Combat problems

[tonycow]

I am not so sure on this whole argument that the AI is so clever, to me it boils down to the following:

Mobs have some nice interactions and scripted moves (like yubos peeing on your leg, carnivores attacking herbivores etc).

If a mob sees you like a goari it aggros you and basically follows you until it is killed by you, a guard or you swim away - not much AI there is there ? It didnt exactly stalk you with a pack of its mates waiting for an opportune moment to strike - EVERY time i get near one it charges to attack - this is regardless of me being the same level as said mob or 50 levels above it.

You do not see mobs adapting the way they fight based on the skills the player uses in combat - if you use melee/ranged/magic the result is always the same the mob comes up and wails on you until you die - the mobs like the players have a very limited set of combat skills they employ.

Tbh the only thing in this game different from any other mmorpg is the baf rules employed when another mob joins in after it walks up to you to inspect you and sees that you are fighting one of its friends. NOTE these are the ways mob aggro works - not what i would class as COMBAT AI.

The mobs dont run off and get reinforcments, switch which skills they use, try to flee when wounded or any other such tactics.

It seems to me that the game has nice scripting, nice interaction between NPCS but actually has very little combat AI at all, the mobs just work through a chain of attacks in a fight and dont adapt.

If you have seen any mob employ some cool tactics in a fight other than wade in and attack until you die then please post them as proof of this marvelous AI of which you speak - and no, just posting that a mob aggroed because you were near or fought a similar mob will do - that just proves that mobs baf or have an aggro radius - that is NOT combat tactics.

Also please dont get me wrong I do like Ryzom and can see its potential but I do feel some combat issues need to be fixed rather than just having it where you wade in for a do-or-die fight or die to a completely random spawn with no chance to flee. And yes, I do think they have made it so that the mobs in the environment seem to react well to each other and it does make the world seem more immersive than others but I wouldnt class that as combat AI , just good npc interactions

[mboeing]

Concerning AI lets see:

The good

- Mobs run around and search for prey. Some more some less.
- Some mobs do move in groups.
- Some mobs can call for help Kinchers apearantly (but seldom do so, this should be improved, especially if you lure one of a herd the whole herd should attack like it used to be in beta 1)
- Mob - Mob interaction
- Mob pathfinding (yes its part of AI)


The bad

- Mobs attacking regardless of lvl of opponent (well with only one life how should they know you are a lvl 1 or a lvl 250) You can learn which mobs you can handle and which you can't they don't =P
- Mobs not using range fight abilities. Most mobs prefer to run up and melee despite some having heavy range fight abilities (e.g. Cutes). This should be tweaked.
- Mobs not having many Affliction abilities. I just remember in beta 1 Kipees stunned you every second hit just about. And attacking a timari was always a bad idea due to the mass fear effect. Mobs should get more of these effects and actually use them.

So all over all the AI and the skills are not bad. It all requires a bit tweaking. But if they make the mobs all too powerful (and interesting to fight) people will start complaining about the game being muchtoo hard (especially to solo)

Lets wait and see what they have in stock for patch one.

[ahremark]

1) The con system - one minute you can fight dark green mob, its an easy fight and low exp - next fight you get your ass whooped easily by another dark green mob thats at the far end of the spectrum.

It's not that bad. On the newbie island the colour is always green (I don't know why), but on the mainland the con system works great assuming that you look on the colour of the frame around your target, it's always relative to your own level:

Green = Easy, not worth the effort
Blue = Moderate difficulty, soloable but might be a gamble
Cyan = Hard, you're not going to take this one solo, bring a friend.
Yellow = Harder, Suitable for a small team.
Orange = Deadly, but suitable for a big/powerful team.
Red = Certain death except perhaps for a raid sized team.
Purple = Will slaughter an army with a fart.

It's not really that complex and though it's not exact, you learn what you can and can't handle pretty fast. Personally i don't see any flaws in it.

2) Travelling to fights and mob placement/aggro rules - mobs that are easy kills still aggro you meaning delays getting about or nuisance adds during fight, compounded with the tight grouping of vast herds of mobs makes soloing hard, there should be a threshold where mobs no longer attack you on sight. With the current herding of animals and the apparent variety of baf rules among similar versions of the same mob pulling singles to solo is at most times random.

Honestly, agressive mobs aren't that common, they are usually found in small clusters that are very far apart. If they are easy kills, just whack them on the head with a pike.
They have a function and you mentioned it yourself, they add an extra level of danger if you're fighting in the wrong spot. (Because the thing with Ryzom is that even the smallest critters have the ability to kill you if you're not careful, a high level don't give you 'auto protection' like in some other MMORPG's)
If you're travelling, they are very easy to avoid. It saves you from the 'hit-autorun-and-go-get-some-coffee syndrome' and you should be grateful for that.

3) Escape - unless you have the sprint stanza (cant remember exact name without going into the game) available to escape you have little way to get out if things go wrong if either adds appear or you bite off more than you can chew through the poor con system. There should be some sort of sprint available as the current combat boils down to kill or be killed with no escape tactics viable. Note: even if the sprint stanza is available its so short lived and mobs track you so well most times you still fail to get away.

If you want to solo you'll have to take the added difficulty of being alone, if you take on a blue con solo you know that it might kill you. Why attack it at all if you're not prepared for death?
Rewards are relative to risk, if you want the big exp kills and the better loot, you need to risk something. If you can run away from everything that's too hard for you, there'll be no risk at all involved and you'll grow bored with the game in a week.
And honestly, death in Ryzom is no big deal.

[jaggarot]

In regard to escaping from mobs:

Try enchanting your weapon with "Fear" or the like (if you can't cast it yourself, then get some friendly MU to make a crystal for you - likewise sap crystals to power it).

Use those speed power-ups.

Keep in mind an escape route at all times.

Note tribal village locations - tribesmen will kill any aggro mobs that enter thier village.

Think laterally..........

This is not a game where everything is handed to you on a plate. You have to do at least some work to achieve anything.

I must admit that I'm starting to get a bit peeved by all the "This is broke Nevrax, fix it now" threads that are appearing because people haven't managed to get a handle on some aspect of the game system. Yes, there are some bugs and issues, but there's also an awful lot of people who seem to want a plain "kill mob" button .

The golden rule is to experiment, and to do so continuously. Something that worked at level 20 may well not work at level 50. Look for alternatives and try and think outside the box.

Yes, being stalked by weeny gingos on the way to a high level hunting spot is a pain - which is why I use teleports to avoid them.........

Sorry about the rant. I'm not saying that anyone is playing the game "wrong", it's an MMORPG - there is no "wrong", only different styles of play. But be aware that some styles work less well than others and be prepared to modify your own style accordingly.

(Sorry about the rant, but this is bugging me!)

[tyreal74]

i dont normally bash other games but if you think the system is bad in ryzom, then horizons is awful, and i like horizons, ai is betetr here, it has CD lots of pluses,

Combat here isnt bad just different you ahve to think what your doing (that will shock some people)

[krone9]

not sure about the color scheme - I regularly solo cyan mobs and always do yellows if I have a friend

What exactly does it indicate - anyone know how exactly the color is worked out (eg proportion of its hit points plus damage dealing abilities compared to your level or comparison of its highest level purely against yours or comparison of sum of skill levels in various areas vs your sum of skill levels etc)

cos I'm wondering if hypothetically I had a crafter (note not forager as they'd need extra hit points) who did no magic or fighting, but had reached lvl 100, how mobs would appear to them. In theory the smallest yubo should be blue - would this be true?

[borg9]

not sure about the color scheme - I regularly solo cyan mobs and always do yellows if I have a friend

What exactly does it indicate - anyone know how exactly the color is worked out (eg proportion of its hit points plus damage dealing abilities compared to your level or comparison of its highest level purely against yours or comparison of sum of skill levels in various areas vs your sum of skill levels etc)

cos I'm wondering if hypothetically I had a crafter (note not forager as they'd need extra hit points) who did no magic or fighting, but had reached lvl 100, how mobs would appear to them. In theory the smallest yubo should be blue - would this be true?

The con system is how the mobs relate to each other with in the same species. It has no relation to the player character. One Yellow mob is not the same as another Yellow mob. Its purpose is as a guide to the character not as a 'OK to fight' vs 'Not OK to fight' indicator.

The simplest way to use the system is ...

Green = low level for that species.

If you find you can kill a green Yubo, easily you need to try a blue one.... etc

However just because you can kill a green Yubo easily this doesn't mean you can kill all green mobs.

**** Note this holds true in most cases, however sometimes the jump in strength between the colours of the con system is large.****

This is very true in the case of carnivores ... jump between the different levels in Cloppers is larger than the jump between Yubos.

Also in the case of Kipee, sometimes the jumps are not linear. I have been lead to believe Hard Kipee have more HPs than Strong Kipee. I have not tested this so its just hear-say.

[ahremark]

not sure about the color scheme - I regularly solo cyan mobs and always do yellows if I have a friend

Well, i suppose the colours and difficulties aren't just relative to your level, they also depend on the idividual. A mage might find blue mobs easy and cyan ones moderate while a light fighter (Me) needs help with the cyan ones.
It depends a lot on how much damage you can/do take and how fast you can deal damage to the enemy.
I know that the colours of the same mob changes as i increase my levels, so they are definately relative to my character.

[fantasmo]

well im also a bit frustated about the " damn this mob is eatin me alive , lets Run, wheres the damn Sprint icon here, aaaargh still chewin' on my leg , Dead" thingy ^^

in evry kind of mmorpg theres a kind of "escaping" , dont know why they didnt have it in this game

but i love the Eco system , its SUMMEEEEER!!

[tonycow]

Dont get me wrong and it does sound like I am griping a lot - so far I have been enjoying Ryzom and the immersive world is far better than the one many games have.

However I do think some facets of the combat system and picking fights/use of tactics/escaping have been overlooked or maybe not tweaked as well as they should have been during the beta - combat is one of the most fundamental elements of any mmorpg and having a broken indicator for mob con level and aggresiveness at launch is plain sloppy.

This is one of the few forums I have ever posted on in all my time playing mmorpgs and I am not one of those who quit a game and comes back to flame it. All these problems I do see within Ryzom I am posting about as I would like to see some of them addressed by the devs in the hope of making it far better than the competition - this game has massive potential and could be one of the best out there. If i didnt care for the game I would simply quit and go back to play one of my other mmorpgs I currently have advanced characters on. However, I want to see Ryzom succeed

As the game stands right now its up for some very stiff competition from some huge name mmorpgs just around the corner - if the developers can make the whole process of combat more fun then that will help them to keep more players when the big boys show up on the scene.