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Unimmersive - have the mobs and AI improved
D00mSay3r
Member Posts: 11
I really like the idea of FE, love the Post Apoc world and the graphics, aside from the fact it looks too pretty. It looks more like a vacation in Arizona than a world decimated by war etc. I can live with that. What I could not live with was the completely unimmersive mobs and ridiculous AI. Going on a kill quest, and your target is standing in the middle of nowhere on a hill, in the middle of the night, and completely ignores the gun fire going by him is bad. Or after taking one target out, the other target standing or walking 5 feet away somewhow didnt hear his partner in a gun battle or getting filled with lead. Myself and a friend left solely for that reason, it was just so unimmersive. I guess we dont have enough imagination to ignore the fact. Even my wife looking over my shoulder asked why the heck are all those people standing in the middle of the desert? The AI was equally bad, mobs delay, then turn and shoot, or just run straight at you. Has this been changed?
Comments
I agree, the AI left a lot to be desired. However, this is a MMORPG. In compare to basically everything on the market, the AI is standard. While it would be nice to expect from online game with FPS combat to bring a fresh and radical approach to mob AI, Icarus is not a particulary big dev team. FE still brings a lot of other fresh ideas, and I'm sure if they will spend significantly more time on the mob AI, we would probably not see any other new content in the next 6 months.
REALITY CHECK
I just picked up the game after taking an almost-one year break. The game is essentially identical, just with some crappy pvp battlegrounds.
As I've said before when this question was posed, the AI in FE is neither better or worse than any other MMOG on the market. You could lodge the same complaint about every MMOG out there. It HAS been improved a bit since launch though. You will need to go do the research into patch noted yourself to discover specifically thing sthat have changed...
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
Then I really do not believe that you really played the game.
Can AI mobs be improved?, oh sure would love to see that, but then would love to see that in atleast 90% of all MMORPG's ever released.
The mobs in FE are pretty much standard affair.. The MMO i'am playin now dosn't even aggro on other mobs chaseing me, so if i run thru a pack of mobs with one of em on me as long as i avoid the pack of mobs nothing will happen even if the mob chaseing me runs thru 20 or 30 of 'em on the way out.. Also remember Icarus is a VERY small company, adding each mob with a different kind of AI would cost them a arm and a leg.. It's something not even most AAA MMO's do.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
Fallout Online, you are my only hope!
If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG - Bill Gates
I agree, mobs AI is the game breaker for me.
I like to both PVE and PVP equialy but as is PVE is just way too boring because of the extremely simple AI.
I don't think they'll ever improve it in a significant way because that will break the game performance wise.
Good mob AI and pathing eats a lot of resources and I used to think that making a huge non instanced world + complex mob AI + FPS style of combat where ping and frames are paramount can't mix well... until I played Darkfall.
They pulled it off there, it works, mob's AI is supperb,there are no static mobs, everything roams, the world is non instanced and huge and the range combat is aim FPS style and on a average system you get 150+ fps and a 30 ping.
So it's possible after all but you probably need to design your engine with that in mind from the start I guess.
Apart from a supperb engine AV uses few other smart tricks to achieve this, mobs don't spawn until a player approaches the camp so there are no huge amount of mobs up to stress the server all the time.
So I think that in order for Fallen Earth to have a mob AI on par with Darkfall their engine needs to be redone from scratch and I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Shame really, I liked every other aspect of FE and would play it long term if the PVE was more chalenging.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
I'm not seeing the problem really, as others have started, MOB AI is pretty standard for most MMORPG's except perhaps for the one example given, Darkfall.
Yet for some reason few people ever praise DF's PvE so I'm thinking there's more to the story than mob AI pathing.
I'm not even sure what difference the pathing really makes. The mobs in FE actually dodge back and forth as they strike you (something most games don't do) and when the run in some will frequently zig zag making a bit of a challenge if you are trying to him them at range.
What the heck, I usually hit them once with the cross bow and then let them run in and shoot them in the face at point blank which pretty much takes care of any annoying dodging issues.
If I really wanted to shoot something with intelligence, I'd go after other players, that's the only real challenge in these games.
Challeging PVE, just hasn't happened in any game far as I can tell.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Lol, static mobs that don't assist eachother is not really standard, or at least it wasn't in the good old days of the genre.
Anyone that played Everquest knows how chalenging PVE can be when you deal with smart made AI.
The first thing I noticed after I stopped playing EQ 4-5 years ago and started playing every limonade MMO outthere, was that no other MMO came even close to EQ's mob AI including EQ2.
Not linked mobs that assist their kind and never leash, try to run away at small health, realistic hate list (for example switching attacks to the player on low health to finish him off, low HP aggro as we called it then) etc etc... makes for some cool PVE experience.
After EQ everything went downhill with mob AI (mobs linked in groups that leash etc) for the sake of eye candy + non zoned enviroments etc. AI eats a lot of resources.
Darkfall mob AI isn't anything like EQ but the PVE fights feel realistic, mobs never spawn at same spot and are always roaming, I haven't seen a single static mob yet ,they use ranged weapons when far, switch to melee when you get close, sometimes charge you sometimes they run away, take cover and the leashing thing feels seamless, sometimes they chase longer etc, paired with the Darkfalls cool combat mechanics (friendly fire, collision detection, FPS style aiming, no tab targeting, melee splash AE damage ala AoC etc) is fun and very enjoyable, especially at night time when it's hard to see the mobs.
Fallen Earth's PVE is just boring because of static dumb mobs that sometimes don't even chase you let alone assist their kind.
I really liked FE and played it for 3-4 months after release but eventually got bored because when PVP is lacking and I can't find fights I could be doing dungeons and stay subed.
Oh well.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
There has to be a balance to were mobs help each other. to much AI and the game goes to needing groups to do stuff. I think the AI is good were it is, My main toon was in s3 I shoot at one and other mobs come running to aide them.
I think the AI is fine.
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Everyone has a point about the AI. There is just something about all the mobs just standing around in the middle of nowhere doing nothing that just kills it for me. Just kills any hope for immersion.
Usually if you read the quest you'll understand why the mobs are standing around.. It tells you who they are and usually what they are doing out in the middle of the desert.. That's one thing i liked about FE was how well its quests was written, even tho most boiled down to fetch and catch.. Sometimes you'll see some AI techies standing in the middle of the desert only to get a quest later that says they are searching for some loss scrap and explaining why they are actually there..
As for them standing around doing nothing.. They are usually paceing back and forth, and the AI does come to the rescue to other AIs.. I mean, what do you want them holding up conversations with one another? Having bar fights? I mean.. What MMO actually has AI that interacts with one another and the enviroment like that? Not many..
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
Mobs can be quite social and help and aid each other in FE. Its just almost always shut off in the low lvl areas for some reason. As you get into higher lvls it becomes more and more common to have social mob.
What is a bit frustrating in s3 is that you never know in advance whether or not a group of mobs are social until you try, because there is no real system for it as far as i can see.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
This is the problem: apathy. What is the real reason mobs cant be improved in a game where youre supposed to have fun killing them? If Darkfall does it better, why not at least copy darkfall?
I don't know that DF does it better, just a story I heard tell one day. Again, if I really want to have fun killing challenging things I look for games that have me hunting other human players.
The real goal of FE is advancing my character in the most efficient manner possible, so challenging AI isn't really what I'm looking for.
Besides, no matter how they try, I'll be able to figure out how to beat any AI encounter, even WOW's huge raids are really just a matter of following the right dance steps unless they randomize it to make wiping on occasion inevitable, which usually just pissed me off, rather than make it more interesting to me.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Fallen Earth is a PVE game though, not a PVP game. So people expect to have fun doing PVE. And this attitude of "so what, all mmos do it" is never going to get anything improved.
The reason this feels wierd is you are essentially playing an FPS with MMO AI. Your mind thinks FPS and is expecting certain things (smartish enemies, etc). Problem is, an MMOFPS with AI as good as, lets say, Halo Reach, is impossible due to network problems.
Maybeit will be possible in the future when we stop getting fleeced by service providers....ohh who am I kidding lol.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2
We arent arguing for perfect, just better. I dont see why its so difficult to code a npc to say, hamstring you, then run away. Or run into cover, or call for backup. Essentially to act like a player would. If this isnt possible then games need to be more pvp focused so you can actually fight real people. Heck, maybe they should hire people to play NPCs. Outsource it to india.
Point being dumb AI is not fun. We pay for fun. No fun, no pay.
I resubed last week and I see a lot of improvements since the last time I played.
I started from scratch and even the S1 mobs are somewhat smarter then the last time I played , aggro range is still on a short side which makes using different stances in PVE kinda pointless, you can run through a pack of mobs in their camps without aggroing them if you are carefull so it's still meh but it's better then it used to be.
I see changes in melee animations too, performance is better allthough there is still annoying rubberbanding from time to time (I play from europe so maybe that's the problem).
Overall, the game is still fun and there's lot to do ,world is huge and there is content for months here for a casual player so I might stick around.
I care about your gaming 'problems' and teenage anxieties, just not today.
It's actually not due to network issues, its due to CPU cycle constraints and because AI programmers are expensive. It also has alot to do with the exploitive nature of advanced AI systems and the headaches that can generate in an MMO world.
Darkfall, as mentioned, is a pretty good indication that its possible, and that making it possible is reasonable even for a small-market company. It's also a good indicator of how easily those AI scripts can be manipulated to game the system and get unfair advantages over your fellow players.
I personally think that MMO gamers need to start demanding better AI from their games. We have fallen into this rut where we basically say "it's good enough because its an MMO". And thats a really bad mindset for a consumer. Things don't improve when you are handing the developers a free pass for mediocrity.
And yes, Fallen Earth's AI is terrible. And is certainly worse than most other AAA MMOs. Atleast they have scripted encounters... FEs NPCs scripts encompass at most 3 actions . It's pretty pathetic, and I think a lot of it might have to do with their gameworld being overpopulated w/ NPC monsters. They'd eat up a lot less CPU cycles if they scaled back on the number of mobs they generate.
AI mobs really arent all that bad in FE compared to other MMO's.
On the Darkfall Posts I think many people just do not pay attention to what the DF AI is doing. Just last night I had one pull me into his group which was hidden on the other side of a wall. Another I tried to sneak up on to see if I could do it and it worked, I was able to sneak up and do a power attack before he saw me, not all mobs you can do that.
Some people are so used to mobs not moving that they think the AI in Darkfall is bugged becuase the AI moves, its funny to me.
edit: also it appears to me that the pve has taken some pvp training. Try this sometime, if you are in melee and the mob starts to run from you, pull your bow, as soon as it can 'hear' that bow it will stop running and turn around.
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