[Merged] Combat Friendly Fire

[Jarmo]

A toggle to turn it off at easy difficulty thank you.

 

I can't see how it takes the fun out of your game if I prefer easy combat.

 

With about 30 yrs of crpg experience, I'm pretty sure I know what I like.

...says someone who finished DA:O three times on easy..

 

---

Eternity, remains to be seen.

Maybe it'll be like Temple of Elemental Evil and I enjoy the tactics, turn up the difficulty a notch.

But maybe it'll be more like ie games and I just want to enjoy the story and fight as little as possible as fast as possible.

 

Generally, if the story is good and I get immersed, having to reload breaks the immersion.

Basically I'd like to enjoy the whole campaign without a single reload. Because reload is cheating, ask your DM about it.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Jarmo

[Ashram]

I think friendly fire should be an option.

 

Some of my most frustrating points in RPGs is when you toss yon fireball and your idiot AI runs into the blast zone before you can click to get him or her away from it(many times this AI was chasing an enemy down or whatnot).

 

If AI can have something coded where they avoid areas that are going to get BOOMED, I would be all for it. How beautiful would that be from both an RP and tactical level?

 

Example:

 

Xaragos begins to cast fireball as the PC has placed the fireball sphere where he wants it tossed. The other party members nearby know what Xaragos is going to do since they have been travelling together and know to move back to not get singed. Fireball is cast and the enemies who remain are now toastified for your party members to go back and bash.

 

That I can support. Not the ...ohhh hey this guy is running away...let me chase him into impending doom.

[limaxophobiacq]

Friendly fire should be on for the spells that are simple explosions like fireball, but I do think there should also be 'intelligent' area spells that don't hurt friendlies (just like there is in PnP d&d).

[ogrezilla]

Friendly fire should be on for the spells that are simple explosions like fireball, but I do think there should also be 'intelligent' area spells that don't hurt friendlies (just like there is in PnP d&d).

it would seem reasonable for some spells to be more controllable. Maybe even have that be a perk or something mages can get better at as they get stronger. Instead of making their spells more powerful they choose to learn to control them better instead. Give choices.

Edited September 25, 2012 by ogrezilla

[anek]

Xaragos begins to cast fireball as the PC has placed the fireball sphere where he wants it tossed. The other party members nearby know what Xaragos is going to do since they have been travelling together and know to move back to not get singed. Fireball is cast and the enemies who remain are now toastified for your party members to go back and bash.

 

Why not just this:

Xaragos begins to cast fireball as the PC has placed the fireball sphere where he wants it tossed. The player knows what Xaragos is going to do since he/she initiated it and knows to press the pause key and direct the other companions to move back to not get singed. Fireball is cast and the enemies who remain are now toastified for your party members to go back and bash.

[Grimlorn]

I'm for friendly fire, but I'd also like to see the AOE the spells would create when casting spells also would like to target the ground too.

 

I suppose there could be a casual setting (easiest difficulty setting) where friendly fire is off for the retards.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Grimlorn

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Why not just this:

Xaragos begins to cast fireball as the PC has placed the fireball sphere where he wants it tossed. The player knows what Xaragos is going to do since he/she initiated it and knows to press the pause key and direct the other companions to move back to not get singed. Fireball is cast and the enemies who remain are now toastified for your party members to go back and bash.

 

Because in most games, your companions happily ignore your "run away, you fools" command, and start to wander back into the area of effect to hack some baddies as soon as you turn your attention elsewhere?

 

But if we make the AI able to run away from spells with AoE, we should implement it for enemies who know about the spell being cast (succesful Spellcraft check or equivalent, have a mage in their party with the same spell, etc.).

Edited September 25, 2012 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Phyon]

I think it should be a option not based on easy normal hard but just a option that should be enabled automatically and if some one wants to turn it off let them be able to turn it off. My only thought on having a friendly fire option and why I think it might not work in this kind of game. Some would not want their party being killed by AOE attacks but what about npcs outside your party? If your in a town and you have a friendly fire option off what happens when you cast a fire ball in town with friendly npcs? Do they attack or don't they? If they don't then you have other problems with starting fights when you want to start them. The moments when you want that fireball to hit those people in town.

 

A lot of modern rpgs have it so people in towns can't be attacked or things engaged until they are supposed to be I think adding a friendly fire option could cause problems in that sense outside of just your party being hit by spells. In Baldur's Gate you could go on murder sprees and your game would be screwed. I don't find that a problem. When adding just a friendly fire option it can end up affecting other parts of the game. I am alright with having a friendly fire Toggle that only affects your party and summons nothing else if a feature like this is put in. So that you have a little consideration to the world around you.

 

 

*Edit as this was posted after alumininiumtroxid

 

I disagree with npcs running that just ends up being annoying having your party enemies spastically running all over the map. Your already trying to do your best to control your ai then to have them decide on their own they want to run in a random direction from where they are standing.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Phyon

[duskwind]

Jokes aside, hurting bystanders is always problematic, because it involves implementing people's reaction to your actions during the battle. Will they flee ?

 

Yes, running away should be an automatic non-combatant response to combat happening too close, with return to usual position/walkpath afterwards. Having random commoners strolling through the middle of a pitched battle is a bit distracting. It could be overridden (by the devs) in specific cases where there's a reason for bystanders to stay put, and if they wanted to get really clever, they could have bystanders attracted towards combat (but not too close) where appropriate, ie a circle around the combat zone, where any bystanders within the circle run outside it, and any outside the circle are likely to approach the edge as spectators.

[ogrezilla]

I think it should be a option not based on easy normal hard but just a option that should be enabled automatically and if some one wants to turn it off let them be able to turn it off. My only thought on having a friendly fire option and why I think it might not work in this kind of game. Some would not want their party being killed by AOE attacks but what about npcs outside your party? If your in a town and you have a friendly fire option off what happens when you cast a fire ball in town with friendly npcs? Do they attack or don't they? If they don't then you have other problems with starting fights when you want to start them. The moments when you want that fireball to hit those people in town.

 

A lot of modern rpgs have it so people in towns can't be attacked or things engaged until they are supposed to be I think adding a friendly fire option could cause problems in that sense outside of just your party being hit by spells. In Baldur's Gate you could go on murder sprees and your game would be screwed. I don't find that a problem. When adding just a friendly fire option it can end up affecting other parts of the game. I am alright with having a friendly fire Toggle that only affects your party and summons nothing else if a feature like this is put in. So that you have a little consideration to the world around you.

 

 

*Edit as this was posted after alumininiumtroxid

 

I disagree with npcs running that just ends up being annoying having your party enemies spastically running all over the map. Your already trying to do your best to control your ai then to have them decide on their own they want to run in a random direction from where they are standing.

 

have some consideration for the world around you and don't shoot fireballs near bystanders then.

 

honestly, I'd be fine with options like Full Friendly Fire, Combatant only FF and no FF. Its a single player game and it doesn't bother me if others don't want to deal with it.

[SqueakyCat]

Friendly fire and soul-crushing difficult. I want to strategically learn from my multitude of deaths and hone my skills. I do not want my hand held at any point in the game. If I have to die 20 times to a spider/goblin to figure out what I'm doing wrong strategically, then I welcome death in that case.

 

Give me a classic - - nothing more, nothing less.

[nikolokolus]

Hell yes to friendly fire

[limaxophobiacq]

Friendly fire and soul-crushing difficult. I want to strategically learn from my multitude of deaths and hone my skills. I do not want my hand held at any point in the game. If I have to die 20 times to a spider/goblin to figure out what I'm doing wrong strategically, then I welcome death in that case.

 

Give me a classic - - nothing more, nothing less.

 

While the classic IE games PE is supposed to be reminiscent of did have hard fights, encounters likely to kill you more than once were usually reserved for significant fights with named antagonists/bosses. A few people seem to want a game that is more unforgiving than the old ones were, which I quite frankly don't think is something that is likely to happen, nor something I want.

Edited September 25, 2012 by limaxophobiacq

[anek]

Why not just this:

Xaragos begins to cast fireball as the PC has placed the fireball sphere where he wants it tossed. The player knows what Xaragos is going to do since he/she initiated it and knows to press the pause key and direct the other companions to move back to not get singed. Fireball is cast and the enemies who remain are now toastified for your party members to go back and bash.

 

Because in most games, your companions happily ignore your "run away, you fools" command, and start to wander back into the area of effect to hack some baddies as soon as you turn your attention elsewhere?

 

Well, then may the solution is to simply not make PE one of those games?

 

I never had such problems with the original InfinityEngine games, which had relatively non-aggressive party AI which (at least in BG2) you could even fine-tune, and which you could quickly disable (or re-enable) on demand with a single key-press.

Edited September 25, 2012 by anek

[Bill Gates' Son]

It should be an option; many people just aren't a fan of it due to brain dead AI in games.

[SqueakyCat]

Friendly fire and soul-crushing difficult. I want to strategically learn from my multitude of deaths and hone my skills. I do not want my hand held at any point in the game. If I have to die 20 times to a spider/goblin to figure out what I'm doing wrong strategically, then I welcome death in that case.

 

Give me a classic - - nothing more, nothing less.

 

While the classic IE games PE is supposed to be reminiscent of did have hard fights, encounters likely to kill you more than once were usually reserved for significant fights with named antagonists/bosses. A few people seem to want a game that is more unforgiving than the old ones were, which I quite frankly don't think is something that is likely to happen, nor something I want.

 

We must not have been playing the same games or at the same difficulty level - or your Mojo is far superior to mine.

 

Once your character gained a few levels and your strategies improved, not every encounter was bone-crushing, but there were many, many that were even then (specifically BG1, 2).

[limaxophobiacq]

Friendly fire and soul-crushing difficult. I want to strategically learn from my multitude of deaths and hone my skills. I do not want my hand held at any point in the game. If I have to die 20 times to a spider/goblin to figure out what I'm doing wrong strategically, then I welcome death in that case.

 

Give me a classic - - nothing more, nothing less.

 

While the classic IE games PE is supposed to be reminiscent of did have hard fights, encounters likely to kill you more than once were usually reserved for significant fights with named antagonists/bosses. A few people seem to want a game that is more unforgiving than the old ones were, which I quite frankly don't think is something that is likely to happen, nor something I want.

 

We must not have been playing the same games or at the same difficulty level - or your Mojo is far superior to mine.

 

Once your character gained a few levels and your strategies improved, not every encounter was bone-crushing, but there were many, many that were even then (specifically BG1, 2).

 

Sure there were encounters that were hard and had me re-loading quite a few times, but those were bosses (Sarevok, the demon-bosses in tales of the sword coast, Yxunomei, Kangaxx), enemy adventuring parties, or the goddamn beholders in bg2, not simple wandering monsters on the map.

Edited September 25, 2012 by limaxophobiacq

[limaxophobiacq]

To be fair, my sense of the difficulty of the IE games might be tainted by having re-played them quite a few times and thus not really remembering how hard they were the first.

Edited September 25, 2012 by limaxophobiacq

[general_azure]

You aren't truly chaotic until you've cast stinking cloud inside a crowded tavern, just for chuckles. Or the other way around: make those fancy heroic types think twice about using fireballs when being attacked in a public place.

 

To be honest, I'd be very suprised if this game didn't have friendly fire for both the party as well as neutral NPCs (on default settings, that is).

[ogrezilla]

While the classic IE games PE is supposed to be reminiscent of did have hard fights, encounters likely to kill you more than once were usually reserved for significant fights with named antagonists/bosses. A few people seem to want a game that is more unforgiving than the old ones were, which I quite frankly don't think is something that is likely to happen, nor something I want.

ya I keep seeing a lot of requests for this game to be extremely hardcore. Which is something the games it is paying homage to were not.

Edited September 25, 2012 by ogrezilla

[LadyCrimson]

Friendly fire is great....as long as the combat arenas/areas aren't designed to be so small and closed in that I feel as if there's no choice but to either not use AoE type stuff or run a very high (not just a little) risk of losing by default via killing my own party members.

 

I've played games where friendly fire added a lot to the gameplay/strategy and games where it added nothing but constant, cheap-feeling frustration.

[ogrezilla]

there should be times where AoE is simply a bad idea because you are in a tight space. Then again, tight corridors can be the ideal time to use linear AoE skills as long as you keep your own fighters out of the way. Making those decisions is what makes friendly fire fun. I don't want to be able to win every encounter with the same tactics.

Edited September 25, 2012 by ogrezilla

[flarglebargle]

idk about BG 1 or 2 but i really hope the combat isn't like fallout 2 where the combat was simple attrition fighting were you could be in ADV MK1 PA with a 112% energy weapon skill shooting a plasma caster but you would lose to guys with metal armor and 10mm smgs simply because there were 8 of them and they would chip away at your health until you died, or the combat gets in the way of the game like the wannimagos who could attack you 3 time in 1 turn did tons of damage and were had insane resistances to everything but fire, so if you didn't have PA a high big guns skill and a upgraded flamer you were screwed

[Seldon]

Yes, running away should be an automatic non-combatant response to combat happening too close, with return to usual position/walkpath afterwards.

 

Lets take this sentence to the middle of the Sigil, and consider how many "non-combatant" characters would actually flee and how many would decide it's time to teach you some manners. 'Fleeing for everyone' is fine when we're talking about game with overpowered dragon-slaying champion fighting ultimate evil bastard, in the middle of humble village, but I hope we aren't

Edited September 25, 2012 by Seldon

[Grimlorn]

It should be an option; many people just aren't a fan of it due to brain dead AI in games.

So they can't beat brain dead AI if friendly fire is on? How does that work exactly? The AI is so stupid it forces you to hit your party with spells so you should have an option to turn it off. Sounds like that kind of player is the brain dead one.