Where is the AI?

[ErBear]

Give me an example of how you want to mobs to react. Because for me, you are the one who should be reacting in a mmorpg.

"this isn't an action game"

Find it funny you say that, and that.

How do you react. A mob does X move, you move, why can't they be smart enough move out of the way of an attack. They are smart enough to talk, they should be smart enough to react. A big reason why people like pvp so much IS because we have I(intelligence) and can react and actually put a up a fight. But "this isn't an action game" so PvP shouldn't be in the game.

[Lacerta]

no mmo has any type of AI that I know of
R

Ragnarok Online has a very basic, albeit functional, scripted AI behaviour that is reactionary as well as proactive in its usage of skills.

Give me an example of how you want to mobs to react. Because for me, you are the one who should be reacting in a mmorpg.

There are a few examples that come from the top of my head:
- Healer-type mobs casting Esuna on beleaguered comrades (do mobs already do this?). This can be extended to more extensive pre-buffing as well, which is done in small amounts already.
- Pre-emptive stunning/sleeping/silencing of player attacks that take a while to charge up.
- Casting Dispell on buffed players.
- Mobs using effective CC abilities or even aiming to kerb the abilities of healers to increase their chances of winning.
- Reacting to certain player skills in a certain way.

While, yes, having an extensive mob AI on all mobs would be overkill and be unnessecary, this doesn't stop there being less scripted, more reactionary boss fights. At the minute, boss fights - à la Titan HM - rely heavily on the remembering of the boss' rotation. Some semblence of an AI, no matter how basic, would certainly spice up these encounters.

[Silverwalk]

...
Yeah super intelligent AI would be nice, but then too many people would get stuck on a lv3 lady bug who takes advantage of the fact that you are level 1 and it knows you just got a quest to kill them and are weak and new to the mechanics, so they gang up on you or trick you into targeting a teant or something...and now your a level one getting screwed over by an unholy alliance of lady bugs squirrels and mushrooms and you just want to....well you get the point.

Don't stop now! It was just getting interesting!

[Yoko_Kurama]

Yeah super intelligent AI would be nice, but then too many people would get stuck on a lv3 lady bug who takes advantage of the fact that you are level 1 and it knows you just got a quest to kill them and are weak and new to the mechanics, so they gang up on you or trick you into targeting a teant or something...and now your a level one getting screwed over by an unholy alliance of lady bugs squirrels and mushrooms and you just want to....well you get the point.

Oh...my...GOD!!!! Dude! We need to propose this! That is the sort of AI I would love to start seeing in mmorpgs, people complain about how quickly they get to max level, or how crafting say a level 20 piece of gear rather than getting it from a quest is useless...but imagine if every level was a fight for your life due to awesome intelligent enemies everywhere!? Yes! Give me that MMO BRO!!!

[Sumii]

It WOULD be nice if our chocobos and the NPCs moved out of AOEs instead of just standing in them.

[Cluebilly]

It WOULD be nice if our chocobos and the NPCs moved out of AOEs instead of just standing in them.

-shudders- The memories of some of the instances I failed thanks to allied NPCs doing that.

[Sin_Nombre]

I don't think most of you know what AI actually is :-X Most games use state machines to drive behavior... that's about the top of the line as far as game AI goes due to time, processing and memory requirements of more advanced techniques. Not to mention that if any game used REAL AI methods, players would complain that the game was too hard. All it takes is a little GA to optimize behavior based off previous experience and a boss becomes unbeatable to most groups.

[JeniLinsky]

Yeah; frankly, I'm not nearly l33t enough to beat a boss who has learned from prior encounters.

I wouldn't mind allied NPCs being smart enough to move out of an AOE, though.

[ErBear]

Yeah; frankly, I'm not nearly l33t enough to beat a boss who has learned from prior encounters.

I wouldn't mind allied NPCs being smart enough to move out of an AOE, though.

I have no idea where you came up with that. I was just asking during the fight, not actually remember what has been done previously. Just to make the fights more interesting, then. Run here, run there, dodge this now, move now. All it is is memorization, once you have that, you can beat any boss in the game(if you have the level and gear)

[FutanXIV]

XI has kind of a combination of scripted and AI. Some mobs will use x move always at y HP but a lot of the time, at y HP it just adds that move to their arsenal. For example, Cerberus won't use Gates of Hades(it's big move) until it's HP is equal or lower than 25%. It can use it anytime after it's HP is ~25%.

I can't help but feel like this is another example of the genre going backwards though. Although it seems like every genre is nowadays as publishers want every game to sell like Call of Duty. /shrug