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Storybricks Update (EQN's AI system)
Allein
Member RarePosts: 2,139
For those into the technical side, here is the most recent details on Storybricks and what we could be seeing happening in EQN. They'll be showing off the AI in some form next month at SOE Live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id-3sUo_DFU
Start is a bit dry, but picks up a third of the way or so when he gets into the examples and what is possible.
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Wasn't the best presentation, not that devs ever really do too well, that's why they are celebs for E3.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/28/5929187/hearthstone-storybricks-storytelling-engine-ai-director-blizzard
Half way down they show Mass Effect 2's tree. Much like most games and choose your own adventure type things, there is a clear end or endings with only so many ways to reach it. There is very little to no side influence or paths to go down to influence or change the main story. A or B, maybe C over and over.
With Storybricks it seems multi-layered and multiple paths that are crossing and interacting causing a ripple effect for the player and the game. We won't have a super clear view of what killing a farmer will result in. Unlike a faction system where it is just +1/-1 until you reach a max.
To me it is actual what dynamic and emergent game play should look like. Hopefully it works out in EQN with players everywhere.
Goes back to their life of consequence and choice being a big deal. Can't just grind undead until you make the Paladin's happy. Will hopefully need to actually do "good" and stop "evil" from happening. Which can be in many forms.
Mobs having the same system where they pick and choose what direction they will go in will be very interesting. Combat influenced by this system should be much more entertaining.
Still all hype though. Next month should give a better picture of how it actually works in a real game.
It's worth watching all the way through if you have any interest in it. Some of the examples make it a bit clearer, although it does drag on a bit in parts.
Like fighting undead and killing the necro summoning them ? I don't see how it is any different than the faction we always had. Can you come up with an example of how something totally unpredictable could happen to get you loved by the Paladins ?
You save a family from an Orc war party. One member of the family is a brother-in-law to a member of the Paladin guild. One day while strolling through Freeport, a random stranger goes "Hail, I've heard of you." Goes on to say they heard you saved a family yadda yadda want to become a member.
While this same thing could be a linear quest line and is to some degree, you wouldn't know it. Maybe you were in a rush one day and ran by an old man asking for help on the road, that made it's way back to the same Paladin and they won't help you because they value one action over another.
I'm not a dev or into AI, but even with my little imagination I can see the story unfolding and branching out quite a bit. If you want to simplify it down to X = Y and you don't see any differences or how SB is making progress for AI and gaming, that's on you. These are games after all, they do have set variables and possibilities, but how crazy complex they get is where it gets interesting. Some seem to be so doom and gloom that even when something good comes along, it is just dismissed as meh, not impressed.
If you watched the video and can give me any example of a current game that has anything similar, please do. I've yet to see anything like it, which is why I'm assuming SOE is making such a big deal about it and other companies/names in the business are taking notice.
Doesn't have to be totally unpredictable, but doesn't have to be either A = Paladins love you or B = they don't. Could be you did A so C so 2 so
so X so treestump. No easy way to go google "how do I get Paladins to love me." It is based on your actions as a whole and all the inter connections they have within a character and the world.
This might be a bit easier to picture some of what SB is doing, even though this isn't them.
http://www.gamespot.com/videos/narrative-legos-with-ken-levine-gdc-2014/2300-6417876/
Too me all it sounds like is some tweaking to EQ1's original faction stuff.. Not sure if you ever played EQ1 but the game was filled with factions.. Almost everything you did in the game either pleased some, or pissed off others.. Every time you made a kill you were given notification which factions were effected by your actions.. And this did come into play often.. If the guards were impartial to you, don't expect help, but if they were allied and you ran to them with mobs, they would come to your assistance. Today you might be KOS to guards, next week you might be friendly.. MOB's do what they are program to do, no more, no less.. If you were a high level toon walking thru danger, mobs would ignore you, but the moment you sat down, BAM, some mob ganks you.. As a druid in EQ I had to be very aware of my factions, depending what rings I was porting to .. LOL
I have never played a game since my EQ days that treated factions with respect.. SB doesn't sound "NEW", just something that was always there fine tuned..
So each ''stars'' have his own hate/love bar with the player. While I can see how this add diversity, it is still pretty much the same as before. You want the orc blacksmith to lower his prices, you go kill elves non stop till he does.
I will wait for SOE to prove me wrong, but right now I don't see much potential in this.
You could make a character hate you in EQ1 just because he had the jealous trait and you keep talking to his wife? Because that is one of the example SOE gave for EQNext Storybricks AI. It's not all about doing quests and killing things.
There is also something they alluded too, along with the Storybricks guys, and that is player's organizations recognized by NPCs. The idea is that players could create a "Thieves Guild" and the would spontaneously create a new thief faction into the game.
I don't think people grasp what's being shown here. It's a very granular AI that is very simple on the development end to modify thus saving a lot of time for developers. There's a reason AI like this isn't granular, it's expensive and time consuming to make. You could theoretically go in and code an individual faction, like, dislike, action, reaction, mood, etc on each NPC, but it isn't going to go over well. Even worse when you decide that some action on the part of the player or even another NPC could completely change the faction, like dislike, action, reaction, and mood of that one NPC.
It's a unified system so the same system can be used for both how he reacts when given a certain food and how he reacts* when his enemy equips a bow in the middle of combat. So it's just as possible to have that individual NPC react* one way when his enemy draws a bow if he is given that piece of food or a completely different way if he isn't given that piece of food.
*By react I mean his tactics in combat.
It's suppose to be game agnostic. It doesn't care what is happening in the game, only what the game is telling the system.
The system is as granular or epic as they want it to be. It could tell an orc to snare and run under any number of conditions or it could direct a division of orcs to flank if they spot a group of enemies, or it could tell the whole orc factions to move to the other side of the map if they are being wiped out.
Even more it can be detailed, so if the division of orcs spots a group and it's mostly melee, they could draw bows and ambush, but if it is mostly spellcasters, the orcs may charge in quickly. It can also direct individual orcs to run if they are faced with something they don't like such as dropping to low health, a spellcaster because they don't like magic, or some new threat emerges they don't like. And if enough of these orcs start to flee, it may tell the rest of the orcs to flee as well. The orc leader may know that if too many run, he's doomed, so he then directs the orcs to take down the new threat.
It's up to the developer on what they want to use it for.
True, we don't. I imagine the hardest part is just the time to implement it. The next time consuming thing would be balance. Sure you could have the smartest AI possible that will just thrash any PC, but that isn't fun. Storybricks allows an intelligence meter. So dumber orcs tier 1 orcs will act very basic while really smart tier 7 orcs will be much more challenging without the need to increase things like their hit points if you don't really want to. I think a lot of the balancing of this difficulty temperature will show up during alpha.
years ago, there was an article about GW1 Eye of the North AI
it sounded great in writing but it was not how it played out ingame
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/guild-wars-eye-of-the-north-hands-on/1100-6176372/
the improved artificial intelligence. Groups of monsters will now take up formations, with the melee warriors in front protecting the spellcasters, and ranged units in the rear. This will force you to try to flank more, to get around the front line.
Storybricks sounds very promising but I would like to see it in action
EQ2 fan sites
This sort of thing shows up in Fallout: New Vegas. I was traveling to Lake Mead, avoiding a bunch of Death Claws roaming around, when in the distance a bunch of Nightstalkers ran across a field and killed a DeathClaw that I was avoiding. There was no particular reason for that to happen, other than Nightstalkers and Death Claws are pretty violent. It was kind of cool.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Rule #54: Pure RNG enrages the playerbase, who still pull the slot machine handle all the same.
Rule #55: If there's a system, the playerbase will game it as much as possible.
Those two points are concerns, off the top of my head, about making Storybricks work in a larger MMO. If there's a consistent path to get to a desired event, the players will find it. If it's pure RNG, the players will whine about it loudly but still do it. Either result can make a great AI concept fail when people get their chance to play it.
In other words, this will have to get a LOT of testing. More than normal, or it could flop like a fish on a pier.
Avatars are people too
Watching the livestream Q&A currently and they basically said that no one has done what they are doing. People simply can't get away from comparing it to other games and systems which I'm assuming means their own games.
If you can't see the possibilities due to lack of imagination or doubt or being unable to get away from what has happened before, not much I can say.
To me it is clear as can be. Will it work, especially on the larger scale? No clue. But the potential for something amazing is there. Might not change your life, but it should change how EQN compares to other games and maybe how gaming goes from here. Several companies are going this route in some fashion, don't think they are all going "Well lets take factions and just call it something else, they won't notice."
They also pointed out that they aren't making GW2 (once again) which is amusing. "But there is action combat and no trinity, it's GW2!!!!" Such limited minds out there.
If Storybricks = Factions from 15 years ago, might as well say EQN = EQ. They are both mmorpgs set in the EQverse, there's classes and races and dragons, basically the same game...
I think this is more of what Storybricks is. The "faction" side of it is just one little layer, but unlike most games, you probably can't just farm rats all day to have the rat catchers love you. Maybe they don't want players stealing their jobs and need carrots for rat stew or something random that they don't point out in neon lights. They have been killing rats all day and are hungry but didn't have time to gather veggies to go with their rats.
Seems people make the assumption that "grinding" will be a thing, even though SOE has said that isn't what they are going for. Making once you kill 1 Orc, killing more doesn't make Paladins any more happy. The video showed this with having actions have multiple reward amounts and when they are reached, another action is needed and so on.
The 2nd video I linked had an example (I think) of two groups of the same type not on good terms. While we could easily just say it is Faction 1 and Faction 2, there might be a lot more dynamics going on and what they do when players aren't around could drastically change how players are able to interact with them one day to the next.
Behaviors, needs, wants, drives, etc seems much more what they are going for and not simply Factions, either do A or B and get C or D results.
this storybricks A.I is something truely special. this is a very, very advanced A.I. Basically the choice an NPC can make, has as many possibilities as the coder gives it. In terms of how that fares in EQN?
well yes there will be bugs, there MOST DEFINETLY be bugs with the A.I at times. But this can all be ironed out over time easily. The A.I can be advanced to the point where it outsmarts your average gamer.
this A.I will be able to scale with increasing player size, i don't understand why people have a problem understanding that?
That would be oh so nice.
You might want backtrack on that out smarting the average gamer comment. If that did happen, the game would be too hard for those that need instant gratification and deserve everything handed to them on a silver platter would rage quit because its too damn hard!
On second thought... maybe that would be a great way to institute Digital Darwinism and weed out all the bottom feeders. Oh never mind, that would result in lower profit margins and we all know that can't happen.
This could all be done 15 years ago, it was scaled down because people were getting their ass kicked left and right. There will be no super advanced AI in EQN. It's all coded, it will not learn and adapt, it will just do what it is programmed to do. Nothing smart about it.
How many can beat deep blue ? That's how you want your average fight to turn out ?
Please provide an example of a game that did this 15 years ago. It isn't a matter of making things super difficult, it is about adding more possibilities to the world. Instead of Guard 1 does X forever, Necro in the middle of the graveyard does Y forever. Not just Necro is insanely smart and can counter every move a player makes.
Also no reason the AI couldn't have simple to very complex variables. A rat shouldn't "outsmart" a player. A group of 20 Orcs might not be able to be soloed by a single player by picking them off 1 by 1 while their friends watch from a distance.
AI in gaming is all variables and what the devs decide, but if they allow a complex amount of choosing what action will happen instead of the predetermined XYZ forever, it can be more interesting. No this isn't Skynet and no the AI isn't going to take over the game and kill all players instantly.
Not sure why it has to be one extreme or another with some people. It isn't either Godmode AI or mindless zombie AI. There is quite a bit of room in between that hasn't really been tapped fully.
If this was possible 15 years ago, where is that code now? Wouldn't some company just knock the dust off some old CDs and go "wait a second we already did that" and cash in?
Must suck to be so negative and never happy. Even when companies attempt to do something more, even if it is just a pipedream, at least they are attempting it. Rather companies try and fail then just throw in the towel like some of you.
If the game is large enough and diverse enough, seems very possible for the challenges to range quite a bit.
The brain power needed bar has been lowered so much for most games that simply having to think 5 seconds a head might be too much for some people. Doesn't mean they can't have complex content that challenges those that want it and actually gets the lower skill end folks to become better.
If players are never challenges and just handed everything, very little incentive to get "better" or work harder. I think people want to be challenged, just a matter of making it inviting, addicting, fun enough to keep trying and coming back for more.
WoW is a big reason for this mentality. Was 95% solo game then all of a sudden you need 40 other people working together to accomplish anything. Which was a bit drastic for most. So they go in the opposite direction and make it so easy that team work isn't even needed. There are other ways to go about it if a company is willing to spend time and effort into the development, which SOE seems to be doing so far.
I was merely replying to the guy. He is talking about an amazing AI. All I am saying is that you won't see much differance in creature behavior than what we had in EQ1. Even if there is a shit load of choice being made by any npc, on the surface you won't notice anything different.
What could the mob possibly do that never happened before ? He will drop on his knees and ask for mercy ? Probably not.
He will try to run when on low life, been done.
He will heal his friends, been done.
He will call for backup, been done.
You could make it attack random player, closest player, most dps, most ugly, most hated. It's been done.
He will decide not to attack if he have no hope of winning, been done. But he will attack if you sit down and he can get a free crit.
I don't know why you are so hyped about something we have no idea how it will turn out. I am not negative about it, I just don't see anything that warrant any form of hype YET. And the games been willingly dumbed down for the last 10 years, it's not because they didn't know how to make it better, it's because better doesn't sell copies.
With those people i am surprised they could sell their product to anyone.The first guy was kind of well you know and the second guy was very boring and not making sense to the average viewer audience.I am sure they put a lot of effort into this engine,trying to cover as many areas as possible but imo it is not good enough and not something i would want as a developer.
Basically a devs auto-bot,you input all the scripts and the engine sorts it for you.
I personally don't like auto scripted content like this because then the entire game looks and plays the same from level 1> end level.SOE already does this with their game,they repeat the same sequence of spells only changing into Taunt 1 >taunt II>?Taunt II ect ect.They do the same with crafting,the same crafts at level 1-10 are the same only a tier higher every ten levels.That is what i call VERY lazy game design.
IDK maybe this engine can do something amazing that i don't know about but i doubt it.I see it being exactly like SWTOR was with it's choices,a few different scripts for each scenario.Sure some math wiz could calculate that over 500 quests and come up with some infinite number of variations but in reality nothing much will change your experience,it will always feel the same old.
Call me a skeptic whatever,i just know how much effort it takes to make some well scripted content and no engine is going to make our story telling any more amazing than what can already be done without the engine.
What it comes down to is the developer needs to put in the effort to make scripted AI with lots of interaction and animations.Then you need to utilize particle effects and action scenes bring the NPC's into the foray with destructive surfaces ect ect.You need to make the assets that bring the scene to life,this Story Bricks is not going to do any of that for the developer.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Did you watch the presentation? It wasn't very combat oriented. The possibilities of what NPCs can do with or without us around is what I'm hyped about. There is nothing in EQ that comes close to what they are saying their AI can do. As they have gone very little into the act of combat itself, not much to go on beyond they've said these drives and what not will also play into combat.
While you are correct that all of those examples have been done before, they are usually in very specific situations and stand out because of it. I don't know of any game that has all those elements on a large scale on top of having AI deciding who they like today, what they plan to do tomorrow, where they were a month ago, etc.
I'm not jumping on my chair going hype crazy, but I'm positive they have something special. It sure sounds a hell of a lot better then what I've see in the last 18+ years online gaming. If combat AI is simply more imitation of players, I'm fine with that, but it sounds like AI and NPC behaviors in general will be fairly complex. Can you simplify it down to 1/0s, if you want, but where's the fun in that.
If you see the possibilities out of combat (do you?) I find it hard to image NPCs going about their virtual lives in a higher capacity then most games, but when you run up and smack them in the face they instantly downgrade to moron mode combat AI. I might be sad when they finally reveal it all, but I'm at least willing to give them a chance to present it before going "meh, nothing to see here." Could just be hype and lies, but as of yesterday, they are still selling the idea that what they have has never been done before and that people just can't understand it because there isn't anything to compare it to without going towards previous games that don't work the same way.
While just total speculation, they've alluded or said that NPCs may be classes or have similar skills as players and will be obvious like players. If this is the case and an Orc Warrior has 12+ skills to choose from and all the variables a player can choose from, that sounds fairly interesting. Instead or Orc 1 has X attack, Orc 2 has Y attack and so on. In a 1 vs 1 PVP/Duel situation, even if I know the other classes abilities and options, that doesn't mean I know what will happen. This AI could vary from Warrior Tier 1 Orc just hits 123 123 123. While Tier 5 does 12281482331 combos that are not easily predictable but not so far out there that I'll never understand what to do. Much like a "good" vs "bad" player. I can face off two identical class/build/geared players, but depending on their ability, will have totally different experiences.
I don't know of any games that have combat like that. Where if I'm about to cast a heal on myself, a NPC silences me, then stuns me then does a heavy attack. Doesn't need to be over the top hard, but doesn't have to be total crap faceroll either.
We are all free to believe what we want, but I'm trying to at least talk about what they are saying, be it is true or not. Instead of just dismissing it as, "Never going to happen, no way, lies lies lies." Why bother even discussing it with that mentality? "Yay another game like all the others, lets talk about everyone, I'm so excited!"