188 réponses à ce sujet

[soteria]

Late reply, but...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

In Exile wrote...

I don't use AI exploits.

Not that it matters, but I dispute that there are such things.

Wouldn't that mean that there's no such thing as an exploit?  If we accept that an exploit can be defined as "using poorly-written or buggy code to give the player an unintended advantage," then I'm not sure you can really do that.  Sure, you might argue that finding and using exploits is acceptable or fun, but what you're doing requires a redefinition of the word "exploit" that I probably reject.

I can see errant_knight's point.  I've long maintained that staying out of melee range is always the superior defensive tactic, given the option.  I tend to eschew melee combat because I can't imagine why any character would want to get hit as part of his combat role.  And many BioWare games have supported an exclusively ranged party.  BG did.  NWN did.  DAO did.

Letting somebody hit you is dumb, because getting hit is unpleasant.  If you can avoid it, do so.

I think a lot of fighters would argue that being "punch-shy" to this degree is a weakness.  In a pre-gunpowder, limited-magic world, completely staying out of melee is unrealistic--you're going to get hit.  That doesn't mean you should allow hits you could avoid, but an unrealistic expectation of avoiding blows will leave you mentally unprepared for the reality of combat.

Beyond that, is it true that you really can't imagine a character that would want to engage in melee?  The mentality you're describing isn't sustainable in the game world.  It's certainly possible to avoid getting hit much with a party of archers and mages, but someone is going to get hit.  Unless everyone is just exceptionally selfish, it makes sense to plan for someone getting hit and having them train and gear for that role.

This is assuming you actually think getting hit is unpleasant in the game world, as you claim here.

[Alodar]

Ziggeh wrote...

I Valente I wrote...
Sorry guy, but it's hard to believe that those drakspawn are going to attack that massive armor clad behemoth just because he insulted their mothers, and ignore all the other squishy party members because they look less intimidating. It's a system born out of the exploitation of ai.

It's an abstraction of positioning, in the same way health bars are an abstraction of survivability.

Thank you, Ziggeh.
I can absolutely accept that. If taunt is an idividual thing, ie you are taunting someone, I can understand that being an abstraction for physically intercepting that someone.

Peter Thomas wrote...

Some mention was made of a Warrior
blocking enemies by hitting them. This is in the game. Force of attacks
affects enemies as well. If a Warrior attack or ability does enough
damage or force, the enemy will be interrupted and play a damage
reaction or knockback type animation. Warriors do their interruptions
through force of attacks, rather than abilities designed purely to
interrupt. A Rogue may do something tricky which stuns a guy, but a
Warrior smashes him in the face to get a similar effect.

That impact dynamic is awesome. It more than anything will change the nature of combat. Mages, without some sort of defense spell, will no longer be able to go toe to toe and just cast spells.

I really wish there was friendly fire on settings other than nightmare -- impact is going to really change how my mage plays the game to survive.

Thanks as always for taking the time to give us informationPeter!

Alodar

[Sylvius the Mad]

soteria wrote...

Wouldn't that mean that there's no such thing as an exploit?

Yes.

I think a lot of fighters would argue that being "punch-shy" to this degree is a weakness.  In a pre-gunpowder, limited-magic world, completely staying out of melee is unrealistic--you're going to get hit.  That doesn't mean you should allow hits you could avoid, but an unrealistic expectation of avoiding blows will leave you mentally unprepared for the reality of combat.

Assuming it's unrealistic, sure.  But many games have supported a no-melee approach to combat.

[Nighteye2]

soteria wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

In Exile wrote...
I don't use AI exploits.

Not that it matters, but I dispute that there are such things.

Wouldn't that mean that there's no such thing as an exploit?  If we accept that an exploit can be defined as "using poorly-written or buggy code to give the player an unintended advantage," then I'm not sure you can really do that.  Sure, you might argue that finding and using exploits is acceptable or fun, but what you're doing requires a redefinition of the word "exploit" that I probably reject.

AI Exploit: making the AI act more amazingly stupid than it normally does.

AI is intended to give enemies a semblance of intelligence. Using bugs that remove that semblance would be counted as exploits, in my opinion.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That requires you make value-judgments about how the AI is supposed to behave. There's no justification for those.

[Nighteye2]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
That requires you make value-judgments about how the AI is supposed to behave. There's no justification for those.

Only to a degree. In some cases it is obvious, although there are a lot of gray areas.

Take, for example, the taunt/forcefield combo. If the enemies had any intelligence at all, they would not continue to attack an invincible character that, for that moment, poses no threat to them. No matter what names he called them.

That they do so anyway breaks the semblance of intelligence.

[Ziggeh]

Nighteye2 wrote...
Take, for example, the taunt/forcefield combo. If the enemies had any intelligence at all, they would not continue to attack an invincible character that, for that moment, poses no threat to them. No matter what names he called them.

That they do so anyway breaks the semblance of intelligence.

How do they know he's invincible? What sort of feedback do they get? We know because the health bar won't budge, but that's not something that exists in universe. Do they know what the big shiny bubble means, are their swords bouncing of it, or are they swinging and not doing damage?

[Marixus99.9]

Ziggeh wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
Take, for example, the taunt/forcefield combo. If the enemies had any intelligence at all, they would not continue to attack an invincible character that, for that moment, poses no threat to them. No matter what names he called them.

That they do so anyway breaks the semblance of intelligence.

How do they know he's invincible? What sort of feedback do they get? We know because the health bar won't budge, but that's not something that exists in universe. Do they know what the big shiny bubble means, are their swords bouncing of it, or are they swinging and not doing damage?

Makes more sense to go after the non-armored mage throwing fireballs rather then the guy armored to take more hits. It isn't suppose to make any sense like warrior's magical abilities to draw aggro and the rogue's magic ability to dissapear in front of people.

Its just a game.

[moilami]

JediHealerCosmin wrote...

Chris Priestly wrote...

distinguetraces wrote...

Is the holy trinity a must for nightmare mode?

Saying a prayer to whomever you believe in can't hurt.

Bring it on 

y, starting right away with "nightmare".


Edit: (stopped reading the thread to this post)

Modifié par moilami, 07 février 2011 - 11:43 .

[Malanek]

The level of AI programming in these games isn't great. It would be hugely time consuming requiring massive resource to program each enemy to react as intelligently as it "should" in every situation. Instead the programers do what is good enough and focus on things that deliver more return for the player. Whenever an enemy reacts less intelligently than it should that is a failure of the AI. Playing in such a way to deliberately strike these is to exploit the AI.

[Nighteye2]

Ziggeh wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
Take, for example, the taunt/forcefield combo. If the enemies had any intelligence at all, they would not continue to attack an invincible character that, for that moment, poses no threat to them. No matter what names he called them.

That they do so anyway breaks the semblance of intelligence.

How do they know he's invincible? What sort of feedback do they get? We know because the health bar won't budge, but that's not something that exists in universe. Do they know what the big shiny bubble means, are their swords bouncing of it, or are they swinging and not doing damage?

Their swords are bouncing off it, of course - from the animation, they would see their target encased by a shimmering wall which their attacks cannot penetrate - which is also why the target takes no damage from their attacks.

They needn't be geniuses to figure out what's happening.

[Nighteye2]

Malanek999 wrote...
The level of AI programming in these games isn't great. It would be hugely time consuming requiring massive resource to program each enemy to react as intelligently as it "should" in every situation. Instead the programers do what is good enough and focus on things that deliver more return for the player. Whenever an enemy reacts less intelligently than it should that is a failure of the AI. Playing in such a way to deliberately strike these is to exploit the AI.

Only if you try to script everything. You can also use threat maps for target selection, with the current actions and status of each target influencing their priority. Get inspiration from these AI systems made for Starcraft.

With such a system, it would be easy to program in that a target affected by force field temporarily gets his/her threat level reduced to 0 until the spell wears off, at which point it is restored to its old level.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Nighteye2 wrote...

Their swords are bouncing off it, of course - from the animation, they would see their target encased by a shimmering wall which their attacks cannot penetrate - which is also why the target takes no damage from their attacks.

The shimmering wall wasn't visible.  The visible spell effects were just UI elements - that's why it wasn't crazy that no one mentioned them during conversations.

[Nighteye2]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
Their swords are bouncing off it, of course - from the animation, they would see their target encased by a shimmering wall which their attacks cannot penetrate - which is also why the target takes no damage from their attacks.

The shimmering wall wasn't visible.  The visible spell effects were just UI elements - that's why it wasn't crazy that no one mentioned them during conversations.

I disagree. By that logic the fireball spell effect would be invisible, too, which I find rather implausible. It's not something that's clearly part of the UI, like an icon floating above their head - it's a visible spell effect, and therefore it is visible to both the player and the characters.

That no one mentioned them during conversations could just be coincidence - in my games they'd never have cause to mention them.