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[Zaratustra]

so I'm in charge of making AI for mmo monsters

and I was thinking

what kind of strategies do you feel are missing from monsters in mmos

[Kazz]

weak monsters (the kind worth next to no XP) can't actually beat you; they should run from you.  preferably toward stronger monsters.  i'm posting that even though it was originally your idea.

in a large open area like a forest, monsters should scatter themselves throughout the area.  when you get close to one that you could kill, it should avoid you while its friends run around you to surround you or your party.  i'd like it if you could hear them blowing little bugles or even just barking orders/information at each other.

in a dungeon, monsters should conduct themselves somewhat like a raiding party.  tanky monsters should try to keep your attention, while ranged mobs and casters keep their distance.  they should also exploit choke points, or at least seem like they are.

this is all assuming some measure of intelligence; there is always room for the idiot mob who just runs at you and tries to kill you.  preferably that particular mob is huge and scary, and therefore doesn't exactly need tactics.

[Friday]

dead ringer mobs

[Mothra]

Just like this fucking HUUGGEE FIRE DRAGON

[Kazz]

Just like this fucking HUUGGEE FIRE DRAGON

no

bigger than that

[Doom]

Traps would be fun. Sure, a bunch of level shit kobolds can't hope to kill you in a fair fight.

So you see a chest.

And it whoops! Wooden stakes! A pot of scalding hot water! Some damage and a big debuff and oh-no kobolds!

[Romosome]

weak monsters (the kind worth next to no XP) can't actually beat you; they should run from you.  preferably toward stronger monsters.  i'm posting that even though it was originally your idea.

in a large open area like a forest, monsters should scatter themselves throughout the area.  when you get close to one that you could kill, it should avoid you while its friends run around you to surround you or your party.  i'd like it if you could hear them blowing little bugles or even just barking orders/information at each other.

in a dungeon, monsters should conduct themselves somewhat like a raiding party.  tanky monsters should try to keep your attention, while ranged mobs and casters keep their distance.  they should also exploit choke points, or at least seem like they are.

this is all assuming some measure of intelligence; there is always room for the idiot mob who just runs at you and tries to kill you.  preferably that particular mob is huge and scary, and therefore doesn't exactly need tactics.

Be careful though. If you make every goblin in the forest capable of flanking and calling 7 friends, your game now probably can't be soloed. You'll need a full party just to level up.  Unless the game is designed to accomodate this, or designed to let a single player kill 7 enemies at once, this is a problem.

Enemy behavior in combat is the core of the game, so the rest of it needs to be designed around it. Dropping a complex system like that into an otherwise generic EQ/WoW framework will lead to frustration.

[TA]

Traps would be fun. Sure, a bunch of level shit kobolds can't hope to kill you in a fair fight.

So you see a chest.

And it whoops! Wooden stakes! A pot of scalding hot water! Some damage and a big debuff and oh-no kobolds!

DDO does a fucking LOT of that, for what it's worth.  It's less fun than it sounds when not having a twinked rogue means you can't do a mission, and not being a rogue means you can't solo.

I think every MMO has things it lacks, and people who are more particularized in that particular MMO will probably look for things that are lacking in it.  I come from CoH, so I'd say tactical movement.  Mobs in that tend to either stay in place, run at you, or run away from you, but there's not much actual positioning.  Lining up cone attacks to hit multiple players, getting some high ground and throwing jump suppression on you so they can peg you from range, trying to specifically stay out of melee range, that sort of thing.  Things that good players do, especially in PvP, because they're more lateral thinkers than most AIs.

With the addendum that there be something a player can do to deal with anything like that.  Respectively, spacing out to avoid AoEs and not just "stand on the opposite side from the tank", there being no space a mob could jump to that can't be reached without jumping (even if it takes longer), ranged effects on melee characters that mitigate what can be done to them from outside melee range, and such.

In CoH, attacks rooted you for the duration of the animation.  If you were moving, using an attack stopped you in your tracks.  One little oddity was that if you hit an attack while jumping and moving, you'd keep your momentum until you landed.  This meant you could keep attacking the majority of the time while still moving, if you had decent unsuppressed jump speed.  Now whatever game you're working on might not have that exact function, but mobs didn't have the AI to take advantage of the fact that the game works that way, and players took advantage of that.  If your game has something like that, making your AI able to exploit it to the extent that players can is exactly the sort of thing that should be done.

[Doom]

DDO does a fucking LOT of that, for what it's worth.  It's less fun than it sounds when not having a twinked rogue means you can't do a mission, and not being a rogue means you can't solo.

Haha, wow, and I was just thinking that I'd merely lifted a simple DMing trick from actual D&D for turning a crappy little monster stomp into a legitimate encounter. Any other odds and ends DDO pulls off?

[Shinra]

Traps would be fun. Sure, a bunch of level shit kobolds can't hope to kill you in a fair fight.

So you see a chest.

And it whoops! Wooden stakes! A pot of scalding hot water! Some damage and a big debuff and oh-no kobolds!

DDO does a fucking LOT of that, for what it's worth.  It's less fun than it sounds when not having a twinked rogue means you can't do a mission, and not being a rogue means you can't solo.

unless you're soloing past normal I haven't had any problems with traps up to level 10 or so. Any character capable of self healing is a strong soloist and if anything rogues are terrible at soloing because of their low hp pool, combat ability and lack of self heals. I'm playing a battlemage right now (notoriously bad at everything) and easily soloing quests at level.

DDO does a fucking LOT of that, for what it's worth.  It's less fun than it sounds when not having a twinked rogue means you can't do a mission, and not being a rogue means you can't solo.

Haha, wow, and I was just thinking that I'd merely lifted a simple DMing trick from actual D&D for turning a crappy little monster stomp into a legitimate encounter. Any other odds and ends DDO pulls off?

The notable thing about DDO mobs is that they actually use all of their special attacks from D&D. This means wolves that actually make trip attacks (making balance the most important skill in the game for everyone) mages actually cast CC spells and enemies with really, really nasty abilities like mummy rot that would otherwise be pushovers at the average DM table are pretty fucking terrifying.

Much like D&D, character building is extremely important. Unlike a table game, you can't get away with a flavor character - at all. You basically have to have a perfectly optimized build to acomplish anything in high level play and hybridization - such as the aforementioned battlemage, or split level cleric/wizards, is considered a non-option for all but the most skilled players and meticulous planners. There are actually builds that require you to hit the level cap three times on the same character via reincarnation, and builds that require you to have a level 20 of every class so you can make use of a feat called completionist. FWIW, the actual gameplay itself is, on a whole, not that complex. all the quests break down like WoW instances but there are few actual challenging moments that can't be overcome with the right mindset, and even the raid content is pretty casual aimed. The real hardcore part of the game seems to revolve around character optimization and coming up with the theoretical perfect build. the character build forums for this game are insane.

[R^2]

With all ideas thrown around, don't discount: smart monsters should be smart, but dumb monsters should be dumb. The stereotypical ogre isn't going to set up complicated traps or fight strategically, just HA HA I CUT ROPE AND LOG FALL ON HUMAN and OGRE SMASH PUNY ELF WITH CLUB. Under the command of a D&D ogre mage they're more likely to fight smart -- until you take out the leader.

[Mongrel]

That's actually a good idea. You can apply standard cliche behaviour to present something that's more interesting and challenging, without being impossible.

You can do things like the goblin raid that loses all confidence when you take out their big guy. So at first there's a real challenge to survive and to take out the leader, but once you do, the challenge changes to "get all the mobs before they run away", so you get more mileage out of a single encounter.

Also, given that I don't really play MMOs I have no idea if this is in some games or not, but there's a simple, brilliant mechanism that allows a single hero to take out large numbers of enemies that - as far as I know - has barely been used in games for over a decade: Have ways the hero can cause the monsters to fight.

You have a gaggle of semi-sentient beasts in a clearing, you might be able to take one or two of them on without trouble, but this is a big bunch. Being able to incite them to start whacking one another gives a player some really good options and a whole new set of risk/reward in mob-clearing.

I think the trick there is to make sure that the hero is credited for the kills, even though he may not strike any blows, but I think in ten years of gaming advances, SOMEONE has got that figured out somewhere.

[Büge]

That can actually happen in Oblivion, but it's mostly a factional thing. Bandits vs marauders or undead vs everyone, that sort of thing. Sometimes though, the AI gets messed up. Once there were two soldiers helping me beat up bandits and I used an AoE, then the one soldier started attacking the other. The one getting attacked didn't fight back, which was odd.

[Ziiro]

The problem is finding mechanics that are cool, but not annoying.

For example, if the AI was smarter, certain mobs could try to Line of Sight you if you're a ranged user. Sure, that sounds cool and realistic - but as a mage or hunter it would be really, really annoying to have to chase a goblin around a tree.

The only mechanic I can think of that would be interesting, but not annoying would be AI smart enough to change tactics/weapons/spells based on their target. A mage mob that usually uses fire spells would switch to slowing frost spells on a melee character, but keep using his fire against ranged players.

[Mongrel]

I think a decrease in predictability is a good overall thing to shoot for. Less rote patterns, less stock attacks, less mind-numbing repetition in general. More adaptability (without being unbeatable), more than one plan of attack, variance in size and organization of groups, etc.

The downside to that is of course those folks who WANT easy, boring grinds... but then I don't know what kind of MMO fanbase you guys are aiming for anyway.

[inyandep]

unless you're soloing past normal I haven't had any problems with traps up to level 10 or so. Any character capable of self healing is a strong soloist and if anything rogues are terrible at soloing because of their low hp pool, combat ability and lack of self heals. I'm playing a battlemage right now (notoriously bad at everything) and easily soloing quests at level.

seconded. then again, most of the time TA was playing without a rogue(me), it was duoing with someone who loved to set difficulties higher. and that trap damage scales into insanity.

The notable thing about DDO mobs is that they actually use all of their special attacks from D&D. This means wolves that actually make trip attacks (making balance the most important skill in the game for everyone) mages actually cast CC spells and enemies with really, really nasty abilities like mummy rot that would otherwise be pushovers at the average DM table are pretty fucking terrifying.

never had a problem with mummy rot really, unless i let it sit for a half hour or so realtime and it drained my CHA to 0. also, i have a 18/2 favored soul and a 19 fighter kensai(longbow) who never had a rank of balance. then again, the fact that i had godmode saves or stayed at range had something to do with that. i used to hate going through the vale on my cleric though because of the tripspam. my third character, a rogue/barbarian, had no problem because lol thief-acrobat.

Much like D&D, character building is extremely important. Unlike a table game, you can't get away with a flavor character - at all. You basically have to have a perfectly optimized build to acomplish anything in high level play and hybridization - such as the aforementioned battlemage, or split level cleric/wizards, is considered a non-option for all but the most skilled players and meticulous planners. There are actually builds that require you to hit the level cap three times on the same character via reincarnation, and builds that require you to have a level 20 of every class so you can make use of a feat called completionist. FWIW, the actual gameplay itself is, on a whole, not that complex. all the quests break down like WoW instances but there are few actual challenging moments that can't be overcome with the right mindset, and even the raid content is pretty casual aimed. The real hardcore part of the game seems to revolve around character optimization and coming up with the theoretical perfect build. the character build forums for this game are insane.

it's not really a non-option, just frowned on by dickbags. my rogue was a 2handed fighting barbarian with 12dex and powerstrength, my fighter was exclusively ranged combat (the silver longbow is pretty much a godmode weapon), and my favored soul had 2 levels of paladin, 8wis and cranked cha to cast buffs and heals while dual-wielding scimitars in full plate. also saw a cleric10/wizard10 who kept getting parties. i guess those characters are kind of balanced out of 'flavor' and more towards asinine stats though.

also, seriously, completionist builds? does anyone even have that yet? ...well, it has been a few months so i guess someone could. which is kind of depressing.

also what server are you on. i'm freemium now and haven't picked up the game since like, january. i'd be interested to know if anyone else is still playing

[Rico]

While most of the stuff you'll get here will probably be workable, it's important to remember that people often don't have a firm idea of what they actually want, and also that their good ideas aren't for "everyday" encounters.

I.e. Kazz's woods flanking example.  Great idea, makes a lot of sense, but there's the big problem that Romo brought up.  And if you don't need a party and can in fact solo 7 mobs at once, is it stressful or easy?  Will it be relatively balanced for all classes?  If it's stressful, it probably shouldn't happen too often.  If it's easy, is it really worth doing, since after the 3rd time you run into anything in the woods it will no longer be novel and be just as grindy as running between single, non-aiding mobs?

The other important thing to do here is to work with the other "departments" and make sure that if relatively-complex-for-an-MMO AI is used that there is a decent learning curve going on.  WoW takes a lot of (rightfully deserved) flak for this in a couple of areas: Roles that play entirely different in group settings than solo settings aren't taught to those classes through any gameplay mechanic other than blundering through a group dungeon and hoping you don't waste everyone else's time.  In raid situations where non-standard AI is used (Faction Champions having a revised threat table where dispelling, CCing, and healing all cause vastly more threat than usual and there is a threat wipe every few seconds), even though virtually every class and role has tools to cope with this in their spellbook, most players haven't even had half this shit on their action bars because it is useless in every other encounter, etc..

[Shinra]

Orien? The newest one.

And yeah lol, duoing hard mode+ at level is basically awful pain.

[Kazz]

Here's the thing.  In my example, the mobs are trying to win the encounter, not just standing around waiting to be killed by a PC.  I guess that it becomes a question of philosophy: is your game about killing mobs for 600 hours until the fun part, or do you have to think a little bit?

And what's the fun of soloing anyway?  Play Diablo, fuck's sake.

[Mongrel]

Here's the thing.  In my example, the mobs are trying to win the encounter, not just standing around waiting to be killed by a PC.  I guess that it becomes a question of philosophy: is your game about killing mobs for 600 hours until the fun part, or do you have to think a little bit?

And what's the fun of soloing anyway?  Play Diablo, fuck's sake.

Precisely. There's a reason grinding is called grinding.