I'm all for more diversity in creature AI, but eliminating the ability to move around your enemies totally defeats the appeal of this type of combat. There's a bit of a disconnect that players have with this being a tile-based game with puzzles, they expect the combat to be turn-based perhaps, or they don't expect dexterity to be a component. But that's exactly what I always loved about this genre, the mixture of styles, the ability to have cerebral puzzles next to fun combat. Standing in front of a mob and bashing it repeatedly is not my idea of fun, I'd much rather use the environment to my advantage, and use the creature's behaviour against it.
Having said that, some of the suggests are quite good. In Dungeon Master and EotB, monster AI rarely if ever dealt with strafing, but in Grimrock the devs have clearly tried to spice it up a bit, and I think they've done a great job in balancing it. Without going into spoilers, you have very fast enemies, very slow ones, enemies that side-step, even enemies that open gates, all tactics to try and defeat "routine". Of course I'd still be happy to see a greater diversity of behaviour and "anti-strafing" traits used in the future. Enemies that can melee you at range (whipping tentacles), enemies that can freeze you into place briefly, enemies that damage you if you look straight at their eyes (beholders, anyone?), enemies that can whip their tails to hit rogue's trying to backstab, enemies that generate electrical fields and shock anything within a 1-2 square range around them (with a suitable warning so you can get out of the way). Just a few examples, I could go on! That's what should be done to further spice up combat, not try and change the basic mechanics that make it fun in the first place.
Re: 2x2 strafing undermines character building
Yeah, I agree. I can perfectly understand why some people wouldn't like the current combat system, but I like it. I find that choosing how and where to fight an enemy is part of the battle, finding a way to separate one monster from the other so you don't get cornered, taking steps backwards down a hall while shooting arrows (and then taking a wrong turn and getting stuck in a dead endatngnd wrote:I for one like the current system just fine.
Perhaps AH can implement some more exotic attack types for the new monsters in LoG 2 or whatever the sequel is going to be called. But the basic system is fine.
Yes, circle strafing may seem like cheating, but it is IMO a lot more fair than having to redo hours of gameplay from an earlier save just because you happened to pick the wrong stats to spend your experience points on. Besides, with more than one mob circle strafing isn't as simple as it seems. There's also often not enough space to do it, although you can lure enemies to a place where you have enough room for it. But that's precisely the kind of strategy that I like.
), well, I like that too. For me, the strafing around a monster doesn't feel like cheating, specially as I do get hit anyway 
, plus the whole getting surprised by other enemies thing. I agree there could be more variation, enemies that behave differently, but I don't like the idea of changing how the fighting works fundamentally. Nothing against turn based fighting, but I consider it to be a completelly different type of game, and making the fighting turn based would completely ruin it for me (sorry for the drama 
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