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Okay so long story short under the big oak tree where the wolf spiders spawn me and my friends built a base and worked hard and long on it and it was coming along extremely well when I died from a ladybug and respawned for the first time at that base and when I spawned in so did THREE wolf spiders. I about pooped myself. After some thinking and trying to build up the courage we went in and we took them out as they destroyed our base. Luckily the chests didn’t break but we would very much appreciate if you guys added a system to prevent enemies from spawning around player built structures in the next patch. I know this game like just came out but I really really like this game and I want to provide detailed feedback. Thank you for your time if you read the whole thing!

Patrols: Sometimes called “pathers” or “pats,” these are lightly scripted enemies in that they walk a set circuit around a particular area. For example, a bandit camp may have two sets of patrols, two guards each, that walk a circle in opposite directions, on the outer edge of the camp; depending on which entry point the player attempts to control and timing (maybe you’re surprised in the middle of combat by a patrol that comes from behind), this would add a tactical layer. The AI may also be altered in that one guard may run away to warn the rest of the camp (perhaps after injury) or automatically call the nearest group of their allies within a certain range. Note that this setup does encourage “pulling,” not “kiting” (a term used incorrectly in the other thread), but I don’t consider pulling a bad thing at all unless the game mechanics are poorly designed to allow pulling individuals on the fog of war edge away from their groups--good pulling mechanics and strategy should involve discrete groups. Other possibilities include heightened senses (to potentially spot stealthy players); multiple, more complex routes that defy easy memorization; different speeds; randomly generated patrols per session or game (e.g. an enemy base has three possible patrol patterns, A-B-C, but in this game you only see B-C). The IE games didn’t make much use of patrols in the classical sense that I remember; enemies may randomly wander around a very small area, but this is not true patrol behavior. The closest analogue I can think of in the IE games would be the guards walking up and down the main “road” of Nashkel, but those are player-side. I wonder if this sort of thing is limited by the engine or something; admittedly I only remember experiencing patrol behaviors in MMOs, but the mechanic’s value is independent of multiplayer and pause ability, so I think this could be reasonably ported. I’d love to see real (enemy) patrols in PE if possible; that would make each combat encounter a bit more unique. This could even be finessed in difficulty settings. Respawns: I have mixed feelings about this kind of mechanic. Simply, a respawn is the same type of enemy/creature (or from a limited pool of cycling creatures) reappearing in the same spot after a certain amount of time. In MMOs, the mechanic is required for so many players, but there are different levels of respawning depending on area (e.g. slower respawns in dungeons, etc.). This doesn’t work so well in a non-persistent SP world like the IE games because it doesn’t work for narrative play--if you clear out a dungeon, it should stay cleared--yet there are a couple places where respawns happened in BG1, and it was poorly implemented: e.g. Cloakwood (the map with the spiders and traps). Spiders would respawn the moment you moved away and covered the spot with the fog of war. Are the randomly generated enemy spawns when you rest in the wilderness or in dungeons “respawns”? I wouldn’t classify them as such, nor the random encounters between map travel in BG. The primary difference between these BG encounters and respawns are that the latter are far less dependent on an RNG check (or not at all). If there were respawns in PE, they would have to be used very sparingly and in situations that make some sense. The Cloakwood spiders made some sense in that the critters could come in from outlying wilderness, but the implementation should have used map-level respawns or even per login session instead of the fog of war (way overkill). Nor should respawns be used for sentient recruit situations (e.g. enemy base) where they’d have a limited number of soldiers. Critters in dungeons (e.g. undead) might make sense, but again, this mechanic would have to be used sparingly if at all. Randomized or pool spawn points: These did not exist much at all in the IE games (the Modron Maze in PS:T), but I think would allow some variety (tactical or not) in PE if possible. Example of randomized spawn points--a dungeon boss may be in one of three rooms; this could add a tactical layer depending on the layout of the room, and the spawn location itself may be determined in each new game or per session. Pool spawns can end up being cosmetic only or significantly affect gameplay--basically the RNG will determine the type and sometimes number of enemy that spawns in a set location; I believe this sort of thing is already part of one of the difficulty modes, though, so I won’t go into it. Randomized spawn points are a bit more interesting to me anyway, though this would have to be used sparingly as well, as the IE games had static encounters and thus a certain overall "feel" should be retained.