Southern Grunvald Barrens

Scenes that just have tons of things that can kill me standing around waiting to kill me are stupid.

I know this is an iterative process. But we have a lot of these scenes. For someone that really doesn't care too much about leveling, I don't know why I'd go to these places except to explore. But since I can't stop to even look at anything without stuff attacking me, it's kind of a no win situation.

So hopefully as we continue to advance these scenes we'll try our best to stay away from anything that resembles "giant pot of monsters waiting to kill players". This just drives me crazy. Because it really only serves one purpose, giving people something to "hunt". Which is a horrible term because hunting would require some form of patience and skill - presumably. Unless the term is trying to describe a vice president going out into a field and having someone throw half dead turkeys at his gun. Then it's entirely accurate.

I remember the guys at Dungeon Siege, years ago, saying that they wanted to break away from that model. They were laughing about the NPC's in roleplaying games and what they did when no one was around. What would their conversations be like? (of course, they went out and made exactly the kind of game they were laughing at)

I mean we have 6 skeletons laying down on the ground, and presumably they're saying:

Skeleton 1: Shhhh, I think someone's coming.
Skeleton 2: You said that 5 minute ago!
Skeleton 3: Who cares, they're probably 50 levels higher than us anyway?
Skeleton 4: Just a few more years of this and I can pay off my boat and retire.
Skeleton 1: I said quite you guys, I'm serious!
Skeleton 2: This really is good work if you can get it. Stable.
Skeleton 3: I hope it's not some guy trying to macro up bludgeoning. Those things really hurt?
Skeleton 2: I maxed out my 401k. I hope the market is as stable as this job.
Skeleton 1: Listen, if you guys don't shut up I'm personally going to tell the Lich King. Now quiet!

Seriously, I know there's a large portion of the player base that loves standing around killing the same things over and over again. But if you could please consider players that would appreciate pockets of space and time where we're not always running around for our lives that would be awesome.

Another case in point would be Desolis. That place is amazing and doesn't need monsters at all to make it amazing. In fact I would argue that there are way too many monsters in Desolis and that having too many subtracts from the beauty and importance of the scene.

 

I completely agree. Haven't been in those places yet, but i feel this is a general issue since i have that "overcrowded" feeling in lots of scenes, and it's been there since i started playing the game. I can see the logic behind that in some scenes, but there are others where respawn timers and enemy density feels just surreal. For example; i'm in Spectral Foothills and seeing patrols around, and zones with campaments obsidian cultists in the scene seems right, because they have a refuge in the mines. On the other hand, walking through the East Perennial Trail and seeing a road section flanked by spiders at one side and skeletons in the other... doesn't make you believe you're in a road used by common folk to travel from one place to another... it feels more like a diablo map.

I'd like to see the enemy population of some zones decreased as roving monsters come in and random encounters are more meaningful. I'm not saying that zones like perennial trail should be danger free (we're living dangerous times after all) but in my opinion animal dangers should be better distributed in the scene, with maybe some patrols on the road (maybe bandits, or skeletons, or even guards!). Even if the map stays the same, if everytime i enter the amount of elements present changes it feels more like a suprise, more like an element of exploration. Even if i know all the possible spawn points for every element in the scene, making their presence random is making me wonder "oh, are the wolves in this time? i'll go check to see if i can skin them". People looking for killing could rely on roving monsters and random encounters without the need of overcrowding scenes.

Those are more or less my hopes towards scene population.