SmedBlog (last year): NPC Enemies and Armies

[Timithos]

At first when I heard about NPC's my immediate thought was guards. NPC guards could be used to deter back-hackers skipping from one place to the next - especially solo hackers.

But NPC attackers? No. We're the attackers. Like someone else said, the moment I lose a fight against a player due to being shot in the back by an AI bot, is the moment I quit.

How's SWTOR going? Are any of those changes being reversed by EA to win back the subscriber base? How about SWG? Did Sony abort changes that were losing subcribers?

So here's a question: If you go down the wrong path are you going to reverse down the right one? History says you won't.

[IMMentat]

Depends on the AI and depends on the frequency, number of enemies and target choice of NPC "invasions".

All things that are generally poorly handled, especially in n open-world game.

Generally NPC enemies are only good for target practice and proof that NPCs "cheat", they either sit still and accept large ammounts of damage like idiots or have pinpoint accuracy combined with perfect awareness and a reaction time of zero (all impossible for a human) forcing an attacking players to play a game of attrition (the choice between outhealing damage and terrain expoiting makes for boring combat in the long-term)

Global agenda did it reasonably well (PvE was robot security swarms against a 4 player team) but that was instanced formulaic heavily biased towards the players outside of boss battles.

[Gimpylung]

Oh please no NPC's or AI or PvE. As others have pointed out, there are other games that do that stuff, If I want to do that stuff, I'll play those games.

Please don't try to make PS2 a jack of all trades game, some PvE, some ESports, some RTS style harvesting. You'll end up with a game that's mediocre at lots of different things. There doesn't have to be something in the game to please absolutely ever type of gamer, coz you'll fail and please nobody.

Develop the games strengths, Planetside is known as being the biggest persistent PvP FPS out there. This is it's thing, it's party piece, develop this. It's what makes Planetside unique, don't add loads of incompatible stuff that doesn't fit coz those components are popular in some other franchise. It will dilute the experience and PS becomes some strange Frankenstein.

Lead the way with persistent PvP, make trends, don't follow them.

The only thing in the blog thats struck me as Planetside-like was the naval stuff and seamless transfer via water to the other conts. It's Planetsidey coz it takes the original premise of Planetside and expands its, larger scale PvP war with even more vehicle types and strategic options.

[Piper]

It is, to me, entirely the wrong way of thinking of what to add to an all PvP game after launch. It is first and foremost a dilution of raw gameplay.

Mostly however it will lead to the wrong kind of rankling between players to put sources of incoming damage in that are not player based. "Oh you only killed me because that bot got a few hits on me, if it wasn't there". Blah blah blah.

As Gimpylung has just said above, make trends, be bold. Don't put NPC's in PS2 please. Hopefully we'll never be short enough of potential targets to ever need 'em.

[dm Akolyte]

Originally Posted by Smed

One other key point about them I didn't mention - they would have buildable AI that players could actually make through a scripting language. (forgot this part too) - Also you would be able to sell that AI to other players if you were an AI designer. Think Robot Wars or cRobots.

That is a *cool ass idea*.....

....for a different game.

[sagolsun]

Scriptable armies in PS2? I don't recall giving SOE permission to harvest my innermost secret dreams of a perfect game and implement that into PS2.

That said I think a lot of negative feeback is coming from people who don't understand how NPCs will be implemented in-game. There are very many ways to do it wrong and few ways to do it right.

I can see the immense potential here because I've played games like Battlezone2 or RoboWar. If our visions match, I can see this being a breakthrough.

The important thing here is to make sure NPCs are extensions of the player's arsenal - the whole experience of designing them has to focus on NPCs being self-propelled weapons with upsides and downsides, particular uses. It's fine if their use is pretty narrow too.

The other good thing about NPCs is that they permit the battlefield to be more alive with roles that would otherwise be too boring for players. Nobody wants to play a resource harvester, logistics or spend hours looking out for enemies. There are certainly roles in PS2 that could improve the game but would be not interesting for players to play. Here's where AI comes in.

And scriptable AI pretty much eliminates the problem of complaints about stupid AI - which will inevitably surface. Effectively using NPC armies will be a skill just like shooting your gun, just that it'll be about choosing the right script (or writing your own) and deploying them at the right time and place.

Just bundle a clientside angelscript/lua interpreter and outsource the coding work to the community. I'm giving it 2 years before we create skynet.

[RoninOni]

lol someone makes a self aware AI in PS2 that builds it's own 4th faction cyborg army

Anyways, I played Battlezone (1 & 2) and it was an AWESOME game I haven't seen properly recreated yet.

However, I don't think Planetside is the game for it.

I think they could MAKE a new game using lightforge and have AI and tons of RTS elements and stuff, and it would need (and in fact prolly do better with) much smaller player counts than Planetside...

but NPC armies just doesn't feel like 'planetside'. I think AI should only be used for base defenses and those harvesters if they get added.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by exLupo

Oh shit, you're right. What's the game I'm thinking of? There's one out there where you control the map and then dive into dudes. Well, whatever, that's the idea.

Maelstrom?

[GLaDOS]

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.

My thoughts exactly.

[Antihero]

Originally Posted by Mattmatrix

But that's not the point of Planetside. We work together, we make our own heroes. We have commanders and CR5's that we hate but for some reason listen to them anyway.

We don't want to be the heroes, at least not because there are NPCs

We want to fight a battle with out comrades and maybe we will be seen as heroes on our server from our actions, but it won't have anything to do with us feeling powerful because of weak NPCs. Instead we'll hold bases against waves and take out 5 guys as the last one standing, allowing us to revive everyone before the next group comes in. We'll be the guy that get in the ANT in at the last possible moment and saves us from losing the base. The galaxy pilot that comes in and gives a much needed spawn point, turning the tide of a losing battle.

That's what makes PS so great. Players feel powerful because of their actions and the actions of their outfit. Anyone who played on Emerald back in the day can remember the horror (or relief if you were on the right faction) of an Enclave 5 gal drop on top of a facility that had 10 min left on the hack.

Power comes from teamwork and skill, not from giving us cannon fodder. That's kind of like the semi-attractive girl hanging out with all the ugly girls to look better in comparison. So not Planetside

THIS.

Originally Posted by Gimpylung

Oh please no NPC's or AI or PvE. As others have pointed out, there are other games that do that stuff, If I want to do that stuff, I'll play those games.

Please don't try to make PS2 a jack of all trades game, some PvE, some ESports, some RTS style harvesting. You'll end up with a game that's mediocre at lots of different things. There doesn't have to be something in the game to please absolutely ever type of gamer, coz you'll fail and please nobody.

Develop the games strengths, Planetside is known as being the biggest persistent PvP FPS out there. This is it's thing, it's party piece, develop this. It's what makes Planetside unique, don't add loads of incompatible stuff that doesn't fit coz those components are popular in some other franchise. It will dilute the experience and PS becomes some strange Frankenstein.

Lead the way with persistent PvP, make trends, don't follow them.

The only thing in the blog thats struck me as Planetside-like was the naval stuff and seamless transfer via water to the other conts. It's Planetsidey coz it takes the original premise of Planetside and expands its, larger scale PvP war with even more vehicle types and strategic options.

This too! Sorry i am too lazy to completely go through why I think AI soldiers are just a really bad idea for this game. If you want AI make some wild life or something, keep this game PVP.

[getembees]

Interesting ideas to be sure. I think they should definately be tested by the dev team to see if they are fun.

I feel skeptical about an alien AI. I imagine this "instance" style event should be kept as a relatively rare event if it is implemented. I would suggest testing simple AI events in beta, just to see how the sample of players react.

I'm also not sure how this would fit into Planetside lore. Are these aliens related to the "thing" that destroyed Pluto during the original wormhole? I kind of like how the 3 factions are unable to find a common cause despite the fact that they are stranded on this planet (much like current humans are). The game feels quite allegorical to me, and I would oppose the introduction of elements that take away from that allegory.

The "drones" might work better in practice. UAV's are a part of modern life, so it makes sense in a canon-sense that Auraxian armies could have commander-controlled drones piloted by AI. The orbital-strikes are a very similar concept that is very popular in the game. Getting besieged with no counters? Have the commander call in a drone swarm to distract the enemy, then have the infnatry storm out the of base for a counter-attack at the same time. I think that any drones should be nerfed down so that they require human-support in firefights to be effective. A drone-squad should not be able to take out a human squad, for example. But a drone squad supporting a human squad could be that small edge that helps you.

I personally liked the drones from BF2142. These hover-drones floated above the player who set them, and followed that player around. By nature the player wouldn't always deploy it because it gave away their position. Any drones in PS2 should have some kind of key disadvantage that prevents them from being over used. The BF2142 drone-AI were kind of dumb, but a bunch of them floating toward a base in PS2 could be trouble. A small force of hackers could more easily fight their way into a base if supported by a smart commander using these drones. Drone forces might also help delay an enemy counter-attack on a different front, giving human reinforcements time to make gal drops.

For the sake of believability, I think that the drones should resemble UAV's more than cyborgs. I just think that fits better into the Planetside lore of human-based content. Each faction's drones could be different in some way or another.

Again, I think that simple-AI should be tested in beta just to see how the community uses these things, in whatever form they come.

So to review, Im much more excited about drone-AI than alien-AI. I think that the drones should be a priority for testing, as I think that they could aid in human-coordination for the grand scale of the game.

[Hunterzen]

Like one person already said only AI should be turrets, and what ever gadgets require AI from PS1 you devs hopefully bring back to PS2. The idea of Aliens invading for a few days in real life time is ok I guess if you devs are set on adding this crap, but to me even that makes so sense lore, or game play wise.

[getembees]

Ideas on drone-styles:

TR: UAV-like miniature planes that carry machine guns. They fire quickly but because they fly instead of hover they must make passes on targets, giving players a chance to get into cover.

Vanu: Hovering drones that fire intermittent energy blasts. Since they hover they can stay on target but there is a long reload.

NC: UAV-like minature planes that carry rockets. Big damage with splash but long reloads and must make passes to fire due to airspeed. This gives enemy better chances to get to cover.

Just a quick brainstorm. In small numbers there arent a big deal, but in big numbers they could be effective at territory denial. Swarm the courtyard of a base or soften up incoming forces.

[RoninOni]

Wildlife would be cool.

all animals would naturally avoid any battlezone area, so they wouldn't interfere with battles, but in the woods and around streams and ponds away from the fighting it'd be telling to see wildlife going about. Predatory creatures may actually decide to attack a lonesome soldier or 2 that invaded their area, but would probably flee upon any serious wound (some areas could have some pretty big and nasty natural predators... they'd still avoid armor and battles naturally, but small infantry parties might look like a snack, and it'd take a lil firepower to actually hurt it)

Shouldn't be a focus, or really a way to earn XP (token XP, not worth time investment or even any risk. Slightly better than idling in HQ) or anything else really. more of a hazard of trying to sneak around off on your own. Nuisances and just scenery really, nothing more.

Maybe something to shoot at as you convoy. (which a patrol farther away may see animals running from, or come across dead animals telling of a convoy that passed through :P Fire discipline's a bitch ain't it?)

[Crator]

Originally Posted by RoninOni

lol someone makes a self aware AI in PS2 that builds it's own 4th faction cyborg army

Ok, that's actually a cool concept for a game. Not PS2 though I don't think.