Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs)
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I've been meaning to write this post for a long while, but I had trouble putting it into words.
Fortunately, Steam's discovery queue came to my rescue, and provided me with a picture worth a thousand words:
...but what am I seeing?This is why I'm here on Fractured forums instead of supporting other crowd-funded MMOs with higher profiles or bigger fanbases.
This is why I'm not playing venerable World of Warcraft, critically-acclaimed Guild Wars 2, or ever-popular Final Fantasy XIV.
This why I hate 99% of MMOs.
So what's upsetting me so much? Take a guess, I'll wait.
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It's the mobs.
Player Character is smack in the middle of a group of mobs, beating some oup, but the rest of them... They're just sort of there. They do not help their compatriots. They do not attack on their own. They do not regroup. They do not run. They do not even pay attention.And it gets worse in ways that the picture did not capture. They will live only on fields filled with exact copies of them and nothing else; or in mixed groups, surrounded by exact copies of their group and nothing else. They will wander eternally, exactly three steps at a time, inside a 2-meter circle. They will chase you for whole 4 meters before giving up or suddenly vanishing. They will come into existence, within an arms length from you, by either getting beamed down from SS Enterprise in a flash of bright light, or just gradually materialising out of thin air.
It's hard to tell fighting them from picking up a particularly thorny plant, or mining boulders that splinter off in heavy chunks that like to land on your toes.
Turns out, I can't enjoy an MMO without some sort of verisimilitude, and I can't get that if monsters don't feel like antagonistic actors, and not catatonic loot pinatas that oh-so-obviously spawn on a tight timer and in a very specific spot.
I want to go on a hunt, I want to run from an angry apex predator, I want to be ambushed by bandits, not just go and trim a field of passive-aggressive weeds.It's not like I need some sort of life-like simulation requiring deep learning networks and Google's supercomputers to work, like some people like to point out.
All is needed is just care about presentation coupled with little smoke and mirrors.- Tibia pulled it off perfectly, and that game is pushing 22 years of being developed by a tiny team of
TeutonsGermans.(1) - Firefall was mismanaged to hell and back, and it managed to pull it off - nay, to knock it out of the park - in the beta in a fully 3D environment, and even managed to retain some of that after its disastrous launch.(2)
So, my question is:
Is that kind of thing also important to the dev team? To other players? To lurkers who feel on the fence about this whole Fractured thing?
Discuss.
Footnotes
(1) I'm not playing Tibia because it quickly turns from a game about adventuring in a hostile world to a game about going around with a potion-filled IV stand, almost literally crushing your enemies with bags of gold, and constantly worrying about your profit margins.
(2) I'm not playing Firefall because it lived a life of constant pain, had its soul sucked out, and its body died a slow, agonizing, humilating death, then had its shrivelled heart ripped out before the final death spiral, and is now dead. Super dead. 100% dead. DEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAD.
- Tibia pulled it off perfectly, and that game is pushing 22 years of being developed by a tiny team of
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Well written. I would certainly enjoy a realistic world, filled with realistic behaving monsters and NPCs.
Not everything is possible, of course, due to strain on the server. But to some extent, some realism is certainly possible, and I hope we will see it.
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Maybe you do not know, but the everquest next had with a similar proposal, mobs that think before acting, would be a very interesting mechanics if it were implemented in the game.
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I've seen posts where it is said wildlife will have "alignment" just like players. Some will be peaceful, and you lose karma for killing. Some are aggressive and you gain karma. Seeing a pasture or a den of some sort of animal type is common, even in reality. Now, entering a dungeon and seeing a group of mobs in a static boss-minion formation, that's not cool. But Fractured should be ok since its not an instanced asian mmo.
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Some type of "an indirect reactive aggro system" could be cool. An aggro not only based on players range to a particular monster, or based on initial pull, but an aggro based on travelling monsters passing by other monsters, and perhaps based on monster type as well.
So if one bear notices another bear from it's "tribe" in danger (in combat), it would react even if it does not notice the player that's attacking that other bear. It would first run towards the bear who needed help, and then check whats up. At that point if bear saw a player attacking a bear he would react to the player. A bear would not instantly run to a player that has aggro, because this might look foolish, because that other bear might not notice player instantly from his original position.
On the other hand if wolf saw a bear needing help, he might not react, and he might ignore the bear (he might even attack the bear to exploit weakness if bear was it's enemy), unless he perhaps saw the player afterwards when he reached the bear and then he started to decide if to attack the player because he wanted to attack the player or keep attacking the bear.
Some more complex aggro system would be cool if designed like that.
Of course game still needs "aggro reset range", because players pulling a whole forest to the city would also likely not be desired.
Mobs would stick to their own area, perhaps and "aggro reset range" would not be fixed to a particular distance, but would be tied to a certain zone. So a bear would chase you while he is in his own forest (home) but when you reached the meadow, or a part which bear does not consider his home anymore, bear would give up, regardless if that was 30m, or 250m.
In any way, I'm also hoping that we will see something more than a standard MMO aggro system.
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The original Gothic RPG had memorable creature behaviors: shadowbeasts were deadly, but loners and not very aggressive, whereas raptors hunted in packs, had a long aggro range, and would -never- stop chasing you.
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players might help others or might run away.
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i also hate when mobs dont run and save their poor lives, i hate when they dont chase me and run back to their respawn point i hate when they dont loot me, say like, boss killed me and looted all my stuff and if i wanna get it back i need to kill him or other players can kill him and get my stuff as a reward. i hate when you have like automated loot system, it should be all chaotic, who ever looted first. if you was killing boss for 30 minute and other party came they gotta have right to loot too, if you dont like it then kill them. simple.
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@boogis said in Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs):
t should be all chaotic, who ever looted first.
haha, we had that and it was horrible.
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@jetah "we had that" - when? Or, more precisely, which "we?"
we who are waiting for Fractured clearly haven't, in that we haven't played it yet...
much confusion
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@dragomok I love the idea of good ai, and better group ai. If nothing responds realistically, and doesn't have multiple options for what that response should be - do not aggro into a group of 50 hunters, you dumb not!bunny
XD Unless you are a black rabite, and then oh crud run you fool hunters XD
I also want to see interaction models that do not relate to aggression. If you are kind and feed animals, don't have them aggro you the next time you show up, have them wander up and nuzzle for food - especially don't have one animal be all friendly, and then have another one (of the same type) show up, and immediately attack. To some extent, this is an aspect of the taming advancement, but it seems like a logical thing to include eventually. Lead in further - you friend enough animals of a type, you start smelling like them, and you are marked as a "friendly" to that species, and as a food source by predators that eat them, and as a predator to things that are afraid of that species. lasts until you bathe XD get it back by snuggling the critter again - which its fine with cause it remembers you.
I'd like to see creatures hunt prey, and run from predators - and I'd like them to ignore, flee, or attack players as a consideration of the previous behavior. If a critter is hungry, it's going to be more interested in hunting prey than attacking you. If you are a blood soaked hunter and murderer of their kind, they might choose to skip a meal to flee from you.
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@jetah what game?
i tell you my game - nature. in nature even if one animal killed a prey then other animals can come and take his food if they are stronger no matter who started killing this pray first. what you are suggesting is kindergarden system for kidds, or like a jail system where everyone has curtain amount of food in a fixed time a day. no one hunt everyone just happy, under stricked supervision of jail administration. people need more freedom mate.
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So it seems there are plenty of people who do care.
Some - like @TheRippyOne and @Roccandil - would be interested in a deeper level of simulation than my, er, "don't spawn them in front of my face and make them appear to do something other than waiting for death" preference, which is nice.
Others - like @boogis and @Gothix - care about a lot about aggro, whether we're talking about single- or multi-mob behaviour, respectively.
Well, this makes me happy I'm not totally alone in that regard.
@mae said in Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs):
I've seen posts where it is said wildlife will have "alignment" just like players. Some will be peaceful, and you lose karma for killing. Some are aggressive and you gain karma. Seeing a pasture or a den of some sort of animal type is common, even in reality. Now, entering a dungeon and seeing a group of mobs in a static boss-minion formation, that's not cool. But Fractured should be ok since its not an instanced asian mmo.
All good points, really.
@meninodeouro said in Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs):
Maybe you do not know, but the everquest next had with a similar proposal, mobs that think before acting, would be a very interesting mechanics if it were implemented in the game.
Ohh, yes, they planned to go really far with that. Not just the "mobs pass the basic criteria for being perceived as actual enemies", but the whole thing with ecosystems and populations and spontaneous boss creation and what have you. It would probably be complex enough to be the main feature of any other game.
@boogis said in Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs):
@jetah what game?
i tell you my game - nature. in nature even if one animal killed a prey then other animals can come and take his food if they are stronger no matter who started killing this pray first. what you are suggesting is kindergarden system for kidds, or like a jail system where everyone has curtain amount of food in a fixed time a day. no one hunt everyone just happy, under stricked supervision of jail administration. people need more freedom mate.I kind of see why people who love the sheer horrifying brutality of nature would be interested in enabling loot thieves. Now I wonder whether people like you, who enjoy that total lawlessness, outweigh people who absolutely can't stand having their precious loot stolen 17 picoseconds after it drops.
I mean, sure, always-on PvPers on Tartaros/Demon's world are probably thinking like you, but I wonder about Human and Beastfolk players.There's also always the "you can always kill the looter, ya big carebear casul avocado" argument, but I wonder how (presumed) invisibility from Illusions and (presumed) stealth from Assasinations are going to factor into that.
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@therippyone
uh the other games in the 2000's. they all had the everyone can loot steal things. people hated it. it was changed after much QQ from everyone.
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@jetah ah. thank you for clarifying.
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I will tell you why I love sand-boxy games.
It's because they put focus on player community, and social aspects of the game, rather then on theme-park elements.
Theme-park games isolate players from each other more, because an actual content is fully defined in the game files, and player community is just there to consume it.
In sand-boxy games, player community creates the good part of the content, and players work together much more then in theme park games. Community grows better, and game usually lives longer (not only being dependent on new expansions).
Now this is not only valid in PvE. It is valid in PvP as well.
Part of people might not agree with me here, but, in my opinion, in sandbox game PvP (same like in PvE), players are supposed to work together and act as community.
If few thieves are bothering someone, don't say "it's not my business", but rather help your neighbor, or when you will be the bothered one, your neighbor will ignore you as well.
People complain about PvP (thieves, murderers) a lot, while refusing to be a community that helps each other, just wishing to solo grind wood and fish.
That way, of course you will not have a good time. And it's your own fault. It's not the thieves fault.
Build your community, help each other, and observe how thieving in game doesn't floorish anymore.
If you are looking for a game where you will be protected from thieves by forced game mechanics, then honestly, sand-box games aren't for you. You might consider playing a theme park game better.
If you wish to play a sandbox game, then you will have to work with your community to protect yourself. It's just how it's supposed to work.
Playing a sand-box game, but complaining to devs to protect you from PvP... I'm sorry but in this scenario you are the problem, and not how the game works.
Thanks for reading.
(special note: all this is one players opinion, you are free to disagree)
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Monster behavior is very important for us all well. While Fractured has elements of an ARPG, we don't like swarms of creatures with 0 brain. We're going to give this side of the game the attention it deserves!
@gothix said in Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs):
So if one bear notices another bear from it's "tribe" in danger (in combat), it would react even if it does not notice the player that's attacking that other bear. It would first run towards the bear who needed help, and then check whats up. At that point if bear saw a player attacking a bear he would react to the player. A bear would not instantly run to a player that has aggro, because this might look foolish, because that other bear might not notice player instantly from his original position.
Even in the current (very basic) version of the creature AI we're running, pack animals already behave that way - they call for help to others members of the pack
Other aggressive creatures instead fight alone, while others just run. Things are going to get a lot more sophisticated than that of course, but it's going to take a while
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@prometheus said in Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs):
Monster behavior is very important for us all well. While Fractured has elements of an ARPG, we don't like swarms of creatures with 0 brain. We're going to give this side of the game the attention it deserves!
@gothix said in Pinatas, catatonia, and Montgomery Scott (or what matters the most to me in MMOs):
So if one bear notices another bear from it's "tribe" in danger (in combat), it would react even if it does not notice the player that's attacking that other bear. It would first run towards the bear who needed help, and then check whats up. At that point if bear saw a player attacking a bear he would react to the player. A bear would not instantly run to a player that has aggro, because this might look foolish, because that other bear might not notice player instantly from his original position.
Even in the current (very basic) version of the creature AI we're running, pack animals already behave that way - they call for help to others members of the pack
Other aggressive creatures instead fight alone, while others just run. Things are going to get a lot more sophisticated than that of course, but it's going to take a while That's... that's some very good news! Thank you so much for the reply.
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I'd really like to see animals even attacking other animals - a wolf killing a rabbit or deer for instance. Also since there are seasons, there is opportunity for creatures to act accordingly.
For more intelligent creatures, them having tactics on par with their intelligence - setting traps, ambushes, etc.
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@kellewic Never fight Kobolds in their nests. The enemy level may be 1, but the trap level is 100 XD
