After playing the game a bit and then watching players like Shevek who could care less that their party members get KO'd in a battle, it seems to me that the disincentives for having your party members stay alive is minimal. This is especially true if you were to have a party member with high hitpoints who would likely survive long enough to get back to camp for healing and resupply.

 

I would suggest having some sort of additional damage added to health if a party member gets knocked out. For example, as health is 4-6x the normal endurance currently, with each knockout, there would be a 5-10% additional damage done to total hitpoints/health. Something that makes KOs scary but not game-breaking. This way, a player who barely scrapes out of a battle is still in a better position than one who gets KO'd. It incentivizes repositioning during battle.

 

Oh, also: get rid of AoO. It's poorly implemented and a huge headache. Think of other ways around your problems with kiting: AoO doesn't do it.

Edited November 18, 201411 yr by Hormalakh

i agree with you about AoO, i'm not sure it works. This video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djUKzUs5aGg (combat starts at 11:00) shows a female disengaging (12:50) and i can't really see if there's any consequence. I would like to see KO as a passive ability for melee classes that occurs on critical hit only.

Reposting this here because it's such a great idea 

 

When a character runs out of stamina and falls, have him (very slowly) lose health until he gets revived or the battle ends. (My inspiration for this is Blackguards, where you had a limited number of turns to heal a fallen character before he went off the battlefield permanently).

 

This will prevent those cheesy situations where you keep fallen characters "in reserve" until you're ready to raise them.

Edited November 18, 201411 yr by Infinitron

How about getting rid of Stamina/Endurance/whatever all together? 

 

Solves all the problems presented by the OP. 

I know this is just me hopping on the IE games band wagon again but i agree that it currently feels very very weird for my character to get knocked down and then the enemy just leaves him.

In the earlier betas the enemy did actually try to kill your fallen characters. Not anymore.

Again, a band aid solution to a **** mechanic?

Edited November 18, 201411 yr by Cubiq

When a character of mine drops in the IE games, I reload.

 

I do the same in PE too, unless I'm doing testing.

I agree with the OP.

 

Reposting this here because it's such a great idea 

 

When a character runs out of stamina and falls, have him (very slowly) lose health until he gets revived or the battle ends. (My inspiration for this is Blackguards, where you had a limited number of turns to heal a fallen character before he went off the battlefield permanently).

 

This will prevent those cheesy situations where you keep fallen characters "in reserve" until you're ready to raise them.

 

I would be ok with that. That will not impact trash combats at all (since they are short) but will be meaningful in larger encounters.

 

Edit: Also, rather than a health dot on KO, you could just hit the character with a chunk of health damage (that might be easier to implement). Like, a player gets KO'd so they get hit with a one time hit to health equal to 10 or 15% of the max right off the bat.

Edited November 18, 201411 yr by Shevek

oops, i confused knockout and knockdown ability, sorry. I'm with Sensuki, if that happened to a char, i'll reload.

Disagree with the OP. The last thing PoE needs is more mechanics to prevent .5% of players from doing something. We already have: no healing, limited resting, unlimited inventory and no kill xp, all to prevent someone from doing something. 

Hey, hey, you! Yes you! That's not how you play the game.