My biggest gripe about a game mechanic - City battles

[Queeg]

There are battles orchestrated in cities. The cities are populated. And you probably realize now what this is about.

 

You are thumping into a massive iron golem with your sword and blasting spells to his plate...everyone is screaming but still all too casual to care, just walking around. A villager takes a stroll according to his AI behavior, minding his own business, right through the battlefield when suddenly WotEP deals a point of damage to them and half the city wants to kill you.

Or rememeber the guard that stood 2 meters from your adversary guarding nothing, not even watching the battle? All of a sudden they decided to move directly into a fireball blast and now half the city wants to kill you.

 

I am now trying to kill Kathrenn the 6th time in a row because of this and ragequit on the 5th. I'm apparently low level on PotD, all the golems are 3 red skulls. I can do it without anyone getting unconscious but only dealing 1-2 damage to the Ironclad Giants per attack. It takes ages to down them and then this happens. Reload. Doing my best, no AoE attacks, but something always triggers them to go after me.

Tried to lure them away, semi-succesfully, killed all but one who still stood by the villagers, he didn't want to follow me. Half the city wanted to kill me. Again.

 

 

It's the chicken from Skyrim all over again, but genuinely hard to avoid!

 

A solution proposed:

Can you please, like, not go into the line of fire, dumb city dwellers? Like perhaps, run and hide while your watcher and savior rips their head off?

Edited June 26, 2018 by Queeg

[Loren Tyr]

Yes, very much this, it's absurd. Can't even use non-damaging AOE attacks, either. I had some Binding Web going on a bunch of thugs that waylaid me, random peasant casually strolls into the middle of all this, gets tagged by the web and goes immediately hostile (well, yellow circle anyway), and is instantly blown apart by a nearby rod blast. Ugh.

 

I mean, that we shouldn't be throwing around Crackling Bolts in the middle of a city, sure. But at least give those NPCs the brains to either run or at least cower in place as soon as they see the melee going on.

[Manveru123]

Omg yes! Kathrenn fight was hell because I had to restart each time a dumb villager got hurt by accident.. Why aren't they running!?

[Enoch]

Yeah, the Katrenn bounty was not placed very well.  If you're going to have a fight in that kind of setting, commoners should have the sense not to just wander through the blast zone.

 

That said, I was more bothered by the fact that, absent nicking a passer-by in the process, the city guards are totally fine with a band of mercenary bounty hunters trying to murder a lady on the steps of the Temple.  

Edited June 26, 2018 by Enoch

[tinysalamander]

That said, I was more bothered by the fact that, absent nicking a passer-by in the process, the city guards are totally fine with a band of mercenary bounty hunters trying to murder a lady on the steps of the Temple.

Must be bribes…

[Shake Appeal]

The second I read the thread title I knew what fight would be mentioned. I did this last night, and it was weird/hilarious. They should probably move it down to outside the bottom part of the Temple of Berath, or something.

 

It didn't help that the end of that fight was my party gathered around the (three red skulls) construct chipping away with single-digit damage for what felt like five minutes because it was so hard to stack any debuffs on it.

[Androoh]

I got around the issue with fighting Katrenn by kiting her into the main amphitheatre area - less npcs lurking there to get caught in the crossfire.

Slightly cheesy tactic but it meant the city guard didn't start attacking me.

[269811510]

Yes，that's a ture problem need to be fixed.

[269811510]

The citizen should understand the danger of be involved into a battle.

[InsaneCommander]

The best part are the comments they make when noticing the fight:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Queeg]

Finally finished it on the 8th try with only one killed Craftsman, but not by me at least, and apparently only the champion and savor is singled out by guards when attacking villagers. Huge steel golems are permitted to kill people all fine. Guards have bigger problems - like watching, if perhaps I dealt a damage to someone.

Edited June 26, 2018 by Queeg

[Abel]

It's fine to have commoners and guards strolling around. It's much needed to make the world alive. Even more so since Obs apparently made a wondeful job giving them AI routines (best feature ever). Defiance Bay felt empty and hardly lively because there was not enough of them, even though the town was supposed to be full of refugees (the very Californian like avenues, waaaaaayy too wide, added to this feeling of emptiness, when more clustered buildings, in a very medieval fashion, would have helped solving it). So it's a great thing Obs corrected the Defiance Bay problem with Pillars 2.

 

But when the kind of things described in this thread happens, it just makes everything look silly, and pretty much ruin the wonderful job done with AI routines. Commoners fleeing combat zones, guards that make decisions and are not just for flavor. This is the kind of reactivity needed for immersion purpose. I seem to remember that more than once, guards in BG1 and 2 would somehow react to this kind of situation (though, in a stereotyped way: they basically attacked the party who intiated combat i guess. Sometimes they would just stand there, too, which is bad), and that commoners would run away in Fallout 1 and 2. Need to replay these games for the XXXXth time to be sure.

 

Hope they will fix that sometime along the patching process.

Edited June 26, 2018 by Abel

[handsomenat]

The only way I was able to fight Kathrenn without harming any NPC was to wait until it was raining - she moves to a less crowded spot in the map, near the entrance to the catacombs.

[Enoch]

It's fine to have commoners and guards strolling around. It's much needed to make the world alive. Even more so since Obs apparently made a wondeful job giving them AI routines (best feature ever). Defiance Bay felt empty and hardly lively because there was not enough of them, even though the town was supposed to be full of refugees (the very Californian like avenues, waaaaaayy too wide, added to this feeling of emptiness, when more clustered buildings, in a very medieval fashion, would have helped solving it). So it's a great thing Obs corrected the Defiance Bay problem with Pillars 2.

 

But when the kind of things described in this thread happens, it just makes everything look silly, and pretty much ruin the wonderful job done with AI routines. Commoners fleeing combat zones, guards that make decisions and are not just for flavor. This is the kind of reactivity needed for immersion purpose. I seem to remember that more than once, guards in BG1 and 2 would somehow react to this kind of situation (though, in a stereotyped way: they basically attacked the party who intiated combat i guess. Sometimes they would just stand there, too, which is bad), and that commoners would run away in Fallout 1 and 2. Need to replay these games for the XXXXth time to be sure.

 

Hope they will fix that sometime along the patching process.

I've seen it in other areas-- IIRC, there were cowering commoners in the Oozey Well random city encounter.  Just not in Sacred Stair.

[Vitalis]

 

It's fine to have commoners and guards strolling around. It's much needed to make the world alive. Even more so since Obs apparently made a wondeful job giving them AI routines (best feature ever). Defiance Bay felt empty and hardly lively because there was not enough of them, even though the town was supposed to be full of refugees (the very Californian like avenues, waaaaaayy too wide, added to this feeling of emptiness, when more clustered buildings, in a very medieval fashion, would have helped solving it). So it's a great thing Obs corrected the Defiance Bay problem with Pillars 2.

 

But when the kind of things described in this thread happens, it just makes everything look silly, and pretty much ruin the wonderful job done with AI routines. Commoners fleeing combat zones, guards that make decisions and are not just for flavor. This is the kind of reactivity needed for immersion purpose. I seem to remember that more than once, guards in BG1 and 2 would somehow react to this kind of situation (though, in a stereotyped way: they basically attacked the party who intiated combat i guess. Sometimes they would just stand there, too, which is bad), and that commoners would run away in Fallout 1 and 2. Need to replay these games for the XXXXth time to be sure.

 

Hope they will fix that sometime along the patching process.

I've seen it in other areas-- IIRC, there were cowering commoners in the Oozey Well random city encounter. Just not in Sacred Stair.

In the well event they cower, of course it doesn't stop them from being murdered by either side. Thankfully there aren't any guards to get pissy over it. Edited June 26, 2018 by Vitalis

[aimlessgun]

That said, I was more bothered by the fact that, absent nicking a passer-by in the process, the city guards are totally fine with a band of mercenary bounty hunters trying to murder a lady on the steps of the Temple.  

 

Yeah the whole bounty system is sort of weird that way. As long as someone's paying you to murder, it's totally ok. Not just killing people in the streets and homes of Neketaka but like, "Oh you sunk a ship of my faction, but some shady person in Dunnage gave you a job to do it? Well then it's A OK with me, no faction rep loss." I like bounty hunting from a gameplay standpoint but maybe some more convincing ingame reasoning could have been offered. 

[InsaneCommander]

Yeah the whole bounty system is sort of weird that way. As long as someone's paying you to murder, it's totally ok. Not just killing people in the streets and homes of Neketaka but like, "Oh you sunk a ship of my faction, but some shady person in Dunnage gave you a job to do it? Well then it's A OK with me, no faction rep loss." I like bounty hunting from a gameplay standpoint but maybe some more convincing ingame reasoning could have been offered.

 

Exactly. Maybe they could make some improvements. For example, waiting until the target has moved to an isolated location. Or having to use a different flag and avoid boarding, otherwise somebody might survive and let their faction know you attacked them.

[InsaneCommander]

Notice some interesting things when doing the Katrenn battle again. It seems some people do react to it, unless they think it's a bathhouse discussion:

 

- A Devotee of Magran was chanting "Dull the Edge, Blunt the Point" during the battle

- Mark van der Bij came to help and cast "Watchful Presence". He did wait until the battle was almost finished for some reason (and I was moving away from him as the battle progressed, so he was not triggered by proximity):

 

 

 

 

- You can just leave Katrenn's body right in front of Magran's temple, as if it was the middle of the Bathhouse

Edited June 27, 2018 by InsaneCommander

[Hawke64]

Been there, fought them. It took 3 or 4 attempts to complete the quest without civilians dying from the Constructs' AoE attacks.

 

Also, I posted it in the Technical Support section: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/102651-guards-reaction-to-combat/

I guess, the more details we provide, the better.

[Phenomenum]

Fresh recipe from Obsidian crew about makin' a hard encouter: just spawn enemies with 100+ Defences - cake is done.

[anathanielh]

I just used a bunch of Foe only AoE spells and used Serafen and his cipher skills to drain armor and defenses from the golems. Still spent like 10 minutes doing 1 dmg a pop to the final iron construct.

 

I do agree that the civilians not reacting is a bit silly, though.