Random (M)MORPG thoughts

[rusty_shackleford]

IDK if you was mentioned, but:
FFXI enemies have the concept of senses, each enemy typically has a couple different kinds, or only one. You can cover your scent and be invisible to some enemies, or run thru water to get them(enemies that hunt by smell) to stop following you.

Always thought that was really neat.

Also, many enemies go to sleep at night.

[Norfleet]

Distance matters in a modern 3D game, as I suspect you realize perfectly well, for a variety of reasons, perhaps most importantly pathing costs, which are actually brutal to calculate between two or more dynamic positions.

This isn't actually true. I know this because I've done it before. The typical technique for calculating EXTREME LONG DISTANCE PATHING across terrain is to break it up into levels of scale. You don't need to work out how to dodge every tree and rock between LA and NYC. You just need to figure out how to Escape from LA. The individual micro-obstacles are irrelevant at this point because you're only calculating the path on the high-level map (which path you take to get from LA to NYC), and the path on the low-level map (how to Escape from LA). You don't have to even look at every single rock in Nevada, because you already have a high-level pathability map that you used to determine that you can get there, and it's only once you're in it that the pathfinder needs to figure out how to get you to the next map square in higher detail. The high-level pathability grid already knows you can get from Sector [4,10] to Sector [5,10], and the sectors you will thus traverse going from one sector on a huge map to the next.

So this claim is trivially and demonstrably false, and you can see it yourself: Just go to Google Maps and ask it to plot you a course from a random building in LA to an equally random building in NYC. Performing this request is so trivial that Google doesn't even try force you to register for it, and we're talking about doing this on a map that has a scale of "the entire fucking real world". Is that not a big enough map for you?

Then there's the issue that, regardless of the actual density of enemies, the number of entities that have to be tracked goes as the square of the distance - cube if they can be in the air or sea!

Space partitioning is how this is done. A given worker only needs to handle the entities within its workspace. And again, "distance" is just a number. By your logic, it would be impossible to have any game in set in space because the distances in space are measured in AUs or even lightyears, which would be a massive amount of "distance". The maximum any game would ever be able to handle would be ants! Right? Right? But no. Distance is just a number. It doesn't matter whether the distance is 500 lightyears or 500 millimeters. What matters is the zone of interactability in strict relative terms.

Even the actual density is far less important than you'd think. Consider: Why does a modern MMO's instanced raid choke and die when an instance consists of less than 20 people in it fighting each other with autohit attacks (read: no actual entities are generated when you cast magic missile), while running on a modern multi-core server with dozens to hundreds of giga of RAMs and gigabit intertube connections, when a game from 1996 could host hundreds of spaceships shooting each other with physically simulated bullets (every bullet bounces around wildly and can interact with anyone or anything they strike) in a single instance running on a shitty 1996 server over dialup intertubes? Answer: Because modern developers are talentless hacks. Despite having a thousand times the computing resources to work with, they cannot even replicate the feats of decades past.

[Stack of Turtles]

Distance matters in a modern 3D game, as I suspect you realize perfectly well, for a variety of reasons, perhaps most importantly pathing costs, which are actually brutal to calculate between two or more dynamic positions.

This isn't actually true. I know this because I've done it before. The typical technique for calculating EXTREME LONG DISTANCE PATHING across terrain is to break it up into levels of scale. You don't need to work out how to dodge every tree and rock between LA and NYC. You just need to figure out how to Escape from LA. The individual micro-obstacles are irrelevant at this point because you're only calculating the path on the high-level map (which path you take to get from LA to NYC), and the path on the low-level map (how to Escape from LA). You don't have to even look at every single rock in Nevada, because you already have a high-level pathability map that you used to determine that you can get there, and it's only once you're in it that the pathfinder needs to figure out how to get you to the next map square in higher detail. The high-level pathability grid already knows you can get from Sector [4,10] to Sector [5,10], and the sectors you will thus traverse going from one sector on a huge map to the next.

So this claim is trivially and demonstrably false, and you can see it yourself: Just go to Google Maps and ask it to plot you a course from a random building in LA to an equally random building in NYC. Performing this request is so trivial that Google doesn't even try force you to register for it, and we're talking about doing this on a map that has a scale of "the entire fucking real world". Is that not a big enough map for you?

DYNAMIC POSITIONS.
Static, even one-sidedly static, is more or less trivial if you can precalculate.

[Norfleet]

DYNAMIC POSITIONS.
Static, even one-sidedly static, is more or less trivial if you can precalculate.

What, exactly, constitutes a "dynamic position"? Some sort of moving target, like an airplane? Because that shit's 1950s-era tech. Or did you mean some sort of dynamic map where the terrain is subject to change? Because, you know, that's just Minecraft. It's perfectly possible to pathfind Minecraft.

[Stack of Turtles]

DYNAMIC POSITIONS.
Static, even one-sidedly static, is more or less trivial if you can precalculate.

What, exactly, constitutes a "dynamic position"? Some sort of moving target, like an airplane? Because that shit's 1950s-era tech. Or did you mean some sort of dynamic map where the terrain is subject to change? Because, you know, that's just Minecraft. It's perfectly possible to pathfind Minecraft.

I didn't say it was impossible.
I said MMO designers aren't going to spend the extra computation time on it when nobody would care enough to pay extra for it.

[Norfleet]

I said MMO designers aren't going to spend the extra computation time on it when nobody would care enough to pay extra for it.

That's because you're viewing it in terms of selling them this as a feature. That's the wrong approach. You make lions hunt players by scent from across the map. Then you charge them extra money for premium scent-masking consumables so that the lions STOP hunting them.

[Stack of Turtles]

I said MMO designers aren't going to spend the extra computation time on it when nobody would care enough to pay extra for it.

That's because you're viewing it in terms of selling them this as a feature. That's the wrong approach. You make lions hunt players by scent from across the map. Then you charge them extra money for premium scent-masking consumables so that the lions STOP hunting them.

MMO players don't want to be attacked by FEWER mobs. That's where the loot is!

[Norfleet]

MMO players don't want to be attacked by FEWER mobs. That's where the loot is!

That's a matter of incentives and outcomes. Believe me, you CAN convince people to want to be attacked by fewer mobs. If fighting and being attacked by mobs is unrewarding and the rewards come from being able to traverse the map and reach resources WITHOUT having to get into fights, you WILL convince players to want to avoid being attacked. See: Every Zombie Survival Game, where zombies don't really drop good loot.

[Stack of Turtles]

MMO players don't want to be attacked by FEWER mobs. That's where the loot is!

That's a matter of incentives and outcomes. Believe me, you CAN convince people to want to be attacked by fewer mobs. If fighting and being attacked by mobs is unrewarding and the rewards come from being able to traverse the map and reach resources WITHOUT having to get into fights, you WILL convince players to want to avoid being attacked. See: Every Zombie Survival Game, where zombies don't really drop good loot.

Sure, but no MMO does this, and games that do it suck. Zombie games in particular suck precisely because combat is just tedious busywork you avoid as much as possible; doubly so because most zombie game devs have a fetish for making every fight a retarded high-stakes gamble with some unavoidable chance of being fucked because that's how zombie movies (which are also fucking boring and shitty) work.

[Norfleet]

Sure, but no MMO does this

On the contrary: PLENTY of games do this. It is incredibly common for games to have some mission/raid/quest where your goal is to accomplish something, like, say, killing a SPECIFIC thing, but there are also a bunch of trash mobs you want to avoid.

and games that do it suck.

I want to disagree, but yeah, those games do suck. Most of us really DO want to just kill them all and be done with it. Nonetheless, they exist and continue to annoy us.

[Stack of Turtles]

and games that do it suck.

I want to disagree, but yeah, those games do suck. Most of us really DO want to just kill them all and be done with it. Nonetheless, they exist and continue to annoy us.

You'll notice how this is also true of real life now that combat isn't worth it anymore.

[Norfleet]

You'll notice how this is also true of real life now that combat isn't worth it anymore.

Nobody seems to have informed the Russians of this, though. They seem determined to kill every random trash mob they find, even the ones that aren't aggressive, even as they burn through their dwindling supply of ammo doing it, instead of hitting anything important.

[anvi]

Another thing I wanted to see in MMOs is for mobs to not be blind and dumb.

it compounds the complexity of the game itself which is why some things are a matter of "suspended disbelief" in order to retain a practical means for game play.

I agree but sometimes it can create new and interesting gameplay too. Maybe creatures go to where you roughly are and then they start tracking you. If you walk through water it stops footprints. Maybe you can setup an ambush for them knowing they are coming for you. Would really like to see games just advance in general. As much as I hate on Skyrim it did have a few outposts where you get attacked by archers and stuff if you get near. I thought that was cool. Also in STALKER, the AI in those games will team up and come for you tactically, even if you go into a building they will come up the stairs etc. Would love to see more stuff like that in RPGs.

IDK if you was mentioned, but:
FFXI enemies have the concept of senses, each enemy typically has a couple different kinds, or only one. You can cover your scent and be invisible to some enemies, or run thru water to get them(enemies that hunt by smell) to stop following you.

Always thought that was really neat.

Also, many enemies go to sleep at night.

I love that, didn't know they had stuff like that.