Hey,

Just two questions for more experienced backers than myself:

Firstly are spiders inside the cave meant to absolutely mob you? I had occasions where while engaging one pack of spiders another from beyond the fog of war would run out and join in the combat, quickly wrecking my party on both Normal and Hard.  Is their "aggro" radius larger than the fog or did they have a "call for help" like ability? I worked around it by pulling them back/positioning against far walls but i was just curious if this happens often with monster packs?

Secondly has anyone else found that the BB Priest character wielding a certain "hidden staff" absolutely destroys anything she hits (Normal hits for 40-50, Crits for 100+ and Grazes for far higher than other characters). For two new games she was my primary damage dealer over barbarians, mages, rogues. In fact i was so amused that i actually hired a second priest to use as a buff bot and let her just blow everything up...Working as intended or just my good luck with rng (Very unlikely across two games)? None of my other characters with the said weapon could deal out the damage she did, her accuracy was also very high for someone with minimal accuracy stat...In fact no character i have made as even come close to the amount of destruction she reaped even with buffs/food etc lol. 

Not really bothered by either of these just wanted to find out if others have seen them lol. 

Thanks, 

First, I think... yes. They're aggressive, and they do swarm. If you scout ahead, though, it is possible to pull them group by group, but you have to be careful to pull them as far as you can. I thought it was pretty cool actually.

 

Second, nope, I haven't noticed that. It's a good weapon though, but there are others that are as good. Haven't noticed the priest being especially effective with it, but then I haven't paid that much attention. Maybe it is a priest staff?

Initially the spider swarm was annoying but yeah once i started scouting and pulling it wasn't so bad i was just amazed at first by the range of the aggro radius. It will make it interesting if other monsters share this swarming trait especially in higher level/late game areas lol

 

I was baffled by how she could out damage any character i had made. It may have been some kind of crazy engagement/flanking bonus or something im not understanding. If you feel incline test it out, its quite hilarious to watch the buff bot blow everything up in 1-2 hits beetles included. 

Edited December 30, 201411 yr by Fen(rir)tastic

On a rather random note, from what I've seen so far, I actually find it extremely refreshing that scouting makes such a big difference in this game. In most games of this type, scouting has often been completely unnecessary. In fact, I would go so far as to say that scouting has never really existed as a concept, and stealth was primarily used to set up backstabs or similar.

Honourable mention to Dragon Age: Origins, not because it encouraged scouting (it didn't), but because Stealth also being amazing for setting up traps anywhere and everywhere.

 

When it comes to the learning curve and prospective tutorials or starting tutorial texts in PoE, I hope Obsidian remembers to impart the importance of scouting to new players, because it appears to make a big difference, and could avoid a lot of "X encounter is too hard!"-arguments. Teach a man to fish and all that.

Edited December 30, 201411 yr by Luckmann

In v333 for example priest's Warding Seal could easily wipe out Medreth's whole group on hard as well as sometimes my chars would miss all their attacks and keep getting accuracy bonus and when I would take weapon off he would do ~3000 dmg by hitting with fists. Maybe this is somehting similar? Some hidden bonus that's not supposed to work like that. 

I equipped BB Priest with said secret staff this time, and she wasn't doing exceptionally hard damage. I think it must've been some weird bug manifesting.

I would also be nice if intelligent enemies like humans you fight actually would react to you fighting their buddies one room away.

I would also be nice if intelligent enemies like humans you fight actually would react to you fighting their buddies one room away.

 

There is a little devil of a roleplayer and a GM inside of me that thinks that this would be an excellent idea, but in actual play, it would probably be pretty horrible.

Yea, I'm surprised at the lack of scouting in single player RPGs. MMO's have been doing this for years, even if you're not playing a stealthy, just standing close enough to see and looking for "outrunners" and what have you is useful.

 

Ever played WoW? Fought solo with Knolls or Murlocs? Yep, careful pulling and distancing is part of it. Same thing for "curmodgeons" in Hibernia in DAoC.

Edited December 30, 201411 yr by Luridis

I have had humanoids from another room come in when the party was fighting.  At least if there was an open door between the two rooms.   Probably a matter of one of my party stepping into the Aggro space though.

 

I would also be nice if intelligent enemies like humans you fight actually would react to you fighting their buddies one room away.

 

There is a little devil of a roleplayer and a GM inside of me that thinks that this would be an excellent idea, but in actual play, it would probably be pretty horrible.

 

Yeh, I'm pretty sure it would. Realistically, unless you somehow managed really quick stealth kills, the entire Skaen temple should get alerted to your presence pretty early on. You would have a lot of those Deep Wounds archers sticking pins into you...

Yea, I'm surprised at the lack of scouting in single player RPGs. MMO's have been doing this for years, even if you're not playing a stealthy, just standing close enough to see and looking for "outrunners" and what have you is useful.

 

Ever played WoW? Fought solo with Knolls or Murlocs? Yep, careful pulling and distancing is part of it. Same thing for "curmodgeons" in Hibernia in DAoC.

 

Actually a very good point. I have played several MMO:s and usually dismiss their relevance in most regards to roleplaying games of all kinds, but this is actually a very fair point and an apt comparison. Scouting usually really matters in MMO:s, yet for whatever reason, I don't think I've seen it matter in any single-player game ever.

 

I was already going to hulk up on Stealth for my Bleak Walker, but I didn't really think it'd ever be truly useful. In PoE, it might actually be worth it just to scout around or to position myself, and that's actually amazing.

 

Yeh, I'm pretty sure it would. Realistically, unless you somehow managed really quick stealth kills, the entire Skaen temple should get alerted to your presence pretty early on. You would have a lot of those Deep Wounds archers sticking pins into you...

 

Exactly, I mean, I might harp on a bit about AI:s and relative (in-universe) realism, but I don't think anyone would really want "realistic" AI, where they alert the entire castle the second they see you, refuse to fight you, lock all the doors and await reinforcements, or where that dragon boss you're fighting will just say "Lol no" when he reaches half health and flees, never to be seen ever again.

 

There's so many things and scenarios I can't even imagine anything other than a full party of rogues and rangers pulling off.

 

 

....now I kinda want to play a PnP where everyone's an assassin of some sort.

 

Edited December 30, 201411 yr by Luckmann

FWIW I made a somewhat stealthy party in my latest round with the BB, and it does make the Skaen temple at least a lot easier. You can get everyone in position, then open up with a volley + backstab from the rogue. Took several groups of Skaenites down virtually without a scratch and without expending spells.

I have had humanoids from another room come in when the party was fighting.  At least if there was an open door between the two rooms.   Probably a matter of one of my party stepping into the Aggro space though.

 

Are they using aggro links in this game? There are places in MMOs, like raids where there will be one or two guys walking between groups. If you attack them, just they come. However, if you attack either group and the "link" is still standing, you get both groups no matter what you try. I'll have to look for this myself when I fire it up later.

 

 

I would also be nice if intelligent enemies like humans you fight actually would react to you fighting their buddies one room away.

 

There is a little devil of a roleplayer and a GM inside of me that thinks that this would be an excellent idea, but in actual play, it would probably be pretty horrible.

 

 

Yeh, I'm pretty sure it would. Realistically, unless you somehow managed really quick stealth kills, the entire Skaen temple should get alerted to your presence pretty early on. You would have a lot of those Deep Wounds archers sticking pins into you...

 

Then you design the dungeon around that.

I would also be nice if intelligent enemies like humans you fight actually would react to you fighting their buddies one room away.

Rooms built into underground cave complexes tend to be soundproof. Animals having better hearing and other senses than humans is also not unheard of.

 

Though I have you question how you can even claim to enjoy RPG's with such absurd standards for realism. The whole point of RPG's is abstracting reality to make it fun.

Edited December 31, 201411 yr by Quetzalcoatl

Then you design the dungeon around that.

 

Mm... no. Not for this type of game. It would work great for a stealth game. You could even make a stealth RPG. But not for an IE-esque game. Dungeon crawling in an IE-esque game is all about clearing the thing room by room. Making "raising the alarm" an effective lose condition would totally change the feelz. I'd rather continue to suspend my disbelief on this score.

 

 

 

I would also be nice if intelligent enemies like humans you fight actually would react to you fighting their buddies one room away.

 

There is a little devil of a roleplayer and a GM inside of me that thinks that this would be an excellent idea, but in actual play, it would probably be pretty horrible.

 

 

Yeh, I'm pretty sure it would. Realistically, unless you somehow managed really quick stealth kills, the entire Skaen temple should get alerted to your presence pretty early on. You would have a lot of those Deep Wounds archers sticking pins into you...

 

Then you design the dungeon around that.

 

 

The thing is.. I mean.. I really want to agree with you. I'm usually very.. "What's the logic behind this?" and "Does this make sense from an in-universe perspective?" and constantly harping on immersion and so on. I mean, I haven't even played the game, and I'm already objecting to shared health between Rangers and their pets based on feel. But.. it's just unreasonable.

 

A single person, acting like a real-life human being, could easily awaken the entire castle.

 

A bullet fired is heard throughout several blocks.

 

A wizard could create a fireball in the sky to alert a full camp of opponents that enemies are approaching.

 

Any person could reasonably see you from a kilometre away, given open terrain.

 

The only solution I can see is designing dungeons with audo-absorbant walls and auto-locking doors that takes a minute to open so you have time to murder the runner.

 

It works in PnP:s because of emergant gameplay, where the GM can constantly change the surroundings around the players to account for whatever they do and how they do it, and there's the possibility to seriously lose without the game being over. You're looking for a back entrance? Roll Awareness and oh, look, there's a ladder here, you don't have to engage the enemies, or you get discovered and this or that happens. A CRPG can't reasonably react to all of that.

So you let players escape during combat like you could in IE games. Not a big deal. You put things into dungeons that prevent enemy movement like those movable crates in D:OS or Blackguards. You give players stealth skills. You let them talk their way out of some fights. And so on.

You build bigger dungeons on multiple levels where each level has bigger rooms and longer passageways and where next level enemies cannot hear what is going on on upper level.

 

You let players have chase skills so those running away to warn others can be chased down and stopped.

So you let players escape during combat like you could in IE games. Not a big deal. You put things into dungeons that prevent enemy movement like those movable crates in D:OS or Blackguards. You give players stealth skills. You let them talk their way out of some fights. And so on.

You build bigger dungeons on multiple levels where each level has bigger rooms and longer passageways and where next level enemies cannot hear what is going on on upper level.

 

You let players have chase skills so those running away to warn others can be chased down and stopped.

But now you're imposing a pretty significant list of restrictions that is in no way better than we currently have in it's rationale. If the goal is to have them behave realistically, then why wouldn't they be allowed to cross from level to level? Why don't they get to hear across elevation, when it's supposedly bad that they can't hear room-to-room?

 

Aside from wilderness fights, I can't think of that many fights (or rather, scenarios) in any of the IE games that would have been reasonably winnable with realistically intelligent or behaving NPC:s.

And I always found Bandit camp in BG1 really stupid due to people in tents not reacting to what is going on outside.

 

And there can always be logical reason why next level don't react immediately to upper level, they don't have complete information on attackers, they think they can defend better on lower level, they don't care about those at upper level dying and want to use them as buffer and so on.

 

I know it is impossible for PoE to have super realistic behaviour but at least lets fix it a bit.

So you let players escape during combat like you could in IE games.

We will try and mod this in, because I don't think they're going to do it. Shouldn't be difficult to do.

 

So you let players escape during combat like you could in IE games.

We will try and mod this in, because I don't think they're going to do it. Shouldn't be difficult to do.

I find OE design philosophy obsolete. I like to compare it to DRM. To prevent piracy DRM for years made life miserable for those that bought the game and it didn't even stop piracy.

So in this case they want to prevent cheese from IE that let you change area to frack up enemy spells by not letting you leave zones during combat. But only a small % of players did that (pirates) while everyone else would use it to just escape combat completely (normal buyers).

 

Why frack up everyones games? Get out of DRM thinking Obsidian!

I follow your simile, but I'm not sure its completely fair. A lot of folks used cheap exploits (myself included) to game the game, and I think OE is just trying to keep us from falling into old patterns, or the temptation to do so. I think it's their way of attempting to make the combat feel fresh, but similar. 

 

That said, I'm not a fan either. I'd like to be able to retreat to town when a battle goes south to regroup instead of being married to every encounter until one side is dead. It's a big reason why I need to play or Easy or Normal, and I imagine it's a much larger problem for folks that play on Hard or PotD. I'll probably never try Trial of Iron mode due to that as well.

 

Also, +1 for use of the word frack. It's highly underutilized. 

It was a clever way to go around common limitations of TV format and I really hoped it would come into common use. But it seems I am only one that uses it :D