A lot about WoM PvE is just dealing with the same enemies just with a higher level or just having more than 1 of them. This does create a sense of difficulty, but feels unfair to the player. Just adding more than 1 enemy to an already existing easy enemy can just make them spam attacks making it harder to deal with multiple. There are still ways to deal with multiple enemies, but they’ll always have the advantage due to you being an easy target when attacking.
Then there’s the AI and types of enemies itself. This is probably a main contributor to why PvE gets so stale alongside “harder” areas just stacking more enemies. Basically you have 2 types of enemies, wizards and bandits. They all share similar AI with similar attack patterns. Wizards aint that varied due to lack of original kits, and bandits are infuriating to fight since they just spam either bow or weapons. This is really easy to deal with alone, but when there’s multiple its EXTREMELY infuriating. Then when you add in levels it can be even worse since now they can absolutely shred your HP.
PvE should be more about learning attack patterns and learning how to defeat difficult enemies, and not just slapping the same ass enemies back to back adding more/less dmg and hp.
I think a big issue is that NPCs can’t use multiple magics, and by extension multiple weapons or a combination of magic and weapons. This results in them all having a spammy nature.
This is because there were many bugs with multi magic NPCs so they were disable for the time being somewhere back in the open tests or whenever captains were first added, and stayed that way ever since.
So because you can’t really make enemies with unique kits you slap more of them to get some type of difficulty.
Anyways, I think a fix for multiple magics/weapons NPCs combined with the combat improvements in TGR (which I assume will be good, no reason for them not to be) would make it possible to have actually difficult but still fun NPCs.
magics barely have any variation and honestly isnt that big of an issue that they cant use multiple. this would however be more noticeable game-wise when we all have 2-3+ magics and npcs still have 1. combat improvements would definitely help with npcs being more interesting. still, they need different ways that they move, attack, and defend compared to others so you have to find out how to fight them instead of 1 strategy that works everytime
Pretty much add better A.I 2, electric boogaloo. Idek if it can be done man.
But yeah I agree that pve is linear since all npc’s behave the same way and bandits are BUSTED, but I believe tgr will tackle this issue so I don’t see a need of harping on this now…
It’s a shame that NPC’s can’t use more than two magics/modes anymore since they’re so stupid.
I can live without creature enemies, they would not add variation imo since we would be back to square one if creatures behaved the same way as bandit A.I (running to you and chomping you like there’s no tmrr).
Ok i forgot to reply, but I got a couple of things I wanted to add onto what I was saying.
The low level NPCs seem fine to me. Their kits are simple and so are yours. They use them pretty sporadically and so does a supposed new player. What needs improvement is the current mid level NPCs (the lvl40 bandits you can find in camps and MC soldiers) and high levels like hero and villain minibosses.
I think that better AI should be tied with giving the NPCs the ability to wield multiple weapons and reworking how they get equipment.
To make different NPC fighs unique their kit needs to get a bit more varied than “blast and jump” for wizards or “one weapon” for bandits. Also they shouldn’t just get random gear, but instead get semi random gear based on their fighting type.
Basically I’m thinking an NPCs getting randomly spawned should look something like this:
Let’s say it’s a ~lvl45 wizard, a low tier enemy who has minimal attack variation
A fighting type for the wizard is chosen, the possibilities could be let’s say rusher, runner and some tankier type and our wizard gets rusher
Since he’s a rusher, he needs to have some gear complementing his playstyle. Being a low tier enemy, he only gets 1-2 items from some “rusher” table of items which contains items giving power, casting and magic speed and maybe enchanted or maybe not for this low level. His other items are truly random.
As for some bandit NPC of a similar level something like this:
If he’s from a bandit organisation, he gets their signature weapon
Pick his playstyle, let’s say it’s some “cowardly” playstyle
Based on his playstyle he gets some gear, rest is random, and maybe a main weapon which complements it (a bow in this example which he would use at a distance) and maybe a dagger to use at short range (if he’s from an organisation just make sure he doesn’t get 2 boes or sum, specifics don’t matter rn)
Now the current AI stays, it just gets different priorities based on the playstyle.
The rusher wizard wouldn’t bother dodging much, but will rather close distance and try hitting you.
The cowardly bandit will try maintaing distance and shooting you, but will run away if you get closer or resort to using a dagger only if you go up to his face and he rolls a 25/100 or some other number.
Each NPCs playstyle would have it’s strengths, the rusher being fairly aggresive making you dodge more often and the coward poking you from a distance while trying to maintain it, and weaknesses, the rusher being an easy target because he refuses to dodge and the coward being rendered not threatening when you rush in and he tries to run away. This makes you play dynamically, adapting to the situation to exploit the weaknesses of your specific opponent and being rewarded for it, but also makes you stay on guard when the opponent’s try to use their strengths.
A system similar to this one will reward you when you manage to kill an enemy 1.5x your level because you recognised his strategy and used it to your advantage with that feeling of achievement, yet it can still humble you by sending a pair of well synergised NPCs that require more than pattern recognition to defeat, making you quickly check priorities while battling a tank which tries to dodge and then attack you and a rusher that is trying to place his hands on your neck at all times. At least I think it will do something like that.
Basically I’ve written a huge block of text for what I wanted to say: I agree that a TGR style change to the current system could make it actually really good. What already exists needs refining and reworking.
It’s not really hard at all to beat up a group of npcs, but you are obviously going to take a lot of hits if you attack an entire group of npcs all at once, in the middle of them… which is totally normal in my opinion. Just try attacking one at a time, starting the fight with a heavy hitting move, not staying in the line of sight of all the npcs at once, etc.
Now I’m not talking about diversity, yeah it’s lacking. However, I’m not expecting different npcs before later levels so…
Yeah I do, I just don’t want to. There is no benefit to having creatures in the game besides “muh immersion”, the time spent creating and modeling them would be better spent on something like fighting styles