Then you'd have forcded group for the most part and in essence no game at all, because no one is going to play a game where you're forced to team up just to advance.
That is a very broad statement, it should be changed to most everyone is not going to play that.
I for one love to group and don't mind forced grouping, as a matter of fact I, want to be in a party most of the time when I play a game, thats why I played FFXI for 3 years. Im only playing WoW right now because family is playing, Hopefully Square Enix new MMO if it ever comes out has a lot of grouping in it.
Games that have a lot of grouping are fun to me, I meet new people time goes by fast because your BSing with people so the game don't seem like a grind to me. Like in FFXI, we'd be camped at the same place for hours grinding mobs but it didn't feel like a grind because I had people to talk to. In WoW I feel so alone even though there are people everywhere, its because nobody really groups unless your doing a dungeon, and then as soon as your done some people quit right away. Not even a thanks for the group guys you want to go somewhere else. They are gone like cockroaches scattering away when you turn the lights on.
But to be on topic about AI, some games do have horrible AI but every once in a while I see some good AI.. Even in WoW, I was fighting 3 mobs with my hunter and they were all attacking my pet then out of nowhere a guy stopped hitting my pet came to me cast some root spell on me and went back to fighting my pet. It wasn't even the guy I was attacking either, which is cool to me.
But I think developers should make AI more difficult give a challenge to the gamers that want one. If people quit playing their game because its to hard then oh well, devs should make the game they want not what the in crowd wants. Its just like music, I respect bands that make music they like not what the in crowd or label wants. Thats where good true music comes from not some pretty blonde dressed all sexy that can sing with the help of Auto tune.
Same goes for games, the truely great games come from devs that do what they want not what everyone else wants. EvE for instance is a great game, its just not my cup of tea, I just cant sit and stare at a ship all day. it's not as popular as WoW but its a amazing game. WoW is an ok game, there are things I could do without like all the hand holding but, its just a popular because it appeals to more people, but the most popular does not = best.
Personally, I think the AI in games nowadays need a lot of work. Do you think so? And how important is the AI in a game?
You have to remember, mobs are meant to be killed. In games where one needs to get experience to level up, the mobs just act as a way to meter out that leveling time.
They are essentially "leveling power-ups).
So no real effort is put into their AI.
If mobs were more like some of those early quake bots (there could be fps shooter bots now but my only experience was with the early quake bots) where its purpose was to defeat you then leveling would take a lot longer and people would get frustrated.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
If A F2P outdated Korean grindgame can get interesting AI(Mabinogi). I seriously see no reason my Western developers can't, though I can see plenty of reasons why they see they don't need to in this thread.
As a matter of fact in Mabinogi you even have players scripting their own AI for pets which shows just how much control the devs do have over it. Lets see the game is also set up so that a level 10 person can easily be better than a level 130 total person in combat.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Originally posted by AllNewMMOSuk MMO = thousands to even tens of thousands or creatures that need to run AI processes every second = advanced AI will bring the system to its knees and kill the game.
*sighs and rolls eyes*
The basic technology for AIs are swarm based, so it's not as much of a CPU load as you want to pretend it to be. Yes, it would mean more memory requirements, but it's probably lower than adding more overhead for 20,000 players on the same logical server (as you can see that CCP had to create a networked supercomputer just to get everyone to exist on one shard/logical-server). So I stop being a naysayer and study some of the facts before posting again. :-P
I think you kind of hit the nail on the head there......at least with regards to todays mmos anyway. Mobs in mmos are really nothing more than walking bags of exp whose only purpose is to "feed" each individual players growth. They are there to be killed......and easily too because most gamers have a low level of patience and tolerance. If they get beaten too often they will give up and migrate to a game where it is easier to experience that false sense of achievement and victory. This means less customers for a game and less money for the games company. In other words the more intelligent a game is, the less people will play it. I think this is a very sad state of affairs as there are plenty of ways to design a game that could handle clever AI. You gave an example above of how every creature in a zone would team up to defeat the players. This isnt neccessarily true.......not if the creatures were programmed with "realistic" AI.......because in that case undead wouldnt team up with wolves, giant spiders wouldnt side with killer bunnies and so on. They would be more focused on holding onto their territories.....and expanding when certain conditions had been met. Certain sentient creatures however might form alliances with others if they felt threatened but this would be entirely situational and if the AI was good then these creatures would be able to react accordingly. It doesnt mean that all the mobs would hunt down all the players because they wouldnt be able to differentiate between a player and another mob which might also be a threat to it. The same would apply to the players too, who could ally themselves with other suitable player factions or even some of the mobs in an area. This is something that never seems to happen in mmos, where players can become friendly and allied to certain npc creatures while other players might remain as enemies to those creatures. It could lead to some pretty interesting conflicts with (for example) the player controlled Orc race attempting to lead the nearby npc goblin tribes against the player controlled Dwarf nation.......who in turn have managed to gain allies from from some stone elementals they encountered. With decent AI it would be possible for once for players to have a genuine choice over how they want to roleplay their character as they woudlnt have to kill everything in sight simply because the game says they must. They could attempt to befriend those npc creatures instead......although not always of course. Those shambling undead probably wont pay much attention to your attempts at diplomacy. Neither will a hungry pack of wolves.......although they might if the right kind of player attempted it. Equally those undead might be susceptible to the manipulations of a group of powerful necromancer players. The potential for almost endless variety in an open gameworld like this would be immense........then again the potential for massive errors would also be pretty high too......so who knows. On top of that remove damned experience levels and give players other incentives for playing a game such as.....oh I dont know.......because its fun and involving perhaps? Because its a ROLEPLAYING game where people can come online to PLAY the ROLE of a particular character. Its a shocking thought I know lol
Then you'd have forcded group for the most part and in essence no game at all, because no one is going to play a game where you're forced to team up just to advance. Also, it IS fun destroying critters. It is NOT fun being wasted by them constantly unless you form a group to take them on like old EQ or DAOC. You see FUN can be had both ways. Thats what dungeons and elite style areas are for. They offer alternatives. If you want better AI thats designed to kick your butt, you go someplace that is designed to be challenging. If you just want to casually advance at your own pace, you go kill some bunnies;) Forcing everything to be so dangerous that you have to have friends around at all times is not always fun.
Besides, too much smart AI just leads to more world problems and of course all the feasiblity, balance problems and so forth that goes into having mobs killing eachother off on their own or doing their own thing. Its simply not worth the risk for a reward of an extremely unpredictible mob system that most players in the end really don't want. You don't make games according to "wouldn't it be cool". You make games accoriding to "will it work or won't it." Ryzome apprently has some decent mob AI and you know what...its 100X more boring. Then again, in most cases these smart mobs didn't seem any smarter than those in WOW that are scripted to be smart or stupid. Thats all AI is. A series of scripts. Its never really intelligence=)
I'll admit WAR has taken bad AI to a new low. Thats not a direction we need to go. The PvE was trully boring in that game. But something like WOW wasn't as stupified. There was good variety and plenty of challenge to be had if you chose to pursue it.
I do totally get what you're saying but it seems to me that you have read my post and then immediatly gone back to thinking in terms of what every other mmo has offered. I was trying to get away from all that. What I was trying to describe was a potential idea for how intelligent AI could possibly be used in an mmo.......an mmo which has not been seen yet.
Forced grouping? Not at all. That depends on the situation that arises.......and if the AI of various creatures in the game is clever enough then those situations will be varied and could occur at any time. At some point in the games life there may for example come a time when a large rampaging mob of Orcs (npcs) decides to attack a particular player settlement. Do they rally together to fight off the Orcs? Or do they all flee and try and decide what to do next? Nothing is "forced". Every player has a choice to do what they want. However there would be consequences or rewards for the players actions. If they rally together and fight then they may save the settlement and deplete the Orc population for some time. If they flee then they will lose the settlement but may be able to re-group and retake the settlement at a later time. With awesome AI situations like this could be possible......maybe no today but possibly in the (near?) future.
Yes it is fun killing critters. It is also fun knowing that those critters can organise themselves and take initiative. It is fun playing in a realistic and immersive gameworld......something which currently doesnt exist. You say it is not fun getting wasted by monsters all the time? Well.......then you DO something about it. Organise people. Get together and fight back! That would afterall be the point of playing a game online with thousands of other people right? But try to realise that NOTHING is being forced on people because everyone has the option to react to any situation in any way they choose......and actually it would be a LOT more fun if (for example) you defeated those rampaging Orcs and saved your own settlement which your fellow players put time and effort into building. Now THAT would be fun for me and I'm pretty sure plenty of other people would find it pretty exciting too. Try and remember that I'm not talking about some static mmo where all the content is laid out for the players to plough their way through like some single player game. I'm thinking of an mmo where the game world is constantly changing.
Players would also be totally free to go roaming on their own too because in a game like this there would be no restrictions. For example if that player settlement was being well run by players then I imagine there would be people scouting the area around it to keep a check on potential hazards (such as an incoming horde of angry Orcs) so that they could warn the settlement in due time. Other players might like the thrill of trying to survive alone in the wilderness. This wouldnt be a game which is "solo friendly" or "group friendly" as those definitions only apply to the pre-planned mmos which we already have. It would be unpredictable and I'm sure for a large number of people this would be very appealing. There would be no real way of knowing exactly what will happen at any place or point in time.......just like in real life.
Of course there will always be people who complain because they want restricted gameplay with less choice, less freedom and less risk and thats fine because there will always be other more simplistic games to play with weaker AI that follow the mainstream game design ideas that we have been seeing over and over again for the past 10 years. Afterall these are cheap, easy and safe (relatively speaking of course) games to make so they will always be around.
You say you dont make games because "It would be cool" and instead only make them based on "It would work". Actually.....a good games developer would make a game for both reasons actually. Is this game cool? Does this game work? A "yes" to both of these means its a good game right?
Finally you said "no one is going to play a game where you're forced to team up just to advance". Well to say NO-ONE will play a game like that is a bit far fetched dont you think? But thats besides the point because like I already said no-one would be forced to do anything they dont want to do......as long as they accept that there may be consequences for certain actions.......or there might not be as who knows whats going to happen in a game like this. Also people who can only get satisfaction from an mmo by going up levels or increasing the stats of their character might not enjoy a game like this as this would be a bit more like a sim than anything else. Advancement can be measured in terms of the achievements made by the community as a whole and not just on an individual level. I would personally find the idea of being part of a project to build a fortified settlement, building a bridge across a chasm, forming good relations with the nearby hill trolls (mobs dont just have to be lined up for the slaughter ya know) or whatever to be a far more rewarding form of advancement than just watching a number increase on my character sheet simply because I have killed "generic walking exp bag number 756".
I am well aware that all of this sounds far fetched and there are LOTS and LOTS of potential for things to go massively wrong. I also know that a game like this probably wont be seen for a long time (actually there IS a game that follows a similar idea to this but its name eludes me). Afterall most people cant even think past the idea of an mmo without "endgame" content or a "tank class" or "levels and loot". But games WILL move on and eventually we will all look back at the games of today and think "What the hell were we playing?!". It will be like looking back at the days of the first computers.......which actually wasnt all that long ago......and considering the rate at which technology is advancing what I have described might not be that far away afterall.
Anyway its just some ideas. Feel free to say its all totally impossible and it will never ever happen cos EVERYONE wants to kill raid bosses and farm phat loot lol
Play Mabinogi. Best MMO AI, and Best combat system. Game requires thought and its been released since 2003. If you can get around the point and click, cartoon graphics, and expensive pricing its an excellent game.
Comments
Then you'd have forcded group for the most part and in essence no game at all, because no one is going to play a game where you're forced to team up just to advance.
That is a very broad statement, it should be changed to most everyone is not going to play that.
I for one love to group and don't mind forced grouping, as a matter of fact I, want to be in a party most of the time when I play a game, thats why I played FFXI for 3 years. Im only playing WoW right now because family is playing, Hopefully Square Enix new MMO if it ever comes out has a lot of grouping in it.
Games that have a lot of grouping are fun to me, I meet new people time goes by fast because your BSing with people so the game don't seem like a grind to me. Like in FFXI, we'd be camped at the same place for hours grinding mobs but it didn't feel like a grind because I had people to talk to. In WoW I feel so alone even though there are people everywhere, its because nobody really groups unless your doing a dungeon, and then as soon as your done some people quit right away. Not even a thanks for the group guys you want to go somewhere else. They are gone like cockroaches scattering away when you turn the lights on.
But to be on topic about AI, some games do have horrible AI but every once in a while I see some good AI.. Even in WoW, I was fighting 3 mobs with my hunter and they were all attacking my pet then out of nowhere a guy stopped hitting my pet came to me cast some root spell on me and went back to fighting my pet. It wasn't even the guy I was attacking either, which is cool to me.
But I think developers should make AI more difficult give a challenge to the gamers that want one. If people quit playing their game because its to hard then oh well, devs should make the game they want not what the in crowd wants. Its just like music, I respect bands that make music they like not what the in crowd or label wants. Thats where good true music comes from not some pretty blonde dressed all sexy that can sing with the help of Auto tune.
Same goes for games, the truely great games come from devs that do what they want not what everyone else wants. EvE for instance is a great game, its just not my cup of tea, I just cant sit and stare at a ship all day. it's not as popular as WoW but its a amazing game. WoW is an ok game, there are things I could do without like all the hand holding but, its just a popular because it appeals to more people, but the most popular does not = best.
Ok sorry for all the rambles....... im done now.
You have to remember, mobs are meant to be killed. In games where one needs to get experience to level up, the mobs just act as a way to meter out that leveling time.
They are essentially "leveling power-ups).
So no real effort is put into their AI.
If mobs were more like some of those early quake bots (there could be fps shooter bots now but my only experience was with the early quake bots) where its purpose was to defeat you then leveling would take a lot longer and people would get frustrated.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Nope. AI is hard and hardware intensive.
If A F2P outdated Korean grindgame can get interesting AI(Mabinogi). I seriously see no reason my Western developers can't, though I can see plenty of reasons why they see they don't need to in this thread.
As a matter of fact in Mabinogi you even have players scripting their own AI for pets which shows just how much control the devs do have over it. Lets see the game is also set up so that a level 10 person can easily be better than a level 130 total person in combat.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
The basic technology for AIs are swarm based, so it's not as much of a CPU load as you want to pretend it to be. Yes, it would mean more memory requirements, but it's probably lower than adding more overhead for 20,000 players on the same logical server (as you can see that CCP had to create a networked supercomputer just to get everyone to exist on one shard/logical-server). So I stop being a naysayer and study some of the facts before posting again. :-P
Then you'd have forcded group for the most part and in essence no game at all, because no one is going to play a game where you're forced to team up just to advance. Also, it IS fun destroying critters. It is NOT fun being wasted by them constantly unless you form a group to take them on like old EQ or DAOC. You see FUN can be had both ways. Thats what dungeons and elite style areas are for. They offer alternatives. If you want better AI thats designed to kick your butt, you go someplace that is designed to be challenging. If you just want to casually advance at your own pace, you go kill some bunnies;) Forcing everything to be so dangerous that you have to have friends around at all times is not always fun.
Besides, too much smart AI just leads to more world problems and of course all the feasiblity, balance problems and so forth that goes into having mobs killing eachother off on their own or doing their own thing. Its simply not worth the risk for a reward of an extremely unpredictible mob system that most players in the end really don't want. You don't make games according to "wouldn't it be cool". You make games accoriding to "will it work or won't it." Ryzome apprently has some decent mob AI and you know what...its 100X more boring. Then again, in most cases these smart mobs didn't seem any smarter than those in WOW that are scripted to be smart or stupid. Thats all AI is. A series of scripts. Its never really intelligence=)
I'll admit WAR has taken bad AI to a new low. Thats not a direction we need to go. The PvE was trully boring in that game. But something like WOW wasn't as stupified. There was good variety and plenty of challenge to be had if you chose to pursue it.
I do totally get what you're saying but it seems to me that you have read my post and then immediatly gone back to thinking in terms of what every other mmo has offered. I was trying to get away from all that. What I was trying to describe was a potential idea for how intelligent AI could possibly be used in an mmo.......an mmo which has not been seen yet.
Forced grouping? Not at all. That depends on the situation that arises.......and if the AI of various creatures in the game is clever enough then those situations will be varied and could occur at any time. At some point in the games life there may for example come a time when a large rampaging mob of Orcs (npcs) decides to attack a particular player settlement. Do they rally together to fight off the Orcs? Or do they all flee and try and decide what to do next? Nothing is "forced". Every player has a choice to do what they want. However there would be consequences or rewards for the players actions. If they rally together and fight then they may save the settlement and deplete the Orc population for some time. If they flee then they will lose the settlement but may be able to re-group and retake the settlement at a later time. With awesome AI situations like this could be possible......maybe no today but possibly in the (near?) future.
Yes it is fun killing critters. It is also fun knowing that those critters can organise themselves and take initiative. It is fun playing in a realistic and immersive gameworld......something which currently doesnt exist. You say it is not fun getting wasted by monsters all the time? Well.......then you DO something about it. Organise people. Get together and fight back! That would afterall be the point of playing a game online with thousands of other people right? But try to realise that NOTHING is being forced on people because everyone has the option to react to any situation in any way they choose......and actually it would be a LOT more fun if (for example) you defeated those rampaging Orcs and saved your own settlement which your fellow players put time and effort into building. Now THAT would be fun for me and I'm pretty sure plenty of other people would find it pretty exciting too. Try and remember that I'm not talking about some static mmo where all the content is laid out for the players to plough their way through like some single player game. I'm thinking of an mmo where the game world is constantly changing.
Players would also be totally free to go roaming on their own too because in a game like this there would be no restrictions. For example if that player settlement was being well run by players then I imagine there would be people scouting the area around it to keep a check on potential hazards (such as an incoming horde of angry Orcs) so that they could warn the settlement in due time. Other players might like the thrill of trying to survive alone in the wilderness. This wouldnt be a game which is "solo friendly" or "group friendly" as those definitions only apply to the pre-planned mmos which we already have. It would be unpredictable and I'm sure for a large number of people this would be very appealing. There would be no real way of knowing exactly what will happen at any place or point in time.......just like in real life.
Of course there will always be people who complain because they want restricted gameplay with less choice, less freedom and less risk and thats fine because there will always be other more simplistic games to play with weaker AI that follow the mainstream game design ideas that we have been seeing over and over again for the past 10 years. Afterall these are cheap, easy and safe (relatively speaking of course) games to make so they will always be around.
You say you dont make games because "It would be cool" and instead only make them based on "It would work". Actually.....a good games developer would make a game for both reasons actually. Is this game cool? Does this game work? A "yes" to both of these means its a good game right?
Finally you said "no one is going to play a game where you're forced to team up just to advance". Well to say NO-ONE will play a game like that is a bit far fetched dont you think? But thats besides the point because like I already said no-one would be forced to do anything they dont want to do......as long as they accept that there may be consequences for certain actions.......or there might not be as who knows whats going to happen in a game like this. Also people who can only get satisfaction from an mmo by going up levels or increasing the stats of their character might not enjoy a game like this as this would be a bit more like a sim than anything else. Advancement can be measured in terms of the achievements made by the community as a whole and not just on an individual level. I would personally find the idea of being part of a project to build a fortified settlement, building a bridge across a chasm, forming good relations with the nearby hill trolls (mobs dont just have to be lined up for the slaughter ya know) or whatever to be a far more rewarding form of advancement than just watching a number increase on my character sheet simply because I have killed "generic walking exp bag number 756".
I am well aware that all of this sounds far fetched and there are LOTS and LOTS of potential for things to go massively wrong. I also know that a game like this probably wont be seen for a long time (actually there IS a game that follows a similar idea to this but its name eludes me). Afterall most people cant even think past the idea of an mmo without "endgame" content or a "tank class" or "levels and loot". But games WILL move on and eventually we will all look back at the games of today and think "What the hell were we playing?!". It will be like looking back at the days of the first computers.......which actually wasnt all that long ago......and considering the rate at which technology is advancing what I have described might not be that far away afterall.
Anyway its just some ideas. Feel free to say its all totally impossible and it will never ever happen cos EVERYONE wants to kill raid bosses and farm phat loot lol
Play Mabinogi. Best MMO AI, and Best combat system. Game requires thought and its been released since 2003. If you can get around the point and click, cartoon graphics, and expensive pricing its an excellent game.