Complete lack of any AI for the monsters

[lemekim]

I think one of the reasons why you mainly see more complex mob behavior in end-game instances is because Blizzard kinda assumed that players entering the World of Warcraft are novices. Thus the complexity of fights builds up through your leveling.

Early on you fight easy mobs and simply familiarize yourself with the combat system. Around level 15-20, you start requiring groups, so you get to familiarize yourself with partying. At this stage the fights are very simple, you don't even need tanks or even healers. Throughout next instances, you get to familiarize yourself with concepts of tanking, healing, holding aggro, crowd control, and AOE, all the way until you are level 60 or so. Kind of like a long learning curve. And you do see more complex behavior at higher levels, even outside instances (e.g. lvl 58 or so Troll scouts that call for help when they see an enemy in E.P.).

I guess it is Blizzards vision and there is little we can do about it. I would like to see more complex behavior myself, probably similar to what Jarulf does, but I have a feeling that would require a complete remake of the combat system.

Take out the dependency on "Trinity". Make environment have more effect on the fight, let distance have effect on chance to hit, enable collision, make some mobs TRY to backstab you and gouge to interrupt your spells, let mobs try to CC players if there is more then one, or make some mobs hide in the dark. Make it more then just stare at a screen while pressing 1-2 buttons over and over and over again.

[Jarulf]

The problem, as you've seen, is that elite creatures (the only things that need groups and therefore the only mobs that I'm really talking about) hit for thousands of points of damage per hit.  With a cloth-wearer's low damage reduction, mobs in MC will generally two-hit a priest. 

The solution you propose is to reduce their damage so that they don't kill priests as quickly.  Then why bother bringing priests?  If their damage is that low, then warriors won't need healing to kill them (and what healing they might need will be done by paladins).  Why bother bringing any cloth-wearer if there's no way any other class can keep mobs off them?  And if you shift the system so that casters can wear heavy armour, why bother bringing warriors or paladins?

The changes you propose wouldn't require adaptation of tactics.  Certain classes would simply become completely useless.
[right][snapback]87642[/snapback][/right]

You are still locked into the existing system. Sure, one might have to change the system oe normal/elites. Why must EVERY monster have tons of damage just because it is supposed to be a hard encounter? Why no mix? Why not mix in hard hitting monsters with less hard hitting ones that for example goes after priests and such. After all, players are vastly different, not all hit hard, not all wear huge armor and so on, why not have the same for monsters? There are endless possibilities.

[Bob the Beholder]

You are still locked into the existing system. Sure, one might have to change the system oe normal/elites. Why must EVERY monster have tons of damage just because it is supposed to be a hard encounter? Why no mix? Why not mix in hard hitting monsters with less hard hitting ones that for example goes after priests and such. After all, players are vastly different, not all hit hard, not all wear huge armor and so on, why not have the same for monsters? There are endless possibilities.
[right][snapback]87727[/snapback][/right]

They've actually included bits of that in the game as it is. In the event warlocks use to get their dreadsteeds, one of the challenges presented is several waves of tiny, melee imps. They're non-elite, and die pretty easy. But there are so many, and the next waves hits so fast, that there's pretty much always going to be a bunch of them floating around the battle. And, once again, because there's so many, it's nearly impossible for a warrior to keep them all aggroed. So once some healing or some AoE starts getting thrown around, a sizable horde will peel to whichever squishies are making them the least happy.

The catch here is that they deal about 1 damage each hit. If you've got ALL of them, and no healing at all, you'll drop eventually. But their biggest purpose is just to screw the healer or the ranged DPS, without going into two-hit-kill territory.

You could AoE them all down pretty fast. But they just keep coming for about a full five minutes, and you'd probably have to have at least two AoE-monkeys acting in shifts for their mana to outlast it all. But even then, that would drain the healer's mana even faster, and leave only two people with their undivided attention on the four elite felguards, elite dreadsteed, and elite dreadlord, which are the bigger threats.

It's a fun, chaotic fight. As a DPS/AoE monkey, last time I did that event, I made it my job to alternate between throwing out some DPS, and pulling the imps on the priest onto myself. In the process of AoEing the little buggers to catch their attention, I also pulled a couple of the Felguards, who tore me up pretty bad. But I kited 'em around, and dropped from combined imp/elite felguard attention late enough in the fight that the rest of the party was prepared to handle the ones I was occupying.

[Skandranon]

Why not? In your example you had a warrior, and a paladin that was enough to heal him.What happens if you have a mail wearer instead? Well, maybe with enemies doing less damage you could make with that instead of having to get a warrior!

Prior to level 60 end-game raids, you don't actually need a warrior for anything. At level 60 end-game raids, what you propose is impossible. Elaboration below.

Or maybe a druid can spec into something that isn't so strongly heal-oriented! Wouldn't that be nice? Heck, maybe you could even let paladins play the "holy warrior" they were told they would be instead of the bad heal-bot many complain they become. Or warriors that try to go offensive wouldn't get looked at over the shoulder so much.[right][snapback]87661[/snapback][/right]

This sounds all well and good, but doesn't actually make sense.

If you are to have discrete classes in a game, their capabilities must, by definition, be different. Thus, in certain roles, certain classes will either be better than or worse than others. Encounters must therefore be scaled assuming that each class plays the role that it plays best.

Using your example, if the enemies that did less damage could be successfully tanked by a mail-wearer, who would have some additional capabilities because they couldn't wear plate, why would anyone bring a warrior? Oh, the warrior can do something else, you say. Then all you've done is swapped roles; same system. What if enemies do very little damage so non-healing druids and tanking paladins and offensive warriors are viable? Then parties with healing druids and tanking warriors and buffing paladins tear through the encounter; it's trivialized. The only way you can avoid that is by making druids best at things other than healing and paladins best at tanking and warriors best at offense, in which case you've again just played a game of musical chairs and had everyone trade roles.

You cannot have a system where anyone can play whatever role they choose and have success without either making the encounters trivially easy for anyone employing the classes in their correct roles, or making all classes equally good at everything, thus obliterating the need for distinct classes or spells or abilities at all.

Your main point, from what I can tell, since you are relatively inexperienced, is that any group of any class should be able to accomplish any thing. Your comment "having to get a warrior" seems to me to be talking about problems like 5-man instance groups not finding an interested warrior of the right level to do their instance. Don't worry: you don't need one. I am happy to inform you that for anything prior to level 60 end-game 40-man raids, you do not need a perfect group; you can do all the way to BRD and probably even UBRS without real tanks and, if you do it right, without any plate wearers at all.

However, for those 40-man raids, any responsible designer will ensure that there is a role to be filled by each of the eight classes; it is not outrageous to expect that members of all classes will be available and that each will want to be useful and effective. Asking for a 40-man raid missing a class or having classes playing off-roles to be as effective as a 40-man raid where all classes are present and working to the best of their ability is simply paradoxical - you cannot design a game that way.

[Skandranon]

Why not mix in hard hitting monsters with less hard hitting ones that for example goes after priests and such.
[right][snapback]87727[/snapback][/right]

Then all you've done is replaced the current system, which doesn't make much sense, with another system, which doesn't make much sense. Just because it's different doesn't make it better.

Either you have monsters exhibiting intelligent behaviour in which they completely ignore plate wearers to rip apart healers and DPS first, or a system in which they do something other than what's intelligent and spend some time beating on warriors. In both cases it has to be a simple, logical system and one that allows for consistency so that players can learn and defeat encounters.

In truth, PvE isn't really the arena you should be looking at for constantly evolving tactical and strategic challenges. Blizzard put in PvP for that.

[Walkiry]

You cannot have a system where anyone can play whatever role they choose and have success without either making the encounters trivially easy for anyone employing the classes in their correct roles, or making all classes equally good at everything, thus obliterating the need for distinct classes or spells or abilities at all.
(...)
However, for those 40-man raids, any responsible designer will ensure that there is a role to be filled by each of the eight classes; it is not outrageous to expect that members of all classes will be available and that each will want to be useful and effective.  Asking for a 40-man raid missing a class or having classes playing off-roles to be as effective as a 40-man raid where all classes are present and working to the best of their ability is simply paradoxical - you cannot design a game that way.
[right][snapback]87730[/snapback][/right]

You're going way too far. No, I don't expect, want, or think that a group with many off-role players should be as effective as a perfectly geared group, but I would like them to be able to overcome challenges. To do that you have to give them more options to overcome those challenges.

Going back to our mail wearer tanking, I don't expect him to tank as well as a decked out defensive warrior; most likely, one'd need much more healing, or a larger stack of debuffs on the enemies. You could say that a mail-tank would need a different group composition to be successful. This mail wearer could, perhaps, need a more defensive "spec" and thus lower the other capabilities (most likely through itemization, as that's Blizzard's choice of poison). And you can do this pretty well without making encounters meaningless.

Why would anyone bring a warrior?

Again, why not? The fact that, with proper backup, a mail wearer could tank foo doesn't mean a warrior won't be better at it. Put it the other way around, if you have an excess of healers (I know, I know, but for the sake of arguing) you can do with a mail wearer, but bring in a warrior and the healers won't have to keep a neverending stream of heals, possibly freing up time to do something else. You haven't trivialized anything, the way I see it you can still get yourself a party-wipe when Onyxia kicks out your tank (be it mail or plate wearer) and goes after the squishies, if you're not on your toes and someone else is there to stop her. What you can do is give the enemies abilities that are smarter than "Smack tank incredibly hard, party wipe ensues if my smacking is better than their healing". Which goes back to Jarulf's point.

You don't have to eliminate roles, you just have to allow more flexibility filling those roles. Doing a job with someone who is not the "best" at doing it should be harder, but possible. To go back to one of the things you said, it doesn't necessarily follow that encounters should be made with a requirement of n roles that have to always be filled by the best possible character for it, it could have n roles and it should be possible to fill one or several of them with off-rolers at the expense of making the other ones harder, but doable. You don't trivialize anything compared to a perfectly-geared team unless the difference between a primary-X and an off-X is of orders of magnitude (as far as I know, druids and paladins are not as good as priests healing, for example, but a single priest is not as good as 10 paladins or druids doing heals).

And give the enemies abilities that don't depend on having a correct party composition to be overcome, but rather having the players do something smart.

So,

You cannot have a system where anyone can play whatever role they choose and have success without either making the encounters trivially easy for anyone employing the classes in their correct roles, or making all classes equally good at everything, thus obliterating the need for distinct classes or spells or abilities at all.

Yes you can. City of Heroes proved as much. You don't have to let the players win the hardest encounters with a full team of "off-role" players, but you can leave enough wiggle room to have some of these and get away with it.

[Arnulf]

[..]
Your main point, from what I can tell, since you are relatively inexperienced, is that any group of any class should be able to accomplish any thing.  Your comment "having to get a warrior" seems to me to be talking about problems like 5-man instance groups not finding an interested warrior of the right level to do their instance.  Don't worry: you don't need one.  I am happy to inform you that for anything prior to level 60 end-game 40-man raids, you do not need a perfect group; you can do all the way to BRD and probably even UBRS without real tanks and, if you do it right, without any plate wearers at all.
[..][right][snapback]87730[/snapback][/right]

(emphasis by me)

There is proof -- in the form of videos -- that..

• 15 paladins doing UBRS and killing General Drakkisath (barely)<>
  
• 15 hunters doing UBRS (including Drakkisath)<>
  
• 15 priests(!) doing UBRS (including Drakkisath)<>
  [st]
  I'm just waiting for the other 6 classes..

[lemekim]

(emphasis by me)

There is proof -- in the form of videos -- that..

• 
  <>
  
• 15 paladins doing UBRS and killing General Drakkisath (barely)
  
  <>
  
• 15 hunters doing UBRS (including Drakkisath)
  
  <>
  
• 15 priests(!) doing UBRS (including Drakkisath)
  
  <>
  [st]
  I'm just waiting for the other 6 classes..
  [right][snapback]87764[/snapback][/right]

It also has been done by 15 warriors. BUT. It also has been done by 4 people with a balanced group. So in a way, it actually shows a counterpoint - that it is THAT much more difficult for an unbalanced group to accomplish things, and herein lies part of the problem.

As long as there is a "healer", "tank" and "dps" classes, hybrids will be delegated to merely a support class, because while you can balance encounters to be doable by these hybrid classes, then the "trinity" group would be able to simply breeze through them.

As Jarluf said, I still think people are locked too much into the current system of thinking. Remember Diablo? Sure, the fighting system in that game was far from perfect, but it did not rely on the "trinity" - you did not need healers or tanks. The diversity in part was enforced through implementation of immunities and very high resists. Supposedly City of Heroes also had a system which did not require the "trinity". So it does show that you can have a totally different, workable fighting system.

[Jarulf]

Prior to level 60 end-game raids, you don't actually need a warrior for anything.&nbsp; At level 60 end-game raids, what you propose is impossible.&nbsp; Elaboration below.
This sounds all well and good, but doesn't actually make sense.[right][snapback]87730[/snapback][/right]

We are not talking about how the game is and what can and can't be done in the game. We are complaining about how the game is and that it isn't "good enough" and what we would like it different. In that case, it is indeed not impossible at all, or at least, it doesn't have to be.

You cannot have a system where anyone can play whatever role they choose and have success without either making the encounters trivially easy for anyone employing the classes in their correct roles, or making all classes equally good at everything, thus obliterating the need for distinct classes or spells or abilities at all.

Well, you can, but that is not what I would propose. What I would like to see is that for different encounters, characters need to have different roles. Sometimes you meet monsters that DO go after the healers and weakly armored, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get both types of monsters mixed up. Throw in a whole bunch of other type of monsters and behaviour and it gets exiting. Sure, some characters might have a very hard time in some situations, some will have it easy in others. It varies.

Your main point, from what I can tell, since you are relatively inexperienced, is that any group of any class should be able to accomplish any thing. [right][snapback]87730[/snapback][/right]

No not at all. And in part, for everything but the very last raid encounters, this is actually true. Any class can for example solo most content (although might need higher or lower levels).

The point I was making though, was that I want more varied opponents and better, more varied and smarter monsters (smarter in that they react more to what is going on and what opponents they face). That would provide for more of a challenge and better game experience in my opinio. With varying monster behaviour and tactics, you also do have the potential to balance things out.

Then all you've done is replaced the current system, which doesn't make much sense, with another system, which doesn't make much sense.&nbsp; Just because it's different doesn't make it better.

Sure, but at least it is a system with variation, were there are more monsters than the "go for the one with most aggro" (and aggro generated the same way regardless of opponent) to one that vary with different situations. There are no longer the "tank get and hold aggro, DPSers deal damage and healer keep people alive" (yes, simplified, I know, just trying to make the point). You have asituation were the role of different characters may change and vary, when you encounter a new situation with new enemies, you really don't know what to except and so on.

I am not saying it is one way or the other, I am syaing, give us both, actually, give us a whole bunch of other types of monsters, tactics and so on as well. Mix them up and so on.

[kandrathe]

You are still locked into the existing system. Sure, one might have to change the system oe normal/elites. Why must EVERY monster have tons of damage just because it is supposed to be a hard encounter? Why no mix? Why not mix in hard hitting monsters with less hard hitting ones that for example goes after priests and such. After all, players are vastly different, not all hit hard, not all wear huge armor and so on, why not have the same for monsters? There are endless possibilities.
[right][snapback]87727[/snapback][/right]

I've been thinking about the aggro list, and it's not a bad solution to the AI problem. The MOB does need to "decide" who to hit and we know at least two factors that increase the values on the hate list include damage done to the mob and healing done. It would be fairly easy to modify that formula to account for potential threat (e.g. higher levels have more powerful spells), or easier kills (e.g. (FACTOR / AC*HP) * HATE). But how playable is a game where any MOB goes first to kill the priests, mages, and warlocks, druids, and then rogues before turning on the lower DPS turtle toons?

It would change the nature of the game entirely where you would need more hard shells to serial aggro and sacrifice themselves to those mobs with priests preparing, rezing, bubbling things out of combat from a safe distance. Or, you would depend on mobile battles where the mobs are slowed, hamstrung, dazed, with the soft shells kiting and healing on the run. "Now I'm the bait, since I generated the most hate. Run, Kite, Run!" You would neuter the tanking skills of the warriors to be able to generate threat to pin down mobs.

This really now descends into game theory. Does the AI reality matter, as long as the rules are known? There is a chance of winning and a chance of losing. If you look at how this game is built, it is very trivial to kill things marginally below your level, and very difficult to kill things marginally above your level. There is no point in killing things too low, or too high. So now you can structure the encounters to become more increasingly difficult, by MOB as increasingly higher levels. I'd say this is what Blizzard has done. In Diablo II terms, I think 1-60 is normal difficulty, 60+ is nightmare difficulty, and we have yet to see hell difficulty. People will play the game because they find winning a challenge, and there is a reward for winning. Now, another aspect to consider; Looking at WCIII vs WOW -- how much of the concept of intelligent enemy in WOW was dependant on the Horde vs Alliance PvP? Perhaps the PVE AI was irrelevant in many ways because your intelligent adversaries should be mostly other players. Should WOW be a Chessmaster 5000, or more like an arcade shoot em' up?

[Walkiry]

But how playable is a game where any MOB goes first to kill the priests, mages, and warlocks, druids, and then rogues before turning on the lower DPS turtle toons?&nbsp;
[right][snapback]87791[/snapback][/right]

Why any mob? (By "any" I think you mean "every", correct me if I'm wrong). Let's say you're fighting Majordomo, the tank is at the top of the hate list as per "standard" combat. Suddenly, a small, easy to kill, not so dangerous fire imp pops out of the lava and goes straight to the cloth wearers (he's in a lava pit, right?). Then another. And another. Soon you have to have a portion of your raid focusing on these easy to kill enemies to keep the back line intact, or else they'll end up swarming you. You don't even have to have these guys constantly out, maybe only for a crucial point of the fight, and if you get Majordomo below X hp they despawn (so you can kill them, or just snare them long enough to reach that point, whatever).

Even if it's not a very good example, the idea is not to have all the enemies going after the clothers, it's to give some a different set of "rules", rules that require something other than the standard hate list mechanics to make alternative methods for dealing with enemies more interesting and rewarding.

Say, a very tough end boss that can be weakened if a rogue picks the lock of a chest in the back of the room and uses a magical artifact on him. When the lockpicking starts, the rogue goes straight to the top of the hate list, and the team has to slow or stop the boss before he tears the poor leather wearer to ribbons, just long enough to get that artifact. Or, you can just smack him silly with your standard tank if your team composition is more suited for it. Or instead, have the boss run to a machine when he's low on health to activate a Goblin Engineering mega-mech (build by a kidnapped goblin, for example, that'S a quest right there); you can try to kill him before he reaches the machine, destroy the machine if you have more appropiate damage for that, or if you have engineers you can have them destroy only parts of the machine and salvage items that can be used to alter the composition of the mega-mech, making it easier... or harder, as any good Gnomish/Goblin Engineering Device should be ;-) Defenses pop out to protect the machine, so it's not trivial to just alter the mech; or just destroy the mech and be done with it, as any highly defensive tank would prefer.

In short, give more than one way to peel the same banana!

This really now descends into game theory.

And, thus, getting more interesting ^_^

[kandrathe]

Why any mob? (By "any" I think you mean "every", correct me if I'm wrong). Let's say you're fighting Majordomo, the tank is at the top of the hate list as per "standard" combat. Suddenly, a small, easy to kill, not so dangerous fire imp pops out of the lava and goes straight to the cloth wearers (he's in a lava pit, right?). Then another. And another. Soon you have to have a portion of your raid focusing on these easy to kill enemies to keep the back line intact, or else they'll end up swarming you.

...
[right][snapback]87808[/snapback][/right]

Essentially, Onyxia phase II -- you designate a team on either side of Onyxia to manage the whelp pits and keep the hatching dragonlings from overwhelming the raid. I meant any since the only thing currently that keeps the main healers alive is the tanks ability to stay #1 on the hate list. If anything interrupts the healers ability to keep the tanks alive its usually a wipe. If the healers go down, it's a wipe.

We aren't talking about any end game raid boss however, we are talking about the AI being smart about who it should target to win. If they were smart (like people are) they target the healers, then the easy to kill squishies that can hurt them the most, then worry about the hard shelled melee types last. The main thrust of the conversation is to me; "Why don't the MOBS act more intelligently?"

If Onyxia was "smart" she would turn around often, tail swiping and conflagrating groups regularly, repeatedly fireball the same squishies during phase II, and in general no one would have defeated her yet.

I would rather play a fun game where I sometimes win, than a realistic game where I always lose. Reality sucks.

[Pesmerga]

Reality sucks.
[right][snapback]87815[/snapback][/right]

Life. Still a poor substitute for video games.

::thumbs up::

[Walkiry]

I meant any since the only thing currently that keeps the main healers alive is the tanks ability to stay #1 on the hate list.&nbsp; If anything interrupts the healers ability to keep the tanks alive its usually a wipe.&nbsp; If the healers go down, it's a wipe.[right][snapback]87815[/snapback][/right]

I'd say that's the problem right there. If you balance things so tight that you need everyone doing X (X being exaclty the job they were designed to do and nothing else), I wouldn't call that fun. Mashing the same buttons and having all work go to hell because one slip-up is rather underwhelming. And not very clever, I'd rather have more than one way of winning (and losing).

If mobs do indeed less damage so that a tank slipup didn't mean an entire cloth wipe (or vice versa), the options for harassing the squishies would increase. And probably the options of how to deal with them.

[oldmandennis]

Walkiry, have you actually participated in 40 man raids? I'm not trying to be insulting, but your request seems to already have been implemented, for the most part.

Kand already mentioned the Ony whelps. Domo has 8 adds, I really don't think that fight needs any more chaos. Garr has 8 adds, one of which ate me last night after stunning his warlock. Someone else then had to jump in as emergency backup tank, and another somebody had to step up as warlock healer. Rag summons his sons. I haven't been to BWL, but I think Razorgore is supposed to be a very complex event, with exploding eggs, mind control, and a lot of orcs.

Drakksaith's adds can be kited by several classes.

Sithilus supposedly will have 40 man raids facing 100's of insects. Zul'gareb supposedly has some very highly scripted encounters.

I think Blizz has show a lot of imagination with the scripted encounters, atleast at the high end. Typically, scripting leads to more specialization of stratagies, not less, when the players try to script their response.

In your example, if the "rogue artifact" was sufficiently powerful, that would probably become THE way to complete that encounter. Only goofy people, the sort who do a 15 hunter UBRS, would try to just kill the thing.

[Walkiry]

Walkiry, have you actually participated in 40 man raids?&nbsp; I'm not trying to be insulting, but your request seems to already have been implemented, for the most part.

No, of course, never made it past 40 as I said.

But reading at what you described, the solution to every single one of them seems to be the same: tank must regain aggro, standard fight ensues. There's nothing specially clever about it; and according to Kan, the moment the heals stop or the tank lets slip some enemy, you're toast.

I think Blizz has show a lot of imagination with the scripted encounters, atleast at the high end.

Not entirely sure myself, it seems to me that all there is to it is to figure the count of your standard classes doing their job and get the only, single unimaginative solution, then repeat 100 times to get the loot you need for the next step in the raid ladder, as it's part of the only unimaginative solution.

Also, the "end game raids" are something far away that doesn't look too appealing frm this point of view. Repeating instances ad nauseum with massive hard to coordinate teams, loot bickering, and lots of wasted time...

In your example, if the "rogue artifact" was sufficiently powerful, that would probably become THE way to complete that encounter.&nbsp; Only goofy people, the sort who do a 15 hunter UBRS, would try to just kill the thing.
[right][snapback]87824[/snapback][/right]

It would depend on how hard it is to keep the rogue alive to open the chest, don't you think? That'd be a balance problem, not a design problem. And more importantly, you can give different loot to different solutions (for you to do solution B you'd need (a) rogue(s), and classes that can slow or stop that enemy, for the other one you'll have tanks and DPS). Same for the "Engineering" one. Carrot on a stick and all that.

[Tuftears]

No offense intended, but you're dismissing something before you've tried it. Figuring out strategies around the higher level encounters is definitely one of the highlights of the endgame.

Lately we've been doing AOE pulls when we have a couple mages and healers - it's great fun and speeds up runs significantly. No MT needed.

[Walkiry]

No offense intended, but you're dismissing something before you've tried it.&nbsp; Figuring out strategies around the higher level encounters is definitely one of the highlights of the endgame.
[right][snapback]87830[/snapback][/right]

Who says I haven't? WoW isn't the only game that does this. Dissecting the Hamidon in City of Heroes was the exact same thing, and once the "right" strategy was devised, running the same damn encounter for the 20th time to get yet another Hamidon Enhancement (the only loot that CoH had) was boring as hell. Mostly because the developers kept changing this encounter until only the "one" strategy was viable.

Once the loot was nerfed, everyone scrambled away from the encounter and back to the infinitely more fun missions. How many times would you run Onyxia if the special loot was removed?

[Tuftears]

Once the loot was nerfed, everyone scrambled away from the encounter and back to the infinitely more fun missions. How many times would you run Onyxia if the special loot was removed?

Right. WoW has many more endgame encounters than the one that CoH has. This is why I'm still playing WoW with my capped druid when I long ago capped a scrapper in CoH.

What you seem to want is more variety to the ways an individual encounter will play out, so that it will be hard to predict a single working solution, and solutions that work one time will not be guaranteed to work another time. Is that it? Seems different from the original stated topic of 'better AI for mobs'.

[Walkiry]

Seems different from the original stated topic of 'better AI for mobs'.
[right][snapback]87833[/snapback][/right]

And now you're bitching at me about a discussion drifting away from the original post?

Doesn't seem that way to me, but whatever dude.

EDIT: And by the way, no, what I want is more than one way to solve the encounters, with different team compositions, not the one way not being guaranteed to work.