So, I've seen some discussion, elsewhere, about Aggro caps and mechanics and also about 'smarter AI' for NPC enemies and it got me thinking about the old-old days.
'Back When', it was important to manage many factors in a combat encounter. Strategic and tactical positioning was one of them. Tanks used taunts and combat maneuvers to turn the enemies away from the rest of the team. This had several effects:
Enemy Cone attacks and AoEs generally only hit the Tank and not the team.
In some of those games, an opponent was more vulnerable and had less damage mitigation in their rear-quarter, so flanking and attacking from the rear were important considerations. Additionally, there were characters with powerful attacks that could only be used from a flanking position, so the Tank's techniques could really improve matters.
In these cases, sometimes the Tanker could only Partially change the enemy's facing-direction, in which case the rest of the team had to be ready to re-deploy their own positions, in order to gain the strategic and tactical advantage.
If an encounter was going badly for an NPC group, one or more sub-lieutenant types would try to turn away from the Tanker and run - looking for 'help' from another, nearby, allied group of NPCs.
So, if the Tanker was positioned right, these 'Runners' would dash off into areas already cleared by the players and find no reinforcements to call on, to come and murderize the player-team.
Another factor was for the rest of the team to Be Aware and have Mez-type attacks ready to Stop these 'Runners' from getting away from the immediate battle-area. Snares, stuns, slows, Taunts, or simply 'massive-damage' attacks to deal with the Runner before it escaped. And sometimes the party would Deliberately let a Runner escape, to pull the next group of enemies into a prepared position.
Coming from a game like that, to the City, brought a sigh of relief from me. I genuinely appreciated and enjoyed the greatly simplified and more straightforward combat mechanics of CoH. The lack of Runners and simpler Aggro of the City was doubly welcome, due to the tighter concentration of enemies, where one might find six separate 'encounter-groups' in a single room.
However... having played City for many years, and other games since then, with similar structures, I find myself... actually Missing that old-style mechanic (just a little).
Might there be a place for more complex NPC behavior (like Runners) in Titan City?
Be Well!
Fireheart
If they do have more involved AI, I think this kind of thing would be great. Also, it would be great if there were mechanisms for sounding a general alarm, in the case of enemy groups that have organized bases.
I think a lot of people liked that about City, which is why I hope that a significant AI change would either be gated behind a team difficulty option, or limited to specific enemy groups that folks who want it simple could avoid. I'd personally prefer the "option" approach, only because I enjoy both simple and the complicated AI's, depending on my mood and, if I am teamed, the kind of players I have around me that night.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
I like the idea of a runner minion AI who streaks about raising the alarm (sending others to the location he got freaked out). It could even be an enemy type, like the Sapper. A Snitch perhaps, or whatever suits the mob. Or a random possible personality for a more complex minion. Perhaps nicer for variety than all the time.
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It could definitely be a mission-specific thing: Catch the mobster before he gets his buddies!
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
For a lot players, the quintessential Runner is ... the [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMPpnCvCZvw]Murloc[/url] of WoW. Reason being that at about 40% HP remaining, Murlocs would run off, make their [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMPpnCvCZvw]Murloc Noise[/url] to communicate with other Murlocs and come back with reinforcements! So even if you only pulled one or two Murlocs at a time, if you didn't halt the Runners you could ultimately wind up chain pulling a dozen or more that would just wear you down and eventually get you through sheer attrition. A friend of mine (who doesn't post here) said that on Horde Side on the server he played on, if a Quest had ANY MURLOCS in it, it was a MUST DO Quest because ALL MURLOCS MUST DIE! Didn't matter if you got no XP or Loot for doing the Quest, if it had Murlocs, you HAD TO go kill Murlocs. It was a "rule" on Horde Side on that server. If you asked about it in City Chat, you'd get buried in replies exhorting you to GO KILL MURLOCS!
This is a fairly simple example of Foe NPCs being able to "communicate aggro" to other Foe NPCs who have not yet been aggroed, and it was accomplished through relatively simple means (essentially by sharing the Threat Table with new Foe NPCs) ... and Players HATED IT in a way that was actually good for the game. It was a "smart" behavior on the part of the AI in an essentially "cowardly" Foe NPC type that made them a lot more dangerous in numbers because they couldn't necessarily be kept herded in a convenient way advantageous to the Players. Putting this behavior onto very low level Foe NPCs then "conditioned" Players to watch out for this particular behavior, and learn to prioritize defeating it, since the downsides of letting the Foe NPCs get away with it was potentially more aggro than your character could withstand!
Needless to say, I'd like to see an equivalent behavior crop up in a FEW Enemy Groups in City of Titans, and potentially among Pets class Foe NPCs (such as Rikti Monkeys) allowing them to make up in Quantity what they cannot do through Quality.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The whole idea of fighting only one group in a large room where the other related groups could also see you, or pulling one mob out of a larger mob and not having the others respond in any way is a trope of MMOs that destroys immersion. The concept of aggro circles rather than line-of-sight can make for some ridiculous situations when you try to think about it in real-world situations but it is how it is done in most MMOs.
I remember back when I was playing a terrific MUD (diku engine) back in the day that most mobs had a break and run code built in that was tied to a whisper code. If they got away from you to another hex, they would tell any similar mobs what happened and you could walk into a bunch of aggroed mobs. Some mobs weren't stationary to begin with, so you could end up with mobs that moved around basically spreading the word to their cronies throughout the zone.
Based on how loud a superhero battle is, you would think that any foes in the area would charge in as soon as they heard the second power go off. (The first power would be more of a "did you hear that?") Those that didn't come running would set up ambushes or trigger other defenses/lockdowns. I suppose that could make for either some very challenging issues with level/mission design or some very boring/predictable play. Any way you slice it, the idea of a large room where everyone can see everyone but only that group right there is fighting, seems preposterous.
I kamehameha'd your mom
Runners Pulling aggo.
Yes please. Lots of it. The more time I spend fighting the harder it is for me to turn off the game. I've had many days of "Wait.. it's already midnight?!" on Marvel Heroes for this reason (and I can't even really Roleplay over there!)
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Yes, I agree completely.
Mobs that fight intelligently make for interesting combat. Things like positioning, crowd control powers, and team roles all become more important. There should obviously be some limits to prevent aggroing the whole map, but combat should be more tactical than picking which power to click next.
On a related note, I consider static spawns to be one of the worst tropes of MMOs. That is, a map with many small groups of badguys scattered about, that never move nor react to anything until something appears right next to them. I really hope this game lets spawns wander about and interact with each other and the world. Imagine a small gang that spawns in an alley and then wanders about the block mugging some civilians, robbing a few stores, smashing a couple windows, etc, until a hero comes to stop them.
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TR had mobs fighting each other.... Although that could lead to some rather interesting "sit there and wait to see what happens" situations. Infact, at one point, there was a *complete* zone that had horrendous lag due to the number of mobs involved.
Due to the composition of the mobs, neither side could win, and they were being constantly reinforced....
Ah ... Mires ... some of my favorite trips across a zone happened there, despite the lag caused by Bailey's Blunder. Mires really was the first true "battlefield" zone, although Plains had some elements of this as well, but Mires was just awesome in that it put what amounted to about 55% of the map area under constant battlefield "churn" among NPCs, making the place just stunningly epic! Unfortunately, in later patches they removed like 70% of the mob spawns from the map in an attempt to fight the lag on the aptly named Mires map ... and it didn't really help that much.
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