[MUD-Dev] Tactical Combat and Traps (was the gender thread)

[Katrina McClelan]

On Wed, 9 Jun 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:

> This sort of tactic (not literally illusions, but other uses such as bardic
> techniques of enticement and the like) are extremely common on graphical
> muds. In fact, many players consider them to be unfair! As an example, it's
> quite common in Ultima Online to teleport up onto ledges and shoot or
> magically fry monsters that cannot reach you below--and it's considered to
> be "cheap" because there's no element of risk (UO monsters are really quite
> stupid, and can't teleport up onto the ledge after you). Also common is
> using any of several skills to lure monsters into traps where you have
> summoned things like energy vortices or blade spirits that are
> uncontrollable but deadly aggressive for the duration of their existences.
> No risk to the player, and the monster gets chopped/fried to death.
> Sometimes these traps rely on the landscape--other times, players use spells
> like Wall of Stone to make the traps.

Trapping is fair, so long as the monsters have enough smarts to make it
somewhat difficult.  The problem is that, as you said, the monsters are
plain dumb.  If the monsters would take any availible cover this would
work better.  In my example, we had to drop the portcullis, and at that, I
failed to mention that the ogres did manage to make for cover before we
finished them off... they were wounded enough that the tactic served its
purpose and we were able to finish them off with more conventional methods
easily.  If the monsters are too dumb to act with a sense of self
preservation, then the problem is in the game engine.  The real problem
here is an issue of monsters being tuned to a hack and slash style of
combat, while ignoring a tactical one.  What if monsters set traps as such
for the players to fall into?  How would a player react?  If you can make
monsters have some sense of when to flee, when to fight, and when to
switch tactics, and the ability to spot _obvious_ traps, you can allow for
traps to be fair.  That is the high level argument, that assumes all can
be implemented in code anyway. Implementing such a "AI" (used loosely) in
code however is somewhat tricky (and I think that is an understatement).  

The biggest problem a computer game (and thus a mud) has with monsters
using sense is that monsters really only exist to get in the players way.
I recall Puff used to shout something to the effect of "Ack! I've been
killed!  Have some god reload me!" when you killed him on some diku muds.
This approach makes for monsters that are merely cannon fodder, that exist
only to do as much damage as possible before dying.  Obviously such a
setup makes for some really dumb mobs, that won't have the sense to give
their own survival priority over their "purpose" in life.  Even an evil
ogre should have some motive beyond causing the player grief to put itself
at risk by attacking an armed group of adventurers. If you had such an
approach, the ogre would be much more willing to give up on the objective
to rob the player (for example) when the objective of staying alive became
more important.  I recall a _long_ time ago a very good discussion on the
list, where mobs had priority motives, and decided how to act based on
them, if you care to check the archives.  And of course, as I touched on
before, the reverse statement tends to be true for players.  Players
should have more motive than gaining experience to risk themselves
by attacking a pack of blood thirsty ogres.

-Katrina




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