I've been wondering about the impact of identifying Dispoitions before you even attack an enemy. I thought about this today while listening to Pantheon Plus Rewind.
Do you think knowing what the Disposition is, say based on the mob’s name prefix, would cause players to attack or avoid enemies? I expect the answer from most is yes.
But it makes me think about if that's what we actually want. Imagine a scenario where people intentionally seek out only certain ones that may have more money or items on them, and avoid ones that may have more armor or HP. Is that the intent of the system? I don't think so. Could that lead to more greifing, kill stealing, or other toxic behavior?
I’m wondering if a mobs Disposition should be hidden until after you attack it. What do you think? Thinking of it from a gameplay wise, how could you know all this information about an enemy just by looking and not engaging it? Could you add spells or abilities that may be able to read dispositions instead of just giving it away? Or you encounter an enemy and enage it, then discover it's Disposition and during battle need to adjust your tactics due to what you have learned about it.
*edit for clarity*
I think for ease of pulling which the masses want dispositions will largely be visible, but I like the idea of hiding most of them behind generic names more.
I think it would make since for many / most of the minor dispositions to be hidden 24/7. No one would advertise being afraid of fire and knowing to prepare for every disposition would be boring. Perhaps stalking the target could show their dispositions eventually through some sort of game mechanic.
My ideal would be the following:
A Kobold may have a few minor dispositions, the same for all kobolds even those named later on. Some may fear fire or can't swim, some may have a chance to run for help every time an ally dies. You learn to keep an eye out for these things when fighting Kobolds.
A Raging Kobold will always have one of a few hidden combat dispositions. It will always have either Battlerage, Sweeping attacks, or Intimidating shouts giving variety of AI sets to the "same" mob. Will the raging kobold be hearty, have sweeping AOE attacks, do AOE debuffs you simply won't know until you fight it.
A Kobold Shaman will always have a hidden disposition to be the healer, debuffer, or balanced.
Same for Kobold Elite and Kobold Necromancers etc
Some dispositions may be so powerful they need to be clearly visible. Will there be A Willful Raging Kobold to show they are immune to CC, perhaps. I hope it is rare though.
Joppa did at one point talk about Perception playing a part in a players ability (or lack of) to determine an enemies Disposition. (source)
This was linked to Perception skill having specializations where you make choices while you advance your Perception skill to gain bonuses. So some players may choose to specialize their Perception to be able to see Dispositions while others may choose a different specialization to gain some other bonus.
Joppa was then asked why anyone would not pick the Specialization that gained you the ability to detect Dispositions and he explained that it would be up to the VR Dev's to make sure these specializations paths were balanced enough so that there were incentives in each path to make them desirable. (source).
Note: This info comes from May 2017 and therefore things may have changed since then.
Perhaps they have moved away from Perception specialization all together. Or perhaps instead of specific specialization paths it will instead have specific skills/bonuses that you choose, maybe using Perception points earned while leveling up the skill, and players then need to decide which bonuses they want to obtain first. Almost like a Perception Mastery. They could even tie this directly into the main Mastery system and players could use Mastery points to upgrade their Perception skills.
I don't think one extreem (name prefix) or the other (engage first} is best. I think "tells" of whatever sort would be best, observe the mob for a bit, it's size compaired to other like mobs, is it pathing away from the water or fire, the perception system is also good. a combination of the two.
The possability of reading the tells wrong or finding out your perception was off is good.
Yes, I think it should be hidden until the mob reveals it's disposition. Either running away from your flame or casting something you wouldn't expect.
If your party has no torches out for the scared of flame dispositon, then you shouldn't even know about it. You should only know about if you have a torch out and using it and the mob reacts to it.
As Zorkon mentioned observing the mob might help, but when you in a group pulling, who stands there looking at a mob for a minute before pulling (unless new to a camp), as you will be getting repop's.
"A Raging Kobold will always have one of a few hidden combat dispositions. It will always have either Battlerage, Sweeping attacks, or Intimidating shouts giving variety of AI sets to the "same" mob. Will the raging kobold be hearty, have sweeping AOE attacks, do AOE debuffs you simply won't know until you fight it."
This kind of thing isn't really something that would be tied to a disposition. It's more a kin to Class abilities. Is the Kobald a Warrior using shouts or a Dire Lord using AoE attacks?
Which of course brings up the question: Will NPC names always give away their class? We know that there are NPC's like 'Wandering Wizard' or the like which seem pretty obvious. But there could be naming schemes specific to NPC types. Such as; When fighting Kobalds will you always know that Raging Kobalds are always Warriors and Snarling Kobalds are always Dire Lords?
Of course it's also likely that some NPC's races will have special 'hidden' classes that Players don't have that give them ability kits unique to that NPC type. Obviously there will be named NPC's that will have special abilities unique to them that aren't tied to a Class. Yet when talking about generic Kobalds there may be specific Kobald classes with specific ability kits not tied to the classes that players can play. As we play we will likely learn to know that Raging Kobalds use a specific unique Kobald ability while Snarling Kobalds use another specific unique Kobald ability, etc...
Pantheon also has NPC Traits which are different than Dispositions. In the July 2021 video showcasing the Monk, they showed off the 'Pack Hunter' Trait (source) which automatically gave the Bloodfang enemies a stacking buff that enhanced their attacks just for being close to another Bloodfang with this same Pack Hunter trait. So for each extra Bloodfang enemy (regardless of class) in close proximity their attacks will be more dangerous. This means getting solo pulls is much more helpful than just pulling several Bloodfangs and using Crowd Control, unless you had enough room in your fight area to spread them out before CC'ing.
It seemed like this 'Trait' was not obvious if you just saw a lone Bloodfang. It only became noticable when 2 or more Bloodfangs were near each other and they gained the buff. We also don't know if VR will decide to keep this 'buff' visible to players or if this kind of Trait induced buff might be a 'hidden' buff that players will need to figure out as they face enemies.
It will be interesting to see if the same Trait in different NPC races would still work together. For example, if Bloodfangs (Werewolf type race) have the 'Pack Hunter' trait and then Stalkers (a type of Wolf) also have a 'Pack Hunter' trait... will bringing a Bloodfang near a Stalker Wolf trigger the buff? Or will each of these races have a unique 'Pack Hunter' trait that only works with others of it's race type?
I'm guessing that this may depend on the trait type. Perhaps Pack Hunter traits are specific to a race and will not work together. But maybe there will be other Traits that do work across different NPC races/types. Like maybe there could be a 'Natures Growth' trait that that will increase HP Regen when another NPC with that trait is nearby. Both a 'Shimmering Cactus' enemy and a 'Glowing Bunny' enemy could have this Trait and stack the buff even though they are different races.
So fighting in a specific forest might be much more complex if lots of the enemies in the area have this Trait because fighting multiple enemies makes them Regen like crazy. They could likely even make it painful by having Glowing Bunnies be non-agressive and lower level but spawn rapidly and hop all over the place. Normally you might think to just ignore them because they aren't useful to kill but since they have this Natures Growth trait, you need to keep clearing them out to make fights with other Enemies in the area less difficult.
Anyway... sorry for going off on a tangent with that...
I think that perception rating should play a part in the information player can decern by looking at an enemy. I think that some dispositions should be transparent, while others are hidden and only discernable through the perception system or after encountering and defeating the disposition X amount of times.
The less we know upfront, the more we will need to adapt or sacrifice damage for tools in case bad scenarios happens.
I want the game to have unforgiving moments, when if you took the path of melting things faster than they can react (IE : High DPS group no counter mechanics) you get brutally ended if bad luck happens, because making monster melt is too much of a counter mechanic already.
This topic has been promoted for my CM content, please continue the discussion and have fun! :)
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I like the idea of connecting it with certain skill - which I wouldn't specialise in, but would like if someone from my party (puller) had some (more than others) idea what we are against. Unless there will be some active ability on certain classes (ranger, wizard) to analyze/scan/identify mobs.
Hegenox said:I like the idea of connecting it with certain skill - which I wouldn't specialise in, but would like if someone from my party (puller) had some (more than others) idea what we are against. Unless there will be some active ability on certain classes (ranger, wizard) to analyze/scan/identify mobs.
Back in the long long ago, before the dark times, Brad had said player were going to have 2 perception related skills one of which was active and the other passive. If you came across something or someplace which triggered the passive ability you would then use the active ability (investigate?) for more information. That could have been used, possible, against NPCs to further identify the hidden characteristics of their dispositions. Thus, the more you engage with a given NPC, the more you would learn about the dispositions available to those NPCs and the function of those dispositions.
So when you came across an NPC you've never encountered before, you're facing a blank slate in terms of what information you can gather. You would, then, have to fight it and more of them to build up the knowledge of that species/race. Its about familiarity, I suppose.
That said, by the time this game releases, every disposition and it's effect will be recorded and at release entire wiki pages will spawn with full write ups kissing any sense of mystery goodbye.
I want mob dispositions to be unknown, unless your perception is high enough to give you a hint. A hint. I want there to be an advantage to having a good perception line. Maybe if you have two people with the right perception skill the group gets a better hint? Or is that too hard to program?
I like the idea of getting more familiar with a particular type of NPC over time, and as that happens you get more information about the NPC. You start off knowing nothing, but once you max out your familiarity, you could know dispositions, schools of magic or physical damage they are strong/weak against, even hp and mp pools. This would all be information we would eventually look up online anyways so why not give us a chance to see it in game.
For those that think this is not immersive, keep in mind that it is also not immersive to know your own hp pool, or know what % of hp a mob has left. To be super realistic, you should just start fighting and have no idea how close something is to being dead until it starts to run. I don't think many would have fun playing such a game.
Questaar said:I want mob dispositions to be unknown, unless your perception is high enough to give you a hint. A hint. I want there to be an advantage to having a good perception line. Maybe if you have two people with the right perception skill the group gets a better hint? Or is that too hard to program?
I agree. It should be tied to preception. My hopes are that some of the benifits from Horizontal Leveling will include higher levels of perception towards specific Dispositions. Exploring the world and having exposure to the world around you should raise your preception of different, races, fations, creatures, animals. etc.
A player who engages the world and taking advantage of Horizontal Leveling should gain the experience of that type of activity, in contrast with grinding XP in once place because the XP is high for killing a particular mob in a narrow path to a higher level. The wider path should offer more knowledge through the Perception System as a player engages the wider world around them. Detecting Dispositions should be skill developed by Horizontal Leveling.
Content is King, I don't want to play a game where it takes 2 weeks to get to max level.
I really think the majority of dispositions should be visible from the start. In a challenging game where death takes away from players they should be able to make informed decisions when deciding what to try to pull and where as well as what LAS abilities they might want to have (limited action set also plays into stronger need to know ahead of time). Getting destroyed because you happened to pull a pair of (for example) CC immune mobs would be very frustrating to say the least. Being able to see them also spurs more group communication and teamwork opportunities.
As far as knowing the disposition, I understand the thought. Taken at face value I dont want to know.
If it must be telegraphed by being named or put as a prefix (and I dont think it should) I would prefer is as "intuitive disposition once removed"
What I mean is, After the 5th group wipe on your first time in the warrens, do you remember the dread and frantic panic you felt when the Kobold Runt began to run away at 25%? Because by that time you learned that it would keep yelping and limping all the way to the end of wherever making every kobold it passed, no matter how far away they were, very determined to see what hurt the puppy.
Or Rabid Kobolds. Fury unleashed, if you are unprepared they can knock you out with one blow and may or may not turn on you for spite. The other kobolds would leave them alone strangely or obviously enough- because they were rabid. Therefore Kobolds were obviously social- as the Runts behaviors attested. So they must know the rabid state is dangerous and therefore, give them berth even if you are killing them right next to a kobold guard. The Kobold guards always in pairs- always come in pairs- stands to reason and interestingly if they howl, will be helped by other guards that can hear(see, line of sight) them. but only guards, none else.
Suddenly, we become anthropologists.
Runt doesnt really say its a runner but if its the runt of the litter, I mean Ghost in Game of thrones was the runt of the litter. People find runts of the litter endearing so- once removed- if the runt gets hurt it makes sense they would get pissed off, too!
Rabid, we know rabid is bad. Just how bad may not be immediately known. We know we can look it up, or- once removed- get it defined for us in terminus in the pantheon way through engagement.
I would rather not see it and have it be learned.
*edit from reading later posts*- Disposition based on perception skill, provided it hints and doesnt define. Im ok with class information more easily known as it gives an idea to what you're up against. But I think for balance (sry) the disposition should be murky. You know thats a caster, but you don't know if its a fearless caster or "loose cannon". You know thats a Paladin but you don't know it's "Brave" Sir Robin that will run away. I can see disposition perception tied to like a consider system- also with a generous share of undercons. OR, as some have mentioned learning from hunting, you learn of 4 dispositions a wolf can have but do not know which disposition this particular wolf will have.
I enjoyed the system in EQ2 to learn about mob types like orcs or gnolls by collecting lore drops (body parts) off them.
If I remember right this just gave you their language and a dd spell that only works on that race, if there was something similar here that would work for me.
Kalok said:In my opinion visible dispositions should be based on your Perception skill. So if you don't work Perception, or have a very low skill, you shouldn't be able to pre-detect them. But as you rank up your skill it should become more and more visible.
My thoughts on it as well. You have to study it to be able to spot it.