That'd be neat!

oh... It'd be so cool if mobs could remember how you'd influenced them last! Like... if you'd seduced that guard, then the next time you went by that guard he or she would be all like "Where have you been? I've missed you!" or if you'd influenced a villager with teasing, they'd start crying next time you came by.... it'd be funny anyway.

Thing is though, it would only be sentients. If you wanted to bash astral all day long, that's fine. This would be more limited to things like merians and krokani and aslaran and guards. And obviously you can limit what cures they have and such just like you can limit how much damage they do, but it would allow for things to be a bit more realistic.

And it isn't just about being training dummies, but about the fact that it could also be used to defend locations when there were no players around to defend it. This would allow people to fight if they wanted to, or let their orgs guards hold it off. Obviously, it wouldn't be as good as a player defence, but it would definitely make raiding against undefended locations much more fun, as well as a bit more fair.

Yes, you're supposed to play with other players.. but personally, I much prefer bashing in groups.. and something like this would make even thaat more fun, since you might actually need the help if the denizens were a bit more like players. I dunno, I just know that I would love to be able to fight against denizens in a way beyond typing 'k' over and over again.

When has that happened, hmm?

There is no need for these new elaborite systems with aether bubbles to raid or any of that garbage. It wouldn't fix the problem with Lusternia combat. The problem with Lusternia combat is half of it occurs when there is no one around to defend, the other half is that the only actual combat is in large groups or the odd duel. Players need to fight each other more often, that is all Lusternia needs.

EDIT: Changing bashing is a neat idea, but in the end it just means it would take twice as long to kill something, you would need to balance it with increased XP for certain mobs, different levels of AI, and one load of conditions.

Regarding coding more intelligent mobs (which really is off-topic IMHO), while anything is possible, one has to weigh the cost of spending resources to code such a system against the benefit.

For one thing, there can't be some "module" that you code on the side and then plug-in so that all skills suddenly work against mobs. Each and every skill that you would want to impact a mob would have to be recoded. Being that this wasn't done initially, we are talking about quite a bit of labor intensive work.

No matter how good your AI is, it won't be as good as having human players behind it, and thus almost will always fail unless you cheat. For example, if a mob can be affected by web, one person (or two people) could just spam web against the mob while another kills it, thus making it extremely easy to kill even the most buffed mob. Thus, mobs would have to cheat so they could not be incapacitated with web which immediately causes them not to really act like a player character. Players are ingenious (as you should know!) and we would have to constantly be spending resources to balance mob vs. player combat as unforeseen results arise. I would expect that mob combat would have to morph (i.e., move further and further away from how a player would react) to compensate.

It is correct that server resources could be compromised but that's something Roark can address if he wants to.

While I think most people will agree that smarter mobs would be nice, I think expecting them to act anything like a real player is unrealistic. I personally don't think it would be worth putting aside the several months of development it would take to attempt a project that I question would be truly beneficial to the overall gameplay.

On the other hand, having mobs "fake" more realistic combat may be more doable but keep in mind that every ailment you can do to them would mean recoding every single skill that gives that ailment so it would work with mobs. Also, going back to the above point, we would have to make sure mobs are compensated from being abused if they are able to be targetted with more afflictions. Even this is no small project!

Yeah, almost anything is possible in this department. I don't know what Illyrias did since it was never open to the public to see how the NPCs actually stacked up compared to the promises made, but the NPCs we have now are actually fairly intelligent compared to what they were in the old days. Long ago, all NPCs had the exact same sets of attacks: random cutting and blunt with the same sets of text based on the amount of damage. They had no defensive abilities like shield. Things that have been added since then include: customized attack types (like afflictions, bleeding, etc.), customized attack messages, the ability to shield themselves, the ability to execute custom scripts when attacked and when killed and when near death, ability to be influenced, extremely massive upgrades to their scripting language (which going even further back originally they had no scripting language at all!), and all the functionality seen in city guards (ability to setup guard patrols, guards communicate between themselves to tell each other where enemies are, etc.). When looking at how far NPCs have evolved, that should show that there is lots of flexibility in what they could do with the proper coding. The problem is cost/benefit. NPC upgrades rarely get players very excited. These games really do revolve more around player on player interaction. I know Achaea once had plans to make NPCs act as close to players as possible in regards to player skillset attacks, but it got ditched for that reason.

Cost:Benefit heh? How about just 16 mobs for each guild that can be afflicted? They'll be in the guild hall or something, which allows novices to see how fun afflictions can be.
Exploitation would be non-existant, as the benefits would be too little for regular players, and novices would have no idea how to exploit.
And as for having to recode all skills, simply recode those skills which are within the reach of non-credit buying novices would be sufficient. As for illusions, make it so that they do distract denizens, so that novices can realise that illusions can do more than just make pretty pictures.

Erm, I think you are missing the point of cost:benefit.

If the cost of coding is two months of development time, is that worth the benefit of the results? Or would those two months of development be better spent by doing envoy reports, or coding new skillsets, or coding new archetypes, or coding skills for new cities/communes? And now you're suggesting that the only benefit would be for 16 mobs that novices could use to see how "fun" afflictions can be?

Ah, I see. I did miss the point. Whoops.

Back to my factions idea...

I definately favor an indepdent system that players can voluntarily join that does not concern communes/cities, but offers conflict and conflict quests. Anyone else? I dislike the idea of it being "Orders" because "Orders" are too tied to cities/communes. The idea here is to provide a system that players can join to foster like minded ideals with said group, but at the same time, there is no "zomg you must join or help or else" complex.

Gosh, you'd think. But then... what I had in the rest of my post was more or less what Estarra and Roark said.





So, I think it's fair for me to say that pointing out the failings in your grammar was not an attempt to sidestep a losing argument and engage with you on a different front, it was just genuine concern for your employability. I am most surprised that you are so eager to brush off people who simply wish to help you make something of your life.