Are monsters run speed slow, too easy to bypass?

I am now in "Ruthless" difficulty and I'm wondering if there is a big flaw in the game waiting to happen or maybe the developers had something different in mind altogether:

You can run/rush past everything.

Have you noticed how so many monsters in PoE are slow as molasses?

Zombies... skeletons... bandits who stop every two meters and pause for a second, maybe thinking to themselves "hmm shall I have a sandwich first?" Etc etc. :)

In Diablo II, if I wanted to run Mephisto in Nightmare, just in Nightmare mind you, the second difficulty, I better had a teleport amulet with my melee and even with it, it was very dangerous; I could get cornered very quickly. Need I mention the amulet cost $$$ to repair/restore charges. But that's how I did it with my melee Amazon. I believe it was still very dangerous for a Sorceress, because of those dmaned exploding dolls, even if it was faster for her.

In PoE, I rush past everything. The skeletons on the Ledge are so annoying to gather up for my AOE that I just skip the whole thing and get to the more entertaining areas. Same thing for the beach, and those dang crabs that you have to run after. I just run through it.

In fact, I just run through most of Act 1.

I enjoy it, mind you.

But I'm wondering how this will work out when the game goes public.

Is it just Normal, Cruel and Ruthless that are super easy?

The only map I could think of that provided some difficulty to rush through is the pyramid, because of the totems. But even that zone was fairly easy to skip at the end of Cruel, with skills or auras (flicker strike, shield charge, molten shield, etc).

Please note all I've said is with -11% movement speed, I'm not using any run speed skills, just clicking and walking my character snubbing everyone like there's no tomorrow.

Thoughts?


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Character stats:

My melee Ranger has ~32% DR and ~53% Evasion. 800 ish life. -11% movement speed! So all I've said is with speed penalty...

DR is irrelevant because I barely get hit when running past mobs.

PS:

I noticed also on Diablo, block speed was HUGE for my melee Amazon.

In PoE it seems that I am never stopped by blocking. In fact I don't remember ever noticing a block animation.

Being interrupted while you are hit by monsters is, I think, what made it far more difficult in Diablo to rush through zones, especially the indoor areas.

I'm sorry to bring up Diablo, that's just the reference I have.

There are certainly other ways to go about it. For one, I'd like to see the archer skeletons on the Ledge actually hurt me >_> I don't even have the Arrow Dodging passive. If I get it I imagine I'll be godly ...

Basically so far the only things I've come accross that would make me proceed with caution are:

* Few yellow Totems that sometimes combine with archers in a dangerous mix, but was a one off occurence so far
* Enemies with coldsnap (ambushers)
* Enemies in Vaal Ruins who shoot fast and hit hard

Glad to see you bring this problematic situation. Actually been mentioning for a very long time about this lacking issue.

Being able to rush from anywhere to anywhere without 0 (zero) trouble really takes away the fun factor so badly that it bores me so much. The game feels like there are monsters there just for a viewing pleasure, and nothing more, you must not deal with them even you are cut in when rushing. This must be changed; whenever you rush, you must feel strained, and a pain on your shoulders because you didn't clear all the way up to this point, and rushing one place to another must just bring much more trouble to you for your cowardness(trade-off).

This should be managed by decreasing the base character speed which is ridiculously WAY too much to compete with monsters. There is an undeniably humongous speed gap between monsters and players, and this shouldn't be overlooked anymore.

Secondly, armor types should give a lot more penalties. Current penalties are like a joke ! I can't notice the speed drop between naked to heavy armored. There is no balance.

Thirdly some skills like whirling blades, shield charge and phase run just gives so big movement boosts that you even never ever had the need finding a speed boots on ! They are easily abused for runing faster.

Remember Diablo I, why you wet your pants when dealing with Butcher, because he was moving with the same speed exactly with yours, this was the reason solely ! Because you know you can't escape from him forever. You gotto either kill him or slayed. It was that straightforward and that brutal years ago ! It was the reason of the movement speed gap being pretty low and how tension and fear had been set once by.

There was a thread opened by Diablo1reborn not long time ago, but died quickly within the lack of interest sadly: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/33025

Hope devs would be very interested in this issue, as of now game has been on turbo mode and pretty easy and unchallenging as it gets.

I'm a "veteran" ARPG player playing default normal first act and i do find the areas and monsters challenging and engaging to battle, i don't think the issue here is with monster difficulty but rather the "ability to cheese avoidance."

here are some classic area clear triggers which require players to actually engage the enemy:

1. lock doors and put keys in item drops. (balance issue, stock pileing many keys = pointless mechanic)

2. Complete simple "torch puzzles" or "block and switch puzzles" to open next door (indirectly the player must defeat enemies to achieve the clarity of space and mind to complete the puzzle)

3. Make a certain group of an area's enemies the "mini-boss mob" apply a distinct aura/render to set them apart destroy them to open next door (magically, and cheese-ily).

4. Escort an NPC who will open the next area/ reveal a secret passage. prevent them from being killed.

5. Put destructible boulders or other mess in front of exits which take 20 hits or more to break, giving enemies chasing you opportunity to catchup and attack.

These are the most classic that jump to mind for me, Got any more???

"

BrecMadak wrote:

The game feels like there are monsters there just for a viewing pleasure, and nothing more, you must not deal with them even you are cut in when rushing.

I think you summarized it really well here. Of course if we stand in place and wait we'll die... eventually. But you really hit the nail with the run speed difference between player and monsters.

At first I thought skills like Flicker Strike and Shield Charge were pretty awesome. I thought "wow, finally a Diablo-like that gives melees some good skills". The melees get great mobility and can also use lots of AOE skills. So far so good (awesome even :)).

Unfortunately as you pointed out, the player's "mobility" tends to outshine that of the monsters. In fact it is the case even at level 1, as you can see the zombies on the beach walk sooooo damnnnnnn slowwwwww.

Both in Diablo and another Indie game I like called "Depths of Peril", it's very dangerous when you flee to run into something you haven't explored yet. You end up often running into more monster packs and getting overwhelmed and having to teleport out asap or die.

I think you were spot on with the run speed, and I would add that it is compounded with a strange monster AI, and perhaps the high mobility skills are too cheap (Flicker Strike can be spammed 10 times or so on my ranger before I need to recharge mana).

"

DrRobotnix wrote:

I'm a "veteran" ARPG player playing default normal first act and i do find the areas and monsters challenging and engaging to battle (...)

Wait until you get to Cruel and then Ruthless difficulty. I agree, Normal difficulty is challenging, especially if you are new to the game. Mostly because your resistances are so low. But once you get all the mods to average values, and you move on to Cruel and Ruthless you may be surprised to find out that the difficulty hasn't really increased. And my resists are still in the 40-60% range.

Your suggestions are good but that's not exactly the issue, because you do have these things to do. You have to find something for the pirate, kill Merveil, find your way through the prison, kill Brutus, etc.

On further thought, and after reviewing other threads, here's my conclusions so far:

1. Difficulty of random "trash" mobs as they are called in MMOs is just fine. See, nobody wants to hack away at "trash" mobs for hours on end. It's not fun to have to hit random skeletons and crabs five times or more. People will just want to rush past them. Their loot drop chance is specifically made so because they are supposed to be killed "en masse", and they are the fodder that makes it so much fun to use AOE skills!

2. Champions variants with blue names take longer to kill and they are fine too. Always nice to be surprised by a particularly THICK monster (thick in the head and in the flesh, hehe). :)

3. The real issue I think is this: the boss enemies (yellow names) are weak, and their auras do not benefit their "pack" very much. There are a few exceptions, with the archers, and the totem in the Ledge map. But for the most part, the yellow encounters are way easy.

If you think about it, the yellows are what everyone wants because of their drops. They are, I think, the only ones that really need a difficulty adjustment. They have to be HARD and their auras should make their pack MUCH stronger and dangerous.

Then, you have a good change of pace between regular "trash" which is fun to destroy, and every now and then the spikes of difficulty with the bosses.

These are my thoughts, as a player who has not been beyond level 42 and Ruthless difficulty so far. But I would imagine that the third difficulty mode and leve 42 should be enough of a sample by now, in regard to the overall difficulty.

As an example my level 42 melee ranger tanks pretty much all the yellows I have come across. I just go toe to toe and SPAM the Heavy Strike, Viper Strike and Shield Charge skills. I don't need to run back and shield charge (which would be far more interesting), I don't need to run back at all, I just gulp potions now and then. One exception would be the spiders sometimes when I tank them I get 4 charges and have to run, but that's only when I don't Fire Trap and Cleave through them quickly...

So as for the future patch notes: increasing overal monster damage, or increasing pack size, I feel those are missing the target.

In conclusion I feel the real problem here is the bosses (yellows) who are too weak and only marginally more challenging than regular "trash" mobs, whom for the most part don't need to be adjusted (I'm not saying the overall difficulty doesn't need finetuning, just trying to really pin point the crux of the matter here).

With the bosses being really challenging, there is no more a problem of rushing/running past everything, since they are always found in every map and you never know for sure when you'll bump into them.

Thoughts?

"

DeF46 wrote:

I am now in "Ruthless" difficulty and I'm wondering if there is a big flaw in the game waiting to happen or maybe the developers had something different in mind altogether:

You can run/rush past everything.

Have you noticed how so many monsters in PoE are slow as molasses?

*shortened post*

It used to be harder to run past content, because there were more mobs.

They have said they will re-add the mobs that were removed in the next few patches. So we can have some hordes again.

It's still possible to run past them though. But I've lost a few characters to bandit archers and double speed enchanted hyenas and monkeys in previous versions.

What i meant could be seen in this video much better;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QShR0S-DimA#t=461s

You can feel the challenge when your speed is same with other monsters, and this becomes even bigger if a monster is ranged, as you can see.

This is the reason i've been keeping to tell that why base character speed should be reduced, hope this would make sense.

* Will try to write more when i have the time to think deeper in this issue.

I see. I think what you nailed is the difference between regular walk in regard to the monsters walk speed, and then the difference betwene regular walk and the mobility skills.

Having a walk speed more in line with the monsters, or allowing the monsters to be less hesitant (all those awkward pauses when they turn around), this would certainly give a new meaning to skills like Flicker Strike, Shield Charge or Phase Run.

Been trying to point this out for a while now. There are hardly any fast enemy packs that swarm you and get in your way. You don't even have to be careful running through areas right now, nothing is going to block you in a corner or surround you. It is just going to walk slowly towards you as you blaze by.