I had a thought that it might be cool to see enemies with more diverse behaviors in Last Epoch. Specifically:
Enemies having traits that cause them to fight the player differently. Such as enemies that are cowardly, courageous, cunning, etc.
Enemies interacting with their environment more. Some examples that come to mind are gathering resources, intimidating the locals, sitting around a fire, burning things, etc.
Enemies grouping up/spreading apart, or having more sophisticated patrolling behaviors. Imagine encountering a giant patrol of 50+ enemies fighting you all at once. It would be terrifying but also rewarding.
The underlying goal behind these suggestions is to make Last Epoch feel more alive, rather than having the sense that the enemies in areas are pixelated blobs that don’t do anything except attack the player and [usually] die to the player.
Wolcen tried something like this and looked far better then LE and it delivered 0 immersion at all… at least to me. At the end of the day H&S games are overgloryfied Whack a’ Mole games.
With the week storytelling in LE (mostly because the UI and how it is delivered is meh) I have 0 immersion to start with. I just want to grind mobs because EVERYTHING else in the game isn’t something to write home about.
Sure everybodys oppinion might be different but to me changes in enemy behaviours wouldn’t change much for me.
I dont think changing some of the enemies interactions necessarily will change their attacking patterns…
About the one suggestion that monster would fight the player differently, the player would adapt, learning these new behaviors.
Hard pass. Enemies that run away from you are one of the most annoying monster behaviors that devs will not stop putting into games.
IMO these ideas do not make sense in an ARPG anyway. This is stuff that fits in a more immersive genre of RPG, like a Skyrim or a Dark Souls. The core gameplay loop in a game like this involves blasting through monsters way too quickly for any of this to even be noticed most of the time.
All this feedback is valid, I appreciate everyone speaking to and against this idea. This was just a shower thought for me.
It may be that it is not in line with aRPG gameplay in general, but I still think there should be consideration to how Last Epoch can expand outside of its strengths to offer a more diverse experience to players. I feel that other games in the genre (Titan Quest, Diablo I & II) offered superior atmosphere, and I would love for Last Epoch to take steps to move in that direction, as it is the greatest and most glaring weakness I see with the game currently.
While the whack-a-mole gameplay is a major component of aRPG gameplay, I think there is also a lot of value in making an environment which the player feels invested in.
EDIT: Another idea could be enemies fighting each other. Stumbling on a brawl between two factions seems like it could be fun and interesting.
They do. When you come across frost elementals and rayahs troops in chapter 7(?) they actually do fight each other. this is heorots forces trying to repel the attackers.
There is story telling elements like this in places, or you can see the face of the mountain walk by as you leave the last refuge in chapter 2 hinting at something extremely large being around.
But I am also in the camp of the fact that most arpgs end game is reusing story monsters in random generation in set or random layouts. So you cant have that kinda stuff in end game. it does not make sense from a gameplay point.
The campaign does use it about as much as say PoE however, which is enough. You are describing something you see in like, Genshin impact. where the enemies are around a campfire cooking and if you sneak up on them they freak out when you start beating them up.
