Personally I’m having a blast with the new raid mechanic on PvE. After reading the forum posts though, it would seem my clan lucked out as far as functionality. We have had zero spawning or pathing issues as far as FOB and fighters go. Out of 20 raids we’ve had only one where the dreaded no clear path message popped up, but it was one of the first few we did on a low level to test things out. The fob spawned a bit further away and we had three of us gassing the crap out of the base. The raiders couldn’t even get out of the gate. I think the game thought there was an obstruction. Beyond that it’s been smooth sailing. It has it’s issues, of coarse, but i actually have a reason to collect materials again, and I get to use my trebuchet for more than just drunken target practice on wolves for a laugh.
People love to say “AI is awful”. That means nothing.
A lot of people say “ChatGPT AI is awful”.
A lot of people say “Google AI is awful”.
And any other real life AI you can cite from the public perspective people say that AI is awful.
According to one of the GDC talks with one of the World of Warcraft AI design, they developed what could be considered to this day the best AI in gaming NPCs. It was programmed to behave like three archetypical players each in the group fight Faction Champions in TotC. According to everyone involved in the tech, it was indeed hard to tell if it was computer or some sort of “pre recorded” player fight. The NPCs would do things sometimes that one could not really understand how the computer would do that, in the point they did. When the test run was made with selected testers from the public who did not knew what that was exact, the response was “The AI is awful”.
What they actually meant by the AI is awful when they were asked technical follow up questions:
“The AI is awful because there is no way to know what to do in the fight”
“The AI is awful because you cant really know what they will do, they might be dull and stupid, or do clever tricks we cant predict”
If that was an isolated case, almost all games which features “highly advanced AI” receive the exact same comments given to the games featuring simple “Ant AI”, meaning a set of 4 or 5 rules in a BT (behavioral tree" indicates what each system will do and “sometimes” all come together nicely.
From the devs stand point, why should them make the most of AI if the reception will be the exact same ?
That being said, the AI in this game is not top notch full “heuristic” ( Heuristics are mental shortcuts that enable us to make close-enough decisions rapidly) self determined AI, instead it uses a root blueprint for selective behavior, and it will do what it does. A heuristic AI in terms of Unreal Engine would be a AI that starts from the sense data, and tracer baselines and from that decide the BT to use, and on those BTs there would be a level of decision making that would regard the functionality of such blueprints and select among an assortment of them.
Again, if that was made, there would incurr that same problem. You cannot really make an AI be “smart” and allow players to know how to play the game, which results in backlash always, as most players want something to guide them on what to do.
Now, to the “measuring stick”. I am sure if you put 10% damage for you and your NPCs, and 150% damage to their NPCs, and call a level 10 purge, you wont get it done unless you call the help of thralls you “MAYBE” have from such purge, but most likely, you will need a number of thralls gotten by non admin methods which will instead clog themselves into combat by sheer volume of waves and the demolishers will eventually breach your security, given that a purge only happens when the AI determines that there is a way to get there. Placing 10 Daughters of Ymir fully armored with the BiS armor in your base and calling it “easy” is not exactly an argument, as I said before, you can only say it is easy because you are using tools at your disposal to make it so. If instead you use the tools in your disposal to self impose difficulty, them it will be so. Such are the Sandbox games designs.
But if you think your idea of fun is to get spawned thralls and not grow a base organically, you can always make a huge base, and call 3 purges level 10 on the same base, and check out if it is still “easy”.
But I honestly calling “theorycraft crap” because if you want it to be hard, it will be. Admin up and ease up your game is not on the devs, it is on you.
The new purge is a waste of time, and not engaging for PVE players.
While there are improvements (relentless assaults, tougher mobs), the playstyle changes are a net negative.
First, purges are not worth it.
- I have ENOUGH named bearers now, thank you.
- Non-bearers are uniformly low-tier combat thralls (or an occasional dancer).
- The loot is worthless and unrewarding.
- The loss in combat thralls and damaged walls/doors etc. is unbalancing; I do not expect to profit vs. purges all the time, but this leads to…
The dynamic has changed from a game challenge to a self-challenge.
- Ask yourself this: if you were faced with an unrewarding dungeon that you had NO need to go into, would you do so?
- Once you’ve done it for the challenge, would you keep doing it? Repeatedly?
- Would your friends?
- So WHY would your clan trigger purges? “Stop me from hitting my head with this hammer!”
The new purge lends itself to cheesy exploits
- The old purge involved attacks from multiple directions and strengths. Your defenses had to be robust and faced largely realistic design constraints.
- The new purge involves an incredibly unrealistic tactic that breaks immersion: the conga line. It’s just ridiculous-looking.
- The single-focus attack lends itself to – even encourages – massive exploitation. Minimal defenders to reduce attack sizes, long, narrow and winding paths, no-wall bases, treasure in the open (so the attackers **** off and stand there, instead of grabbing loot).
The actual challenge is LESS, as the OP points out.
- Yeah, in PVP, you still need a good base. But why put your treasure in it? If someone comes along and steals it, then they can put it in their treasure room. This would be in order to trigger cheesy, no-profit purges, that other clans can crash and steal the worthless loot or bearer thralls, of course. Um, well, bragging rights I guess. “We stole your pointless loot, hur, hur!”
- In PVE, now you don’t need to worry about defending anything but your loot room. You need only enough combat thralls and walls to stop the local wildlife, so you’ve got a much reduced need to worry about defenses against a purge that will never happen. So just get your crafter thralls and (mostly) ignore the rest.
No need to scramble for defense
- Maybe my group is weird, but we liked random purges. It kept things fresh.
- We had to be flexible. We each had our own bases, so any of us could be attacked on short notice. Half the fun was going, “My base! Again???”
- It encouraged cooperative play – the clan member you helped defend his base today would be inclined to return the favor tomorrow.
- It also encouraged friendly competitiveness. “Hey look at my bad*** base!” (Not “Look at my super-xploit base!”)
Purge participation has cratered on our server, along with play time. Why log on to see if anyone needs help with a purge, or to gain thralls to defend your base, when anyone can trigger (or avoid) a purge any time they want, and they aren’t worth it anyway? You can’t get any good crafting thralls from the lower tier purges, the loot sucks, and the combat thralls, even at mid-tiers, are not worth the potential loss of your own.
And you want to add purge trebuchets to really smash things up? Ah, no. Just…no,
Exactly. That’s why I did not protest reducing world boss hitpoints etc. It didn’t make those fights easier, only less time-consuming and tedious.
And it bothers me a little that Siptah Vault creatures did not receive this treatment. Even the regular enemies down there are huge hitpoint sponges, the bosses still have around 20,000 hitpoints, and the only thing resembling dangerous are the machine-gun harpies.
The harpies were extremely nerfed, their feather attack does almost nothing to people in armor anymore. It used to basically one shot you even at 80% DR, which was a bit much, but now the harpies aren’t even remotely a threat anymore.
Siptah isn’t the only place they borked up. Theres a few places in the EL where enemies were buffed to have more hp. Thag used to have 13k now he has 20k for example… same with the warkmaker hammer guy.
While I agree that the current implementation of the new purge system is less than ideal, as in really bad, it definitely has more potential than the old system.
AI is basic but it’s not bad…if you play a single player.
Majority if not all AI issues come from the ■■■■■■ quality of the servers (if you play officials) or overpopulation/overbuilding (if you play private with 70+ slots and an active community.)
There’s no “I” in the game’s AI. It simply tries to move to a predetermined optimal distance (melee range for most, or short distance for ranged combatants) and then randomly chooses its moves from a very limited pool of move sets. It doesn’t care whether it is being attacked if it decides to block with a shield; it doesn’t choose to kick when the opponent is blocking with a shield. Once it starts executing a combo, it doesn’t even care if the target stays in front of it - it keeps doing the combo against empty air.
As I said it’s basic and the quality of officials doesn’t provide any growth potential.
The amount of calculations and npcs on the map is too much for them to handle in a playable manner.
Officials barely manage 15+players+map activity+players buildings etc.
Add non-basic logic to npcs and the majority of the servers will just choke.
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