Valorian

Here's a quote from the update on melee engagement: Here's how it works: when two opposed combatants come near each other and one of them a) has a melee weapon equipped b) is not moving and c) is not currently at his or her maximum limit of engagement targets (the standard is 1), the other character will be Engaged. Unless it's been changed, melee engagement doesn't trigger if both combatants are moving.

It will take longer and it will be harder. Clearly, if someone is inclined to abuse exploits, he/she will probably find a way. However, there's no reason to offer auto-win methods on a silver plate. Just because potentially there could be a similar exploit with disengagement attacks (I'm sure they won't let AI suicide like that) doesn't mean they need to add more ways to abuse the AI on top of that.

If it makes you happy that you found an example of a "level scaled" (*cough* copy-pasted *cough*) encounter that one would reasonably use only once per game... Congratulations!

If that creature is able to not only emulate your appearance, but also your very being and is thus somehow capable of becoming your mirror image with copied stats.. yeah. Fighting against my character's copy isn't something I particularly enjoy though.

I'll give an example. We don't have to call it kiting. You use one character to lure a creature and with another you go stab it in the back with a melee weapon. AI, being silly as AIs usually are, keeps chasing the other character while being stabbed in the back repeatedly. This cheap tactic would be harder to execute if moving stops your recovery timer.

The idea behind LS isn't cryptic. The cardinal problem with level scaling is how (stomping on growth etc.) it puts this idea into effect.

It's fine. It's not frustrating, at least not for me. If I feel like skipping someone's (giant) post, I'll just skip it. I get it that you have a compulsion to elaborate and explain as many little details as possible. Certain people will jump on someone if they think there's a weakness in what was said (Aha! You said this, but you're wrong because it's like this!), regardless of how irrelevant that detail might be and regardless of their interest in what is being discussed. Perhaps that's one of the reasons you want to preemptively clarify everything. The purpose is to discourage cheap exploits. Kiting can completely trivialize combat. There's no reason to arbitrarily enforce recovery time just on ranged combatants.

Oh Lephys, your naivety is kind of cute. Of course I know that you wanted me to answer that the "remedy" is to place encounters that are appropriate for the player's level. I was just having fun with you. But before you jump to a conclusion, I'd like you to understand that one of the many points of trashing level scaling is to not make all encounters appropriate for the player's current level.

...ok Lephys, if that's what you really want. It saddens me that we didn't solve the mystery of level scaling due to a language barrier. If only I had known the answers to your sagacious questions... *sob*

Like I said previously, the remedy depends on how someone wants to structure their game.

Lephys, come on... I'm joking with you sometimes. I believe you're a good person so it's not my intention to hurt you in any way. Sorry.

In fact, I was talking about the AI being unpredictable...

I don't know Lephys. You could try to kite them?

These level 35 enemies would slaughter your level 1 party.

I'm glad you got this clarification off your chest so we can move on now.

I realize this. I didn't mean "we'll literally just run the exact same football play, every time we fight this guy." Specifically where you step and what order in which you use abilities and such will be different, and you can even use completely different party makeups and strategies. However, your goals will be the same, because a bunch of factors will be the same. "Oh, he's got hefty plate armor, so we're all gonna wanna worry with DT-breaching than attack speed." Or "Oh, that guy's got a huge two-handed sword, so we need to make sure to work against damage types A and B in this fight." That kind of stuff. Just, ideally, in complete isolation, it'd be really nice to play a game in which your combat challenges mixed it up a bit. In a way. That's a hardly an "and therefore, that's how the game should obviously work" observation. There's a lot more to consider before making such a decision, and I'm not really privy to enough info about the game's design context to even begin to decide whether or not such a thing should be implemented, or how. That's why we end up brainstorming and discussing so much hypothetical stuff around here. "Theorycrafting" and all that. But.. if you use completely different party makeups, your tools will be completely different, and the encounter will indeed feel like you fight it for the very first time. Awesome! It's possible that you won't even be upset that this one guy is using plate armor and a two-handed sword, again. And honestly, I think you slightly undervalue the impact of an AI that's unpredictable with ability usage. There's a lot more to consider before deciding "let's go random, yay!", indeed.

Noted, but, how might one go about determining what's an appropriate barrier, and what isn't? How is the toughness of a given enemy or challenge to be determined? I hope there won't be too many more. I appreciate your answers, for realsies. I'm just either correct, or mistaken, in my thinking on this, and if I'm mistaken, I'd like to know that and correct my thinking. Oh, depends on how someone wants to structure their game. Perhaps they want a really challenging beginning, perhaps they don't. Maybe they want the player character to suffer a lot (and even die sometimes!) the moment he or she steps into the big scary world. Maybe they want the player to literally blow up enemies by merely glancing at them. Alrighty then. Just for a moment I was worried you've mistaken your keyboard for a phone (free of charge), and this forum for the best friend you never had.

However, it's entirely possible that some active and modal talents, e.g. shield bash, will be tied to specific combat styles or category of weapons. It's not like the NPC is forced to do anything. It's simply designed that way to complement an encounter with other two enemies who use crushing and piercing weapons respectively, for example. I am confident they'll take care of details and assign appropriate abilities to creatures.

If you say so. I'm pretty sure that enemies equipped by hand, and designed from head to toe with appropriate abilities, improve encounter quality. Decent item randomization and programming the AI to take into account random item/ability combinations is lots of work too. But if you're worried that bandit #37 on playthrough #X will use exactly the same tactics (which you'll obviously remember with crystal clarity, just like his items) as in your playthrough #1, you don't have to be. Abilities are never randomly assigned, but the AI may select semi-randomly from the abilities it has based on a variety of criteria. The creature is given a set of abilities in its prefab (data file) and then its instruction set has an entry for each of those abilities. Each entry has a relative weight and set of conditions applied to it. When the AI analyzes the validity for any entry’s conditions, it adds that entry’s weight into the mix and randomly selects from the valid choices.This quote is taken from Josh Sawyer's tumblr page. http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/79942961685/answering-about-ai-enemy-types-and-their-abilities I think that's neat.

@HH Because unlike Dragon Age 2 for instance, PoE will likely have symmetrical combat mechanics, with enemies functioning within the same set of rules. If my fighter can have 3-4 Talents at level 5, I expect the same to be true for an enemy fighter. Then there's the AI and its prioritization of active abilities, so it isn't just a matter of simply dumping as many abilities as possible into a creature to accommodate your particular fetish.

There's this wild possibility that one can pick only a limited number of Talents. Shocking, I know. So assigning redundant Talents to creatures just to satiate your hunger for omnipresent item randomization might not be such a good idea.

Yes. Enemies can't reload, but they could be allowed to rest, which would alleviate this problem. That's why I agree it should be hard to simply run away from combat.

They certainly should regenerate stamina if that happens, but you'd be able to rest, would they be able to do the same? Having your per rest abilities available (again) is a considerable advantage.

Sure, they don't need to mention their specific weapon, but it would be a pity to have a Talent that boosts prowess with swords and then randomly receive a mace. The AI won't always use the same tactics because there's a bit of randomness involved, so you don't have to worry that a static AI will ruin your subsequent playthroughs.

Yes, good good. And why are the low level encounters reasonable, while having only high-level encounters in the first area of the game (at least some of which you must face and can't avoid) unreasonable? What is the difference, and why is it good? I suppose because it would be odd to put an unavoidable and insurmountable barrier, intentionally preventing the player from ever seeing the rest of the game? Will there be many more questions? I'm happy to solve your peculiar enquiries, but I hope it's at least helping you understand that games can work just fine (or even better!) without level scaling, yes?