MOB AI

Spiders occupy webs waiting for prey.
Wolves roam hunt in packs.
Goblins and brigands hide and target lone travelers.
zombies emerge from the earth in mass burial grounds.
Organized militias post a few watchers while the rest are sleeping/drinking/working.
etc.

One thing that turns me off about classic MMO mob AI is that the aggro mechanic is uninspiring and boring. It feels real bad to see a bunch of random mobs populate and patrol a plot of land as health bars waiting to be depleted for loot and xp. Is there not a better alternative for this? Is proximity the only aggro factor and is a spawn point the only reason a mob exists?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Azherae

Already planned.

For some of them, already in.

Don't worry, Ashes is trying to 'return to the golden days', not make another Dynasty Warriors Online.

Depraved

Orgagriffith wrote: »

Spiders occupy webs waiting for prey.
Wolves roam hunt in packs.
Goblins and brigands hide and target lone travelers.
zombies emerge from the earth in mass burial grounds.
Organized militias post a few watchers while the rest are sleeping/drinking/working.
etc.

One thing that turns me off about classic MMO mob AI is that the aggro mechanic is uninspiring and boring. It feels real bad to see a bunch of random mobs populate and patrol a plot of land as health bars waiting to be depleted for loot and xp. Is there not a better alternative for this? Is proximity the only aggro factor and is a spawn point the only reason a mob exists?

wolves hunt in packs, but do you see them going to other territories? animals are territorials as well.

bandits ambush you in a specific area, but they dont abmush you anywhere and everywhere...

if you go into a cave and you are expected to find some evil dragons in the cave you want to farm, imagine if they decided to leave lmao that would make for a terrible game.

different regions have flora and fauna. you arent going to find kangaroos in america and you arent going to find bears in australia. cactus are in the dessert and pine trees are in...yeah you guessed it, pine forests.

and yes, proximity is the only factor for detecting players (actually event triggers too). that proximity could be the mob detecting you when you are really close, or when you are on the other side of the map (but this one would suck).

even triggers refer to the player doing an action and that action causing a mob to spawn or attack the player. for example, if you attack a mob, that mob will attack you but also a nearby mob might attack you as well.

if you chop too many trees in one region, that could trigger an event and make some dryads attack you, for example

Raven016

Orgagriffith wrote: »

One thing that turns me off about classic MMO mob AI is that the aggro mechanic is uninspiring and boring.

I want to see sarcastic AI which aggros players properly

Orgagriffith

I hope what yall are saying is correct, that this is planned.
I was just a little concerned on the latest dev stream when that spider got leashed

nothing about current mmos scream "adventure" I think this would help with that

Enigmatic Sage

@Orgagriffith yeah, we've seen the undead rise out of the ground in various live stream demonstrations already.

We should see some logical characteristics of AI and mob type relations.

Aszkalon

Orgagriffith wrote: »

I noticed in a few Showcase/Presentations ... ...

... ... there are some Wolves out in the Wilderness. But they are - "alone". While i know, that literal "Lone Wolves" do in fact exist,

i think this is very odd, because it was also RIGHT NEAR the Node Sir Steven and his fellow Developers emerged from.

Wild Animals like Wolves would either need to be extremely desperate to go near a Human Settlement, or they would usually only approach it in a pack. It hardly makes any Sense that they split up like Scouts of a great Army of Humanoids and wander through the Landscape alone.

Depraved

Aszkalon wrote: »

Orgagriffith wrote: »

I noticed in a few Showcase/Presentations ... ...

... ... there are some Wolves out in the Wilderness. But they are - "alone". While i know, that literal "Lone Wolves" do in fact exist,

i think this is very odd, because it was also RIGHT NEAR the Node Sir Steven and his fellow Developers emerged from.

Wild Animals like Wolves would either need to be extremely desperate to go near a Human Settlement, or they would usually only approach it in a pack. It hardly makes any Sense that they split up like Scouts of a great Army of Humanoids and wander through the Landscape alone.

lone wolves hehe. well they could have split to do something. wolves arent hunting 24/7, they do other wolf stuff too. however, we have to consider that these arent earth wolves, they are verran wolves. verran wolves probably hunt alone and not in a pack.

cant expect every single mob you fight to be in a group lol

Orgagriffith

Depraved wrote: »

wolves arent hunting 24/7, they do other wolf stuff too.

This here is exactly what im talking about. In the latest (2/29) livestream there were minotaurs and mycelium just like, standing around doing nothing. This maybe makes sense for the mycelium because they were soaking up the rain but the minotaurs would have noticed you in their territory well-before you even poked your head around the canyon wall.

Is everything you find in this game deaf and blind? and once you run away 30 yeards they lose all interest and run back to the exact spot they were standing in as fast as they can?

Noaani

Keep in mind, the kinds of interactions you are talking about are likely to be among the last things implemented in the entire game - like, the update to the client as the game goes live type things.

Intrepid have said they have this kind of thing in mind, that doesnt mean they have done any work on it at all as yet.

Nerror

I honestly don't think Ashes will revolutionise this aspect of MMOs. At release we are going to have supposedly intelligent mobs standing spread out, ignoring their buddies being butchered 30 meters away, and leashing mechanics.

If those Minotaurs were to behave even remotely like they would if they were real, we'd have ambushes and roving bands of them ganking any and all adventurers that set foot in the area, giving them zero chance to survive unless they came in equal numbers. Great idea for some areas, and I hope we see it for 8+ group content areas, but not so great for areas designed to be partly soloable or done in small groups.

Depraved

Orgagriffith wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

wolves arent hunting 24/7, they do other wolf stuff too.

This here is exactly what im talking about. In the latest (2/29) livestream there were minotaurs and mycelium just like, standing around doing nothing. This maybe makes sense for the mycelium because they were soaking up the rain but the minotaurs would have noticed you in their territory well-before you even poked your head around the canyon wall.

Is everything you find in this game deaf and blind? and once you run away 30 yeards they lose all interest and run back to the exact spot they were standing in as fast as they can?

you ignored what i said after. they arent earth wolves, they are verran wolves. regarding the minotaurs, they are verran minotaurs. maybe they cant see or hear very well. i mean look at eagles, can a human see as good as an eagle? or smell as good as a dog? nope! not all verran creatures behave like similar creatures on earth or have the same abilities or degrees of senses developed.

also, balance > *

Sauronplay

I think intrepid is in it, but I don't know how they will do it, but I share your opinion, we need the AI to have more action and a diverse combat that offers us unique abilities.

Dripyula

OOOOOH YES when I saw the Minotaurs walk around like final stage Alzheimer people ( no pun intended ) I felt very bad looking at this.

I would love it when certain groups of beings do not do this "meaningless MMO stride" and I feel even mostly stationary standing around is better for Humanoids. Looks just ridicolous when they walk around forever in their tiny little circles.
Let them sit on chairs, at tables, craft, drink something, grill or doze off even at daytime hours.

And let animals "hide" near bushes when they hear you from about 100 meters away or spawn carnivores in bushes straight away and just lurk there.

TheDarkSorcerer

Nerror wrote: »

I honestly don't think Ashes will revolutionise this aspect of MMOs. At release we are going to have supposedly intelligent mobs standing spread out, ignoring their buddies being butchered 30 meters away, and leashing mechanics.

If those Minotaurs were to behave even remotely like they would if they were real, we'd have ambushes and roving bands of them ganking any and all adventurers that set foot in the area, giving them zero chance to survive unless they came in equal numbers. Great idea for some areas, and I hope we see it for 8+ group content areas, but not so great for areas designed to be partly soloable or done in small groups.

I wouldn't mind if it works like the enemy camps in Hogwarts Legacy. If you attack an enemy within a camp or within X feet of other enemies, they get alerted of intruder and starts attacking as well.

Morashtak

This sounds like a "all the bears" discussion. Hopefully players will see the mobs not so much as loot pinatas but as representations of the population and territory of each mob type.

While it was fun to plan the perfect strat to take out a Hogwarts or RDR2 enemy camp these were single players games and do not translate well to an MMO.

A players aggro range should expand a bit when attacking and intelligent mobs should have a reinforcement mechanic but if "all the bears" come running clever players will find a way to exploit it or grief others.

Orgagriffith

Nerror wrote: »

I honestly don't think Ashes will revolutionise this aspect of MMOs. At release we are going to have supposedly intelligent mobs standing spread out, ignoring their buddies being butchered 30 meters away, and leashing mechanics.

If those Minotaurs were to behave even remotely like they would if they were real, we'd have ambushes and roving bands of them ganking any and all adventurers that set foot in the area, giving them zero chance to survive unless they came in equal numbers. Great idea for some areas, and I hope we see it for 8+ group content areas, but not so great for areas designed to be partly soloable or done in small groups.

I think you might be right but I'm still gonna make some noise about it.
I'm hoping that triggered events will be numerous enough that the regular "mobs to farm" won't be the primary combat.

Grimmsley

Probably addressed already but, I wanna take a mob to the guard and for the guard to actually care like he's being paid well to guard T_T

Saabynator

I like the "realism" of it as well. The problem is, it does not work that well in MMORPGs. There is some mechanics you can do, that there is in ashes now. Like low life mobs run to get help. There is mobs that blow a horn or whatever, and call in more mobs or expands the radius of agro around that target. But realistic agro only works in like single player shooters, and still does not work that well there. There will be mobs just standing around walking from a to b to c then back to a. Cant make it work if its too fancy. What would solo'ers do? Small groups etc.

akabear

Asheron's Call in open beta, I recall having a mob that stalked me moving parallel with me for a very long time. Me, running in the open, the mob, running in the forest.. a good few minutes of running to get away.
That was an experience.

In Hawken (Mech FPS) winter map, sometimes yeti would appear and players would have to decide to fight each other or forget the opponent for a moment and collectively fight the mob.. I hope the open oceans have elements like this.

So on that note, with any given behavior of mobs of a particular type and/or in a region, I hope that there are occasional/rare outliners that behave differently (possibly with different spoils too)

Dezemi

Grimmsley wrote: »

Probably addressed already but, I wanna take a mob to the guard and for the guard to actually care like he's being paid well to guard T_T

Oh. I am used to them caring, but if the guard kills it, then you get no loot nor exp! xd

Child Item