NPCs, Combat and PvE, Oh, and minor artifacts too! Options

[Kunin]

Mobs/Denizens or NPCs (Non-Player Characters)

In Tears of Polaris we have made a few adjustments to how mobs work, making them more like players than items with health.

Mobs in ToP can have limbs, up to eight arms and legs, which means they can also have their limbs broken! Along those same lines mobs can take many different afflictions, and the smarter they are the better they are at healing them. Some afflictions will affect mobs in a different manner than players, and they are ALL timed afflictions. By timed we mean that they will “auto-cure” it after a set period of time, normally 20-30 seconds, if the mob does not cure it on it’s own right away.

In addition to afflictions and limbs, sentient mobs in Polaris also have mental points in the same manner as players. Some of their attacks will cost mental points to use, and if they do not have any then they cannot use that attack. They will regenerate mental points at the same time they regenerate health points. Sentient mobs are also capable of using some healing items as players can, curing their health and afflictions slightly faster than a non-sentient mob could handle.

Both sentient and non-sentient mobs have been instilled with a simple AI for choosing their attacks and targets, with sentient mobs obviously having the better of the two. Each mobile remembers the last few attacks that they have made, as well as the person they are currently targeting. Sentient mobs that are loyal to an organisation or another mobile can also access a “loyalty memory” for the room they are in, which stores the last few attacks made by any mob, in that room, with the same loyalty.

Once they have determined what attacks they are capable of doing, based off of their afflictions and mental points, they will then build a list of possible targets, and how much they “hate” each target. Based off this information they may or may not choose to change their target and, using their memory they also decide if they want to do a room/area wide attack or just an attack on a single target.

Once a sentient mob knows who to attack, what type of attack to use, and what attacks they have to use they will estimate the status of their main target. They will assess health/mental status of the target as well as afflictions that they have. Based off that information they will make a choice of doing an affliction based attack or a damage based attack, and if doing damage they might even look at what types of damage the main target is resistant against. With this new information they will make another assessment of what attack to use.

Once the attack choice is decided the mobile will store that attack it it’s memory, as well as the main target. If the mobile is sentient and loyal to an organisation, such as an Empire’s guard, or another mobile it will also store the attack in a memory in the “loyalty memory” for that room so all other mobs with the same loyalty, in that room, to use in future attacks.

If, for any reason, the mobile ends up unable to attack they will get an extra “action” phase in place of the attack. Action phases are used for things such as curing, moving, picking up items, etc. In this manner the mobile will always have something it can do, and if it cannot attack due to afflictions it will cure one of those afflictions.

Mob Drop System

One of the things Matt tasked me to do with Polaris was to make the game more “item centric” instead of the standard IRE model where only a few classes really care about their items. After some debate on how to do that, without taking away from the strengths of a system highly relent on player and character skill, I came up with the Mob Drop System. This system is not only used by mobs, but was also found to be very useful in quest rewards. It consists of two parts, Mob Drop Sets (call sets later in this article) and Mob Drop Packages (packages).

Mob Drop Sets

Sets can hold up to ten items or objects, an object being the “base” template for any item. When a builder designs a set they have to decide, for each item in it, if they want it to be a unique item or a created item.

Unique Items

If a builder decides to use a unique item, then they create the item that they wish to use, and place that specific item into the set. They also set a “reset time” to make sure that it is never destroyed. When such items reset they will go to a “limbo” location, and it is ONLY from there that they can be “dropped” by a mobile. That means that if Bob has that item then no mobile can drop that item again.

Created Items

If the builder decides that a created item is best, which it normally will be, then they place an object in the set. The object is also known as the “mother”, it is just a template for new items and a way for the game to know that John the Orc and Jack the Orc are really the same type of thing. When the set goes to drop this item it will create a new item of that type and then adjust it’s “decay time” to be anywhere between 50-75% of what the item’s maximum decay time is. This adjustment is made to show that these items are “used” and also to make sure that player crafted items are always stronger. Weapons and armour dropped this way will also have their stats adjusted, but not stronger than what a player could craft.

Once the builder has chosen the items they wish to put in the set, up to ten of them, they then have one more thing to do before the set is complete. They will be able to assign a “rarity” value to each created item in the set. This rarity is used when the item is actually created to, possibly, give it artifact powers. Yes, I said ARTIFACT powers.

We call these minor artifacts, as they can have almost all the powers that one could buy in a real artifact but with the side effect of decaying. Not all artifact powers can be used on minor artifacts, but most of those that cannot will have a minor version of them. For example the power critical hits cannot be used on a minor artifact, but the power major hits can be. Powers made specifically for minor artifacts cannot be purchased on real artifacts. Each power that can be used on minor artifacts also has a rarity value assigned to it, the better it is the higher the value.

For created items that have a rarity value the system will go through the list of artifact powers that have the same, or lower, rarity value and put them in a list. It will then go down the list, randomly, and do a check to see if this artifact should have that power. If the check is passed then it will check to see if the rarity points the item has is enough to have that power at a higher level, if so another random check is done to see if it goes to a higher level. Once this is done the total rarity cost(power’s cost * level) is taken from the current rarity points the item has. This process continues until the item has no points left, or the list of powers the item can afford is exhausted. If there are any left over points some of them are converted into decay time.

Mob Drop Packages

All sets are put into a package, which can hold up to ten sets. Each set is given a percent chance to be used, with an overall total chance of 100%. If the chance of all packages does not add up to 100% then the left over points goes towards nothing. IE if all the sets add up to 90% then there is a 10% chance that nothing will be “dropped” when the mobile dies.

Packages are then attached to mobiles and/or quests to be used as rewards. Not all of them need to produce “usable” items, for example in Zedach many animals can drop combinations of meat and fur which can be used in quests instead of the more boring “bring me a corpse of X” type quests. It’s not really that different, but enough to be interesting and makes it so how much you get in reward for that quest is different each time.

We know that this system will generate a lot of “junk” throughout the game, and thus we have recycling centers. These are machines that have been developed to convert items into energy, which is then compressed into e-currency(ecur) for the player. Most items will only give you a small amount of ecur, but minor artifacts hold far more energy in them and therefore will give you more ecur for their destruction. Resetting items, such as artifacts, will give you nothing. These centers do work in reverse, but that is a system that has not yet been perfected yet and therefore the items you can purchase through them tend to be of lower quality. In other words, these devices function as our “newbie equipment” sellers.

While minor artifacts can produce almost any artifact power, remember that they WILL decay and are semi-randomly generated. Only player crafted items can be made permanent, and therefore only player crafted items can become “real” artifacts.

PvE

In addition to mobiles and mobile combat there are many other aspects of Player vs Environment that Polaris will be utilizing for your enjoyment.

Quests is one of the biggest ones, and I personally strive for “dynamic” quests. That means quests that can be done in different ways, or that change under some circumstances. The highest level of dynamic quests, which I hope we will see more of, are those that are “randomly” available at different times. Imagine an area where there are five mini-quests, but only two are available at any time. Every few hours which two you can do change, making the area just a little different each time you visit it.

There are some quests, for example a major one in Zedach, that only give it’s “true” reward ONCE to each person. That quest is actually very hard to do, and follows the dynamic nature I wish to have fairly well. In the end the user will be presented with an item, using the above mentioned Mob Drop system, that can be worth up to 1.4k credits! If one were to accomplish it a second time, they will just get some money for their effort.

On the space level we also intend to add in some activities such as asteroid mining and salvaging of trash or left over pieces of destroyed vessels. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of space, we will probably have to release such things after the Open Beta period has begun.

[Kaotac]

Sounds very very interesting. Seems like everything someone could ask for in a 'loot' system.

[Malarious]

I am in awe.. no one can say you are not out to throw in variety.

Questions though

-If you are doing a quest and it comes time for a 'turnover' of which quests are active will your current quest 'shut down'?

-Will we happen to see any mob instakills?
'A Priest of the Singularity whispers to you of the secrets he knows.
Your mind, unable to take such punishment, gives out.
You have been slain by a priest of the singulatirty'
OR if you have something other than you have been slain by... Your mind has been destroyed by.. etc.

-Can mobs deal wounds (if they will be in play)?

-Because of the ability to delay mobs does that mean because of things that might multiply afflict at once, that mobs will be alot harder to kill to compensate for the ability to pin them down?


-So if I get this right. A spawned items rarity points means it might get an artifact effect on it. Which makes me wonder if we will have normal artifacts since you also said players can CREATE such normal artifacts. Will that mean slaying the same denizen 50 times at a fairly higher level has a good chance to yield very varied results?

Love how mush thought has been put in! Thanks for all your hard work!

[Noola]

Wow!

Sounds like 'bashing' will be a lot more interesting! And you get stuffs! That super-quest sounds crazy hard and I'll prolly never solve it (seriously bad at quests! ) but it sounds super-cool that you get something so neat from it!

[Yrael]

I suppose there is no hope of that artifacts being permanent. I know, I know, it could decay, but one can always hope.

[Kunin]

Bashing should be more interesting, and sentient mobs are a bit harder than you may be used too but also give a bit more experience than a non-sentient mob of the same level.

Minor artifacts can never become permanent, but if you're lucky and persistent you could get another one with the same powers on it after yours decays. On average most of them last 2-4 RL weeks, so if you find a good one you'll have some time to enjoy it.

[-Neil-]

one question all this talk of mob drops gave me:
when the mob drops something do you auto-grab it or do you need to enter the command?

[Tzekelkan]

There will almost certainly be an ability that will let you auto-pick up objects... but I do agree that if there will be rare objects dropping from powerful mobs, there should be some sort of system that only lets you pick them up; otherwise, we will be seeing a lot of complaints

Anyway, awesome system! Again, I can't wait to play it!

EDIT: or if it already has a safety against this, ignore me. I need to read through it more thoroughly when I get back home.

This post has been edited by Tzekelkan: Mar 15 2008, 01:00 PM

[TheBug]

Trigger it or kill the person who steals it.

[Cubey]

First of all,
*bloody rampage which leaves everyone who uses the term 'bashing' slaughtered in a bloodied heap*
It's PvE! Even Kunin calls it that!

Second, great job. Looks interesting and non-boring. I see here some ideas from Illyrias (that's how the game was supposed to be called, right?) which were too good to scrap, but the system was additionally refined.

I want to ask for how long the "dropped" items stay with you until they decay. You say that minor artifacts last for 2-4 weeks, what about normal items? Do Unique items last for longer than Created items until they decay?

And finally, if there will be an option to repair your gear, making it last longer - will it be usable on PvE-obtained stuff? Especially artifacts - you mentioned getting an expensive minor artifact as a quest reward. It'd be a bit disheartening to see it disappear on you after some time, especially if it is a one-time only reward. Of course, you can simply cash it in in a recycler when its decay time draws near.

I'm not Kunin, but I bet I can answer the question about instakills - he mentioned that many, but not all afflictions work on mobs, and some work in a different way. So I assume that instakills neither work nor will be used by mobs.

[Acrune]

Very cool stuff.

[Jack Shade]

Ahhh, I'm happy to read this. I always disliked the item system in the IRE muds I played where I was limited to my class' weapons/armor with no variety(except for artefacts). Plus, it will make the PvE more interesting, which is always good!

[Dallas Mathews]

Wow, this looks awesome. I'm not much of a PvP person myself, and it always upset me that I couldn't use most of my abilities on denizens. Now, it looks like this is gonna be a lot more interesting.

Also like this idea of loot. It makes sense that you'll be able to loot things from certain denizens (IE: That orc that's wielding a shiny longsword) and it always felt unrealistic to me that they never dropped anything.

[Xandi]

Nice, finally some place where PvE may no longer be a simple matter of button mashing I hope that because of this added complexity, leveling up won't take nearly as much grinding as in other games.

Love the concept of 'harvesting' things from corpses instead of taking the corpse too. Carrying around bodies up to a hundred times your own weight is really weird!

I don't really understand these item sets and packages though... but minor artifacts seem pretty neat. And I hope these quests will be 'challenging hard', not 'tearing out your hair hard'

[Arizte]

This is nice. I see the Epic gear and vendor trash have been implemented.

But I especially like the quest revamp! Hopefully the dynamism will remove the highly esoteric nature of many quests.

[Xinhu]

Good to see something refreshing especially mob drop package.

[Enthralled]

Very excited by this. I have always felt that PvE was one big glaring thing that needed to be addressed in IRE games and it is great to see this.

As always though, I have some questions hehe

1. Will minor artifacts be bound in any manner? It does not sound like they are, but I thought I would double check.
2. Will you use a traditional prefix/sufix naming system to more easily identify the properties of a minor artifact? Or will this information be listed in the probe?
3. Will there be a command to auto sell items?
4. With the agro system you described it sounds like it might be finally possible to have a real "tank" role, is this true?
4a. Will there be any changes to the way group PvE works (better exp to encourage grouping, or any other synergy type things?)
5. One problem I have always had with some areas in IRE games is that they were pure money sinks. It took more to buy the cures for the afflictions given than the mobs were worth. In affect if you hunted there you had to pay for your exp. With a more complex PvE system involving more skills and more cures I can see this being a big issue. This is not so much a question as a concern to address in balancing. I hope the vast majority of areas are net energy gain places.
6. Finally by opening up the range of abilities we can use against Mobs and some basic AI to the Mobs I hope you also have clear rules on what you define as exploitive. As in, if I am able to afflict a given Mob in such a way so they can no longer hurt me is that a bug, or just a good strategy?

[Kunin]

1. Will minor artifacts be bound in any manner? It does not sound like they are, but I thought I would double check.

No, they are basically normal items that have artifact powers. I see these becoming a big sell-able item.

2. Will you use a traditional prefix/sufix naming system to more easily identify the properties of a minor artifact? Or will this information be listed in the probe?

Each power has a prefix or suffix, and they are also coloured on IH(INFOHERE) with four different colours.

White - Normal Item
Green - 1-2 Powers
Blue - 3-5 Powers
Gold - 6+ Powers

Powers means both number of powers and the level of the powers. IE Mental_Regen 2 and Max_Mental 1 would be colored blue.

3. Will there be a command to auto sell items?

Auto sell?

4. With the agro system you described it sounds like it might be finally possible to have a real "tank" role, is this true?

If you're doing the most damage out of anyone in your group then you are the most likely target. Keep in mind though that NPCs aren't dumb and probably wouldn't like that little guy in the back keeping you alive.

4a. Will there be any changes to the way group PvE works (better exp to encourage grouping, or any other synergy type things?)

This is a commonly misunderstood aspect of PvE in IRE games, ALL games encourage grouping by giving more overall experience. The more people in the group the higher the total experience is, it is then divided amoung the members based off their levels. The easiest example is two people of the same level grouping, when the NPC dies they both get about 51% of the total experience, in other words they get 102%, combined, than a single person killing that NPC would get.

That said, with the fact that NPCs can take afflictions that alone should help encourage grouping, especially against sentient mobiles. The way the system works the more attacks we teach a mobile the smarter it becomes in it's choices of attacks. Of course, the experience it gives will be increased if it's harder to defeat.

5. One problem I have always had with some areas in IRE games is that they were pure money sinks. It took more to buy the cures for the afflictions given than the mobs were worth. In affect if you hunted there you had to pay for your exp. With a more complex PvE system involving more skills and more cures I can see this being a big issue. This is not so much a question as a concern to address in balancing. I hope the vast majority of areas are net energy gain places.

Not sure what you mean by that... With our skill system you will get more for your money. There is still one more aspect of player characters that I have not released as well.

6. Finally by opening up the range of abilities we can use against Mobs and some basic AI to the Mobs I hope you also have clear rules on what you define as exploitive. As in, if I am able to afflict a given Mob in such a way so they can no longer hurt me is that a bug, or just a good strategy?

Hey, if you can kill that orc without getting hurt... you're that good. Of course, that orc might get smarter as well.

[Enthralled]

Auto sell?

As in, I get back from hunting for an hour and my inventory is full of 100 different items. I just want to recycle them all for energy. Will I have to manually sell each item by name/number or can I just do something like "recycle all".

If you're doing the most damage out of anyone in your group then you are the most likely target. Keep in mind though that NPCs aren't dumb and probably wouldn't like that little guy in the back keeping you alive.

Well this sounds like it could be a start. The agro system in modern graphic mmorphs can be very complex and it adds a lot to group PvE fighting. I look forward to seeing this system in action.

This is a commonly misunderstood aspect of PvE in IRE games, ALL games encourage grouping by giving more overall experience. The more people in the group the higher the total experience is, it is then divided amoung the members based off their levels. The easiest example is two people of the same level grouping, when the NPC dies they both get about 51% of the total experience, in other words they get 102%, combined, than a single person killing that NPC would get.

That said, with the fact that NPCs can take afflictions that alone should help encourage grouping, especially against sentient mobiles. The way the system works the more attacks we teach a mobile the smarter it becomes in it's choices of attacks. Of course, the experience it gives will be increased if it's harder to defeat.

Split exp is a penalty not a bonus. Even if adding a second player to your group doubled your killing time if you are Mob limited this will give a huge penalty to your overall exp/hour. If I am in an area with say 100 mobs, and I know I can kill them all before they start to respawn, and I see another player in the area, the only incentive I have is to try and kill the mobs before they do. If I got 52 or more mobs I would be better off not grouping, the same is true for him.

I have always wanted to see no split exp. As in each group member received full exp from the kill. You could then modify this by level differences in the group, or damage dealt, or whatever.

Not sure what you mean by that... With our skill system you will get more for your money. There is still one more aspect of player characters that I have not released as well.

I am speaking in terms of in game money, energy, gold, whatever. Many areas with afflictions cost lots of in game gold and give no gold in return. Thus to kill things there you had to have earned lots of gold elsewhere first. This is highly annoying, and yet the fights that give the most afflictions are also the most interesting and challenging. Their drops should at least make up for the cost to fight them.

Hey, if you can kill that orc without getting hurt... you're that good. Of course, that orc might get smarter as well.

Great!

[-Neil-]

Trigger it or kill the person who steals it.

perhaps you could help me then
to trigger a money-grab is easy enough
but items?
how do you GET <whatever> if you don't know what <whatever> will be?

This post has been edited by -Neil-: Mar 16 2008, 12:41 PM