Ryzom

In development wrote:We want to work on the bosses including Aen the Desert Blade, who were once all available on the mainland.
What we have in mind:

* They will keep the same name and look, plus they will stay in the same regions.
* Their respawn rate would be random and wouldn't be reset after a server reboot.
* The armour statistics would change, except the quality. The stats of the "old" armour already in game shouldn't change.
* The armour drop would be different. the NPC would drop only pieces and not a whole set.
* Their AI would be redesigned to bring new challenge.

Feel free to give your opinion here.

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You say Aen and you have my attention.

Thank you for hearing out the community on the way to acquire the armours piecemeal instead of instantly. Crafting plans for each piece individually may have been a lot harder to implement, but I can deffinatly find myself backing this implementation. I hope the random spawntime will indeed discourage or rather make it impossible to camp the bosses.

Anything that changes the AI of these bosses gets a thumbs up as well, for as long as they will be really challenging. Keep in mind that players and developpers don't always think alike, and players are bound to find an exploitable weak point in mob AI way faster and easier.

Due to the lack of information on the change of statistics I am a bit worried tho. However I fully understand it's best not to communicate to much on these at this point.
Make the statistics to high and anyone will be wanting one for the 'uberness' no doubt and you give even more incentive to 'camp'.
Make them to low and no one may really want to go after them.
It's a matter of considerate balancing and availability with the incredible annoying and hard process of creating a top of the line player crafted heavy armour (due to more degrades at higher levels and the scarcity of the needed materials which get camped because of lack of challenging AI on those mob bosses).

I'm looking forward to hear more on this Marjo.
Keep it up!


Edit: And before I forget: are there any plans on taking a look at the AI of mob bosses as to make them more challenging as well?

Might be an idea to have them spawn in different places in regions too.

My concern with single-part drops is that Aen then becomes our ground, repetetive 'raid' content and competition etc over her/them then becomes that much more snarky and problematic.

yay, i miss Pei!

and as an also, if you can put all boss mobs on random timers without being affected by resets/reboots you will improve that aspect of the game immeasurably.

rushin wrote:yay, i miss Pei!

and as an also, if you can put all boss mobs on random timers without being affected by resets/reboots you will improve that aspect of the game immeasurably.

Definately. Same thing with the supernodes.

Marjo wrote:Feel free to give your opinion here.

These all sound like great ideas to me! I hope that the new armor statistics are not better than craftable supreme gear.

Regarding NPC AI:

Don't make killing the boss a matter of figuring out how to pull l it away from the minions!

Make it *impossible* to pull from the minions. Whenever someone hits the boss, it aggros all the minions, even if they're 1000m away. (Ring already has this group AI, but the range is a bit short) This would of course requires the number of minions to be reduced, but that's good. You should have to fight the whole camp, not just one NPC. It makes no sense at all for some awesome bandit squad to stand by stupidly while their boss is murdered over the hill.

sehracii wrote:It makes no sense at all for some awesome bandit squad to stand by stupidly while their boss is murdered over the hill.

Elaborating on that idea, let's remember that these are HOMIN bosses. Their behaviour should indicate that they have the same abilities and intelligence (as near as can be within technical limitations) as player-controlled homins. A player-homin can call for help over distance via nanoseed communication. So even if the minions couldn't see their boss, they should still be able to come to its aid. Though this might be stretching my intended example a bit, the principle remains: NPC homins' behaviour should be consistent with that of PC homins as much as possible.

Marjo wrote:Feel free to give your opinion here.

This is all good to hear !

Great news again!