Arelith

It is just bad design. Everything else considered. Mobs set in a place where they can instantly spot and block a door you walk through is immersion destroying and bad design no matter how you cut it.

I get it, there is a need for some matter of trying to achieve an aesthetic here. It fails, every time. No, it does not give a challenge, it gives a really unfair annoyance, because you're building into short falls of the NWN tools.

Things like the transition down from the monastery to the crypts, and several points below the Fortress City, are really awful with regards to this. The grotto as well. I understand the layout of an area, and the wanting to get a certain feel, for it aesthetic wise. But, from a player standpoint, you lose all that aesthetic value as hard as you would at the tabletop if playing with a railroad DM in the old school Gygax way of doing Tomb of Annihilation, basically 'Rocks fall...' isn't good in NWN.

In-zone transitions are really bad with it too. The worst offenders that immediately come to mind is the forest maze north of the Radiant Heart keep where ogres spawn on transitions, making you stuck inside all of them. And the Sibayad crypts, especially the crypt of the king of kings (I think that's the one with the undead giants and lasso points?) where you can take the stairs and have mobs surrounding you and casters off to the side you can't get to who cast evards on you.

I find them annoying as well but I view it as the flip side of the NwN limitations that benefit me, like the fact that other mob groups don't come running as I loudly massacre their brethren within shouting distance. Exception for that one sandbar area by Crows Nest which is really well done.

I wish that this was the case but is it even possible to script?

God_In_Action wrote: Tue Jan 03, 2023 8:35 pm I wish that this was the case but is it even possible to script?

I swore there used to be something that kept them off transitions, but maybe that was another server or faulty memory. Moving spawn points should help I assume. I really don't remember the problem being as bad as it's been in the last year or so though. I guess in the past you could backtrack to the previous area if you needed to.

Two big problems are monsters attacking when you're climbing- you're unable to move much less defend yourself at the end of a climb (I am not sure if there's supposed to be protection against that but if there is it doesn't always work) and the doorway issue where you, your summons or the enemies are on the space on the other side of a closed door making targeting impossible, making your summons trapped and useless and often meaning you're crowded in a way you can't move.

Arelith seems to just put monsters wherever. I see them on transitions, up on ledges, and down in pits. Always annoying in all those cases. I think they went away from static spawns so they can't be gamed, but the current alternative is worse.

We have exclusion zone objects that players can't see, but I may look at adding any transition to have a few metre exclusion around it just for the sake of the stated issue.

For clarity:
The spawn system is entirely random outside bosses and rarely hand placed enemies that will often not respawn.