General feedback on AI hostility

[Khadgar]

I really want to like this game. It's equal parts fun and frustrating though.

As it stands right now, I am continually blindsided by enemies becoming hostile to me for what seems like no (logical) reason.

Example 1:
- As the Assassin
- Enter a shop with a shopkeeper and a goon while invisible
- Go behind the shopkeeper and backstab him for a 1HKO
- Pick up his key and safe combination
- Open the door to the safe room, hide in the room while stealth recharges
- Open safe, grab contents, become invisible, leave
- Leave the building and enter another nearby building to wait a while to make sure the goon has calmed down
- The goon enters the building I am in and becomes hostile to me

What the ♥♥♥♥ is going on? The goon didn't see me do anything, he didn't see me go into the building. He just randomly pathed in there (bad luck I guess), and then went hostile to me. It's incredibly frustrating.


Example 2:
- With a loyal follower ally
- Send the loyal follower into a restricted room to neutralize the scientist target
- The scientiest unfortunately wins
- The scientist is now hostile
- The scientist runs out of the building straight to where I am and starts punching me

Ummm.


Example 3:
- As whoever on the 3rd level of the slums
- Walking around minding my own business
- Bombs raining from the sky
- Bomb blows up the wall of some restricted building;s wall
- A person inside immediately goes hostile to me and starts shooting

WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥


This mostly concerns some sort of stealth run on a stealth character. Getting detected and attacked is exceedingly frustrating in these situations, because it's an immediate failure of the "don't be detected" and "take no damage" XP bonuses for what feels like no reason.

I'd be really happy if some work was done on this, so I wouldn't be left feeling so sour about stealth.

[Khadgar]

As a related note, could the assassin's backstab ability be changed? As it is right now, it's around a 50% success rate to use it for me. Unlike the doctor's chloroform, the shapeshifter's possess, or the vampire's suck blood, there is no indication if your melee attack is going to initiate a backstab or not. It's just a crapshoot of some of the following:
- Backstab!
- Punch a wall instead, break stealth, alert enemy
- You weren't actually behind them properly, punch them for ♥♥♥♥ damage, break stealth, alert enemy
- You backstab 2 scientists in the same spot, but oen of them was angled differently. kill one, the other one is now hostile.
- Right before you press the melee attack button, the enemy turns around. punch them in the face for ♥♥♥♥-all damage, get in a fight.

Would you consider changing the backstab ability to function like all the other special abilities somehow? Maybe tweak the special ability of the assassin to be:
[if not invisible] Become invisible
[if invisible] Backstab target

Note: I think some of my issues maybe be due to using a gamepad with joystick, since it's probably harder to orient myself in cardinal directions, leading to a few missed backstabs. Still, I don't think the gamepad control scheme should be inherantly worse. An alternative correction would be to allow rotation / orientation of the player character without movement somehow. Then I could position myself behind a character, and rotate to face the direction I want to face without having to run that direction. It wouldn't solve the problem, but it would help.

[knojkah]

Also, when you're standing near neutral(to you) fighting NPCs, and they accidentally hit you, and if there were cops standing nearby, they start beating you to death. I saw that a long time ago, maybe that was fixed already

[Madguy]

There's always a reason for this sort of behavior.

Example 1: You left something out here -- why did the goon need to "calm down"? Did he see you at some point? Did you trigger the alarm? If they have a question mark over their head, it means you (or someone else) committed some sort of act they didn't like, and they're actively searching for a suspicious person in the area.

Example 2: You were aligned with the follower. If the scientist saw you and the follower at the same time (likely what happened through a window or something), then he would become hostile toward you. That's how the system works.

Example 3: You probably went into his property after the bomb blew up the wall.

Regarding the gamepad: You know you can aim in whatever direction you want if you use the right analog stick? You don't have to face the direction by walking that way with the left analog stick.

Cops attack whoever they see fighting. If someone else attacks you, cops will attack them. If you fight back, cops will attack both of you.

[Khadgar]

Originally posted by Madguy:

- snip-

Thanks for the reply!

I wasn't trying to imply it was actually unprovoked, or some sort of bug, but in the above scenarios, sometimes it feels arbitrary or unfair. Or rather, it wasn't really obvious why or how the NPC 'knew' it was me.

In the case of the follower, I understand that the system probably is designed this way because of gameplay or balance reasons, but is it actually neccessary? Would it be too easy if you could send followers with no consequence into a fight with someone? And moreover, how does some random NPC connect being beaten up by a gang member / whoever with the player character? Are your followesr wearing nametags? (Hello, I am a hired goon of : Khadgar) I would think, from a gameplay perspective, that if the player is rich enough to afford sending in someone else to do their dirty work for them, then there should be less odds of being connected to that other person.

In regards to the gamepad, I did know I could use the right analogue stick to move some cursor thing around, I never realized it would work for melee attacks, since the player model doesn't rotate when I spin that stick. Good to know!

[Ｂｏｏｂｓ]

Originally posted by Khadgar:

Thanks for the reply!

I wasn't trying to imply it was actually unprovoked, or some sort of bug, but in the above scenarios, sometimes it feels arbitrary or unfair. Or rather, it wasn't really obvious why or how the NPC 'knew' it was me.

In the case of the follower, I understand that the system probably is designed this way because of gameplay or balance reasons, but is it actually neccessary? Would it be too easy if you could send followers with no consequence into a fight with someone? And moreover, how does some random NPC connect being beaten up by a gang member / whoever with the player character? Are your followesr wearing nametags? (Hello, I am a hired goon of : Khadgar) I would think, from a gameplay perspective, that if the player is rich enough to afford sending in someone else to do their dirty work for them, then there should be less odds of being connected to that other person.

In regards to the gamepad, I did know I could use the right analogue stick to move some cursor thing around, I never realized it would work for melee attacks, since the player model doesn't rotate when I spin that stick. Good to know!

you know thier (the yellow name in the same building is connected, and the same gang color), they know you. it's a fair game