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Why are we killing rats?
wisesquirrel
Member UncommonPosts: 282
Yay my first thread complaining about something, keep posts constructive people ;p.
Why are we killing rats, frog, flies, yaks?
They are all harmless spawns which in most cases ignore you until you attack them just because some guy standing there doing nothing told you...kill 10 rats, and tells another guy the same thing 5 seconds later.
Now you go kill the spider / rat / bunny / bear / boar / squirrel / bee, it ignores you and stays in one place....pretty boring, you attack it, the thing suddenly goes mad and charges at you at full speed as if it were a bull instead of running away, imagine a bunny attacking you...lol.
Then the combat (This is another topic but it also kinda makes you think), you take a turn swing your sword / firing an arrow /casting a spell in front of the bunny then he launches his body towards you and slides back into positions, the you attack it again until he dies, now all the mobs that are 5 meters away from you are like if nothing happened.
It would be nice if the bunny would maybe run away from you at sight, or hide in the bushes, if you attack a bull, make all of the surrounding creatures either gang up on you or run away (Or maybe a Mix), have flying creatures take off and come back down when your a little farther, have the mobs not be all over the place, have them move and think, do not have them slaughtered just because the NPCs want them specifically dead or for their ears.
In the classic RP games where you used dice you didn't fight mobs because of this, you weren't told to kill 10 mobs to thin outl the population (I have seen this quest in so many games) or to get revenge (I once got a quest in which a POOR man who LOST his home sent you to kill TWENTY ORCS (They were huge) for revenge and actually gave you sufficient money and weapons which he could have used to make himself a new home.
In these games you fought because they came right at you, because they were trying to keep you away from completing your objective (Assassinations, retrieve something from a keep). mobs aren't dumb either, they should have the ability to reason with their evil "kill the adventurer" instinct through his "survival instinct" to run away, hide, call for help, beg for forgiveness (For those pesky outlaws and bandits which might give you a map or something).
Mobs AI is potentially what will practically change our way of thinking towards these "kill" quests, it would be nice to play an MMO in which character behavior made sense.
And why do they respawn so soon?, 5 minutes isn't exactly my idea of reasonable (That's enough time to attack you from behind while your attacking a neighboring mob), maybe respawning after 10 minutes would be fine.
What are your thoughts on this, ideas you have to fix this?
Comments
We're killing rats because there are too damned many of them and their population needs to drop dramatically.
Check out the MUD I'm making!
I don't have the answer on how to improve a mob to kill but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a rat to kill for a reward (xp, lootable items etc...) is just as good killing a zombie, knight warrior, ladiebug, etc...
If you don't kill the rats they will loot all the good loot before you can.
Jam is sticky.
I think we need to "fix" all wild-life. It has become widely known that they are sporadically increasing in size and instead of killing them off, we should "fix" them all so that they may never have offspring again. This would help reduce wild-life across the board in all new MMOs to come and thus solving the problem of having to reduce population numbers.
Using the method provided above, we can move on to bigger and larger creatures such as the goblin or troll so that we may continue to get "massive lewts".
Vote yes on Prop 5701 today!
"IRL is a pretty upstanding MMO with thousands of classes, a lot of PvP and even some pretty unique emotes and titles you can acquire. Explore that world first, then we'll talk about this virtual one."
No! You need a stable % population of trolls or else the internets becomes boring. What you really need to happen is train the rats as ninjas causing them to be a more formidable and lucrative enemy while at the same time you gain ninjas which, lets face it, make anything awesome.
Will also cause nostalgia about splinter from the turtles yadyadayada......
Jam is sticky.
Nice, I inmediatelly get 6 joke responses.
Humor is good but someone please respond seriously
Basically? Because except for the graphics, games, especially MMORPGS, haven't evolved much from the "keep eating dots until they are all gone, and watch out for the ghosts" days and neither have a large percentage of the player base.
I have a couple of ways to fix this one, wait ten years until computer technology advances far enough that game developers with true vision and talent can make some really sophisticated and entertaining games. OR figure out a way to make current game developers stop creating shyte games targeting the lowest common denominator. There is no real point in putting forth the effort of making a truly innovative game when the biggest part of your player base if deprived of their leveling treadmill of a game, would be just as happy to spend their entire day lighting ants on fire with a magnifying glass, eating their own feces, and/or masturbating.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Oh yeah...can see that quest now.
"Here is a small knife....now go up behind that bull and 'fix' em up real good."
Oh yeah...can see that quest now.
"Here is a small knife....now go up behind that bull and 'fix' em up real good."
Old MacDonald had a FarMMO
... e-i-e-i-o...
Coming Q3 2011
Oh yeah...can see that quest now.
"Here is a small knife....now go up behind that bull and 'fix' em up real good."
No way dude, you gotta use your teeth. Haven't you seen that Dirty Jobs episode?
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
We kill rats because it reminds us of the old days of killing bats around something that kinda looked like a small stonehenge in EQ. I don't know, I'm still trying to figure out why they're sending me to kill Harpies living in a place nobody with a brain would want to step foot in. I got killing the orcs in EQ, they had a town, we wanted it, what the heck do the harpies have besides having to deal with giant reptiles and little walking bon fires? But I can live with killing the harpies or rats or whatever as long as I can collect their heads if I can see their heads. Tired of killing birds who are attacking me with their beaks when apparently I can't take them after they don't need em anymore!
Played in some form:
UO til tram, AC, EQ, AO, WW2O, PS, SB, CoH, AC2, Hor, LoTRO, DDO, AoC, Aion, CO, STO
Playing: WoW (for gf), WAR
Waiting For: SWTOR, FFXVI
Hoping For: DCUO, Secret World, Earthrise
-S- (UO Sonoma)
You are worrying too much. I have just come from an article on here where the EU is trying to enforce political correctness on our gaming behaviour for the sanctimonious reason of human rights. How long before animal rights need to taken into consideration too? We won’t be able to kill those rats because they have feelings, the poor darlings.
So get online and kill those rats now, before the EU forces MMO’s to change those quest to one where you round up all the rats and put them in a rat sanctuary!
I also hate having to kill animas that are minding their own business. If you make me kill something, give me a good reason.
About mobs not reacting in a logical way, it's because devs don't give a damn about making the game a bit more realistic. We have the same AI we had 10 years ago.
Well you are killing rats and poinntless creatures because game dev's have no imagination anymore. There are a couple of games that seem to be trying to implement creature AI so that the creature runs, moves in herds, group up, etc. My problem is why even have those stupid quests in the first place. There should only be quests in MMO's for a couple reasons i.e. point you in the right direction in game, maybe for dungeons, or even a good reason for FFA PvP or faction PvP.
Either way we need to get away from this form of the MMO, the go kill X amount of wolves or go collect 10 flowers or some bs. Why can't you just have maybe some tutorial quests and then some to point your ass where to go next or something. The corrent form of the MMO is just disappointing, everything is just a WoW or EQ clone. We need a game that can take what's good from the old games like UO or EQ and then do something completely fresh.
The apparent answer is of course it's a cheap and simple way for a developer to keep people playing and paying a MMO. You can fill a MMO world much easier with 20000 kill X amount of Y than with meaningful stuff. Personally, I am SO tired of it myself.
There are only very few exception that do make sense. Like killing Crebain crows in LOTRO, because they are the eyes of the enemy in Tolkien lore.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Good question.
Rats are the necessary victims, the scapegoat.
The thing is an NPC wants to give us items and wants to give us 3000 xp. There had to be something to kill. Rats came up first.
Without rats we would have to go kill real people to train... or maybe dummies in gymrooms. Yeah it would be better, imo.
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And even that doesn't really make sense. Once you kill them he is going to know where you are. "Ouch my eyes my ears!! Bleeping heroes are running around Weathertop again!! Go and slay them!!"
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Killing rats has become a staple, and was lampooned long ago in The Bard's Tale; where you are sent to kill rats and get torched by a giant one. I would take that an extra step with the thing from Aliens bursting through a wall as soon as you kill the first one.
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Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
That's why I killed Gnomes in WoW. Well, that and they are tasty.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
You are basically asking developers to code intelligent UI on a massive scale. Since its possible to create npc's that could react a little more intelligently, I'm going to assume it is more cost efficient not to.
At the core, MMORPG's have a problem that single player games don't, they are infested with thousands of people who think they are hero's. If the game world was more realistic, everyone would have to start off as peasants, shopkeepers, farmers, craffters and every other sort of commoner and be forced to work their way up to a position of lordship worthy of sending out on an epic quest journey.
Think of the classic, Lord of the Rings, other than Gandalf, (who was only a "gray" wizard) who else in the fellowship had a really great job before the big journey. Frodo, Samwise and the other hobbits, simple farmers/crafters, Aragorn and some others lived a simple life as Rangers (hunting and trapping I presume) and the dwarf most certainly was a common miner. Sure, a few humans were sons of Kings or Lords, but not many.
Since few people would want to work their way up to hero status, the game world has to be populated with thousands of quests for them to experience. They have to respawn, so that everyone kills the 100 rats, saves the princess, wipes out the Orc town, and evenutally, all must kill the dragon lord.
Its almost impossible to come up with a reasonable design when there's so many hero's running around, so you get what's been delivered to us so far.
SwTOR promised to provided more story oriented content, but in the end, 100,000 of us will experience the exact same experience.
I see only one real solution to the issue, and most people don't like it. The sandbox style game where the real story is the one the players themselves create. EVE continues to amaze me in this regard, because even though I'm still running the same missions for the past 2.5 years, the other parts I've been part of, (several of my corps/alliances were wiped from existence, I helped build 3 stations in 0.0 that will stand for all time, I've been part of merc corps that terrorized empire space and I've battled mercs to the death)
No AI can truly be developed to accommodate the thousand of heroes, so only a sandbox type environment will ever be truly engaging over the long term.
But hey, the largest MMO's in the world all have players running inane quests and killing rats, so who's to say developers are wrong to build them that way?
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Because players refuse to keep themselves occupied with things other than questing between the really good quests. So devs add all of the kill x quests to keep you occupied.
God forbid we organize a player event and figure out different ways to have fun. I mean people ask devs to hold their hand from character creation to endgame, why are you suprised when they respond with garbage gameplay.
My sig is just as logical as your posts are
Lol.
If this was my thread, I'd have my answer.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
in lotro wolves, rats and crows are saurans minions...so that game is sticking it to the lore! keepin it real and so on
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Darkfall just implemented wildlife. Man, those deer/foxes/bighorns/badgers run like crack addicts after a smoking pipe once you hit them. And there's no hit and jump back into the spot where you just stood stuff either. Definitely not a game for everyone, but it's not a tab-target, 3-button spam, eat-a-sandwich-and-take-a-dump-at-the-same-time kind of game either. Wow, that's a lot of dashes. And I'm hungry now.
Lol.
If this was my thread, I'd have my answer.
Because game design isn't about creating games people like, it's about satisfying the ultra-niche. Right?
(So this is what it's like being a rebel against good game design. It feels odd. Sort of like my ideas aren't entirely thought out, but it doesn't matter because I'm a rebel. I'm allowed to be vague and criticize the system even though I have no clear solutions (and my unclear solutions are status quo in disguise.))
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver