Scripted fights.

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Originally Posted by Bladenite81

Demon Souls line of gaming is not difficult, nor is it brutal, its indifferent and repetitive. Every creature has a routine and tells, you just have more fluid movement and options in those games. The NPCs are not trying to win, they are performing the same scripts, just the scripts for them are more intricate. I doubt people as a general rule would like enemies to have AI.

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I agree Demon's Souls is not difficult after you learn. While enemies in Demon's Souls have scripts, they are usually based on the environment situation. For example, if you are facing an NPC black phantom, they will simply hack and slash you. If you have your back to an NPC black phantom, they will back stab you. I only play a few games a year and the Souls series is the closest I know of to Hulan's description. No other current moderately-popular game has the difficult reputation that Souls games do even though their difficulty is only because of trial and error. Maybe there's some niche game or something that fits Hulan's description but are there any popular modern games that closely fit Hulan's description?

No I do not believe there are any, honestly that is the thrill of PvP..playing against an opponent who truly wants to win and will do anything they know how to do in order to succeed. PvE would not last long as a general rule with such a punishing system in place, people would just leave.

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Originally Posted by Bladenite81

No I do not believe there are any, honestly that is the thrill of PvP..playing against an opponent who truly wants to win and will do anything they know how to do in order to succeed. PvE would not last long as a general rule with such a punishing system in place, people would just leave.

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That's the catch 22 - People say monsters don't "try to win", but if they try to win people ragequit because the monster did everything to win and thus want to be able to win no matter what.

People seem to have this mistaken notion that AI is about the computer trying to win. It's never the case because the computer can pretty much win every single time in almost any game if it actually tried. It doesn't even have to cheat most of the time, but of course it can do that too. Randomness is not smart. If you're controlling Titan, and suppose you have to obey all the aggro/CD/targetting rules and you're playing against 8 really good players. After a while you'd notice Landslide isn't actually hitting any of those guys and you'd stop wasting your time on that. You'd likely settle on a rotation like Bomb -> Tumult -> WotL -> MB (to maximize the amount the healer have to move before you try to finish tank off with MB), and if this rotation works you'd just stick to it 100% of the time. There would be nothing random about it, and there's no reason for you to do anything different once you found a rotation that can defeat the players.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

People seem to have this mistaken notion that AI is about the computer trying to win. It's never the case because the computer can pretty much win every single time in almost any game if it actually tried. It doesn't even have to cheat most of the time, but of course it can do that too. Randomness is not smart. If you're controlling Titan, and suppose you have to obey all the aggro/CD/targetting rules and you're playing against 8 really good players. After a while you'd notice Landslide isn't actually hitting any of those guys and you'd stop wasting your time on that. You'd likely settle on a rotation like Bomb -> Tumult -> WotL -> MB (to maximize the amount the healer have to move before you try to finish tank off with MB), and if this rotation works you'd just stick to it 100% of the time. There would be nothing random about it, and there's no reason for you to do anything different once you found a rotation that can defeat the players.

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That's not actually entirely true, though it does get at the heart of what I'm trying to say. video game (Chess aside) AI in general does not follow true AI principles, because if it did, it would destroy all challengers. That being said, if you used a min/max tree as you basis, chances are pretty good you actually wouldn't end up with an AI repeating the same actions again and again. The reason for this is because the AI is always reassessing the validity of a given move based on the current environment. If the players try something new to counteract the rotation you mentioned, the min/max tree would fold that into consideration and change it's tactics accordingly.

I suppose my point, since it seems to have a lot of support, is that you can't just make something more challenging, be it by randomizing it, or using more and more complex patterns, because there comes a point where you have gone too far and it is no longer the experience the players came to play. To make it more complex, each player has a different tolerance point.

For fights being so heavily scripted and memorizable, people sure have a lot of problems on Titan.

I think your memory of 1.0 is pretty fuzzy. Ifrit was just as easy to anticipate then and the only main difference with Garuda is the randomization of which of her three "phases" she calls on after Aerial Blast after they've cycled once.

Most games have what's known as a dominating strategy. For example in Chess, the dominating strategy is the no-move move. That is, the AI calculates what happens if the player gets 2 moves in a row and attempts to counter it, knowing that if it was able to counter it, it clearly has found an incredibly strong move and there's no need to think about anything else. If we're building Titan-bot (which has to obey all aggro/targeting/CD rules), the dominating strategy of Titan-bot is 'kill the tank'. Its most potent tool to kill the tank is obviously the Mountain Buster. Gaol is another dominating strategy since it cannot be countered, and if it traps the player's healer it makes your job a lot easier. So Titan-bot's sequence will always look like: Gaol -> ??? -> MB. As it gets more experience, the ??? part will become clearer, and you can be certain it will always open with Gaol and end with Mountain Buster because these are the best opening/ending moves.

Scripted fights are fine as long as you have enough content to move on to the next one and are not forced to repeat it too often. With the additional content coming our way (Crystal Tower and mystery dungeon), that should help to alleviate the repetition.

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Originally Posted by ShadowDan

Scripted fights are fine as long as you have enough content to move on to the next one and are not forced to repeat it too often. With the additional content coming our way (Crystal Tower and mystery dungeon), that should help to alleviate the repetition.

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The fact is it wont, you know it and I know it, it is wishful thinking. Players will do the hm dungeons and find they are not worth the effort and than SR wp or they will find it worth their time and do it. As I have said before some not all coil groups may farm Crystal Tower for the gear but than gain seeing you can skip Crystal Towers and get the gear from myth and coil, the gear from Crystal Towers is practically useless seeing you can do coil in darklight and win.

I'll take a scripted fight anyday over the complete bullshit luck that is non scripted. I seem to remember very well what non scripted was like when playing a game called Mystic Quest....and the golems(I think) around the volcano along with most bosses. There are times they would do nothing but normal moves and times they would do nothing but try and put stone on you, and it was a party wide debuff not just single. Unless you could kill them in one turn or get the auto attack ones you literally had to bank on nothing but pure rng.

That is not fun when a mob does nothing but spams it's ultimate attack, especially when you have no way of either dodging it or being able to mitigate it every time. The moment you take out that possible ultimate spam and put cds on abilities you have gone back to scripted encounters, there is no inbetween.