About the AI and bestiary from Eorzea

Hello everyone.

I joined the game the last January, and have now a proud little Lalafell Paladin/BLM. I had a very good time in this game up until now, but now that I can see things hindsight, something is just amazingly shocking : dwelling in Eorzea is not threatening at all.

I want to point out all the inhabitant of Eorzea : the wildlife, the tribes, the imperials and so on. They all have the same behaviour, the same brain, the same AI.

Pass in front of them, inside their 90° conical field of sight, they will attack you.
Bring them at a certain distance from their spawn point, they will abandon all pursuit.
If you are alone and pull them, they will come alone.
If you are in group and pull them, they will come in group.
They will groupe with anything that is hostile to the player, even if their species should not be able to communicate.
Sometimes they follow a patrol path.

Be it a Coeurl, an imperial guard, a sahuagin, a fly or a Fate boss, they all use the same behaviour, the same AI. After a year, it is becoming quite boring to travel in Eorzea.

And it is worst with the arival of the high ilevel gears. In the point of view of a "monster", a level 50 character is nothing more than a level 50 character. It will attack you, even if your stuff brings you closer to a level 70 character. It is even more true for the tanks, as our HPs don't seems to lower much, even with several opponents hitting us.

I'd like to launch a call to Eorzea, and moreover to the devs, so they could bring us more depth to the world.

Please, Square Enix, give your bestiary some more brains!
Have the imperials patrols in groups and protect their whole bases, not only their spawn points!
Have the Raptors wander by pack, protecting their youngsters!
Have a group of happy Amal'jaa, discussing around a campfire, act together to protect themselves, instead of watching their friends being pulled one after another and still talking in void!
And also, gives the high ilevel more uninstancied areas to explore with a real threat and the need to stay together to progress!

You are in pair with World of Warcraft in the ranking for best subscribtion MMORPG, but World of Warcraft have decades of exploitation and still use this old randomized spawn points system. The future MMORPGs are trying to bring more smart and meaningfull AI to their worlds, like Everquest Next. Bringing a more smart world would bring up your competitiveness against other MMOs, and also gives a better experience to your players.

We are so much Heroes of Light in Eorzea that we don't have any taste of adventure anymore. Only a feeling of being surrounded by quest objectives and farming subjects, nothing more.

That's it. Now I'm looking for new horizons, but I'd really hope the game could evolve in a better direction.

In before "that guy" tells you how to get around the 1000 char limit!

This was changed from 1.0 (where most mobs had unique AIs) due to two reasons, the first and foremost world mobs won't be anymore the main source of exp for leveling, so them being smart and dangerous wouldn't make sense, and if they did, they could stress new players too much. The second one is probably being the limited capacity of the PS3 on memory and CPU power to hold all that AI in the game.

It would be better to bring it back? yes it would. Will it ever happen? maybe in the far away future after the second expansion.

There have been many threads and discussions about the pros and cons of having a more dangerous open world, but I am on the side of the ones that think there should be a more dangerous open world.

Edit:

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Originally Posted by kidvideo

In before "that guy" tells you how to get around the 1000 char limit!

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Here I am!

You can edit your post and paste over 1k characters.

Heya and welcome to the Forums! ^^

I don't know if i'll be the first one to tell you: once you are done with your first post, you can click EDIT and then the 1000 character limit is non-existent.

I don't know why they are doing that, knowing we all bypass it. Guess they need to fix the game before the Forum as priority ;)

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EDIT: see I knew someone would beat me to it ^^

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On topic: I agree with you that the maps are very easy and not threathening at all.. one's to wonder why..

Hopefully since they are active on the forums, they will read us and the next map will be very potent that you wont make a step outside without at least one friend.

But you have to consider those with no friends.. /Shrugs (Well, they can lvl up their companion, so that should count as +1)

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Originally Posted by Dannythm

...them being smart and dangerous wouldn't make sense, and if they did, they could stress new players too much.

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*And as for stressing new players: that's exactly what they need, to be on the verge, to have a sense of: oh, I must be careful else I might die (as if dying in this game had huge consequences anyway) - More people would play the game, which lots thinks are for kids.

And once they have accomplished their mission, feeling good, they can resort to fishing to stress out, in stealth mode ;)

**not that I want to point out that you can use a gatherer's stealth mode, then move unnoticed by mobs, and then once passed, you switch to your battle class and get your mission done.. nothing of that sort was intended..

Hey, yes, that was my first post on the forum. =p

I edited the message, though I don't see why put a character limitation on the topic's creation and not the edition, but whatever.

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Originally Posted by kidvideo

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I know what you mean, this should be a little more like Dark Souls in that sense, but Yoshi is focused on not stressing the players and new players (he has said so on several interviews), so as much as I'd like that feel to come back from XI and 1.0, I highly doubt I'll happen.

Also not all players want a world like that an enjoy the easy going challenges ARR currently has so finding the right balance here is somehow hard. Open world dungeons with elite mobs cold solve the problem or add dangerous areas to the world (areas like the beastmen camps, the castrums, etc), The Old Republic did that aspect of the game really well.

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Originally Posted by Dannythm

Open world dungeons with elite mobs cold solve the problem or add dangerous areas to the world (areas like the beastmen camps, the castrums, etc), The Old Republic did that aspect of the game really well.

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So did FFXI. In Eorzea the only part of the world that could be considered dangerous is the drop from Sorrel Haven into Bentbranch (Central Shroud). If your level is just right, there is a slight chance that you may have a mushroom chasing you as you drop off the cliff, thereby negating the "survive every fall with at least 1 hp" rule.

The best thing they could do is really make separated versions of dungeons and raids for ppl who want more challenge, however with the same rewards for the ones that do not want it. Say a Coil of 12 ppl for casuals, instead of 8. However as long as open world is involved, i dont think we can get the balance needed.