I've been playing a stealth based run and haven't had any problems - enemies will search for you for a little bit after you stealth, but eventually they will settle into fixed positions. I think they used to just stop dead in their tracks when you hid in shadows, which seemed a little unrealistic and would make it way too easy for shadowdancers to just backstab away indefinitely. With the new behavior, you have to wait a little bit - they never seem to know *exactly* where I am, but ideally they should only be attracted to the spot where I was last visible. Probably a nightmare to code.
This may be the behavior if you play solo, or if everyone in your party is stealthed. What I'm observing is that as soon as someone detects a stealthed character, the whole group (and possibly those in the vicinity) will attack the party, whether they are in sight or not, regardless of distance, even if the character they originally detected goes out of sight and back into stealth.
Owing to this, I had to deal with all the spiders inside a certain cave simultaneously. It was fun but I doubt I could have managed it without fire wand/fireball spam. In a certain other cave, one specific type of enemy can see invisible characters but cannot attack them directly. This means that the enemies around it (who cannot themselves see through invisibility) immediately started to march towards the rest of my party, who were at certain points literally on the other side of the map.
I have SCS installed, so I suppose it's possible that it's the mod that's causing this, but seeing how I'm not the first to report it, I don't think that's the cause. Maybe @DavidW could clarify. Again, this is not the default behavior after applying "better calls for help".
EDIT: this is on Insane.
That is so strange. If I'm playing an assassin as the only character with stealth in a diverse party on Core Rules and not experiencing this behavior, then I would think it's either Hard mode that's broken or something to do with your mods. I hope you get it sorted out – what you're experiencing sounds really frustrating.
That is so strange. If I'm playing an assassin as the only character with stealth in a diverse party on Core Rules and not experiencing this behavior, then I would think it's either Hard mode that's broken or something to do with your mods. I hope you get it sorted out – what you're experiencing sounds really frustrating.
Well, it's not so much frustrating as it is immersion-breaking. Knowing that this is how it works makes setting up ambushes and laying traps much easier, but it feels gamey. I can still hit-and-run, only I need to do it on the move. It doesn't really increase difficulty much except in areas where groups are packed together really close to each other -- but then packed enemies are Slow/AOE fodder.
It may be a consequence of playing in Insane, what with enemies "fighting to the best of their ability and employing advanced combat tactics", which seems to be a clear hint that combat AI behaves differently with each difficulty setting. I'll mess around with the slider and see if it changes anything.
@AlexT I always thought enemies should spread and move a bit within a certain range one from another, no matter what (standing still is not really realistic) and as soon as one of them is attacked, the others should join to help. Going straight for the party members doesn't make much sense.
Btw they added a lot of divination spells and improved the overall AI in many ways, which is always good.
I can't find this reported here: Infinity Engine (affects all games) Under the patch preview thread. Has this issue been reported as a bug? And if not where exactly would I report it?. I'm assuming feature requests as there is no bugs page.
This happened to me, in the first crypt dungeon and vs undead only. All other mobs it seems to be working as it shold.
I just loaded the black pits as a solo Shadowdancer, got to 105 in stealth and move silently (which took awhile because although it states 20 points per level I only got 10 after level 2), and was followed by every enemy on the screen in stealth. At first I thought "maybe Beamdog has implemented infravision on the hobgoblins and gibberlings", but then I killed everyone down to a human in the tavern party battle, and was still followed.
Well, it's only been 4 years waiting to play this game and my first hour or so has exposed me to a game breaking bug, and a class impairment preventing me from playing the class. Not very impressed so far.
I'm in the middle of my second playthrough, and I no longer have enemies aggro on characters they can't see after detecting a party member or initiating combat. They will still "search" around, but their movement seems to be much more random, in line with what @AlexT described the intended behavior should be.
In short, I cannot replicate the behavior I described in my first post in this thread. Funny because I haven't even updated to 2.1.
Maybe some AI flag wasn't resetting between encounters/reloads?
It's quite ridiculous, especially in the Black Pits. Many enemies are scripted to fully or partially ignore Charm, Fear, and Invisibility. Such as these:
IF
!Allegiance(Myself,ENEMY)
OR(2)AreaCheck("OH9310")AreaCheck("OH9350")
THEN
RESPONSE #100Enemy()Continue()END
If my Allegiance isn't "Enemy", change my Allegiance back to "Enemy". Charmed is an Allegiance. End Result: Remove any Charm or Domination effect.
One of these for each Player slot and for summons:
IF
ActionListEmpty()
OR(2)!Detect([PC])!Detect(NearestEnemyOf(Myself))InMyArea(Player1)
HPGT(Player1,1)RandomNum(6,1)
THEN
RESPONSE #100MoveToObject(Player1)END
If I cannot detect the Player Character(such as them being invisible), but they are alive and on the same map, move to and follow them anyway.
Their script that controls using potions and casting defensive/curative spells has a higher priority than them being panicked, allowing them to take actions they should not be able to take.
Have they addressed this? I've been looking for more recent notes on the subject. I'm playing a solo assassin run on core rules and although it's been fun and challenging up until now (just killed the necromancer lady) all the sudden every enemy knows exactly where I am, no matter how far away I am. I'm stealthed, and the entire horde of monsters surrounds me. On top of that Orrick didn't update his inventory, so even though I lucked out on Fox boots I don't have the infinite missile wand to hit-n-run enemies that require magic damage.
Is this a feature? Am I simply underskilled in move silently and they know I'm there but can't act? Am I just SOL on this run because I didn't put enough points into cheesing with traps. I figured the stealth juke backstab route (which has always been the most fun for me) was cheesy enough. Boy was I wrong!
Really makes me want to go dig up the original version to compare.
This is fixed in the 2.5 version for BGII:EE and SoD. https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/30526 - enemies now mill around looking appropriately confused before returning to where they started.
As for IWD:EE, this is original IWD (or rather HoW) behavior. The follow behavior was intended by the original developers. There's a feature request to change it, though.
Most excellent! so the mob-following in IWD was intentional from the original developer? It seems to happen inconsistently though, I got past the Ethydians or w/ever and they swarmed me along with the cold wights in the big open room full of undead, but sometimes there are groups of enemies I can escape from, stealth, and they WON'T do that. Same with the Yuan'Ti warriors, some groups swarm and some groups will act like they don't know where you are at all after hide in shadows.
Thanks for the response, could you link me to the feature request? I'd like to offer my support towards it.
Comments
It may be a consequence of playing in Insane, what with enemies "fighting to the best of their ability and employing advanced combat tactics", which seems to be a clear hint that combat AI behaves differently with each difficulty setting. I'll mess around with the slider and see if it changes anything.
@AlexT I always thought enemies should spread and move a bit within a certain range one from another, no matter what (standing still is not really realistic) and as soon as one of them is attacked, the others should join to help.
Going straight for the party members doesn't make much sense.
Btw they added a lot of divination spells and improved the overall AI in many ways, which is always good.
Infinity Engine (affects all games)
Under the patch preview thread. Has this issue been reported as a bug? And if not where exactly would I report it?. I'm assuming feature requests as there is no bugs page.
Well, it's only been 4 years waiting to play this game and my first hour or so has exposed me to a game breaking bug, and a class impairment preventing me from playing the class. Not very impressed so far.
I'm in the middle of my second playthrough, and I no longer have enemies aggro on characters they can't see after detecting a party member or initiating combat. They will still "search" around, but their movement seems to be much more random, in line with what @AlexT described the intended behavior should be.
In short, I cannot replicate the behavior I described in my first post in this thread. Funny because I haven't even updated to 2.1.
Maybe some AI flag wasn't resetting between encounters/reloads?
Many enemies are scripted to fully or partially ignore Charm, Fear, and Invisibility.
Such as these: If my Allegiance isn't "Enemy", change my Allegiance back to "Enemy". Charmed is an Allegiance. End Result: Remove any Charm or Domination effect.
One of these for each Player slot and for summons: If I cannot detect the Player Character(such as them being invisible), but they are alive and on the same map, move to and follow them anyway.
Their script that controls using potions and casting defensive/curative spells has a higher priority than them being panicked, allowing them to take actions they should not be able to take.
Is this a feature? Am I simply underskilled in move silently and they know I'm there but can't act? Am I just SOL on this run because I didn't put enough points into cheesing with traps. I figured the stealth juke backstab route (which has always been the most fun for me) was cheesy enough. Boy was I wrong!
Really makes me want to go dig up the original version to compare.
As for IWD:EE, this is original IWD (or rather HoW) behavior. The follow behavior was intended by the original developers. There's a feature request to change it, though.
Thanks for the response, could you link me to the feature request? I'd like to offer my support towards it.
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/36665
Those links above won't work, does anyone have working ones?