05-03-2004, 08:47 PM
As a mostly solo player so far, I've spent a lot of time watching the monsters (mobs?) and how they operate and interact. Although I'm only level 12 and I'm pretty sure things change quite a bit when we get to higher level areas, this is an area that I think I'd like to see tweaked a bit in future versions.
Most of my time so far has been spent dealing with monsters one-on-one. Even when I've been in a party, the group has generally isolated one or two monsters, each group member has done whatever it is that they're good at, and then the entire process is repeated for the next one or two monsters. This works well, but is often not particularly exciting.
Now, there are some areas and quests that require people to get past a large group of monsters guarding a particular area, for example, or progress through a dungeon that might be set up to spawn several monsters in the same room. These are, naturally, much more entertaining because it requires a little more thought. You might have to use tactics to work your way up the side and around the group to a more defensible position where you can pull the monsters back one at a time. Or, even if you're not working with a group, you might find that you need to party with some passers by to complete a dungeon, even if you all go your separate ways afterwards. I'd personally like to see more of this sort of thing.
As I gain levels, it seems pretty clear that there are more and more quests that require use of tactics and dealing with larger mobs. I've started to encounter groups of ranged attackers, too. :) This is great, and I'm looking forward to it. But, I'd like to see the "ordinary" mobs get bumped up a bit, both in awareness (how large an area they are aware of) and in cohesiveness (how much they "work together" with thir fellow bad guys). So far, most of the monsters have been pretty solitary guys. They don't generally work together with nearby monsters, unless I am careless enough to allow myself to enter two creatures' "threatened areas" at the same time.
There are exceptions. I've noticed that the mercenaries tend to go get other mercenaries (or their bosses!) when they're injured to the point that they run away in fear. Some monsters will become "activated" if anything happens in the area they're patrolling, so if I cast at a monster that is next to another one, in some cases both will come and attack. Last night, I think I was attacked by a kodo that was near a plainstrider who I had attacked after the plainstrider ran away in fear (I think that's what happened, but I didn't stick around to test it). But, far too often IMO, I'm able to waltz right through a guarded area, killing one creature at a time, without any of them raising any sort of general alarm. This can damage immersion to some degree when there are creatures that clearly should be able to see what you're doing to their buddies, but can't in terms of game mechanics because they're only paying attention to their little spot. While the exceptions are nice, I'd really like to see this become the rule, rather than the exception. Also, even the monsters that work together have been pretty limited in their ability to do so. Usually they only raise the alarm after they're severely injured, and only to maybe one nearby creature.
These changes would encourage players to have to think more about what they're doing, even just in moving between quests. Even if it happens more often at higher levels, I guess I'd still ask why it doesn't happen with all the monsters, or at least most of them?
I don't think this would be too difficult to implement, although I don't know the mechanics soecific to WoW. In NWN, since we were able to play with the editor, I tried some of this sort of thing out. You could set creatures to be part of different factions, and each faction would respond differently to your character's actions. So, you might have a "town guards" faction that would always attack any character that attacked any other town guard within their area of awareness. I also think it was possible to set some sort of temporary flag on the character so that, if he came across another town guard later on, they would still get attacked even though the guard did not drop everything and run halfway across town when you first made the attack. Some factions would also protect other factions if you attacked them. So, the town guards might go hostile if you attacked someone in a "townsperson" faction, but not in the "thieves" faction, for example.
Increasing the area of awareness for monster (but still keeping the variation between different creatures) would probably be fairly simple to implement, although there would be challenges. First of all, that would probably mean a big increase in cpu use and possibly latency. My guess is that's why most monsters have such a small range of awareness at the moment. I think it's worth it, and my computer's not that new, because I think it would add a lot of interest and replayability.
Also, monsters' spawn areas and locations would probably need to be changed if they were more aware and working together. Right now, for the solo player anyway, taking on more than one monster of a similar level can be very challenging. I think Charis said something like "one is best, two is a bit scary, and three means I'm dead meat." So far, that's been my experience as well. It might make sense, if players could expect to encounter more monsters at a time, to have players fighting monsters that are lower level than they are, by a little bit at least. I think it would be much more interesting for a level 9 character, for example, to have to deal with three level 6-7's than one level 9. In some cases, they might be able to use tactics to split up the group, but sometimes they might just need to use tactics to make sure they're not mobbed by 10 level 6-7's, for example.
So, that's my idea. What do you think?
-Griselda
Most of my time so far has been spent dealing with monsters one-on-one. Even when I've been in a party, the group has generally isolated one or two monsters, each group member has done whatever it is that they're good at, and then the entire process is repeated for the next one or two monsters. This works well, but is often not particularly exciting.
Now, there are some areas and quests that require people to get past a large group of monsters guarding a particular area, for example, or progress through a dungeon that might be set up to spawn several monsters in the same room. These are, naturally, much more entertaining because it requires a little more thought. You might have to use tactics to work your way up the side and around the group to a more defensible position where you can pull the monsters back one at a time. Or, even if you're not working with a group, you might find that you need to party with some passers by to complete a dungeon, even if you all go your separate ways afterwards. I'd personally like to see more of this sort of thing.
As I gain levels, it seems pretty clear that there are more and more quests that require use of tactics and dealing with larger mobs. I've started to encounter groups of ranged attackers, too. :) This is great, and I'm looking forward to it. But, I'd like to see the "ordinary" mobs get bumped up a bit, both in awareness (how large an area they are aware of) and in cohesiveness (how much they "work together" with thir fellow bad guys). So far, most of the monsters have been pretty solitary guys. They don't generally work together with nearby monsters, unless I am careless enough to allow myself to enter two creatures' "threatened areas" at the same time.
There are exceptions. I've noticed that the mercenaries tend to go get other mercenaries (or their bosses!) when they're injured to the point that they run away in fear. Some monsters will become "activated" if anything happens in the area they're patrolling, so if I cast at a monster that is next to another one, in some cases both will come and attack. Last night, I think I was attacked by a kodo that was near a plainstrider who I had attacked after the plainstrider ran away in fear (I think that's what happened, but I didn't stick around to test it). But, far too often IMO, I'm able to waltz right through a guarded area, killing one creature at a time, without any of them raising any sort of general alarm. This can damage immersion to some degree when there are creatures that clearly should be able to see what you're doing to their buddies, but can't in terms of game mechanics because they're only paying attention to their little spot. While the exceptions are nice, I'd really like to see this become the rule, rather than the exception. Also, even the monsters that work together have been pretty limited in their ability to do so. Usually they only raise the alarm after they're severely injured, and only to maybe one nearby creature.
These changes would encourage players to have to think more about what they're doing, even just in moving between quests. Even if it happens more often at higher levels, I guess I'd still ask why it doesn't happen with all the monsters, or at least most of them?
I don't think this would be too difficult to implement, although I don't know the mechanics soecific to WoW. In NWN, since we were able to play with the editor, I tried some of this sort of thing out. You could set creatures to be part of different factions, and each faction would respond differently to your character's actions. So, you might have a "town guards" faction that would always attack any character that attacked any other town guard within their area of awareness. I also think it was possible to set some sort of temporary flag on the character so that, if he came across another town guard later on, they would still get attacked even though the guard did not drop everything and run halfway across town when you first made the attack. Some factions would also protect other factions if you attacked them. So, the town guards might go hostile if you attacked someone in a "townsperson" faction, but not in the "thieves" faction, for example.
Increasing the area of awareness for monster (but still keeping the variation between different creatures) would probably be fairly simple to implement, although there would be challenges. First of all, that would probably mean a big increase in cpu use and possibly latency. My guess is that's why most monsters have such a small range of awareness at the moment. I think it's worth it, and my computer's not that new, because I think it would add a lot of interest and replayability.
Also, monsters' spawn areas and locations would probably need to be changed if they were more aware and working together. Right now, for the solo player anyway, taking on more than one monster of a similar level can be very challenging. I think Charis said something like "one is best, two is a bit scary, and three means I'm dead meat." So far, that's been my experience as well. It might make sense, if players could expect to encounter more monsters at a time, to have players fighting monsters that are lower level than they are, by a little bit at least. I think it would be much more interesting for a level 9 character, for example, to have to deal with three level 6-7's than one level 9. In some cases, they might be able to use tactics to split up the group, but sometimes they might just need to use tactics to make sure they're not mobbed by 10 level 6-7's, for example.
So, that's my idea. What do you think?
-Griselda
Why can't we all just get along
--Pete
--Pete