Guild Wars 2

Background:

It is been bothering me for a while, that the game play in GW2 is lacking. In GW1 mobs will fight on a fairly even playing field as the players. Similar skills, stats, etc. But in GW2 they seem to be fighting on a totally different universe. They have health and damages well outside of the players’ reach. At the same time they are dumb as a brick.

Right now we have mobs randomly spawning in the middle of the players. They are not organized at all and do not work as an unit. I think a simple Mob Unit AI will really help in providing the players will a new type of challenge.

Purpose:

Unless the Mob Unit fights in an organized fashion, the players will never be organized. There is no need right now.

The mob units should fight in a similar fashion as a player zerg. It sounds complicated but it doesn’t have to be. Please read on. ^^

Required:

1) No random mob spawns for the unit – There is no mob spawns for a unit of mobs. All the mobs involved in the fight already exists right from the start.

For game play reasons, there may be mobs spawning around this fight. However they are not part of the unit of mobs.

2) Mobs will stack on their Champion as their commander – A unit of mob consist of 1 Champion, 2 elites and 8 Veteran mobs. They will always stack on the Champion as their commander; going exactly wherever he goes.

3) Each champion have a different field+blast – A “Water Champion” will let loose a water field once every 30 seconds at its location. A “Fire Champion” will let loose a fire field once every 30 seconds. etc

A champion will automatically do 5 blast finishers (in a roll) every 10 seconds.

That means a champion will by itself fulfil the function of field+blash finisher for its whole unit.

These field will be bigger than normal (480 in size) to make it easy for the mobs to use.

Some champions have alternating fields. That means water field, then 30 seconds later fire field. Then 30 seconds later static field. etc.

4) Mobs in a unit are downed, and needs to be finished – The mobs in the unit won’t help their downed allies. Instead the downed mobs automatically gains 1% health per second. The players need to go and finish the mobs.

The downed mob have the same health as a regular mob, not their regular health. So you do not need to drain a champion’s health twice. It is champion’s health+ health of a regular mob.

Mobs that requires finishing will give 25% more exp and 25% more chance at dropping loots. This will compensate for the extra time needed to kill them.

5) Focus fire – Mob units will try to hit the same player(s) to down them.

Result:

We now have mob units that are designed to fight together. They will stack together. They will get benefits from fields+blast finishers. They now require players to finish them. And they will focus fire.

Basic Tactics:

Now we have established what a unit is, we can move on to unit tactics. We will start with basic tactics. That means the unit, by itself, try to survive and deal damage against the players.

Basic:

1) Always on the move – the unit is always on the move. This make it hard for the players’ AoE to deal its full damage.

They may pause for a few seconds when the Champion drops a field, to let the blash finishers take effect.

2) Find large cluster of players (AoE mob unit) – The mob unit will prioritize attacking an area with the highest concentration of players. This will allow the mobs to use their AoE to maximum effect.

3) Pick on the glass cannons (single target mob unit) – The mob unit will prioritize berserker (glass cannon) players to down them first.

4) Dodge together – The mob unit will dodge together with its Champion. When to dodge is up for debate. However when there are 10+ AoE nukes under this unit’s feet, maybe it is a good time to dodge together.

Advanced Tactics:

Now let us move on to advanced tactics. That means the unit working together with other units to fight the players. There are many options. I will provide two options here as examples.

1) Reserves – The mob units form up depths of units, to slowly wear out the players. For example a depth of 3 layers means 3 groups of mob units.

The first unit will engage the players, damaging them and putting the player’s skills on cooldown.

Shortly afterwards to second unit will join the fight. The now weakened players (lost of health, skills on cooldown, etc) will have a harder time fighting this second unit.

Finally the third unit joins the fight. They have a good chance of overwhelming the players, because the players are “exhausted”.

2) Lure – The mobs lure the players into a trap.

To simplify things, let’s say there are only two type of units:

1) Warrior Hammer Unit – This unit are melee fighters.
2) Warrior Rifle Unit – This unit are range fighters.

The mobs will split into two groups, one on the left and one on the right. Each group have a Warrior Rifle Unit in the front and a Warrior Hammer Unit in the back.

The battle starts with the Warrior Rifle Units picking off soft player targets from range. The players have two options:

i) The players charge themselves into one of the two groups of mobs.

Let’s say the players go after the left group of mobs. These Warrior Rifle Unit on the left will roll/dodge back twice, while the Warrior Hammer Unit charge forward to intercept. The Warrior Hammer Unit on the left will take the damage, while the Warrior Rifle Unit (now behind them) can keep firing.

At the same time, the mob group to the right will move in to assist the left side. The players, exhausted from the fight on the left, will have a hard time fighting this right side group off.

ii) The players try to kill these Warrior Rifle Units from range

The players are bound to focus more on one of the sides. This will be obvious since one of the units will be taking more damage. Let’s say the left side of the mobs takes more damage.

The Warrior Hammer Unit on the right will charge in when the players aren’t looking. They will now draw the players’ attention.

The Warrior Hammer Unit on the left will now charge in to assist. Once again, the now exhausted players will have a hard time fighting this group from the left.

For the whole fight, the more glassy Warrior Rifle Unit gets to shoot at the player without much risk.

Watch videos on Rome: Total War for more ideas. For example:

Any opinions on this? Anyone else want to see an improvement in mob unit AI?

Is my proposal that bad? Or is it too hard to understand?

would this be instance-related or open world, because however engaging and challenging it sounds, if it’s open world most players would rather go around this glob of pain than work out tactics and organise to take them down, at least it’s what i think.. now if it were instanced within a larger-than-5-player-party instance… huhuhuh then it’d be quite an interesting change to AI and gameplay.

I wish it was like that on veteran and elite mobs.

I understand that regular mobs are dumb for low level players and lazy players.
but veterans should be exactly like that.

also all dynamic events should spawn veteran mobs and not regular mobs.

also to the AI devs, please see these:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012410/Improving-AI-Decision-Modeling-Through

http://gdcvault.com/play/1015683/Embracing-the-Dark-Art-of

MuxyKillin.7036:

would this be instance-related or open world, because however engaging and challenging it sounds, if it’s open world most players would rather go around this glob of pain than work out tactics and organise to take them down, at least it’s what i think.. now if it were instanced within a larger-than-5-player-party instance… huhuhuh then it’d be quite an interesting change to AI and gameplay.

I am talking about instanced Living Story events. Like inside LA during Escape from LA. Players can get organized in there to fight against organized mobs.

The open world is mostly roaming for most players. So the mobs should be roaming as well (unorganized).

Lalangamena.3694:

I wish it was like that on veteran and elite mobs.

I understand that regular mobs are dumb for low level players and lazy players.
but veterans should be exactly like that.

also all dynamic events should spawn veteran mobs and not regular mobs.

also to the AI devs, please see these:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012410/Improving-AI-Decision-Modeling-Through

http://gdcvault.com/play/1015683/Embracing-the-Dark-Art-of

They may also need to hire someone with experience in RTS to help write the AI.

I think in large open events that are instants like LA one would be to much chaos. Firstly the lag some experience (fellow lag guildies) would not be able to handle it, secondly I think this AI system would take months if not years of work only to be wasted by people zerging them down. I would LOVE this style in Dungeons. Instead of big health bar OP moves Boss have 5 or 6 other AI all with similar stats to take on in epic fight.

It would also make a various and underused control skills a lot more apealing, support would have a reason other than dmage buffs, melee would be a roll of the dice and trust in your fellow team-mates. It has a lot of potentian for fun encounters, a lot of potential for epic fights… there’s just one hitch….. think Dredge fractal clown car…. That’s gotta be one of the primary issues of such an AI change… at least related to the reserves tactic you mentioned.

Lankybird.8149:

I think in large open events that are instants like LA one would be to much chaos. Firstly the lag some experience (fellow lag guildies) would not be able to handle it, secondly I think this AI system would take months if not years of work only to be wasted by people zerging them down. I would LOVE this style in Dungeons. Instead of big health bar OP moves Boss have 5 or 6 other AI all with similar stats to take on in epic fight.

I believe the first part can already be done.

1) No random mob spawns for the unit
2) Mobs will stack on their Champion as their commander
3) Each champion have a different field+blast
4) Mobs in a unit are downed, and needs to be finished
5) Focus fire

The basic and advanced tactics may take longer. But those can be done later. ^^

MuxyKillin.7036:

It would also make a various and underused control skills a lot more apealing, support would have a reason other than dmage buffs, melee would be a roll of the dice and trust in your fellow team-mates. It has a lot of potentian for fun encounters, a lot of potential for epic fights… there’s just one hitch….. think Dredge fractal clown car…. That’s gotta be one of the primary issues of such an AI change… at least related to the reserves tactic you mentioned.

Oh yes. This will definitely make the fights more exciting.

Now players need to stack to buff, just to be at event strength as the mobs.

They will also need to debuff the mobs to reduce their damage. The elite and champion mobs with 25 stacks of might will hurt a lot. Things like Protection and Fury will also need to be removed.

The only way to survive these AoE onslaughts will be stacking together to reduce overall damage taken (maximum AoE is 5 targets).

When basic and advanced tactics are implemented, the fights becomes much harder. The players will have to listen closely to their commander (on teamspeak, mumble) to have be successful.

CHIPS.6018:

Is my proposal that bad? Or is it too hard to understand?

If they aren’t going to put the resources into fixing the Ranger pet AI, what ever on this blue planet that we live on makes you think they’re going to put the resources neccessary to fix the same code that the Ranger pet AI uses?

thefantasticg.3984:

CHIPS.6018:

Is my proposal that bad? Or is it too hard to understand?

If they aren’t going to put the resources into fixing the Ranger pet AI, what ever on this blue planet that we live on makes you think they’re going to put the resources neccessary to fix the same code that the Ranger pet AI uses?

Fixing the mob AI is more important than fixing the ranger pet AI. Not every player plays the ranger. But all the players have to deal with the mob AI.

And BTW when the mob AI is fixed, the ranger pet AI will probably be fixed along with it. ^^

The way I see it, mob AI is nearly non-existent right now. If they have a hammer, they swing it at the player and spam skills. If they have a rifle, they shoot at the player and spam skills. etc.

The mobs don’t think. They also aren’t aware of their allies around them. Each mob just fight by itself.

This type of AI may work in the open world, where the players roam around. It doesn’t work as well when there is a zerg of players.

Right now the only reason these mobs provides the players with any sort of challenge is their 1,000 times of health and 10 times the damage, when compared to the players.

These kind of fights are getting dull tbh.