Respawning Creatures in BG:EE - What's your preference?

Dee

(Note well: This poll is not official, nor a promise to change any of the game's current behavior.)

In Baldur's Gate's original release in 1998, creatures in most wilderness and dungeon areas would respawn almost immediately after being slain. You walk into a room, kill the kobold in there, walk out of the room, and then a minute later that same kobold is back again shooting your party from behind.

In Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, most - if not all- of these spawn points were changed to only fire once when encountered; so that once you clear an area of the dungeon, that area is cleared for good. No more painful backtracking on your way back to town to buy more arrows or revive dead companions, but also no more resident creatures once you've completed Firewine Ruins.

Some people preferred the original, more aggressive method, while others enjoy the less punishing style in the Enhanced Edition. Obviously, the people who prefer the current method are less likely to complain, since the current behavior works best for them. For those who prefer the old ways, it may seem like a bug.

I should note right now that the results of this poll will not change what we do in the Enhanced Edition - or I should say, will not necessarily change what we do. I just want to get a broader perspective.

The third option in the poll is to make it so that creatures respawn after an hour of game-time, rather than immediately. This would allow players to backtrack through a cleared area if need be, but would also allow areas to repopulate when the player rests or travels (or simply spends too long in one spot). There's a small sampling of what this would look like here: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/543193/#Comment_543193

Tell us what you think.

Silverstar

Seems like something that could be a toggleable option though, unless that would be tricky to implement?

Dee

It'd definitely require code to make it toggle-able; the "best" (read: safest) implementation is to make one choice and let players mod it if they don't like the behavior. I know that I personally prefer one option over the others, I'm mostly curious to see if there's a clear preference from the community one way or another (or another).

Metalloman

WHAT? @Dee posting a non-necessarily official poll thread??

Bookmarked.


Anyway: that is interesting and personally I like both the first and the second options depending on the moment I'm playing.
Said that and considering that I'm sure that all the guys and girls here have different tastes regarding this peculiar topic I would suggest a slider in game options to choose one of the three above options so people can balance their own run depending on what they want, considering that they could want random spawns to behave differently each time they play.
Of course if all of this is possible.

EDIT: damn smartphone keyboard: typo

meagloth

You're italics are a but off, btw.

Dee

meagloth said:

You're italics are a but off, btw.

Bah--I've been spending too much time on RPG Crossing today. Fixed.

Metalloman

It looks like @Silverstar ninjed me, and in a pretty concise way.

CrevsDaak

I think that the perfect time between spawns is from 5 to 1 hours. If there are many creatures, 5 hours, if there are just one of two, one hour.

Silverstar

Is this sneaky market research for potential future project(s)?

Dee

Mostly for my own edification. But it's definitely good information to have, going forward.

deltago

Dee said:

It'd definitely require code to make it toggle-able; the "best" (read: safest) implementation is to make one choice and let players mod it if they don't like the behavior. I know that I personally prefer one option over the others, I'm mostly curious to see if there's a clear preference from the community one way or another (or another).

Some versions of the game are unmoddable are they not?
I wouldn't mind a new difficulty slider in options for the spawn rates and allow everyone to play their own way. It would be a very nice feature.

Metalloman

Sooo, Dee, you think that there's no way to implement such an option (spawn slider) in IE:EE games in the future?

Gotural

Since a hour is in game time equal to 2.5 or 5 minutes in real life, I would prefer it to be 2 hours to be sure that the area respawn after I leave it, and not while I'm in the area.

SharGuidesMyHand

The way that the original game had it was just absurd IMO. It almost felt like the game was punishing you for reloading, or for deciding to go to bed before you had finished exploring an area.

The way that the game currently has it is fine IMO (though I should note that I haven't downloaded the latest patch - I don't know if it has changed anything since the prior one).

Lemernis

I favor leaving it as it is in EE--unless as suggested by @Mettaloman a slider is offered for no, low, medium, and high respawn rates. One size cannot fit all here.

Tresset

I do sorely miss the respawns that were in the original and I do really want them back, but every hour seems like a little bit too quickly for me. I would prefer something along the lines of either every 8, 12, or 24 in game hours to one in game hour. One in game hour isn't all that long in real time and wouldn't be all that realistic anyway. Every 8-24 hours however would be awesome if you could do it and it would allow for a realistic risk for resting in the wilderness/dungeon or leaving an area prematurely. Other than that YES!!!! MAKE RESPAWNS HAPPEN!!!! DO IT NAOW!!!!

Tresset

@Dee just to clarify something: I believe that in the origninal 1998 release the respawns were triggered by reloading in an area, which is why it seemed immediate in some cases. IIRC if you didn't reload then nothing would respawn. It has been a while though...

xzarsrevenge

I love the way you guys handle it in the EE games. I hate respawning enemies in any game, so aggravating!

Mathsorcerer

Of the three, I voted for "respawn after an hour" even though 6 hours or 12 hours might be more "realistic". As I noted elsewhere, though, I may go back to removing spawn points from area files completely and using scripts to manage the spawns based on number in party, average party level, and game difficulty setting.

TheSarge

I think certain areas should have no respawns and others should respawn like a perpetual popcorn machine. Depends on the in-world reason for the spawns.

elminster

An hour is 5 minutes in real-life time. That seems like a good amount of time to me.

Belanos

Dee said:

In Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, most - if not all- of these spawn points were changed to only fire once when encountered; so that once you clear an area of the dungeon, that area is cleared for good. No more painful backtracking on your way back to town to buy more arrows or revive dead companions, but also no more resident creatures once you've completed Firewine Ruins.

I get the impression you didn't get around to this in outdoor areas. I was trying to get through the Peldvale area, and time after time I'd come across a group of Bandits. I'd kill them, haul off their loot to Beregost as my party had no more inventory space, then come back again. Yet still I encountered yet more Bandits in the same locations and I'd have to rinse and repeat. I did this several times and it got so tedious I just stopped playing the game completely, and moved on to BG2.

Erg

None of the above. I prefer to use this mod, at least until my own mod, Tutification, is ready.

JuliusBorisov

Actually, I've got used to how it currently works in BG:EE and don't think it should be changed. I like it how it's now.

What Is Dead May Never Die

OperativeNL

None of the above. I would prefer a respawn time of at least 8 hours, so monsters only respawn in the case you rest, or re-enter the area. Save and reload should not trigger respawns IMO, only time. Also, the respawns should be less powerful than the original encounters: in effect, any area has 'natural inhabitants' which are small groups of low level natives of an area: kobolds, orcs, wolves, whatever. Only the first time should one encounter the most powerful of monsters, such as bigger groups of bandits, named enemies, and monsters such as that ogre mage in the cloakwood mines (enemies such as that shouldnt respawn imo)

shortly said: i would support respawns, but only if they took min. 8 hours and the respawns are weaker than the original spawns (and non-named creatures)

Karashi

Personally, I think respawns should be based on the location rather than a generic game wide rule. Take Firewine ruins for instance, back in the original games I would actually have a fair bit of fear when roaming through those halls slaughtering everything in sight, not because I was scared of the little rodents but by the shear never ending waves of them. You could literally take two steps to the left around a corner then immediately step back and have 3-4 commandos standing over they're friends you just killed. It was quite fun to have that feeling for a dungeon like that. But at the same time, if I am out exploring a forest area, having a respawn rate based on time would probably be preferable(in game or time played would be fine). And there would be places I could see as no respawns at all would work out well, like the cloakwood mines for instance, I mean, who would want to come guard a mine that some guy just came and flooded anyway?

Nimran

I agree with respawning after some time has passed. It makes sense that monster-infested areas would have respawns, but not to the point where they say "Heya! We appeared the moment you left this room!"

Dee

Belanos said:

Dee said:

In Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, most - if not all- of these spawn points were changed to only fire once when encountered; so that once you clear an area of the dungeon, that area is cleared for good. No more painful backtracking on your way back to town to buy more arrows or revive dead companions, but also no more resident creatures once you've completed Firewine Ruins.

I get the impression you didn't get around to this in outdoor areas. I was trying to get through the Peldvale area, and time after time I'd come across a group of Bandits. I'd kill them, haul off their loot to Beregost as my party had no more inventory space, then come back again. Yet still I encountered yet more Bandits in the same locations and I'd have to rinse and repeat. I did this several times and it got so tedious I just stopped playing the game completely, and moved on to BG2.

After doing a bit more investigation, it does look like resting or world travel (if it's longer than 8 hours) does cause the spawn points to repopulate. But the time has to be spent all at once; if you sit with the game unpaused for those eight hours, the spawn points will stay empty once they've been dealt with.

Heindrich

I am inclined to agree with @OperativeNL‌ and @TheSarge‌.

Firstly an hour of game-time seems pretty punishing. For example in my multiplayer roleplaying game, we quite often spend significant amounts of time to roleplay right after a battle, and don't always remember to pause, it'd be a bit annoying if that Tanar'ri we put down respawned only a few minutes later. I haven't fully thought this through, but respawns after 8 hrs (rest) seems like a good solution in most cases. It would punish what I'd consider to be "unrealistic rest" practises. We're breaking into this heavily guarded compound, the alarm has been sounded, we've taken out the perimeter guards... but I'm out of spells, so let's have a nap for 8 hours here in the lobby....

Also I don't know if this might be too impractical to implement, but it'd be nice if respawn rates were dependent on location. For example in the above situation I described, like the Iron Throne HQ, Cloakwood Mines or Sendai's Enclave, where there is an "active defense" and presumably organised response to an incursion, fast respawns (such that it makes rest very difficult) is realistic and sensible. For passive dungeons, where monsters reside, but not necessarily in an organised way to respond to an incursion, like Watcher's Keep or Durlag's Tower, then slower respawns would make more sense. Obviously named monsters/enemies should never respawn.