we have to wait for decades or a century before we can have human level AI
Not really. It isn't missing because they can't do it, it's missing because players don't want it. It would frustrate the crap out of half the playerbase and kick the ass of the other half.
Some basic rules they could follow that would require minimal processing
If helath is low, then run away or, better yet, recall out.
If PC is fighting mob and low on health, attack PC.
If mob next to me is getting attacked, jump in to help.
If we have buddies around, call them all into battle to kick the PC's ass.
The tank is harmless. Ignore him. Kill the support and damage dealer. (After the rest of the PCs are dead, remaining mobs do a point and laugh emote at the tank and then walk away.)
Loot dead PCs
These are extremely basic rules. Even something as basic as this would turn most MMO gamers on their head.
This is my thinking on it as well. At first when reading I thought it could be interesting, but then reading the OP's line about the NPCs going after weaker players, figured that as with real humans the potential for NPC driven gankfests would be enormous.
we have to wait for decades or a century before we can have human level AI
Not really. It isn't missing because they can't do it, it's missing because players don't want it. It would frustrate the crap out of half the playerbase and kick the ass of the other half.
Some basic rules they could follow that would require minimal processing
If helath is low, then run away or, better yet, recall out.
If PC is fighting mob and low on health, attack PC.
If mob next to me is getting attacked, jump in to help.
If we have buddies around, call them all into battle to kick the PC's ass.
The tank is harmless. Ignore him. Kill the support and damage dealer. (After the rest of the PCs are dead, remaining mobs do a point and laugh emote at the tank and then walk away.)
Loot dead PCs
These are extremely basic rules. Even something as basic as this would turn most MMO gamers on their head.
This is my thinking on it as well. At first when reading I thought it could be interesting, but then reading the OP's line about the NPCs going after weaker players, figured that as with real humans the potential for NPC driven gankfests would be enormous.
Not necessarily but you have to remove the classic tank.
If your melee classes make a shield wall between the mobs and the weaker players then you have a mechanism to prevent ganking the mage/healers. It does require collision detection and the idea of a line of players forming an impassable barrier.
Improving mob AI does mean changing the game mechanics, both have to change together,.
Ryzom has probably the best creature AI. In that game, a creature will come up to you, sniff you, and then pee on your leg.
Herds migrate according to season, carnivores hunt herbivores, and even the harvesting resources are based on the season.
Mabinogi *** A FREE TO PLAY GAME *** has the best pet animations.
I'm not sure if I would call it AI. Yes, my dog does respond to my moves and in a number of different ways. But after a while I can count the possible ways he might respond. For it to be counted as AI maybe there needs to be a set number of spontaneity and responses somewhere in the 50's or above???
we have to wait for decades or a century before we can have human level AI
Not really. It isn't missing because they can't do it, it's missing because players don't want it. It would frustrate the crap out of half the playerbase and kick the ass of the other half.
Some basic rules they could follow that would require minimal processing
If helath is low, then run away or, better yet, recall out.
If PC is fighting mob and low on health, attack PC.
If mob next to me is getting attacked, jump in to help.
If we have buddies around, call them all into battle to kick the PC's ass.
The tank is harmless. Ignore him. Kill the support and damage dealer. (After the rest of the PCs are dead, remaining mobs do a point and laugh emote at the tank and then walk away.)
Loot dead PCs
These are extremely basic rules. Even something as basic as this would turn most MMO gamers on their head.
This is my thinking on it as well. At first when reading I thought it could be interesting, but then reading the OP's line about the NPCs going after weaker players, figured that as with real humans the potential for NPC driven gankfests would be enormous.
Not necessarily but you have to remove the classic tank.
If your melee classes make a shield wall between the mobs and the weaker players then you have a mechanism to prevent ganking the mage/healers. It does require collision detection and the idea of a line of players forming an impassable barrier.
Improving mob AI does mean changing the game mechanics, both have to change together,.
Yes, this is true, but wouldn't a mechanism like this take the fun out of playing a MMO? Many like freedom of roaming an open world, and freedom of actions, a possibility that would have to be totally removed if players had to base every action on a player made "wall" and their place in or behind it.
why? because theres no option to vote for. "yes i want human-like npc AI but i dont want free for all pvp as the only server".
ITs not about the OW pvp. Its about the OW one-shotting jerks ganking low levels and ruining the open world conflict experience.
But yes, i want smart AI too. Any day. The smartest ive seen on elder scrolls games and tahts not an mmo. and by smartest i mean living their own lives, not standing there waiting to be killed.
Had to vote no because human AI which actually does EVERYTHING a human would do would be horrible.
I don't want to be camped by a higher level player for 4 hours, why would I want a higher level mob to stand on top of my corpse for 4 hours?
I hate it when players exploit the game environment so that they can't get hit while killing everyone around them, why would I want a mob to do that?
Therein lies the problem. Many of tactics players would call cheap or unfair do win fights therefore would be the "smart" move.
Imagine the computer decided it was going to zerg a raid group with every mob in the dungeon. While it would be funny for others to watch on YouTube, the group who got stomped probably wouldn't laugh.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
So the npc would now act like high school thugs, OMFG just shoot me.
Elder great wyrms spawning with their demon minions in the starter areas and then running away like pussies when anyone that can fight back show up. lol
From what some people said in this thread, they unconsciously states that pvers dislike ow ffa pvp merely because the bigger difficulty, but they dont admit it and create several other excuses to "justify" their distaste.
PVPers are the first to QQ when they keep getting killed, blaming balance and the like. PVPers would hate this kind of AI more than PVErs, as they will have to deal with AI griefers with infinite patience to gank you over and and over and over. No, PVPers only like it when they have less skilled, less prepared or less-numbered human players to gank with nothing else around to stop them.
How about AI that is 15 levels higher than you that is programmed to hunt down and kill pvp or "criminal" flagged players and keep looking for them to kill them again and again at the spawn areas? Sound like fun?
we have to wait for decades or a century before we can have human level AI
Not really. It isn't missing because they can't do it, it's missing because players don't want it. It would frustrate the crap out of half the playerbase and kick the ass of the other half.
Some basic rules they could follow that would require minimal processing
If helath is low, then run away or, better yet, recall out.
If PC is fighting mob and low on health, attack PC.
If mob next to me is getting attacked, jump in to help.
If we have buddies around, call them all into battle to kick the PC's ass.
The tank is harmless. Ignore him. Kill the support and damage dealer. (After the rest of the PCs are dead, remaining mobs do a point and laugh emote at the tank and then walk away.)
Loot dead PCs
These are extremely basic rules. Even something as basic as this would turn most MMO gamers on their head.
no, it's missing because it can't be done, and in fact really hasn't been done by even the most powerful computers.
Human AI means something that learns, something that has choice, something that does things without being instructed, etc.
Every AI we could make is really ONLY consisting of either a Cause and Effect relationship or a predesignated instruction.
You could argue that "A character that gets mad and behaves different'y is like giving them human emotions" except not really. Humans change. A single person will react differently over time to the same thing. A human will justify their emotions. If you say bad things to an NPC, you could give them a desired response and a parameter of responses, but a human will have different responses with different degrees which are impacted by different reasons.
I know I am not good at articulating why it can't be done now, but it's not done simply because it simply cant be done.
Agreed. What you suggest isn't currently doable and I would never argue that, especially since that's not even what we are talking about.
What I presented was that even the most primitive attempt at it - which is very doable - would not be palatable to most MMO gamers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
we have to wait for decades or a century before we can have human level AI
Not really. It isn't missing because they can't do it, it's missing because players don't want it. It would frustrate the crap out of half the playerbase and kick the ass of the other half.
Some basic rules they could follow that would require minimal processing
If helath is low, then run away or, better yet, recall out.
If PC is fighting mob and low on health, attack PC.
If mob next to me is getting attacked, jump in to help.
If we have buddies around, call them all into battle to kick the PC's ass.
The tank is harmless. Ignore him. Kill the support and damage dealer. (After the rest of the PCs are dead, remaining mobs do a point and laugh emote at the tank and then walk away.)
Loot dead PCs
These are extremely basic rules. Even something as basic as this would turn most MMO gamers on their head.
This is my thinking on it as well. At first when reading I thought it could be interesting, but then reading the OP's line about the NPCs going after weaker players, figured that as with real humans the potential for NPC driven gankfests would be enormous.
Not necessarily but you have to remove the classic tank.
If your melee classes make a shield wall between the mobs and the weaker players then you have a mechanism to prevent ganking the mage/healers. It does require collision detection and the idea of a line of players forming an impassable barrier.
Improving mob AI does mean changing the game mechanics, both have to change together,.
+1
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
People here seem to think we don't know how to do AI or something. There has been quite a bit of research in the area of AI and many advancements. Some of it is limited by things like processing power, of course, but that's not even the issue here. Most of AI that a video game would need is nowhere near this at all and would work on relatively "simple" value hierarchies and scripting, it's just that AI developers have been out of favor because companies want to avoid AI and replace it with players, hence making more multiplayer oriented games, god forbid you worry about AI. Hence it's not surprising that MMO's have some of the worst AI in the industry, since they are often designed specifically to avoid that issue.
Video games are not research, features you add need to be counterbalanced by their gameplay benefit. MMORPG's could greatly benefit from advanced AI but people here seem to have some strange idea of what advanced AI entails, why the hell would a bunch of mudcrabs behave like humans? They are not humans. That's why they're mudcrabs. Furthermore, even human AI using game exploits reduces the immersion quality of the world. That'd only work in a joke game and I am not really sure why that is being discussed. Exploitation/gamification is usually result of design issues here and there and should be minimized, truly.
What's mentioned in the OP makes a lot more sense.
One thing most MMO's continue refusing to implement is animal and NPC world behavior. None of this requires terribly complex AI, but it does require some.
The primary thing, that should already be in every game, is just general semi-non-idiotic and realistic mob behavior. I.e., escaping, indeed kiting (plenty of single player games have kiting, seriously, this is not a hard thing to implement. Ever played AoE II? Yikes), using your spells that you have, using spells correctly (removing poison if poisoned, etc.), targeting the players that are most dangerous, trying to figure out where the player is vulnerable (archers don't like melee combat, mages made out of paper, knights slow, whatever).
Basic things already implemented in many single player games: animals herding and flocking. Animals attacking, or not, in packs. Animals actually traveling significant distances instead of being on a tiny patrol around one point. Reproduction instead of random spawning to control monster quantities. Animals hunting each other, animals consuming plants. Great migrations.
For NPC's, you can get a lot more interesting. For one, you could have a simple group AI if NPC's find themselves nearby each other. Ergo, assigning roles who does what.
NPC groups could have purposes they are trying to fulfill. You can have NPC camps of various ogres, lizardmen, goblins, whatever the hell do you have going on in your game, and they all want something or don't want something. Maybe that lizardmen camp is really angry at humans for whatever reason and constantly make attacks on human settlements. Some games, like Rift and GW2, are scratching the surface here already, but neither of those games made the jump.
The issue with these things is not AI or "AI is so hard to do", there are people out there who can do it. The issue is that it will require a complete redesign of how the modern MMO is perceived. You would need gigantic map sizes (think SWG, DayZ, etc.). These things need to be carefully balanced because we're playing a game not an ecology simulator, because you can't have some level 60 Paladin show up and genocide the entire animal population, and we also can't exactly allow NPC's to win the game. That's why developer events actually work a lot better for this, they can basically change the face of the world once in a while by spawning some general event in the nature of: "These 5 dragon cults united and will now attack human settlements, if you lose, the world will change forever." Of course, there are some major issues here in terms of developer costs and prediction but that's a whole other story.
Generally, GW2 is the one game that actually attempts a fairly decent chunk of all this. But, it didn't really make the jump. Yet.
All this goes back to an old point that I argued long ago:
The influence of NPC's in MMO's is way, way too low. NPC's are supposed to fill transitionary roles that players either don't want to, or can't, fill properly. This is especially true for many sandboxes that, for some reason, think players should be responsible for logistics, guarding, farming (lol), and whatever else - this is not viable. Players should be filling semi-relevant roles of partial implementors and partial leaders. But it is also true for games like WoW where most mobs are glorified target dummies and NPC's do little besides give you quests and sell you stuff, and grunt a few words. I also thing GW1's idea of AI mercernaries was pretty interesting, since it allows you to still group when you can't find players. Especially for MMO's with low populations or desertation issues.
I can't think as fast as a computer. Computer wins 100% of the time.
This goes back to what I have said about there is no hard in a video game. If Devs wanted to create intelligent AI that did what we do? They would tab us, figure out they are going to lose in .02 seconds and run away. Tab us, figure out in perfect math, in .02 seconds they can beat us and would.
I can't think as fast as a computer. Computer wins 100% of the time.
This goes back to what I have said about there is no hard in a video game. If Devs wanted to create intelligent AI that did what we do? They would tab us, figure out they are going to lose in .02 seconds and run away. Tab us, figure out in perfect math, in .02 seconds they can beat us and would.
That's not human AI, that's powerful computer AI.
Human AI, if we were to go there, would be equivalent to a human, meaning it would have all the issues that a human has, since the whole point of human AI in research is to, well, simulate humans.
What you're talking about is pure AI, without the human part.
One thing is sure about the introduction os human-level (or near) AI in npcs: everything about the way mmos are tought and regarded today would have to change!
The paradigm of a player character single-handedly smashing npcs one after another to farm xp/gold/itens would be ended. The approach of npcs would obey another logic, more "realistic". Instead of objectives to kill or farm dozens of npcs/itens, they would be more single acomplishments (e.g: to kill 1 determined npc, to steal one determined item or pack of itens, sabotage missions, and so on).
The direct battles wouldn't be the general rule of solving things and get your way. They would be avoided or postponed at maximum. The stealth or deceptions strategies to get things would become more prevalent. We would see 1 player scamming or stealth robbing/killing 1 or very little npcs and fleeing. We would see bands of players making surprise attacks in weak points of npcs settlements and fleeing afterwards. We would see players disguised as npcs allieds, or deceiving them, gaining their trust and using this as tool to get things or as a way to access some critical places/knowledges and later betray the npcs.
When battles occur, they would be more like the reality ones: groups of warriors in formations, the heavy infantry/cavalry in the front, the artillery (archers and mages) and support (healers, buffers) behind. The battle would probably start with a frenetic exchange volley of arrows, fireballs, cannon balls and other artillery ammunition to "softem" the enemy army, followed by a charge of cavalry and heavy infantry to finish the work.
Some said that a mmo like that would have npcs "ganking" PC 24/7. They forget that there would be politics and diplomatic tools to manage that (e.g: a defeated npc faction would be forbidden to attack PC,to possess some kinds of weapons and other war tools that makes them stronger, to build defensive walls and so on). The war would be wearing for everyone, and even the npcs would try to avoid it if seens to not bring any advantage to their objectives or existence.
Comments
One of the reasons I like faction vs faction conflict is because of the superior intelligence and unpredictability.
Sure I would like smarter AI's.
Not if Warren Spector gets his way, which he already has, so it's only a short while longer.
This is my thinking on it as well. At first when reading I thought it could be interesting, but then reading the OP's line about the NPCs going after weaker players, figured that as with real humans the potential for NPC driven gankfests would be enormous.
Ryzom has probably the best creature AI. In that game, a creature will come up to you, sniff you, and then pee on your leg.
Herds migrate according to season, carnivores hunt herbivores, and even the harvesting resources are based on the season.
------------
2025: 48 years on the Net.
Not necessarily but you have to remove the classic tank.
If your melee classes make a shield wall between the mobs and the weaker players then you have a mechanism to prevent ganking the mage/healers. It does require collision detection and the idea of a line of players forming an impassable barrier.
Improving mob AI does mean changing the game mechanics, both have to change together,.
Mabinogi *** A FREE TO PLAY GAME *** has the best pet animations.
I'm not sure if I would call it AI. Yes, my dog does respond to my moves and in a number of different ways. But after a while I can count the possible ways he might respond. For it to be counted as AI maybe there needs to be a set number of spontaneity and responses somewhere in the 50's or above???
Yes, this is true, but wouldn't a mechanism like this take the fun out of playing a MMO? Many like freedom of roaming an open world, and freedom of actions, a possibility that would have to be totally removed if players had to base every action on a player made "wall" and their place in or behind it.
i voted "yes, and dont like ow pvp"
why? because theres no option to vote for. "yes i want human-like npc AI but i dont want free for all pvp as the only server".
ITs not about the OW pvp. Its about the OW one-shotting jerks ganking low levels and ruining the open world conflict experience.
But yes, i want smart AI too. Any day. The smartest ive seen on elder scrolls games and tahts not an mmo. and by smartest i mean living their own lives, not standing there waiting to be killed.
Therein lies the problem. Many of tactics players would call cheap or unfair do win fights therefore would be the "smart" move.
Imagine the computer decided it was going to zerg a raid group with every mob in the dungeon. While it would be funny for others to watch on YouTube, the group who got stomped probably wouldn't laugh.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
So the npc would now act like high school thugs, OMFG just shoot me.
Elder great wyrms spawning with their demon minions in the starter areas and then running away like pussies when anyone that can fight back show up. lol
PVPers are the first to QQ when they keep getting killed, blaming balance and the like. PVPers would hate this kind of AI more than PVErs, as they will have to deal with AI griefers with infinite patience to gank you over and and over and over. No, PVPers only like it when they have less skilled, less prepared or less-numbered human players to gank with nothing else around to stop them.
How about AI that is 15 levels higher than you that is programmed to hunt down and kill pvp or "criminal" flagged players and keep looking for them to kill them again and again at the spawn areas? Sound like fun?
Agreed. What you suggest isn't currently doable and I would never argue that, especially since that's not even what we are talking about.
What I presented was that even the most primitive attempt at it - which is very doable - would not be palatable to most MMO gamers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
+1
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
People here seem to think we don't know how to do AI or something. There has been quite a bit of research in the area of AI and many advancements. Some of it is limited by things like processing power, of course, but that's not even the issue here. Most of AI that a video game would need is nowhere near this at all and would work on relatively "simple" value hierarchies and scripting, it's just that AI developers have been out of favor because companies want to avoid AI and replace it with players, hence making more multiplayer oriented games, god forbid you worry about AI. Hence it's not surprising that MMO's have some of the worst AI in the industry, since they are often designed specifically to avoid that issue.
Video games are not research, features you add need to be counterbalanced by their gameplay benefit. MMORPG's could greatly benefit from advanced AI but people here seem to have some strange idea of what advanced AI entails, why the hell would a bunch of mudcrabs behave like humans? They are not humans. That's why they're mudcrabs. Furthermore, even human AI using game exploits reduces the immersion quality of the world. That'd only work in a joke game and I am not really sure why that is being discussed. Exploitation/gamification is usually result of design issues here and there and should be minimized, truly.
What's mentioned in the OP makes a lot more sense.
One thing most MMO's continue refusing to implement is animal and NPC world behavior. None of this requires terribly complex AI, but it does require some.
The primary thing, that should already be in every game, is just general semi-non-idiotic and realistic mob behavior. I.e., escaping, indeed kiting (plenty of single player games have kiting, seriously, this is not a hard thing to implement. Ever played AoE II? Yikes), using your spells that you have, using spells correctly (removing poison if poisoned, etc.), targeting the players that are most dangerous, trying to figure out where the player is vulnerable (archers don't like melee combat, mages made out of paper, knights slow, whatever).
Basic things already implemented in many single player games: animals herding and flocking. Animals attacking, or not, in packs. Animals actually traveling significant distances instead of being on a tiny patrol around one point. Reproduction instead of random spawning to control monster quantities. Animals hunting each other, animals consuming plants. Great migrations.
For NPC's, you can get a lot more interesting. For one, you could have a simple group AI if NPC's find themselves nearby each other. Ergo, assigning roles who does what.
NPC groups could have purposes they are trying to fulfill. You can have NPC camps of various ogres, lizardmen, goblins, whatever the hell do you have going on in your game, and they all want something or don't want something. Maybe that lizardmen camp is really angry at humans for whatever reason and constantly make attacks on human settlements. Some games, like Rift and GW2, are scratching the surface here already, but neither of those games made the jump.
The issue with these things is not AI or "AI is so hard to do", there are people out there who can do it. The issue is that it will require a complete redesign of how the modern MMO is perceived. You would need gigantic map sizes (think SWG, DayZ, etc.). These things need to be carefully balanced because we're playing a game not an ecology simulator, because you can't have some level 60 Paladin show up and genocide the entire animal population, and we also can't exactly allow NPC's to win the game. That's why developer events actually work a lot better for this, they can basically change the face of the world once in a while by spawning some general event in the nature of: "These 5 dragon cults united and will now attack human settlements, if you lose, the world will change forever." Of course, there are some major issues here in terms of developer costs and prediction but that's a whole other story.
Generally, GW2 is the one game that actually attempts a fairly decent chunk of all this. But, it didn't really make the jump. Yet.
All this goes back to an old point that I argued long ago:
The influence of NPC's in MMO's is way, way too low. NPC's are supposed to fill transitionary roles that players either don't want to, or can't, fill properly. This is especially true for many sandboxes that, for some reason, think players should be responsible for logistics, guarding, farming (lol), and whatever else - this is not viable. Players should be filling semi-relevant roles of partial implementors and partial leaders. But it is also true for games like WoW where most mobs are glorified target dummies and NPC's do little besides give you quests and sell you stuff, and grunt a few words. I also thing GW1's idea of AI mercernaries was pretty interesting, since it allows you to still group when you can't find players. Especially for MMO's with low populations or desertation issues.
I can't think as fast as a computer. Computer wins 100% of the time.
This goes back to what I have said about there is no hard in a video game. If Devs wanted to create intelligent AI that did what we do? They would tab us, figure out they are going to lose in .02 seconds and run away. Tab us, figure out in perfect math, in .02 seconds they can beat us and would.
It's pure math.
That's not human AI, that's powerful computer AI.
Human AI, if we were to go there, would be equivalent to a human, meaning it would have all the issues that a human has, since the whole point of human AI in research is to, well, simulate humans.
What you're talking about is pure AI, without the human part.
One thing is sure about the introduction os human-level (or near) AI in npcs: everything about the way mmos are tought and regarded today would have to change!
The paradigm of a player character single-handedly smashing npcs one after another to farm xp/gold/itens would be ended. The approach of npcs would obey another logic, more "realistic". Instead of objectives to kill or farm dozens of npcs/itens, they would be more single acomplishments (e.g: to kill 1 determined npc, to steal one determined item or pack of itens, sabotage missions, and so on).
The direct battles wouldn't be the general rule of solving things and get your way. They would be avoided or postponed at maximum. The stealth or deceptions strategies to get things would become more prevalent. We would see 1 player scamming or stealth robbing/killing 1 or very little npcs and fleeing. We would see bands of players making surprise attacks in weak points of npcs settlements and fleeing afterwards. We would see players disguised as npcs allieds, or deceiving them, gaining their trust and using this as tool to get things or as a way to access some critical places/knowledges and later betray the npcs.
When battles occur, they would be more like the reality ones: groups of warriors in formations, the heavy infantry/cavalry in the front, the artillery (archers and mages) and support (healers, buffers) behind. The battle would probably start with a frenetic exchange volley of arrows, fireballs, cannon balls and other artillery ammunition to "softem" the enemy army, followed by a charge of cavalry and heavy infantry to finish the work.
Some said that a mmo like that would have npcs "ganking" PC 24/7. They forget that there would be politics and diplomatic tools to manage that (e.g: a defeated npc faction would be forbidden to attack PC,to possess some kinds of weapons and other war tools that makes them stronger, to build defensive walls and so on). The war would be wearing for everyone, and even the npcs would try to avoid it if seens to not bring any advantage to their objectives or existence.