When I first started playing L2, some 2 1/2 years ago (at release whenever that was) I noticed while running around Talking Island that most of the monsters seemed to just stand around and wait to be killed. I assumed that this was just because TI was a "training" island and that the mainland would be entirely different with monsters that attacked on site and that did not appear to be planted in a corn field waiting to be chopped down.
Sadly, upon arriving at the mainland, I realized that the monster AI was identical and the only difference was that the monsters got harder. This seems to be the case all the way to the hardest monster. With the exception of the occasional healer mob that heals its "tank" mob, the AI is pretty bland. It also encourages botting. If you can see a monster from a long way away and decide to attack it, then why can't a mob decide to attack you until you are within a feet? I know this will likely never be fixed, at least not until L3. It is, however, a solution to the botting, adena farming problem that plagues this game. If they took the number of monsters and reduced it by 75% and made the monsters available give much higher XP to where you would still get the same amount of XP as before, there would be no more botting in L2. What would result is far more party oriented gameplay. If the monsters were 75% more rare and 75% harder to kill, you would have far more parties as well.
The other problem with the monsters, and this is more minor, is the way that mobs just appear ("spawn") out of thin air and when they are killed they evaporate into thin air. In a word... lame. The alternative wouldnt be that hard. For example, in all of the fantasy games played in the past, orcs are born out of fire. So have a cave with a fire pit in the bottom that spawns orcs that walk out of the cave and roam the country side. Some of the orcs could remain around the pit and tend to it, making that a natural spot to hunt.
For a dragon you could make them swoop down from the sky, instead of just magically showing up flapping their wings and floating in space. Undead could rise out of graves. Ghost could rise out of corpses.
All of this is within the realm of the capabilities of this game. The solutions for some of the games biggest problems are there.
Please, don't let this post be misinterpreted to think that I am unhappy with the progress that the L2 staff has made in continuing to develop Lineage II. I appreciate all the hard work, and I think that you guys have done a magnificent job! This is just my $0.02 on how to make it even better.
The monster AI is better than just standing there....
In places like AC and OB the mobs will run back to their camps and bring their friends to come kill you...
Uh ... they do?
I remember them running away. Which is fine; I'm a mean MF. :cool:
I don't remember them bringing their friends with them, or getting them to flank me, or anything that would be at least partially clever. They just wander back after a while and get killed then.
Well NCSoft wants you to stick around and you sure don't want to play a game that's unplayable. Anyway at higher levels here's what you can look forward to seeing.
Mobs that morph
Mobs that summon other mobs
Mobs that cast hate
Mobs that teleport YOU TO THEM
Mobs that teleport TO YOU
Mobs that run, gather a posse, and come and zerg your pants off
Mobs with pets (pesky things)
Mobs that rez each other (lol)
and many more I don't know about
The monster AI is better than just standing there....
In places like AC and OB the mobs will run back to their camps and bring their friends to come kill you...
Uh ... they do?
I remember them running away. Which is fine; I'm a mean MF. :cool:
I don't remember them bringing their friends with them, or getting them to flank me, or anything that would be at least partially clever. They just wander back after a while and get killed then.
Artificial stupidity at work.
they started doing it in C3 I believe... first time I was there on an alt and watched the ol mahum guard run into the camp... thought no big deal... stood around waiting and he ran back out with a commander and a captain and zerged me....
I guess I'm not sure about OB... they do in AC for sure though.
Mobs that summon other mobs
Mobs that cast hate
Mobs that teleport YOU TO THEM
Mobs that teleport TO YOU
Mobs that run, gather a posse, and come and zerg your pants off
Mobs with pets (pesky things)
Mobs that rez each other (lol)
and many more I don't know about
We also get...
Mobs that use spirit/ soul shots
Mods that cancel buffs
Mobs that silences mages
Mods that target lower level players/ healers automatically
Mobs that summon three or more allies after their death
Mobs with a wide variety of skills
Mobs that resist Darkness, Light, blunts, arrows, daggers, physical, fire, water, wind, sleep, root, and magic in general. You also get mobs with multiple resistances.
When you're higher levels, you will start to appreciate the AI for what it is.
Yeah, the mob AI for the lower lvls is easy as you do see. 1 reason, they are still making it easy for you to lvl without needing to know a pile of friends, etc. The first time you will see some AI is in AC or Orc Barracks. I can speak from experience, they do run back to a camp, and they can pull their friends with them. I remember a few times when luck really wasn't with me, and they brought back the entire camp to kill me. Also if your in a group, have pet out whatever, when they come back, the aggro will usually go to the weakest member/pet there.
After you lvl up some more, the AI gets better and better. 1 reason is probably due to the fact they want easier for new players. The other reason, the majority of the new players are in the higher lvls. When they do work on mobs, changing their AI, whatever, they aren't going to waste their time changing ones that very few people will see. They will focus most of the work on new areas/new mobs, and mobs that are in the lvl ranges of the majority of players. With C4, I am only beginning to see a few of the different things these mobs can do, some of them are scary :)
Oh forgot, alot of mobs do attack you when they see you. Once you walk into your first aggro area, you will know what I mean. I always used to hate those aggro orc troop leaders around Oren. Your just running along the road. One of them sees you, chases you. If you attack him, bam 4 of his friends are there to take you out. If your not high enought lvl to deal with 4 mobs on you, all you can do is run, and hope you don't die before he loses interest in you.
You do realize that all of those things - with the exception of "running back to the base to get reinforcements" at which the mobs, frankly, suck - aren't AI related, but just some extra abilities?
I'm level 50 and have leveled to 61 before. I know that monster AI gets slightly more complicated. Still, come on people, we have to admit that this is the weakest part of the game. Also, noone has addressed my point that the sheer number of idiot monsters in the game strongly encourages botters. If they had to hunt for the mobs, they wouldnt be able to use programs to play.
I'm level 50 and have leveled to 61 before. I know that monster AI gets slightly more complicated. Still, come on people, we have to admit that this is the weakest part of the game. Also, noone has addressed my point that the sheer number of idiot monsters in the game strongly encourages botters. If they had to hunt for the mobs, they wouldnt be able to use programs to play.
Do you have any idea how many mobs you have to kill to get to 75? You only killed enough to get 1/9 the way.... and god knows how much more to 78. You should be thankful the AI is what it is. Hunting would become a stressful chore with the type of AI you're looking for. I suggest you make your fun out of PVP/ RP like the rest of us, and leave the mob AI alone.
Good lord! Did any part of my post lend itself to ******* people off? I thought I was voicing my opinion of what I feel is a weak point of the game, which it definitely is. Sorry to the guys above. Didnt mean to ruffle any feathers.
Botting is easy since there aren't really enough mobs around, instead of the other way around.
And mosnters are hard enough as they are for melee; I can't find enough mobs in the 30 lvl range that DON'T spam one type of spell or another... have you seen the marsh stakatos lately? They agro socially and have skills now. Hell even monsters around Dion spam spells a lot. top NG jewelry isn't cutting it; lowest D grade jewels aren't helping either.
Half the noobie monsters have some sort or "skill" now inherent to them. Past level 25 monsters; they all have at least 2 or can spam rqnged spells and aura flares.
Now regarding your suggestion; ok, let's pretend they implemented some sort of AI that ressembled more a human player so every monster encounter would be like PvP... let's pretend AI only really kicks in after your first class transfer to spare the noobies from unnecesary slaughter.
The moment you step out of a town, 10+ monsters zerg over you, since they have your same field of vision. Let's pretend everyone of them is a fighter class. At level 20 they'd have at least 9 levels of powerstrike, more or less half your HP EACH and medium grade armor and weapons.
Hell no, make them level 18 and they'd still have those; and it's 10 of them charging at you. So let's assume you can group enough people; top number of party members is 9 or so. Each and every encounter would last too long, and would be blowing money left and right. so you'd have to crawl your way to another town. Heaven helps you if someone in your party crashes or goes AFK in the middle of the field.
I can picture the loads of fun that would be having to run solo from one town to another, followed by a train of monsters with equal skills to you; specially since town guards won't help you with them.
Oh what fun it would be that every monster was aggressive and that randomly spawned raid monsters would chase after you because they happened to be looking your way when you were passing by.
Then they'd have to rework the entire XP/SP/adena reward table, the quests award table, the whole combat system and in general program a whole different **** game.
Because then what prevents the monsters from just rushing into the cities? :mad:
I have to agree - with the grind like it is in this game, making each mob encounter more "interesting" would make lvling far too slow. You really would have to change the rest of the game, too (less exp/level and so on). And, frankly, I *like* it that the mobs act a bit dumb. That way you can lean back sometimes and just grind and relax a bit. I personally do not want to log on and have several hours of nerve-wrecking fighting against mobs, I *like* the grind sometimes :)
If you want hardcore action (no, not THAT one!), there are areas where you cannot relax even one minute. Go to forge of gods, for example. Not really super AI, but mobs dying and spawning six lvl 80+ multi-hp mobs which all go for one party member makes for some very interesting encounters...
If you want hardcore action (no, not THAT one!), there are areas where you cannot relax even one minute. Go to forge of gods, for example. Not really super AI, but mobs dying and spawning six lvl 80+ multi-hp mobs which all go for one party member makes for some very interesting encounters...
Yeah especially when your healers and nukers were killing just one more before medding. Scary fact, we lived :p
If you want hardcore action (no, not THAT one!), there are areas where you cannot relax even one minute. Go to forge of gods, for example. Not really super AI, but mobs dying and spawning six lvl 80+ multi-hp mobs which all go for one party member makes for some very interesting encounters...
Yeah especially when your healers and nukers were killing just one more before medding. Scary fact, we lived :p
Lol yes, probably a feature of the AI :) Two times we said "oh, buffs fade in one minute, just this one mob more" - and BOOM, here the cloud of mobs arrives :)
The moment you step out of a town, 10+ monsters zerg over you, since they have your same field of vision. Let's pretend everyone of them is a fighter class. At level 20 they'd have at least 9 levels of powerstrike, more or less half your HP EACH and medium grade armor and weapons.
That sounds like an awsome game; where do I sign up?
Incidentally, this reminds me of many merry hours with Operation Flashpoint, where I set up just such situations in the editor to have fun - me and a gun and 20-something enemies. And the AI there does make you work for every kill.
They discuss some ideas related to the topic of this thread, anticipating a second generation of mmogs where the design is not based on grinding.
Let's face it, if lineage][ were a single-player game, it would be a miserable failure. Or analogously, can you imagine playing a paper-n-pencil rpg where the gamemaster set it up to have you grind 1000s of monsters repeatedly in the same room with no variation? Hopefully, in the future there will be mm games that have a challenge beyond time-in-the-saddle.
The problem isn't just AI, but also design. If we need to kill hundreds of thousands of mobs to get in-game achievements, we need those encounters to go pretty quickly. But if the design of the game were such that one encounter would be rewarding, then it'd be okay if it were challenging and time consuming.
Lineage][ can only begin to approach creative alternatives to grinding dumb mobs. The new mob abilities in C4 are one improvement to make the game less dumb.
Another advance I see is that it's now almost viable to level on raid bosses, except that there really aren't enough to go around. Now they can be done with a single party, even non-ideal parties. One trouble is you'll rapidly go broke. The other trouble is many of the raid bosses are just big versions of the same old stupid mobs and require nothing more than the tank spamming aggression, the healers keeping hp up, and everyone else pressing the same button or two over and over. The ones with interesting skills, AoE sleep, healing minions, and things like that are fun.
Mobs with memory, who lay ambushes, extortion rings, thieves, puzzles, dynamic politics, etc. would all be nice. Currently we have to rely on ourselves to put those elements into the game. It's a shame you can't level on clan wars and scams, eh.
I take it you realize, than in this "intelligent" monster setup, you'd be dying a whole lot right? In fact you'd be dying hundred fold. Because then... what is going to prevent mobs from looting you? And then, if mobs were "really" intelligent; they'd even farm the adventurers.
You speak easily of a system where monsters "lay traps and ambush you" yet I can't see if you are realizing it would be a very frustrating environment.
Because you are assuming monsters would ambush you and be "fun" yet somehow they don't stand a fighting chance? Or do you want them just to be "interesting" enough so they can amuse you, but not really a threat? Because even with the smartest AI, there is bound to be some grinding to do.