Believe it or not aggro is a huge part of immersion. Take a look at what EQ did. You had all kinds of aggro, if you sat down in the middle of combat, a pissed off mob is going to take that opportunity to assault a vulnerable target. Then you had the 20% HP aggro. Now this was the best idea ever. Why not attack an already wounded person? Everything in the area would drop what they were doing to come finish that guy off. And why not? It made sense. If there was someone injured, why would I still be trying to kill the uninjured guy when i could just go kill the injured one and reduce their numbers by 1. Made sense right?
Immersion is key to an MMO, and doesn't always come in the form of environment. Casters in EQ were the most annoying mobs ever lol. If you got them close to death they would gate back to their bind point which possibly alerted any nearby mobs. 9/10 times a gate was really bad for the group. It either meant a train was coming, or you got REALLY lucky and all his friends were dead and he brought nothing back. So instead of just running something to the group and turning on auto attack, we now had to think about how we were going to counter that stupid gate. Or figure out how to stop a mob from running.
Hopefully we still see these kinds of things. I can understand a mob being so mad at a tank that he wouldn't want to switch to a sitting caster because anger does tend to blind people. But if the fight just started a wizard landed a huge nuke or a cleric landed a big heal and tried to sit. The mob should think and take advantage of that. After all, their job in the game is try to survive but kill people at the same time.
Running from a group that's clearly kicking your butt was also a great tactic. And they thought about where they were gonna run, they didn't run back to their spawn point, they ran to the closest ally they had alive at the time. And sometimes when an ally of theirs jumped in, he would run back to the group thinking he now has the upper hand, but sometimes they just kept going. Survival is a natural instinct, everything wants to survive. There should be things that add to this type of immersion tho.
Like an alarm to sound if the mob gets to it everything nearby is alerted and comes to the mobs aid. These are some things I would love to see... If we fight a banshee her scream alone should bring some friends to come figure out what is going on. They don't have to come to join the fight but at least peek around the corner. I mean, that's exactly what happens. Even we run or call for help if we are getting stomped, so why shouldn't the enemy as well.
Now since Brad is working on this project, I'm sure there are some features just like this that will be added. Just because he did it with EQ. But I think we should take EQ just one step farther, maybe 2 or 3. Running, sounding an alarm, screaming, gating back to their spawn point are all good features to have with some of these enemies, because we do it all too. Then add in the sitting aggro, and the near death aggro as well as all different other types of aggro.
One thing I loved about EQ as well was that no matter what level you were, if it attacked you at level 1, it will attack you at level 20, or 30 or 40. They never stopped except some mobs. But a bear and wolves? They have that I gotta eat instinct, so why not attack at all levels? Orcs, they were bred for war, so why would they just let me waltz in and do what I want to whatever named/rare spawn i wanted to? These are the types of immersion I am speaking of.
Now the next thing I want to talk about is invisibility. Let me just say that FFXI nailed that type of stuff. Sure, I was hidden, they couldn't see me. But why couldn't a mob hear me? Or smell me? See invis became a huge thing in EQ eventually. But why was it all I needed was invisibility to get by a bat? They can't see anyways, they use sound to see. This is another thing I would love to see in the game that would make immersion HUGE. I mean, EQ rogue's kinda nailed it, even if a mob saw invis you can still walk right by them as long as you were sneaking. It took the sound and the visibility part out of the equation, but some mobs can still smell. Like wolves, who hunt by scent.
These are things I would love to see. If you are wearing plate boots, mobs can hear that, and should be able to track it by sound. Some mobs could require scent, and some could require eyesight. These things make for a much more immersive world.
I approve of this message whole-heartedly.
I would also like to see this play into similar 'Pulling' mechanics that we had in Everquest. I played a Bard for years, and one of my biggest prides was to be able to pull anything I wanted, Solo. I can't stand the Auto-Tether mechanics that games like WoW and all of the recent MMORPG Follow-ups have used. Why CAN'T I, with some effort, get one bad guy away from his friend? We're talking about a fantasy world with magic. I've truly missed the way that pulling and aggro worked in recent years. It felt the most "real" or immersive of any MMO I've played.
Yup you're not the only one. A bunch of ideas just like this have been tossed around. Like you said, Brad already has some EQ-like ideas in the works and more. The NPC Dispositions from The Pantheon Difference will make a huge difference in aggro. For example, one of the dispositions is "Alarmist," which has a tendency to alert their nearby allies of danger and rally them together. This was actually the cause of the infamous Brad train at Black Dagger Keep in the first stream.
You will also probably find this thread interesting: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2374/aggro-in-regard-to-player-level
These are good ideas, many of which we have certainly discussed. Bazgrim is correct that Dispositions allow for some interesting approaches to aggro, and the Alarmist is something to watch out for. Aggro during medding and when players have low health are also things that could be done across the board or assigned to certain personalities.
Aggro mechanics do add a considerable amount to both immersion and gameplay and certainly can't be ignored.
Thinking about the relation between aggro and how clever AI feels,
Wouldn't it be cool if mobs would respond to any activity during a fight that poses the greatest threat? If a player tries to trigger a trap to make the mob vulnerable.It would recognize that attempt as the greatest threat. In this case mobs would no longer feel like dumb empty sacks that can be distracted by the greatest damage done. They would respond more intelligently,as they'd gain a sense of awareness that misses in MMO's ,making these fights less scripted and more exciting
Nice post Dubah, here are some thoughts I had on a different thread:
"I really like the mixture of predicability/unpredictability in NPC behavior as it promotes a more dynamic style of combat. It will be particularly fun to learn their tendencies and try to find ways to use them to our advantage, or their disadvantage. I imagine that that this will all require engaging combat mechanics to prevent a mob from fleeing, sounding the alarm, spawning a death devil on our healer, imploding for %max HP AoE damage, stoneskinning, warping, morphing, etc. Or, maybe there will be a time where we want to force those actions, ala emergent gameplay."
To summarize, I think we would all benefit from as dynamic a style of combat as possible. Whether it's initiating aggro, maintaining it, or trying to peel back and lower it ... aggro should be meaningful and challenging to master. Besides that, it would also be nice to see a slew of other combat mechanics. Getting the timing down on finishing a mob off to prevent a certain mechanic or counter should be critical, and the idea of being able to force-pop those mechanics is also intriguing in it's own right. I also agree with the notion of how FFXI used vision, scent, and sound as a way of detecting us. I remember farming adamantium ores and always having a full stock of consumables that would help me bypass the detection methods of different NPC's. This helped a ton with the sense of danger and immersion that we all crave from oldschool MMO's.
Bazgrim said:Yup you're not the only one. A bunch of ideas just like this have been tossed around. Like you said, Brad already has some EQ-like ideas in the works and more. The NPC Dispositions from The Pantheon Difference will make a huge difference in aggro. For example, one of the dispositions is "Alarmist," which has a tendency to alert their nearby allies of danger and rally them together. This was actually the cause of the infamous Brad train at Black Dagger Keep in the first stream.
You will also probably find this thread interesting: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2374/aggro-in-regard-to-player-level
Thank you, I was also going to quote this thread for the leveling idea. Basicaly I'm trying to get them all compiled into a massive thread. I wasn't even going to mention this but I figured if I didn't someone would point it out anyways so I mentioned it then couldn't find this thread which I've read before.
But basically, I want more than just level aggro, I mean considering that is just a single side of immersion I wanted to hit all the points of immersion, or at least as many as I could think of lol. But thanks for posting this, I kinda suck when it comes to forums, I can read and respond the rest is just "crap how do I do this?" lol.
But yes I remember VR discussing the alarmist, but that's what I'm talking about as well. You know, needing to stop some mobs from reaching an alarm will give more depth in a combat situation, rather than an alarmist who will automatically call everyone. I hope this makes sense lol. I love the idea of the alarmist, but I love the idea of having to root, snare, mem blur or anything that we have in our arsenal to stop a mob from reaching an alarm, more than I love the one mob auto alarm type of deal. That being said, both ways could work wonders lol.
Dubah said:Bazgrim said:Yup you're not the only one. A bunch of ideas just like this have been tossed around. Like you said, Brad already has some EQ-like ideas in the works and more. The NPC Dispositions from The Pantheon Difference will make a huge difference in aggro. For example, one of the dispositions is "Alarmist," which has a tendency to alert their nearby allies of danger and rally them together. This was actually the cause of the infamous Brad train at Black Dagger Keep in the first stream.
You will also probably find this thread interesting: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2374/aggro-in-regard-to-player-level
Thank you, I was also going to quote this thread for the leveling idea. Basicaly I'm trying to get them all compiled into a massive thread. I wasn't even going to mention this but I figured if I didn't someone would point it out anyways so I mentioned it then couldn't find this thread which I've read before.
But basically, I want more than just level aggro, I mean considering that is just a single side of immersion I wanted to hit all the points of immersion, or at least as many as I could think of lol. But thanks for posting this, I kinda suck when it comes to forums, I can read and respond the rest is just "crap how do I do this?" lol.
But yes I remember VR discussing the alarmist, but that's what I'm talking about as well. You know, needing to stop some mobs from reaching an alarm will give more depth in a combat situation, rather than an alarmist who will automatically call everyone. I hope this makes sense lol. I love the idea of the alarmist, but I love the idea of having to root, snare, mem blur or anything that we have in our arsenal to stop a mob from reaching an alarm, more than I love the one mob auto alarm type of deal. That being said, both ways could work wonders lol.
Yeah I definitely know what you mean. There's a lot more to it than just level, but that thread has some good input on at least part of what you were saying. Anyway, in a lot of kobold and hobgoblin lairs in DDO, it was fairly common for there to be a big gong or bell that you had to prevent the bellringer from reaching or else it'd get the attention of all their friends. That's a fun mechanic. There's countless ideas for potential interactions. I'd love for Zippy to give us a list of the Dispositions that are planned for launch :) I don't remember ever seeing them all in one place.
But in general, the smarter the mobs, the smarter the players have to be to defeat them. And that's a really enriching experience. The more factors the mobs take into account, the more interesting it will be. Ideally, they should be strategizing against us just as we are against them.
EQ mobs also took time into consideration. If they were beating on someone and someone else had higher agro, they may stay on the person they're already beating on because it would take too long to get to the other person. This is something that made snare helpful during combat.
As for invis...
I liked how Vanguard handled stealth. It was a levelable skill that would only level when used against a mob that could see through it successfully. So if you didn't sneak around appropriate level mobs much, you wouldn't level it up. Also, the closer you got to the mob, the more likely it was to see you, and bumping into one pretty much guaranteed it. It would be nice if, instead of invisibility just making you flat out immune to detection from anything that didn't see through invis, it just boosted the stealth of the person (except against mobs that see through invis).
With invis boosting stealth (even on those that don't have stealth), it would have the following effects. You could make invis give appropriate stealth boost to someone without the skill equal to the level of the caster, so if each level allows 5 ranks of skills, then a 10th level caster would give a +50 bonus on stealth. If they cast it on someone who can stealth, it still gives them a bonus normally, but if they begin using their own stealth, it would max out at 2 levels higher than the max bonus. So if a 10th level rogue can get their stealth to 50, and invisibility was cast on them by a 8th level caster, they would get +40 stealth, but it would cap out at 60 (2 levels higher than the rogue could normally get). If a 10th level rogue got their stealth to 50, and invisibility was cast on them by a 20th level caster, they would get +100 stealth, but it would cap out at 110 (2 levels higher than the 20th level caster). Of course, anything that can see invisibility would ignore any bonuses from invisibility.
This would make some areas more than just having the bard group invis everyone and run through the content without worry, which was occasionally a problem with content in both EQ and Vanguard. With this, people would still have to be careful not to get too close to mobs or they might still be detected.
Bazgrim said:Yeah I definitely know what you mean. There's a lot more to it than just level, but that thread has some good input on at least part of what you were saying. Anyway, in a lot of kobold and hobgoblin lairs in DDO, it was fairly common for there to be a big gong or bell that you had to prevent the bellringer from reaching or else it'd get the attention of all their friends. That's a fun mechanic. There's countless ideas for potential interactions. I'd love for Zippy to give us a list of the Dispositions that are planned for launch :) I don't remember ever seeing them all in one place.
But in general, the smarter the mobs, the smarter the players have to be to defeat them. And that's a really enriching experience. The more factors the mobs take into account, the more interesting it will be. Ideally, they should be strategizing against us just as we are against them.
Yup, and the way I see if everytime you get into combat there is a different possible outcome, then that will make doing the repetitive stuff seem not so repetitive. It's always fun to get into that last second cram to stop a mob from doing something deadly lol. Like casting a deadly spell or something everyone is trying to stun the stupid thing and it's not working, or resisting everything and everyone is on the edge of their seat. It just makes it that much more interesting, that much more fun and that much more immersive. Then, when you add all of that together, instead of something being time consuming, time just flies and you don't even realize it. Changes the entire aspect of the game lol.