SmedBlog (last year): NPC Enemies and Armies

[exLupo]

Yea, no, I was thinking about WotR but also thinking incorrectly. If my other posts of the past hour or so are any indication, sleep dep and caffeine are fighting with vigor. I am excited about War, it looks boss.

[RoninOni]

Originally Posted by exLupo

Yea, no, I was thinking about WotR but also thinking incorrectly. If my other posts of the past hour or so are any indication, sleep dep and caffeine are fighting with vigor. I am excited about War, it looks boss.

Oh it is... you ever play mount & blade? (this is a different studio by the way, just same publisher)

Basic control wise it's largely the same, but MUCH tighter with far better 3d models and hit detection. Parrying with a weapon is now fully manual, and if you're using a weapon with a head (hammer/axe) you need to actually hit with the lethal part of the weapon.

Quality of hit is important too.

Lance charge was a bit OP in the build we played, but the ground fighting was solid...

also, being that we were playing it eSports style (5v5) instead of 32v32 over larger maps with various terrain (some prohibitive to mounted fighting) it kinda screwed that balance up as well.

[Sighpolice]

Ahh an invasion sounds cool, but it would ultimately be pretty gash. If it was a once a year sort of Christmas invasion, and every year you fought different aliens with different strategies then I could see that happening. Like for instance one race of Aliens could be infiltrator specialists, and each empire would need to find and kill the top dog to stop the invasion, and the empire that did that got bonus resources.

Then next year you had some heavy tanks assault your bases, where you would need an armoured column just to take one down (think war of the worlds?) and the empire that killed the most aliens got bonus resources.

If they are implementing naval, then the year after that could be alien naval ships, and the year after that could be infantry invasion (starship troopers bug type thing)

There is a lot of potential for it to be "good" but it needs to happen once a year, if it was a regular monthly thing then it becomes no more than a repeatable quest in a generic RPG.

[Emperor Newt]

IF something like this is implemented I'm in for the first one. That one is the only one that sounds pretty cool especially because it could interefere with plans of outfits/factions and change the course of war. Sounds pretty interesting and a challenge to adapt to.

But I really don't know if PS2 really needs this.

[SztEltviz]

AI coding Hell yeah!

Why we need ai in a pvp game? Because it will be smarter than average player.
Check out World of Tanks. It's a free, and FULL OF IDIOTS!
There are matches when i would replace my 14 teammates for only 5 ai that has a basic idea what the hell they supposed to do.

[exLupo]

re WoT+bots: TF2 did it. Bot filler isn't super popular but it's decent when used. Bots aren't rock stupid or poor shots, they just aren't creative. You can't scare them or piss them off or catch them doing anything surprising or interesting, they're always just as they are. Better than an empty server but I don't think PS2 will ever have that problem.

*knocks on wood*

[Tikuto]

Sounds like my sig.

[Boomhowser]

One of the biggest lures of Planetside for me was fighting only human opponents in an epic scale enviroment and SOE nailed it.
Now the vibe im getting on this thread from devs is they are playing a lot of Moba like LoL & Smite etc etc & I understand thats the fotm style games but come on!

I just want to shoot other players I have no interest to go jungling on some alien boss, I would hate to be positioning myself for my snipe run, only to have a group of 5 NPCs run through me not fun infact very frustrating!! at least if that happens with enemy players you can hate tell them

[Sunrock]

I experienced a NPC faction in Aion.

(For those that did not play Aion I will try to explain it quickly. In Aion you had 2 player faction and a 3rd NPC faction. Some times the 3rd NPC faction could come and try to attack and take a PVP fort that the players had to fight off. This was to help make the balance between the two player factions so not only player faction could hold on to a majority of all the forts too easily.)

And in that game having a NPC faction really did not really work. The players would most of the time just ignore it and play around it as there was just easier to make them take the base and then take it back then it was to defend the base from the NPC attack.

This sounds really cool on paper perhaps but will just be a mild annoyances in practice IMO. For it to really work SOE have to build a really advanced IA script for this faction where the NPC faction does not act predictable in a obvious way. And I wonder if that is even possible without spending one billion dollars and 10-15 years of development of it. As they need to have allot more advanced IA then anyone have invented to date.

[Timey]

So, about a year and this game is ruined :] Seems standard SOE to mee, then.

[lLl]

Sorry if this has been proposed already, but as people have mentioned, i think an event would be a good idea.

There could be an alien race which attacks one area of the map. Then if captured would spread from this space out to the surrounding capture-able areas. This would force the attacked faction to suppress this invasion as they would lose territory, but more interestingly, the other factions could capitalize on this event to attack other points of interest.

In addition, capturing or suppressing the initial point of contact would reward a faction with high resources, thus negating any time spent being attacked on all fronts.

Although not everyone would like this, it would definitely make for some great PS2 tactics history lessons.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by Timey

So, about a year and this game is ruined :] Seems standard SOE to mee, then.

QFT hehe

[Marinealver]

The only NPC I would care to see is Spitfire turrets and phalanix with interlink.

Although the phalanix could use an AI update if you upgrade to AV turret or AA turret then it should use the upgraded turret when shooting at is intended target and switch to normal when shooting at other. As in the AA phalanx turret will switch to flack when shooting at aircraft and switch to chingun when shooting at Maxs/vehicles and the AV will be visa versa.

Now an option instead of NPC how about player controlled AI assisted drones and such to help out when the servers are at low population. I can just imagine a guy behind the base terminal controling a couple of UAVs to assist his squad defending the base while an infiltraitor goal will be to assisanate him before going for the ghost hack. Something to help with the area control and ghost prevention but nothing that could really stop a zerg rush, or assist one.

[SeanNewBoy]

Originally Posted by Blackwolf

Uncertain about NPC armies. I think the players shouldn't be substituted for NPCs when going against other players.

NPC enemy invasion might be a cool treat or event at some points, but not on a regular basis.

Exactly, the npc invasions as special events would be kind of cool.

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by Smed

I should point out the simple fact that I'm having this discussion before the game even launches and in my blog I specifically noted that we plan on releasing the 3 year plan and taking player feedback. We've learned our lessons.

In terms of some of the comments I've been reading (which have been great btw) - someone asked the basic question of why we would introduce these NPC armies. The idea (and maybe it's a crappy one) is that we want you to feel like you're in a war and we're the heroes of that war. These NPC guys would be cyborgs perhaps or something like that. It's interesting to me that this particular idea is getting the response it is. This wasn't an idea that was high on the list. actually it was pretty far down. I'm just genuinely fascinated by the reaction. People have some great points both positive and negative.

Either way this one isn't on the high priority list anyways.

Smed, thanks for responding to my post, and I really should have put something in showing that I recognize that you guys are making the right steps.

I was talking to Hamma yesterday about how impressed we were to see the president of a giant developer like SOE log into a fan forum and pitch ideas around with the players. I've never really seen the like, (though Hamma says the Firefall ceo does the same) so perhaps my post came across as too critical.

My cousin was a producer at Broderbund, so I've been intimately involved in the development process of several titles he worked on. (He employed me as his test subject and idea critic ) I know how usually great ideas typically start out very ambitious and usually end up being a compromise so that they mesh well with other game mechanics, fit within development deadlines, and more or less meet the consensus of the team that will be implementing the feature.

I remember being shocked at some of the ideas that my cousin proposed, and most never became a reality. Of those that did, some turned out to work very well, while others did not always feel like a great fit. Fortunately there were few of the latter, as his games did quite well.

I guess where I'm going with all this is that we, the community, aren't used to being involved in this process, and people get real worried when they get the impression that radical ideas are going to be implemented exactly as suggested.

Personally, I don't think npcs in PlanetSide is a good idea. Perhaps there's a way to work it into the game that I would enjoy, but frankly I cannot envision it.

I think that AI npcs should be kept as an ace up your sleeve, Smed. We all love PS, but after a number of years we may see population levels fall in PS2. Who knows, maybe PS2 will be so successful it will spawn some competitive clones. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and all developers look for inspiration in other games. If population levels fall significantly, PS2 will need something that could pull a different niche of gamer into the game while keeping plenty of stuff in the game to kill, and this idea might be the right way to go. But, IMO, hopefully it'll never have to happen.