. It's the worst of both worlds as far as I'm concerned.

Actually, I don't think every objective should yield XP.

Also the worst of both worlds is kill XP as it combines build agnosticism and lack of logical constraints of goal XP, with lack of high-level (think GM) control and loophole sensitivity of use based.
The rationale for goal XP is basically "at least it's simple and exploit proof".
Not really something to evoke my enthusiasm, but still infinitely better than typical XP system.

 

[Lhynn]

D&D is a shining example of setting consistency and logic.

Lolno.

Im not saying that, im saying its entirely dependant on the DM and the players.

3) Using explosives gives you a better insight on how to use explosives, throwing grenades gives you a better insight on throwing. stop being fucking retarded, but you can still learn a lot aboutthe timing, the power, how the explosion works, how you can direct it, etc. by chucking a few. and i can tell you something, you learn a lot more by doing than by reading about it.

You still don't learn how to construct better explosives by chucking them pineapples.

Casting standard sleep, fireball and magic missile can be compared to tossing a 'nade. Even if you had to learn and comprehend the spells you're not learning anything new by casting them on goblins and shit.
What does make mages stronger is learning or creating new spells - designing new explosives or getting their blueprints.

Nope, using them makes them better at using them, more precise incantations, more precise quantities of ingredients, better hand gestures, better entonation, everything tested in stressful situations. Throwing grenades makes you better at throwing grenades, but you also get to exercise your knowledge in explosives, because you can give a more precise purpose to each grenade... put them where you know it will hurt the most, because youve studied this shit. Again, tested in stressful situations.
Stop underestimating learning by doing man, it is amazing the stuff you can learn by passively simply staying on the subject or using the skill.

An adventuring wizard reads that book of ancient elven magic lore he found last week in some ruins after using his new found "ghostly assasination" on some trolls, poor fucks never stood a chance, fine way to get around that pesky regeneration (make note, visualizing their deaths on your head seems to make that particular spell somewhat more effective, need to experiment on this), wondering what effects it will have on that succubus that has been ambushing us the past few months.

Well, I think the original premise was that adventuring wizards would be getting two things the old dude in a lab is not;

A: Encounters with various magic creatures/objects/places, which cannot simply be purchased.
B: The chance to ransack the laboratory of another (evil) wizard, taking his spellbook and cribbing off of years of research that would never be shared otherwise.

Those two things could afford a lot of rapid study compared to someone working on his own.

Actually those are good points, but they are arguments for completely divorcing caster progression from any sort of generic XP mechanics, kill XP in particular, and either have it handled by scripted, caster specific XP gains, or have it tied to specific in-game objects.
Generic XP mechanics definitely doesn't abstract this sort of stuff well, because it's well, generic, while the argument is for tying caster progression to highly specific kinds of places, items and situations, which, being highly specific, are not generic.
For example killing a bunch of generic wolves in a generic forest doesn't really involve realistic prospects of finding and deciphering an ancient inscription of power.

Presumably the vast majority of the time those greybeards spend is researching individual spells and crafting potions/magic items. Which isn't analogous to learning so much as working as an engineer. They'll have those spells and skills gained from that work, but it'd be less efficient than time spent purely learning their craft by studying the works of others and travelling.

Presumably they can also arrange for works of others and other intersting stuff to get in their possession. If you have a lot of gold to blow on your expenses you can organize a proper expedition or hire a band of murderhobos.

There's also the problem where adventures shouldn't be non stop affairs that rocket you from level 1 to 16 in the span of a few months. There should be significant time lost to things like rest, travel, and simply time consuming activities that yield little. If an adventure that gains you have a level worth of xp involved traveling the world for a full year to track down the location of a powerful magic item, then several months more travel and preparation to get there (and then more time to get back) the adventurers would be greybeards by the time they're powerful enough to settle down in a nice tower and make fun of the level one idiots wanting their magic sword identified.

And that's an argument for either having a huge gamworld and spend most of the time offscreen travelling, resting and so on, or breaking a tighter, more constrained game into chapters with significant amount of time passing in between, and base progression on that structure.

Why not? why cant you learn and uncover secrets, take shortcuts and make your way into an amazing archamage in a matter of months? if you got the "int" you certainly got the talent to do it. Why dont the other oldfags made it so fast? they didnt have the drive, life didnt present them with enough challenges to force them to evolve. Or maybe they did, and then they hit a wall to their skills and havent been able to really improve in a thousands of years. Who knows?

Also the worst of both worlds is kill XP as it combines build agnosticism and lack of logical constraints of goal XP, with lack of high-level (think GM) control and loophole sensitivity of use based.
The rationale for goal XP is basically "at least it's simple and exploit proof".
Not really something to evoke my enthusiasm, but still infinitely better than typical XP system.

Goal xp is not exploit proof, it also creates scenarios where players get stronger by running away from shit. It is neither interesting nor coherent. XP is not a candy, its a measure of how much your characters strenght, prowess, etc. has advanced and should be treated as that. Quest XP goes against that.

 

[Alfons]

This idea just came to me ,I'm sure it's far from revolutionary,hell it might have been suggested in this thread.
How about XP for "events" and XP having diminishing returns.For instance,if I fight a group of bandits I think the characters can definitely learn from that,sneaking by the same group also makes my guys more experienced.
Encountering the same group of bandits even if there are more of them wont yield as much XP because my guys are more familiar with their tactics.
This idea is quite vague and I am too intellectually lazy to try and come up with more scenarios or details on how it would work but I think the concept is good.

The best example that comes to my head is killing the Slavers in fallout 2,quest or no you get the XP for killing them.
What do you guys think?

 

[FeelTheRads]

HERP.

DERP.

Yeah, I'm sure you're a big fan of the awesome non-linearity of true RPGs like The Witcher, but when you say that an adventurer "adventuring" is stupid you pretty much have won the dunce cap.

 

[Rake]

HERP.

DERP.

Yeah, I'm sure you're a big fan of the awesome non-linearity of true RPGs like The Witcher, but when you say that an adventurer "adventuring" is stupid you pretty much have won the dunce cap.

What is an "adventurer" ? In game logic pls.
And yes, "adventuring" for no reason is all kinds of stupid.

 

[Johannes]

I'm an adventurer without a cause.

 

[Infinitron]

Do you really feel compelled by the game to do it and feel bad/frustrated if not doing it? I don't understand the thought process, it's really fascinating to me

If you don't understand the thought process, that must mean that experience point aren't an incentive that works on you.

Therefore, that must logically mean that you don't care if killing enemies doesn't give you experience points.

However, earlier you implied that not giving experience points for killing enemies is somehow contradictory to the "Infinity Engine experience". So what's the deal?

 

[mutonizer]

I don't understand the extremes of it, the..."craving" it seems to create in some players.
I quite like getting XP for killing mobs indeed, and getting some bit of loot as well. But that doesn't mean I'll spend hours grinding everything there is. Likewise, I like finding the odd chest here and there with interesting loot, but that doesn't mean I'll bash every single barrel I encounter and collect all the trash loot in existence. I have no interest whatsoever in Achievements however (not part of the game for me) so I'll ignore these completely.
Pleasure also comes in moderation you know, you can drink a single glass of red wine and enjoy it, without having to empty the bottle right then and there.

And me stating that the IE games were a lot about killing shit for XP, loot and items (with some story in there as well, varying from IE game to IE game) isn't really related, even though I think it to be true. Removing that part from a game claiming to be the "spiritual successor" to these games feels..wrong to me.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

If you don't understand the thought process, that must mean that experience point aren't an incentive that works on you.

Therefore, that must logically mean that you don't care if killing enemies doesn't give you experience points.

However, earlier you implied that not giving experience points for killing enemies is somehow contradictory to the "Infinity Engine experience". So what's the deal?

Right, not understand the thought process behind the urge to drain the game of every last ounce of XP (even going as so far to kill quest givers) means you simply don't care about XP, at all.

That's akin to saying that if you didn't slaughter absolutely every living thing you came across in IE games (massacring whole towns/villages and such) it means you didn't enjoy/care about combat in those games.

Or that if you didn't pick up every arrow stack and short sword kobolds dropped, you don't care about loot.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I don't understand the extremes of it, the..."craving" it seems to create in some players.
I quite like getting XP for killing mobs indeed, and getting some bit of loot as well. But that doesn't mean I'll spend hours grinding everything there is. Likewise, I like finding the odd chest here and there with interesting loot, but that doesn't mean I'll bash every single barrel I encounter and collect all the trash loot in existence. I have no interest whatsoever in Achievements however (not part of the game for me) so I'll ignore these completely.
Pleasure also comes in moderation you know, you can drink a single glass of red wine and enjoy it, without having to empty the bottle right then and there.

And me stating that the IE games were a lot about killing shit for XP, loot and items (with some story in there as well, varying from IE game to IE game) isn't really related, even though I think it to be true. Removing that part from a game claiming to be the "spiritual successor" to these games feels..wrong to me.

Sorry man, you're other OCD about loot and XP or you don't care, there's no middle ground here.

 

[Infinitron]

I think that if you're saying that something is abso-fucking-lutely integral to the "Infinity Engine experience", then that sounds like something you "crave".

If you just kind of like it, but don't "crave" it, then a compromise can be found. And what do you know, that's exactly what Pillars of Eternity is doing.

 

[Immortal]

Do you really feel compelled by the game to do it and feel bad/frustrated if not doing it? I don't understand the thought process, it's really fascinating to me

If you don't understand the thought process, that must mean that experience point aren't an incentive that works on you.

Therefore, that must logically mean that you don't care if killing enemies doesn't give you experience points.

However, earlier you implied that not giving experience points for killing enemies is somehow contradictory to the "Infinity Engine experience". So what's the deal?

> Creates a seperate thread for Combat XP
> Moves any posts about Combat XP to that thread
> Derails this Thread into Debate about Combat XP

All in a days work..

 

[mutonizer]

No it's not, it's forcing players to go one route and one route only, instead of keeping it in the players hands and instead of actually finding interesting ways around it (which I'd be totally for if it made sense), they just slapped some artificial mechanics in there and called it "solved". That's my issue with it.

Though apparently players aren't capable of handling the responsibility of it so you might be right, better to treat them like little children on a leash, make sure they don't get lost or hurt along the way.

 

[Duraframe300]

No it's not, it's forcing players to go one route and one route only, instead of keeping it in the players hands and instead of actually finding interesting ways around it (which I'd be totally for if it made sense), they just slapped some artificial mechanics in there and called it "solved". That's my issue with it.

Though apparently players aren't capable of handling the responsibility of it so you might be right, better to treat them like little children on a leash, make sure they don't get lost or hurt along the way.

What?

Sorry, I don't get what you are trying to say here. How is it one route only?

Edit: Also why are you surprised about people that try to game the system and going for the best possible route?