Thoughts on more aggressive enemy linking?

SikariZen

Hello!

I wanted to gauge community thought on this topic. Steven made it clear he wants to break away from traditional MMO mob spawning, where you just have a clump of mobs here and there, which doesn't feel like a living and breathing world.

To add to this train of thought; another MMO trope that bothers me is mobs watching their friends get beat in the face and just standing around, and the lack of urgency of surrounding mobs. What do you all think of larger aggro radius and/or mobs calling for help to nearby allies when engaging?

Do you prefer more manageable and player friendly pulls or would you prefer the world to feel more risky and lively in this aspect?

Ludullu

I expect most mobs to be social within their subtypes. And have scouts that can roam around a location and when they see you they run back to their friends and agro them onto you.

Ace1234

Yes please. I am all for having intelligent and coordinated mobs. I would definitely prefer everything within the world to be as interactive as possible- so mobs being able to interact with each other or call other nearby ones over for help is better to me than a bunch of isolated mobs that can't interact.

DarkTides

IMO, NPCs should engage in player professions, such as cutting down trees and other forms of gathering, including hunting....such that when you cut down trees in the presence of Tree Hugger Minotaurs (if they are), they do not approve of these actions and will become aggressive, if not immediate, over time, which can lead to larger mino army events attacking your node. Similarly, they could hunt the wild life, but take issue with over hunting and decide to kill players who hunt their food without their permission, which would be some faction quest thing.. which means you can kill players if you take their side...affiliations etc etc.

So watching NPCs actually do things is one way, but that's still kind of localized.... now to prevent static spawns..... more to add to this later!

Arya_Yeshe

I don't know how their mobs work now, if they have machine states, or if they have multiple machine states for their body/mind/route.

What I would do is trying to band up together mobs who are nearby... and if fartest mobs see mobs reacting to something then the fartest ones should start patrolling. I would work with states and try making it lightweight... speed is not important here, it's important the player having this experience in which he is fighting them all.

It's just like having an array and populating it with mods who are nearby where stuff is happening which could be a fight or they can see that another mob is going somewhere.

In all other MMOs it's just weird that the mod passively see their friends get slaughtered.

Arya_Yeshe

The quests being always available there at the same spot, with the same guy, through years and years it's just weird.

Does that NPC even have a life? A family somewhere else? Go visit relatives in Christmas or something?


Don't tell me that during sieges the NPCs will be there saying the same things, completely oblivious that there is a siege and the city is fire... just think of the memes about this.

Percimes

Yes, longer aggro range for some, lots of cooperation or group tactic with intelligent enemies: archers trying to stay far, healers keeping their tank alive and melee dps moving around you trying to get in your back and out of your hitting cone.

Mob initiatives. Scouts spot your party and they go get their pals and hunts you down. You hit them first? They retreat automatically to their base where the band wait for you on their wall.

The goblin attack event we've seen a few months ago is kind of like this, but not quite. It would be nice to have small scale mob reaction to player presence in their turf. Not only stationary monster waiting to be killed.