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How smart will the AI be?
Tesinato
Member UncommonPosts: 222
I sadly was playing wow earlier, and realized that the AI is stupid. Mobs kind of just stand around, or walk in a very small area, and if you attack one that is close to them, they just watch it seems. I know most of this is due to the aggro range and stuff like that, but is this how the AI is going to be in this game? Or are they going to be paying more attention. I personally know, if I see someone being attacked and I can assist, i do. Will mobs have that sense to see or know someone is about and help their allies? Will they stand or move in little patterns guarding a mine or will they be walking through the mines, setting up tactics to protect it from others? The mine is just an example, it could be anything. I don't know if it is possible to make an AI that smart, but I figured I would ask seeing as it has been stated the AI will be very smart.
Comments
There are few, if any, monsters in the game, since this is not a rading game.
But here's what I know. Each player has their very own quest in the game, no one's story is thhe same. Not only do you have your own story, but you also develop you own enemies and allies. So say you are doing a quest, and mabye your enemy will be able to track you down, and ambush you in a surprise attack. When this happens, you get into an epic battle and blah blah blah.
Point is, that some NPC's will be smarter than others, like a dark witch will be very intelligent. Point is, from what I understand, there will not be stupid NPCs/monsters standing around waiting to be attacked.
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In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
The 4th paragraph on this page says it all...
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameID/333/setview/features/loadFeature/1836
"This is just one example of a changing dynamic world. Every monster, every Non-player character (NPC) has a purpose in the world, a life, goals, movement. Some of these NPCs become your friends and enemies… not everyone’s… just yours. Monsters in Citadel of Sorcery move through the world on their own agendas and logical tasks. They may be building up their forces along the No-Man’s-Land border for an assault on a Town, and the following day that assault will commence. Or, they might be a raiding party that is out burning farms and killing the local population. They might be abducting people to turn into their own kind, or building a foothold in Citadel lands. There are nearly endless agendas, and they keep working toward these goals unless they are stopped, or they are successful and then move onto their next goal. Time moves on."
Hope that helps
Citadel of Sorcery is not using a standard agro circumference. This means that if you walk up behind a hostile opponent they may not attack you. It depends... did he hear you? Did he turn so that you got into his vision? Is his vision good or bad... if bad, and you stop moving while he looks, he still might not see you. These examples should show you that opponents will act more realistically than standard argo models.
However, once detected how does an opponent act in battle? That will depend on their intelligence level. Again, our game is taking a different route on this area. The opponent AI is dependent on their intelligence. Therefore, you MAY be up against stupid monsters that will not have much in the way of strategic thought. However, in other cases the AI may be of fairly high intelligence. In these cases your opponent will have a lot more options and use them wisely.
As for mob communication, our game again works differently. If you attack one of several guards and wait until the other two are facing away, the others will be unaware that you took out the first guard until they see him down or missing... or you make too much noise, in which case they might turn and see you. Also... if one guard sees you attack another he might yell an alarm. But they are not magically attached to each other and all attack you because one was attacked.
Jatar
Citadel of Sorcery dev team member
I'm not sure where you got this information, perhaps I was unclear somewhere. However, let me clarify now, there are LOTS of monsters in Citadel of Sorcery. One of the two armies at war is made up of all kinds of creatures and monsters. The only difference is that our monsters are not randomly distributed, they generally have an agenda of some sorts, rather than patrolling a grid square on a map.
Jatar
Citadel of Sorcery dev team member
Very interesting Jatar. I really like the way that sounds. Will monsters be able to say use tactics like a human group would? Lets just say that you and 2 friends run in to a group of 4-5 of something, 2 of them are more damage dealing, one will heal, and 2 will be able to tank. I'm not sure this will apply, but it is seems like a good example. So the 3 of us decide to go after the healer first, logically that would be smart, but the AI may have an ability to prevent us from targetting the healer? Or will the healer run away so you attack the others, then comes back and heals? The dymanic of it seems really interesting, and if they can work in sync with each other like this, this will be one hell of a game.
You have it almost exactly. The only change to your example is that we aren't using the standard 'Tank' and 'Healer' system. However, monsters (and players) can have roles at times, and the monsters AI will apply those roles. But your example is correct for our game in that they will have AI appropriate for their role.
If I was going to fix your example, let's say one of them stays back and heals the others. So you break through and attack that 'healing' opponent. He might then switch to offense and engage you, while one of the others that was fighting might now back off and start healing.
In a different example, some archers might hang back and pelt you with arrows, but if you close, switch to swords and engage you, while a magic user might retreat if you come close, then reengage with magic if you don't hunt him down. If you do hunt him down, he might switch to melee weapon and use a combination of magic and fighting.
Jatar
Citadel of Sorcery dev team member
Wow. Simply wow. That is amazing that you are going to be able to do this. I have to be honest, I can't believe an AI could be this smart. I get a feeling your going to make every game's AI look retarted compared to what you can do with your AI. Hehe. I seriously look forward to hearing more.
I'm not sure where you got this information, perhaps I was unclear somewhere. However, let me clarify now, there are LOTS of monsters in Citadel of Sorcery. One of the two armies at war is made up of all kinds of creatures and monsters. The only difference is that our monsters are not randomly distributed, they generally have an agenda of some sorts, rather than patrolling a grid square on a map.
Jatar
Citadel of Sorcery dev team member
Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification.
But I meant more by monsters ones like standing around doing nothing waiting to be attacked..I probably should have explained that a bit further.
Thanks.
__________________________________________________
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on Aug/13/08 - Rest In Peace; you will not be forgotten
I totally agree with Shadowlord, not only will this game's AI be totally awesome and make other games look like a bunch of children playing with dolls (npc's) but i believe that it will change the future of mmo's completely...i'm totally rooting for you MMO Magic, and i'll be definitely looking forward to this game. The AI, the quest system, the Adventure system, the character build freedom, and all the other great things about this game will draw a lot of players once they all hear about it!
Somehow i just don't see how this game could fail if the devs provide the game that is being portrayed...and by the looks of there honest dedication and willingness to listen to the "gamer/consumer" i think that they are going to provided us with that!
Thank you Jatar and MMO Magic!
Developers have been ABLE to make smart AI for a very long time. The problems with doing so are twofold: 1) most games are built on a model of "kill monsters to get XP," meaning you have to be able to win lots of fights in order to advance your character, and 2) players have been conditioned to expect that they will be able to win every battle, and that losing a fight is a Very Bad Thing.
So clearly, this is a big, big risk for MMO Magic.
But they just might pull it off if they build their game so that the player's advancement is not dependent on the outright killing of every enemy you see. In a more quest-based environment, monsters can become mere obstacles to the fulfillment of your goals, rather than the primary means of accomplishing the single-minded goal of XP gain for advancement.
D&D Online has its problems, but it does illustrate this point to a degree. In DDO, you don't HAVE to kill everything in sight (even though you can, and most people do). But the killing only gets you a little bit of money. In order to get XP, you have to finish the quests. Sadly, DDO doesn't really make the most of this system, and the AI is not as stellar as it could be.
Anyway, in this kind of world, you have to make it very clear to players that winning fights is not the be-all, end-all. You have to make it clear that the quest is the important thing. You have to show that a total, decisive victory against a smart AI is a rare thing that will only happen every once in a great while. Most important, you need to include big rewards for players who defeat such an AI.
And yet, it's probably a good idea to have plenty of stupid creatures running around on which the less philosophically minded players can take out their frustrations. Players do enjoy a fight they can win, after all.
One thing I'd like to see more of is retreating. If you want your AI to be at all believeable, you need to make outnumbered or relatively weak (but smart) monsters RUN AWAY. Like, immediately. At the first sign of trouble. Preferably to get reinforcements. Any creature with humanoid intelligence should NEVER throw its life away on an obviously impossible fight.
Of course, this could make entrapment abilities a lot more popular among players, and I'm fine with that.
Which brings me to another point ... players should NOT have access to strategies and abilities that are not available to the AI. Taunt is quite stupid in my opinion, but in the past it has been a necessary evil. But it's made so much worse by the fact that very few games let the monsters taunt the players.
Good old (poor excuse for a designer) Brad McQuaid once said he didn't like giving monsters crowd control powers because it's no fun for the player to be on the receiving end, powerless to participate in a fight. I say tough darts. If your game is more "fun" for the players than the monsters, it is probably not very challenging. (Of course, the smart developer gives both players and monsters the ability to break free from CC abilities.)
All in all, I would hope for any fight between players and an equal number of AI opponents should have even odds of going either way. THAT would be my measuring stick for challenge, and I think the game should take such odds into account when assigning rewards.
In other words, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Jatar