Would "intelligent" mobs counter power creep?

[LSD.4673]

Does anyone honestly believe the servers can handle any form of AI complexity like this? There's no way in hell. Same way pet AI is so terrible. 

The game world is insanely simplistic. A couple of creatures have little patrol paths. most stand there until aggro'd (with that weird 1-sec delay). Then they beeline to their target and stand there doing an attack every second. 

That's all the server has to cope with from NPCs. From players it has all the cumbersome calculations on range, durations, damage calculations, buffs coming and going and making changes to those calculations. All that stuff is hat has the big footprint, and it's why moderately sized WvW fights end up with skill delay.

Even if they had he staff to program AI for NPCs, you'd end up with either cut sized player counts on servers, or chugging performance.

[kharmin.7683]

12 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

A better way, in my opinion, is the HoT model.  You're usually faced with a mix of enemies.  There's nothing intelligent about their behavior, but they can force the player to intelligently approach the encounter with the various threats they present.

I can agree here.  As much as I detest HoT maps, I still appreciate them for what they are and the challenges that they bring.  I agree that having a mix of enemies like this can make things more complicated (Crystal Desert maps do this to an extent as well), but I'd rather not see every map changed to mirror this.  It would be a more delicate balance, for sure. 

[Tiamat.8254]

Stop with the power creep posts. I like things how they are. There are places I would much prefer resources to be spent beyond this. If you need a challenge don't spoil it for the rest of us.

[Zera.9435]

They should bring back actual interrupts from GW1. I'm talking Cry of Frustration, Distraction Shot, Power Spike, Broadhead Arrow, and Panic. Panic in particular would be the perfect counter to all players. The metas for raids and 'endgame' content are always the same: stack up on the tag so you can share buffs, tank the hits, and then hit it till it dies. Panic interrupts all nearby enemies when the hexed (debuffed) creature attacks or casts a spell. It was an aoe debuff, so the entire squad would get the debuff. Then, either the entire raid would have to stop attacking/casting immediately or risk interrupting the entire raid, and it lasted several seconds.

Or just multiply the damage output of enemies by 10 and be done with it.

Edited February 1 by Zera.9435

[Gehenna.3625]

The whole reason that mobs are "dumb" in OW/Story content is because of the combat system. The reason I say that is because the combat system is too complex for the OW content but mastering the combat system is VERY rewarding, to the point that if you put a casual person next to a skilled person, the difference is so big that it's ridiculous frankly.

However, there are many more unskilled than skilled players in GW2. And if they make mobs harder then the vast majority of players will not be able to keep up. But for the more skilled players OW/story content is just way too easy. So even if you meet at the middle it will be too hard for unskilled players and still way too easy for skilled players.

It just seems that with every new expansion mobs get more hit points or something, so it takes a bit longer to kill for skilled players and a lot longer to kill for unskilled players, essentially trying to group people up together rather than to solo stuff.

But content in OW and story can only be as hard as most people can beat and that's effectively a pretty low bar. Now if they would not have a combat system where they would reward skill as much as they do in GW2 then OW content could be a little more challenging but since that'll never happen, just accept that OW and story content will forever be way too easy for a skilled player.

[Omega.6801]

You are aware that the average player is outsmarted by story bosses and that whole swaths of endgame content had to be toned down because ppl couldn't handle being cc'd in the open world?
It's fine. It would be nice if we could live in that world where we could have an interesting and engaging open world, but we can't. It's fine. Let's not go into the whys and hows too much and have this nice thread shut down early. It's fine.

Edited February 1 by Omega.6801

[ArchonWing.9480]

I feel like this is one of the ideas that sounds great on paper, but would be annoying to do on a farm basis.

A lot of skills are pretty much designed around hitting targets that don't move very much, and having a boss that jets around dodging everything would make a lot of things unplayable, and also introduce variance that may annoy players.

Also if the game was still based on dodging telegraphed attacks as the main way of survival, that might be possible, but there is so much chip damage these days that the best way to play is to stack together for boons and crap and again, following a mobile boss is going to be irritating. This is especially true if the boss can just arbitrarily dodge without warning.

If fights had a way to consistently draw aggro, this might be more passable, but for the most part a lot of the game would have to be reworked for it to not annoy players.

This could be something for story or event bosses. But not stuff people do regularly.

Edited February 1 by ArchonWing.9480

[frazazel.7501]

What about if just Veteran / Elite / Champion / Legendary mobs gained new intelligence? Veterans start to walk out of AoEs, Elites also dodge big attacks, etc.

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

 

A lot of skills are pretty much designed around hitting targets that don't move very much, and having a boss that jets around dodging everything would make a lot of things unplayable, and also introduce variance that may annoy players.

 

There is that one hero point under the pyramid north of the Amnoon waypoint with the dude that periodically zips around.  Maybe not for all targets, but some variety like this may not be too bad?

[Zzik.5873]

8 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

The problem with "intelligent" enemies is that it can just be annoying.  Cleansing conditions, for example.  It would be smart of enemies to cleanse if they have the ability.  But if every trash mob can cleanse conditions, then condition damage becomes even less effective when it's already at a disadvantage for clearing trash mobs.

Dodging attacks would also be a smart behavior.  But now you have to go through the same dance with every trash mob, baiting out its dodges before you can kill it.

Immobilizing melee attackers.  How great would it be to get constantly spammed with immobilize by the endless stream of trash mobs you face in open world?  Hope you like ranged combat only, because melee just ain't worth it!

A better way, in my opinion, is the HoT model.  You're usually faced with a mix of enemies.  There's nothing intelligent about their behavior, but they can force the player to intelligently approach the encounter with the various threats they present.

Just add a radomizer on the skill activation so it does not always trigger it automatically. Example: when it have condi. Give it a timer of dunno 15 sec, after check if it hs condi, 45% chance to trigger said condi cleanse skill. Either the skill is trigger or not restart the timer, Its basic AI programming really.

[Zzik.5873]

8 hours ago, LSD.4673 said:

Does anyone honestly believe the servers can handle any form of AI complexity like this? There's no way in hell. Same way pet AI is so terrible. 

The game world is insanely simplistic. A couple of creatures have little patrol paths. most stand there until aggro'd (with that weird 1-sec delay). Then they beeline to their target and stand there doing an attack every second. 

That's all the server has to cope with from NPCs. From players it has all the cumbersome calculations on range, durations, damage calculations, buffs coming and going and making changes to those calculations. All that stuff is hat has the big footprint, and it's why moderately sized WvW fights end up with skill delay.

Even if they had he staff to program AI for NPCs, you'd end up with either cut sized player counts on servers, or chugging performance.

If anet server cant handle an mmo, why did they make an mmo? I mean... Thats a scuff excuse. Dont know if its a real reason or no, just saying that its lame.

[AliamRationem.5172]

3 minutes ago, Zzik.5873 said:

Just add a radomizer on the skill activation so it does not always trigger it automatically. Example: when it have condi. Give it a timer of dunno 15 sec, after check if it hs condi, 45% chance to trigger said condi cleanse skill. Either the skill is trigger or not restart the timer, Its basic AI programming really.

That's not intelligent and not interactable.  It's as uninteresting as giving enemies more health and more problematic as it serves as a penalty on conditions where none is needed.

[Zzik.5873]

3 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

That's not intelligent and not interactable.  It's as uninteresting as giving enemies more health and more problematic as it serves as a penalty on conditions where none is needed.

Well yes and no, its just another additive system to give the illusion of "personality" or that the AI is making a choice. Because without it, the AI just always counter apply the perfect skill witch get frustrating, but this neat little trick, you have the impression of fighting an entity that "think". AI are just a collection of additive system stack on top of one another. Example: avatar detection/target direction -> pathfinding -> obstacle avoidance -> weigh based combat movement -> avatar/target input reaction (skill) -> rng action -> etc

The more tou stack, the more "alive" the AI feel. Thats something that enemy in gw2 seriously miss.

[Phyb.6704]

18 hours ago, kiroho.4738 said:

I personally can't remember this being a thing that actively got removed.

What I remember was that mobs ran out of AoEs. This got removes eventually to gain a better combat flow.

As for your question, I don't think it will help much. Only blocking and dodging would cause them to live longer and well, look and griffons and harpy mobs. They are hated for doing dodges. The only thing that helps agains power creep is more HP.

 

I mean, Mobs in GW1 aren't that intelligent. You can even stop them from doing anything entirely just by spamming AoE fields. They are so busy moving out of them that they won't attack anymore.

Aside from that, yes some areas actually require you to play against different tactics/builds, which is simply how the combat works.
Use the wrong build/team and you have hard times, use the right build and team and you cut through everything like butter while being afk. But that haven't really much to do with intelligent mobs.

Honestly a overall buff would help. More hp, damage and have them actually interupt. Things like a warriors axe 5 would get interupted. Have them corrupt boons too. More damage so you actually need vit, tough and healing power or you get 1-2 hit. Players are too strong / mobs too weak. Ncsoft does not care tho. Doing something costs money and effects bonuses for executives. This is the game. This is how it is. Far too high of a expectation of ncsoft. 

[Zebulous.2934]

I am a bit confused.  I didn't mean that every mob would have every skill at their disposal.  I do expect mob actions to have cooldowns.  No infinite dodging without pause or stun-locking for days.  I would expect varied mobs within a group.  Sure you may get stunned twice in a row by the only two dps in a monster group and one of your counterattacks may be foiled by aegis. But the other mobs will be healing each other, or blinding, or applying confusion.  You would have time to breath, the mobs would be auto attacking while the cooldowns are active.  Hell, the mobs don't even have to have that many skills individually.  
I didn't mean to imply that skills and AI would simply be added to current mobs as they are now.  I would want the devs to put some thought into it.  Give the mobs roles within a monster .... "Party?"  Adjust the stats based on the role.

I had thought that only the core maps shouldn't be upgraded, but HoT is difficult at times (the spawn rate there was a shock to me the first time)  The PoF mobs are certainly easier to deal with compared to the HoT mobs.   The aspect mechanic in LWs4 is different, but I think something could be added. 
If the devs do decide to gift intelligence to veteran, champion, legendary monsters; I think I would rather they just add support mobs with the improvements, rather than alter the elite monsters directly.  Let the champ monsters spawn with two or three annoying little friends.

[BlueJin.4127]

Giving PVE monsters player-like AI sounds great on paper, but in reality, it's not a good idea for a fast paced game like GW2. I don't remember which project it was, but once, we had a project where we made the AI behave smarter to make combat more interesting. Unfortunately, smarter enemies meant that every regular fight dragged on. In a fast paced PVE environment where the player wants to quickly dispose of enemies that are in their way, having regular enemies that constantly avoided getting killed made things drag on a bit too much.

Trying to find the right balance between enemies that try to stay alive without dragging things out too long was pretty pointless. Any changes to the game's balance or the character's power would ruin whatever delicate balance was created and made things swing one way or the other. In the end, it just didn't work.

 

Edited February 2 by BlueJin.4127

[Astralporing.1957]

12 hours ago, frazazel.7501 said:

What about if just Veteran / Elite / Champion / Legendary mobs gained new intelligence? Veterans start to walk out of AoEs, Elites also dodge big attacks, etc.

Like i said, there's a reason why raid bosses are generally even dumber and more predictable than the normal OW trash mobs.

[kharmin.7683]

I find, as a filthy casual, the mobs in PoF to be challenging enough for me.  They have different mechanics within the same group which makes targeting specific ones more of a decision rather.  I wouldn't want them changed other than their extreme aggro radius.

[Zebulous.2934]

I don't think that people who just want quick farming want to reduce powercreep.

  I can understand that farmers who stand very still for long periods of time may feel threatened by mobs that survive longer, or enemies who avoid danger.

[kiroho.4738]

8 hours ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

Have them corrupt boons too.

What I would like is if they gave them more boons. Except from a few mobs all boon corruption skills are useless in open world.

 

9 hours ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

Ncsoft does not care tho. Doing something costs money and effects bonuses for executives. This is the game. This is how it is. Far too high of a expectation of ncsoft. 

It's not NCsoft's choice though. It's Anet's.
Aside from a very few exceptions (like the canceled project + layoffs) NCsoft does not interfere in Anet's business. Anet does it's thing independetly and NCsoft grabs some of their money, that's how their general connection is.
NCsoft does not controll the balancing or such ingame choices.

[kharmin.7683]

8 minutes ago, kiroho.4738 said:

What I would like is if they gave them more boons. Except from a few mobs all boon corruption skills are useless in open world.

 

I would be on board with this.  For us OW casual players, there aren't many opportunities to boon strip.

[Gehenna.3625]

2 hours ago, kiroho.4738 said:

What I would like is if they gave them more boons. Except from a few mobs all boon corruption skills are useless in open world.

Considering that very few classes/elite specs have access to either boon corruption/ripping, I would be against this. I mean it's nice for the few who do but it would be a terrible idea for the other 6 professions. And I think that warrior only has access to boon ripping on one elite spec.

[frazazel.7501]

57 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Considering that very few classes/elite specs have access to either boon corruption/ripping, I would be against this. I mean it's nice for the few who do but it would be a terrible idea for the other 6 professions. And I think that warrior only has access to boon ripping on one elite spec.

You would include the boons that they generate in that monster's power budget. If a monster can provide itself with 10 stacks of might with 50% uptime, that's 300 power and 300 condition damage, half the time. Reduce their base stats by 150 power and condition damage. They now are more interesting to fight against (they have burst phases), they do overall the same damage, and boon stripping players can actually get an advantage by stripping their boons.

[Teknomancer.4895]

21 hours ago, frazazel.7501 said:

What about if just Veteran / Elite / Champion / Legendary mobs gained new intelligence? Veterans start to walk out of AoEs, Elites also dodge big attacks, etc.

Knock veterans off that list and I could get behind this, their sheer numbers would make giving this function to vets really annoying really fast. Anything Elite and above, though? It makes sense.

[Astralporing.1957]

31 minutes ago, frazazel.7501 said:

You would include the boons that they generate in that monster's power budget. If a monster can provide itself with 10 stacks of might with 50% uptime, that's 300 power and 300 condition damage, half the time. Reduce their base stats by 150 power and condition damage. They now are more interesting to fight against (they have burst phases), they do overall the same damage, and boon stripping players can actually get an advantage by stripping their boons.

Meaning, for any more organized group it would actually end up being a nerf to said mob?