Make enemies smarter (and other PvE combat improvements).

[Astralporing.1957]

On 5/5/2023 at 10:58 AM, Dib.4612 said:

Make enemies smart enough to dodge heavy attacks and dodge or walk out of area damage.

Make enemies smart enough to set up combos on you and punish your for mistakes.

Make enemies smart enough to work together.

Most of this (except dodges) was already something GW1 AI scripts were capable of - and dodges were supposedly tested out as well during early GW2 testing. All worked extremely well. So well, in fact, that after testing devs decided to remove those things from the game. Because, as it happened, the mobs with those capabilities enabled, were capable of murdering the kitten out of huge majority of potential players. And Anet did not want to scare all the casuals into leaving.

Since that time, nothing has changed whatsoever.

Hint number 2: notice, how the combat system is capable of creating enemies that are far more engaging to fight, and taking far more use of the dynamic, active combat system than what has been actually implemented in the game. Why do you think, then, that devs in raids (supposedly the most challenging content, at the moment when it was introduced), instead of putting more emphasis on those capabilities, decided to cut them down even more, and make the fights even more static and predictable? The answer is the same as above - because raid bosses capable of utilizing AI responses on the level you speak of would probably be able to cut down raid community to only maybe a tenth of its size. And nobody truly wants that. In reality, some people might think they want to up the challenge that way, but most of them would also be screaming bloody murder if it ever was implemented. Especially if they found out they weren't as good as they have thought they were, but even without that the stress and annoyance would eventually turn out to be too much for even those that might cope with it on purely skillwise level.

Edited May 6, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[AliamRationem.5172]

30 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Most of this (except dodges) was already something GW1 AI scripts were capable of - and dodges were supposedly tested out as well during early GW2 testing. All worked extremely well. So well, in fact, that after testing devs decided to remove those things from the game. Because, as it happened, the mobs with those capabilities enabled, were capable of murdering the kitten out of huge majority of potential players. And Anet did not want to scare all the casuals into leaving.

Since that time, nothing has changed whatsoever.

Hint number 2: notice, how the combat system is capable of creating enemies that are far more engaging to fight, and taking far more use of the dynamic, active combat system than what has been actually implemented in the game. Why do you think, then, that devs in raids (supposedly the most challenging content, at the moment when it was introduced), instead of putting more emphasis on those capabilities, decided to cut them down even more, and make the fights even more static and predictable? The answer is the same as above - because raid bosses capable of utilizing AI responses on the level you speak of would probably be able to cut down raid community to only maybe a tenth of its size. And nobody truly wants that. In reality, some people might think they want to up the challenge that way, but most of them would also be screaming bloody murder if it ever was implemented. Especially if they found out they weren't as good as they have thought they were, but even without that the stress and annoyance would eventually turn out to be too much for even those that might cope with it on purely skillwise level.

Difficulty isn't even the issue.  If you give AI the ability to dodge, for example.  The AI isn't human.  It doesn't have reaction time.  If it successfully dodges every single time it attempts, you know it's because of that.  Likewise, if it makes "mistakes" you know they just dumbed down the system to make it imperfect when they didn't have to.  In either case there is no strategy to employ here.  You aren't baiting out dodges on AI.  And if you were, then it's predictable behavior, which is what we're trying to avoid with a change like this, right?

So what it is is just plain annoying.  Here's you killing your 10,000th chak and whattya know?  It rando dodges your attack so now you have to spend twice as long killing a trash mob.  What fun!  As much fun as those griffons that just fly around evading when you engage them and you just have to wait it out until they feel like fighting.

Anyway, all of this has been said already.  Bottom line:  It's a stupid idea that nobody would enjoy, including those who claim they would.

 

[Gehenna.3625]

16 hours ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Well jeez, if such a large portion of our player base is so averse to combat lets just turn it all off, Anet will surely be swimming in new customers, where’s the down side? 🤪

Casual players are not averse to combat but they are averse to learning a way too intrasparent, convoluted and complex combat system.

The issue is that the difference between a casual player with a basic understanding of the combat system and someone who's mastered the combat system is just way too big. If you wonder why OW content and story content is so easy, this is why and solving it lies in overhauling the combat system. Until that happens (If it ever does), don't expect OW and story content to get any harder.

[Aelin.9317]

Elden ring is there if you want it. 

I don't really like the clear disdain a lot of people are showing for casual players. In my experience the most hardcore spend very little and the casuals throw money a lot more. Makes no sense to cater to a small handful of people who want an experience they can get elsewhere. Go and clear the harvest temple challenge mode. Barely anyone has. Open world is accessible, instanced content is where you can seek more of a challenge. I am glad they will be adding more strikes to provide such content 🙂 

I would like Anet to fix the huge gap between an average player and the tippy top 1%. The dmg disparity is huge. I think they should fix that and a lot of content would be a lot more consistent and also save quite some friction between players. If they are pressing the important things on cd that should be the majority of the damage imo. And you can sweat to squeeze a bit of extra damage but not suddenly double it ykno? You can still top the dps meter and feel good but you are not dwarfing the damage of other players.

 

[Poormany.4507]

On 5/5/2023 at 4:58 AM, Dib.4612 said:

Make enemies smart enough to dodge heavy attacks and dodge or walk out of area damage.

Make enemies smart enough to set up combos on you and punish your for mistakes.

Make enemies smart enough to work together.

This will make the game more interactive, immersive and thus fun.

That doesn't sound fun to me at all - It just sounds like combat would take forever per encounter and have annoying gimmicks each time. Overall, this idea sounds really bad imo for GW2. Maybe it would work for a single-player game or a different mmo that caters specifically to more hardcore players, but there is zero chance of this type of system being implemented in GW2 (a game whose appeal is largely casual player centric), especially this late in the game's life where players already have firm expectations of combat.

On 5/5/2023 at 4:58 AM, Dib.4612 said:

And maybe get people more engaged with things PvP and WvW, as they will be familiar with its mechanics.

That is not the reason people are not engaged in PvP and WvW... Playing against npcs should be distinct from playing against real players. If a casual player, such as myself, doesn't want to compete with other players or player-like AI, they shouldn't be forced to do so just because a few players want hardcore combat.

Edited May 7, 2023 by Poormany.4507

[kharmin.7683]

41 minutes ago, Poormany.4507 said:

That is not the reason people are not engaged in PvP and WvW... Playing against npcs should be distinct from playing against real players. If a casual player, such as myself, doesn't want to compete with other players or player-like AI, they shouldn't be forced to do so just because a few players want hardcore combat.

Exactly so.  There are other MMOs that I choose not to play because of a heavier PvP environment.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Casual players are not averse to combat but they are averse to learning a way too intrasparent, convoluted and complex combat system.

The issue is that the difference between a casual player with a basic understanding of the combat system and someone who's mastered the combat system is just way too big. If you wonder why OW content and story content is so easy, this is why and solving it lies in overhauling the combat system. Until that happens (If it ever does), don't expect OW and story content to get any harder.

They've made a concerted effort to reduce that gap since EoD, but as the mechanist debacle demonstrated, there's only so far you can go in automating the gameplay.  Having said that, I think there are a few issues that have an outsized impact. 

AA chains and animation/after-cast, canceling, etc.  on some builds make for a huge disparity in complexity, for instance.  I wouldn't care to have them change the feel of combat by switching to a GCD or similar system, however.  But perhaps something as simple as making AA chains actually "auto" (i.e. the chain just picks up wherever it left off instead of resetting).

I also see issues with damage modifiers and boons (specifically quickness and might).  Stacking damage modifiers have a huge impact on power damage, leaving little room for suboptimal choices.  In groups this isn't so much of an issue due to the presence of support roles to cover boons and healing, leaving players free to focus solely on DPS.  But in solo play if you need to provide your own boons and sustain, you give up far too much with power builds.  Condition builds suffer somewhat less because they don't have an equivalent to ferocity stat, magnified by stacking trait modifiers.  This stuff is so ingrained in the way everything works that I don't know where to begin to propose fixing any of it, though.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

On 5/6/2023 at 5:54 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Difficulty isn't even the issue.  If you give AI the ability to dodge, for example.  The AI isn't human.  It doesn't have reaction time.  If it successfully dodges every single time it attempts, you know it's because of that.  Likewise, if it makes "mistakes" you know they just dumbed down the system to make it imperfect when they didn't have to.  In either case there is no strategy to employ here.  You aren't baiting out dodges on AI.  And if you were, then it's predictable behavior, which is what we're trying to avoid with a change like this, right?

So what it is is just plain annoying.  Here's you killing your 10,000th chak and whattya know?  It rando dodges your attack so now you have to spend twice as long killing a trash mob.  What fun!  As much fun as those griffons that just fly around evading when you engage them and you just have to wait it out until they feel like fighting.

Anyway, all of this has been said already.  Bottom line:  It's a stupid idea that nobody would enjoy, including those who claim they would.

 

This is where limiting the AI to what the player can do is actually a good idea (Especially if their humanoid in appearance).  There's also setting up the dodge to have a random wait duration before it triggers (EG, attack that triggers the dodge response has a minimum and maximum wait time before they dodge).  Also, creatures already have random abilities that make them evade, block, or mitigate damage, they're just not smart enough to walk out of AoEs.

Mordrem have a simplistic version of this AI, the most specific example I can think of are snipers who have a stunbreak that is also a dodge.  They can do this twice before they can't do it again and get locked down.

On 5/6/2023 at 5:54 PM, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Anyway, all of this has been said already.  Bottom line:  It's a stupid idea that nobody would enjoy, including those who claim they would.

 

Please don't speak for anyone but yourself.  I'd personally be okay with more AI complexity for higher tier mobs (Veteran, Elite, Champion, Legendary) because there's nothing fun to me about fighting an Elite that is just a copy/paste of another creature just with higher stats.

[AlPower.2476]

Good idea, at least it could be done in "scaled content" like Fractals. More higher the tier, mo' AI the mobs should have.

[Sarm.5923]

To me, that only sounds entertaining as a once-in-a-blue-moon encounter. Cranking up the AI on general enemies might make a single fight more intense, but I feel that gameplay fatigue would quickly set in as you have to deal with it over, and over, and over again.

[Astralporing.1957]

18 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

They've made a concerted effort to reduce that gap since EoD, but as the mechanist debacle demonstrated, there's only so far you can go in automating the gameplay.  Having said that, I think there are a few issues that have an outsized impact. 

AA chains and animation/after-cast, canceling, etc.  on some builds make for a huge disparity in complexity, for instance.  I wouldn't care to have them change the feel of combat by switching to a GCD or similar system, however.  But perhaps something as simple as making AA chains actually "auto" (i.e. the chain just picks up wherever it left off instead of resetting).

I also see issues with damage modifiers and boons (specifically quickness and might).  Stacking damage modifiers have a huge impact on power damage, leaving little room for suboptimal choices.  In groups this isn't so much of an issue due to the presence of support roles to cover boons and healing, leaving players free to focus solely on DPS.  But in solo play if you need to provide your own boons and sustain, you give up far too much with power builds.  Condition builds suffer somewhat less because they don't have an equivalent to ferocity stat, magnified by stacking trait modifiers.  This stuff is so ingrained in the way everything works that I don't know where to begin to propose fixing any of it, though.

Fixing it would require a massive overhaul of more than one game system. At the very basics, it would require:

1. significant simplification of the gear stat system (and a possible cap to ferocity)

2. changing all (positive) multiplicative damage modifiers into additive ones.

3. rework of trait system, that would flatten the difference between worst and best traitline choices (by nerfing the best ones, buffing the wors ones, or both), and make the inter-trait synnergy more widely adaptable (so, basically most trait combinations would have some synnergy between them so the chances of picking completely useless trait combinations would be lower).

Notice, that not only point 3 is immensely hard by itself, but also touching even one of those points (much less all 3) would as a consequence require a rebalance pass over all in-game mobs and encounters, which would be an even higher undertaking.

[AliamRationem.5172]

52 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Fixing it would require a massive overhaul of more than one game system. At the very basics, it would require:

1. significant simplification of the gear stat system (and a possible cap to ferocity)

2. changing all (positive) multiplicative damage modifiers into additive ones.

3. rework of trait system, that would flatten the difference between worst and best traitline choices (by nerfing the best ones, buffing the wors ones, or both), and make the inter-trait synnergy more widely adaptable (so, basically most trait combinations would have some synnergy between them so the chances of picking completely useless trait combinations would be lower).

Notice, that not only point 3 is immensely hard by itself, but also touching even one of those points (much less all 3) would as a consequence require a rebalance pass over all in-game mobs and encounters, which would be an even higher undertaking.

Yeah, I don't think it's feasible.  There are probably easier ways to increase parity without reinventing the wheel.  At some point you have to accept that this is the game we have and work with that. 

Still, I'm sure it throws new players for a loop to find that their 40k benchmark build deals less than half that in solo play and they die if a champion sneezes at them.  Then they look at guys running around in statistically inferior cele builds yet dealing higher damage while soloing practically anything.  Like what?

[Cuks.8241]

Better AI doesn't necessarily mean harder combat. Can be just more engaging and a bit less predictive. For example Destiny 2. Bosses mostly work like most mmorpg bosses and these encounters still follow the same pattern of learning and mastering the encounter puzzle until it becomes farmable. Some might cover to force you into melee or just avoid being shot down from great range but mostly they are on rails.

But the most basic mobs do show some semblance of AI. Ranged enemies will hide behind covers, show their faces just to shoot you and duck back. Melee mobs will dodge attacks to close on you. These mobs are mostly 1 headshot kill but their behaviour makes the encounters more believable.

Now Destiny is a shooter and not directly comparable. Twitchy fast gun play is what such game has to enforce and this means dodging fast mobs.

Mobs constantly dodging out of aoe fields would just be highly annoying in gw2. Maybe a mob here and there would be fine though.

What could fit would be mobs with larger abilities arsenal that would counter your abilities to force a change of tactics. For example you have a melee mob with shield. You attack it with projectile, he will block and force you to either come melee or use unblockable. These could also serve as a bit of a learning of mechanics. The game has some of that but it's mostly triggered independently of your actions. For example mob will start healing at 50% hp. If these would be a bit more reactive, things could be more interesting.  

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Better AI doesn't necessarily mean harder combat.

Taken without context, you're completely right. This is completely false, however, if (as OP suggests) you're increasing AI capacity of mobs in an already existing system. In case of GW2, if you made mobs smarter, it would mean harder (or at least more annoying) combat, unless you at the same time happened to nerf mobs to compensate in other ways.

[The Boz.2038]

13 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Better AI doesn't necessarily mean harder combat

 

13 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Ranged enemies will hide behind covers,

 

13 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Melee mobs will dodge attacks to close on you

Sounds like these smart moves by the enemies makes them more difficult to defeat.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Sounds like these smart moves by the enemies makes them more difficult to defeat.

They probably wanted to say that smart enemies do not necessarily have to be hard to defeat - which is true. They've just omitted the part where it is being done by having those very enemies have a certain balancing weakness. And likely didn't think about the fact, that just adding some more complex (and smart) behaviour patterns on top of the preexisting difficulty makes mobs more able to deal with player attacks in some way, but without adding a corresponding weakness to balance for that - so, resulting in a net increase in difficulty.

[FiveBunnies.5730]

There are smart enemies already. These are some of the bounties. If you want more smart bounties, I'm all for it.

But if you want our legendary great commander to have trouble wining a bear (or like bear), I'm against it.

[Bilbo Vaggins.3027]

Imagine HC mode for GW2...🥲

[Khisanth.2948]

On 5/8/2023 at 2:19 PM, Cuks.8241 said:

What could fit would be mobs with larger abilities arsenal that would counter your abilities to force a change of tactics. For example you have a melee mob with shield. You attack it with projectile, he will block and force you to either come melee or use unblockable. These could also serve as a bit of a learning of mechanics. The game has some of that but it's mostly triggered independently of your actions. For example mob will start healing at 50% hp. If these would be a bit more reactive, things could be more interesting.  

This is the much bigger problem with GW2 enemies. Even the bosses have a tiny skill set. Pretty sure some only have 1. How smart can anything be when their only option is to do one thing. Actually this is what makes griffons annoying. Although it is funny in the context of "I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again." The griffon players must be very bored.

 

 

[Zephire.8049]

They tried more involved AI before launch and found it turned testers off of the game because people don't play MMOs wanting or expecting combat more involved than action RPGs or requiring the same twitch responses as FPS games. MMOs are a small genre compared to other video game genres while also being the one with the slimmest profit margins and highest cost to maintain, there's zero point trying to cater to a niche community in a niche genre and driving away the bulk of people paying your bills and development.

For the occasional boss, sure, have more involved AI, but open world mobs should be left as they are. They can already be punishing if you don't know what you're doing and it's not enjoyable having to deal with mobs that dismount, keep you in combat, and you take an annoying amount of time to deal with. Just look at how many people hate branded griffons not because the mobs are hard but because they put you in combat and keep you there while going completely invulnerable for several seconds. Harder AI may have novelty but it gets old fast, particularly in a game/genre where it's not known for having hard, dynamic AI to begin with.

[Hashberry.4510]

Open world has become deadly dull. There is a lot of room to spice it up in a few areas. This isn’t the game it was.

[Barabbas.8715]

On 5/5/2023 at 4:58 AM, Dib.4612 said:

Make enemies smart enough to dodge heavy attacks and dodge or walk out of area damage.

Make enemies smart enough to set up combos on you and punish your for mistakes.

Make enemies smart enough to work together.

This will make the game more interactive, immersive and thus fun. And will possibly make it easier to design for all gamemodes at the same time.

And maybe get people more engaged with things PvP and WvW, as they will be familiar with its mechanics.

 

This, in my opinion, should be paired with a simplified scaling system that should go either of two ways.

1. ONLY increase NPC rank based on the amount of players, make them larger too with each rank to make them more visible. This will have the benefit of having less clutter and thus being more readable and reactable for players.

or

2. ONLY spawn standard mobs, but in the same amount as there are players. And make them smart enough to work like a WvW blob. This will have the benefit of making people familiar with WvW in a PvE setting, although of course the game will be less readable. 

 

If the latter (2) is not deemed desirable, then perhaps WvW itself ought to be reconsidered on a deep level.

Nah, screw this. The game should be EZ mode. If you want a challenge, go play Battletoads.

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Open world has become deadly dull. There is a lot of room to spice it up in a few areas. This isn’t the game it was.

Minor correction here:

Open world has always been deadly dull, for skilled players (and skilled literally means: players who undertood this games mechanics and design aka boons). That's what all the old:"we need challenging content" crowd was going off of.

Now thanks to power creep (in all areas from on demand special action key aoe cc, high damage auto attack rotations, boons on nearly every class, new or buffed stat types(celestial is a joke, turning nearly any class immortal fornopen world content)) a lot more players get to experience the joys of mundane and boring open world content. Ironically forcing even more players into instanced content.

The only ones struggling now are the very bottom skill level players or the completely new.

As to AI and improving enemy reactions, on a limited basis maybe. With content designed specifically for this type of AI (and we are still talking limited AI, severly handycapped).

You really do not want to test full on AI reactions versus player reactions. Players would always lose. Go watch some AI versus Starcraft 2 pros from years ago (and that's years ago).

Yes, I too love me my Elden Ring, Dark Souls XYZ, Sekiro, etc. Finished them all too. I'm reflected enough though to understand that even those games are severely limiting the AI scripts and patters that enemies are allowed to use. 

Edited May 10, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Hashberry.4510]

Well the game was complex and difficult to keep an old fart like me engaged for 10 years. It likely took me 5 years to master the combat system enough to make HoT styles zones a fun challenge. Thats a hell of a fun deal, it felt like the games success revolved around being a technical puzzle to sort out.

 

I know it always lacked for folks at your level, Cyn, but it gave me what I needed for a while and I guess I will have to be happy with that.

 

Small team Instance combat hmmm, I recall when it was a lot a fun but that is not for me anymore. If anything, I dislike tying this combat system down so group combat is somehow workable, we really lost a lot there.

[Cyninja.2954]

10 hours ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Well the game was complex and difficult to keep an old fart like me engaged for 10 years. It likely took me 5 years to master the combat system enough to make HoT styles zones a fun challenge. Thats a hell of a fun deal, it felt like the games success revolved around being a technical puzzle to sort out.

 

I know it always lacked for folks at your level, Cyn, but it gave me what I needed for a while and I guess I will have to be happy with that.

Agreed, I'd phrase it a bit differently: one of this games main strengths is its combat system, on almost any level at that imo. It's great to mess around with on easy content but also great to master for challenging content. Overall though, yes the games combat is engaging (to those who enjoy this type of combat).

I'm not against having easy content, on the contrary. I've always felt as though open world content should be the most accessible while instanced content gradually increases in difficulty. That was before nearly all instanced content was discontinued post PoF era.

It's not even about player skill. It's about having enough variety to engage different players. I'm still all in favor of having open world as wide as possible, if there is different degrees of engaging/challenging content added. That's what I personally am hoping their new model will deliver on.

10 hours ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Small team Instance combat hmmm, I recall when it was a lot a fun but that is not for me anymore. If anything, I dislike tying this combat system down so group combat is somehow workable, we really lost a lot there.

I see instanced content as a way to tell players naturally: things might ramp up a bit here, be prepared. Sure it might not be for everyone, but that way open world content can remain on the easier side. Plus instances are easier scaled. Who knows, maybe we will see some type of Guild Wars 1 style of hard mode come out (though i doubt it).

Edited May 13, 2023 by Cyninja.2954