Smarter, smarter, Smarter

[Hungkung]

In the ongoing struggle of hardcore player vrs. casual player, and the ensueing to nerf-good xp from quests/grinding or not which follows, let me start a brand new thread, so we can completely lose track of the point

The thing that Vanguard has impressed me most with is the immersion factor, esp. from questing. The logic progress of Find my lost cat --> kill the nasty kitten eating demon is both fun and gives the illusion that *my* character matters to the state of the world. The diplo quests are great for this, in letting you innocently get involved in a delivery and end up serving the queen, through a series of quests which take you closer and further up the chain.

so on an emotional level, --that reason some of us read books and go to movies to be entertained, not given a spectacle-- they've done a good job. However you slice it though, no matter if you make the progress bar go fast or slow, there will be people who rush to the end missing the ungathered rosebuds along the way, so they can declare...um...not sure what they are declaring really

in an anonymous world, who are you trying to impress?

I'd like to see smarter AI interactions and fights, the mobs use all the talents a player can use, so yes it is possible to solo a mob +3 levels, buuuut, you better have your stuff wired for the fight and not make too many mistakes. Vanguard seems about average for this, smarter than some, but still in the hamster wheel, of once you've fought a X-lvl fighter/caster/healer, they are not going to surprise you.

In a smarter game, all the uberjunk in the world won't make a difference if you insist on running through a field of baddies pulliing a 20 mob train that when catches you, will treat you like a pretty boy on his first night in real prison. So learning to play the corners, of when to get off the beaten track and try tactics rather than gear to solve a problem becomes important. thus leveling the playing ground for everybody.

scenario: A mob with archer backups, when the archers are smart enough to stay out of casting/hitting range, behind thier bulwark, and the fighter mobs are not dumb enough to get pulled out of the artillery umbrella.

we have come so far in terms of graphics and hardware, and visual possiblities, isn't there just an nth left over to write scripts for mobs that make even a very good player go "wow, I won". The tactics by mobs today are not that much more sophisticated than back 15 years ago when people were working with Diku muds

think about this: You are a biped mob out on the plain, you got your little leather jerkin, your cruddy tin sword, your little hat...and you hear that there is a mondo killer coming to get you...wouldn't you run? or get a lot of your other biped mob types to jump him when he was resting? If you were a dragon of great magical ability, and saw there was a party coming intent on taking your head...wouldn't it be time to start a few avalanches while they were on the twisty mountain road

uber loot comes from the direct result of making harder (not smarter) mobs, you need a +143 sword, to be able to knock the hitpoints out of the newest nastist boss, and so the cyle continues, you have your new +342 shield which can stand up to anything, so a new boss has to be able to deal 10x10squared damage.

any game could fix 98% of its end game boredom problem by making raiding grounds random-dependant, have enough combinations only the truest diehard will ever be able to see the pattern.
scenario: you go into dungeon #124 the first time it's archers/fighters, the second time its fire casters and acid fiends, the 54th time its archers and acid fiends. then as a designer you could actually add traps knowing that every shcmuck who'se been to the dungeon before and is used to avoiding them, and make it part of the adventure again. All of this would take so little CPU time, (compared to graphics) I gotta wonder do we get dumb games for the same reason we get dumb politicians...cuz we won't vote for the smart ones?

[Ysharros]

This type of smarter AI is on the way. You can already see inklings of it in places like Riftseekers' Torrent, where the $&#*^# students run off to get their friends when you try to pull them from a distance, which certainly beats them coming to certain death all by themselves.

One thing to consider is that players might not want hugely smart AI *all* the time. Sometimes I log on for a strategic challenge (like how to get my squishy bard to the clicky pillar without aggroing a zillion undead nearby), but sometimes I log on just to smack a few things about, steal their lunch money, skin em if I can, and move on. What I'm saying is, my own desire for challenge varies from day to day, and if the AI were *always* fiendishly smart, I'd have days where I just didn't have the energy to contend with that. Which defeats the basic purpose of the game: to make people log on. Games with more consequences are more meaningful, for sure, but you have to balance that against frustration that might make people quit. Many people play purely for entertainment, not to "live" in an MMO world, and what they primarily want out of a game is entertainment, not a life-altering experience. I'm not criticising any kind of playstyle here, just pointing out that many people play for many different reasons.

Another thing is that static challenges, like dungeons that don't change, can still be challenges - this is how WoW works its end-game content, where groups work a little further in each time they try, learning as they go. That's tough rather than smart, but it still provides entertainment for many.

What I'm trying to say is that if we suddenly *did* have access to smart, adaptable AIs, I'm not sure I'd want to see them as an opponent every single fight. Sometimes, I'll admit, I just want to go kill stuff secure in the knowledge that I'm unlikely to die myself. Sometimes I *want* the routine.

That said, there's still a ways to go before your average opponent can count as "too smart," even for me

Last but not least, hardcore/casual is a dead horse and nobody ever agreed on its colour (i.e. what constitutes "hardcore" and what is "casual") when it was freshly dead, let alone now. The desire for meaningful content or one's taste for a particular kind of challenge is *not* dictated by how many hours, how hard, or how fanatically one plays or doesn't play.

[Hungkung]

All excellent points Y, (I'm not even going to try to spell your name from memory) and yes well, if I *truely* had to be challanged at every fight, to out think my opponent I would probably start hunting rabbits more, but then the rewards (and the more important Uber-factor would reflect that in my rewards...or I'd be known as Nik the Bunny killer) and we could get rid of this silly "look at me I'm in tier XX, I'm cooler than you"...

which omg, if you have a house, a family, a loving spouse/children, no taxman is after you...and you get insecure cuz some "kid" has purple electronic blips while you have only green electronic blips you might want to rethink your self-worth program cuz it ain't working.... (not YOU, you Y, just ya know, the YOU in the world at large *grin*)

funny story, it's a wow story but most of the readers here should be able to relate. I was a mid level priest type waiting on the zep and started getting crap blown at me by this mid level (obviously uberboy12-type behind the keyboard) cuz "my gear sucked" which it did. this was waaaay back before alt-play became the only real game on older servers.

my old age took umbrage and we got into this normal nasty fest and I started naming the mini areas in winterspring, burning steppes, that I had visited on my little crappy-geared priest, by myself, no one holding my hand and his last line was "how is exploring fun?" and I realized, Bob Barker won in the scheme of the world, our love of toys has managed to out shine even the wander lust which has created our species. I weep for a soceity who cannot see value unless you can buy something with it.

and then I realized how full of crap I truely was, understood everybody plays these games their own way and if uberboy12 needed the egoshine of good gear, who was I to judge him. but

so far in the world it's

Paris Hilton 1
John Lennon 0

[Ysharros]

Sadly, a smarter AI won't change this.

And, as you say, who are we to judge? I used to get all bothered by the preening, comparison, trash-talking and obsession-with-results attitude I took as being purely juvenile. To some extent they *are* juvenile, because that's the sort of thing we're interested in at that age - measuring yourself against others, wanting to see immediate results, and not being that good at taking a longer view aren't really things (younger, mostly) people should be criticised for - it's more biological than anything else, I'm starting to think. It plays a part in growing up, learning stuff, and generally becoming more experienced, so as long as it's not particularly in my face, I try not to be such a crusty old bag.

Course if those consarned youngsters could do ME the courtesy of understanding MY motives a little better... But then, I'd not have any "kids today!" to complain about.

You can call me Ysh if I can call you Hung.

[Ceyllynn]

just don't combine his name with horse....

good posts from both of you... but i have to agree with the OP more than the crusty old bag.

it seems that wanting to explore and not be uber is more of a crime in games now.

i would love to see more intelligent AI's thump those uberites... but i'm a redheaded grumpy old... i'll stop there lol

[Nil]

Originally Posted by Hungkung

(I'm not even going to try to spell your name from memory)

Just so you know, if you scroll down from the message editing screen, you can see the previous posts (and see the names). Saves me every day.

Besides, everyone knows Syahrrso.

[Ragerider]

Great posts and ideas. It would be fun to see smarter AI in that respect, but the other day I saw something that blew me away too in the immersian aspect. I was doing diplo in Hathor Zhi and as I was talking to the guards, they moved on me..... I watched them and actually saw them changing the guard. The guards inside near the beds went to the door and the ones by the door went to the beds. Even little things like that make a big difference.
Trying to remember another place I saw something like that, but it slips my mind although I do remember one other thing, in the orc/goblin area, I found that one of the guys I was supposed to talk to, had gone across the road and was chatting with his buddy.
They may not have taken the AI to fighting the Players yet, but adding those little touches is one of the things that I feel takes the game a half step ahead of the other MMO's out there at the moment.

[sherrjo]

I would not like randomness to be too apparent in the dungeons. Or to have any unbeatable segments in dungeons.

The right team with the right gear should be able to beat any dungeon. In DDO to make more of a challenge they started introducing pre-requisites to finish quests. This involved people rerolling certain builds to have certain abilities just to play certain dungeons which is not correct.

I would however, agree that sometimes things can be done differently and the option for a mob to flee is certainly nothing new. (One only has too look at certain mobs in WoW dungeons, where lack of control or correct pulling causes a wipe).

Randomness regarding loot and treasure is something else though, which could easily increase the playability of games. Not having boss MOB X drop Y each time therefore people get to know the direct route to Bos MOB X but have boss mob X roaming one of 20 or so places. Perhaps even running into patrols of mobs which if encountered whilst resting would result in a wipe would be interesting.

At the moment dungeons are interesting because if you take your time you are backstabbed by respawns