One of the biggest problems that many games suffer from is a finite amount of potential content to be done. The ability to overcome this and create seemingly infinite content is one of the major draws of the Dungeon Crawler genre.
For those unfamiliar with this genre, there is a basic story that consists of visiting specific areas and defeating the boss of that area. Each area is located within an open world with a hub area acting as your resting ground and has shopkeepers, questgivers, a stash, etc. While traveling to the quest objective one will run into seemingly endless hordes of enemies and may eventually stumble across the opening of an optional dungeon whose location may be randomly placed in the game world. The layout of the dungeon is picked from a vast amount of maps connected together by floors and the dungeon's enemies and named enemies are selected seemingly at random. After completing the main story, one can still roam around the world entering these dungeons and completing them whenever they wish. Quitting the game resets the map and removes any entrances to dungeons, respawning them in new locations upon the next time the game is loaded up and again randomly generating what each one holds. This allows for a different experience each time you play.
NOW, how can a similar system be translated into a superhero MMO?
Champions Online has the Nemesis system. Every so often when you pick up a boost (Health orb, energy orb, +Damage orb, +Defense orb) your nemesis's minions will spawn and upon defeating them you will gain a clue that gives you a random mission based on what personality type you gave your nemesis. This is on a 6 hour cooldown timer.
Champions ALSO has a thing called Vigilante missions. After level 10, saving a citizens that appear in set locations around the game world will give you +500 XP and a random (potentially repeatable) mission from a set list, scaled to your level upon receiving it. However, these stop showing up after level 32 IIRC.
Both of these can be used as a framework.
Perhaps defeating Not-Longbow will have a chance to drop a clue for the location of a base, which you can wreck to set them back and divert efforts from stopping your villainy. Or maybe they drop a manifest of a new shipment of weapons coming in, which you just KNOW would be so much more at home in the hands of your followers.. or the highest bidder.
Perhaps there could be an information broker who would sell similar clues to players for a modest fee.
Perhaps as you're traversing the world a popup appears and says you notice something out of place and gives you a marker on your map for one of these areas.
Perhaps in your secret lair you have a computer/scrying pool/whatever that will give you a small amount of these missions for free per day, with the ability to upgrade how many a day.
But what about the variety? You can offer so many missions but how do you keep them different? Well, that's problem somewhat easily rectified.
Let's say there's only 15 types of set-ups, represented by clues. Upon receiving each clue, you get a choice of 3 options. In the base example you can either disable/sabotage the base, destroy the base, or stealing information from it. All 3 of these are completely different missions with different rewards and impacts on your overall standing. Disabling would entail cutting off its power source and leaving it virtually useless for the time being, destroying would be to essentially fight your way through and set off explosives or whatnot (similar to the Post-Freedom Mercy Island mission), and a theft would be to essentially get in and protect a spawned NPC as it hacks the mainframe or whatnot.
Just from the basic setting of 3 missions per set-up, you have 45 unique missions. However, to spice it up we have to a different map. Even if there are only 4 different maps per set-up, that would be 180 unique missions.
Now to make this even bigger, let's say each faction only gets 5 different types of set-ups, which makes sense. Not-Longbow wouldn't have a magic oriented set-up after all. This would be 5 set-ups x 3 missions x 4 maps, or 60 unique missions per faction.
[b]60 Per Faction. [/b]
With a superhero setting, you'd probably have at the very least 15 different factions (we're counting those that would, within reason, be so numerous and spread out to even be considered for this. Not-Rularuu couldn't possibly make sense in this system). That would be 900 unique missions under this system.
Unique maps wouldn't even need to be made for this. How many missions in CoH used the same map?
Granted, I'm not saying this has to be available at launch. Realistically, I wouldn't even expect a system like this to be implemented until the second year. BUT it is a wonderful thing to consider.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
You might wanna read this
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/650323
and this
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/642943
I think some of what you are discussing here is already being worked on.
I'm gonna go hit myself against a wall for a while.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
You're going to go hit on a wall?
"So, do you come here often?" "Ah, strong-silent type, eh?" "Hmm, and very upright, too." "I'm just gonna lean, here, a bit, if you don't mind?" "Wow, you have a hard body. Do you lift?" "I bet you're a load-bearer."
Be Well!
Fireheart
...
*Cues the porno music*
Why?
Your idea and theirs are pretty close....and ...to me at least...this is one of the best things they are working on for the game....a discussion about it might be nice. Of course we would need a bit of an update on it first I guess.
These two blog posts might also be of interest to you: [url=http://www.gamesbyangelina.org/2015/10/more-unpredictable-stuff/]More Unpredictable Stuff[/url] and [url=http://togelius.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/what-if-videogames-had-actual-ai.html]What if videogames had actual AI?[/url]
As I am wont to say, as far as I'm concerned the holy grail in MMOs will be to have an AI and a mission builder that it can use to procedurally generate new missions. That won't happy today or tomorrow, of course. However, even having similar missions with different enemies and a different MacGuffin - as opposed to always stealing the Mk. 3 Superweaponoftheweek from that awfully familiar Longbow base - will do a lot to keep things from getting stale.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
So you do that too when you accidentally embarrass yourself? Now I feel less weird for smashing my own brains into walls, desks, and keyboards. I have managed to mold my wall into the shape of my head by doing that....
But in all seriousness though it's a good idea and I find it would be interesting to see implemented. Since they are already working on something like that I imagine we'll pretty happy.
Formerly known as Bleddyn
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WCqnt88Umk]Do you want to be a hero?[/url]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/nyktoss-character-cove] My characters [/url]
Because the second I saw those posts I remembered commenting on them a lot. And usually I never forget if an idea had been brought up or not.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpqmoBYkQfc
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
"Damn, you're built like a brick shit house."
[youtube]_u2_Dw27btU[/youtube]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I suggested using what I called a Mission Matrix way back during CoH to try and break up the monotony. Say we have 5 different kinds of missions for heroes (retrieve stolen thing, rescue kidnapped person, fight minions, fight boss and minions or timed mission to stop the timer). Now we have say ten maps. We have a dozen factions at our hero's level. The Mission Matrix could draw one Mission, put it with a Map, add a Faction and there you go. A lot like what the OP said.
However some combinations would be excluded (no wizards in space missions) and so forth. WHat I wanted the Davs to add was a counter to track all of this. If you'd already been in Warehouse #6 today then you would NOT get that map again until you'd seen all of the other possible maps today. Factions and missions would be the same way.
I remember going after the Oxygen-Destroyer three times in the same 2-hour period. A system like this would prevent that.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I would think that something like what Comicsluvr suggests above could be used to at least somewhat fake an actual AI-run mission builder like Darth would like. It wouldn't be the same, but it would still be a significant improvement.
But no Wizards in space?!?!?
That has lots of prescident in comics, and those type of crazy genre-mixing is one of the charms of comics. I thought you were a comics lover! :P
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
CoH's random map generator was pretty darn good...but it did not take long to get to know it. From what I understand CoT's will be much more extensive..... if this type of thing could be implemented I think it would be a big help in keeping the maps and layouts fresh longer.
That was the biggest flaw of the newspaper/scanner missions...there was a limited variety. It meant that anyone who wanted to engage in simple one off missions quickly were going to run into this problem a lot. That's not to mention that many of these missions for villains were stealing something you actually thought was cool and wanted like the bank gun but never got use or even see.
I hope that CoT has quick easily accessed one off missions that don't work this way for those days when I just feel like being lazy.
We plan on having a slightly different take on things with what we hope to provide is a system where the player essentially crafts their missions obtained from clues. These clues go into a 'clue board' and can be pieced together in different combinations resulting in the missions objectives, locations, and adversaries varying. It is tentatively called Schemes and Investigations and something we'll look to implement at a later stage after release.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I'm going to lay my bet now and say it was Dr. Tyche, in the conservatory, with the oscillation overthruster.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
There's also the [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/tech-update-mission-missive]Mission Missive[/url] update which told us that they intend to put the mission data into a spreadsheet (plus [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/discuss-tech-update-mission-missive]discussion thread[/url]). That [i]sounds[/i] like it ought to be easy to mix and match different elements to allow precisely the kind of "mission matrix" scenario Comicsluvr postulated. At least that's what I was hoping for with that update.
The beard did it. It's always the beard. If you see a butler with a beard, don't think. Run.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
An actual AI would necessitate the abandonment of taunt, and hence the tank/heal/DPS. Any rational AI would not waste time beating nearly pointlessly on an armored bag of hitpoints. I am virulently against CoH's use of taunt in PvP to redirect an opposing player's target, often for an unchangable period of time. This completely defeats strategy, and to allow it in an"better AI" environment defeats the purpose.
Of course the real reason games fall into that model is anything else is seen as too hard.
I think way way back to original D&D, where clerics wore armor so they could survive being beat on as rational AI demands first taking out the healer. So the healer must be tough.
i can see a much greater role for controllers to lock down and debuff and defenders to buff/heal.
I would like to see that, but I don't hold my breath. It is ironic most MMOs are soloable with most classes now, meaning taunt is rarely used in practice as even groups don't need it, except for bosses in raids, and those are the things most sorely in need of change from taunt heal dps model.
__________________
[IMG]http://i284.photobucket.com/albums/ll38/Gnurl/a72b7fba-8da2-4ac8-8e18-0f8453f7d3ee_zpscc5b27b5.jpg[/IMG]
The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
I believe the Devs comment was that the AI was too smart, or not limited enough, and tended to curb-stomp everybody so fast it was dismaying. I don't think you would actually enjoy playing a game like you've described. There would be no point in having different ATs, if the AI was able to pick its targets 'realistically'.
Be Well!
Fireheart
The original AI simply knew where the player characters were located on the map at all times and were relentless in pursuit. It would come at all angles, if enough where put into the map, they might even come in multiple groups from multiple angles.
To be truthful, there are multiple stories from game developers where players ended up frustrated by "too smart an AI" even when they'd ask for "more realistic AI", even when the devs designed this smarter AI to provide "tells" to the players to clue them in on what actions the AI would take. Quite simply, when players go into PvE they expect a certain type of experience, one that is very different from a PvP experience.
That being said, the way we've designed taunt as a power is that it behaves like a control effect, it affects what you do. It is not a specific "trick the AI" mechanic as it is applicable to both player and non player characters in function. We do however need to have AI behave in certain...predictable ways (there's a lot that goes into this to be true I won't bother getting into), and so we do have a mechanic for how an AI will determine who to go after, one that we can manipulate by classification mods, allow players to "manage" via their own actions, and of course adjust in order to get those "sweet spots" in the flow of combat we require.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Then there's the various "aggro magnet" Powers displayed in Log Horizon ... [url=http://log-horizon.wikia.com/wiki/Anchor_Howl]Anchor Howl[/url] being one of the most widely known.
This sets up a dynamic of "attack the aggro magnet or pay the consequences" instead of doing something "silly" such as making Foes untargetable. The behavioral incentives work out to be the same, but the underlying reason/rationale relies less on a "just because" excuse. Thus, Anchor Howl is really a PBVoE Debuff that functions as a Control with a "backlash" for resisting the effect.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
One definition an AI programmer provided of what it is he does is, "Take a system that knows everything and can do anything, and dumbs it down just enough to be fun to beat."
That's the key ingredient here: "fun to beat." The AI is a part of a game, and the game as a whole is designed to be beat (for whatever value "beat" may have in a MMO). If the developers begin designing an AI with the intent that it should beat the players - which is the impression I'm starting to get from Gorgon - then most players are likely to go looking elsewhere for their fun.
If the AI is "smart enough" to go after the healer, because they're the ones keeping the other players alive, then the developers need to give the healer some chance to survive. No one is going to play a character who is almost guaranteed to die at the start of combat. So, the healer needs to be tough enough to take all the attacks coming their way. Good, now they get all the aggro and are tough enough to survive it. Oh, hey! We've got our tank.
Do it with controllers? So, throw out the "holy trinity" and replace it with the "holy class"? Don't bring a tank or healer, just bring a controller! On the whole, controllers were already easily the most powerful AT in CoH. I doubt making them the official god class in CoT would be a wise decision.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I know many people saw the mission generator in COH as being random. Assembling pieces of missions together based on a roll of an 8 million sided dice. I don't know that it was. I think every mission in the game was pre-canned and pre-assembled. A player could potentially access one of these missions, at random, by radio or newspaper. And the name and baddies in the mission might vary but the maps themselves were not randomly generated.
Indeed if your map-generator was anything but absolutely perfect and smart enough to fix holes between map tiles or prevent loose ends or even spawning a safe just inches from being on the right side of the wall, you could have some very bad experiences. Based on this I suspect that every map generated was then tied very specifically to a mission, or group of missions. Very little randomness occurred in the map generation process. Only in assigning which pre-processed mission to which character.
On the side of smarter AI, it is a unique balance. One of my pet peeves was walking into a large room and using loud explosive powers and flinging baddies across the room with knock back and getting no response out of enemies that even buzzing bee intelligence would think, "probably ought to do something about that." My second peeve was that runners, triggered by a very clever "oh shoot" mechanic would never come back with back up. That said if you fix those two issues you could quickly end up with a very messy situation. (Unless I was playing my /regen in which case I would inhale, go into scrapperlock till nothing was left standing, and then exhale) Even with that messy situation in mind I think fixing those two pet peeves would go a long way to promoting the hero feeling. Every once in a great while the hero has to get beat down in order to overcome that obstacle and feel more powerful. Success at every turn is worthless, success after defeat is priceless. So the key is making the AI smart enough to beat the hero down, but also smart enough to know when to let the hero get back up again. And further to do it intelligently enough that the player doesn't notice. A tall order.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
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Makes me wonder if there's "room" in the game design to allow a certain type of tradeoff ... "noisy" vs stealthy. Essentially, you have the "quick 'n' dirty" slash "noisy" way to enhance Powers which increases their damage output, but also ramps up how loud/obvious they are in ways that attract attention (read: aggro). Conversely, you'd alternatively be able to enhance Powers in ways that are "stealthy" so as to NOT draw more aggro from ever increasing radii away. The former would be (to quote an immigrant to Degobah) "quicker, easier, more seductive" while the latter would require a different balance of investment (4 slots instead of 3?).
Just a thought.
This requires Foe NPCs to "communicate" their threat tables to each other, thus transferring Aggro.
[youtube]qMPpnCvCZvw[/youtube]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
It is possible. First thing that came to mind was a revamped dungeon in old EQ where goblins had their AI routine changed to cause one of the pack to run off if the pack was being defeated too quickly or when itself was at a certain health point. It would then link up with other nearby packs and bring them back to the adventure party. It ended up getting removed after a while if I recall correctly.
Players that were actually having a hard go at it ended up overwhelmed, consistently. With corpse runs and xp loss back in that game, well you could imagine why those players never bothered.
Then there were those who could handle it, and so they leveraged the mechanic and would let one of the green skinned suckers run off to bring back several groups of buddies. They literally used the AI to pull for them, clearing the dungeon without having to delve through the entire map. They tried trickier things too like providing shamans to buff their packs and stuff but all that did was require a change of focus on particular targets. Not that I had actually done this or anything...
(full disclosure, the final nail in the coffin was an expansion offering better loot for the time spent in the crawl, therefore leaving the crawl all but abandoned by players anyway, so it may have not been reverted back but never used again either).
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Which is sad, because my Wood Elf Bard used to love timing snares and charms, so that runner would take off just as the rest of the mob was cleaned up. Then the party could rest until he brought his friends back. Fun stuff!
Be Well!
Fireheart
In World of Warcraft, the quintessential example of this phenomenon was the Murloc.
[youtube]qMPpnCvCZvw[/youtube]
Individual Murlocs would "run" from combat once hitting 40% HP remaining, which made them a challenging "spike damage" kill, particularly for lowbies (you could meet Murlocs as low as Level 4). Their retreat vector would be "random" but in my experience the "randomness" of their choice of escape vector was weighted towards running away in the direction of other Foe NPCs, with an increased weight placed on running away to other Murlocs nearby who hadn't been aggroed. If the runner found another Murloc, the runner would stop ... do the Murloc noise ...
[youtube]qMPpnCvCZvw[/youtube]
... and then the runner plus the reinforcement(s) would come charging back at you. For low level, pre-teen characters, this could potentially result in an exhausting chain of pulls that would eventually wear your character down and get you killed via attrition. It also didn't help that dead Murlocs tended to respawn within a few minutes, which might also just so happen to be how long it might take to kill one/a few of them, meaning their numbers were endless and you had only yourself.
Long story short, a LOT of Players hated fighting Murlocs. They were "cowardly" in that they wouldn't suicidally just stand and fight to the death, but were also "cooperative" among their own kind, in that they'd run off to get reinforcements to overwhelm the Player, and they made that Annoying Noise™! I know that on one server, the "Undead" faction of PCs made it a RULE that every mission that told you to go out and kill Murlocs WAS OBLIGATORY TO DO. Why? [b]BECAUSE MURLOCS [i]*MUST*[/i] DIE![/b] It basically became a part of the "culture" for the Players of that faction that Murlocs HAD to be killed, as often and as completely and totally as necessary. It got to the point of "peer pressure" such that Players who skipped the quests that involved killing Murlocs were shunned.
That said, the "Murloc Experience" TAUGHT a lot of Players many of the necessary tactics and strategies needed to think beyond just mere DPS and survival times figured on a spreadsheet. Murloc battles tended to be much more mobile (since the Murlocs almost always wound up running away at some point) and thus didn't function well as "plant the flag" stand and stick affairs, unlike almost every other Foe NPC in the inventory. It meant that Murlocs would be a serious challenge to melee only character types, while remaining an easier challenge for characters with ranged attacks. But the fact that they would RUN when reduced to 40% of their HP meant that "The Chase" phase of almost every combat with them would be dynamic and fought over varied terrain. The fact that they would "run off and find friends" to come back and overwhelm you made for a very serious challenge that each Player needed to figure out how they were going to solve.
Other Foe NPCs would also do the "run away and come back with friends" routine as well, but none were quite as prone to it as the Murlocs.
[youtube]qMPpnCvCZvw[/youtube]
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Don't forget the Pre-Cata Elwynn Forest (Human Starting Area) had watery areas full of Murlocs that had an insane aggro range, which began many players hatred of them...
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
I think diffenet types of mobs ought to behave differently in a some cases. Like, if you're going to have a Rikti Mother Ship raid that get's started by taking down pylons, well, everyone knows a pylon can't run away. On the other hand you could also have a thing where you have to fight smarter, more mobile foes and have to try to wrangle them so as to avoid over-aggroing the whole map, etc.
I know this sounds like stuff you probably couldn't solo with your defender, and I'm fine with that. This is one area where team size and composition become a thing and maybe you need to try to form a decently-well equipped team to do that content. I'm for that.
A group of zombies, robots, turrets, etc will likely just fight until destroyed, being more or less unintelligent. A more cagey foe like Nemesis or MAlta or Crey would likely have tactics that are a little more difficult to handle, in many cases. Not unlike your Murlocks, probably.
This is also a way to make less-than-godlike entities in the game something to be reckoned with, without having to just give them better defense, resistance, and damage numbers on an individual level.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I very much agree with this concept. Smarter foes should have smarter tactics.
Tannim gave a brief counter-point to the concept of runners bringing back help.
He said that the magic medium ground where additional mobs is a challenge but not overwhelming or simply inconsequential is tough to program for. If its overwhelming then it stops being fun and if its inconsequential its inclusion is a waste of time to program.
That's the biggest thing I think the devs have to deal with when it comes to programing alternate tactics for foes... either its interesting and fun or its a waste to have programed to begin with.
But I very much agree that foes should have an individual behavior and unique tactics. I just don't envy the devs workload in doing so.
I prefer to put a slightly different spin on that. Foes ought to be biased towards smarter engagement tactics depending on the availability of "leadership" in the vicinity. Functionally, this would mean that the presence of Lieutenants and Bosses would influence the decision biases of groups of Foes, to the point of adjusting how "smart" their behaviors appear.
Functionally, that winds up being akin to an "aura" effect centered on the Lieutenant or Boss introducing a bias into the behavioral decision system. Whether or not the AI is "robust" enough to account for that sort of detail will depend on Segev's experiments.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
That's one way to introduce various response by foes. Probably one of the better ones I have seen as it builds in a certain tactical skill cap for foes based on a players difficulty setting. Assuming, of course, that difficulty settings are similar to the way CoH handled them.
This could also introduce the variable of troop 'quality', where some minions respond better to leadership, and some leader-types are better at leading. So, the presence of a Lieutenant in the group might raise the threat-level of a given mob of Mobs.
These factors could alter the AI-equation. Possibly even dynamically. Imagine the demoralizing effect of seeing the Lieutenant go down first. Or, if we have Runners pulling agro, then the sudden appearance of a Lieutenant in the mob might cause the Minions to straighten up and soldier, or behave with more confidence.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Eh ... I have my moments ... ^_~
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Such a system would be brilliant, and of course extended to EB's and AV's (and any other "tier" of enemy).
Couple that with the possible dynamical changes with the Momentum system and we can get really engaging tactical combat, rather than the herd and burn of CoH.
I think the key to successfully including this system is simply not to make it work too well for the bad guys.
Include it, but don't make it too effective or powerful. Make the mob wait a little too long to run or only run so far. Make the aggro transference not too strong or effective, or not to that many other mobs.
That way the "realism" and fun of the mechanic exists int the game, but it won't be too hard to use tactics to deal with it and it won't be too catastrophic if you mess up.
To quote Darth's quote,
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
To quote what people used to say a century ago (and can still see in some old cartoons) ... "now you're cooking with gas!"
Let me give a simplistic yet still concrete example of biasing the dynamics of behaviors in this way ... Runners.
So just for illustration purposes, let's say that a Foe NPC Group has a reputation for having a glass jaw (kinda like Murlocs). Beat 'em up a bit and they'll either run or scatter due to loss of morale.
The way to make this work is to arrange things such that individually they're cowards, but together, in a group, they're "brave" so that the dynamics of their behavior changes depending on WHO and how MANY you're fighting. Doesn't take a whole lot of knowledge in the field to realize that this actually models what a lot of us think of as "gang" behavior ... alone equals weak, together equals strong.
So you set the threshold to break off and RUN from combat somewhere relatively high ... say, 40% of HP remaining ... for the individual members.
Then you define PBVoE "auras" for each ranking in that NPC Group that can affect that, so as to shift the threshold needed to make that decision and prompt that behavior.
Underlings: -1% each
Minions: -2% each
Lieutenants: -4% each
Bosses: -8% each
Elite Bosses: -16% each
Archvillains: -32% each
Giant Monsters: -64% each
The inter(re)action of the PBVoE "auras" then helps shape the behaviorals for the Foe NPC Group and is a DYNAMIC factor based on relative positioning. Cluster them all up together, so you've got a lot of overlapping auras, and the threshold for deciding to RUN can drop a good long way, meaning that so long as they all "stick together" they'll stand and fight. Drop a grenade into the pile to Knockback them all away from each other and suddenly they aren't a collective group anymore but instead they're clumps of individuals. Suddenly, the behavioral dynamic changes from "we're all in this together" to being "every man for himself!" and the scattered groups flee ... where if they'd stayed together they would have stood and fought.
Fighting 10 Minions, all within overlapping supporting range of each other? When will they break and run?
(40 - (10 * 2))% = 20% HP threshold to Run
There wouldn't be any Art Assets going on to SHOW these effects via FX, but Players would learn to associate this behavior with different groups and adapt their tactics and strategies of how to engage accordingly.
Then contrast the above with another Foe NPC Group that has a different reputation, one in which they're relatively fanatical and "disciplined" as fighters. How would you tweak the settings to represent that? Well ...
First off, you set the threshold to break off and RUN from combat somewhere relatively low ... say, 15% of HP remaining ... for the individual members.
Then you define PBVoE "auras" for each ranking in that NPC Group that can affect that, so as to shift the threshold needed to make that decision and prompt that behavior.
Underlings: -0% each
Minions: -1% each
Lieutenants: -2% each
Bosses: -3% each
Elite Bosses: -6% each
Archvillains: -9% each
Giant Monsters: -12% each
Now you've got a Foe NPC Group who tends to "stand and fight" and only decides to retreat/run after taking a lot more of a beating. This then is much more consistent with "disciplined" fighting behavior associated with (professional) soldiering and formation fighting, where individuals have received training on how to fight in groups and maintain unit cohesion.
That's just a very simple model of how you'd be able to program and score those sorts of effects. Just run it using PBVoE aura effects (with no video or audio FX) and then let the dynamics of positioning and density determine, dynamically, what happens with respect to the question of When Will They Run? Additionally, there's enough opportunities for variations between the two extreme examples I've given to yield a variety of different intended, and expected, behaviors. That then gives a Developer (such as Segev) plenty of knobs to frobbish ... including the radius on the PBVoE auras driving this behavioral modification ... for yielding a wide(r) variety of behavioral possibilities.
United they stand.
Divided they fall.
/em bowling strike sound FX
[youtube]M37ps37Z3II[/youtube]
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
To sum it up in a phrase: "complex but predictable".
So long as the player doesn't feel that they were cheated, or that what happened was beyond their control or ability to influence, it's all good. This can be tricky, indeed, as this humorous pie chart reminds us.
[img]http://funnymemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Fcking-bullsht.jpg[/img]
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
That is hilarious.
We humans are such entertaining creatures. We see what we like.
I always try to remember that, in all likelihood, at least 90% of the reason that I fail when I fail is because I suck.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
There is the possibility of mobs that, under some circumstances, would surrender instead of running away too. Or some that chomp cyanide instead of being captured (unless that's too gruesome for the kids). And then of course CoX had the "Two Hercs form one Zeus" thing, which would be awesome to have too, eventually.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The idea of mobs changing behavior based on nearby pawn ranks is something we want to do. If we do it, it would be in a fairly obvious change of behavior, the best example of this would be vahz anominations being near other non-abomination mobs of the same faction. At least early on, while more tactical changes would escalate throughout levels of the game. Essentially, we would slowly intorduce this AI behavioral changing-driven by pawn ranks-mechanic over time.
Sureendering would probably be saved for alignment-affecting decisions and not a common behavior. Fleeing, breaking off to gather reinforcements, calling in reinforcements, taking advataeous positions, being extra aggressive, being "dumb" are all possibilities (and more). Our hope is to (eventually) have multiple AI modules we can place into our NPC designer that are appropriate to the theme of the NPC faction.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Ohh.. like if you attack a Malta group, but you might not see a Boss in the group, depending on your missions difficulty, an extra Boss or two might teleport in? :D
No, that would break the mission difficulty rules. This is more along the lines of how abominations were kind of dumb when only among otther aboms but when say a mortician was around theybwere more aggressive. Their behavior changed based on what other npc ranks were in their spawn.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
The way I always interpreted that behavior was that the "living" Vahzilok members operated as a sort of Command & Control for communicating Threat Tables to the Abominations (et al.). Without those Reapers and Morticians around, there wasn't anyone for the Abominations to "talk to" and coordinate with. This then enabled PCs to engage Abominations in a sequential solo fashion, rather than in parallel.
The way I figure it was programmed was that the Morticians and Reapers (and whatever the Bosses were, memory fades) would communicate Threat tables to the entire group. Abominations would communicate their Threat ONLY to these "living" members of the group, rather than "communally" between the zombies directly. Thus, take out the "command & control" node of the living members and the zombie Abominations could only REACT to hostilities if directly affected. This then permitted a Divide & Conquer strategy to succeed, in which you could take out the "living leaders" capable of directing traffic ... retreat to shed aggro ... and then come back and pick off the Abominations one by one, since they were no longer capable of coordinating or communicating among themselves.
It was quite cleverly done, game mechanically speaking.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yup, so the technique for dealing with them was to lure out a single zombie, kill it, then wait for the Mortician to come out to Rez it. Then take down the Mort. Rinse and Repeat until all of those bossy-guys were downed, and then you could slaughter the rest of the zombies.
That was using the faction's Intelligence against them. Might be harder, with the new AI, but should be fun to figure out a method.
Be Well!
Fireheart
In regards to AI I would like to also see a slight span in it for the different factions and enemy types/roles, that is that two NPC's that are essentially clones, outside of visuals, would have the potential to behave slightly differently between them due to falling at different points in this span.
I'm not talking a span that is big enough to make a defender type enemy suddenly behave as if they were a tank, but something large enough to make a noticeable difference, thus reducing the predictability of the encounter slightly and giving them a bit more "individuality".
It would essentially be that all enemies of the same faction type and/or role shared a basic module and then a "bias" module added on top that was taken from this span.
Am I understanding you correctly in that you are asking for a variety in foes that while they may looked the same they might behave differently?
Not look the same but rather function the same. That is enemies of the same faction with the same power sets archetype and/or role would have slightly differing biases in their AI so that they behave slightly differently.
So one guy runs away at 50% HP but another at 25%? Or similar.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
As one possible bias, yes.
Another one could be that one favors rapid fire attacks (low CD low damage) while another could favor nukes (high CD high damage) even though they have the exact same powers to choose from. This could mean that some powers would effectively never be used while under a certain bias.