Mobs: equal opportunity haters?

TheGoodzilla

I'm curious about am element of other games I'm wondering about possibly making an appearance in Ashes.

I have seen other games where various mobs (say a wolf and a boar) will attack each other without any prompting from the player at times. To me this made the game feel a little more realistic, as opposed to mobs basically just standing there waiting to die.

One sort of exploit to this system was you can pull one mob, walk near the second, and then back up to watch them fight each other. But I would still like to see this added in even if the exploit remains.

Any chance of this happening in your opinion? Or will mobs just be mobile loot sacks for players?

TheGoodzilla

No one has an idea on this?

deakbo

I agree the world should be more realistic. I haven’t heard of this being talked about yet so I have no clue if it will be implemented or not

Dygz

Seems likely but not really enough mobs in the game to know for sure yet.

Elgaroth

I think it would be interesting if mobs did have more natural behavior like this. It would be great to see wolves acting like wolves... elk behaving like elk... and so on. The more detail, the better the immersion. Like you, I've seen a few examples of this in previous MMOs, but only occasionally. In most cases, the mobs are (as you described) just mobile loot sacks waiting to be harvested by the players.

So, for my vote, I would say "yes, please".

However, I think we may have to recognize two main issues that may prevent this from happening.

The first is the increased difficulty for the Devs. Putting in mob behavior is no problem... but making sure each environment is functional and doesn't have TOO many exploits, that would take a lot of effort. I wouldn't blame them if they passed on that ambitious goal.

The second (and more significant) is the players themselves. While there are those of us (like you and I) who would love these little details... there are many of those for whom the goal is just to find monster, kill monster, and take reward. Get enough players together in a game... and collectively, they tend to act less like people and more like... well, ants. Consume and move on.

Interestingly, there was a great video put together by Richard Garriott where he explains this. Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE

As a gamer, I felt like it was a fascinating bit of history. They had this whole virtual ecology put together... and the players just mowed it down like it was nothing... to the point where they just removed the code entirely.

So, from a Dev's point of view, there is probably an instinctive point where, essentially, enough detail is enough. I suppose, if enough of us ask for it, though, who knows?

Anyway, just a thought.

Have a great day, everyone!

Xenotor

+1 I am all for this.
Its the same thing that happens in Grim dawn.
I always loved going out of town to see 2 monster types ducking it out at their territory border.
Just how wild animals would repel intruder into their "home" turf, i would like to see friction between the different monsters.

Balrog21

I think this will happen, but need confirm from Jahlon or the team if this has been asked before.

TheGoodzilla

Even if it isnt "creatures" like wolves and such, and instead was only group of separate factions (like goblins vs golems, or something) I think that would be neat.

My potential issue, to be clear, is that you travel to an area and find enemies just milling about effectively waiting to be killed. So seeing them interact with eachother would be neat. But I think another possibility would be to give the enemy ai some kind of wandering feature.

Like for example, if its a group of wolves, why not let them roam around a large area as a pack would do, instead of just hanging out by a tree having an everlasting siesta?

winner909098

It would be interesting if a raptor, which is near some rabbits, would run up and attack one or two and eat it, adding in a thing of you wanting to help get rid with the raptors, to let rabbits move back

TheGoodzilla

Yeah I'm not asking for a realistic ecology. It's just one of the biggest tropes in fantasy games: the idea that the bad guys are just standing around waiting for the hero to show up.

Anything that gives them any kind of simulated life without player interaction would be great.