Goblin Squad Member
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I have seen this alluded to in a few posts but I haven't found where it is spelled out. Are all mob encounters going to be random encounters, like the randomly spawned bear cave, or goblin camp, because this would be very cool. Or will there be the traditional "wolf pack spawns under that oak tree ever minute and a half" type of encounters. In my opinion this is the biggest immersion breaker of any game. Having the mob you just killed respawn on top of you because the respawn timer is all messed up or getting half way through wiping out a goblin camp and turning around to discover that 3/4 of what you just killed has respawned kind of breaks the whole experience.
Along similar lines I was wondering if there will be mob exploit code. What I mean by that is if I decide to climb a cliff and take out the pack of wolves down below with my long bow, will that be allowed. Or will the wolves reset because they can't find any way to get me. IMO this is a legitimate tactic. I understand that it is done to keep people from staying up there and autoattacking everything that spawns below, but if there aren't any normal spawn locations, this is no longer an issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From what I have heard the wolfpack spawns on a timer won't be there. even the dungeons that are cleared out won't repopulate overnight. They might repopulate eventually and gradually, but the emphais is that player activity persists. They say they are going to have some dungeon instances that will respawn in different places for different characters but that is about it.
I would expect populations to gradually increase after having been cleared out but it sounds like it will be more natural seeming than we are used to in other games.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is what i would like to see.
Random mobs, of appropriate level, spread out. So in general people know that in this part of the mountain range is mostly filled with goblins and maybe some bugbears.
In another area you are going to find some tougher enemies with the hardest being something along the lines of an adult dragon.
In Area 2 you better not go there without vast prep and lots of skills as thats where a Great Wyrm and its flight are. That cave system is where a beholder nest is (i know cant have beholders but ehhhh).
So in general people know where harder content is, in general. HOWEVER that does not mean that it has to be static. That adult dragon maybe will go to the goblin area to hunt goblins for food. Perhaps that Great Wyrm decides to attack settlements and cause damage.
Maybe one of the younger beholders decide to set up in some tunnels a bugbear dug.
the other thing i would like to see is escalation of the enemy. Lets say that those goblin camps we were talking about havent been culled in a long while. Well the game decides you know what, its about time for those tribes to come together. So perhaps a great goblinoid leader shows up, unites the tribes, and invades the local hex.
Maybe no one killed that adult dragon and now its a mature adult. Those young beholders....well those arnt young no more.
hmmm those goblin camps...well no more goblins, the hobgoblins and bugbears took over.
So why encourage people to go in dangrous places? well because thats where the rare materials are. want to craft that holy avenger? well you better want to take on titans, great wyrms, beholder infestations.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well ,there are ways to bend the proposed escalation sytem to repopulate areas like Leperkhaun describes, or there should be.
Take the mountain range he describes filled with goblins as an example. If it is an entire mountain range, then I would expect it to be peppered with goblin camps, maybe a dozen goblins each, and unless it was completely cleared (a major, multi-party offensive should be required for that) then in the least accessible, most heavily fortified area should be the Chieftain's camp. The goblins there would all be veterens but population growth in it should be lower than a normal hex's escalation setting.
The way to clear the area of threats, to where it would take a long time to regrow, would be to take out that fortification altogether, slaying the goblin chieftain along with the bulk of the individual camps all over the mountain range.
If the fortress is levelled by players then it would trigger a timer counting down before the Chieftain respawned under a different name, and when he respawned the normal goblins there would start rebuilding the fortress. When the fortress was complete, the goblins who rebuilt it would become veteren and remain in place as servants of the Chieftain, his personal guards.
But if adventurers only cleared a few outlying camps, those camps would stay cleared until new spawns in the fortress reached a maximum population threshold, which would then start a daily single goblin spawn, setting the new goblin to wandering behavior.
The wandering AI routine would govern the behavior of the wandering goblin. He might stand still talking to himself, saying evil things and doing idle evil things or picking berries from bushes if any were nearby. After a timed duration his AI routine would pick a random direction and distance and the wanderer would hed off. If he came to one of the scattered campfires and there was an empty space he would join that camp and take up his role. If that camp was full, no available role slots, he would resume wandering until he found one. If he missed all the possible campsites or all the campsites were full he would continue wandering like that until killed or he found the edge of the map, or got himself stuck somewhere in the map where he could not move. At that point he would despawn (to free resources). I think I'd tie in a message to the admin where it was that he despawned. the message could go to a log the devs might periodically review.
If in his wandering he found a campsite that was fully depopulated he would relight the camfire and wait, doing goblinish things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think both of these are good ideas, but what would make it even more interesting is if a scouting party of say orcs could wander through and if it stumbled on an empty campsite have a 50/50 chance of deciding to stay there for a while. If our wandering goblin happens to come across them he heads back to one of the other goblin camps and collects a small group to push them out. But if after a couple of days no one runs across them then they pull up camp and continue on their mission of scouting the area.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well ,there are ways to bend the proposed escalation sytem to repopulate areas like Leperkhaun describes, or there should be.
Take the mountain range he describes filled with goblins as an example. If it is an entire mountain range, then I would expect it to be peppered with goblin camps, maybe a dozen goblins each, and unless it was completely cleared (a major, multi-party offensive should be required for that) then in the least accessible, most heavily fortified area should be the Chieftain's camp. The goblins there would all be veterens but population growth in it should be lower than a normal hex's escalation setting.
The way to clear the area of threats, to where it would take a long time to regrow, would be to take out that fortification altogether, slaying the goblin chieftain along with the bulk of the individual camps all over the mountain range.
If the fortress is levelled by players then it would trigger a timer counting down before the Chieftain respawned under a different name, and when he respawned the normal goblins there would start rebuilding the fortress. When the fortress was complete, the goblins who rebuilt it would become veteren and remain in place as servants of the Chieftain, his personal guards.
But if adventurers only cleared a few outlying camps, those camps would stay cleared until new spawns in the fortress reached a maximum population threshold, which would then start a daily single goblin spawn, setting the new goblin to wandering behavior.
The wandering AI routine would govern the behavior of the wandering goblin. He might stand still talking to himself, saying evil things and doing idle evil things or picking berries from bushes if any were nearby. After a timed duration his AI routine would pick a random direction and distance and the wanderer would hed off. If he came to one of the scattered campfires and there was an empty space he would join that camp and take up his role. If that camp was full, no available role slots, he would resume wandering until he...
I really like this idea but I think it'd be cooler and feel more dynamic if it wasn't necessarily goblins who repopulated the goblin camps.
Maybe a kobold tribe were to rebuild the ruined goblin fortress and camps, and if there are any goblin camps left, kill or chase off the remaining goblins.I think it would make the world feel a bit more alive if it wasn't always the same kind of creature that occupied a certain area but instead a random, similar monster type of about the same level were to take the other one's place.
'Cause even with a chief with new name goblins are still goblins and finding them and wiping them out in the same place every other day/week would start to feel a bit odd after a while I think.
Other than that it sounds awesome, though.
It does sound quite sound (haha). An addition to the improved AI routines we were discussing in that other thread, was it the wildlife ecology thread? Not that it matters though. It would really provide people with a lot of PvE content. And overall would just be cool :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wouldn't that depend on the area? Hopefully PFO will be drawing new people into the game a couple of years from now. If the respawn point is near a starting town those folks will need something in PvE to work with rather than an Ancient Red Dragon lair.
I'd make a counter proposal that the difficulty level of random monster tables used should key off the average power of nearby settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well what you could do is that if the scouting parties completed their task, which would be to find 3 or 4 settlements, whether that was goblin camps, player mining camps, or player towns. Since they are scouts I would expect them to use some level of stealth and not actually engage the camps. they might engage the wandering goblin but not a goblin camp. Anyways, once they have found 3 or 4 settlements they start making their way back to their starting location, whether that was a cave, or the edge of the hex, whatever was randomly rolled as their starting location. If even one of them makes it back then an invasionary force is sent. Depending on the what they had encountered determines the size and strength of the force. If it was 3 goblin camps, then maybe a small force. If they happen to have found the goblin main camp, then a medium size force. And if they had found a large mining camp and a player town, then a larger force. I would expect this force to head to the closest settlement and continue marching on. At each camp they took over they could roll to see if they decide to make it a permanent camp. I would expect a larger camps to have a higher chance of this. So if they just found 3 goblin camps, then it would be a 50/50 for each camp. If they found the goblin main camp, then it would have a 75% chance and the goblin camps would have 25%. IF they found multiple large camps then they would have a 50/50 chance while the smaller camps would have a 25% If they decided to make a camp, then half of their force stays in the camp while the other half proceeds onto the next objective. Once they had completed their objectives they would head back to the camp they made. If they were unlucky and didn't make a camp then they would just wander around killing and burning anything they came across.
You could also have multiple scouting parties from different races going on at the same time. I would just make sure they didn't start at the same location.
Also if the scouting party happen to be non-sentient, like a pack of wolves, then I would expect them to wander around until they found a fairly unpopulated area that had a good place for a den, such as a cave, burrow, or even an old abandoned farm. They would make their den there and then patrol a section of the hex around that den.