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Just for the record, my idea of spreading AoE damage among critters hit instead of duplicating it was yours before it was mine. That's where I got it from |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
There's a lot of things I would do *except* for the fact they would piss off the playerbase, and as a dev I would not advocate doing things just because I want them if the playerbase didn't.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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That means they would run more, yeah the players would hate you. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
But the one thing I can guarantee I would do as a dev that at least *some* of the playerbase would hate me for is that I would make the critters smarter.
Much, much, much smarter. Or at least apparently so enough so as to be basically indistinguishable from that. |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
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Much, much, much smarter. Or at least apparently so enough so as to be basically indistinguishable from that. Its something I've put a lot of thought into. Whatever else they had me working on, this is what I'd be working on all of the rest of the time. My metric for success here is when multiple players posted on the forums "I've wanted the critters to be smarter for years, but not *that* smart." ... |
With all those "if" statements that the mobs would have to go through it'd crash the servers!
Mob AI:
Attack hero if hero is seen/or is attacked by hero
if support (defender, controller, corruptor, etc) near-by, attack him first unless taunted by Tanker unless use "taunt break free" inspiration to continue to attack support toon
if being debuffed (RI, etc...), run away unless taunted unless debuffs get too much, run away.
if out-manned by more than 2, call for re-inforcements, hide behind nearest object
Tons more to think of but...yeah...it'll be interesting how future MMOs work
I'm all for smarter AI but at some point...it is just a script and will get "routine" after a while.
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Well, I was aiming for a, "how much do I think I could get away with that would piss people off but not enough to make them quit." Which is a very entertaining thought process for some reason.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Seems to me there are two kinds of "suggestions" showing up here: people who genuinely want specific changes but know that implementing them would be disastrous and people intentionally suggesting changes they don't want just to think of the worst thing they could come up with. For what it's worth, I get the feeling Bill was after the former.
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For actual changes I'd like that I'm sure people would hate:
- Implement a tab next to LFG called PvP. Consolidate the current Arena listings into a much smaller and easier to understand format (level ranges, solo/team) and let players queue from anywhere. At the end of the match, winners and losers get a varying number of Reward Merits and XP, and maybe a short duration buff to a stat of their choice, ala DFB.
- Following that train of thought, implement a new style of PvP matches that grants you a pre-specified set of powers using the extra power bar thing from i23. You could pick from a number of pre-set abilities (maybe themed after characters, but you still play as your own character) and play that way. Much easier to balance. Put it in the PvP tab alongside Arenas.
- Cut all existing craftable temp powers. Make them considerably rare drops, and include offerings that we already get from the market: Mission Teleporter charges, Experienced charges, Windfall charges, etc. Tradeable, auctionable, etc.
- Consolidate existing "clone sets", offering all the weapon models/animations from the two sets in power customization, but making a pass on the numbers to bring them up to snuff and making them into one set. For example, War Mace and Battle Axe would become Medieval Weapon. Super Reflexes and Ninjitsu would become... well, probably just Super Reflexes But With A Heal.
- Create thematic equals to the patron power pools for heroes. Numbers wise the same powers, but visually tied to existing heroes.
- Allow villains into Paragon City, giving them their own content to do there. Comic book villains are always in the city, not hanging out on some remote island chain run by a creepy spider guy. Keep Rogue Isles as viable content, but let villains be villains in the city. Implement a mode of transportation that isn't a tram for them, and a flagging system that lets villains or heroes designate that they're "ok" with open world PvP. If you don't turn it on, you never have to deal with it. Using the "yellow" status to make enemies neutral, villains could be buddy-buddy around certain villain groups while in the city. Depending on who you do missions for, you could earn their favor, elevating them from flat out hostile to neutral and eventually to friendly, where they'll shoot buffs at you as you run by, help you out if you're under attack, etc.
- Add in Woofers to replace Positron as head of the Phalanx.
- Blow up Faultline. Again.
- I'm running out of ideas.
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Originally Posted by Android_5Point9
...Using the "yellow" status to make enemies neutral, villains could be buddy-buddy around certain villain groups while in the city. Depending on who you do missions for, you could earn their favor, elevating them from flat out hostile to neutral and eventually to friendly, where they'll shoot buffs at you as you run by, help you out if you're under attack, etc.
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I've always wished when CoV released they did something like this.
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On the topic of smarter mobs: I'd prefer interesting and diverse AI over what most people would consider to be "smarter" AI. Nobody is going to want to play a Defender or a Tanker if the mobs ignore the Tanker and go after the Defender anyway. That's an overly simplistic example, but it's often the sort of thing people come up with when they want to make smarter AI. Yeah, it's smarter. But this is why our Defender wasn't having any fun in my SG's first couple of attempts at team PvP.
As for runners, if runners could actually get away, and their defeat weren't a requirement of completing the mission (like in comics where the hero stops the villain's plan, but he manages to get away, or the villain succeeds in his plan, but the heroes escape to try to thwart the villain later), I think people wouldn't hate runners so much.
It's not runners that are bad, it's having to chase them all over the map as a success condition that is bad. Having Romulus freak out and run all over the map with no goal and no consequence aside from annoying the players does absolutely nothing to make the final battle of the ITF more interesting. Being able to stop his plans to take over Cimerora, but with a significant chance of him getting away to try again, could make it more interesting, if executed well.
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Sounds like Eve Online. If I want that, I would just go play it.|
Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell
Some of these, I'm sure, would generate more heat than others...
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If I were a dev, I would change Warburg, Siren's Call and Bloody Bay into PVE co-op zones and make RV a 1-50 FFA zone.
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD
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Yeah, that'd probably get me to quit. I've never gotten a brute past level 26. I've rolled a number, but I can't say I care to play them. They end up deleted or transferred to a server I don't play on. I enjoy playing Tanks though, and a plurality of my characters are Tanks.|
Originally Posted by Siolfir
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I understand that it becomes difficult to balance things when there are four different melee archetypes, but they each play significantly differently, except perhaps when on a team.
I don't understand why you would want to decrease diversity like that.
Let's see, things I'd do that people would hate.
Bring back all the AE farms. Yep, all of them. I don't care if people want to farm. Some characters aren't fun during certain levels. If people want to skip those levels and get to the fun parts faster, let em.
State flat out that there will never be further work on PVP so that people can stop begging and wishing for changes. It simply isn't a large enough sub-community to be worth spending development time on (IMO).
Completely redo set bonuses from IOs. There would be considerably less defense and recharge, considerably more +damage, resistance boosts, and other boosts, so that people had the ability to build for more things, rather than just softcaps and perma-hasten. (Actually, some people would probably love this, but it's a big enough change that there would be plenty of haters too).
Change the code so if you were on a team, any knockback power would automatically become knockdown, with no option to change it back.
Cut the number of servers in half. Delete the 8 lowest-population servers. When characters had to be renamed, whoever had been subscribed longer got to keep it.
Get rid of separate alignments for rogues and vigilantes. There'd just be a single middle alignment.
That's all I can think of at the moment that would really cheese people off.
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What if this could be done with a new layer/set of IOs and not just by redoing the IO system? Would that work the same?|
Originally Posted by firespray
Completely redo set bonuses from IOs. There would be considerably less defense and recharge, considerably more +damage, resistance boosts, and other boosts, so that people had the ability to build for more things, rather than just softcaps and perma-hasten. (Actually, some people would probably love this, but it's a big enough change that there would be plenty of haters too).
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I know by some of my comments in this thread some may thing I am a crazed +def, everything must soft capped player. If you look through my posts and posted builds it can be seen that is far from the truth.
Def is a bit broken in this game, but I think any attempt to change or fix it would cause more harm than good. Now, my recharge I will fight over.
What I would like to see is for Resistance to be made more useful, and for there to be more ways to build for it.
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I'd love this, personally. At least, I think so now. >.>|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
But the one thing I can guarantee I would do as a dev that at least *some* of the playerbase would hate me for is that I would make the critters smarter. |
However, I've come to the belief that most players don't want that kind of challenge, and no, it doesn't have to be with runners; it could be with a hierarchical forces allocation AI, that's modeling an OODA loop on an operational level within a mission. It would work better if there were more environmental influences on combat (e.g., vantage point, obstructions, flanks and axis of attack, and all that) of course.
And then most everyone would get their rears handed to them, and complain that fighting the AI was more work than fun, and then the firestorm of rage and hate would erupt. Cool.
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You're assuming that all mob logic would necessarily be linear logical steps executed per mob.|
Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion
With all those "if" statements that the mobs would have to go through it'd crash the servers!
<snip> I'm all for smarter AI but at some point...it is just a script and will get "routine" after a while. |
There are other ways, involving powers, to influence how mobs react.
More importantly, it's important NOT to try to get mobs to strictly emulate certain behaviors, because that's where a lot of gameable behavior (or AI uncanny valley quirks) comes in.
The goal is to give them tendencies that can be influenced by circumstance, not rules to follow.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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Here's another one. I'd drop endurance as the be-all, end-all of power sources and add at least two or three more. In addition, I would have:
Ammo - your "energy" bar does not recover. At all. Powers still cost and deplete it, but it has no natural recovery. Instead, you have to stop and go through a lengthy "reload" process which would recover either all or half of your energy bar, then be bound by recharge of some sort. This applies to all powers, not just guns.
Surge - your "energy" bar recovers incredibly quickly, but is also incredibly small, small enough to go down from just a handful of attacks. You have virtually no downtime and very fast recovery, but you are throttled by the speed with which you can fire off powers without draining yourself below the level where you can fire them off.
Rage - your "energy" bar does not recover, and starts out empty. You recover it by using "rage builder" attacks which have a negative cost and use it for "rage consumer" attacks that have a positive cost.
Which of those mechanics you want to use is up to you to choose, but is locked in at character creation.
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Also, I'd change toggle costs. Instead of having a constant drain, toggles would "reserve" part of your energy bar that you can never recover, this leaving you with a smaller endurance pool with whatever recovery you have.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Remove the "VIP" status.
No subs. Everyone's a freemium, and everything goes on the Market.
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Not a fan of this to be honest. I'd rather they just add a variety of useful bonuses since health and recharge are so enticing...|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
wh
9. Revisit the set bonus rule of 5. How? Instead of "Five of any one bonus and percent," it would be "Five of any bonus, either five of the lowest or one of each percent." Let me illustrate: We have a set that has, say, "Increased debt protection" (because EVERYONE builds for that!) at .0625, 1, 1.5, 2, and 3%, with a purple set giving 5%. You have five "slots" for it. You could end up with five of .0625%. If you get one that's higher, it replaces one - so you have one 1% and four .0625% ones. At most, though, you could have four 1% bonuses. Get another at one percent, and you have two 1%, three .0625%. You CANNOT, however, have five 3% bonuses! At most, you could have one 3%, one 2%, one 1.5%, one 1%, and one .0625% (If we had one more - say a 2.5% bonus - you could drop the lowest .0625 and have a 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3% - but only one of each.) Yeah, it makes things a little more complex, I know. And it drops those caps - not 5 3%, 5 2%, etc, etc, etc. |
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Originally Posted by Zyphoid
4. Max listing cap on items in the AH based on rarity. I personally have billions in inf, so it is not about me. It is more about capitalism run amok. 8. Brutes would have a 85% resistance cap, to put them below tanks. 9. Tanks would get an increase to their base damage, and damage cap. However I would still be hated for this because it would not be enough to make J_B happy. 11. Conserve power would go away for melee ATs. They would all get Superior Conditioning in place of it. . |
8. Yes please.
9. Yes please, a small increase in damage would be nice.
11. Like this idea a lot.
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
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That's not what I was thinking. It would perhaps be better to state that I have thought of ways to make the AI not do obviously stupid things, and not act consistently predictably.|
Originally Posted by Liquid
On the topic of smarter mobs: I'd prefer interesting and diverse AI over what most people would consider to be "smarter" AI. Nobody is going to want to play a Defender or a Tanker if the mobs ignore the Tanker and go after the Defender anyway. That's an overly simplistic example, but it's often the sort of thing people come up with when they want to make smarter AI. Yeah, it's smarter. But this is why our Defender wasn't having any fun in my SG's first couple of attempts at team PvP.
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For example, having the critter AI ignore taunt breaks the intent of taunt. But having taunted critters that have no melee attacks at all run up to the tanker when taunted is idiotic. In fact, running out of the county when the thing you're primarily attacking is itself a melee character is equally idiotic. It makes more sense to run thirty feet and then turn and start shooting again.
"Smarter AI" as I am thinking of it doesn't mean "figure out the best way to frustrate the player." Its more of "always act with (apparent) purpose." Why move closer if it doesn't help your offense? Why continue to run if the attackers can't hit you? Why watch the players kill something right in your line of sight? Why stand all in one place? Why patrol in a straight line without ever looking behind?
The problem is people think addressing these issues would require massive computational resources, but I don't think they do. I think you can leverage the principles of emergent behavior to engineer simple AI that generate complex results when perturbed by situational changes.
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Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
You're assuming that all mob logic would necessarily be linear logical steps executed per mob.
There are other ways, involving powers, to influence how mobs react. More importantly, it's important NOT to try to get mobs to strictly emulate certain behaviors, because that's where a lot of gameable behavior (or AI uncanny valley quirks) comes in. The goal is to give them tendencies that can be influenced by circumstance, not rules to follow. |
I'm no programmer in any sense (unless you call making a few html pages with notepad back in the day!
) but I still see it as something that's limited.Until AI can think on its own then AI will be 'easy' (unless you're just giving them cheats like auto one-hit kill attacks).
Then again when AI can think on its own...the "game" us humans will be playing is "stay alive"!
*dons tinfoil anti-skynet hat*
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Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I was thinking about posting a thread proposing almost exactly this exact mechanic as the basis of a future archetype (and I'm also acknowledging that similar ideas have been discussed on the forums many times in the past, albeit not recently).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Ammo - your "energy" bar does not recover. At all. Powers still cost and deplete it, but it has no natural recovery. Instead, you have to stop and go through a lengthy "reload" process which would recover either all or half of your energy bar, then be bound by recharge of some sort. This applies to all powers, not just guns.
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I was going to propose it as a question: would you be willing to have unlimited endurance recovery via click powers if it meant your normal recovery was permanently suppressed to zero?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
....
For example, having the critter AI ignore taunt breaks the intent of taunt. But having taunted critters that have no melee attacks at all run up to the tanker when taunted is idiotic. In fact, running out of the county when the thing you're primarily attacking is itself a melee character is equally idiotic. It makes more sense to run thirty feet and then turn and start shooting again. .... |
It makes total sense!
I mean when, in the game, you taunt you're basically calling the mob names and what not right?
Well if the mob is at range and gets taunted, he's not running up to attack in melee range, he's running up to you to ask you, "what did you say?" Sometimes mobs can't hear from taunt's range.
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Actually, thinking about it more, I'd probably do a mix of both.|
Originally Posted by Zyphoid
What if this could be done with a new layer/set of IOs and not just by redoing the IO system? Would that work the same?
I know by some of my comments in this thread some may thing I am a crazed +def, everything must soft capped player. If you look through my posts and posted builds it can be seen that is far from the truth. Def is a bit broken in this game, but I think any attempt to change or fix it would cause more harm than good. Now, my recharge I will fight over. What I would like to see is for Resistance to be made more useful, and for there to be more ways to build for it. |
Some types of IOs (ranged and melee damage particularly) have a TON of sets. Those I probably wouldn't add new sets to, I'd just replace some of the already existing sets (since a lot of them suck). Other types (PBAoE, Targeted AoE, many others) need more sets, and I'd probably just add new ones rather than changing ones that already existed. I'd still probably end up changing quite a few though.
And since getting rid of the crappy sets also means getting rid of all the cheap sets, I'd make generic multi-aspect IOs. They'd work exactly like multi-aspect set IOs, they'd just give no set bonuses. Then people who just wanted to slot cheap IOs for the enhancement and don't care about set bonuses could use those cheaply.
Actually, people might not hate that so much, so I better stick with the first idea.
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I'd actually be pretty okay with this as long as players (i.e. pets) benefited from the improved AI too.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That's not what I was thinking. It would perhaps be better to state that I have thought of ways to make the AI not do obviously stupid things, and not act consistently predictably.
For example, having the critter AI ignore taunt breaks the intent of taunt. But having taunted critters that have no melee attacks at all run up to the tanker when taunted is idiotic. In fact, running out of the county when the thing you're primarily attacking is itself a melee character is equally idiotic. It makes more sense to run thirty feet and then turn and start shooting again. "Smarter AI" as I am thinking of it doesn't mean "figure out the best way to frustrate the player." Its more of "always act with (apparent) purpose." Why move closer if it doesn't help your offense? Why continue to run if the attackers can't hit you? Why watch the players kill something right in your line of sight? Why stand all in one place? Why patrol in a straight line without ever looking behind? The problem is people think addressing these issues would require massive computational resources, but I don't think they do. I think you can leverage the principles of emergent behavior to engineer simple AI that generate complex results when perturbed by situational changes. |
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Oh, that reminds me. Toggles and passives are designed wrong in this game. Passives should be stronger than toggles most of the time, particularly for mitigation powers.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Also, I'd change toggle costs. Instead of having a constant drain, toggles would "reserve" part of your energy bar that you can never recover, this leaving you with a smaller endurance pool with whatever recovery you have.
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No, I'm not kidding. I've mentioned it before, but this is a case where the devs do not see the forest for the trees. Its not that this is another way to do it. Logically, its the only correct way to do it.
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Which part? Because I've never played Eve Online.
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Originally Posted by newchemicals
Sounds like Eve Online. If I want that, I would just go play it.
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FUN FACT: That burst of light when you level up is actually the effectiveness escaping from your enhancements all at once.
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Could you expand on why, please?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Oh, that reminds me. Toggles and passives are designed wrong in this game. Passives should be stronger than toggles most of the time, particularly for mitigation powers.
No, I'm not kidding. I've mentioned it before, but this is a case where the devs do not see the forest for the trees. Its not that this is another way to do it. Logically, its the only correct way to do it. |
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
5. AE would be POLICED.
You make a farm, you get temp banned.
You make an awesome story, you get shouted out by the citizens on the streets.
You make ALOT of farms, you are sent to the cornfield.
You make ALOT of awesome stories, well I think boosts from reviews could happen.
Why not just create a filter (or another category) for "farms"? That way people who create "farms" can just mark it as such so that you (and others) can just search for non-"farms"?
And if the creator makes a "farm" that isn't marked as a "farm" then sure some sort of punishment could happen.
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