There is no right answer. That's in my official answer for every thread now...
But and there is always a But, and a Big old Butt is always nice...
Harder mobs in general would be a lot better overall if the game was really made well. A really well made no controversial game, is about as rare as trying to get a hold of Verizon for a bill dispute.
*Cracks open a single malt Bourbon*, as I was saying um yah whatever just give up and play Risk the board game.
I'd like to see some kind of open world where mob difficulty would be indicated by how many players are approx needed to "deal" with the mob. Example: one battle geared character can take on a goblin npc or a wolf. Then a dragon needs 30 battle geared characters etcs and lots of other mobs between those etc.
Then one epicly geared experienced character might be able to face multiple goblins for example or a mob that would usually take more than one character.
For aggroing I'd like to see some kind of habitats for mobs. An example: If a character agroess a forest wolf and runs away that wolf will chase the character all the way to the edge of the forest. So if you want to go deep into the forest, you have to really play and strategize, not just run and ignore mobs.
Talking about games where thousands of players exist simultaneously in a single instance and mechanics related to such games.
So in the end it's really an issue what the mass market demands.
If eq1 style combat and mob difficulty was what the overwhelming majority wanted - every MMO would be like that.
Guess what - that's not what the masses want.
Devs are fully capable of making smarter mob AI, servers are fully capable of handling it today - neither is the reason why we don't see this today.
So go and support indie games like Pantheon that will have this type of mob AI and combat. Don't expect a major mass market game to have it though.
It doesn't always have to be about mob difficulty. It's more about making the pve combat more entertaining. The illusion of danger and survivability.
We need more creativity with Mob AI, its pretty much been completely ignored.
MMORPGs provide difficulty through mob abilities. It's a visible ability you can adapt and react to. Whereas if mobs work via realistic line of sight, then you can't plan around the behavior of the mobs in any significant way, which causes the game to be less tactically rich.
In short, "realistic AI" is a bad idea for most types of games, and certainly not the best way to increase difficulty in a game.
More creativity with AI and more interesting challenges through AI does not equate to specifically "realistic" AI and there are many ways you can utilize it in a deeper manner than it currently tends to be that would greatly assist making combat more interesting without providing an insurmountable challenge.
Like for example personality or behavioral quirks. The base abilities and tactics of a mob might stay the same, but each one can also have the potential to exhibit a unique trait or behavior that can throw a curveball into the mix in how you deal with them, without completely sabotaging the unterlying flow of combat.
Or if you are swinging on the sim/survival side, you can build a game with migratory cycles for creature AI and let players use tracking features to hunt them as the mobs and their spawns move across the maps.
Or it can intelligently track player location in the world to seed events that relate to quests, class, professions, etc so that the game can more effectively pez-feeder a constant stream of interesting content to a user.
Better AI also helps in terms of adding more depth and dymanic elements to a game's narrative, simulating lifecycles, and making more personable NPCs to interact with.
The list goes on....
More advanced AI can be used in a wide variety of ways to deepen the strategy of a game and increase both the difficulty as well as the interest to be found.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
So in the end it's really an issue what the mass market demands.
If eq1 style combat and mob difficulty was what the overwhelming majority wanted - every MMO would be like that.
Guess what - that's not what the masses want.
Devs are fully capable of making smarter mob AI, servers are fully capable of handling it today - neither is the reason why we don't see this today.
So go and support indie games like Pantheon that will have this type of mob AI and combat. Don't expect a major mass market game to have it though.
It doesn't always have to be about mob difficulty. It's more about making the pve combat more entertaining. The illusion of danger and survivability.
We need more creativity with Mob AI, its pretty much been completely ignored.
MMORPGs provide difficulty through mob abilities. It's a visible ability you can adapt and react to. Whereas if mobs work via realistic line of sight, then you can't plan around the behavior of the mobs in any significant way, which causes the game to be less tactically rich.
In short, "realistic AI" is a bad idea for most types of games, and certainly not the best way to increase difficulty in a game.
More creativity with AI and more interesting challenges through AI does not equate to specifically "realistic" AI and there are many ways you can utilize it in a deeper manner than it currently tends to be that would greatly assist making combat more interesting without providing an insurmountable challenge.
Like for example personality or behavioral quirks. The base abilities and tactics of a mob might stay the same, but each one can also have the potential to exhibit a unique trait or behavior that can throw a curveball into the mix in how you deal with them, without completely sabotaging the unterlying flow of combat.
Or if you are swinging on the sim/survival side, you can build a game with migratory cycles for creature AI and let players use tracking features to hunt them as the mobs and their spawns move across the maps.
Or it can intelligently track player location in the world to seed events that relate to quests, class, professions, etc so that the game can more effectively pez-feeder a constant stream of interesting content to a user.
Better AI also helps in terms of adding more depth and dymanic elements to a game's narrative, simulating lifecycles, and making more personable NPCs to interact with.
The list goes on....
More advanced AI can be used in a wide variety of ways to deepen the strategy of a game and increase both the difficulty as well as the interest to be found.
smart/realistic AI give immersion. while retard AI make me feel it just a game with stupid programming
heck if u want an easy but realistic AI, it can be made!!
Just make mobs hp lower, there u go an easy PVE!!!!
smart/realistic AI give immersion. while retard AI make me feel it just a game with stupid programming
heck if u want an easy but realistic AI, it can be made!!
Just make mobs hp lower, there u go an easy PVE!!!!
Provide an example of an immersive game with realistic AI.
You can't simply make blind claims that smart AI provides immersion if there's no basis for the remark.
For that matter, immersion can occur in a game like Tetris. Immersion is being immersed in an experience so that everything else falls away, and doesn't require hyper realism.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
smart/realistic AI give immersion. while retard AI make me feel it just a game with stupid programming
heck if u want an easy but realistic AI, it can be made!!
Just make mobs hp lower, there u go an easy PVE!!!!
Provide an example of an immersive game with realistic AI.
You can't simply make blind claims that smart AI provides immersion if there's no basis for the remark.
For that matter, immersion can occur in a game like Tetris. Immersion is being immersed in an experience so that everything else falls away, and doesn't require hyper realism.
Shadow of Mordor has a believable, immersive, entertaining AI. An AI that is not necessarily difficult.
It's fun and immersive just to sneak around and watch the AI interact with itself. The AI is definitely the star of the show in that game.
luckully it seem to be the game with the best AI ever only according to online polls. phew
Oh my, a post lambasting a game for not having pathing AI up to snuff with an entirely different AI suite within the game.
The pathing AI is not remotely the same as the AI components driving the Nemesis System, the AI personalities, or the database tracking/generating events in the game.
Hence to the point, it can still be flawed on something like the pathing of AI as seen in that video, while still being outstanding for it's progression of AI in many other ways.
And as you vaguely pointed out, it was listed as the community vote, not the editor or AIdev groups.
Would you like to attempt trolling again or are you done?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The primary problem with PvE in most MMOs is lack of variety. You go to one area and that areas predictably spawns the same mobs who do a predictable damage type using predictable abilities. You do a dungeon or raid and there are always the same exact NPCs in the same exact locations. Everything can be prepared for ahead of time, everything is known.
While this gives developers greater control over the challenge of content it also means players almost constantly know what they are getting themselves into and how to prepare for it.
This, along with the aggro mechanic, eventually leads to games like WoW and SWTOR getting rid of character customization because there is no need for a unique or different build if all content is going to be exactly the same and there is no need to make your build slightly more versatile to prepare for the unexpected. (Of course that screws over the PvP community because players are never 100% predictable but most games don't care about PvPers anyway.)
I think this is why I'd love to see more things like Runescape's Dungeoneering which pulls from a set of pre-built rooms and then randomly generates a dungeon with them, with random resources, random non-combat challenges, random enemies, and even a random boss.
You never know exactly what type of skillset will be best to bring in because the dungeon is random. Having versatile builds instead of builds min-maxed to a single specific role makes sense because that versatility may allow you access rooms you otherwise might not have or have an easier time dealing with an enemy you weren't expecting.
luckully it seem to be the game with the best AI ever only according to online polls. phew
Oh my, a post lambasting a game for not having pathing AI up to snuff with an entirely different AI suite within the game.
The pathing AI is not remotely the same as the AI components driving the Nemesis System, the AI personalities, or the database tracking/generating events in the game.
Hence to the point, it can still be flawed on something like the pathing of AI as seen in that video, while still being outstanding for it's progression of AI in many other ways.
And as you vaguely pointed out, it was listed as the community vote, not the editor or AIdev groups.
Would you like to attempt trolling again or are you done?
I have to agree; his point is like saying the new Nathan Drake game isn't beautiful because there's slight but noticeable clipping during some of the action.
I also agree with you wholeheartedly reference AI improvements.
In the vast majority of MMORPGs, folks spend most of their time in PvE situations. However, devs have only given 2/3rds of the PvE equation any real thought over the years. We've been given hyped up, "revolutionary" systems regarding the "P" and the "v" part of the gameplay, yet advancement of the "E" part has been disappointingly bare and lacking in innovation almost completely.
The best I've played against were some of the ones in Darkfall. They would run, heal, change tactics. It can always be improved, but they could prove to be a challenge.
Yes the op basically described what FFXi vanilla was like.
All these linear questing games are just so far below what FFXi was doing,it was why i lol@ those games and could not leave FFXi for anything else.
I don't want some FAKE game that is only there until players hit some raid or boss zone,i want an entire GAME,yeah go figure wanting a complete entire mmorpg.The only problem ,well two was that even FFXi was not complete,it lacked water zones and housing.
So to this day i have been complaining about mmorpg game design because absolutely nothing has come close to improving the genre.I want to see a FFXI type game but with housing and water zones and just overall quality improvements.
FFXI had mob creativity and NOT just in some raid zone as well it had the very reason you play online,to interact with others. FFXIV was originally going to be a really great game but cost soon changed their ways and created a more WOWish type mainstream game to garner ..$$$$.
The ONLY two devs that "could" pull off what i and the OP are looking for is Square and Blizzard.Blizzard has shown me absolutely no indication they are willing or capable of doing it and Square has changed their ways to be more like Blizzard and aim for money over quality and integrity.
So we sit and wait and hope some new developer comes along with the skills and money but not likely to happen with such a flooded market in every genre.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
For truly better/harder mobs you would need 2 things:
1. HUGE # of server CPU cycles to process very big amount of scripts all the time
2. Lot of programmer hours writing scripts for mobs in diffrent parts of game and debbugins it
3. Difficiculty - i.e. what I would personally want from normal ordinary mobs in terms of scripting and smart difficulty is more than 90%+ of players would want
That's not even touching things like latency, etc
Problem is both technological and economical as well as conceptual.
Kinda why MMORPGs mobs / open world actual difficulty haven't progressed much since first MMORPG in 1997.
So the technologies have not advanced enough over the last 19 years to improve on MMORPG AI?
Such a huge factor when it comes to game play and it's pretty much been ignored.
The technology is fine. DMKano pretty much covered it in his post on the first page - people don't WANT harder mobs.
The ONLY game that comes close in our eyes will be Pantheon,the other games are just pretty much cash shop games.COE was another that could have been but again,a small team,limited budget means ,a one trick pony. I won't completely write off Pantheon or COE just yet but also not holding my breathe in anticipation.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Slightly off-topic, slightly on-topic but Pantheon. They don't do a very good job of letting you know what makes their MMO different on their website, but people seem to think it's this really new and original thing. I assume they have some reason for saying that. What is it that makes Pantheon different enough from most MMOs that I should care?
For truly better/harder mobs you would need 2 things:
1. HUGE # of server CPU cycles to process very big amount of scripts all the time
2. Lot of programmer hours writing scripts for mobs in diffrent parts of game and debbugins it
3. Difficiculty - i.e. what I would personally want from normal ordinary mobs in terms of scripting and smart difficulty is more than 90%+ of players would want
That's not even touching things like latency, etc
Problem is both technological and economical as well as conceptual.
Kinda why MMORPGs mobs / open world actual difficulty haven't progressed much since first MMORPG in 1997.
So the technologies have not advanced enough over the last 19 years to improve on MMORPG AI?
Such a huge factor when it comes to game play and it's pretty much been ignored.
The technology is fine. DMKano pretty much covered it in his post on the first page - people don't WANT harder mobs.
I think we should delineate between "harder" mobs and "smarter/more interesting" mobs.
Smarter mobs only tangentially has bearing on difficulty, specifically in MMORPGs. Difficulty is decided much more by the statistics underlying the combat. A mob that can one-shot a player is "hard" whether he outright and mindlessly rushes the player every time or tries to trap the player using the environment instead.
Ironically, if the AI were smart enough to realize it can one-shot the player... Generally speaking, rushing the player immediately to attempt to land that killing blow BECOMES one of the most intelligent things the mob could do once it realizes it only needs to land one hit.
Invoking AI is a contradiction to your desires. AI is to mimic the reactions, tendencies, reasoning, and more importantly randomness, of a living entity (humanoid in most cases). That's pushing the slider to the right.
You think you want to push the slider to the right, but more than likely you don't.
You don't like playing against other players unless you can set the rules of engagement
You won't admit it but you DO like playing against NPCs because you KNOW you can or eventually will beat them.
You don't like action combat of any sort because it's "too twitchy and spammy"
You do like traditional RPG elements because the dice controls your outcome.
If the above describes you, AI will only grief you worse than a human can. Be careful what you ask for
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
You do realize AI governs vastly more than simply the difficulty of beating a mob, right?
...Obviously not.
Smarter AI lends itself to a more living and dynamic game world, more emergent gameplay value, deeper interaction with friendly NPCs ad well as a more interesting structure and gameplay opportunities to use against enemy mobs, more personalized and contextual storytelling, more activities and objectives that relate to your apparent interests, etc.
AI is a tool which controls all these different aspects, and a smarter AI goes a long way in fleshing out an experience where even PvE monsters can become a lot more interesting to deal with not simply on a pre-individual basis, but more likely on a group and faction basis alongside the visual impact of seeing how doing something as simple as killing off wolves around a farm might possibly start a shift in the overall ecosystem.
Wanting better AI for PvE is perfectly rational in that regard.
Post edited by Deivos on
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Solution: Make the gameplay an adventure, and not have the game becoming inflicted with the "a rising-hero syndrome", and don't go for so called "balanced" gameplay.
luckully it seem to be the game with the best AI ever only according to online polls. phew
Oh my, a post lambasting a game for not having pathing AI up to snuff with an entirely different AI suite within the game.
The pathing AI is not remotely the same as the AI components driving the Nemesis System, the AI personalities, or the database tracking/generating events in the game.
Hence to the point, it can still be flawed on something like the pathing of AI as seen in that video, while still being outstanding for it's progression of AI in many other ways.
And as you vaguely pointed out, it was listed as the community vote, not the editor or AIdev groups.
Would you like to attempt trolling again or are you done?
trolling me? absurd! don't you think too that exploiting dumb AI can be fun too? boring.
Comments
But and there is always a But, and a Big old Butt is always nice...
Harder mobs in general would be a lot better overall if the game was really made well. A really well made no controversial game, is about as rare as trying to get a hold of Verizon for a bill dispute.
*Cracks open a single malt Bourbon*, as I was saying um yah whatever just give up and play Risk the board game.
Cheers...
Then one epicly geared experienced character might be able to face multiple goblins for example or a mob that would usually take more than one character.
For aggroing I'd like to see some kind of habitats for mobs. An example: If a character agroess a forest wolf and runs away that wolf will chase the character all the way to the edge of the forest. So if you want to go deep into the forest, you have to really play and strategize, not just run and ignore mobs.
Like for example personality or behavioral quirks. The base abilities and tactics of a mob might stay the same, but each one can also have the potential to exhibit a unique trait or behavior that can throw a curveball into the mix in how you deal with them, without completely sabotaging the unterlying flow of combat.
Or if you are swinging on the sim/survival side, you can build a game with migratory cycles for creature AI and let players use tracking features to hunt them as the mobs and their spawns move across the maps.
Or it can intelligently track player location in the world to seed events that relate to quests, class, professions, etc so that the game can more effectively pez-feeder a constant stream of interesting content to a user.
Better AI also helps in terms of adding more depth and dymanic elements to a game's narrative, simulating lifecycles, and making more personable NPCs to interact with.
The list goes on....
More advanced AI can be used in a wide variety of ways to deepen the strategy of a game and increase both the difficulty as well as the interest to be found.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
heck if u want an easy but realistic AI, it can be made!!
Just make mobs hp lower, there u go an easy PVE!!!!
Isn't it a waste of time for developers to create intelligent mob behaviour when you can just fight a human?
You can't simply make blind claims that smart AI provides immersion if there's no basis for the remark.
For that matter, immersion can occur in a game like Tetris. Immersion is being immersed in an experience so that everything else falls away, and doesn't require hyper realism.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's fun and immersive just to sneak around and watch the AI interact with itself. The AI is definitely the star of the show in that game.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
http://aigamedev.com/open/editorial/2014-awards/#best
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
luckully it seem to be the game with the best AI ever only according to online polls. phew
The pathing AI is not remotely the same as the AI components driving the Nemesis System, the AI personalities, or the database tracking/generating events in the game.
Hence to the point, it can still be flawed on something like the pathing of AI as seen in that video, while still being outstanding for it's progression of AI in many other ways.
And as you vaguely pointed out, it was listed as the community vote, not the editor or AIdev groups.
Would you like to attempt trolling again or are you done?
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
While this gives developers greater control over the challenge of content it also means players almost constantly know what they are getting themselves into and how to prepare for it.
This, along with the aggro mechanic, eventually leads to games like WoW and SWTOR getting rid of character customization because there is no need for a unique or different build if all content is going to be exactly the same and there is no need to make your build slightly more versatile to prepare for the unexpected. (Of course that screws over the PvP community because players are never 100% predictable but most games don't care about PvPers anyway.)
I think this is why I'd love to see more things like Runescape's Dungeoneering which pulls from a set of pre-built rooms and then randomly generates a dungeon with them, with random resources, random non-combat challenges, random enemies, and even a random boss.
You never know exactly what type of skillset will be best to bring in because the dungeon is random. Having versatile builds instead of builds min-maxed to a single specific role makes sense because that versatility may allow you access rooms you otherwise might not have or have an easier time dealing with an enemy you weren't expecting.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I also agree with you wholeheartedly reference AI improvements.
In the vast majority of MMORPGs, folks spend most of their time in PvE situations. However, devs have only given 2/3rds of the PvE equation any real thought over the years. We've been given hyped up, "revolutionary" systems regarding the "P" and the "v" part of the gameplay, yet advancement of the "E" part has been disappointingly bare and lacking in innovation almost completely.
I self identify as a monkey.
All these linear questing games are just so far below what FFXi was doing,it was why i lol@ those games and could not leave FFXi for anything else.
I don't want some FAKE game that is only there until players hit some raid or boss zone,i want an entire GAME,yeah go figure wanting a complete entire mmorpg.The only problem ,well two was that even FFXi was not complete,it lacked water zones and housing.
So to this day i have been complaining about mmorpg game design because absolutely nothing has come close to improving the genre.I want to see a FFXI type game but with housing and water zones and just overall quality improvements.
FFXI had mob creativity and NOT just in some raid zone as well it had the very reason you play online,to interact with others.
FFXIV was originally going to be a really great game but cost soon changed their ways and created a more WOWish type mainstream game to garner ..$$$$.
The ONLY two devs that "could" pull off what i and the OP are looking for is Square and Blizzard.Blizzard has shown me absolutely no indication they are willing or capable of doing it and Square has changed their ways to be more like Blizzard and aim for money over quality and integrity.
So we sit and wait and hope some new developer comes along with the skills and money but not likely to happen with such a flooded market in every genre.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The technology is fine. DMKano pretty much covered it in his post on the first page - people don't WANT harder mobs.
I won't completely write off Pantheon or COE just yet but also not holding my breathe in anticipation.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Smarter mobs only tangentially has bearing on difficulty, specifically in MMORPGs. Difficulty is decided much more by the statistics underlying the combat. A mob that can one-shot a player is "hard" whether he outright and mindlessly rushes the player every time or tries to trap the player using the environment instead.
Ironically, if the AI were smart enough to realize it can one-shot the player... Generally speaking, rushing the player immediately to attempt to land that killing blow BECOMES one of the most intelligent things the mob could do once it realizes it only needs to land one hit.
Folks don't REALLY want smarter AI. They want a manufactured feeling of accomplishment over a challenge that doesn't really challenge them.
Here's a diagram:
(Chance) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(Skill)
Invoking AI is a contradiction to your desires. AI is to mimic the reactions, tendencies, reasoning, and more importantly randomness, of a living entity (humanoid in most cases). That's pushing the slider to the right.
You think you want to push the slider to the right, but more than likely you don't.
- You don't like playing against other players unless you can set the rules of engagement
- You won't admit it but you DO like playing against NPCs because you KNOW you can or eventually will beat them.
- You don't like action combat of any sort because it's "too twitchy and spammy"
- You do like traditional RPG elements because the dice controls your outcome.
If the above describes you, AI will only grief you worse than a human can. Be careful what you ask for¯\_(ツ)_/¯
...Obviously not.
Smarter AI lends itself to a more living and dynamic game world, more emergent gameplay value, deeper interaction with friendly NPCs ad well as a more interesting structure and gameplay opportunities to use against enemy mobs, more personalized and contextual storytelling, more activities and objectives that relate to your apparent interests, etc.
AI is a tool which controls all these different aspects, and a smarter AI goes a long way in fleshing out an experience where even PvE monsters can become a lot more interesting to deal with not simply on a pre-individual basis, but more likely on a group and faction basis alongside the visual impact of seeing how doing something as simple as killing off wolves around a farm might possibly start a shift in the overall ecosystem.
Wanting better AI for PvE is perfectly rational in that regard.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
boring.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin