kreed99 said: At this level of development AI would be nothing more than scripted interactions. We arent talking about learned advancements or advanced AI environments. We are just looking for predictable, but yet unknown scripted dispositions. Be it 5 or 10 whatever the amount we just want the mobs to react to situations in a meaningful way. And i feel like VR is developing those based on what i have seen/heard/read. I personally would love to see a caster run around like a crazy person but there has to be a limit to how far they run based on player ability to stop them. Indefinite AI evade and aggro isnt fun....
Yes I agree with that and it shows among others that there is no real challenge in any MMORPG which is PvE. PvP would be something completely different but this is not the topic here .
What is that we are doing in an MMORPG ? We are decoding a script . We don't know its few lines but we know for sure that we are dealing with a script . It will need some learning curve as we, like any typical human being, notice and remember the correlations in the NPC behavior and find the adequate winning answers . Is this learning process challenging ? Not at all or at least not more than learning in RL that catching a wasp with bare hands is not a bright thing to do .
However, and this is really the point, when this learning process is finished , the player has decoded the script and knows that this particular NPC/raid will forever only repeat the same script . Randomizing some lines in the script changes nothing on the matter . The player will just notice that some NPC's actions are randomly chosen on a small list of actions . But as the possible actions are also scripted, it is not more difficult to decode than if there were only non randomized actions . At this stage any challenge, if there was one first place, disappears because every fight willl just reproduce the already decoded script . This decoded NPC/raid/camp becomes trivial . People will still be able to make mistakes but this won't make the encounters challenging .
It is because there is not any challenge in this decoding activity besides basic knowledge of the game mechanism , memory and some common sense that every MMORPG has used time as an artificial factor to keep players playing . Rare spawns, rare drops , slow travel , harsh levelling curves . All this takes time but there is of course no challenge involved regardless if it takes longer or shorter . To finish, I'd add that I never played an MMORPG for "challenge" because I know that there is none and that the amount of things that I can achieve depends only on time I will put in playing . I played them because I liked to identify with my virtual alter ego and to discover a virtual world where I could relax with a few like minded people for an hour or 2 .
Deadshade said:However, and this is really the point, when this learning process is finished , the player has decoded the script and knows that this particular NPC/raid will forever only repeat the same script . Randomizing some lines in the script changes nothing on the matter . The player will just notice that some NPC's actions are randomly chosen on a small list of actions . But as the possible actions are also scripted, it is not more difficult to decode than if there were only non randomized actions . At this stage any challenge, if there was one first place, disappears because every fight willl just reproduce the already decoded script . This decoded NPC/raid/camp becomes trivial . People will still be able to make mistakes but this won't make the encounters challenging .
It is because there is not any challenge in this decoding activity besides basic knowledge of the game mechanism , memory and some common sense that every MMORPG has used time as an artificial factor to keep players playing . Rare spawns, rare drops , slow travel , harsh levelling curves . All this takes time but there is of course no challenge involved regardless if it takes longer or shorter . To finish, I'd add that I never played an MMORPG for "challenge" because I know that there is none and that the amount of things that I can achieve depends only on time I will put in playing . I played them because I liked to identify with my virtual alter ego and to discover a virtual world where I could relax with a few like minded people for an hour or 2 .
Sad face because what you say is true. However, it would add some additional depth and at least for the first few times (which could equate to months) it could add that artificial element of preceived challenge. (Until, like you said, everyone figures out the scripts being used.)
Deadshade said:
However, and this is really the point, when this learning process is finished , the player has decoded the script and knows that this particular NPC/raid will forever only repeat the same script . Randomizing some lines in the script changes nothing on the matter . The player will just notice that some NPC's actions are randomly chosen on a small list of actions . But as the possible actions are also scripted, it is not more difficult to decode than if there were only non randomized actions . At this stage any challenge, if there was one first place, disappears because every fight willl just reproduce the already decoded script . This decoded NPC/raid/camp becomes trivial . People will still be able to make mistakes but this won't make the encounters challenging .
It is because there is not any challenge in this decoding activity besides basic knowledge of the game mechanism , memory and some common sense that every MMORPG has used time as an artificial factor to keep players playing . Rare spawns, rare drops , slow travel , harsh levelling curves . All this takes time but there is of course no challenge involved regardless if it takes longer or shorter . To finish, I'd add that I never played an MMORPG for "challenge" because I know that there is none and that the amount of things that I can achieve depends only on time I will put in playing . I played them because I liked to identify with my virtual alter ego and to discover a virtual world where I could relax with a few like minded people for an hour or 2 .
With this knowledge, your recommendation to the devs would then be to do, what ?
Deadshade said:It is because there is not any challenge in this decoding activity besides basic knowledge of the game mechanism , memory and some common sense that every MMORPG has used time as an artificial factor to keep players playing . Rare spawns, rare drops , slow travel , harsh levelling curves . All this takes time but there is of course no challenge involved regardless if it takes longer or shorter . To finish, I'd add that I never played an MMORPG for "challenge" because I know that there is none and that the amount of things that I can achieve depends only on time I will put in playing . I played them because I liked to identify with my virtual alter ego and to discover a virtual world where I could relax with a few like minded people for an hour or 2 .
"No challenge except..." The moment you put a "but" in there, you contradicted yourself - not to mention this whole post read as ripe with superiority issues.
It's great that you're capable of instantly learning and memorizing mechanics and appropriately reacting to them in all possible situations immediately, alongside the variable complications of coordinating with 4-24 other people. Hurrah! Guess us plebs will just continue to delude ourselves that encounters we've found legitimately difficult weren't actually challenging.
I don't care if the game is slow. I care if the game is boring. Like I said. I fell asleep playing EQ. More than once. Does this make the game hard? No, it makes the game hard to play, hard to want to support and hard to justify giving money to it. I'd be perfectly happy if level 1 to level 2 of Pantheon takes five days, as long as those five days are worth it and entertaining. Do I need to be stimulated constatnly? No, but I also don't need to do nohting. I'd prefer my entertainment that I pay for to be entertaining.
I read an article about an amateur photographer who had spent his savings to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to South America to photograph some Aztec pyramid (it was a while ago, so my memory of the article is hazy) at sunrise on a certain day of the year when the sun would shine through the building on the top of the pyramid and light up a certain part of the temple/town below. It would have made an amazing picture and was special to him also because his ancestors were suposedly from the local tribes of Aztecs, etc.
Long story short, he went there, spents days in a hard trek through the jungle, etc, and he fell asleep waiting for sunrise on the special morning and he missed the photo opportunity forever.
Now, why is that relevant? Does his experience mean that 'photography' is boring? That travel is boring? That his experience was boring? That the story about his experience was boring? That this post is boring?...
To me, what that story says is that the really special things in life usually have something undesirable, even boring or tedious, to endure before you get to them. Otherwise everyone would have done it and they wouldn't be 'special' at all. Also, even when you fail, if you really tried hard, that experience in itself can be worthwhile and noteworthy.
Sure, not everything in a game should have something 'boring' or 'tedious' or even 'hard' before it to make it worthwhile including, but something being hard or lengthy or requiring endurance, persistence, tenacity and/or discipline doesn't make it 'boring' per se. Something that *is* that hard should certainly have the potential of a good reward. That sort of thing shouldn't be for everyday stuff, but it certainly shouldn't be excluded because some would find it boring.
I suppose it depends on your definition of 'entertaining', but for me, if every point of a game were 'entertaining' in the traditional sense, it would become tiresome. There need to be changes of pace and even 'boring' bits to get your breath back and reflect on what's happened and talk about it and there can also be 'boring' bits to endure as, yes, a challenge to get through.
In EQ some people moaned a *lot* about the epic quests. I moaned about them sometimes, but the experience of holding down a certain dungeon area solo for hours on end (solo because no one else, even my good friends, would spend hours at a time in there with me) which was a massive endurance and concentration test at the time (it wasn't easy - a lapse in concentration meant death), but finally getting that rare monster spawn and managing to kill him after several multi-hour camping sessions was *amazing*. Also knowing that the progress I'd made hadn't been made by many and wouldn't be made by many made it *very* special. The reason not many did it? Because, they would say, it was 'boring'.
disposalist said:Because, they would say, it was 'boring'.
It obviously wasn't boring for you, which negates the point.
I've done more than my fair share of farming for very rare items (some, even after 7+ years, I still don't have). That in and of itself is not the boring aspect (though certainly frustrating - in a traditional video game-y way that we can all identify with). What people are generally worried about are designs more fundamental - combat being too slow or too one-dimensional, being forced to sit in one place and not do anything because you haven't been blessed with a group, grinding the same mobs for nothing but XP and having no other way to level, bosses having only a few/very limited mechanics due to the limits of having to design them for open world, etc.