3 réponses à ce sujet

[DarthGizka]

This is not about BioWare's well-established but totally brain-damaged tradtion of cutscene teleports, whereby some trigger drops your character out of stealth and teleports your companions to the location, preferrably smack in the middle of a horde of enemies.

Just yesterday I had a doozy of that kind in the Dalish Elf origin (dropped out of stealth in front of two wolves, with two teams of darkspawn in line of sight blocking either side of the path; and then Merrill mumbles something about things being unusually quiet as if the wolves gnawing off her legs had affected her hearing). Although this is certainly immersion-breaking and annoying, with time you know all the traps and can make allowance for them.

This is something different.

Quite a few times it happened in the Korcari Wilds that I parked all companions at the entrance and went off to have some fun, and suddenly I found that they had somehow moved to the middle of the map (in any case, a long way towards the PC). The first time I noticed this because they started taking damage even though I thought they were safely parked out of harm's way; it turned out that they had ended up in one of the spots patrolled by cloaked darkspawn.

The fact that they would have come across enemies to get where they were suggests that either teleportation is involved, or they were moving too fast for the enemy to keep up, or game processing must have been sort of suspended because of the great distance from the controlled character.

Today the team suddenly appeared on the emissary bridge, surrounded by numerous enemies including at least one wolf (supporting the theory that they must have walked rather than teleported) but no one was taking any damage at all until I moved closer to take a peek. The latter seems to indicate some distance-based activation/deactivation of processing.

Initially I thought the stuff happened because I had forgotten to disable all the tactics, but yesterday I had them all set to 'Cautious' plus empty custom tactics presets and it still happened.

On a few occasions I noticed that changes in the tactics screen seemed to have no effect, like Leliana still using her initial default tactics in Lothering and not the ones I had assigned. That would explain the behaviour of Alistair & friends, because they have some rules like 'if player is being attacked by blah' or 'attack target of controlled character' or something of that sort.

Does anyone know what's going on? Any way to avoid crap like that?

P.S.: this time I was able to work around it by depositing all companions at the ruined arches shortly after the auto-save point before I went off to kick the emissary where it hurts. But that shouldn't have been necessary.

Modifié par DarthGizka, 18 janvier 2014 - 01:00 .

[Blazomancer]

The companions would always follow if the distance between them and the controlled character gets too large, even when put in hold. The distance between the arches and the emissary encounter is pretty short, that's why they are staying put.

[Chocolina]

As Blazomancer said, they will follow you if you get to far away. Just a question; why leave them behind? After the events at Ostagar, you can select your party, and play solo if you wish.

[DarthGizka]

@ Blazomancer: so it's a simple matter of distance between companion and controlled character? Good to know. I guess that means I'll have to 'follow'-teleport the companions regularly in order to keep the distance below the SNAFU limit at all times and find safe spots for them to be parked in...

@ Chocolina: as I said in my post, it's mostly in the Korcari Wilds where the weirdness happens all the time. I'm using the origin and the Wilds as a proving ground for new toons, to get a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. To avoid temptation I use strict solo rules plus 'no consumables except when fighting ranked enemies'. If necessary I extend the solo trial period to the Tower of Ishal or even Lothering.

I'm not playing a solo game, mind you, just going temporarily solo. Hence I would take my favourite companions along in any case, for the experience.

That aside, the game occasionally forces companions on you even after you've passed through Lothering. Branka's husband comes to mind, Wynne in the Broken Circle, or the failed templar (late-game in Denerim, once you got your marching orders for the Landsmeet). I guess our nightmare solo artists can tell a tale or two about that...

Last but not least, I have found the origin + wilds solo proving to be surprisingly useful and effective, much more so than I'd originally hoped. That's why all my toons go through it as a matter of course. First of all, it adjusts the mindset of the source of the ominous clicking sounds, which may still be too focussed on the ways of the previous character. Second, soloing tends to expose weaknesses in abilities or builds that you might otherwise notice only too late.

An example is the extremely long setup time for archer abilities like Pinning Shot. It is of little consequence for a pure support character (who has someone else tanking for them) but it makes it mostly useless in a solo context, except for some very specific tactical purposes. On the other hand, the soloing may also let you find unexpected strengths. So you can correct the direction your build is taking, and if all else fails it is not too late to restart from scratch.

By the way, yesterday was the first time a toon actually failed the test. My Dalish Elf rogue archer had trouble taking on more than one enemy at a time, except for the little cloaked buggers who have low HP. All her predecessors - including rogues - could handle at least two enemies without breaking a sweat or running away to restealth.

Between misses and low strength the overall damage output was so low that some enemies actually regenerated during combat. The emissary and the alpha wolf weren't doable without consumables (health packs, bombs); the alpha wolf was particularly nasty because it resisted Pinning Shot nine times out of ten, got out of a Dirty Fighting stun in less than a second and could Overwhelm even while stunned. Gazarath I gave up on because I couldn't find a viable tactic. Stocking up on bombs and/or traps would be an option, of course, but in the proving I want to see what the toons are capable of on their own.

When I planned the character I had set Coercion I and DC 20 locks/traps as corner stones for the early levels. The proving showed that this is a luxury which a Dalish Elf rogue archer can ill afford without a support team to fall back on. In a sense it is ironical because the Dalish Elf culture oozes archery but Dalish Elf rogues are the worst archers in all of Vvardenfell. They got so utterly shafted by the designers that not a single origin skill, talent or attribute point is of any use whatsoever for an archer...

P.S.: Dalish Elf rogues are also strange in that they seem to have the widest XP variance. I had only one character who entered the Wilds while still at level 2 and who was still at level 3 after the Joining; I had only one who hit level 5 while still in the Wilds (without any trips back to Ostagar). Both were Dalish Elf rogues.

Modifié par DarthGizka, 19 janvier 2014 - 01:52 .