Line of sight / distance ?

[sandcracker21]

I have searched but can't seem to find any information on this...

 

Just finished Divinity Original Sin and had a thirst for more, so I picked up Pillars of Eternity 2. However, the game is EXTREMELY difficult to get into right off the bat for the simple reason that... you apparently can't see more that 4 feet in front of you?? 

 

Is there anyway to adjust the game so that other characters don't pop up only when they are a few feet in front of you? Is it an 'ability' to not have the eye-site of a 97 year old?

 

Does this not bother anyone else??

[cevogreen]

Bump- Would like to know this as well.

[Amentep]

Are you referring to the use of "Shroud"/"Fog of War" to limit sight distance of unexplored areas, or to limit sight distance in explored areas, or something else?

[sandcracker21]

I am referring to already explored areas. For example, I'm in a town and there is an NPC LITTERATLY 8 feet in front of me but he doesn't 'pop in' until I'm right on top of him. Makes it very difficult to explore and takes me out of the experience.

[sandcracker21]

Bump- Would like to know this as well.

It's good to know I'm not the only one bothered by this strange design choice.

 

I needed to find a specific person to talk to and had to scower ever inch of the first town because you can't see where the people are!

[jww]

Related to this, my party is regularly hit by ranged attackers that I can't see, so it seems like enemies have a longer line-of-sight?

 

And in town, it's kind of annoying when you are well within your line-of-sight range (which is already pretty short as mentioned above), and you can see the background near you (for example, the steps in front of a building), but you can't see people standing on that background, presumably because there's some sort of obstacle, even if that obstacle is very tiny and shouldn't be blocking your view? You think you're able to see that spot, and can't figure out why the NPC you expect to be there isn't there, until you change angles and realize that a tiny shrub or something was blocking your view of the entire front of the building.

[ShadySands]

It's been a complaint of mine since the first game. I feel like the all distances/ranges are all too close and make it feel claustrophobic.

[InsaneCommander]

They should definitely increase the range of the line of sight. At least for daytime.

[Myztik]

I believe it's done for performance reasons

[sandcracker21]

If it's for performance there should be something in options. I'm sure my 1080ti can handle another few objects on screen!

 

Super frigging annoying. Now that I know it's not just bothering me, I wish someone smarter than myself would mod it! Lol

[acbatchelor]

I may be due to performance reasons, but I doubt it. I haven't try with Deadfire, but in PoE1 I've used the console command to remove the fog of war for the whole map and saw little to no performance loss. 

 

Also, does anyone know if this is something that can be modded? I'd bet it probably isn't, but I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

[Silvaren]

I can see few reasons. First of all, it comes directly from Baldur's Gate. That game was RTS called Battleground Infinity until BioWare made a deal with Interplay, used AD&D and Forgotten Realms licenses and turn it into cRPG in quasi real time with pause. It has sense because tabletop RPG evolve from strategy games.

 

If you look at Baldur's Gate which PoE uses as a template, there was black fog of war in unexplored areas and fog of war in explored areas. It worked in the same way as it worked i RTS games, for example StarCraft. And like I mentioned, BG in early development was RTS game.

 

All Infinity Engine games had huge range of spells and ranged weapons. Range od those were set to "in the line of sight" mostly. You could cast fireball from huge distance as long as you had line of sight. You could use bow to shoot someone from very far. Fog of war was supposed to set some limit to that range.

 

Why fog of war is in explored areas? In Infinity Engine games it was caused by technology. I guess. It is probably hard to limit character's line of sight if you put that character in 2d background without tilesets but with complex gemoetry. What I mean, for example you explored some dungeon and after some events, in one room few corridors prior to your current position some NPC appeared. With fog of war you are unaware of that, even if you already explored that area. It has sense. You see the map, because you remember visited places but you don't know what else is there right now. You don't see through walls, arround the corner.

 

Remember that first BG used 640x480 resolution so visible distance was really short and I guess it was one of the design rules from RTS that most fights should take place on one screen in that resolution to avoid too much chaos and keep player's attention on squeezed combatants rather than moving cammera for long disntance to target another enemy far away.

 

Classic Fallout games didn't have fog of war at all. With high enough Perception, some perks and high weapon's skills you could kill groups of people from huge distant being completly safe. Somehow it is realistic, but games, especially cRPG have rules and are attached to them through all the time without exceptions.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Silvaren

[sandcracker21]

^^ yes, but my compliant is when you have a character that is clearly in your line of site but 'invisible' to you. No fog of war just not rendered on the screen for whatever reason

[Silvaren]

^^ yes, but my compliant is when you have a character that is clearly in your line of site but 'invisible' to you. No fog of war just not rendered on the screen for whatever reason

It sounds like bug to me. Check integrity of your installation on Steam/GOG, make sure to update GPU drivers. I never heard of such problem.

[Amentep]

I think as Silvaren says, this is lifted directly from what Baldur's Gate did.

 

You can see it action in this BG Let's Play (easiest to see by skipping to 7:42 and watching as NPCs move in/out of the sight radius while the party crosses the lobby of the Friendly Arm Inn.

 

 

EDIT: Not to say that this is the way it has to be or that a toggle couldn't be created or something - provided there's not a systemic reason to do it this way.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Amentep

[Rumpelstilskin]

another thing is LoS to enemies on another "floor", in that there doesn't seem to be any. even if it's only a couple of stairs up, as long as you can't walk to them along a straight line, you can't shoot them. divinity was way better with it, they really made elevation into a fleshed-out mechanic.

[Lexx]

Personally I don't see much a problem in it in PoE2, as the maps are all rather small. It annoyed me a lot more in PoE1.

[try2handing]

I also find the visual range too short for my liking. Some ranged weapons have way longer range than your default visual range. Many ranged enemies can attack you from outside of your visual range. In the BG games everyone has the same visual range (which is pretty big) and no one can directly target another from outside of that range. In PoE2 this seems to me like a rather questionable design choice and it causes unnecessary inconveniences.

[sandcracker21]

I also find the visual range too short for my liking. Some ranged weapons have way longer range than your default visual range. Many ranged enemies can attack you from outside of your visual range. In the BG games everyone has the same visual range (which is pretty big) and no one can directly target another from outside of that range. In PoE2 this seems to me like a rather questionable design choice and it causes unnecessary inconveniences.

Could not agree more