Enemies using potions and Level Difficulties

[Dougm77]

2 Questions: Will enemies use potions in Grim Dawn and will there be tiered difficulties as there were in Titan Quest and Diablo 2?

First: Will enemies use Potions? Now I know there has to be alot of people out there that think the same thing as I do on this matter. I would like to FINALLY see an ARPG implement this feature. In EVERY game of this type of genre I've played this scenario ALWAYS happens: You run up to enemy, happily start cracking on their skulls with your weapon, and then they drop over dead within a couple hits with potions spilling out of their pockets leaving you to always think "Why the hell did you even have that on you if you weren't ever going to use it"? It drives me insane

I think this should be the first game of this genre ever to finally implemet this feature. Now I'm not saying go overboard and give them a ton of potions and make them continuously pop them throughout the battle (though I would like that) but at least give them 1 or 2 to use possibly. Even only limit potion using to "smarter" enemies like bosses or enemies that wear armour and carry swords and shields. The mindless enemies like zombies, birds, undead, etc wouldn't use them. Make it finally seem like a "living" world where your enemy reacts to your hits by healing up.. rather then being a living punching bag standing there waiting to die by your weapon of choice. It would add a needed twist that this genre of game needs.

Second: Will there be tiered difficulties in Grim Dawn? By this I mean will there be "Normal", "Epic", and "Legendary" difficulties in the game or will it just be 1 straight default difficulty?

Because tying in to my first question about enemies using potions I was thinking that maybe depending on the level difficulty the enemies could use potions differently. In the normal difficulty they could use them once in awhile since it is the easiest difficulty. In epic difficulty they could use them more often. And in the hardest difficulty they could use them all the time constantly to provide an even greater challenge!

Anyone else with me on this? Agree or Disagree? Can I BEG the developers for this long needed feature?!

[eisprinzessin]

Originally Posted by medierra

Monsters do not drink the potions because they have no programming that would enable them to do so. We haven't given them this functionality because it would be counter productive to our goal of supplying potions to the player. The monsters carry the potions and not pine cones because designers configure the loot tables on monsters to drop potions but have not done so for pine cones since no such item exists in the game.

And yes, the three difficulties will return in GD.
My suggestion: the harder the mode the less potions should be dropped.

[Druthers]

As eisprinzessin pointed out the question about enemies and potions has been answered but what about enemy healing in general?

In TQ there were a few caster types that healed the allies around them and I thought that was a cool thing to have in the game.

I think that GD should include this as well, or maybe some enemies could have a health surge that would activate when their health is low. Enemies that could heal would be rare in a normal game but in higher difficulties they would become more common and could heal for more. I think it would add some good strategy to the game knowing that some enemies could heal themselves or that you have to go after the healing casters first otherwise you could get overwhelmed.

[Harlequin]

I really think that enemys should heal themselves.

For example: you hit an enemy, run away out of his aggro-range and use a pot or whatever to heal up. You are now fighting the enemy with full health but he is still dmged. I think that enemys should start to heal once they are out of combat and that leaders should even heal themselves while in combat.

It never made sense to me tbh: You are hitting the living daylight out of a boss while he stands around until his timer tells him to attack again and they never heal themselves when they are getting low. You can buy healpots everywhere in RPG-Worlds but for some reason bosses never have them. It's just weird.^^

[yerkyerk]

You'd really not want players to farm potions - they'll go back to easy area's to farm up potions if they have too little. So, reducing the number of potions dropped will result in annoying gameplay :/

I like (powerful) healing enemies. Gives some tactical opportunities to the player; simply try to steamroll the enemy down, outdamaging the healers, or aiming for the fragile healers first. Similar tactical mechanics can be applied to many elements of the game. I just like it when the player has something more to choose from than just straight ahead and killing everything that's closest.

[Dougm77]

Thank you for clearing up that the suggestion had already been made/asked about enemies and potions usage. Kind of saddens me to see that too. Oh well.. I will now hope for the other suggestion that was brought up about enemies healing themselves in battle. I actually like that idea if they wont use potions. Something a little different instead of just running in and hitting on a punching bag until it dies without worrying it'll heal itself somehow. Some sort of tactical variations would be great with enemies/bosses that heal.

I would even actually like to see "scripted" events during mini boss/major boss fights like there are in MMO's. Like when boss gets to "x" amount of health it does action "a". When it gets lower to "y" amount of health it does action "b" and so on. Healing could be one of those actions. Would make for interesting combat scenarios, especially with multiple players.

[Harlequin]

Healing bosses are very rare in games but imo very interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r2FNIszE1U
When fighting this guy for the first time I was completely annihilated. I threw everything at him I had right at the beginning just to see him heal himself back to 100% later. It took me several attempts to beat him.
That's why I like Final Fantasy. The bosses will totally stomp you if you just charge in. There was another boss in this FF who swarmed me with status-changes (poison, blind etc), it felt really fresh and was alot of fun.

Edit: the guy in the vid trashed that boss in 3 minutes... T_T
Well I was about 10 levels under him (about lvl 25) so I think I still did well.

[Kardiophylax]

Originally Posted by yerkyerk

You'd really not want players to farm potions - they'll go back to easy area's to farm up potions if they have too little. So, reducing the number of potions dropped will result in annoying gameplay :/

I like (powerful) healing enemies. Gives some tactical opportunities to the player; simply try to steamroll the enemy down, outdamaging the healers, or aiming for the fragile healers first. Similar tactical mechanics can be applied to many elements of the game. I just like it when the player has something more to choose from than just straight ahead and killing everything that's closest.

True, the boss fight in Torchlight against the Orc boss comes to mind. The Shaman shielded the boss until they were dead, forcing the player to select his targets deliberately while dodging the boss attacks. I'd like to see GD use some of these types of mechanics.