Originally posted by leone2nd

Did you happen to notice how that mob is able to use obstacles? Trees rocks sometimes but rarely water etc.

Once something gets between you and them they either turn around or decide to alter their path around it and they rarely attack at full speed if they don't have full eye contact with you while coming around it and this is dependable of your action speed, hitting it etc as it seems. pay attention to the stronger unit of the mob to realize this. Other weaker units often act as decoys to draw you near and then the stronger ones to flank you.

it's not strange behavior, it is very clever design but it's not quite there yet in terms of fine tuning and I don't have any idea how they did it.

 

That's just the starter mob.

Imagine what they can do updating all the other mobs as time passes and all the new staff they re going to put in.

Facing 2+ mobs i ll try to bring one mob in the line of fire of the others but these litle fuckers obviously "know" about that and the oe i try to put in the middle sidesteps to open line of sight for his friend and/or the other try to find the position with free sight on me. I ll make a mini game out of these on how many friendly fire hits  the mob infront me receives.

Originally posted by DarthRaiden

Originally posted by leone2nd

Did you happen to notice how that mob is able to use obstacles? Trees rocks sometimes but rarely water etc.

Once something gets between you and them they either turn around or decide to alter their path around it and they rarely attack at full speed if they don't have full eye contact with you while coming around it and this is dependable of your action speed, hitting it etc as it seems. pay attention to the stronger unit of the mob to realize this. Other weaker units often act as decoys to draw you near and then the stronger ones to flank you.

it's not strange behavior, it is very clever design but it's not quite there yet in terms of fine tuning and I don't have any idea how they did it.

 

That's just the starter mob.

Imagine what they can do updating all the other mobs as time passes and all the new staff they re going to put in.

 

Facing 2+ mobs i ll try to bring one mob in the line of fire of the others but these litle fuckers obviously "know" about that and the oe i try to put in the middle sidesteps to open line of sight for his friend and/or the other try to find the position with free sight on me. I ll make a mini game out of these on how many friendly fire hits  the mob infront me receives.

I had situations when cooperating mobs hit each other while trying to land a hit on me, healed me instead of comrade or even did the finishing blow on one of their almost dead friends. Darkfall's AI may be annoying and in some cases exploited, but it is still the best in the MMO genre.

Darkfalls AI is by far the best try I have seen in any MMO so far.

Sure it can be exploited and sure there are ways to bug it out. but if you try to fight the mobs without trying to bug them it can be a great fight with them teaming up on you grouping up retreating attacking and pretty much doing everything PCs do.

Every patch so far has improved the NPCs and made them smarter and harder to bug. its still possible to bug quite a fewe mobs but its a lot less and a lot harder now than before. I can't wait to see just how good the AI will be in a years time.

Nice to see that the post is still alive and kicking. About the AI, I do actually have to agree that it is pretty good. Fact is the Goblins are still weird but I had some more adventures this weekend, including visiting a Dungeun and receiving some nice loot from a Selentine chest at the end of the dungeun. The AI tries to use tactics against you, which sometimes makes it look rather weird, but also gives one hell of a fight many times as they try to circle you, hide behind buildings and request friends for help.

I played through most of the weekend (my girlfriend was not really happy with that but so be it :-P ) and had a lot of new adventures, I will once again write some down to give people a better view of what Darkfall can be like:

First of all a real life friend of mine joined in so now we were 2 guys strong, and ready to explore far beyond the starter towns. I set myself some goals before playing Darkfall, one of those goals was to get a raft and explore the (huge) sea that surround the many islands and the main continent of Agon. The durability of the armor which I got as a welcome present was all but gone now, so firstly I went to gather some Iron Ore and start crafting me and my friend a new set of banded armor, after which we were ready for battle.

So we went out into the Wilderniss , towards the Alfar lands to the east ( we were eager to fight some new Alfar players) , we were not far out before we found another Chaos chest, ofcourse it was looted and received 500 gold, a nice start. We travelled further towards the East and to my suprise the world seemed a lot more populated this time, we found many new elfs questing and killing mobs. We got chased away from a small Troll encampment by a few of our elf brethren, apparently they did not respect our racial bonds as much as we had hoped, the only thing they saw was blood, our blood ofcourse (and perhaps our new shiny banded armor?) , many arrows flew over our heads and they tried to kill our mounts, luckily we managed to get away with our mounts bleeding and at 30% health.

We found a nice place to rest under a tree which was hollow from underneath, it was time to recover from our wounds and discuss our strategy on what to do next? We healed our mounts and decided to travel further along towards the East. After riding for around 5 minutes we saw a huge tower in the distance, it seemed to be a huge castle! We could not resist checking it out, although we did not trust it, such a huge castle but no banners flying gracefully at the highest of towers? Something was off, and upon entering the castle we heard many frightening sounds of magic being cast. We climbed upon a wall and what we saw was a spectacle:

A group of 5 Alfars (all red, which means enemies) where slaughtering these Human NPC's living in the fortress, the Alfar used magic I had never even seen, Fireballs and weird skulls flying in the air, which made really creepy sounds. Knowing we were out matched and out skilled we quickly turned back and got away without them ever knowing we were there. We started having doubts about our decision to PvP in the Alfar lands, we thought we had seen enough for now, and being the noobs we are we travelled back to the Elf lands for some treasure hunting. Our plans changed drastically after finding a Chaos chest in the wilds, I looted it and to my suprise I found something big in my backpack! I looked what it was and apparantly it was a housing item, called a Cupboard!

Not really knowing what it was worth I quickly ran a price check and was told the item sells for 10K, immediately I started dreaming about a mighty raft floating around the Sea! We recalled and sold the item for the price of 10.000 gold in a mather of minutes. Upon which I asked in Trade chat if anybody was selling rafts, I received a few replies and was able to buy a raft for the price of 1.5K, on to the sea!

We also wanted to explore some dungeuns and we both took 1 Selentine chest key with us, we mounted up and headed West towards the sea, it was only a good 5 minute run and after arriving I pointed at the salty water and spawned my raft for the very first time! It was definetly a feeling of accomplisment and sailing around in Agon is a lot of fun! We explored some Islands, killed some mobs, ran from some mobs aswell ofcourse and finally saw a purple blinking portal in the distance along the shore. I parked my raft nicely in the sand and put it in my bag, unto our first dungeun!

The dungeun was beautifull from the inside, with broken statues, small huts and a sinister feel about it, it reminded me a lot of Oblivion Dungeuns, only if I would die here, I would actually lose something (my precious raft!), we encountered a stange lizard like mob and were able to beat it 2vs1, we entered another chamber with something that looked like a big temple, there were about 4-5 of these lizards wandering around the temple, just as we wanted to turn back we spotted a chest at the highest point of the temple! A selentine chest, with a few meters next to it a portal back to the outside, we ran for it, looted the chest and got some awesome named armor and staffs from it and ran through the portal back to safety! We recalled and banked our new loot, wondering what new adventures would await us in Agon.......

Thanks for reading and hope to see you in Agon!!

Originally posted by Ladrann

Nice to see that the post is still alive and kicking. About the AI, I do actually have to agree that it is pretty good. Fact is the Goblins are still weird but I had some more adventures this weekend, including visiting a Dungeun and receiving some nice loot from a Selentine chest at the end of the dungeun. The AI tries to use tactics against you, which sometimes makes it look rather weird, but also gives one hell of a fight many times as they try to circle you, hide behind buildings and request friends for help.

I played through most of the weekend (my girlfriend was not really happy with that but so be it :-P ) and had a lot of new adventures, I will once again write some down to give people a better view of what Darkfall can be like:

First of all a real life friend of mine joined in so now we were 2 guys strong, and ready to explore far beyond the starter towns. I set myself some goals before playing Darkfall, one of those goals was to get a raft and explore the (huge) sea that surround the many islands and the main continent of Agon. The durability of the armor which I got as a welcome present was all but gone now, so firstly I went to gather some Iron Ore and start crafting me and my friend a new set of banded armor, after which we were ready for battle.

So we went out into the Wilderniss , towards the Alfar lands to the east ( we were eager to fight some new Alfar players) , we were not far out before we found another Chaos chest, ofcourse it was looted and received 500 gold, a nice start. We travelled further towards the East and to my suprise the world seemed a lot more populated this time, we found many new elfs questing and killing mobs. We got chased away from a small Troll encampment by a few of our elf brethren, apparently they did not respect our racial bonds as much as we had hoped, the only thing they saw was blood, our blood ofcourse (and perhaps our new shiny banded armor?) , many arrows flew over our heads and they tried to kill our mounts, luckily we managed to get away with our mounts bleeding and at 30% health.

We found a nice place to rest under a tree which was hollow from underneath, it was time to recover from our wounds and discuss our strategy on what to do next? We healed our mounts and decided to travel further along towards the East. After riding for around 5 minutes we saw a huge tower in the distance, it seemed to be a huge castle! We could not resist checking it out, although we did not trust it, such a huge castle but no banners flying gracefully at the highest of towers? Something was off, and upon entering the castle we heard many frightening sounds of magic being cast. We climbed upon a wall and what we saw was a spectacle:

A group of 5 Alfars (all red, which means PK's) where slaughtering these Human NPC's living in the fortress, the Alfar used magic I had never even seen, Fireballs and weird skulls flying in the air, which made really creepy sounds. Knowing we were out matched and out skilled we quickly turned back and got away without them ever knowing we were there. We started having doubts about our decision to PvP in the Alfar lands, we thought we had seen enough for now, and being the noobs we are we travelled back to the Elf lands for some treasure hunting. Our plans changed drastically after finding a Chaos chest in the wilds, I looted it and to my suprise I found something big in my backpack! I looked what it was and apparantly it was a housing item, called a Cupboard!

Not really knowing what it was worth I quickly ran a price check and was told the item sells for 10K, immediately I started dreaming about a mighty raft floating around the Sea! We recalled and sold the item for the price of 10.000 gold in a mather of minutes. Upon which I asked in Trade chat if anybody was selling rafts, I received a few replies and was able to buy a raft for the price of 1.5K, on to the sea!

We also wanted to explore some dungeuns and we both took 1 Selentine chest key with us, we mounted up and headed West towards the sea, it was only a good 5 minute run and after arriving I pointed at the salty water and spawned my raft for the very first time! It was definetly a feeling of accomplisment and sailing around in Agon is a lot of fun! We explored some Islands, killed some mobs, ran from some mobs aswell ofcourse and finally saw a purple blinking portal in the distance along the shore. I parked my raft nicely in the sand and put it in my bag, unto our first dungeun!

The dungeun was beautifull from the inside, with broken statues, small huts and a sinister feel about it, it reminded me a lot of Oblivion Dungeuns, only if I would die here, I would actually lose something (my precious raft!), we encountered a stange lizard like mob and were able to beat it 2vs1, we entered another chamber with something that looked like a big temple, there were about 4-5 of these lizards wandering around the temple, just as we wanted to turn back we spotted a chest at the highest point of the temple! A selentine chest, with a few meters next to it a portal back to the outside, we ran for it, looted the chest and got some awesome named armor and staffs from it and ran through the portal back to safety! We recalled and banked our new loot, wondering what new adventures would await us in Agon.......

Thanks for reading and hope to see you in Agon!!

thanks for the great story.

One thing, red isn't aplied on pk exclusively, there is a more dark red and a more light red  one for PK and te other for racial enemy, if you were human (iam assuming) and you run into Alfar you faced the racial enemy red.   That doesn't mean those alfars  kill their own although Alfars probably tents to do these most of the time..

However red signals enemy  and you did good to avoid conflict :D

Originally posted by DarthRaiden

thanks for the great story.

One thing, red isn't aplied on pk exclusively, there is a more dark red and a more light red  one for PK and te other for racial enemy, if you were human (iam assuming) and you run into Alfar you faced the racial enemy red.   That doesn't mean those alfars  kill their own although Alfars probably tents to do these most of the time..

However red signals enemy  and you did good to avoid conflict :D

Thanks mate, fixed it.