Wanders wrote:

I'd suggest making an "AI slider" (or whatever UI implementation makes sense for CoT) available to the team. That way folks can have their fun, whether it involves herding or not.

Bad Idea. That multiplies the work of the AI Team by an extraordinary degree, and with increasing complexity comes the potential for behavioral oddities and edge cases that become very difficult to debug.

[b]K[/b] eep
[b]I[/b] t
[b]S[/b] imple
[b]S[/b] tupid

Now ... that said ... what WOULD be interesting is if the NPC AI had a sort of "staged intelligence" to it, such that Minions (alone) were stupid and predictable, but Lieutenants made their group "a little bit smarter" and Bosses added "a good bit of smarts" to the behavioral algorithms. Easiest way I can think of to do this would be to build the "smart" side of the AI first, get it all tested and QAed and proofed, and then start adding "intelligence inhibitors" to it that would disable certain levels of "smarts" depending on what NPCs were in the mix. That way, you wind up with a sort of "Leadership" kind of dynamic, where Minions are smarter when in the presence of Lieutenants, Bosses, etc. ... and Pets (think Rikti Monkeys) all by themselves are just DUMB as a sack of hammers because a lot of the "smart decisions" simply aren't available to them.

This would then lead to a variety of challenges in dealing with Foe NPCs, where the "smart play" could be to take out the Leaders first, rather than chowing down on the Crunchies first and saving the tougher Boss types for last. That then makes combat encounters more dynamic, and therefore more enjoyable to play.

Letting Players decide the "Stupid Level" of the opposition they face is just BEGGING to be exploited by the Min/Max Player crowd, especially since there's no real way to "balance" such a thing for ALL Players and Playstyles.

Redlynne wrote:

Wanders wrote:
I'd suggest making an "AI slider" (or whatever UI implementation makes sense for CoT) available to the team. That way folks can have their fun, whether it involves herding or not.
Bad Idea. That multiplies the work of the AI Team by an extraordinary degree, and with increasing complexity comes the potential for behavioral oddities and edge cases that become very difficult to debug.
K eepI tS impleS tupid
Now ... that said ... what WOULD be interesting is if the NPC AI had a sort of "staged intelligence" to it, such that Minions (alone) were stupid and predictable, but Lieutenants made their group "a little bit smarter" and Bosses added "a good bit of smarts" to the behavioral algorithms. Easiest way I can think of to do this would be to build the "smart" side of the AI first, get it all tested and QAed and proofed, and then start adding "intelligence inhibitors" to it that would disable certain levels of "smarts" depending on what NPCs were in the mix. That way, you wind up with a sort of "Leadership" kind of dynamic, where Minions are smarter when in the presence of Lieutenants, Bosses, etc. ... and Pets (think Rikti Monkeys) all by themselves are just DUMB as a sack of hammers because a lot of the "smart decisions" simply aren't available to them.
This would then lead to a variety of challenges in dealing with Foe NPCs, where the "smart play" could be to take out the Leaders first, rather than chowing down on the Crunchies first and saving the tougher Boss types for last. That then makes combat encounters more dynamic, and therefore more enjoyable to play.
Letting Players decide the "Stupid Level" of the opposition they face is just BEGGING to be exploited by the Min/Max Player crowd, especially since there's no real way to "balance" such a thing for ALL Players and Playstyles.

This "staged intelligence" thing seems like a very good idea. I must admit as much fun as I had sniping MOBs back in CoH it was pretty unrealistic to be able to pick off one critter at a time in a MOB from a distance and never worry about any of the rest of the MOB from ever reacting to that.

Having something in game that would make MOBs act "smarter" based on a Leadership quality seems like a good way to handle this. If nothing else it'd give the Devs another quality to make various kinds of MOBs different from each other (e.g. they could set faction A to have a much higher default Leadership potential than faction B).

And yes an AI quality like this should be something the players could NOT adjust or manipulate manually - would seem way too easy to exploit or abuse in all sorts of ways.

Comicsluvr wrote:

With CoT's efforts to make Stealth a viable option I look to see more of this, not less.
Guard 1: You hear something?
Guard 2: No...did you?
Guard 1: I thought so. This is a high-profile client we got here...better check it out.
Caped Wonder sneaks around the other side of the room and gets inside with no alarms.
Not ALL pulling has to result in a fight...

I would be remiss if I didn't note here that in WoW, one of the skills of the Rogue (a "stealthy" class) is the Distract skill, which is basically what Comicsluvr is referring to here. Basically you throw an "attention getter" away from you, and that makes all the Foe NPCs within a certain radius (shown when selecting the Target Location of using the skill) spin around to look at where the Distraction was thrown. Since Foes have a reduced ability to Detect Stealth in their rear arc, the Distract skill can be used to "spin" Foe NPCs without drawing aggro so as to be able to maneuver past them without them noticing you. Furthermore, quite a few of the Rogue's attacks that they can use from Stealth require a Back Attack (for things like an Ambush or a Sap or a Garrotte and the like), and so use of a Distract to "spin" the NPCs and "pin" them into place (they voluntarily stop moving for a few seconds while paying attention to where the Distract was thrown) gives additional room to maneuver and opportunities which otherwise wouldn't be present. Distract can thus be used to either permit or set up additional maneuvers or actions, making the tactics of Positioning an important consideration when either engaging, or fooling, NPCs.

Yes a certain degree of Herding/Pulling are in fact comic book staples. But what I think what we're talking about here is controlling the excesses that are possible in a MMO when players are able to exploit or push these tactics too far.Exactly. Maybe a pull power that only works once with a group, like throw rock, make noise, but the excess one could do it in CoH was terrible.[/

quote]

Instead of a power slot, maybe an inherent ability, like basic brawl, with a longer cooldown?