More Good News GGG (part 3)... not quite

Hello again. Our adventurous Anarchy summer trio is making good progress (for us at least since we average about 25 hours a week and skipped 5 days due to my friends anniversary) and defeated Cruel Vaal last night. The good news is that we're still having loads of fun playing PoE and so I say to GGG this game is still "working as intended". Well I guess it is but not quite in a way that is completely satisfying. Let me explain.

Last night we needed to kill the 3 bandits before making the Vaal pyramid run. No problem. We go to the Western Forest, battle and kill Alira being careful to not stand too close to dead bodies as everyone knows what damage exploding corpses do to your health. We then traveled east to the lair of Kraityn and decided (I got outvoted 2 to 1) to help him since we killed all 3 in Normal for the passive skill point. None of us looked at the wiki to see what reward he gives for helping him (+8% attack speed as I found out which is nothing great so in hindsight we should have killed all 3) but that is all part of the PoE "learning experience" and was the majority decision so I went along with it. We then proceed to Pools and Streams and had it out with Oak. Here's where our trouble began and the main reason I'm posting.

During the Cruel Oak battle my 2 best friends that are new to PoE as of the start of Anarchy League died. We had learned earlier from my Duelist dieing at the hands of 1 too many of Alira's exploding corpses that you can't re-enter a bandit battle in progress when you die. For Alira we decide to battle her a 2nd time so I could get the item she drops and the second time we all survived and moved on. Now we are in the Oak battle and everything is progressing as normal... so far so good. We get his health knocked down to about 1/3rd and then (explicative) our witch dies. She can't re-enter the fight so the 2 of us battle on. Then at about 1/5 Oak health (another explicative) our marauder dies. Oh great, now I'm all alone with my elemental Duelist ranger. I'm at level 50 so I have a good poison arrow with fork and added lightning damage (I really need to find the extra elemental damage support gem) plus a good fire arrow plus skeletons plus a firestorm spell totem so I kited around for the next few minutes raising my 4 skeletons (which don't last very long), throwing my 3 fire traps, deploying the firestorm totem, and getting a few poison arrows in every now and then when Oak leaps to my skele's or totem. I stay alive and finally defeat him. A satisfying kill for me. I get the item he drops and we discuss whether or not we need to redo the Oak battle so that all 3 of us defeat him. I said that it wasn't necessary for all 3 of us have killed both bandits and that as long as one of us has the items then I can get the Apex and we can battle Vaal.

I now know that my thinking was not entirely correct. While it is true that because I have the apex I can (and did) cap the pyramid and Vaal came out to play... rather to kill. We battled him to the death and he dropped his usual healthy amount of rare loot plus a beaucoup amount of vendor trash. Now here's where I found the problem. Since I was the only one to defeat Oak I went on through to the first waypoint in Act 3. I then told my friends to do the same to unlock the waypoint before quitting for the night. Much to our surprise, the access was blocked by a round door and neither of them could advance to Act 3. We are all disappointed that the pyramid run and defeat of Vaal seams to have been in vain since 2 of us were not in on the killing of Oak.

My question to GGG is this. In a group, if a player takes part in a major amount of a bandit battle but dies just before the bandit is killed, do you really think that it is fair that the player must start the whole battle over again? It's not as if we all died, that would be obvious that we have to start over. Right now it means that one of us dieing means we all have to quit and start over. Or should I have stayed in the Vaal arena and waited for my teammates to come back from town before I went through to Act 3? Would they have been able to go through at the same time that I did?

This game has a different motive behind it than other games. For instance, you lose 15% experience when you die in merciless. For anyone with characters in the mid 80s, this can mean hours of work gone. I think you should have to start over if you die because you were not successful. This game tries to separate the coddled and faceroll direction this style of game is heading.

Just a future FYI, when you have the option to help or kill a bandit, it tells you what you will get if you help that bandit in the text box.

1) Did your friends whose to help Oak and get the final piece to open vaal altaar?
2)I think that if your friends did not press "esc" and stayed dead in the place they would eventually get the third piece when you kill it ( i am not sure about that )

3) if they they helped Oak and got the final piece to unleach Vaal, have you unleashed Vaal befre they came or were you all in the arena ?

OP, look at it this way: You must be strong enough to defeat the bandits to continue. If you die, you must try again for the kill. Just because someone in your group succeeded, doesn't mean you did.

I think it is good how it is.


Also, for future reference, never let someone else decide to help/kill a bandit for your character. These are permanent choices you have to live with for the rest of your character's life. Don't make your decision based on someone else's character. If your group wants to help, but you want to kill, leave the group until you kill and join up with them later.

I maybe mistaken but if I remember correctly if the dead players do not click resurrect and they stay dead till after the battle ends their item will pop and they will receive credit for the kill. Like I said I maybe mistaken about that but I'm fairly sure I've seen it happen. I frequently would help friends clear bandits and power through to end game and I think that they have done that a few times.

I agree with some of the above posters where if you stay dead inside the camp and stay for the kill you should get the loot, as i have done this in various other games.

My friends did not get the item that Oak drops upon death because they had died. I alone killed Oak so only I received the item he drops.

I do believe that if they partied as a duo and went without me and battled Oak again that they would be able to travel to Act 3 upon defeating Vaal. I know if I stay out that Oak's difficulty level should be lower with only a 2 member party than 3 so I may suggest that they do that.

Ok, here's my dilemma.
1. In group play, is it mandatory that every one kill the bandits (or help 1 of them) to be able to go to Act 3 after defeating Vaal?

2. If question 1 is yes, does that make sense? I means, If we 3 battle a bandit until he has only a sliver of life left and then one of us dies, should we all be punished and forced to restart the battle over again?

3. If one of us works hard and helps for 99% of the bandit battle but dies, is it fair that all that effort was in vain?  If you don't click to resurrect shouldn't you also get the bandit item (receive it posthumously)? (I here a no already, so why not? Please, no lame "because it's PoE and hard core" and all the usual bs.)

 Does anyone have a definitive answer (not just supposition) about this? I guess I need a GGG dev needs to come in and give the authoritative answer to clear the air here.

edit:  Maybe a better way to handle this is to allow a fallen comrade (after resurrection in town) be allowed to come back through the portal and to rejoin the battle. This is Anarchy and not Onslaught or HC so like Standard we resurrect, take the exp. penalty, and then continue on as a trio.

Question 1 : Yes.

Example : If a friend is in Ledge and you were still in Mud flats searching for those 3 things to open underground passage. And he wanted to TP you You would not be able.
Is it mandatory to open underground passage ? Yes.
I guess i's the same for entering act 3 and doing the bandits quest/ trigering vaal aalter / killing him/it.

If one of your friends stay dead and do not "resurect" will he recieve the " you killed that bandit " ? I can't answer, go try it.

"

Inexium wrote:

Question 1 : Yes.

Example : If a friend is in Ledge and you were still in Mud flats searching for those 3 things to open underground passage. And he wanted to TP you You would not be able.
Is it mandatory to open underground passage ? Yes.
I guess i's the same for entering act 3 and doing the bandits quest/ triggering Vaal alter / killing him/it.

If one of your friends stay dead and do not "resurrect" will he receive the " you killed that bandit " ? I can't answer, go try it.

Ok, I understand the idea that a player should not be allowed to skip ahead to an area just because another teammate has played solo and gone ahead of the others. That makes logical sense and should never be allowed. So if I chose to solo and kill 1 of the bandits then when I played in my trio later the other 2 should not get credit for my solo kill and will need to kill that bandit on their own (or have me battle again if I want to help). But this is not the case here. None of us played solo and killed the bandit or Vaal so we aren't trying to exploit a logic flaw so a player can skip ahead and not do the boss battle. I get that. But what's wrong to me is that by playing as a trio and as long as at least one of us acquires all 3 bandit items and gets the Apex, we can battle Vaal but not all of us can advance to Act 3.

That being the way it works now there should be a warning message come up upon entering the Vaal arena for the party members that have not completed one of the bandit kills that they must go back and complete the bandit battle (stating which ones are uncompleted) before battling Vaal. PoE gives no such message. Right now the message in PoE is: it's ok, we will let you cap the pyramid with the Apex and trigger the Vaal battle, and you can partake in the battle, and even get the loot drop upon his death, but we are going to be nasty to you and not allow you to enter Act 3 because you died in one of the bandit battles and didn't do it over.

I guess the GGG devs. need to rethink on how the whole 3 bandits must be defeated (or 1 helped) when in party play and provide better help so all other newbie group players don't find out the hard way as we did.