Holy moly... This is everything I was hoping it would be! NPC's cancelling mez, interrupting heals, dragging in ranged players... It feels like your playing against something that is considering it's surroundings as much as we are, fighting to survive and counter the players... not just attacking via some preset dance moves.
Super impressed VR! Seeing it come to light is amazing! It's like a super deep version of that dragon age origins tactics menu! Which is what I was really hoping for.. Giving the devs so much flexibility to build each encounter in such a unique way
Having more sophisticated enemies so that a fight can be difficult without using the dance step approach is very encouraging. By dance step I mean going from pixel to pixel to pixel in a set order at set times or you wipe. Something all too common in many games and one of the reasons I left FFXIV long ago though I don't mean to imply that FFXIV is the worst by any means.
The more success or failure depends on our character abilities, our gear, our knowing our roles and our teamates' roles and the like the better. The less it depends on a script the better.
In the YouTube post of this talk and demonstration: 30:15, the NIGHTMARE PULL, Kyle dies from full health (he had immortal) but he would have died?. So that is huge! This really makes the encounters clearly challenging. Every additional MOB within an encounter changes the strat and value of each encounter, per player engaged. Chaos, learnable chaos but yes, yes, yes. This is fantastic!
I can not express how this one video has increased by happiness for what is being created.
This was a fantastic demonstration.
I thought it was very cool, but there is a tin-foil hat wearing part of me that is slightly concerned about industrial espionage. This kind of AI mapping is not new, right? or proprietary? seemed a little like learning how the sausages were made. (although I imagine Upton Sinclair would be pleased in this case, metaphorically speaking)
Spell graphics were nice! my mouth was getting dry watching them on the platform, seemed so arid up there, hard. If you never knew what hard water was, and you had some water from there? you would never forget- a spill would practically bounce I imagine, its so hard.
Having AI NPC being even a degree of intelligent will be a big step forward. Now if they can make it so it's not the exact same script all the time. Thats the issue in big game raids today. Everything is timed exactly the same and stripted to a T. Hopfully their (VR) way of doing this will add some much needed variance to scripted raids and mobs.
dorotea said:Having more sophisticated enemies so that a fight can be difficult without using the dance step approach is very encouraging. By dance step I mean going from pixel to pixel to pixel in a set order at set times or you wipe. Something all too common in many games and one of the reasons I left FFXIV long ago though I don't mean to imply that FFXIV is the worst by any means.
The more success or failure depends on our character abilities, our gear, our knowing our roles and our teamates' roles and the like the better. The less it depends on a script the better.
As someone who isn't a huge fan of "avoid the giant glowy shapes on the ground" being the main mechanic for fights*, i completely agree.
*as all things, this is fine in moderation
Praecant said:dorotea said:Having more sophisticated enemies so that a fight can be difficult without using the dance step approach is very encouraging. By dance step I mean going from pixel to pixel to pixel in a set order at set times or you wipe. Something all too common in many games and one of the reasons I left FFXIV long ago though I don't mean to imply that FFXIV is the worst by any means.
The more success or failure depends on our character abilities, our gear, our knowing our roles and our teamates' roles and the like the better. The less it depends on a script the better.
As someone who isn't a huge fan of "avoid the giant glowy shapes on the ground" being the main mechanic for fights*, i completely agree.
*as all things, this is fine in moderation
Seconded.
Praecant said:dorotea said:Having more sophisticated enemies so that a fight can be difficult without using the dance step approach is very encouraging. By dance step I mean going from pixel to pixel to pixel in a set order at set times or you wipe. Something all too common in many games and one of the reasons I left FFXIV long ago though I don't mean to imply that FFXIV is the worst by any means.
The more success or failure depends on our character abilities, our gear, our knowing our roles and our teamates' roles and the like the better. The less it depends on a script the better.
As someone who isn't a huge fan of "avoid the giant glowy shapes on the ground" being the main mechanic for fights*, i completely agree.
*as all things, this is fine in moderation
I agree completely about the glowing circle telling you to run/joust out. I do really appreciate the visual queues in this game vs just looking over people's heads for debuffs. The mez visual effects and the effects used in the pull are really cool visual indications of what is going on, and done well are actually more immersive than having to look at icons hovering over people's heads. Not that we'll get away from having to use some of the more traditional indicators such as combat logs, icons over/under people's names, etc..
GoofyWarriorGuy said:I wonder if I was the only one that thought to myself 'Hmm... to bad they didn't think to have the Cleric summon a Celestial Aegis wall to block the edge' as Joppa was being pushed off to his doom!
Yup, that came to mind, and the summoner's wall too. Could really be helpful in such situations!
I liked the stream a lot, and am really happy at how much power and flexibility this system gives the encounter designers. I think we can look forward to unexpected NPC behaviours :)
Sarim said:I liked the stream a lot, and am really happy at how much power and flexibility this system gives the encounter designers. I think we can look forward to unexpected NPC behaviours :)
Encounters that may differ depending on your group makeup and even ability loadout. If the mobs are reacting to spells we are casting, there could be a number of things we have to watch out for each time we revisit an area!
I'm honestly really pumped about this system! If you couldn't tell from the op haha
Absolutely!
The AI design is brilliant, some real challenge in an MMO where NPCs will fight back against players using the same kinds of spells and abilities as players have.
We always have encounters designed where you need to taunt the mob, CC the DPS and interrupt the healer, but we've never faced NPCS or groups of NPCs that will do that back to us!
Finally, NPCS that aren't just HP sponges with AoE red circles to avoid. The Stormhand looked amazing to fight!
Looks like they are developing a beautiful middle ground between traditional slow-paced tab target and newer action combat frantic button mashing. They've made tactical, engaging combat with moments of action.