zewtastic Make the AI 21 century smarter. No level 15 wizard is going to be running into melee combat with a level 30 ogre.
I agree that it would be great to see mobs be more intelligent in the game world (and even "level up" to a point depending on how long they have been around and the encounters they have survived). But I disagree that the above would never happen.
I could see a level 15 wizard confront a level 30 Ogre if that wizard had never encountered an Ogre before or knew little of them. Imagine a self-important wizard, recently trained and thinking they are better than their ability actually is. He sees a lone Ogre in the distance; something he has only read about in his books. "Oooh" he thinks, "I could make a name for myself here! How hard could it be?". Yes, the wizard will regret it, but it is not out of the realms of possibility.
I think though, what would be more realistic is that the wizard got his own party together, or hired a few mercenaries before he set out wandering. Now that would make for a more interesting encounter.
As VR have hinted at though, I think there will be more unexpected faction encounters lined up that will include large sections of game play and complex faction interactions, so with any luck, we may well not have single mobs running amok, forever diving headlong into a brick wall (ah Fippy!).
Remember, this is still pre-alpha and VR need to see that simple non-player mob encounters work the way they are intended before more complex encounters can be initiated. But I do agree, seeing mobs being more intelligent and more aware of their environment would be a blast and would make PRotF stand out a bit more in the genre.
Just think about the MMO playerbase these days...
They won't be attacking level 30's at level 15, they will be trying that at level 1. They're so indoctrinated into believing they're a one-man-army with no fear of death that, Pantheon is going to be a real steep learning curve for them. Many will likely think the game is broken and not working as intended, hehe. I know you meant AI, not players, but players act like robots running on an algorithm these days anyway, so there's little difference :P
chenzeme said:I could see a level 15 wizard confront a level 30 Ogre if that wizard had never encountered an Ogre before or knew little of them.
What do you mean - all the wizard has to do is look at the ogre's nameplate and see it's level 30!
Ok...I'll show myself out...
zewtastic said:Make the AI 21 century smarter.
No level 15 wizard is going to be running into melee combat with a level 30 ogre.
Almost no player playing a game with access to a UI/HUD that has gameplay information to allow them to make informed decisions so as to not punish them unjustly would do that.
A wizard NPC existing in its simulated reality with none of the player knowledge would absolutely attack a rival faction ogre infiltrating the territory.
AI NPC behavior in an mmo of this scale. Requiring additional testing and tweeks with all the variables and possible interactions. Plus the computational resources needed to monitor the ai behavior with multiple faction and class/group design possibilities.
No.
Let a level 1 rat attack a level 50 dragon for all I care.
I'd love to see Pantheon take a page out of dragon age origins party ai tactics options available to players in that game and expand it then apply that to the npcs in Pantheon. So npcs have specific instructions for dealing with multiple situations. I've always thought that party ai tactics was the standout of dragon age.. then they watered it down to be a shell of itself
If we really want a more interesting AI, most actions that it decides upon/between should have an element of randomness. Even if it's a 95% chance of performing an action, it still creates enough variability that it feels unpredicable enough to feel real. When the underlying mechanics of the game become too obvious, it loses some suspension of disbelief.
But at the same time Counterflech, we want a group of npcs carrying out their roles together right? Healers preference healing and dps should be looking for opportunities to use cc on player classes that might be flagged as priority targets as well as dpsing based on their threat table
Iksar said:zewtastic said:Make the AI 21 century smarter.
No level 15 wizard is going to be running into melee combat with a level 30 ogre.
Almost no player playing a game with access to a UI/HUD that has gameplay information to allow them to make informed decisions so as to not punish them unjustly would do that.
A wizard NPC existing in its simulated reality with none of the player knowledge would absolutely attack a rival faction ogre infiltrating the territory.
I think his point was that a caster should not ever, deliberately, put itself into melee range with any adversary. That is what makes casters ridiculously stupid. VR needs to fix that.
The point was:
NPC's with factions at opposition, fighting, is nothing new.
It was first seen in EQ circa 1998beta.
It was never smart, they just go at each other mindlessly, regardless of their levels and abilities.
The example I gave: A Hill Giant (aggro to everything) attacks npc bandits in the Karana's. Do they run? No. They piddle against him till he stomps them all down.
A wizard is not going to engage in melee, if possible.
Are the actions a wizard NPC going to be intelligent? Or not?
Does the wizard snare, root, teleport? Why would a Wizard go toe-to-toe with an Ogre at all? Regardless of levels.
Would a Wizard dumbly wander up to Ogre Town? Unlikely. What is the line of sight? Cause that big ogre was pretty obvious from a long ways away.
The point is the AI we've seen so far is a dumb as the AI was in 1998.
Is the AI going to be smarter? If so, how much smarter?
Will the Wizard understand it's target and adjust?
Will an AI Wizard teleport it's entire group if attacked by an opposite faction of ogres or players even? Will it use invis? Shadow Step? Other evasive tools?
nuff said...
I think most of us need to be carful what we are asking for....
Now I know this isn't a single player game... well not supposed to be anyway... That will not stop people from trying to do solo nor should it... i guess.... Can you imagine the screams of terror from some players? especially if they couldn't root or have a way with dealing with the situation.... I am not talking about a lvl 15 player trying to kill a lvl 30 ogre... I am saying if you made the AI that smart to were it sets up traps and ambushes you or I can't win this fight i am going to go get more of my npc buddies.... is that what you guys want?
I am all for smarter AI and I do agree with the OP in that the wizzard at lvl 15 should not be dumb enough to walk into a lvl 30 ogre... or especially put himself into melee... How far do you want to take it tho? I mean if 6 people come up in a wizzard don't you think he should run and get more people than what you have? why would he stand there and get beat down? Could you imagine if the npc kited you? it would run thru other npcs and you would get tons of adds
At what point is this a game to how smart you want the AI? where does it stop?
Nytman said:I am saying if you made the AI that smart to were it sets up traps and ambushes you or I can't win this fight i am going to go get more of my npc buddies.... is that what you guys want?
Yes, if you can't prevent an NPC from getting its friends then clearly you should have to run or die. Way more interesting than mindlessly moving from mob to mob with a predictable, repeatble kill loop. Maybe not all NPCs have the same IQ and will commit suicide on you/your group, but some surely should be smarter than that.
Nytman said:I am all for smarter AI and I do agree with the OP in that the wizzard at lvl 15 should not be dumb enough to walk into a lvl 30 ogre... or especially put himself into melee... How far do you want to take it tho? I mean if 6 people come up in a wizzard don't you think he should run and get more people than what you have? why would he stand there and get beat down? Could you imagine if the npc kited you? it would run thru other npcs and you would get tons of adds
At what point is this a game to how smart you want the AI? where does it stop?
IMO, NPC AI should be more than a bunch of if,then,else staments hard coded into a script that is so predictable that by the time your level 10 you can predict how every encounter to end game will go. I would propose even doing real AI with pre-trained networks that represent the base smarts of an NPC - every time that NPC wins it gets to train from the pervious encounter data and then perform that much smarter nexst time. Probablby more resources than VR has at the moment, but ideallyl AI should be Intellegent, not scripted and dumb.
my 2cp
-Az
So i was playing EQ and some situation came up, that reminded me of this thread.
Basically i was killing something, the mob began to ran away due to low health, i did not really pay attention, so the mob was running away and i had so search it like a fool.
Now what comes to my mind is this: Why do mobs always know the best way to get to you, even if you have moved while they are out of sight? What i mean is this:
- Lets assume we have two rooms connectec with a door, and in each room there are other doors.
- A group fights in Room A, whil the mob is mezzed in Room B.
- While the mob is mezzed, the group moves out of Room A into another room, without being seen by the mezzed mob (one could argue, that a mezzed mob does not notice anything anyway, but thats another story).
- When the mob awakens, it does not know where the group is gone. Maybe it will move to Room A and search a bit to find them (like me, looking really stupid), or it will just get back to business. But it does not run straight after the group knowing magically where they have gone.
To me, this does not sound too smart or too dumb, but can open up some nice tactics. What do you think?
Matrulak said:So i was playing EQ and some situation came up, that reminded me of this thread.
Basically i was killing something, the mob began to ran away due to low health, i did not really pay attention, so the mob was running away and i had so search it like a fool.
Now what comes to my mind is this: Why do mobs always know the best way to get to you, even if you have moved while they are out of sight? What i mean is this:
- Lets assume we have two rooms connectec with a door, and in each room there are other doors.
- A group fights in Room A, whil the mob is mezzed in Room B.
- While the mob is mezzed, the group moves out of Room A into another room, without being seen by the mezzed mob (one could argue, that a mezzed mob does not notice anything anyway, but thats another story).
- When the mob awakens, it does not know where the group is gone. Maybe it will move to Room A and search a bit to find them (like me, looking really stupid), or it will just get back to business. But it does not run straight after the group knowing magically where they have gone.
To me, this does not sound too smart or too dumb, but can open up some nice tactics. What do you think?
Good point!
No mob should auto-magically know exactly where you are once you have moved out of sight, through rooms or wooded areas. They should not be able to go directly to you like a laser, no matter where you might be, over hill and dale, inside a back room of a building, etc.
A good point about making AI super-smart with magical knowledge, the opposite of being dumb about melee interaction and not knowing how to react as their class.
Iksar said:Disagree with the above. This is done for gameplay reasons rather than trying to replicate any notion of "realism" and the solution offered sounds extremely exploitable (not to mention easy to use to grief other groups/players).
Targetting (training) others, groups and camps, with mobs you tagged has always been a griefing tactic. And is MORE exploitable when you know you have aggro coming from anywhere in a zone. Usually exploited by a feign-dead class, but not exclusively. One player on these forums admitted he trained groups in dungeons just to get tips for rezzing them back up. He would camp out his cleric, log in his monk, train a group, log in Cleric and offer rezzes for donations.
And citing "gameplay reaons" to create super-smart AI functionality for Mobs to magically know exactly where you are in a zone is just bad coding. Mobs should retain aggro for a player, but knowing exactly where that player is, is dumb.
This reminds me of the old days in Vanilla EQ in the Plane of Fear zone. When pulling in that zone, you needed to be aware of the quirks of Feign Death and how it really effected Agro/Hate lists. When you FD the targets will of course stop attacking and will walk back to where they were when you first engaged them, but this did not always clear you entirely from their hate list, and if those targets tended to Roam around the zone, they would often pass on their dislike of you to other targets that they passed. If you were far enough away, those targets wouldn't actually come running for you, but they did still have you on their Hate list, and as soon as you came within a certain distance of them, they would suddenly become aware of you and would Agro instantly and come running. This distance would be much larger than a normal Agro distance if you were not on their Hate list already, and so sometimes you would get blind sided by mobs running at you from a long way away without any warning.
This got really interesting when you took into consideration the 'Death Touch' ability that some of the Bosses had. This ability was an instant kill on a player no matter their HP or Resists or whatever. The Boss just yelled out your Name in ALL CAPS to the entire zone and you'd instantly died. Now fight tactics aside, this meant that pulling these targets required a sacrifical player to die to the initial Death Touch they would use instantly when you first engaged them, and then you needed to have a second person engage and pull the Boss back to the group before his cooldown on his Death Touch finished and he insta-killed the next player.
So due to the way targets could pass around their Hate lists as they roam the zone, along with the massive range that these targets would suddenly realize that I was there and come running, and you can see how some funny moments would occur with these Death Touch bosses. I would sometimes be circling around trying to avoid these Bosses to clear out the area and I would definately be far enough away not to Agro this Boss, when suddenly the zone would all see my name in bright Red as the Boss called out my instant Death for all to see. All because I'd had to Feign Death off a Roamer who had passed on my name to his Boss and said 'If you ever scent this guy in your area... toast him!'.
I learned very quickly that it was often wise to /camp regularly to totally clear myself off Hate lists, just in case a Roamer was out there passing out flyers with my picture on them to all his superiours.
There is some potential for exploit, and some spells may have a completely new purpose (blind for example). However, I still think that this can lead to cool new strategies to handle a dungeon.
If the mob does not loose aggro, but you stay on his hatelist, he could still be looking for you, roaming around his usual place and will aggro you as soon as you get in sight (with much higher radius, similar as what GoofyWarriorGuy described). Maybe they will tell their friends, so they also start looking for you. So this has some consequences.
I am not really sure myself, if this is a good idea ;) However, there is a story that brought this topic to my mind. Me and a wizard friend were in howling stone when things went bad. He was able to port to entrance ... without reloading (therefore no aggro wipe). The whole dungeon still knew where to find us! We just disappeared in front of them, and they were all running towards us through half of the dungeon.
Also, this "I know always where to find you" made spells like Shadow Step completely useless, which also annoyed me.
So you see, I am not sure if this is an improvement, but we already have some downsides with EQs implementation. MAybe this idea will make everything worse, maybe not. So lets talk :) Where are the exploits, and is there an elegant way to handle it?
For starters you could run through a dungeon as an enchanter/bard and grief everyone in the zone in an easier way than old feign death training. A group camping in one area? Go to the area adjacent to it and mez the room up then run off, now that room of mobs is roaming around and likely to wipe that group. You could do it to entire zones over time to where the whole zone is a roaming mess of unpredictable mobs that is more or less impossible to enter/navigate for an at-level group. Rile up a whole zone and climb to some ledge on a wall they'd never check.
Matrulak said:So i was playing EQ and some situation came up, that reminded me of this thread.
Basically i was killing something, the mob began to ran away due to low health, i did not really pay attention, so the mob was running away and i had so search it like a fool.
Now what comes to my mind is this: Why do mobs always know the best way to get to you, even if you have moved while they are out of sight? What i mean is this:
- Lets assume we have two rooms connectec with a door, and in each room there are other doors.
- A group fights in Room A, whil the mob is mezzed in Room B.
- While the mob is mezzed, the group moves out of Room A into another room, without being seen by the mezzed mob (one could argue, that a mezzed mob does not notice anything anyway, but thats another story).
- When the mob awakens, it does not know where the group is gone. Maybe it will move to Room A and search a bit to find them (like me, looking really stupid), or it will just get back to business. But it does not run straight after the group knowing magically where they have gone.
To me, this does not sound too smart or too dumb, but can open up some nice tactics. What do you think?
I like ideas like this because they show that making AI smarter can be give AND take for the players. Some realisms would definately make the game harder, but some would also make it easier, for a happy balance.
I'm all for smarter AI but if you only make them smarter by making them put in traps and group together a lot you would probably make the game too hard.
Especially considering how the sheer volume of mobs necessary to support several groups of players in a dungeon is very unrealistic and giving them realistic means to interact with each other despite there being no way that little tower could support that many powerful wizards who all happen to be perfect friends that never betray each other... you get it right? Way too hard.