Hi everyone, long-time-no-see.
I was talking about monster AI with Derakon on IRC and thought it'd be interesting to open up the conversation to a wider audience. This isn't necessarily limited to what should go in V (although that was the original context).
Right now, V's monsters are powerful but dumb. There's nothing stopping a monster from (randmoly) choosing its most powerful attack N times in a row, although it's very unlikely. Of course, if we improve the AI, V's tougher monsters could easily become unbeatable.
Many variants have introduced monster mana to solve this problem. From what I understand, monsters in these variants are incredibly tough until they run out of mana, and then are much easier. Monsters that can heal or teleport are particularly hard--you pretty much have to get them to use up their mana before trying to kill them.
An alternative would be cooldown timers. This is similar to what a lot of MMOs have ended up doing. It'd mean that you'd never have to worry about two breath attacks (or mana storms or whatever) in a row, and would allow things like healing to be pretty rare. Unfortunately, I think it would also make monster battles very predictable. For instance, a teleporting monster would always teleport once when hurt. You'd have to track them down and kill them before the timer reset, or they'd do it again. I think this could get pretty tedious. (Healing has the same problem.) As I said, it also makes some unpredictably dangerous monsters less dangerous (if they only have one strong breath attack).
Combining timers and mana might work. I think you'd still get the same kinds of predictable behavior, but it would be easier to "wear down" a monster by waiting until its mana was exhausted. Monsters could still teleport away to let their timers and mana reset though.
One option I found really interesting was the option of having monsters use HP as mana, instead of a separate quantity. This would make building the AI a bit more interesting--spamming powerful spells might be the most efficient way to try to kill the PC, but would also bring the monster closer to death. And running out of mana would more obviously be fatal. The one big problem here is that healing doesn't totally make sense--if the monster could heal that would also reset the mana, which would be really powerful. But I do like the fact that with monster HP instead of mana, the player has a stronger incentive to damage the monster early on (to limit available HP for spells and attacks).
None of these seem perfect, and its possible that a hybrid approach (mana + timers, HP + timers, something even more complicated) might work best. Since there is already huge asymmetry between the player and monsters, I don't think it's a problem to have very different systems here as well.
What do you all think?
I was talking about monster AI with Derakon on IRC and thought it'd be interesting to open up the conversation to a wider audience. This isn't necessarily limited to what should go in V (although that was the original context).
Right now, V's monsters are powerful but dumb. There's nothing stopping a monster from (randmoly) choosing its most powerful attack N times in a row, although it's very unlikely. Of course, if we improve the AI, V's tougher monsters could easily become unbeatable.
Many variants have introduced monster mana to solve this problem. From what I understand, monsters in these variants are incredibly tough until they run out of mana, and then are much easier. Monsters that can heal or teleport are particularly hard--you pretty much have to get them to use up their mana before trying to kill them.
An alternative would be cooldown timers. This is similar to what a lot of MMOs have ended up doing. It'd mean that you'd never have to worry about two breath attacks (or mana storms or whatever) in a row, and would allow things like healing to be pretty rare. Unfortunately, I think it would also make monster battles very predictable. For instance, a teleporting monster would always teleport once when hurt. You'd have to track them down and kill them before the timer reset, or they'd do it again. I think this could get pretty tedious. (Healing has the same problem.) As I said, it also makes some unpredictably dangerous monsters less dangerous (if they only have one strong breath attack).
Combining timers and mana might work. I think you'd still get the same kinds of predictable behavior, but it would be easier to "wear down" a monster by waiting until its mana was exhausted. Monsters could still teleport away to let their timers and mana reset though.
One option I found really interesting was the option of having monsters use HP as mana, instead of a separate quantity. This would make building the AI a bit more interesting--spamming powerful spells might be the most efficient way to try to kill the PC, but would also bring the monster closer to death. And running out of mana would more obviously be fatal. The one big problem here is that healing doesn't totally make sense--if the monster could heal that would also reset the mana, which would be really powerful. But I do like the fact that with monster HP instead of mana, the player has a stronger incentive to damage the monster early on (to limit available HP for spells and attacks).
None of these seem perfect, and its possible that a hybrid approach (mana + timers, HP + timers, something even more complicated) might work best. Since there is already huge asymmetry between the player and monsters, I don't think it's a problem to have very different systems here as well.
What do you all think?
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