AI, Immerssion, the Undead example that won't die.

I'm currently only using death magic. I really have no other attack but for my pitiful punches that do 1 point of damage.

But my expectation is that there will be logical monster types (like the Undead) that will not be impacted by death magic, as well as other types of attacks that seem equally absurd to work on the non-living.

For example:

1. All Death Magic
2. Healing. Why in the world would healing (life) magic help the undead? (I'm thinking of summoned undead here)
3. Poison. I see spiders poisoning undead all the time.


The AI of the monsters continues to concern me as well. Many monsters don't act how I would expect them to act.

For example:

1. Skeletons should probably follow you forever. They should really never stop following you. I'd love to see a skeleton follow people out onto the overland map and all the way back to Owl's Head someday. They're kind of singularly focused on killing the living.

2. Wolves. I think wolves would try to corner their opponents between barriers and other wolves. They're pack animals. They also roam and don't generally stand around in the same spot all day. I know this is a game and they're currently "guarding" resources, but it would be really cool if you could have packs of wolves roaming a scene actively working together to kill things.

I'd like to see a pack of wolves have the ability to overwhelm players so that players get taken down to the ground and stunned. Let's see players kite that!

I'd also like to see some basic intelligence checks for wolves, like this:

1. Is a player weak or injured? If yes - attack in force. If no - test for weakness. If no weakness - run away.
2. Is player in a group? If yes - test for weakness. If no weakness - run away. If no - see step 1.
3. Does player kill lead wolf. If yes - run away.

Let's see players camp that!

3. Bears. Bears should be looking for what? Food. I'm not sure they should be guarding resources unless they're connected to food or where they live. They should also be able to out run players.

I like that Bears can knock down and stun players. But it seems like this is too much of a random event. It would be great if there were some way for players to prevent this from happening. Likewise it would be nice of Bears that were successful in this attack could take more advantage from it. Maybe there should be a lingering effect from being knocked down by a bear?

 

A skeleton companion would be interesting. Imagine NPCs in towns running away screaming while old Bones says: "This always happens to me..."

 

Fully concur - I always have to chuckle when I go "rend" on a skeleton for sustained (bleeding !? ) damage.

MdG

 

Yes! I can't believe I forgot to add Rend to my list. That one drives me crazy!

 

I'd love to see this happen but once we implement weather, I think bears should hibernate rather than look for food if it's snowing.

 

I was about to do a post on how to improve combat for different creatures. Skeletons shouldn't bleed, but they're also brittle, so bludgeons (and shield bashes) should give them more damage. The more you break their bones the more they'll die and stay dead.

I'm going to go ahead and put up the post with some of my thoughts today.

 

Oh, and I was thinking the same thing about mobs combining their attacks and bringing you down to the ground. I was thinking, in this case, about spiders swarming you.

 

I'd love to see bear cubs and wolf cubs in the game. They'd protect their young.

 

And webs. Even my 5 year old was asking me why I could just walk through all the webs without getting stuck.

 

Also add this. If a player attacks a wolf, a wolf should be able to call for backup. Would also make "kiting" more difficult.

 

Right now they only web you as a player, so its like a root spell. It would be also interesting if they used webs as a tactic -- like try to push you into the web that's right behind you.

Though it should be possible to maybe burn down webs or slash them.

 

I agree. I think kiting is something that all AI should anticipate at this point and attempt to counter by surrounding and keeping good spacing between players. In terms of pack animals, they're really designed to counter kiting better than most. Yet because players can outrun everything they don't really have a chance.

 

Oh, in fact, I'll more post about this later today... but one of the things that would be cool to see is skeletons which come back to life after you kill them. Which I've seen in a couple of games, like Prince of Persia, and also in Ultima VIII if I remember correctly.. and a few games where there are specific necromancer enemies that resurrect the undead, like Path of Exile.

One way to do it would just be varying difficulties of skeletons, and the harder ones take longer to die; or to allow them to be revived by a lich in some cases. Another way to do it would be to give skeletons a kind of "durability" meter in addition to health. You knock down their health, and they fall to the ground. But in order to kill them permanently, you'd have to knock down their durability, which a bludgeon would be better at doing. I don't know, what do you think? They'd need some way to fight you though, and if you took their weapon while they were down the first time they'd just have their hands. It would depend on how long it would take them to revive, and whether you as a player would want to take the risk of going to them and taking the time to steal their weapon, or run and get a distance instead.

 

No. In order to kill them permanently, you have to use something equivalent to holy water on the corpse. So like your avatar would have to draw the Sign of Ankh on the skeleton's skull. This way you don't HAVE to use a bludgeon to permanently kill a skeleton.

 

For ghosts, I hope we need magic to kill them.

 

I'm really skeptical about making it so that a monster of the game can only be killed by "magic" characters. I don't mind having to enchant my swords with a specific (even rare?) enchantment to kill ghosts while magic users don't have to enchant anything because they can just use magic...but there should be many ways to "kill" a monster.

 

Magic can come in many forms. I have no problem with needing a magical spell, weapon, or item to kill certain monsters. I think it adds a lot to the game. I get upset that Liches are not much harder to kill.

 

Ghosts are the liches, they are double as tough