Re: Improved NPC AI

Cassius wrote:

Let's try an actual on topic post for a change.

When I started playing, all NPCs were red, there were red grand Mech Observers that spawned (perhaps by artifact hunters) right outside ICS Alpha that vaporized my yagel ... I could walk roughly 1200 m from ICSA and try and farm a lvl 4 Ewar/ lvl 2 light spawn on my trial which dropped occasionally a T3 lwf. It felt pretty special. I lost a lot of bots but learned to kite effectively, learned to replace losses, learned to value T3 gear ... And it was a challenge. When I got better I could find harder spawns to challenge my skills, and earn better loot. Nia was dangerous. The roaming observers on Alpha were an event, you either avoided them or died, or tried with others.
...

thats funny, because when i started, i was killed by Blackomen around the same distance away from the same terminal. Though, i have lost my brand new cammy there to another player with a Gropho attacking me.

PvP on alpha islands was patched out a few weeks later with a bandaid hotfix because a certain group of player exploited the weaknesses of the system to the extreme. The temporary fix was never reverted with a well thought out system to fix what was actually broken.

does that sound familar when you compare it with PvE ?

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

152

Re: Improved NPC AI

I agree with Cassius, the thing I really liked about this game early on was how dangerous npcs were and how aggressive. For some reason that's been lost. It used to be taking on an npc that is the same size as you with moderate skills would be challenging and you might not win. What happened to that?

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

153 (edited by Burial 2014-08-03 11:05:57)

Re: Improved NPC AI

Cassius wrote:

...

Removing anything entertaining and fun has been a recurring theme for some time now, and I do agree with most of what you've said except kiting NPC-s being a problem in any way: It's just a way to farm NPCs since active tank and accumulator stability is insufficient in a lot of cases.

154 (edited by Kaldenines 2014-08-03 11:26:30)

Re: Improved NPC AI

I also have fond memories of the good old days when you could take out a fleet of T2 fit assaults, just roam around and get a fight with a fleet of a similar EP/tech level (ok that's a lie those were always rare occasions).

Lets not for get why people actually farm NPCs.  It's to get resources for bots to use in PvP.  Even the carebear who will never PvP is still farming for, ultimately, the same reason.  Its just that someone else will blow up those resources in PvP (or stockpile them until the end of days).

Now in the good old days you could get PvP in cheap fits and not feel like a total scrub all the time but times have moved on.  Players have a lot more EP and many vets have large stockpiles of Mk2 mechs/heavies.  This is not a bad thing but it exacerbates the glaring imbalance between the amount of time players spend farming and the amount of time they spend enjoying the fruits of their labour.

"All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy."

TLDR: make NPCs as tough as you like, just make it worth the player's time go out and kill them.

+1
-Confucius

Re: Improved NPC AI

Kaldenines wrote:

...

this answers my rhetorical question in post #104 wink

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: Improved NPC AI

Cassius wrote:

Too many players have their own agendas, good or bad, that the forum feedback is just a cesspool of politics.

I can assure you that I take this "cesspool" for what it is. Lately even the smallest gameplay change invokes pages of complaints induced by (what I take as) general frustration. This doesn't really change our intentions about this particular change, but even worse, it makes us take forum feedback less and less seriously, and rather resort to our own gut feeling. (Because yes, we do play the game occasionally, just not on the live server).

157

Re: Improved NPC AI

DEV Zoom wrote:
Cassius wrote:

Too many players have their own agendas, good or bad, that the forum feedback is just a cesspool of politics.

I can assure you that I take this "cesspool" for what it is. Lately even the smallest gameplay change invokes pages of complaints induced by (what I take as) general frustration. This doesn't really change our intentions about this particular change, but even worse, it makes us take forum feedback less and less seriously, and rather resort to our own gut feeling. (Because yes, we do play the game occasionally, just not on the live server).

either that or the changes are idiotic.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Improved NPC AI

DEV Zoom wrote:

(Because yes, we do play the game occasionally, just not on the live server).

+1

+1
-Confucius

Re: Improved NPC AI

DEV Zoom wrote:
Cassius wrote:

Too many players have their own agendas, good or bad, that the forum feedback is just a cesspool of politics.

(Because yes, we do play the game occasionally, just not on the live server).

I'm sorry to hear this. From my perspective your game was something that entertained me for the last 3 years. And something I happily gave you (est) roughly $1400. Very cheap entertainment IMO and I enjoyed it. From your perspective it's either a labour of love indie project that you and a bunch of other long haired geeks devote time on the side to, or it's a business opportunity you are attempting to launch and gain a small but substainable market share to support all your co-workers. I know the state of your available resources. I know you cannot hire 24/7 play testers to get live server feedback.

But you really don't have a choice. You need this feedback, politic free, to understand your product, to improve it, to grow your business. To survive. It's not my livelihood, it's yours. If you the Devs cannot have a character in the world you created, that interacts with the rules, that engages others, that grows with the game and is challenged, that simply has FUN playing ... What hope in hell do us the customers have. This is not a 10 minute PvP match style game. It's a persistent 24/7 world where you gain EP roughly 1 per actual minute ... It's an investment to play, you cannot test it by occasionally logging in, shooting something, and logging out ... That's only testing code, not playability.

Regardless, good luck. Even if real life takes me away from this game I enjoyed it and want to see it succeed.

160 (edited by Annihilator 2014-08-03 16:45:32)

Re: Improved NPC AI

actually, it was the playerbase that forbid the DEVs to play the game and participate in its PvP part. it was also the playerbase that asked the DEVs to cut any connection to their active players (=testers)

can you blame them for not playing on the actual live server after their target group has forbidden them to do so?

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: Improved NPC AI

Don't ever run a business Anni.

Re: Improved NPC AI

He has a point though.

Re: Improved NPC AI

Maybe. But I have a point, too.

Re: Improved NPC AI

Annihilator wrote:

actually, it was the playerbase that forbid the DEVs to play the game and participate in its PvP part. it was also the playerbase that asked the DEVs to cut any connection to their active players (=testers)

can you blame them for not playing on the actual live server after their target group has forbidden them to do so?


They shouldn't get deeply involved in politics and favor one side over another.  We have seen where that leads.  That doesn't mean don't play at all. 

In fact, they should be rolling new characters and not using DEV bots that can fly around invisible and have infinite EP etc so they can see how it really is, ie, why people fight against changes to things they have invested YEARS of EP in, why people constantly complain about travel times, the mission system, etc.

Population graphs

<GM Synapse> please don't abuse our fresh players before blowing them up. And for god sakes, don't do that after it!

Re: Improved NPC AI

Nobody ever told the Devs not to play the game. Emergency patches being skyped in from closed-beta buddies was the problem in the past.

In fact, I'm sure it would be a pretty good experience for them if they rolled new characters and tried to get a corp off the ground. Without spawning bots/mods/resources/money/etc for themselves.

TEST CORP PLEASE IGNORE or something.

[18:20:30] <GLiMPSE> Chairman Of My Heart o/
CIR Complaint Form

The Imperial Grand Wizard of Justice

166 (edited by Kaldenines 2014-08-03 21:58:20)

Re: Improved NPC AI

I actually think the best thing for the future of the game would be if the devs stopped working so hard and just played their game as a day job for like a month smile

+1
-Confucius

167 (edited by Syndic 2014-08-03 22:21:14)

Re: Improved NPC AI

+ 1, but they'd cascade in 2 weeks lol

[18:20:30] <GLiMPSE> Chairman Of My Heart o/
CIR Complaint Form

The Imperial Grand Wizard of Justice

Re: Improved NPC AI

Crepitus wrote:

They shouldn't get deeply involved in politics and favor one side over another.  We have seen where that leads.  That doesn't mean don't play at all.

Been there, NOT done it, still got accused. To this day.

Re: Improved NPC AI

Syndic wrote:

Nobody ever told the Devs not to play the game. Emergency patches being skyped in from closed-beta buddies was the problem in the past.

In fact, I'm sure it would be a pretty good experience for them if they rolled new characters and tried to get a corp off the ground. Without spawning bots/mods/resources/money/etc for themselves.

TEST CORP PLEASE IGNORE or something.

wow, i didn't know Styx and Siddy had so much power.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: Improved NPC AI

Well, propaganda is a part of group pvp in a game like this. It's actually quite a significant piece of content.

+1
-Confucius

171

Re: Improved NPC AI

I miss engaging the hybrid lairds from that one Dev dude.

Steam achievement Unlocked:  Being a Badass
http://www.perp-kill.net/kill/239407
Dev Zoom: I think its time to confess, Ville is my alt
Dev Zoom: Ville can be sometimes so sane it's scary.

Re: Improved NPC AI

when will this be release on live?

also, found a nice quote in forums log:

Jita wrote:

I expect pve to be about fun, not about reward. This is pretty much the opposite of the current observer system. I would also like it so that every time I kill a spawn once any rat within 1km responds. If I kill it twice it should be 2km etc etc. Farming rats should be hard and as they don't move or adapt it's not. Perhaps have a couple of dozen patterns of spawn that randomly generate over a week. Each time the new pattern is switched to the rats roam as a spawn group from one location to another.

this was from "noob"-jita years ago big_smile

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

173

Re: Improved NPC AI

What happened to this dude?

http://www.perp-kill.net/agent/DEV%20Drone%20Quijote

Steam achievement Unlocked:  Being a Badass
http://www.perp-kill.net/kill/239407
Dev Zoom: I think its time to confess, Ville is my alt
Dev Zoom: Ville can be sometimes so sane it's scary.

Re: Improved NPC AI

Annihilator wrote:

when will this be release on live?

also, found a nice quote in forums log:

Jita wrote:

I expect pve to be about fun, not about reward. This is pretty much the opposite of the current observer system. I would also like it so that every time I kill a spawn once any rat within 1km responds. If I kill it twice it should be 2km etc etc. Farming rats should be hard and as they don't move or adapt it's not. Perhaps have a couple of dozen patterns of spawn that randomly generate over a week. Each time the new pattern is switched to the rats roam as a spawn group from one location to another.

this was from "noob"-jita years ago big_smile

Goddamn stalker.

I still think PVE should be fun based not reward based.

Re: Improved NPC AI

this is just fun for older players. I sympathize with corporations which will be from scratch to explore their knowledge base, to save the kernel with this innovation. imho perp die

Just @ Game