Creature Selection Not Making Sense

Now before everyone jumps in here and screams at me that the game is already dark and gritty (believe me, I love that it is!!) I just seem to not be connecting well with the creatures we are fighting. It is not making sense to me why we are fighting certain things.

Now I am going to pull examples from Diablo, and I know this has been beat to death, however there is really no other way to explain my case then to pull from an example that we have all experienced.

Current PoE Starting Location:

We start on a shore, and initially (even without any story behind why we are here) it seems dark and eerie. We pick ourselves up and start fighting some Zombies.
----Zombies: Okay, cool enough, creepy enough, the walking dead of those that ship wrecked with us. Very cool, eerie.

After the zombies, we get some living, I don't exactly know what to call them, refugees/thugs?
----Fellow Humans next to Zombies: This really disconnects me from the eerie, creepy feel. It makes no sense that these humans are side by side with the walking dead... I can understand the zombies not fighting fellow undead ect. but why are they allied with humans?

After we get this oddity, we are approched by sandspitters.
Sandspitters: Naturally occuring hostile animal type creature on the island.
This I can still understand, and I maintain immersion into the atmosphere around these creatures. However, again, why are they not attacking the other humans they are side by side?

Current Diablo 2 Starting Location:

Player starts at the Rogue Encampment, and then enters the wilderness, so we initially feel like we are starting out against the forces of evil, that plague the lands, our first area leads us into fighting Zombies.
Zombies: Again always a great choice for a low level undead enemy. Stupid, Slow, and easy to dispatch. This still offers good immersion into the evil plaguing the lands by bringing to life the dead.

Then we find some small, little Quill Rats.
Quill Rats: Again, same as the Sandspitter, natural animal type creatures.

Eventually ending off with the Fallen.
The Fallen: Again, low level demon type enemy that offers a good way for the inexperienced new player to start his/her quest against Diablo.

Fast Forward Both Games:

Diablo 2: Never offers the human aspect into enemies, consistantly maintains the evil demons, curropted natural animals, raised undead beings. Any human the player fights is either a boss (ie possessed or devil worshipper) or an ancient guardian that fights the player seperate from monsters/demons.

This all fits into the story of Diablo, and maintains common law of mythological/supernatural creatures.

Path of Exile: Offering continued Human Thug type enemy throughout act 1, placed next to skeletons, goatmen, zombies, and then even further into act 2, you see better equipped human warriors/archers next to Rock Golems, Blood Thirsty Apes/Monkeys, Giant Spiders, Hulking Bonecrushing Bear monsters, and Water Elementals.

This is not making sense to me. It is actually so odd that it is truly breaking the entire atmosphere of the gameplay for me.

Zombies/Skeletons/Undead should not befriend human thugs on the coast line, if they are not being controlled by a necromancer type summoner.

Blood Raged Apes, should want to rip limb from limb my character, and every human they encounter. When they are fighting next to the Human Archer, and then clawing at my Human Ranger I am asking myself, "Why is this happening?"

Justification:

Now I understand that most of the story is not fleshed out yet in Path of Exile, believe me, I know that most of the quests have placeholder text ect ect. However no matter how well you flesh out the story, you do not have the "We are fighting the Devil himself" theory to fall back on for explaining monsters.

GGG has created a world that maintains commonly accepted lore for creatures that are utilized in these types of games. You have passive skills that are "Summoner" spells, and refer to your summons and Minions. This is consistant with Necromancy, Brutus himself was the result of necromancers going to far.

However, unless for the final boss we are fighting the ULTIMATE Necromancer that can control every zombie on the island at once, there is still now way to justify zombies fighting side by side with human shipwrecked thugs.

In Diablo you have the concept. "Everything is within Hells Legion, and they are all controlled by Prime Evils (aka Dark Gods)" so it is acceptable to understand that all dark creatures get along.

In Path of Exile the simple fact that that Bonecrusher is only attempting to crush MY bones, or that Spider is only trying to drain MY body of its juices when they both have several hundred other opporunities to do so, is really hard to stomach.

I can sort of understand humans taiming the natural animal type creatures... But again, justify it with enemy types that flesh out that concept.

Have "Beast Tamer" as a enemy in act 2, or "Dark Conjurer" in act 1, mixed in with the Thug type monsters.

At least this will justify the reasoning behind these creatures/humanoids siding against me.

As it currently stands, I feel like I have a bunch of monsters just thrown into a world, with no other goal or objective other then to hate the player character and try to kill me.

Common Answer:
"We don't know the final boss yet."

This is a great answer, and its true, however unless we are in fact fighting a hulking Demonic creature, or the best Necromancer we have ever seen grace novels/video games there is no way to justify humans fighting side by side with undead, or blood hungry beasts.

EDIT: The reason I posted this in the Art/Area feedback is I feel it is more of an inconsistant art theme for creatures in the same area, as oppose to feedback related. I love that this game actually offers HUMAN enemies to fight against, I just feel like they need to either have seperate places, or at least a reasonable explination for being side by side.

+1 i think the same than you.

i have lots of things to say, but i am spanish and i only know a bit of english, so i dont know how to say all that i want to say :/

but the only thing i can say is that i feel the same that you.

i dont understand why the mosnters, zombies, etc. only want YOUR/MY blood and not the blood of all other humans.

i think that GGG should delete all the human mobs and put more animals/zombies/elementals/ghosts, at least for the first act.

for the second act, i dont know what to say because i didnt reach it yet, but i think that a cool idea is like the 3º act in diablo 3, a structure like an "Aztec ruin" and lots of cannibals and arpies, and wild animals like tigers and all that things.
but i repeat, i dont play yet t he second act, so i dont know what i am talking about.

I have the same immersion problems as the OP. Why am I the only survivor zombies are trying to munch on?

It's important to keep consistent within your imaginary world.

If your bleak imaginary world has zombies that like to eat brains, cool. But it's not like mine are tastier than the next guys.

Maybe it'd be bleaker on the strand if we came across bodies of survivors that a group of zombies were busy chowing down on.

Not that I feel that lore is as important as that IGN preview made it sound, but I really hope this isn't an indicatin that we the players have to create it ourselve's, for the most part.

It feel's like GGG's created a lot of cool mobs to kill, but that the dice was rolled, for the most part, about what mob-types apear in a given area.

And there is no sense in the environment that anyone "lives" there. Apparently, all of the mobs exist just off screen doing nothing, and come running when they see an exile walk by... Two or three of the boss's in particular have some sort of camp, but for the most part, its like playing GTA where people just spawn right out of view...

Even if MMO's in general dont necessarily do it well, at least when you go to kill mob-x, they are located in an area that makes sense. During the ascent to the Prison in Act 1, there are several different mobs types that apparently hang around with nothing to do but look at the rock walls or the sandy/dirt floor until I show up, then it's a dogpile of sprint races to be killed by me. lol

I have to agree with the OP.

I understand the lore behind the Scavengers, however, they still just seem too human to me.

They need some good sound effects to round them out a bit.

Perhaps a bit of labored breathing and/or snarling would do the trick.

*EDIT*

@BINARYGOD
There will be plenty of lore, complete with voice acting. There are already some good stories in the Areas/Monsters sections.
Also, the creature layout is pretty standard for a game of this type.
I find that enemies will come from quite a distance away.

Remember, it's Beta, the "Reasons" will come when the "Mechanics" have settled in.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

I don't find it takes much imagination to think of several possible reasons for these creatures to be all focusing on you, at least while you're around, and while it might be cool to have a few hints here and there - and this may well happen as the story is put more and more into the game, I'd personally hate to have everything spelled out rather than leaving us to wonder why in some cases.

Mark,

I do understand that some of the players own imagination should be used when figuring the origin of X Creature or diving further into detail as to why X is happening, however if you are to justify zombies and scavengers as you said, ie: Scavengers covering themselves with mud to lower their temp so the zombies dont know what they are, that needs to be told to the players, or you run into this particular issue.

Anyone playing this type of game is at least somewhat familiar with horror, and mythology/super natural to some extent. So when you deviate far from the norm with these types of things, its awesome, but they need to be explained. Your explination was totally cool, IF it had been told me me officially from an NPC.

To say the player needs to think up that the scavengers are covering themselves with mud to mask their living status so they can be left alone with zombies, is asking a little much, when it is not commonly accepted in the first place that zombies utilized body heat signatures to detect the living.

In short; Changing the Lore of creatures that are already created in everyones mind is totally awesome, however, it's only awesome if you explain it somehow to us in game. So instead of everyone being puzzeled and asking "Why am I the only one these things are attacking?" people say, "wow thats neat that the scavengers are figuring things like that out."

Player imagination goes far, but only when it has foundational facts to go on.

D2 did not explain details regarding each creature it had. It was bunch of demons and possessed creatures. You had a goal... everything in-between was just another thing to slay.

"

bkboggy wrote:

D2 did not explain details regarding each creature it had. It was bunch of demons and possessed creatures. You had a goal... everything in-between was just another thing to slay.

I think you pretty much just answered your own statement.

Diablo lives, demons poured forth, and mortals became possessed, the dead would rise up and fight the mortals. Any human on Diablos side was explained, think Nihlathak in Act 5. No further explaination would have even been required for that game, however even further was provided for what was already a simple explaination, the devil walks the earth.

In PoE we don't have such a simple situation. Not knowing exactly what the end boss will be could be the issue, but still, you should not have to wait till the end boss to understand why humans are side by side with Zombies.

@Mordliss, you said all the thinks i want to say xD

i agree with that idea:

"Your explination was totally cool, IF it had been told me me officially from an NPC."