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Why are mobs so dumb?
reavo
Member Posts: 2,173
Don't monsters have motivations? Don't they get hungry and go searching for food? Do they sleep? Do they mate and make little monsters? Boy, imagine the aggression enhancer the mum would have carrying her brood if you went after her.
I just don't understand why mobs insist on standing in one place waiting for the inevitable group to come by.
I want my mobs to get a life !!!!
Hunt, fish, climb a tree for friggin honey. I dunno. Do something besides just stand on the side of the road.
How about if a group of people are attacking the mobs food stock the mob decides it's time to raise hell on the village? How about mobs do like birds and have certain things they do during the day; birds feed in the morning, gather gravel to digest it in the afternoon. It just adds more realism and strategy for the hunt.
Comments
Its all about the CPU cycles and lag. Regarding CPU cycles, all AI movements and actions have to be controlled by the server. To have the mobs doing things when they are not fighting would create a lot of extra workload for the server. Regarding lag, if you look at a field that has 20 mobs and they arent moving, youre getting little lag. If all of a sudden all 20 of those mobs are moving, not only is your PC slowing down to animate all those mobs, but the network traffic increases substantially as the server is sending you updated information regarding the position of each mob.
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Played: Asheron's Call 1, Dark Age of Camelot, Earth & Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies
Tested: Asheron's Call 1, Asheron's Call 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Eve Online, Lineage 2, Risk Your Life
Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tales, Star Sonata
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33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?
Killer 100%
Achiever 53%
Explorer 33%
Socializer 13%
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Having some npcs doing stuff isnt a problem, and it isnt what the thread starter is talking about. He wants mobs that are 'alive'. So were not talking about 15 npcs in town, were talking about thousands of mobs roaming and doing stuff.
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Played: Asheron's Call 1, Dark Age of Camelot, Earth & Beyond, Star Wars Galaxies
Tested: Asheron's Call 1, Asheron's Call 2, Dark Age of Camelot, Eve Online, Lineage 2, Risk Your Life
Uninstalled ASAP: MU Online, Knight Online, Rubies of Eventide, Priston Tales, Star Sonata
Monsters with "ecology" was tried in the origonal UO and it was a unmitigated disaster.
The problems are many, for starters the begining population in no way matches the ending population. The things people hunt at first aren't the same things that are killed after say 6 months when everyone is maxed. This requires constant attention to mob reproduction tendancies, to the point that you almost have to hire someone to do it. Most places aren't willing to spend that much time on it. If you design the game for the endgame at the start you end up with no deer and dragons roaming everywhere.
2ndly, it's IMPOSSIBLE to predict what players will hunt for experiance. What if they decide to kill every deer on the planet? Sure you can say "tough luck, shouldn't have done that!", but when you spend 100 hours codeing a tanning skill and now nobody can tan because they can't find any deer to skin to skill past the newbie levels....Well are you willing to spend 100 hours to just throw away because your players do something unexpected?
What if you get more players than you expected? Suddenly everything is 'overhunted' in comparision to it's reproduction rate and soon there's nothing left. What if there are less? Now the newbie areas are SWAMPED with monsters, to the point that nobody can kill anything because they draw aggro from 5 critters.
So the wolves hunt the deer right? And the dragons hunt the wolves? Well what is somewhere down the road you realize that wolves are underpowered compared to the value of their pelts and have to be beefed up. Now suddenly they are wacking deer left and right, now you have to beef the deer up. Now the trees aren't growing because the deer can't be killed, nobody can get past the newbie stages, and to top it off the dragons can't kill the wolves so they all starve to death, eliminateing your high level content.
What I am driveing at here is that balance is _HARD_. Balanceing an ecosystem, even a simulated one, is _HARDER_. You know that no game releases balanced...Things are always nerfed, buffed, ectera. Now multiply that complexity by a hundredfold to take into account all the ecosystem interactions...It just makes it harder and harder the more detail you try to add.
That's why mob AI is so stupid.
AI is very complex, and VERY hard to program.
Many new approaches are being taken to develope the best AI, but riight now we are very limited.
The theory behind it can get pretty crazy.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
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~Gideon~
Actually, Ryzom has mobs that sleep, move in herds, after spawn move to fellow mobs, assist (yes, many other have this), rest of herd run after one being attacked, come and look at you as if interested in you, carnivores actively hunt for food then appear to "eat" what they killed, herbavors eat grass, and some even pee!!!
It's something spectacular to watch, as I've sat and just watched a lot of these mobs and animals for almost hours on end. You really should check it out.
--Ha, Pwned--
Pvp = godliness
--Ha, Pwned--
Pvp = godliness
Playing: WoW
Waiting on: Gods and Heroes
I think if they were really smart they would kick our buts
Wow, that sounds like a lot of excuses for some game developers who just don't want to do what they're paid for. I don't mean that to you sarcastically, I mean it realistically.
Besides that it's like I said, what if you start hunting all the deer and their pelts aren't o'plenty? That's going to piss off some hungry bears, right? So then the papa bear says, "My hume stew is just right."
I just feel like it's laziness personally. I mean God keeps our earth in balance doesn't he? And it's HUGE. These online worlds are miniscule compared.
Reavo, it's not a matter of what the devlopers want...It's a matter of what the money-men will pay for.
If the money-men say "We are cutting this and that out because the program team lead expects it to take 600 man-hours plus an additional 40 man-hours per month to support and we don't want to pay for it" then it gets cut out.
Generally when things are on the chopping block the first things to go are the "fluff" peices like this, after that it's usually content, after that it's in-game events, afterward comes customer service.
How many MMORPGs do you know with great customer service?
Where's your sense of humor? I know, I know... It's hard to tell when it's in text what people are meaning to say. Learned all about it in Technical Writing class, Ugggghhhhh.....
But, compare the size of a MMORPG world and the size of the universe. Now don't you feel silly saying what you said?
Look, I'm a programmer by trade (please don't outsource me.) Not a game programmer granted, but I write object oriented code all day long til my eyes bleed out of thier sockets. I don't see what so hard about adding an attribute of something like say uhmmmm, motivation. My monkey class wants a banana. Why not, it's noon and that's the typical time monkey classes get a rumbling in their tummy's. Wheeeeew, look monkey class, there's a banana in that there tree. Monkey gets banana, that motivation attribute is handled. Now monkey's motivation attribute can turn to more important things, like monkey sex.
Destroy the infidels who dare call us infidels!
But that's different. You saying they should get a "life". A life is where they do something different every day. Not the same thing everyday.
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Now say you give that monkey 10 attrubites. You get it an attack pattern, a run pattern, 2 eat patterns, a restroom pattern, a reproduction pattern, and 5 other misc things.
Now you have a fully functional very intelligent monkey. Only took you a few hours right?
Now do that for every diffrent type of creature in your game. All 1000 of them. That's a lot of cash that going to have to come out of someone's pocket. Now update them when the playerbase does something you didn't expect...But not with the origonal guy, with a new guy who dosen't know that part of the code yet.(Because the origonal guy left when the game went gold for a sweet job with SOE)
It CAN be done, but it takes a whole lot of work and money. A lot more than most venture caps are willing to spend....Easily add 4+ million to the dev cost of a game.
Now think about what else you could get for those millions. Easily hire 2 content guys for the cost of a guy smart enough to do the AI. How many quests could they add? How many new areas, or skills could be added? What's going to attract more players, smart banna-eating monkies or a dozen fantastic areas?
I'll rejoice at the day when all of these game dev's united and create the ultimate MMORPG.
All it'll take is companies like sony and Vivendi Universal (Vivendi is the parent company to a managerie of high-profile gaming companies. I believe sierra and Blizzard to name a few) to work together for an ideal MMORPG.
I think this MMORPG will be very unlike any other, most focus towards monster slaying, repetism, and what I like to call the "carebear syndrome."
I think it'd focus on freedom. There would be no limitations like, "You can't plant here. You can't kill this person here. Or cant go here."
But I think it'd be as such. The players would rule the world. You'd effect terrain, AI for monsters/animals would be similar to how they react in the real world. There would be massive or miniscule wars (clan wars. Wars within a clan. Betrayal. Wars of countries. Etc.) Uniting people. Or breaking them apart.
Murdering somone in their home. Or being a bounty hunter going after criminals.
Being a farmer that grows cabbage to feed people. Being a woodsman, hunting deer for food with your german shephard & bow. Cutting down tree's and selling it to a lumbermill. Planting tree's, watching them grow.
Etc.
It'd remove boundaries, it'd let the players be in control. Have a world of chaos, or order. Have a village of chaos or order. Have a desolate wasteland. Or a city in the tree's.
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
Why does everyone's ultimate MMORPG have to include unlimited PvP?
It's very unpopular all things considered.
You said it yourself. Unlimited. No limits.
Human competition is something thats been going on for thousands of years. People flourish when competing against another human.
Ancient Gladitorial fights, football, the Olympics. All have been very popular. And its all about beating the other guy.
And when including that in MMRPG's, the more freedom you give to it, the more possibilities. The best MMRPG that'll ever be created will include unlimited PvP. Because it'll end up being based around reality of the extent of limitless possibility.
You limit PvP, you limit the possibility of roleplaying. And to roleplay is to take on another persona then your own in a sense, to take on another role. You'll already see that the vets of MMRPG's will already are getting horridly sick with the bash monster grind that's been going on for about the past 14 or so years.
The reason being you still have games like EQ, or SWG that are popular is because MMRPG's is a relatively new market in the sense, and that it was usually very secluded from the general public and is just now making itself known.
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
Some people do, others do not. The vast majority of mankind is genetically incapable of winning the olympics, for instance, and only get discouraged when they try.
Women also tend to favor coorperation versus competition.
Typically people favor competition....when they can win. For that reason you see many PvPers steryotyped as young immature men....These are the types of people who are most prominent in "pk" games simply because those are the type of people who excell at them...and thus wish to take part in them. Mature young men don't spend all day playing computer games, and thus can't excell in them(As power is usually associated with playing long hours). Older men have jobs, families, ectera, and thus can't spend the time. Women tend to favor coorperation over conflict.
It's all about WATCHING someone who is CAPABLE of it beating the other guy. Such games wouldn't be nearly as popular if they required audiance participation...and the audiance always lost.
Would you like to play Shaqille O'Niel in basketball? Would you like to play him again? Would you like to play against him every single day and lose each and every time? How many times would he have to beat you before you got sick of it and stopped playing? That's how most people feel about MMORPGs with PvP because they can't afford to put in the time to get as powerful as the other guy, can't afford to make the connections to form a huge guild and find out all the exploits. Can't spend 12 hours tracking down the latest hacks.
You are stateing an opinion as fact. I just thought you'd like to know that you are an idiot for doing so:)
Have they really? Then why are all the successful games EQ clones? You are makeing things up here, and are a true moron for doing so. Cite your statistics please showing that the average MMORPG player is getting bored of the monster bash? Posts by a bunch of guys on a board don't count, they aren't representative at all of the general MMORPG population. Here's a little help for you, go to bartle, he'll have good statistics showing one way or the other.
Is that a fact? Please cite your survey compriseing at least 1000 participants randomly selected from the general MMORPG player pool. "I just know it in my gut." gets you jack and squat around here kiddo.
Another intresting note: Every single example of "human competition" you cited has rules. The rules are in place to make it more fair. Unlimited PVP is just that, unlimited, no rules.
Would the olympics be as much fun to watch if every single athlete was allowed to take as many drugs as they liked? Why not let a great ape compete? They'll beat the pants off any human player in any test of strength or speed. Would that be fun? Watching apes run the 100 for the worldwide gold?
Hell even the gladiators had rules. No killing the other player without the Overseer's permission. Diffrent very specfic sets of armor and weapons allowed to be used(Mantlet, Net-Man, ect). These things were all fun because they were based on rules.
A better example of unlimited PVP is War. Full-on outright old style rape-the-women and enslave the boys, kill all the men, use biological weapons, use chemical weapons, WAR. How much fun is war?
Edit: Hell man ever WAR has rules these days. How long do you think we'd be the world power if we had used nukes in Iraq? If we had gassed the fighters in the Al-Whatever mosque the other day? We got in enough trouble for killing a few innocents at al-garbe, imagine if we pulled out all the stops.
/rude
Carebear, the Friendlist Gamer Alive!
Carebear
*WoW = Level 60 Priest*
*EQ2 = Level 25 Druid*
I won't even bother typing out a lengthy response. Somone such as yourself that lacks the maturity or discipline to get in a debate and only ends up resorting to immature namecalling, or as somone around here likes to state it as argumentum ad hominem, is not worthy of a response.
Coming on these boards with lack of maturity will only get your posts deleted or ultimately banned.
If you want to get in a flamewar. Try the blizzard forums. Heard they're always looking for more of your type to "converse" with.
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
Lmao. A "Open PvP"er who can't handle a little grief?
I patiently explained how you were useing logical fallacies, then pointed out that you are rather stupid for doing so. (A logical assumption. Obviously you either never studied logic or debate or just like to lie and confuse.) Then point by point reduced your argument to a pile of rubble, and now you "won't debate with me because I am immature".....
That's actually another logical fallacy. When the going gets tough...You get going. Out of town:)
Taunting...Namecalling. Hrm. Anything else you'd like to add? Hey. Could go ahead and throw in maybe a couple threats. Obscene pictures. Gratuitous language.
I mean hey, your on the train, and you obviously don't want to stop. So just keep on bumpin up the speed!
Choo...choo.
See, you wonder why I don't debate with you. Its because there is two sayings, one, "Don't argue with a fool, for lest he lowers you down to his level and beats you with experience" and, "DON'T FEED THE TROLL."
So this'll be my last post on this topic regarding you. Have fun!
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
Yet another logical fallacy:)
You are now resorting to name calling and insulting my charecter. By this you hope that people will see me as a lesser person, and therefore see my arguments as invalid.
You REALLY need to take a debate class. Might I suggest a community college?:)
Whoa, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to start an argument. I went to the movies and couldn't wait to get back to see what everyone wrote about the AI of mobs, wasn't expecting this though.
Anyways, I went to the movie with four of my buddy's who also play online games. They all agreed, the AI needs some major overhauling.
I just think the creativity level is lacking. And heck, I'd work for one of these gaming companies to give them ideas very cheap. I'd want to do it just for the fun of it all.
Destroy the infidels who dare call us infidels!