Question to Nevrax regarding kitins

[katriell]

I'd like to ask Nevrax, or the event team, or whoever is able to answer officially, whether there would be any reaction from the kitins if this happened:

Say players started frequently attacking kitin nests, clearing Almati Woods, etc. in a direct offensive against the kitins. Not tied to any official GM-organized event, but purely player-driven action. Would such actions have any effect? Would the kitin invade more?

So far it seems players usually wait to be spoon-fed official homins vs. kitins events by Nevrax. Rarely is initiative taken to really attack the kitins independantly of such events. Maybe this is why we don't have very frequent invasions/kitin activity?

Yesterday the Dragonblades went into Almati Woods and killed a bunch of kitins, especially kirosta. Today we attacked Tunnel of Woe with the help of many others. That is why I've gotten to thinking about this.


I'm not looking for cynical and pessimistic comments from the peanut gallery, mind you...

[kuroari]

We have a peanut gallery!? *dashes off in frantic search*

--

Aye, i do think that something like that would be VERY nice but would require some Top of the line NPC reactions that i think Ryzom just doesnt have. i've begun to see this AI in other games though.. and who knows - maybe one day down the line we can actually see influence like that in the game!

-this is assuming, of course, that our actions have little/no effect on how the kitin feel about our attacks.


can someone official fill in on this one?

[katriell]

I was thinking more along the lines of totally player action, having nothing to do with GMs or NPCs. Like if we started doing lots of attacks on kitins, and announcing it in the forums. Nevrax reads the forums, so kitin activity could be adjusted according to how much visible offensive is going on.

They're probably more likely to do something like that than implement new NPC interactions and fancy AI code, I'd guess.

[geezas]

It would be cool that if alot of homins attacked a nest the nest would become less populated or more populated, maybe other kinds of mobs would be spawned, more offensive, or a neighbouring nest would send reinforcements to help them out, a trigger when something happens, when you kill the 'queen' the nest dies for a a while untill there is a new one born. One can dream

[bluefve]

Sounds like it might be in the scope of R2, eh?

[kuroari]

I was thinking more along the lines of totally player action, having nothing to do with GMs or NPCs. Like if we started doing lots of attacks on kitins, and announcing it in the forums. Nevrax reads the forums, so kitin activity could be adjusted according to how much visible offensive is going on.

They're probably more likely to do something like that than implement new NPC interactions and fancy AI code, I'd guess.

o well, just two ways down the same road
though AI would be so much cooler

[dazman76]

It's a great idea, but would require a fair bit of balance I think. Some mobs are already equipped with some of the needed intelligence - the mobs Nevrax use for the Kitin invasions. I don't think it goes as far as inter-group AI though, i.e. the mobs have an additional objective of protecting neighbouring teams.

I guess this depends on how much of the event mobs AI is automated, and how much is controlled by pulling the strings in the background. I personally don't think any of the mob counts are auto-balanced, and that Nevrax/CSRs are wholly responsible for spawn types, location and count. Secondly, I'm not sure the fighters have any more AI than 'protect their boss' - again I could be wrong there. Still, that could be used to control these events to a point - as long as a boss mob can choose to help another boss mob, his fighters will tag along automatically.

The main (and possibly the killer) problem, is when and how to 'turn it off' In other words, the AI is probably balanced against your progress, to give you a good challenge. So, you kill 2 kitin, another 4 popup. You kill those, and another 6 popup. That's very simple mechanics, and wouldn't hold interest long - plus, in a fairly short time you'd be up to your knees in Kitin that you can't kill quickly enough, and quite possibly hit a brick wall at full speed Without human interaction in realtime, it's very hard to manage the balance of mobs versus effort. And sadly, without fairly advanced AI, the mobs will either be programmed to try and win, or to just try and be competitive for whoever is fighting them - because the only balance mechanics available are mob numbers and mob strengths, there's a potential for the fight to be over far too quickly, or become completely stagnant, or indeed be far too much to overcome.

If Nevrax could add mechanics to the game specifically for this kind of thing, it may be possible. However, I can only see it being an 'instance' kind of battle - in other words, you and your party speak to a 'Kitin Hunter' NPC and trigger the start of the battle, maybe by choosing from a number of difficulty levels at the beginning. This way the event could have a proper beginning and end, since you're probably not talking about a group of standard mobs.

But, I'm thinking the idea doesn't quite fit with what you had in mind I think you're looking for something very 'organic' which just fits in the current world, and that is even more difficult to achieve - because you also need to consider the balance of *everything* that could be affected by the event. Also, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like the start of my plans for R2