GW2 and SW:TOR at the forefront of MMORPG?

[seamussheridan]

AI complexity directly leads to slowing things down or thinning out monsters. It simply has to.

making enemy AI better is easy. If a dev wanted, they could make an little level 1 enemy impossible to beat. Of course, the ai would take so much computation that you wouldn't see another enemy on the map.

Most players simply want easier ai with more mobs. That is just how it is. They don't want to spend 10 minutes or more fighting every single enemy the see.

Look at GW1. They didn't make the ai better for hard mode, they added superficial things to make it harder. Now it depends on how they designed their ai systems at the beginning, but they could've chosen to just make the ai better, but probably chose not to because of how computationally excessive it could be.

[Alaris]

AI complexity, for me, is more about not having all mobs fall into 3 categories:

1) those that mindlessly walk to you and hit you
2) those that mindlessly walk to within range of you and shoot you, and
3) those that do 1 or 2 and pop the occasional heal

I don't want complex, per se, I want some variety. Diablo 2 had variety, and it was far from complex.

[Akirai Annuvil]

Most players simply want easier ai with more mobs. That is just how it is. They don't want to spend 10 minutes or more fighting every single enemy the see.

Changing aggro methods to make it possible to sneak past mobs in more ways or in different ways is different from making them harder to kill and making encounters more one-on-one don't have to be related.
For example if you make hostile Charr mob's detection of PC's more dependant on smell and less on sight or sound, you can enable the player to use musks and fragrances to mask their smell and continue past an army unhindered. Blinding a group of Beholders and rolling away behind them would be an effective way to lose aggro.

For the rest: Metal Gear, Thief, Splinter Cell - popularity of Rogue-like classes in MMO's - Stealth in Elder Scrolls/Deus Ex/Dragon Age. All games, classes or roles which rely on the player being stealthy and taking on enemies one on one, slowly and deliberately. All very, very popular. There's definitely a market here which isn't tapped by any currently existing MMO.

[djacob]

The question is, is gw2 the mmo that should be trying this system? Wouldn't musks cost money if added into the game, and where the current playerbase complains about energy potions that allow you to "win the game" by pumping out damage, thus making them a "required gold sink"... how much complaining do you suppose items that cost money and allow you to sneak by enemies who are now much harder to get by without doing so?

Runners from this game would probably say they wouldn't buy it. I'm not saying that this is a reason not to do so. It might even be a reason to put them in (I don't really like runners for the most part). However, they would be right that it would be creating a gold sink, and not one that has any true reason to add in.

Yes, you could give players a skill that does the same thing, but again, why? It just seems like a system that adds complexity for complexity's sake. I would not mind if it allowed more ways of getting enemies by themselves for classes that profit from 1v1 fights. However, it just sounds like a way for some to over aggro accidentally because they didn't take the right skills. Anet is trying to make builds easier to make workable, and I feel that this would be the exact opposite direction of that.

I would not mind a more complex aggro system, as long as it is not item or ig skills based. What I would really want to see if that can't be done, are mini-games that reward stealth. Something like the halloween quests that require you to run around in the uw. Your build there is limited to non-damage skills, but that's ok because you aren't meant to kill anything.

[Alaris]

I think the problem is less in whether stealth gameplay is fun, and more in whether MMOs are built to allow that gameplay.

In WoW, playing as a healer was terrible because most of the time you have nobody but yourself to heal... and if you do that your dps suffers. Likewise, unless the MMO was made that stealth was a viable way to progress, I'd be afraid to be stuck with an ability that is rarely useful.

The boost in damage and survivability might be enough to make stealth worthwhile for combat purposes... but the game objectives would need tweaking so that you'd level up as fast if you manage to infiltrate without combat than if you did with combat.

[BrotherGrimm]

I could see stealth "minigame" type missions in MMOs (EX the end of GWENs mission in the Bonus Mission Pack), but I doubt seriously you could make it part of a general MMO combat type area. That's not to say that an exclusively built stealth based MMO isn't possible or might not even be profitable. MSG is a HUGELY popular game. AC Brotherhood's multiplayer taken to the next logical step could be an MMO....

[Thalanor Thornhale]

PErhaps not a general area, buuuuuut GW2 will have "dungeons" and dungeons
ARE instanced, are they not?

I could well imagine having SOME dungeons set up like that. It doesn't even have to be in in the beginning. (You do want to introduce new things with new packs).

[sorudo]

i only know that personal stories are instants, i dunno about dungeons.

[djacob]

Yes, dungeons are instanced as has been stated multiple times before, and allow for teams of 5. They are in the same location as the instanced personal storyline areas, and can only be done after you have finished that part of the storyline.

The dungeons are much more difficult than the storyline so the team will need to work together well in order to clear it. I would not be surprised if managing aggro will be a part of the difficulty. Hopefully there will even be a stealth element to at least one or two.

[sorudo]

you do have to keep in mind that dungeons have to scale on party size, so a solo player doesn't get enemies for a 5 man team.