All I'm really trying to say is that Kickstarting the game implied entering into a partnership, (to some extent pre-ordering BG was the same thing). That, really is the problem - the partnership doesn't seem to have been explicitly defined, so that each side knows what to expect from the other.
That people feel so strongly now suggests that the partnership has not been equal. Most of the contention seems to be about the attribute system, which is why I used that example - had the backers been more involved in designing it, they wouldn't now be dissatisfied with the way it functions. Clearly the backers are under the impression that they're supposed to be involved in the design choices - the actually meaningful ones. So I can understand why some feel the way they do and think they should be allowed to express it - without being vilified.
(It's almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation over there, which is why I asked for people's impressions here).
If real backer participation in the design choices wasn't what the devs wanted, it could have been made clear from the beginning. To use the attribute system as an example - when it was designed it could have been presented as done, without any discussion at all, long before the beta was played. That way, if nothing else, people would have had a chance to accept that that's the way it is before playing the beta. Also, in that case, a closed beta for the exclusive purpose of bug hunting would have been more appropriate. I can accept that easily enough, after all, there's a reason why an artist doesn't let you see his work until it's complete - it's his work and he wants to do it his way without being challenged.
In retrospect it would have saved a lot of hassle if Pillars of Eternity had been pitched in the Kickstarter, rather than 'Project X - *the* successor of the IE games'. Personally, if I want to play Baldur's Gate that's what I'll do. I hope very much that PoE, when finished, is it's own entity. It's sad though that a lot of people are only now realising that that was the idea all along.
I just now learned that there will be only 8 real companions. They had said 16, but this was counting the 8 you are allowed to create and use in game, as in no dialog or story. So you pretty much get everybody in one playthrough. I personally find that a HUGE hit to replayability. Thoughts?
These negative comments, to me, come as a result of high expectations.
When you enter the PoE site, the first thing you notice is: "Miss classic cRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment? So do we! Introducing Obsidian's PILLARS OF ETERNITY."
From the very start of the whole project they have positioned their future game as the one that can stand in the legendary line of BG, IWD and PST.
And to me this is a nearly impossible task. No matter how many effort you put into a project, it's EXCEPTIONALLY hard to become so good that people would stop criticising this or that - taking into account the heaviweights of BG, IWD and PST as comparisons which the company itself has chosen as the examples.
So, such high expectations automatically demand high results. And when people don't find them, the negativity rises.
Dragon Age: Origins did this as well (though they were more blatant about it). It billed itself as the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and in my opinion it didn't stand up to that standard (it was good but wasn't on the level of BG2).
It will be interesting to see how PoE does/if it can do so.
I just now learned that there will be only 8 real companions. They had said 16, but this was counting the 8 you are allowed to create and use in game, as in no dialog or story. So you pretty much get everybody in one playthrough. I personally find that a HUGE hit to replayability. Thoughts?
That's not a big deal. I'm sure there will be plenty of NPC mods to choose from... Oh wait ...
I just now learned that there will be only 8 real companions. They had said 16, but this was counting the 8 you are allowed to create and use in game, as in no dialog or story. So you pretty much get everybody in one playthrough. I personally find that a HUGE hit to replayability. Thoughts?
That's not a big deal. I'm sure there will be plenty of NPC mods to choose from... Oh wait ...
I just now learned that there will be only 8 real companions. They had said 16, but this was counting the 8 you are allowed to create and use in game, as in no dialog or story. So you pretty much get everybody in one playthrough. I personally find that a HUGE hit to replayability. Thoughts?
Sounds like a fairly good number for well written companions. About the same as Dragon Age for instance, and while BG2 had 16 several were skippable imo.
Sounds like a fairly good number for well written companions. About the same as Dragon Age for instance, and while BG2 had 16 several were skippable imo.
People don't like to admit it but plenty of BG2 NPCs kind of sucked.
I just now learned that there will be only 8 real companions. They had said 16, but this was counting the 8 you are allowed to create and use in game, as in no dialog or story. So you pretty much get everybody in one playthrough. I personally find that a HUGE hit to replayability. Thoughts?
They said a long time ago that they were locking the number of pre-made NPC companions at eight due to budget and time issues. So, they're doing the best they can with the resources available, I'd rather eight deep NPCs than 16 shallow ones, which I think is what they said they were trying to accomplish. To be fair, you can take at most five of them with you on a single playthrough, and I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people that have replayed BG2 multiple times and still haven't spent an entire playthrough with some of the NPCs.
That being said, lots of choices is always great. I would of course prefer more too, I think everyone would, but resources must be managed. Also, it's always possible that they'll eventually add more to the game down the road if possible.
It's a bit on the low side, yeah. It really depends on how well written they are, but eight might still be too few. I mean New Vegas had eight companions as well, but that game only allowed you to have two companions at a time. I mean, I wouldn't want a BG1-like amount of NPCs again if it meant the same almost non-existent writing, but at least having twice the amount of party slots would have been nice.
As far as sensible impressions go, this is from a guy I trust to be capable of an intelligent perspective/criticism. If you don't know who he is, remember that he's coming from a viewpoint that's a bit more "hardcore" (I hate that term) than most. The forum is pretty good for RPG discussion in general, considering what sites where nerds congregate tends to be like.
on one hand im looking forward to it. But, on the other hand I'm a little disappointed that as good as It looks, it seems like its going to fall far short of what id hoped for.
also I do think 8 is maybe too few its adequate but not much else, also if u don't like one or two of them your kinda screwed.
Sounds like a fairly good number for well written companions. About the same as Dragon Age for instance, and while BG2 had 16 several were skippable imo.
apart from in dragon age one party will only ever have 4 characters in and one of those is the player, so having 8, means there's actually a lot of variation in the party you make especially as each class is represented multiple times. In PoE its a 6 man party meaning you will have most of the npcs in your party at any one time. And given that relatively few classes are represented you'll probably end up using certain npcs all the time unless you make a custom npc or your pc is covering that role.
I think expecting Torment level of character writing/containedness might be a bit too high even for me, though, and I already boarded the hype train three stations ago :v
Planescape: Torment only had seven, each of them top-notch.
If those eight companions are even remotely on the same level, I don't think we'll have a problem.
yes certainly, its really going to come down to the quality here(I don't expect torment level righting though). Although I still think from a mechanics/replay perspective 8 is still too few after one run your basically going to have seen everyone.
apart from in dragon age one party will only ever have 4 characters in and one of those is the player, so having 8, means there's actually a lot of variation in the party you make especially as each class is represented multiple times.
In theory at any rate. I'm willing to bet some were far more popular choices than others on account of just being built better. I know I kept bringing certain ones along and leaving some behind in even though I did multiple pts. Anyways, personally I'm more interested in the dialogue being good. If I like all 8 NPCs, I'll be happy enough with that number is all I'm saying.
Of course I think that 8 companions is too little. We can have a 6-member party but only 8 characters to choose from as 5 companions. It's very far from BG.
And yet we can look at it this way: maybe a 6-member party is too much for this game and we better travel with only 3 companions, just as it was in Dragon Age. With a 4-member party we'll at least have several runs with different party members.
Another way to look at it is consider the PoE party as the one in IWD: you can make your own party members and the replayability will base on not using the in-game characters but on trying your own combinations. It's good that there're not few classes in that game, so with your own party you can at least try something different every time.
The thing that worries me the most is that there will be no XP for killing enemies, only XP for completing quests.
They say that this game is for those who miss classics like BG and IWD and yet they make a system where a random exploration is not encouraged. And I can't think about not getting XP for killing enemies as anything rather then a blow to freedom.
That feeling when you can go to any area and can kill any monster: an ogre here, a spider there, a siren on the beach, a basilisk in the field... To me, this freedom of choice in the matter how to develop your character, how to get experience is one of the cornerstones of BG and IWD.
And right now it feels very strange that they have decided to change that. Why? "Don't fix what is not broken", right?
I will miss the ability to get experience just from random exploring the wild areas.
Likewise. Most of the time the experience you got from random fights hardly made any kind of a difference, but even so, removing it entirely just makes the whole thing feel pointless.
Why should I go and charge in that basilisk now? I hope they'll bring up some other reason.
Not getting exp from combat doesn't mean you won't get any exp from minor things and discoveries. "You found a secret entrance to the bandit's lair! +100 exp", "You learned the forgotten history of Sunken Dun Edin! +1000 exp", "You found little Timmy wandering the woods and helped him find his dog Roofie! +5000 exp, -1 Soul" type stuff. I usually go around exploring stuff out of curiosity or interest in what may be there (and what you can loot ) anyway, not because there's enemies there to be killed.
Not getting exp from combat doesn't mean you won't get any exp from minor things and discoveries. "You found a secret entrance to the bandit's lair! +100 exp", "You learned the forgotten history of Sunken Dun Edin! +1000 exp", "You found little Timmy wandering the woods and helped him find his dog Roofie! +5000 exp, -1 Soul" type stuff. I usually go around exploring stuff out of curiosity or interest in what may be there (and what you can loot ) anyway, not because there's enemies there to be killed.
It looks as if PoE's system is quest only, so you'll only be rewarded for such things if they are the end result, or a step along the way, of a predefined quest, given to the character by a quest giver. I'd say that quest XP is the other side of the coin of kill XP, they both encourage you to do one thing -- either kill or complete predefined quests. Neither of these promote freedom in my opinion, and I can't relate at all with @bengoshi's example of freedom as:
"That feeling when you can go to any area and can kill any monster: an ogre here, a spider there, a siren on the beach, a basilisk in the field... To me, this freedom of choice in the matter how to develop your character, how to get experience is one of the cornerstones of BG and IWD."
This is the opposite of freedom, as you're just doing what you're told by killing everything in the game world, because you've been conditioned to expect XP for doing so. How that could possibly be more freedom than a system that allows you to explore for its own reward, instead of suggesting to you that you should be slaughtering a path through every obstacle along the way, is beyond me. Kill XP is even more restrictive than Quest XP in that it not only tells you how you should explore but how you should complete quests as well. At least with the quest XP system your character is able to explore for the sake of exploration or story or RP, and not be told how to go about exploring (killing everything along the way for every last drop of XP). Also, Quest XP rewards the player for reaching milestones throughout a quest, regardless of how the milestone was reached. If anything, this quest XP system promotes freedom a great deal more than the per-kill XP plus quest-XP systems in that it doesn't suggest to the player how they should be doing things such as exploring or completing quests.
I'd personally prefer a system that provided comprehensive objective XP for all sorts of things from clearing a road of bandits to exploring some ancient ruins (regardless of whether these objectives were presented to the player by a quest-giver), but in the absence of that I'd say that I prefer this quest XP system to one that focuses primarily on per-kill XP.
Also, as to the linearity of XP rewards, it's very difficult to say for sure as the amount of XP has been inflated for the beta so as to allow the player to level up. I will say, though, that there are a good number of quests in this optional town that isn't along the main questline, and there will probably plenty of XP to be had by exploring (because you could find quests in the course of exploring).
The other good thing about removing per-kill XP is that the player will ask questions such as this one that @Chow just asked:
"Why should I go and charge in that basilisk now? I hope they'll bring up some other reason"
Well if you don't have a reason to do it, then perhaps you shouldn't do it. I think that no per-kill XP promotes RP by removing the false encouragement of killing something for XP. If your party doesn't have a reason to kill that basilisk, then maybe they shouldn't; if they do, they should. The removal of per-kill XP simply removes the non-RP motivation of "the game's going to give my character XP for killing that basilisk, so my character's going to kill that basilisk."
This is the opposite of freedom, as you're just doing what you're told by killing everything in the game world, because you've been conditioned to expect XP for doing so. How that could possibly be more freedom than a system that allows you to explore for its own reward, instead of suggesting to you that you should be slaughtering a path through every obstacle along the way, is beyond me.
Well, to illustrate my feelings I want to give the following example:
You party comes to a room full of demons. It takes every single tactical trick you have to come out victorious. You literally feel fatigued when it is over.
And what do you get for it? Nothing. It's like the fight didn't count. It's like the game didn't intend for you to kill these demons. It's like the game laughed at you and said: lol.
Several such fights and you won't feel free any more, you will feel obliged to first find an appropriate quest and then clear a location.
So I think you should definitely get XP from defeating enemies. There're always times in any of my games when I'm just wandering or exploring and either get attacked or can't avoid combat when not actively working on a quest and I think I should still get XP from surviving that.
As a side note, one of the consequencies of "no XP for killing" system is that there will be no ambushes in PoE. And I seriously think it's a downside.
@bengoshi Well, the demons are in your party's way presumably, so your continued progression throughout the story depended upon killing those demons. Also, perhaps the demons were simply in your party's way in the course of completing a quest, in which case you would be rewarded XP. The only reason that you feel the game is laughing at you is that you expected XP based on past experiences; I think that at the core of this resistance for a lot of people, myself included, is just a shock value of moving away from a system that we know and love. I was surprised to find that the combat in the PoE beta was fun and engaging, and I didn't miss the instant gratification XP for a moment.
Another thing that I think people like about the per-kill XP systems we've know in the past is the intuitiveness of the concept of "practice makes perfect." However, this really falls apart in the face of "How many goblins do I have to kill to be really good at lockpicking?" or "How many traps do I have to disarm before I can cast time stop?" In other words, if you don't think about it much the idea of getting XP for repeating a task feels like it makes sense, but upon further inspection it would only make sense if each task gave XP towards improving only that task. As far as I've seen, nobody's arguing for a system like that.
Ultimately, in a game with a level cap which one will probably reach (or nearly reach) throughout the course of the main quest line, does it actually matter how the XP is rewarded along the way? Doling it out throughout quests (including side quests) is really just a pacing issue. Your experience throughout the game is being rewarded with XP regardless of how you choose to complete your tasks, because your character is meant to progress throughout the story. The developers have decided that players intentionally mining XP via murder is a less effective system than one that hands out XP throughout quests.
My desire to explore wasn't diminished in the slightest by not getting XP for each enemy killed, and I'd bet that those going into it with an open mind would find the same, though it may take some getting used to. One person on the Obsidian forums mentioned that he had been playing the beta and having a great time until he went on the forums and read that per-kill XP wasn't in, and then went on to explain how ridiculous it was that there was no kill XP and that kill XP is a necessity. The point here being that he didn't even realize he wasn't getting it while playing, had in fact been having a great time with the game and specifically the combat, and so was only upset by the idea of it. This is anecdotal of course and likely doesn't represent all those that want per-kill XP, but I have a feeling that at the base of some of this resistance is an aversion to change.
@bengoshi as to your additional points, I don't see why there wouldn't be any ambushes in PoE, is that something you read or just an assumption? As far as I know, there will be plenty of times where combat is required to proceed, the lack of per-kill XP doesn't assume that the game won't be combat heavy. Once again, ambushes and combat encounters that block progression are rewarded with progression. The need for per-kill XP is the need for an instant gratification (or a "dopamine-reward" as mentioned above). You can't progress or gain levels or explore the world or experience the story without overcoming the obstacles in your path, so why does one form of overcoming such obstacles need to be specifically encouraged and rewarded on the spot. The reward for overcoming obstacles is progression...
On the subject of suggesting that there's no point to combat without XP (as a couple of people have done), I completely disagree. Corpses carry loot. Monsters often block access to areas with treasure. If you must have an immediate reward for every kill, there you have it.
@bengoshi Well, I don't really see that as too much of a loss, I feel like when someone was desperate enough that they needed to sleep in a dangerous area, they just reloaded on the off chance that they were attacked in their sleep. I think the limited camping supplies of PoE is a good wilderness resting system. I will miss random ambushes between areas I suppose, but similar to being ambushed in your sleep I doubt this ever made much difference except to those playing ironman/with limited reloads.
Surviving an ambush by bandits or wyverns in BG1 does result in quite a sense of accomplishment. Anyway, as I mentioned, ambushes in general could (and hopefully will) still occur, even if it isn't while resting or between areas.
EDIT: When it comes to ironman runs or limited reload runs (the latter appealing more to me as I dread the idea of having to start entirely over 3/4 of the way through the game, but do love the challenge of only saving at inns and only reloading on PC death), I agree that ambushes while sleeping or traveling become significantly more relevant. I hadn't really given it much thought but the risk of being randomly attacked adds a great deal to the challenge and excitement for those that don't reload at every misstep.
Speaking of which, I'd like to say that I really appreciate there will be an optional Iron Man mode named Trial of Iron (which has a single save that is used to save your game when you stop playing) and an Expert mode that introduces perma-death.
I've always wanted BG to have similar options and it's good PoE will grant them.
Comments
That people feel so strongly now suggests that the partnership has not been equal. Most of the contention seems to be about the attribute system, which is why I used that example - had the backers been more involved in designing it, they wouldn't now be dissatisfied with the way it functions. Clearly the backers are under the impression that they're supposed to be involved in the design choices - the actually meaningful ones. So I can understand why some feel the way they do and think they should be allowed to express it - without being vilified.
(It's almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation over there, which is why I asked for people's impressions here).
If real backer participation in the design choices wasn't what the devs wanted, it could have been made clear from the beginning. To use the attribute system as an example - when it was designed it could have been presented as done, without any discussion at all, long before the beta was played. That way, if nothing else, people would have had a chance to accept that that's the way it is before playing the beta. Also, in that case, a closed beta for the exclusive purpose of bug hunting would have been more appropriate. I can accept that easily enough, after all, there's a reason why an artist doesn't let you see his work until it's complete - it's his work and he wants to do it his way without being challenged.
In retrospect it would have saved a lot of hassle if Pillars of Eternity had been pitched in the Kickstarter, rather than 'Project X - *the* successor of the IE games'. Personally, if I want to play Baldur's Gate that's what I'll do. I hope very much that PoE, when finished, is it's own entity. It's sad though that a lot of people are only now realising that that was the idea all along.
It will be interesting to see how PoE does/if it can do so.
That being said, lots of choices is always great. I would of course prefer more too, I think everyone would, but resources must be managed. Also, it's always possible that they'll eventually add more to the game down the road if possible.
As far as sensible impressions go, this is from a guy I trust to be capable of an intelligent perspective/criticism. If you don't know who he is, remember that he's coming from a viewpoint that's a bit more "hardcore" (I hate that term) than most. The forum is pretty good for RPG discussion in general, considering what sites where nerds congregate tends to be like.
on one hand im looking forward to it. But, on the other hand I'm a little disappointed that as good as It looks, it seems like its going to fall far short of what id hoped for.
also I do think 8 is maybe too few its adequate but not much else, also if u don't like one or two of them your kinda screwed. apart from in dragon age one party will only ever have 4 characters in and one of those is the player, so having 8, means there's actually a lot of variation in the party you make especially as each class is represented multiple times. In PoE its a 6 man party meaning you will have most of the npcs in your party at any one time. And given that relatively few classes are represented you'll probably end up using certain npcs all the time unless you make a custom npc or your pc is covering that role.
If those eight companions are even remotely on the same level, I don't think we'll have a problem.
Anyways, personally I'm more interested in the dialogue being good. If I like all 8 NPCs, I'll be happy enough with that number is all I'm saying.
And yet we can look at it this way: maybe a 6-member party is too much for this game and we better travel with only 3 companions, just as it was in Dragon Age. With a 4-member party we'll at least have several runs with different party members.
Another way to look at it is consider the PoE party as the one in IWD: you can make your own party members and the replayability will base on not using the in-game characters but on trying your own combinations. It's good that there're not few classes in that game, so with your own party you can at least try something different every time.
They say that this game is for those who miss classics like BG and IWD and yet they make a system where a random exploration is not encouraged. And I can't think about not getting XP for killing enemies as anything rather then a blow to freedom.
That feeling when you can go to any area and can kill any monster: an ogre here, a spider there, a siren on the beach, a basilisk in the field... To me, this freedom of choice in the matter how to develop your character, how to get experience is one of the cornerstones of BG and IWD.
And right now it feels very strange that they have decided to change that. Why? "Don't fix what is not broken", right?
I will miss the ability to get experience just from random exploring the wild areas.
Why should I go and charge in that basilisk now? I hope they'll bring up some other reason.
"That feeling when you can go to any area and can kill any monster: an ogre here, a spider there, a siren on the beach, a basilisk in the field... To me, this freedom of choice in the matter how to develop your character, how to get experience is one of the cornerstones of BG and IWD."
This is the opposite of freedom, as you're just doing what you're told by killing everything in the game world, because you've been conditioned to expect XP for doing so. How that could possibly be more freedom than a system that allows you to explore for its own reward, instead of suggesting to you that you should be slaughtering a path through every obstacle along the way, is beyond me. Kill XP is even more restrictive than Quest XP in that it not only tells you how you should explore but how you should complete quests as well. At least with the quest XP system your character is able to explore for the sake of exploration or story or RP, and not be told how to go about exploring (killing everything along the way for every last drop of XP). Also, Quest XP rewards the player for reaching milestones throughout a quest, regardless of how the milestone was reached. If anything, this quest XP system promotes freedom a great deal more than the per-kill XP plus quest-XP systems in that it doesn't suggest to the player how they should be doing things such as exploring or completing quests.
I'd personally prefer a system that provided comprehensive objective XP for all sorts of things from clearing a road of bandits to exploring some ancient ruins (regardless of whether these objectives were presented to the player by a quest-giver), but in the absence of that I'd say that I prefer this quest XP system to one that focuses primarily on per-kill XP.
Also, as to the linearity of XP rewards, it's very difficult to say for sure as the amount of XP has been inflated for the beta so as to allow the player to level up. I will say, though, that there are a good number of quests in this optional town that isn't along the main questline, and there will probably plenty of XP to be had by exploring (because you could find quests in the course of exploring).
The other good thing about removing per-kill XP is that the player will ask questions such as this one that @Chow just asked:
"Why should I go and charge in that basilisk now? I hope they'll bring up some other reason"
Well if you don't have a reason to do it, then perhaps you shouldn't do it. I think that no per-kill XP promotes RP by removing the false encouragement of killing something for XP. If your party doesn't have a reason to kill that basilisk, then maybe they shouldn't; if they do, they should. The removal of per-kill XP simply removes the non-RP motivation of "the game's going to give my character XP for killing that basilisk, so my character's going to kill that basilisk."
You party comes to a room full of demons. It takes every single tactical trick you have to come out victorious. You literally feel fatigued when it is over.
And what do you get for it? Nothing. It's like the fight didn't count. It's like the game didn't intend for you to kill these demons. It's like the game laughed at you and said: lol.
Several such fights and you won't feel free any more, you will feel obliged to first find an appropriate quest and then clear a location.
So I think you should definitely get XP from defeating enemies. There're always times in any of my games when I'm just wandering or exploring and either get attacked or can't avoid combat when not actively working on a quest and I think I should still get XP from surviving that.
As a side note, one of the consequencies of "no XP for killing" system is that there will be no ambushes in PoE. And I seriously think it's a downside.
Another thing that I think people like about the per-kill XP systems we've know in the past is the intuitiveness of the concept of "practice makes perfect." However, this really falls apart in the face of "How many goblins do I have to kill to be really good at lockpicking?" or "How many traps do I have to disarm before I can cast time stop?" In other words, if you don't think about it much the idea of getting XP for repeating a task feels like it makes sense, but upon further inspection it would only make sense if each task gave XP towards improving only that task. As far as I've seen, nobody's arguing for a system like that.
Ultimately, in a game with a level cap which one will probably reach (or nearly reach) throughout the course of the main quest line, does it actually matter how the XP is rewarded along the way? Doling it out throughout quests (including side quests) is really just a pacing issue. Your experience throughout the game is being rewarded with XP regardless of how you choose to complete your tasks, because your character is meant to progress throughout the story. The developers have decided that players intentionally mining XP via murder is a less effective system than one that hands out XP throughout quests.
My desire to explore wasn't diminished in the slightest by not getting XP for each enemy killed, and I'd bet that those going into it with an open mind would find the same, though it may take some getting used to. One person on the Obsidian forums mentioned that he had been playing the beta and having a great time until he went on the forums and read that per-kill XP wasn't in, and then went on to explain how ridiculous it was that there was no kill XP and that kill XP is a necessity. The point here being that he didn't even realize he wasn't getting it while playing, had in fact been having a great time with the game and specifically the combat, and so was only upset by the idea of it. This is anecdotal of course and likely doesn't represent all those that want per-kill XP, but I have a feeling that at the base of some of this resistance is an aversion to change.
On the subject of suggesting that there's no point to combat without XP (as a couple of people have done), I completely disagree. Corpses carry loot. Monsters often block access to areas with treasure. If you must have an immediate reward for every kill, there you have it.
"Sleeping outside is safe and will not get you attacked"
http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=250&ref=0&id=508
Surviving an ambush by bandits or wyverns in BG1 does result in quite a sense of accomplishment. Anyway, as I mentioned, ambushes in general could (and hopefully will) still occur, even if it isn't while resting or between areas.
EDIT: When it comes to ironman runs or limited reload runs (the latter appealing more to me as I dread the idea of having to start entirely over 3/4 of the way through the game, but do love the challenge of only saving at inns and only reloading on PC death), I agree that ambushes while sleeping or traveling become significantly more relevant. I hadn't really given it much thought but the risk of being randomly attacked adds a great deal to the challenge and excitement for those that don't reload at every misstep.
Speaking of which, I'd like to say that I really appreciate there will be an optional Iron Man mode named Trial of Iron (which has a single save that is used to save your game when you stop playing) and an Expert mode that introduces perma-death.
I've always wanted BG to have similar options and it's good PoE will grant them.