Difficulty of the AI

Bennu

I tried Vanguard a few months, but it was the tutorial area. I know there is no PvP to keep me for the long run. I'm wondering how "smart" the AI is. I think back to GW1. The mobs there changed tactics throughout a fight, ran out of AoE, etc. The chance of failure on a quests was high (well to me at least). How comparable is the AI to this scenario? I'm thinking more of leveling up not so much the raids/dungeons.

olepi

I'd say the AI is pretty good, especially on the higher level mobs. Healers will stop attacking and heal themselves, mobs will run away before dying, etc.

One of the main features of Vanguard is that dungeons are almost always full of multiple mobs, so that a solo player will probably never get to see them. It requires a team to really explore most dungeons.

 

Bennu

I'm all for difficult mobs that force grouping. I've never been a big dungeon kind of player. I can do a dungeon a few times but to do it over and over again for the best gear drove me nuts. If mobs have this kind of behavior, I can see myself having fun with it.

 

By higher level mobs, what level are you talking about?

olepi

There are two things that determine the mob:

- level, of course, and

- number of "dots"

A 2-dot mob is typical, and they won't do much except just fight you. A 3-dot mob will have some special abilities. A 4-dot mob will be difficult for a solo player, and they will have more abilities. 5-6 dot mobs are very tough and will have more abilities.

You will encounter 3-dots at fairly low levels, say 10-15.

Also, there are various "resists" that mobs have, so a life-tap spell might work very well on some mobs, and fail a lot on others.

boojiboy

Originally posted by Bennu

I'm all for difficult mobs that force grouping. I've never been a big dungeon kind of player. I can do a dungeon a few times but to do it over and over again for the best gear drove me nuts. If mobs have this kind of behavior, I can see myself having fun with it.

 

By higher level mobs, what level are you talking about?

Well, if we are talking raid mobs, I think Vanguard has the best raid encounters of any MMO I've ever played, hands-down.  Also, the variety of raid ecnounters is very impressive requiring different strategies, tactics, raid make-up, etc.

Also, dungeons in Vanguard are at a whole different level that most MMOs.  Take all the dungeons in Rift and combine them into one, they still probably wouldn't equal the nice of Nusibe in Vanguard.  Dungeon crawls in Vanguard live up to the term, Dungeon Crawls. 

So in the end, higher level mobs, could be solo encounters, group, raid (12-man, 24-man), quest lines such as the Griffon Quest which has an increasing difficult set of encounters and quests to get by.

allegria

Originally posted by Bennu

I'm all for difficult mobs that force grouping. I've never been a big dungeon kind of player. I can do a dungeon a few times but to do it over and over again for the best gear drove me nuts. If mobs have this kind of behavior, I can see myself having fun with it.

 

By higher level mobs, what level are you talking about?

One thing about vanguard... dungeons are not linear for the mostpart... so returning to a dungeon area rarely results in repetition like in your typical MMO today.