Diversity (no, not the sociopolitical thing...) of mobs

Hey guys, I wonder what your opinion on the following subject is and if there is any information from the devs (that I may have missed).

In my opinion it is highly desirable for an mmorpg to have hostile mobs that are very diverse regarding their combat-related aspects. To start with some more obvious possibilities. Some mobs...

could have higher armor
could have higher resistances or even immunities against certain elemental attacks
could be faster
could have especially high / low hp numbers
could have especially long ranged attacks

Those differences would not only be more interesting to fight but also lead to a situation where different classes / builds would show very different performances against different types of mobs. When combined with some abilities for mobs like...

Snares
Self-Heals
Damage-Reflects
Projectile-Reflects
Charges / Jumps
Invisibility

we can even imagine mobs that are easier to kill for a healer or a tank than for a damage dealer.

But all this diversity would become useless when mobs are too weak.

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Comments

Yulivee

In early WoW we saw some of this variation in mob design. Although it may seem a bit shallow regarding todays standards imho it was pretty good for the first version of the game 20years ago.

But instead of digging deeper into this they turned around and kind of harmonized all the mobtypes (at least for the open world) until everything feels like "melee mob with lvl X" or "ranged mob with lvl X".

Never played Raknarok Online myself but as far as I understand it from my wifes descriptions, this game was on a whole other level regarding mob diversity. Even to the point where players started to create specialized builds / equips for certain mobtypes.

Birthday

I agree. I myself am a avid explorer. The thing I love the most is exploring and questing in the open world. Raids don't tickle my fancy so much as world bosses, good, fun and challenging quests and challenging mobs.
I just love the feel the open wild world. Behind every corner there is a suprise.

However all of this feeling is very ruined and trickled down to a walking simulator experience when mobs are so boring that I just spam 1, 2, 3 and they die.

From what I've seen so far Intrepid has shown some interesting mobs which have specific mechanics that make them harder to kill and harder to defend against. This is something very refreshing and nice to see because most MMOs don't have this. Everything usually feels like a punching bag pretty much.

Arya_Yeshe

Well, someone has to tackle the issue that is poor AI and poor mob squad composition.

mobs have no ability to call support
mobs don't flee
mob squads don't merge with another squad for making a bigger sqad
everything else, infinite stuff
immesureable lack of creativity from devs in general

Why is it that in no game, when a party of four people arrive at a location, do the mob squads not combine and form a large squad consisting of 30 mobs?

Despite demanding a bit more work performance, game developers do not appear to be putting any efforts into creating innovative or unique gameplay experiences. Devs just sprinkle a mob here and there and that's about it.

It's just disgusting.

Ludullu

All of that is expected for me. And it would be quite sad if they weren't in the game.

Sjelden

Creatures perception in MMO's can be measured in inches and not furlongs.

NPC's that communicate, protect their homes, team up, apply different strategies, make us of enviroment, and combine flanking, sneak attacks, and disengagement would make for a vastly different experience.

Modern AI technology make these kinds of encounters possible. Not scripted, but dynamically adaptable NPC behaviour. I believe the limitations mostly comes down to server performance and available resources.

Kilion

Agreed, I certainly hope to see a variety of mobs in this game, but I am already quite optimistic in that regard due to the 64 class systems. I expect this not only to be the basis for us players to build our character, I am very confident when I say: This will be a guiding line when designing mobs as well.

(1) Example:
You have a hunting cat type of mob. You can assign it the general archetype of Rouge (sneak up on prey and kill it with bleed and raw burst damage)
Now however this base mob adapts to its surroundings... it gets augmented. e.g. near the Tower of Carphin magic power has leaked out to such an extent that some of the abilities of the cat have become semi-magical. So Intrepid can now design the Rouge-inspired cat base skills with the augmentation paths of a mage or summoner.

To extend this a bit further - It would be crazy if mobs had "phases" based on environmental circumstances. e.g. a Riverlands cat will usually have a Rouge base archetype but if enough other wildlife is hunted (because demand for leather is high) it will change into "hunger mode" where the base archetype becomes that more akin of a Fighter - or simply change the behavior to be more aggressive. I'm no developer but I would at least think that this is not a complex task to put into the game regarding the behavior tree and counting the prey that has been killed in a certain amount of time. It 100% would take time, but I think it wouldn't be too difficult. Then again, I have no idea about game design.

(2) We also have seen a minotaur "Shaman" and I would expect those to have similar skills to the Shaman we as players will be able to play. Add to that the "racial abilities" of mobs due to them being much more diverse than us players (scorpions, flying geodes and minotaurs) and you end up with a modular construction kit that should allow for a vast array of different PvE encounters.

(3) And as a last point, I think especially for tamable wild life the status diversity (e.g. immunity against certain types of damage) would give a HUGE boost to animal husbandry to counter certain terrains dangers.

Birthday

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Well, someone has to tackle the issue that is poor AI and poor mob squad composition.
mobs have no ability to call support

mobs don't flee

mob squads don't merge with another squad for making a bigger sqad

everything else, infinite stuff

immesureable lack of creativity from devs in general

Why is it that in no game, when a party of four people arrive at a location, do the mob squads not combine and form a large squad consisting of 30 mobs?

Despite demanding a bit more work performance, game developers do not appear to be putting any efforts into creating innovative or unique gameplay experiences. Devs just sprinkle a mob here and there and that's about it.

It's just disgusting.

I know what you mean bro. It makes me cry literally. Playing WoW vanilla in the beginning was so fun because the game's mobs were advanced enough for the time. When I played it I'd always think that they'd improve upon it, adding stuff like this. Nope. Just re-skinning mobs and environment for the next 20 years.

Spif

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Why is it that in no game, when a party of four people arrive at a location, do the mob squads not combine and form a large squad consisting of 30 mobs?

Because then those 4 people would just AE 30 mobs down after running around a corner?

But seriously, AI combat programming is tough to do with varied terrain and pathing. I picked up the latest DLC for Destiny 2 (having never played it before), and put it down soon afterwards. Because progression is partially about exploiting AI dumbness.

The more complicated the AI, the more likely that a player is going to find one trick to make it do something stupid. That method will be told to everyone.

Arya_Yeshe

Spif wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Why is it that in no game, when a party of four people arrive at a location, do the mob squads not combine and form a large squad consisting of 30 mobs?

Because then those 4 people would just AE 30 mobs down after running around a corner?

But seriously, AI combat programming is tough to do with varied terrain and pathing. I picked up the latest DLC for Destiny 2 (having never played it before), and put it down soon afterwards. Because progression is partially about exploiting AI dumbness.

The more complicated the AI, the more likely that a player is going to find one trick to make it do something stupid. That method will be told to everyone.

The thing is, those 30 mobs are already there, but they don't support each other these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3QImwiDg7g

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