Pack UI = artificial stupidity?

[ewert]

how would 'i'm hurt guys' improve on that? It seems like it'd be problematic either way.

Hound takes damage, calls out "I'm hurt", all LoS hounds get flag for "stop AI, charge". Then hound dies...

Compared to hound dies. All hounds check for hurt friends and see none. And stay put.

[fizzix]

Hound takes damage, calls out "I'm hurt", all LoS hounds get flag for "stop AI, charge". Then hound dies...

Compared to hound dies. All hounds check for hurt friends and see none. And stay put.

got it.

This could be equivalent to a 'notice_death' on monster removal.

[PowerDiver]

Even if you fix that targetable vs LoS you can still kill the monsters without with ball spells. That's what's wrong in pack behavior.

My question is whether that is a big deal. Half the classes do not get free ball attacks. If you have to use up a wand, that doesn't seem like a problem to me. Is the paladin's orb sufficiently powerful and common [re: mana] to use on a pack of in-depth hounds? Even that isn't clear to me. Mages are already assumed to kill with magic at range, so that doesn't bother me particularly.

Just change Orb to only damage evil and make monster LOS path the inverse of player LOS path and the problem is 99% solved IMO.

Don't get me wrong. I am not opposed to any of the changes mentioned upthread. It just seems to me that if you want to work on monster AI there are much better places to expend one's efforts.

[Timo Pietilä]

Don't get me wrong. I am not opposed to any of the changes mentioned upthread. It just seems to me that if you want to work on monster AI there are much better places to expend one's efforts.

I'm not actually trying to work with monster AI. I'm questioning default pack behavior as being "intelligent". I made some suggestions, but my main point was that this behavior we have now is just plain bad and needs to be fixed. I think that pack behavior should be simply removed (until we have better AI). It is too easy to abuse that behavior. Even with warrior without ball spells, it usually allows warrior to back up in some room before hounds start to chase him by dismantling "ambush" those same hounds tried to set up before that said warrior retreated to that room.

I don't think *any* monster had become more dangerous with that AI. It has just made game easier.

[PowerDiver]

made some suggestions, but my main point was that this behavior we have now is just plain bad and needs to be fixed. I think that pack behavior should be simply removed.

When it comes to an easy solution, it's hard to improve over that.

[chris]

When it comes to an easy solution, it's hard to improve over that.

I remember when it was first added ... Surprising for a bit, and then it took all of 15 minutes to adapt, learning that this made the game much easier. Its hard to write a computer program to outsmart humans. Some bit of randomness seems best ... so the player doesn't know in advance how certain monsters will behave. Also, you need adaptability. Monsters need to be able to change their behavior in response to stimuli. But yeah, just going back to normal seek mode is the easiest change.