[MUD-Dev] The Relationship between pkers and monster AI?

[Tony Wilkinson]

hi guys, I would like to get your thoughts on the relationship between the
level of pker activity and the AI of the monsters in MMORPGs.

Thinking about all the effort that goes into trying to curb rampant player
killing but still allow a place for that type of gamer in the recent massive
games (i.e. UO, EQ and the soon to be AC and ME) the thought occured to me
that really, there is a pretty small percentage of gamers who are the real
hard core PvP types. Certainly from my experiences in UO, many people who
would be considered veterans move into more PvP activity because once the
monster AI is mastered, there is not much threat there. Increased PvP
activity tends to lead to more player killing and hence issues arise which
(often) need development effort to curtail.

None of the MMORPGs to date have very strong monster AI (because of resourse
limitations I guess) but if for example the monsters were "smarter" would it
stop players from looking to PvP for their kicks? In Close Combat 3, the
computer behaves so "intelligently" that you genuinely have to keep telling
yourself it's not another person. If that sort of AI was on a MMORPG, would
the need to clamp down on player killing be so necessary?

I do feel there is some truth in this argument and I'm interested to get
your take on it...

Tony Wilkinson (aka Bagpuss)
http://www.xploding.com





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