Guild Wars 2

Okay, how about this everyone: a random rare mob that isn’t necessarily region specific, has adaptive AI, puts healing power reduced effectiveness on the player, fast, scales with player density so goes to legendary powerlevel with more than 10 people around, and has no timer so they can potentially strike anywhere at anytime and could be any mob type from any part of the game.

Let’s say people are running around in Orr, and all of a sudden a teagariff more powerful than usual who learns and adapts from previous experience randomly just plowed through a Plinx or temple event? In the closed quarters of the Grenth Temple for example it’ll add that environmental difficulty that plays to its strength (though that particular place at random with that particular mob would be very rare but it’s a hypothetical situation like I said any random ultra mob anywhere yes even a land shark ultra mob). Or a super poison or fire imp randomly invading a HoT map?

If you die when engaged in combat with it then you’re locked out of its rewards and fighting them reduces healing power automatically. They wouldn’t overcommit, but intelligently factor into account player builds, utilities, stats, and classes for employing their abilities. Since it’s assumed more than one player will be around they’d have more abilities than us.

Fantastic idea.
Looking forward to your source code to implement such a Monster.
Wonder why Ive never seen such a monster in other MMOs.

Apart from the enormous technical challenges, this would, of course, tear the forums apart. If people are annoyed with the jungle critters, which are challenging but predictable, imagine the fuss when there’s a creature that not only adapts but can strike anywhere. The flames would put the burning of Rome to shame.

Now that we have that out of the way…. I love it! You had me at adaptive. What gamer doesn’t dream of battling a foe like this?

Personally, I don’t think the critters need to be more powerful. Power could be one variant, but (since we’re imagining) there are other ways to make the experience interesting. Imagine a critter that skulks in the shadows, flittering just out of the corner of your eye, and making skittering noises that set your teeth on edge. Imagine another that aggros a nearby enemy and draws them to you. Or one that simulates a downed player and when you attempt to res it attacks you.

Or… one that takes a dislike to you personally, and stalks you wherever you kitten

ay. I think I’ve gone mad.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Personally, I don’t think the critters need to be more powerful. Power could be one variant, but (since we’re imagining) there are other ways to make the experience interesting. Imagine a critter that skulks in the shadows, flittering just out of the corner of your eye, and making skittering noises that set your teeth on edge. Imagine another that aggros a nearby enemy and draws them to you. Or one that simulates a downed player and when you attempt to res it attacks you.

Those ones sound fantastic, not to mention plausible. I can already feel the skulking, skittering creature… shudder.

errr… the playbase is already rally against the semi stupid hots mobs. I dont think there will be a chance that anet will put a better ai.

In fact, I do not care about if it learns anything. I would already be happy if there was diversity in attacks and encounters.

I been begging anet since day 1. sigh….

It would be a disaster to make enemies more intelligent than an average player.

Wethospu.6437:

It would be a disaster to make enemies more intelligent than an average player.

Not all enemies. That would be boring. Enemies need to be varied, and some should be smarter to give more challenge.

Think of HOT: was it a disaster to make maps more challenging than the average player is used to? There’s grumbling, to be sure, but there is also enjoyment.

When I was thinking about the OP’s idea, I had a thought which I didn’t voice in my original reply: there is a way to allow players to choose to battle a tougher monster without inflicting that monster on players who don’t want it.
There could be a corrupted statue somewhere. When a player interacts with it, it spawns a smart, sneaky monster somewhere who stalks the player. You never know when or where it’s going to strike, but you can be sure it will only strike the player who summoned it, like a curse.

They already had far better AI than is seen in the game now as far back as the original beta but it was nerfed because everyone complained it was too hard in the same way they complain about snipers etc now.

mauried.5608:

Fantastic idea.
Looking forward to your source code to implement such a Monster.
Wonder why Ive never seen such a monster in other MMOs.

Because people are afraid to challenge crazy ideas and see failure as failure and not a step towards progress/success (you were taught in school that this is true).

Anyways,

Titanfall apparently off-loaded some of it’s AI onto the Azure cloud… HMMM possibilities…

Wethospu.6437:

It would be a disaster to make enemies more intelligent than an average player.

Well there’s your answer, people would rather faceroll brain dead mobs against a dps timer than engage in challenging encounters that properly utilize the existing combat system.

This sounds like some pretty advanced coding tbh. What if, instead, we just allow the top 10% of PvPers to log in to PvE with Legendary Mob scaled builds and attack other players? This would achieve what you’re asking for and be easier to implement…

Phantaram with 300k health and 5k Celestial stats anyone? Nos with 500k HPs and Reaper’s Shroud? Lol

Tman.6349:

This sounds like some pretty advanced coding tbh. What if, instead, we just allow the top 10% of PvPers to log in to PvE with Legendary Mob scaled builds and attack other players? This would achieve what you’re asking for and be easier to implement…

Phantaram with 300k health and 5k Celestial stats anyone? Nos with 500k HPs and Reaper’s Shroud? Lol

That…. is an incredible idea!

I have this crazy image of Teq controlled by a human player. OoO

Do you have any idea of the difficulty to make this? I mean like, any idea at all? I don’t think you even grasp 1% of the difficulty. Come back when you’ve tried it yourself and you can give the devs some insight in how it should be done.

piza.9310:

Do you have any idea of the difficulty to make this? I mean like, any idea at all? I don’t think you even grasp 1% of the difficulty. Come back when you’ve tried it yourself and you can give the devs some insight in how it should be done.

Do you have any idea of the difficulty of making an mmo? I don’t think you even grasp 1% of the difficulty. Come back when you’ve made your own mmo and can give the devs some insight…. etc

Sorry about that. I couldn’t resist. Your argument was just so silly. You see, we’re not morons here. We have some idea of the difficulties of things. But you’ll notice this thread involves a little thing called …imagination. That’s where we imagine what it might be like if it were possible. Some people find imagining enjoyable. You should try it.

Tman.6349:

This sounds like some pretty advanced coding tbh. What if, instead, we just allow the top 10% of PvPers to log in to PvE with Legendary Mob scaled builds and attack other players? This would achieve what you’re asking for and be easier to implement…

Phantaram with 300k health and 5k Celestial stats anyone? Nos with 500k HPs and Reaper’s Shroud? Lol

That sounds awesome for special events actually!

Yeah I can imagine the coding challenges. In 1v1 you could write things like, “Autoattack-CC at this interval-Player catches on so pick from a randomized time pool under 30 seconds-charge-top priority for interrupting high CD utilities(abuse fake cast like shadow refuge would be a problem though but players wouldn’t have that inside information but would catch on with experience eventually)” and even ancient fighting games from Master System and arcades could be super hard and the world champion in chess lost to a computer way back in the 90s. So yeah 1v1 isn’t the problem it’s applying that to big groups and accounting for all the permutations and combinations as classes and potential utilities vary wildly. With adaptable AI however the need for human input is minimized:

http://www.ercim.eu/publication/Ercim_News/enw57/spronck.html

There’s already research into dynamic scripting so it’s a good start.