[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Kill Smarter...Not Harder (Player vs. Monster)

[Louis d'Ambra]

On 10/14/06, Nicholas Koranda <nkk at eml.cc> wrote:
> The problem is that
> the scale that is used to gauge the difficulty of monsters is in there
> damage and hit points, not their skills, movements, abilities, etc..  So
> a dragon is only more difficult than a rat since a rat bites you for 1HP
> and a dragon swats you with its tail for 1,000 HP.  A dragon is really
> not more difficult because it hides in the shadows, or flies out the way
> of your flame arrows, or blocks a sword swing with its claw, it just can
> take a beating a whole lot longer.

When it comes to PvP, no AI will ever match the interest of playing
with or against real human  players, no matter how bright it is. When
it comes to MMOs, the reasons for not implemeting a somewhat
intelligent AI seems pretty clear to me : it's technically not
possible, it would take too much server ressources (or maybe it would
simply cost way too much).

The most elegant alternative I see to make a very interesting
challenge from a very dumb AI lies in one concept : critters
interactions. So basically you arrange your critters in a zone in such
a way that taken individualy, they are weak, but when together, they
could lash out deadly combos. For example, I played a MUD where a big
nasty serpent (boss) roamed slowly in a zone (2 hex per round, where
every player could move 3 hex per round), so everyone could kill it
using ranged weapon and dancing around. But the trick is that they
were also orcs that casted the spell "web", wich is a poor spell until
you discover that zone. I was killed once this way, stuck in a web
where the serpent joined me. Honestly, this happened to me only once,
because I was careful the other times and the game was still pretty
easy, but I saw the challenge potential when playing with critters
interactions. I would call this "zone intelligence", because it's not
that one intelligent crit that represents a challenge, but the zone
arrangement itselfs.

If you could make your zone in such a way that it could happen a lot
of surprising things because of unexpected interactions, then in my
eyes you have made one of the best things video games have to offer.