It's just like the real world. If you were on a mountain and a mountain lion came to eat you, you could probably get up on something high to stay away from him.

I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but in New Vegas the creatures that don't have ranged attacks will run away from you (if they're just trying to find another route to you or actually showing some self preservation I don't know) although anyone with a gun will continue to shoot at you.
Oh, and if a mountain lion's after you, climbing a rock isn't going to help much

I mostly played a hunter/archer and I rarely did this.

Because I don't svck. :/

right now im thinking plenty of people are responding without experiencing the effect first hand. because i cant imagine anyone actually watching an enemy smacking its head against a wall, getting riddled with arrows and saying 'oh cool, just like real world'

im not having a problem with characters jumping on rocks, im having a problem with how the AI reacts to it and the way it reacts now is far from just like the real world.

if you did that in real world the lion would try to jump after you, in oblivon even if you were standing on a 1.5 ft (0.5 m) high rock it couldnt reach you - not like real world (and no amount of acrobatis would make you jump and climb better than a mountain lion)

but if the jumping and climbing of NPCs and monsters is an engine/physics problem then ok, there are other solutions

if an enemy cant think of a way to reach you i guess in real world it would try a ranged attack, wouldnt you agree? if it doesnt have a way of attacking from range it would find cover? sounds like real world to me
if it cant find cover then it would probably flee, also sounds like real world.
anything but how it is now would look like real world, because right now the moment you jump on a rock the AI is non-existant

this is a flaw in the AI, its a fact, anyone who thinks otherwise is too stubborn to admit it.

i didnt want to make the poll biased, so i formulated the questions like i did, but essentially the question should be 'do you want an improvement in the AI?'

changing their reaction would be an improvement in the AI, would help the immersion and would make the game more challenging . . . those are facts

And of course the answer is yes, unless it's the Headless Zombie AI.

I think we should be able to do it but not as easy. You will have to find a high rock and have better acrobatics than the NPCs. But even then, the AI should be good enough so the NPCs will realize when the can't reach you and run away instead.

Anyone who says that you just have to stop abusing it are being silly. It is an obvious flaw in Oblivion, why keep it in Skyrim if they know how to fix it?

That reminds me of a mod I'm working on... it includeds a bunch of orcs in a dungeon with a script which makes them use crossbows 'till you get close...

Some people seriously need to review their concept of gaming. Ignoring stuff? Seriously?
If the developers added a instant kill sword in-game would you simply restrain yourself? That's a flaw in balance that should be fixed, problems are like that, people should fix them.
I can understand you've been enhancing your acrobatics and want to have an advantage but the enemy would simply try to run into a wall or stand there like there's nothing wrong with the thousand arrows sticking out of their faces.
Games are meant to add limits, I don't want to use my imagination with stuff like "oh, their feet are probably stuck". There are NO excuses for bad design.

Like people mentioned previously a simply fix would be an improved AI, I had enough of oblivion's laughable AI.

It's an AI issue, and anyone saying 'just ignore it / don't exploit it' is missing the point. It makes sense for an archer to seek the high ground and rain arrows down on his enemies. It does not make sense for those enemies to reach the base of that high ground and keep running into it face-first.

If I get up on a high rock and the AI can't find a path or climb/jump up to me, I want to see him run behind a tree for cover. If he has a bow, he should equip it and jump out from cover occasionally to fire off a shot or two.

The problem is that on the one hand you are exploiting an enemies weakness, and on the other you are exploiting the shortcomings of the game design. The former is desirable, the latter is not.

Taking advantage of the fact that an enemy has no ranged abilities is smart tactical thinking. The enemy being totally cool with you doing that and just letting you stick him with arrow after arrow is [censored] stupid. It's not intelligent, it's not about freedom or player agency. It's [censored] stupid. You will always have the ability to climb rocks/on to roof tops/whatever. The correct response is then to decide how AI should react in this unique situation rather than tell it to do the exact same thing it always does: "Charge headlong into the enemy!"

When people talk about balance being less important in single player games, they mean artificially gimping or boosting different play-styles to work well in every situation. This is undesirable. It's unrealistic, it doesn't make sense, and any uniqueness between the play-styles is lost. What is not meant is excusing poor design choices based on some flawed idea of proper tactics.

I'm amazed how many will shout about some people just wanting Morrowind 2.0 and will then go on to defend incredibly stupid design issues that would easily improve the game.

It makes sense if you are a archer type class to seek the higher ground - it gets you cover and more visibility, more control of the situation.

Now the AI in oblivion was not constructed to respond this behavior witch is probably a flaw in the system. Let's hope the skyrim AI is much better!

I suspect not everyone is aware just how extensive the exploit is, so I would like to help shed some light on this and better expose the issue. I'd also like to clarify its nature just in case any devs find this thread and aren't aware of how extensive the exploit is (for it has existed in at least two titles now.)

It is not a minor exploit that only makes itself available on occasion. This is a method by which the player can kill any land-based creature in the game, without the player taking a hit themselves. *ANY* land based creature in the game (other than scripted quest creatures which require a specific weapon or action to be used.) It doesn't matter what level they are, and it doesn't matter what level the player is. If there's no high-ground in the immediate vicinity, the player just leads the opponent to a spot where there is suitable high ground. It does not matter if the opponent has a ranged attack, as the player need only duck and position themselves properly to be unreachable by a weapon's line of sight, and then continually summon minions and let them do the dirty work while you remain completely safe.

For example, I use mods to remove leveling and make the game (supposedly) much more difficult. As a maybe level-3 character I cleared out a very, *VERY* high level oblivion gate by doing this. Spell-casting dremora, Spider Daedra, http://www.rashid-clark.com/rpg_chars/oblivion/ScreenShot140.jpg ...all of them slain by an unscathed, low-level character. All of them. A previous poster made a good anology by bringing up Mario Bros. Wasn't there an exploit in some levels where you could just punch a hole in the ceiling and walk past the entire level without anything harming you? Now imagine if that exploit were available on every level in the game. Regardless of whether or not one takes advantage of the exploit, the fact that an exploit of that scale even exists is something for a development team to be concerned about.

That is, as a professional game programmer, I look at this issue and an alarm bell goes off as it being a major hole in the game's implementation. And contrary to some posts I've read, providing a minimal fix for this hole is very easy to program. Just compare the opponents' percentage health loss over time vs the player's percentage health loss over time. If there's a large discrepancy between the two in the opponent's disfavor, then switch the opponent from fight mode to flight mode, or visa-versa if gains are made. That alone would cement over the hole. Extra details could be added to the equation after that depending on how much one is willing to go beyond the most basic fix.

I dont want this to be in the game but if it is I dont care because I barely use magic and bows

This

My problem is with the people that say "don't complain, just stop using it!" . I don't see too much of a problem with that line of thinking if the mentioned exploit is something like duplication where someone has to consciously try to work around the system in order to exploit it. In those type of scenarios, people who want to exploit will find an exploit and perform it ad nauseam. There is little point trying to stop those exploits because it is impossible to fully do so, and people are paying for the game. If they want to enjoy it in that manner, who cares? Conversely, I do have a big problem with the Oblivion system because it is easy to unknowingly exploit the system while running from an enemy. Many times, I was shooting an animal with a bow (shoot, retreat, shoot, retreat), and accidentally backed up onto a rock, where mysteriously the bear/troll etc wouldn't follow me. If I wanted to play somewhat realistically, I would have to consciously choose to jump off the rock right next to the enemy, all the while knowing I could have just stayed on the rock and avoided damage. When I have to consciously take myself out of the game in order to prevent an exploitation, that kills my immersion. For this reason, it isn't enough just to say, "just don't exploit the game" because the system breaks immersion for exploiters and non-exploiters. This is why a fix is needed for this problem, and not for something like duplication. I never needed to go, "Oh, I guess I'll choose not to select this item, then drop this one for no reason, etc". In your normal gameplay, duplication would never enter your mind. The rock exploit was constantly happening whether or not I wanted it or not. This is why it needs to be fixed.

I would like to see better enemy AI but seriously, if you don't want to jump on things to attack, don't do it.

My problem is that you don't want people to say "Don't like it don't use it", but it's perfectly fine for you to say "Well I can't help myself so they need to remove the temptation." No, they don't.

Well, it is up to the player whether to abuse this or not. But it would be a nice change if we got 'Smart' Enemies in Skyrim. Climbing would also be a cool thing to implement, or a small time vault (Could be useful for Assassins/Rogues/Archers trying to put distance between enemies) that would be like how in Mirrors Edge when you jump near something that can be vaulted you will jumped over/onto it. I think that sentence was really hard to understand, kind of fragmented :/.

EDIT:

It is also a viable tactic for Archers/Mages. I mean, when have you not seen an Archer/Mage stand on top of a rock unleashing hell? I have seen this in quite a few movies/games.

It wasn't that there was to many unreachable spots it was that I could jump on top of a small rock and own anything that was melee only they need to make it where if I choose to get on top of a rock that the enemy needs to have some way of countering my action

As I stated in a previous post, this exploit happens whether or not you intend it to. Did you really go hundreds of hours without accidentally ending up on a rock where they couldn't reach you?

Probably, but I didn't dwell on it. I dont recall it happening that often. Then again, I don't mind exploits. Like I said, I agree with better enemy AI. It's the whining that's the problem.

and where was the whining? when i started this thread pointing out a flaw in the AI and providing easy fixes? is that whining?

Why don't they just make a big ol' flat circle with just containment walls so you can hit an enemy, then run around for a bit to regain health, hit the enemy again, run around some more, rinse, repeat??

One of the old maxims of ground warfare is, you control the higher ground, you control the battle. Reaching for higher ground is a strategic move, not a cheat, especially when fighting multiple enemies, and actually adds realism to the game.

why are you even commenting when you have no idea what im talking about?

Where's the "I don't care" option?

You exercise that option by not posting.

As for SystemShock: Yes, you're right, but why not add to the AI so some enemies can recognize that you hold the higher ground and then retreat?