Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Introducing True AI for next-level boss fights & PvE
Hi Everyone
I really like playing PvE. But i do find that the monsters are kinda static & predictable. So i was thinking.. How can we improve this? With Artificial Inteligence or Machine Learning this is totally possible today. With upgraded programming languages and new dedicated hardware for machine learning (NVIDIA Tensor cores, AMD Radeon Instinct). It is possible to write the MIND of a creature and let it act on its own. This would give a real dynamic feeling and a lot of diversification.
Today, we do not really have AI's in game. A certain mob has a set of predefined code with a lot of parameters and attributes to calculate what the next move will be. Some games like League of legends and Civilization 6 may say they have AI, but I hardly doubt that. You could call it "a very smart Bot". But thats it.
Now what defines an AI? It is something that is 'aware' off itself. It is aware it has arms and legs, and it could learn to walk by trial & error. An AI at it's earliest stage is an empty head and it has the capacity to learn along the way. It stores the information & iterates the action to get a reward (desired result). It will reach the result because it has learned doing it himself, not because we coded it that way.
An example: Dungeon boss, Location: on top of a volcano.
It is a dragon. It has 2 feet, 2 arms with claws, it has wings, a tail, energy, can breath fire, has a certain hight etc.. It could gain energy over time and when it dmg's enemies.
So it learnes by doing, Trial and error. But it needs a reward system. ex: The dragon needs to feel good. You could implement the following to adjust 'the feelings':
It can scratch enemies (+3), hide behind a rock (+1), fly (+1), regenerate (+1), create dust (+1), receive dmg (-3), below 75% HP (-5), below 50HP (-5). Breath fire (use energy, multi-player dmg, +7), when it leaves its territory (-100 u don't want it leaving the volcano, it's a raid boss), kill enemy (+10) ETC.. Now the dragon will make it's own decisions what it will do next based on the rewards it might receive. depending on the experience off the AI
Im sugesting raid bosses because it is easy to implement, just 1 creature. In the end you can do it for general mobs as well.
Please follow the next links to learn more about AI in games. Deep Q learning, reïnforcement learning and more. Let your imagination run wild and see the possibilities. I truly believe this will be huge in the gaming industry!
https://youtu.be/A5eihauRQvo
https://youtu.be/HBAUeJkFMH0
https://youtu.be/79pmNdyxEGo
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I look forward to your responses. What do you think?
Cheers
I really like playing PvE. But i do find that the monsters are kinda static & predictable. So i was thinking.. How can we improve this? With Artificial Inteligence or Machine Learning this is totally possible today. With upgraded programming languages and new dedicated hardware for machine learning (NVIDIA Tensor cores, AMD Radeon Instinct). It is possible to write the MIND of a creature and let it act on its own. This would give a real dynamic feeling and a lot of diversification.
Today, we do not really have AI's in game. A certain mob has a set of predefined code with a lot of parameters and attributes to calculate what the next move will be. Some games like League of legends and Civilization 6 may say they have AI, but I hardly doubt that. You could call it "a very smart Bot". But thats it.
Now what defines an AI? It is something that is 'aware' off itself. It is aware it has arms and legs, and it could learn to walk by trial & error. An AI at it's earliest stage is an empty head and it has the capacity to learn along the way. It stores the information & iterates the action to get a reward (desired result). It will reach the result because it has learned doing it himself, not because we coded it that way.
An example: Dungeon boss, Location: on top of a volcano.
It is a dragon. It has 2 feet, 2 arms with claws, it has wings, a tail, energy, can breath fire, has a certain hight etc.. It could gain energy over time and when it dmg's enemies.
So it learnes by doing, Trial and error. But it needs a reward system. ex: The dragon needs to feel good. You could implement the following to adjust 'the feelings':
It can scratch enemies (+3), hide behind a rock (+1), fly (+1), regenerate (+1), create dust (+1), receive dmg (-3), below 75% HP (-5), below 50HP (-5). Breath fire (use energy, multi-player dmg, +7), when it leaves its territory (-100 u don't want it leaving the volcano, it's a raid boss), kill enemy (+10) ETC.. Now the dragon will make it's own decisions what it will do next based on the rewards it might receive. depending on the experience off the AI
Im sugesting raid bosses because it is easy to implement, just 1 creature. In the end you can do it for general mobs as well.
Please follow the next links to learn more about AI in games. Deep Q learning, reïnforcement learning and more. Let your imagination run wild and see the possibilities. I truly believe this will be huge in the gaming industry!
https://youtu.be/A5eihauRQvohttps://youtu.be/HBAUeJkFMH0https://youtu.be/79pmNdyxEGoThanks for taking the time to read this. I look forward to your responses. What do you think?
Cheers
0
Comments
Players who would play in this period would fight "dumb" mobs and bosses, and gain unfair advantage. Players who would join the game later on would have much more difficult time, and would have hard time reaching the spot where endgame players are, players who used easy path to gear up and do everything.
There would be a big gap between new players and old due to this.
And as time would move on, mobs would continually become better and smarter, and each new generation of players that would join the game would have even harder time, and gap between player generations would become higher and higher.
nah that wouldn't be a problem, the ai would be pre trained by developers and its development will be frozen at some point.
I recently found a paper about hindsight experience replay, that might improve the required time to train the mob by alot!
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.01495.pdf
(in summary: it enables the ai to learn from mistakes//usualy ai can only learn if it did something right and its reward score increases)
The real issue would be the constant required computing power for every mob on every server i guess? Because computing a ai is much more demanding than narrow ki with just a handful of set rules...
While Intrepid haven't said anything specific, what Steven did say about AI sounds promising.
In a way, one the deep learning systems are in place, keeping them updated and relevant would require less effort than reprogramming traditional algorithmic based AI.
Intrepid are in discussions with Google about hosting Ashes of Creation on the Google Cloud Platform. That platform offers a sophisticated deep learning engine called the Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine. This is based on their leading edge tensor flow technology.
It would probably ignore the tank,
position himself behind the players with most dmg output 24/7
or focus healers.
The real improvement would come through greater skill pools for mobs,
if the mob only has 2 attacks he wont be abel to do something else with a smart ai either.
With smart ai the implementation of dodging/blocking/positioning/cc skills for mobs would add a whole new difficulty layer however.
Smarter bosses and mobs would in general have to follow the same game physics, so I wouldn't expect too many encounters where a boss could just plough through the tank(s) straight to the healers or DPS
Caravans, sieges and open world dungeons and raids, are all PvX encounters, meaning that PvP and PvE combat is happening at the same time. It would be very difficult to have two entirely different rulesets apply to combat when both PvP and PvE combat are happening at the same time.
Having mob behavior closer to human behavior will mean that skills, gear and stats won't have to compensate as much for PvE combat against "dumb" or predictable bosses and mobs. This could actually mean less work tuning game systems in the long run.
One day you would step into the raid instance to find every mob waiting at the front door and gank you during the loading screen.
Or corpse camping us at graveyards.
I was talking about mobs that get the ability to use dodging skills etc.
Ofc players have these anyway.
Edit: I prob misread ur point.
I agree that it would decrease work in the long run, especialy if they buy google's solutions.
But mob behavior thats closer to human will still be similar to usual ki if the mob only has its auto attack and maybe 1-2 special ability as in most games.
Especialy for tab target heavy combat, since it makes positioning less important..
@BlackCat75
That would be funny/horrible
But these extreme situations can be prevented by adding appropriate rules/negative rewards.
Intelligent mobs are a huge step towards a living world, that can keeps us on our toes, and at the same time make the usage of bots really hard.
So the content is challenging and tactical and not just mind numbing repetitive clicking of few skills without any further thought given into it.
Do you think we should also have a "tricking/deceiving" system for the same AI Bosses, like luring them into a point where the boss mob is forced to attack with their AOE(for example), because the boss will "think" it'll be more efficient to attack with AOE, so we can gain advantage out of that. Or should it be just too unpredictable no matter what we try, thus blocking every upcoming move instantly without a plan?
Well thats not necessarily bad, but why would someone play a tank if the boss attacks the healer anyway. And intrepid want tanks to be a thing.
Personaly i dont like the general concept of a tank anyway.
All classes should avoid incoming dmg by dodging/parry/etc.
There could be classes that endure some more dmg but not too diffrent.
Because forcing the enemy to only attack the only player with super armor(who is also the only player that doesnt represent any threat towards the enemy) is a weird game mechanic that is totaly illogical and imo doesnt provide fun either.
Because you also brought up the logic aspect - many games have healing aggro, which depending on the game can actually amount to quite a lot. That also makes more sense logically since they're supposed to provide life-saving support. An AI might figure that out as well.
If the tank can just keep aggro all the time without much effort, that defeats the thrill.
Ofc tanks can die aswell, but the ai will figure out that its best chances to survive are somehow like:
attack healer that is about to cast revive>attack low health player>attack player with lowest armor>attack healer>=attack highest dps>position behind highest dps>= run away > attack random dps>>attack tank.
So as long as you dont physicaly prevent the ai from doing anything but attacking the tank, it wouldn't do so..
healing aggro doesnt really solve the problem: tank aggro remains illogical even if there is a logical reason to healing aggro.
As i think about it... true AI would turn pve into pvp similar fights so tanks will be useless unless you put in another reward function to reward dmging the tank... but why even create a smart ai in the first place if it has to do the same thing dumb ki would do anyway ...
Classic tanks are just doomed in the future?
Thats exactly why i said 'classic' tanks
Adding human-like AI behavior into the above, probably won't change class roles and playstyles far beyond what is already necessary for PvP.
- Tanks will need to be well armored, physically block attacks (Bulwark), taunt (Hatred, Impale), silence/stun (Shield Might), mitigate damage to other players (Cover), etc. I think tanks in Ashes will have a similar necessary role in both PvP and PvE.
- Melee classes will also need excellent armor and will need to use their defensive abilities, because smart AI bosses will look for the weakest targets to attack. Melee in Ashes will likely play a role in blocking attacks directed towards ranged classes.
- Ranged classes will actually need to stay at range from their enemies. Distance and physical barriers created by spells or simply body blocking from the melee classes will be significant, just like in PvP. Ranged will also need to be vigilant of the boss or other mobs attacking them directly; using their mobility (Mage's Escape, Fleeting Shot) and defensive skills (After Image, Ice Prison, Snare) to avoid danger.
To me, this is a way more immersive style of combat for all of the classes, rather than solely memorizing timing and ability sequences of "dumb" AI bosses and mobs in other MMORPGS.http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012410/Improving-AI-Decision-Modeling-Through
I would do a combination of classic and modern.
Boss should do some "basic attacks" towards target with AGRO, this target would (ideally) be tank, tank would be armored and able to survive this basic attacks if, of course, he is been healed by capable healer.
In addition to this basic attacks (classic tanking mode) boss should do AoEs on other targeted areas, some AoEs to predetermined areas, some AoEs to areas where most real threat to him lies "most dangerous DPSers, healers etc".
All this AoEs would have graphs drawn and all players would have limited time to exit the danger area where AoE would soon strike. All AoEs would be 1 shot kills (even for tanks).
So raid that attacks boss should have all players knowing to play their role (tank, heal, DPS) in classic sense (be tanky enough, heal enough,do enough DPS). In addition to that all players would need to avoid predetermined AoEs (know tactics and movement paths), and also all players would need to have good reaction / instantaneous thinking, by reacting to un-predetermined boss AoEs, that boss choses to cast at current area of interest.
This, plus being able to react well enough to do combos that Intrepid already introduced (and hopefully with reworked "timer bar") would ensure game is sufficiently skill based, and interesting enough.
Perhaps add some dynamic boss random moves that would play a bit differently in each time you face him, and fights would hardly become boring soon.
Added that some of these bosses would be in open world dungeons with players hopefully auto flagged for PvP (like in sieges), and you would have plenty of fun, that would persist through time.
Tera still has similar pve combat and its by far the best ive ever seen.
I loved telegraphs in Wildstar and in original Secret World combat, it took some skills to win the fights and not just mind numbing key smashing.
Too much work for Ashes, but we might be getting a simplified implementation of the SOE version of StoryBricks.
AI wouldn't be able to ignore the Tank any more than players can ignore a Tank's threat abilities.
AI should ideally have the same ranges of abilities as players.
The thing that bothers me with wildstar is that they used these telgraphs way too much. Its more of a replacement for proper animations smh.
In tera you had these telegraphs for most boss attacks in normal mode and in hard mode you simply die if you dont pay attention to the actual animation of the boss.
Also tera has a ton of i-frame and dodging skills that add alot to the gameplay while wildstar only has this small ability bar with ~11 skills.
But no need to start playing tera, they successfully made every possible other part of the game so bad that no sane person would want to play the game for a long time..
Removing the ambiguity is a good thing though. When your raid wipes in Wildstar, you know exactly what bad stuff you stood in. I cringe every time I watch the PAX PvE demo, the only way the tank knows he's out of the boss's breath is that he isn't taking damage from it. A proper telegraph would make things absolutely clear.
No iframes in Wildstar, knowing exactly where things will happen because of the telegraphs let you avoid damage by actually avoiding it, and crafting a skill set to maximize your damage/threat and tankiness/healing while bringing the required utility is part of the appeal.