What kind of "conditional logic" would you like to see in Pantheon?
Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:
Aggro modifiers based on positioning, successfully interrupting an attack, or blocking/parrying/riposting while a certain buff is up.
Heal modifiers that are guaranteed to crit if a players health pool is within a specific percentage range.
DPS modifiers based on time spent in combat, current health percentage, damage taken/done within last X seconds. (Sounds like a Berserker!)
Pet modifiers based on climate/region/lunar cycle.
Stoneskin ability that will absorb next 1-3 attacks that do at least 15% of your total HP. (These need to be timed properly ... ideally you block an attack that does 50% rather than those on the lower end of the spectrum.)
Bane enchantments that do increased damage to certain mob types.
Other weapon enchantment variables such as crushing bonus vs skeletons, piercing bonus vs armor, slashing bonus vs flesh.
NPC/Quest dialogue that could change based on faction/alignment, player choices/achievements, IE: barmaid that offers 10% discounts to all patrons purchasing drinks as a token of appreciation for "Guild X" that recently killed a contested raid boss nearby.
Quest/Encounter rewards that are based on performance metrics such as clear time, successful interrupts, bonus objectives.
Encounters that can dynamically change their script based on the group/raid composition confronting them.
Fishing/Hunting nodes that can change based on weather/night-day cycle/season.
Loot percentages that can change based on a "luck" attribute. Would love to have a "situational luck" set that doesen't provide much of a boost to combat performance, but would allow players to equip as much as possible while still being able to defeat an opponent. (Risk vs Reward)
Harvesting nodes that have increased quality based on time spent in world (This would reward players for exploration by seeking out hard to find nodes off the beaten path)
Gear that can be temporarily reinforced by having the proper crafter/material present. (Armorsmith could polish plate while out in the field, only lasts 30 minutes, provides additional utility to players who are well versed in both adventuring/crafting spheres)
Crafting bonuses to gear such as +1, +2, +3 versions based on material quality, crafting device/location (Amberfaet Forge = +3 bonus from this metric), and other variables.
Resistance to various elements for players and mobs.
Environmental impacts on spells, and melee.
Environmental control (druids, etc)
Buffs that factor in range. (Maybe cleric buffs only stay on within 100M of the cleric?)
Mobs that heal from certain type of damage.
Mobs that hate certain types of damage. So if you hit an ice golem with firebolt you get far more aggro than the same amount of damage from lightning strike.
Weapons dealing Melee and xx type of damage. If Aradune has his flaming sword, it should hit for Melee and Fire damage, and should come with all the penalties and benefits associated.
Magic items that resonate with each other. So, if you are wearing an Amulet of tunare and also have the staff of tunare they could amplify each other in some way.
Speed increase / decrease based upon environment, weather, terrain.
What about heal modifiers not only in a certain percentage, but what if a tank could self buff a 3 second buff that he needs to time with a heal landing to get a big crit? For that matter I wouldn't mind seeing some level of the same thing on mobs where a short term debuff could be used to increase specific damage types.
I'd love to see more mechanics for positioning matter. Fighting in small spaces causing advantages or disadvantages, the ability to trip a mob leading to advantages in melee and disadvantages in ranged attacks. Maybe ground based spells deal more damage if a mob is prone.
Magician pets could exude auras that would lessen the impacts of cerain environments (if you are in a frozen wasteland, perhaps a fire elemental could help ward off affects some on people within x feet)
I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive list, but it's all I have a the moment.
Run speed effects the 'jiggle' of certain avatar parts :)
Less blanket "taunt" ability to hold aggro and more reactive methods to keep things focused, so something like:
For every x attacks suffered by party members, tank can use a Retribution skill for a guaranteed high threat crit.
Interrupting a spell/skill of a mob that is targeting another party member gives a flat high threat and increases the threat of the next x skills used within x seconds.
Mobs throwing out various debuffs/cc to party members regardless of who its main target is, based on what is happening in a fight. Attempting to silence/stun/concuss(slower cast time) caster DPS & healers or disarm/stun/etc rising threat DPS or in reaction to receiving critical hits.
Players on the threat list and in melee range that turn their back to a mob provoking attacks of opportunity against them, making positioning & awareness more important.
And things like:
Player healing generating more threat based on the % hp of the target being healed or even becoming enraged if a player falls below 15% and is then healed past 30%. The idea being the mob is furious that defeat of his target was snatched out of its grasp, sort of how players tend to get upset when their target is near death and healed out of nowhere in a PvP battle.
Elemental spells and creatures buffed/weakened by weather conditions. Creatures gaining special abilities/traits in different weather of maybe if hit accidentally with their own element.
Fishing... just a node. You might catch hands talkin like that to the wrong person. If fishing is not serious business in this game, I feel like a DNA test to prove that's the real Brad should be ordered up. I want to see fish biting in the shade, and when it is dark. But never out in direct sunlight. I want to see schools of fish in the water, that I can follow around and try to catch. I want to see different lures and bait for many different fish, AND I want to see those same baits/lure combinations as they exist near the fish that eat them. Like the beetles that fish, near firebeetle pond, like to eat, should be flying over and around the pond, so you can catch them to fish with.
I want it all. And then a sneak peak of something else. And then sport fishing by the 1st expansion with advanced cullinary options for highly prized fish. Like Trophy Fish Pot Pie... And Fishing Boats by the 2nd expansion. And a whole Pie manufacturing plant with workers and merchants with quests for new players who want to join your Pie empire...
I want to see things evolve, not just interact on a loop.
I want a much more complex and robust aggro system, not a simple list where the highest always holds aggro. Here you are, in a group or raid, crushing some big monster. The rogue has been backstabbing the hell out of the thing since the fight started. I don't care if the rogue is keeping his aggro below that of the main tank, that monster should know he's back there and occassionally reach behind and take a swipe at the guy. As the fight goes on, the closer and closer to death the monster gets the more unpredictable it could become because it has a more complex aggro structure. Eventually it could just go crazy and just start swiping at everyone in melee range. Why not.
oneADseven said:Stoneskin ability that will absorb next 1-3 attacks that do at least 15% of your total HP. (These need to be timed properly ... ideally you block an attack that does 50% rather than those on the lower end of the spectrum.)
I have a sneaking suspicion you played EQ2. I love stoneskins.
Realistically I like a lot of conditionals. Some of them can be obnoxious though, for instance, in EQ2 the strict positionals on Assassin abilities made you have to dance around a bit to use them all. If they were going to make rear positional abilities, I would rather it be the entire 180 degree rear of a mob. For PvP however, bring on the strict positionals. Dark Age of Camelot melee positional skills are easily one of my favorite implementations, and it is disgusting what high skill players have been able to do with side stuns, rear stuns, frontal roots, etc.
A Rogue epic passive effect like "guaranteed backstab critical hits when mob's health is below 20%" or something could be really cool and maybe even lead to strategically making Rogues save their burns for 20% to maximize that, depending on the encounter.
Lots of potential in conditionals to increase combat complexity, but making sure there aren't too many to juggle or it just gets irritating to deal with.
Some neat ideas here.
It may go without saying, but low-health agro is a cool mechanic. If a player drops below 20%, all mobs in agro range pile on to finish the kill.
If a mob is stunned, it cannot dodge/parry/block and there is an increased chance to critical from melee hits.
Also, kind of along the same lines as Vandraad's post, I would generally like to see intelligent mobs (humanoids, for example) share agro information or otherwise assist one another more intelligently when they are agro'd in groups. For example, if a rogue is backstabbing a healer NPC, I would expect another NPC on the agro list, say a warrior class, to come to the aid of the healer by attacking, disarming, or otherwise impeding the backstabbing rogue. It isn't very smart for non-healer NPCs to accrue zero agro when their healers are getting focus fired.
I never kept up with DDO so I can't say if they maintained their AI and encounter mechanics. However, three encounters that stick in my mind that I would most welcome into the fold and even have them expanded are as follows:
1) Scorpion encounter in one of the dungeons.
I remember the encounter being two scorpions but it was the behaviour of the scorpions that I most loved about the encounter. While engaged in combat they would try to position themselves against the main tank with one of them being on the side. The one egaged head on would burrow under the ground. When it did that you would lose the target. The scorpion would burrow up from the ground to continue with the attack. It could be from behind, from the side, or even next to someone else in the group - say a ranged attacker or healer. You would need to pay attention to the disturbed dirt on the ground to know where it was coming up (a sound effect would let you know when they were burrowing up). You would need to reposition according to when and where the scorpions would resurface (I seem to remember there were times when both scorpions would burrow). I loved that mechanic.
2) Goblin Shaman in some cave dungeon.
The encounter generally involved two goblins with one being a traditional warrior goblin and one being a shaman that may have started out sitting on a ledge higher up the tunnel wall. When engaged the shaman would lob fireballs at the group, generally at other members of the group and not those tanking the warrior (lobbing at healers or ranged casters). If someone turned their attention on the shaman he would start jumping around and moving down the tunnel out of range or make some people break the encounter to keep after him. Should they return back to the warrior the Shaman came back into range and began lobbing fireballs again. That was a great encounter to make sure you never ran too far and chased him too far to become spearated from your group lest you get adds. But also to keep attention on the waarior goblin to take him down before he doled out too much damage. At the time in DDO there was no mana regen. Once spent that was it. There generally were rooms in dungeons that could be tapped just once to regen mana while in the dungeon. So it required a lot of care in how and when you burned down mana. I'm not saying that mana aspect needs to be given credence, but an encounter with some solid AI behind it that needs to be taken into account (not a random assortment of "what the hell") for combat would be very engaging. It doesn't have to be everywhere all the time but sprinkled in here and there would keep it interesting.
3) Rotating tiles on the ground as a puzzle in a dungeon to aid in progress (and I believe also another one involving gems on a wall).
This doesn't really lead to much replayability unless the tiles that need to be positioned could be randomized when "spawning" thus making the puzzle unique every spawn (not infinite but different). It could be used as an unlocking mechanism, a trap, a timer, an encounter mechanic. Once solved it could dematerialize or break apart and re-spawn in a different orientation. Further conditional logic could maintain around when or how it recreates itself. I see a lot of potential in these types of things including dungeon progression (and retreat). These don't have to be part of a combat encounter and can be generated according to proximity. I could also see it (variations of it) being used in various types of harvesting mechanics as well as crafting mechanics. I could go into detail explaining how these particular mechnics worked (as a mini-game with a timer) but that may limit the potential for these types of things by becoming tunnel visioned.
One way this may be able to be employed would be as a disarm trap skill. It could be only a rogue with the requisite skill could position tiles, or reduce the time involved in positioning tiles. Just as an example.
All three of those things can fall under conditional logic or under the auspices of AI.
Liav said:oneADseven said:Stoneskin ability that will absorb next 1-3 attacks that do at least 15% of your total HP. (These need to be timed properly ... ideally you block an attack that does 50% rather than those on the lower end of the spectrum.)
I have a sneaking suspicion you played EQ2. I love stoneskins.
I liked stoneskin as well , but not when in became broken in EQ2.
Along with some other bug in game there was a point where I was Virtualy immune .
Guardian in full Leather gear , stone skin boot and more + the Guard sphere etc and tower of stone, Healing Avatar charm , with Buckler Reversal.
We could Tank Raid without a healer , In fact even solo some ....
While it was amusing and i cant say I did not enjoyed that period ... It was really Un-balanced
Pretty sure 1AD7 remember that !
Iksar said:Less blanket "taunt" ability to hold aggro and more reactive methods to keep things focused, so something like:
For every x attacks suffered by party members, tank can use a Retribution skill for a guaranteed high threat crit.
Interrupting a spell/skill of a mob that is targeting another party member gives a flat high threat and increases the threat of the next x skills used within x seconds.
Mobs throwing out various debuffs/cc to party members regardless of who its main target is, based on what is happening in a fight. Attempting to silence/stun/concuss(slower cast time) caster DPS & healers or disarm/stun/etc rising threat DPS or in reaction to receiving critical hits.
Players on the threat list and in melee range that turn their back to a mob provoking attacks of opportunity against them, making positioning & awareness more important.
And things like:
Player healing generating more threat based on the % hp of the target being healed or even becoming enraged if a player falls below 15% and is then healed past 30%. The idea being the mob is furious that defeat of his target was snatched out of its grasp, sort of how players tend to get upset when their target is near death and healed out of nowhere in a PvP battle.
Elemental spells and creatures buffed/weakened by weather conditions. Creatures gaining special abilities/traits in different weather of maybe if hit accidentally with their own element.
Great list. I like anything that changes the way aggro is determined and held. Give me ways to generate aggro, as a tank, that is more outside the box than simple AoE taunts or force taunts. I want aggro leeches, aggro auras, or even aggro determined by a paladin's throwing out some friggin' heals.
Make aggro great again.
I really like this thread and the excellent suggestions and ideas. Too early for me to dissect them for you in a public forum and have our creative team really dig deep -- but that day will come, and we appreciate your patience. I can say this: very, very little I've read in this thread do I not like. At this point it's a matter of managing expectations and under-promising and over-delivering. Beyond that I'll have to comment in more detail in the future.
Aradune said:I really like this thread and the excellent suggestions and ideas. Too early for me to dissect them for you in a public forum and have our creative team really dig deep -- but that day will come, and we appreciate your patience. I can say this: very, very little I've read in this thread do I not like. At this point it's a matter of managing expectations and under-promising and over-delivering. Beyond that I'll have to comment in more detail in the future.
Very glad to see this response. There is a lot that I like in this thread and just the fact that this is recognized bodes well.
Wanted to add a few more random ideas that popped up.
Bloodthirsty Disposition: NPC's with this disposition have an increasing aggro radius based on the health of our characters. For example, if a player is at half health, these NPC's will have their aggro radius doubled. If a player is in critical health, it could be tripled.
Mana-starved Disposition: Same as above, but perhaps these mobs have their aggro radius increased based on how much mana someone has. For example, a player with full mana would attract these creatures from three times the normal distance. Could be tricky managing mana in areas with these kind of mobs.
Master Strike Mechanic: Something along the lines of the EQ2 master strike ability. If players collect enough body parts (each eligible mob-type had 5 dropped items that could be traded, and 3 random auto updates) players can then use this ability on the type of mob they have mastered. Using the ability on any mob would put it on cooldown.
Cursed Zones: Some sort of risk vs reward mechanic that could pop up periodically in different zones. Could be tied into the lunar cycle (if applicable), night/day cycles, or just be completely random. Cursed zones would have an increased disposition pool to draw from (unless they are all universal), increased offense/defense, increased death penalty, and better XP. Perhaps mobs in the cursed zone have a chance to drop a useful crafting component that is exclusive to the cursed mob loot table.
Sacrificial Buffs: Similar to sacrificing an item at an altar for a temporary buff, pet classes would be able to use this same mechanic but rather than getting a buff for themself, it would be applied directly to their pet. Sacrificing a weapon might give their pet added offense, or sacrificing armor could provide a defensive boon.
Reanimate: Perhaps a disposition or temporary buff that can be cast; while under this effect, mobs will "reanimate" after dying with full HP that quickly decays, but they have increased movement speed, attack speed, DPS, and lifesteal. (Sion passive if anybody plays League.)
I really like a lot of the ideas here. Cool thread indeed.
But I'm not a fan of encounters or rewards scaling based on who engages in the combat, how they are equipped, or how quickly/slowly they complete the encounter. A mob shouldnt be dynamic to the degree that their level or stats or abiilities change based on who attacks them. Their reactions may well be, but not the core of who they are. I'm ok with a mob standing and fighting to the death against 4 players, or running or calling in reinforcements when confronted with 10 players. I'm not ok with their melee attack scaling to hit for 100 against 4 opponents and to hit for 1000 against 10. Likewise, what that mob holds should also not scale. They have it, or they don't. Extra nifty goody prizes should not materialize because 4 people killed him rather than 10.
Depends on how its implimented I guess. I mean, if you're fighting in sort of a spectator, gladiator sport kinda thing there would be some logic in you defining your team, and the lord or the caesar or whatever saying, "Ok, in that case I'm going to put you up against THIS!". And the reward for that being commensurate. But, if the rewards for this kind of thing were compelling enough it could be the defacto means by which people gear up rather than going out into the gameworld. That would break a pretty significant portion of Pantheon's intended direction.
Aradune said:I really like this thread and the excellent suggestions and ideas. Too early for me to dissect them for you in a public forum and have our creative team really dig deep -- but that day will come, and we appreciate your patience. I can say this: very, very little I've read in this thread do I not like. At this point it's a matter of managing expectations and under-promising and over-delivering. Beyond that I'll have to comment in more detail in the future.
^^^
This is why I bought 2 pledges granting pre-alpha acess. I’ve waited many years for a game that had a dev team that actually read and commented on forum posts. This is exactly what I was hoping for.
Having reviewed this thread again, I am starting to think that NPC dispositions and conditional behaviors, such as the conditional behaviors described in this thread, present the greatest potential for PRF to break ground in the MMO space and distinguish PRF from prior MMOs. In every MMO I've played, the NPCs I've encountered, at least in group play, are just too stupid. They are too predictable and manipulable.
I won't try to state an exhaustive list of the reasons that NPC behavior has traditionally been too predictable and manipulable. But the primary one, in my mind, is the traditional MMO mechanic of "aggro". In my experience, a mob's "aggro" refers to a simple ordering of how much an NPC "hates" the players on its aggro list, as determined by the aggro-producing actions that have been taken by a given player. Conditional rules--like some of the conditional rules listed here--have the potential to supplant, or at least modify, the traditional "aggro" mechanic. For example, if an NPC's skillset includes spell-interrupting abilities, I would like that NPC to have a semi-intelligent subroutine that attempts to calculate the ideal moment to use a spell-interrupting ability. As a simple illustration, for any NPC with a spell-interrupting ability, there could be a routine--call it "InterruptSpell_Yes_or_No()"--that is triggered whenever the NPC's spell-interrupting ability is available for use and a player on the NPC's aggro list begins to cast a spell. Depending on a defined set of variables (health of the target of the spell, for example), the InterruptSpell_Yes_or_No() routine would direct the NPC whether to use its interrupt ability on a particular spellcaster. Perhaps the same kind of decisionmaking routine could be used for other abilities, such as stuns and roots, persumably based on other triggering events and variables.
I'm sure these simple illustrations will come across as rudimentary to anyone with basic programming experience. I am not trying to say I have the answers here. But this conditional approach to NPC behavior, and, in particular, a conditional approach to NPC behavior as a replacement for, or at least a major modification/supplement to, the traditional "aggro" system, is something I would really like to see VR emphasize and run with. For me, this is an area where there is real potential to break ground in the MMO space. I think it's crazy that, in 2017, NPCs in MMOs still act so stupidly.
Looking even further ahead, once you put in place some general-purpose decisionmaking algorithms for your NPCs, you can think about incorporating machine learning algorithms into NPC decisionmaking. The machine learning component of NPC decisionmaking could be informed by combat data that is generated across all servers by NPCs of a certain species interacting with real players. So, at the beginning of PRF's lifetime, "smart" NPCs could be running fairly rudimentary, maybe partially random decisionmaking algorithms. But then, as the server collects data from real interactions between NPCs and players--including what NPC behaviors are most successful in surviving against and killing the players--the NPC decisionmaking algorithm would be improved through traditional machine learning / Go-language algorithms. Or maybe I'm completely out of my mind here.
Would love to hear more ideas for the kind of "conditional logic" that should be built into NPC combat behavior.
oneADseven said:
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Bloodthirsty Disposition: NPC's with this disposition have an increasing aggro radius based on the health of our characters.
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Master Strike Mechanic: Something along the lines of the EQ2 master strike ability. If players collect enough body parts
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Rydan said:This made me think.. what if you collected orc teeth on a necklace? Would that deminish aggro radius?
What if killing 1000 orcs made you an Orcbane, with a master skill to blast them pretty hard. But they hated you because you were known as Orcbane, and your threat generation with them was increased? Maybe that means you draw agro easier. Maybe it means they run from you earlier. Either way, could stir things up a bit :)
Feyshtey said:Rydan said:This made me think.. what if you collected orc teeth on a necklace? Would that deminish aggro radius?
What if killing 1000 orcs made you an Orcbane, with a master skill to blast them pretty hard. But they hated you because you were known as Orcbane, and your threat generation with them was increased? Maybe that means you draw agro easier. Maybe it means they run from you earlier. Either way, could stir things up a bit :)
To add to this a little bit... If they were higher level, or same level and feeling more adventuresome.....aggro. If they are loweer level, or same level and not feeling adventuresome.....run away. The determination of adventuresome could be a "random roll".