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

[Damion Schubert]

On 11/3/06, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:

> This would be another form of emergent gameplay - in this case, complex
> encounters emerge from simplistic enemies. It is strange that almost all
> MMO's I've played seem to focus on single enemy combat the player (or
> team) versus one AI oponent, which seems to be ignoring an awful lot of
> potential.

Trust me, this is something that MMO designers have been trying to do for
years.  There are a couple of hidden costs, though.
* More critters = more AI cycles.  AI cycles (esp. pathfinding) are already
among the largest server CPU costs.
* More critters = bigger worlds to hold them.

I actually suspect that Moore's law will help, at least with the first part of
that equation.  And to be fair, City of Heroes is built a lot more around
horde-fighting than your standard MMO - they get around problem 1 by
being heavily instanced.

--d