» Thu Dec 01, 2011 8:46 am
I remember seeing a YouTube video about how the waypoint pathfinding system needed to be passed up for vector pathfinding featuring, among other things, Oblivion, Half Life 2, and WoW. It showed obvious flaws (to the tune of Yakkity Sax) in pathfinding exactly like the ones you are exploiting in any waypoint pathfinding system. He also demonstrated by doing things like going behind a boulder near a cliff (where no waypoints were nearby), where the tiger chasing him would have to go all the way around the other side of the boulder. Likewise, crossing a stream would send a gorilla all the way back up the bank of the stream, across the bridge, then back down the bank to try to take a swipe at the player, who would then just move back across the stream, forcing the monster to stop, turn around, and go back the way it came. Also, it featured a flying gargoyle getting "caught" on a 1-foot rise while trying to fly after the player in Oblivion, in spite of flying at least three feet off the ground.
Sadly, I either can't search for it, or it was taken down.
Anyway, "Expert" only makes the enemies have more health and damage, as far as I know, so it won't do a thing for your actual difficulty if they never reach melee range because of bug exploits. Hence, it's not a matter of "making something harder than expert" to begin with.