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Mongo Not Like Warrior - How long before boss mob AI gets sophisticated?
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
For a long time boss fights were "tank and spanks." The warrior taunts and takes damage. Healers heal. DPSers damage. It was really more of a gear check, a raid discipline check, and a test of your patience.
That evolved into a raid setting now best exemplified by WoW. All of the above, plus you have to learn a dance. Stand here. Now stand there. The fights are challenging until everyone learns the dance. (I'm not saying WoW invented this or is the only game that uses it).
It's time for something more. How much longer before you can't simply gear up and learn a routine to succeed?
I see no reason why a boss mob could not be assigned a series of things it can do in its own defense that at various intervals it pulls randomly from a selection menu. Let's say it is assigned 10 abilities. Instead of doing them at predictable times, such as when it's health drops to 75%, it periodically (and even that could vary) pulls a random attack from its defense menu.
If that were done, no two boss fights would ever be the same. Just because a boss defended itself one way last week doesn't mean that's how it will fight this week. The boss isn't actually smarter, but it would seem smarter because you don't know what the hell it will do next.
That's just one idea. I'm sure there could be better ones. But my point is, are boss fights going to become more fluid, unpredictable encounters in the near future?
I sometimes think that bosses stay dumb because someone (players? devs?) want them dumb. A boss mob already has huge advantages in terms of health, resistance, offense and defense. If it wasn't clueless then the raid party could be in real trouble.
But surely it is possible to make them smarter after over a decade of play?
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Comments
Abilities being used at random times or events happening is already being done to some extent.
But you can't make everything too random without annoying people to no end, take the 'Nefarian' encounter in BWL in WoW.
This dragon boss has several abilities and phases including:
Calling off classes and performing an ability based on that, one such thing was by calling 'Mages' who then proceeded to change raid members into various critters.
At another phase (health level), he called several lesser minions to his side.
Now imagine this being completely random:
Raid nr1 comes into the dungeon and pulls the dragon, the dragon fires off the polymorph call at 45% and the call for minions at 10%; more than enough time between both for the raid to react and heal up again.
Dragon goes down without problems.
Raid nr2 comes into the same dungeon and pulls the dragon, at the same time half the raid is changed into squirrels and cattle, while the main tank becomes a cute little rabbit which is smashed into a bloody pulp by the boss, seconds later a multitude of adds swarm the room and wipes the group.
Of course nr2 will be quite pissed, as there might have been no skill differences between them and nr1, but due to sheer bad luck they got screwed.
If this happens again, they can't do anything to stop it and have no control over the situation.
People want control over what they do in a game, simple RNG deciding who wins and who loses with no regard for effort or skill pisses people off.
Which can also be observed in Aion, where one person would succeed in crafting a high level armour in his first attempt, while another might need dozens of attempts; this sparked quite a discussion and caused a lot of people to be disillusioned by the game.
Finally, you don't want a super smart AI, it's no problem for the devs to make a near unbeatable AI, but that wouldn't be fun.
Nor would it be fun if you had an AI that always went after the weakest class / build in the group, because that guy would always end up dead first.
In short, AI will always be a puzzle, it's up to the devs to make that puzzle as enjoyable as possible and to an extend I agree, that is something which is lacking in current mmo's, mostly not in bosses however, but in the casual mob encounters.
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I'm sure some mobs could say the same thing about many playrs
...if they could.
AI is limited, the more complex, the more server resources. Multiply that by 1000's and the server potentially tanks. Ummm... my fav mob improvement is if they get stronger with each player they dirt nap. Either hit harder or gain more HP. At some point, over hours or days of killing newbies lol they become nearly unbeatable, requiring raid group size. But, any boss these days is instanced, so this would probably never happen apart from indie games.
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Get rid of the heavy class specialisation stuff and let the boss attack whoever he wants to.
Problem solved.
Just let it become more PnP-game-like.
op! its like you say exept for one small detail !you forgot to mention that nobody need a brain anymore why
you got add-on that record the fight you got add-on that do watchemacallit!
so after the second wipe all the data needed is there .so once that data is entered in the add-on you use
you could be drunk it wouldnt matter as long as you can read the warning your fine ho and letter font is too small no issue you can put them as big as you need and be even more drunk then you ever tho possible and still beat that uber wow boss at end game
i asked wow often to make the hardest content avail in wow without any aid whatsover be it add-on ,coord,time etc!
why!so that those fight are hard has they were thot instead of easy mode the average player feel they are like
the only player in wow that feel any fight in wow are hard are those not using any aid!
as for your title about AI
keep a look out for forsaken world (perfect world corp)i hear the ai way too smart for its own good(yes its a quality lol)
id like to see more active blocking, dodging to all classes make it more like a god of war type fight.
so instead of fighting a dragon and saying "oh tailswipe in 10 seconds ... everyone joust" the dragon makes a specific move and then everyone has to click their active dodge hotkey.
I also think games need to move away from the whole "Main tank" nonsense.
Unpredictability in a boss works to a point - I like it myself, as it makes things a lot more fun. But as mentioned, it can also be frustrating, when one party breezes through, and the next equally skilled/equipped party gets curbstomped. And success shouldn't be based on a RNG deciding whether the boss uses an uber-move for a particular play-through. But a variety of standard moves could go a long way towards improving things, I agree.
There is probably a certain resistance among many players to smarter bosses, since as mentioned, the boss obviously outclasses in raw stats, and giving it the intelligence to actually use its stats could make things difficult in a hurry. Still, it's something that I'd definitely welcome, and I'm pretty sure that it's within developers means, without requiring too many resources. When you can rely on a formula, or even add-ons, to play a boss, it gets boring really quickly.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Is this so? Do players really want all mops behave like zombies out of dawn of the dead. Well, I at least I don’t like that, unless the mob is a zombie of course.
Of course no one wants a unbeatable opponent, but players might like one that is at least responsive to the players actions. So far the only thing that most mobs can do, is randomly using several attacks and healing themselves if they have x hp left. (In wow they only heal once even if they have enough mana left, to make it even more simple)
If the mob represents a sane being, it should at best react as if a human was controlling it. It should surprise me with clever things. In many fps and rts games there is quite challenging AI why can’t I have that in mmos?
This whole tank-healer-dps thing is basically only a simple trick, but surprisingly every single mob in the game falls for it every time. Why can’t the mobs counter that tactic and go for the healer, at least after they have noticed that they won’t come fare the other way?
Well I've been that healer before and having the Mob change his mind and attack me(aggro change due to suckie tank) was never a good feeling...since I am just wearing a robe and all....the Whole role Tank-healer-dps is really here to stay since its been around since games have been coming out. Any change from that...the game usally is unplayable or just sucks
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More challenging means that those with more skill have a higher chance of success than those with less skill. Until we figure out what constitutes "skill" in an MMO, bosses will never get any smarter. As it is, the state of your equipment along with your ability to follow simple "stand here, go there, use that ability, face this direction" is the only measuring stick that either devs or players know of. XKhallusX mentioned an active dodge button that would add "reflexes" to the skill bucket, but that's a road that I hope MMOs don't go down. Aside from the fact that a certain percentage of the MMO population is always going to struggle with lag, there's also the simple fact that so many single-player games are already based on reflexes. To me, it just doesn't seem right for an MMO in the same way that aiming at the head for extra damage would feel out of place.
You get that in some games already, actually. In my current MMO, healing generates huge aggro, particularly among boss summons, making it important to heal only when actually needed, and for the DPS's to frequently break off and defend the healer. Also, if any characters in a party get below 25% hp, the boss immediately breaks off and goes after them, no matter how much aggro the tank might have built up so far. Definitely a step in the right direction, I think.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
While it all sounds nice and dandy You need to remember few things.
First of all - Its supposed to be fun. When an encounter is not predictable to some extent it stops being fun and start being frustrating,. Having ot re-learn every most mundane fight each time you want to run a full dungeon (in WoWs case it can be quite a few bosses on the way) is not the fun people are looking for.
Second - Difficulty is very relative term. Sure, fromt he most basic point of view its nothing but simple maths. Tank keep agro generation at level X, DPS keeps blow it, everyoen moves between points A, B and C. Simple. Well, apparently not considering how few of MMO players actually finish the end-game content. Its already consuming lots of time, any more complexity through randomness would just elimane another group of people from possibly expieriencing the content.
Third - RNG factor. Randomness is just what it is, randomness. Most of players wants to limit the RNG factor, so thats kills rely more on actual stats/'skills' rather than random computer generated dice rolls. The more randoms omething becomes the less reliable it is, and then when it starts to become pointless again.
You cant transfer core pnp mechanics into MMO setting. IT doesnt work. PnP is so different in so many ways form computer RPGS and MMOs that it just does not mix together well. Not to mention the fact that many players prefer Story Telling elements over the (in)famous Dungeon Master approach. Dice rolling is not the only way.
Seeing how many people already have trouble with just not standing in the fire or moving their butts at proper time any more changes in that type of difficulty would pretty much ruin the end-game expierience rendering it pointless from production pov.
Who said you really had to re-learn every patterns everytime? Once you've learned the monster's abilities (based on OP's idea), it's only a matter of reacting based on the action "x" Boss took. What OP is asking is for Boss Fight that you don't need to watch on Youtube to learn how to kill, for Boss Fight that are actually different, meaning that they wouldn't be so "mundane" anymore and actually brought an interesting twist.
I see what the OP means, but I for one was happy when they introduced the dance on top of the TnS. It still works for me, but if people are that tired of it already, how long before the next changeup tires them? How long till all possbile resources have been used and the ideal hits it's limit?
The only next logical step is visibile 'phases' that change the behavior of the boss AI. Best example; Metal Slug games.
As you pound on a boss it will start to look like it's losing momentum. Pieces of armor fall off, it changes color, and tend to bleed everywhere - but the battle itself gets way more fierce. That's the only next step to take it, and most likely the last one until the base gameplay itself changes. A game more akin to splinter cell or a platformer has no need for TnS, but every reason to still apply phases to boss fights.
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I love that idea, would certainly make the fights more fun. It used to be that RPGs also did this a lot, especially with final bosses. Games like Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Xenogears, etc sometimes had epic boss battles where you would have to defeat multiple phases of the bosses, each with its own unique sets of strengths and weaknesses.
I would love for MMOs to do something more like that with their boss battles, rather than constantly fighting enemies that are supposed to be powerful enough to destroy worlds and stuff, but are really nothing more than a regular mob with more HP, higher damage, and a skin that makes it look 5x bigger than the rest.
Though we would need to add some sort of random element into it, and probably allow the bosses to change to multiple phases on the fly and at random intervals, otherwise it would still just be the same patterned puzzle we currently have anyway.
I would love to see something like this combined with a more reactive battle system which allows both the player and the mobs to properly react to what is happening, rathe rthan just following a preset pattern regardless of what just happened. Basically more active dodging, blocking, etc combined with being able to counter most skills and create combos. Learn to react with the right skill at the right time, or get your ass kicked, regardless of how powerful you are. I guess sort of a Mabinogi battle system (which does involve constant countering of specific skills, rather than just button mashing your "best" skill) but on roids & with more variety. Im actually hoping Vindictus aka Mabinogi: Heroes does exactly that, and improves on the Mabinogi system while keeping the core idea.
But this presupposes that the devs change nothing about the abilities or the fight, just add in randomness. Of course this would not be the case - the entire fight would be retuned. There would not be any huge "destroyer" type abilities that can wipe a raid if done back to back. Abilities that are more challenging to react to but actually allow players to react are what is needed.
There was an encounter in WoW in a 5 man instance called Magisters Terrace where you encountered a group of five mobs who had similar roles to player characters (you had a hunter, rogue, mage etc) and they would use their abilities and react much more like players and so this encounter became almost a 5 on 5 pvp fight. A lot of people loved it, a lot of people hated it. People hated it because it was not like other boss fights and you had to react during an event not simply go into it with the preprogrammed "two steps left, attack, one step right, attack" mentality. But these mobs were not ultra powerful - they did not one shot a clothwearer if they got loose. People had chances to use their skills and react. I believe that is what the OP was getting at.
I think the idea of a larger pool of abilities that are randomly chosen - or even triggered by player actions - is an excellent idea and would work quite well in increasing the challenge and sense of achievement in boss fights. Not to mention making them a hell of a lot more fun.
What I would like to see are certain things incorporated whereby the boss actually reacts to the actions of the players. Say a player scores a particularly large crit - the boss immediately goes after that player, or maybe the boss enrages and htis harder for 5 seconds due to the pain-infused rage. Things like this would need the players to watch they way they played, give them somehing a little more to do other than mash a few buttons.
I never said I want zombie like mobs, I said a super smart (read, realistic) AI is unfun.
Then you'd get bosses who always go after the guy with the weakest armour, who always spam all their abilities together at the start of the fight etc.
And you don't want completely random encounters, because that would mean either not giving many abilities to monsters or frustrating players because their skill doesn't really count in the face of RNG.
I'd like mobs to 'look like they are real' ducking behind cover, getting in from different entrances etc, that's cool, but beatable and still predictable up to a point.
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How hard is to simply program mobs to act like players? Just observe what players do and program AI. That means buffing themselves, healing their mates, getting aggro with their tanks, running, blocking, hiding to heal up and coming back. calling in reinforcements. etc. If all devs are going to do is make a boss you can beat with a script, you might as well not bother making it in the first place.
I think WoW's ToC Champion's fight is probably the closest thing we've seen so far. Basically making a raid of NPCs going up against your raid. The class makup is random, with a few constants (number of healers, dps). Making it so every time you do the encounter your approach has to change slightly. These NPCs don't have a lot of smarts, for one they don't gang up on a single target much, but they will constantly use CC over your entire raid, which even by dumb luck might stick your healers in fears/polys/stuns at random parts of the fight.
Now the bad part about this is that instead of there being one way to do the fight, is now there are three. Is it really better? If there is a druid you CC him, kill priest, let pally heal, then take out rogue/lock etc. etc. Are three possibilities better than one once all of the strats are hammered out? Not really. I just read an article that covers similar difficulties in gaming regarding making AI smarter: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TylerGlaiel/20100501/5064/Playing_Around_With_Genetic_Algorithms.php. Interesting idea, but I don't think fights are long enough for this type of AI.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Pretty much all WoW raid bosses have a 5 minute rage timer. I like the idea of the boss start looking hurt, but it would probably introduce lag.
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Here is a simulation of the festergut fight.. Not a video, but a simulation, the guys at bosskillers have started doing this to make the fights easier to follow.
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This fight has a few phases. Other fights have more phases.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
It is one of the failures of a themepark - limited mob AI. Tank 'n Spank is one of the most unrealistic conventions in MMORPGs.
Reporter: So, Mr. Boss, care to break down that last fight for us?
Boss: Sure, there was this little guy that said I was fat - so I focused on him. I ignored all the guys that were killing me, the guy wearing a dress that was keeping the little guy alive, and well - I guess they got the better of me.
Reporter: So will you do anything different next time?
Boss: Well, no - see, if the little guy calls me fat again . . . I'm sensitive about my weight.
Heck, that brings up the next time as an issue. Yep, the fact that you can kill the same boss multiple times in a day or on a weekly basis; well...yeah, anyway.
Throw in getting to the boss. There your party is, walking right into the enemy base, no alarms go off - other mobs watching other mobs getting slaughtered from not that far away...yeah, um, fun.
But face it, MMORPGs are not going to be like PnP - they are more casual and cater more to the ADHD crowd. There is almost nothing in most MMORPGs that comes close to the dangers PCs face in a PnP game. The average person could not handle it and many would complain it is not any fun. It would take too long to progress through dungeons, if somebody had previously killed the boss, then what - and people would not be able to stand around in the dozens all equipped with the same "unique" items.
Face it, they are 3-D virtual chatroom timesinks... but they work out to be cheaper and less disappointing than single player games most of the time.
It is best not to look too closely at the games, you can only find frustration. How can the Lich King be so powerful, caused so much trouble for the world...and well, 10 players can kick his butt, eh? So yeah, just play along with the brain turned off - enjoy - or perhaps move on...
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
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Making smarter NPCs shouldn't be that hard. Nor implementing random behaviour.
The argument that doing this will burden the servers, is a half-truth. It just depends on how NPCs are implmented. You could "outsource NPCs" to other seperate servers which don't affect the environment that much. More often to save bandwith NPCs are packed on the same servers as the game environment.
Another point is the design of the encounters, the environment and game mechanics (respectively equipment). As it is today, the raid/party is supposed to walk up to the trashmobs/boss and beat them up. Mobs are very predictable in their behaviour too, which make the encounters easier to master. The NPCs have quite some abilities. But more often players don't notice them (e.g. trip attacks, charge attacks, stuns, etc.). Especially when you're overequipped (and can "DPS" them into dust), the monster's abilities are quite negligible/redundant. A game designer can give NPCs whatever abilities he likes, but that encounter will only be balanced vs. a certain character level/equipment level (a drawback of the progression/item progression paradigm). Even implementing random behaviour wouldn't help the NPCs much, once players are overequipped. NPC scaling helps to a certain degree.
And last. What do you do with your smart NPCs once new content hits the shelves and rends older content redundant?
NPCs don't need to be necessarily smarter or show random behaviour. Rather should they be "believable" and be able to use all their abilities. A bully type NPC would show another behaviour than a frail but powerful wizard NPC. NPCs should have access to the same abilities as players of the same level.
You should be able to use the envrionment to your adantage, as well as be able to run away when the battle turns bad. So should the NPCs. They might lure you into ambushes. Or you might trick NPCs into following you and lock them up in their own dungeons.
There is just a lot of things that can be done to break the same old formula.
Game makers cant even make good AI in single players rpg's. Remember the claims that were made about how smart the npcs would be in oblivion, and how that turned out to be pure hype? I knew it would be too. Has anyone anywhere ever made a real AI even outside of gaming? I dont think so. The closest we have is chess computers and they are hardware dedicated and took decades of development. MMO development doesnt have that kind of juice.
I always wanted a game where actual people played as the Bosses, but It would be very hard to get it to work. If you think about it anything that isn't based on the tank and spank really woulnd't work..... Lets say that mobs are smart and go for the healers first then the dps and then finally take out the tanks. No matter how hard the the tank tries to provoke the mobs says stuff you im gonna kill the easy guys first.
Then the game would basically turn into a dps fest and everyone would play dps classes because all other classes basically become obsolete since the healer can't heal themselves fast enough to say a live and the tank can't provoke the mob away from them. Even if you had a CC class it wouln't be much different than tank and spank.
A lot of people seem to be missing the OP's actual point. The OP isn't asking for smarter AI but rather a degree of randomness and instantaneous player reaction in order to survive (as opposed to rehearsed player reaction like we see in 'the dance' in WoW-like raids).
Think of boss encounters in games like Zelda. The boss has a pool of skills available to them that they select from randomly. The player has to spot the cues for the skills and react instantaneously in order to survive. Sometimes those skills leave certain weakpoints open for a counter-attack. In my opinion this is exactly the direction that MMO combat encounters as a whole need to move in, not just raids.
The actual AI required for something like this is little more than what we already have, the bosses just select from a pool of skills at random rather than a scripted sequence that players can learn and pre-empt.
Active blocking/dodging, fewer random dice rolls, timed and coordinated attacks. Add in all these elements and we're looking at a combat system that relies on player skill as opposed to dice rolls and UI add ons.
The only problem is that when the game depends on skill you're going to have players who are incapable of winning. Those players will moan and the devs will nerf it... putting us back at square one.
The real problem here is the mentality that everyone has to be able to do everything. Single player games usually don't reward being a bad player; if you suck you get game over and either try again or give up. In MMOs the devs have a bigger incentive to dumb things down and make it easier so everyone can do it in order to keep the subscription numbers up. You have the option of 'hard modes' and other things as a compromise... but like the word implies it still compromises the reliance on player skill as a player with no skill can still progress in such a system.
I fear MMOs are, by nature, required to be easy in order to be as successful as possible. In order to get away from that you'll need a dev willing to sacrifice subscription numbers and able to ignore the whining and moaning about things being too difficult. There may be one or two such devs on the horizon though, SquareEnix certainly seem to be using a more tactical and reactionary combat system in FFXIV... so I guess we'll see.