Sloe Times

These are some thoughts I wanted to remember that I wrote about the SWG combat system as it exists today. Maybe I can actually get someones ear that it could make a difference on.

The combat system as it is is both good and flawed in many ways. The NPC/MOBs are in the same boat. The problem is that you can't create a reasonable AI to compete with the way that humans will try to exploit the game, your alternatives are either make the non-player components unnaturally challenging, apply bounds that limit the exploitation of the system in place, or a little of both.

Thinking like a DM, the first thing I would do is change how the game evaluates a challenge, and how it rewards players for overcoming that challenge. A classic example of this are solo groups and buffed players. The system will grant difficult quests to individuals based on the cummulative level of the members of a group. One person in that group then runs off and completes that quest acquiring all of the xp and reward for doing so. they can do this thanks to some great armor, some great buffs, and some great food.
The exploit here is gaining a mission above their abilities and being able to complete it as an individual because the game does not accurately evaluate and adapt to the players real challenge level. Quest challenge level is based on weapon in hand, perhaps even skill with that weapon, but perhaps not. I'm thinking I can recall getting some healthy missions holding a nice flamethrower that I couldn't use while at the mission terminal working on my marksman tree.

When developing challenges for a normal RPG more stuff is taken into account than the weapon an individual is holding, in fact here are the things I would want the system to look at:

* Number of individuals in the group
* HAM level of group individuals (cumulative)
* Relative Power (weapon/armor/resists)

Using that information I would then randomly spawn a mission that would actually create a challenge for the person(s) acquiring it. As it stands now using my example above, you're looking for specific types of missions/MOBs and I wouldn't give players that option. I would allow only the group leader to acquire a mission (if it's jsut you, you default to the group leader right?) and basicly offer a Good/Neutral/Evil ... perhaps more SWG correct method would be Rebel/Neutral/Imperial aligned mission. Not a factional mission, although maybe that could be a toggle for the group to decide to use or not, but a mission that is in line with the focus of those three alignments. You shouldn't have to change things up too much since this can be as simple as something you have today like clearing some vicious animals where the wants to mine/build/etc for individuals and low powered groups, to something more complex for large/powerful groups like a one shot dungeon. As you may have noticed many of the dungeons/caves in the galaxy look a lot alike, so the template is there, it just needs a starting point which I don't see it being difficult to make dynamic by spawning stairs down into a dungeon or a mini base instead of a nest (there when the mission starts, gone when it ends just like the nests), content (quantity and difficulty of NPCs/MOBs based on power level of group) and rewards (treasure chests and mob loot based on the challenge level of the quest plus the mission bounty). One other thing I would do to reduce the clutter is put a time limit on the mission based on the challenge level. At level X the mission it should take Y amount of time to complete. If you don't complete it, despawn it, and if you're in the middle of it, teleport you(group) out of any dynamic dungeon and you get to keep whatever you looted and if there were a mechanisim for determining how far along you got, maybe a partial bounty, otherwise no bounty since the mission didn't get completed.

Some changes in the the way NPCs work (MOBs excluded since creatures seem to have a good setting, they just need more appropriate matchups vs. PCs when they are a mission objective) would be to actually assign professions and skill levels to NPCs and have them use the specials and weapons to full effect just like PCs. As it is there seems to be a little of this for NPCs in that you see those with rifles actually try for range vs. you and then shoot, but their weapon graphic is random and damage is apparently capped based on the level of the mob. I would also make armor that NPCs wore relavent rather than just random set resists, put them in armor and let that armor provide its resists. Now, you might be thinking more DB bloat to actually make this work, but I don't think it would really have to be any different than it is now. Skin the NPCs with armor and weapons that they would reasonably have (flags in the code) and identify vulnerable areas (no armor/resists/vulnerabilities). The only reason you would have to create objects is if you actually allowed linked loot to a given NPC(type). i.e. An NPC with a T21 in Ubese armor may have ubese armor pieces or even a T21 available to loot (spawned in the container when killed/looted). I wouldn't make these loot items better than what players could make except as ultra-rare drops, and in general slightly inferior to what players can make (this could be determined via point in time scrapes periodically from the server DB). In addition to these gear type loots, I would then have a 1:n chance of random object junk or treasure also on the body.

posted by Andres Silva  # 10/26/2004 04:20:00 PM