Irregular Monsters

[trollson]

Forword:

I don't habitually slaughter the fauna, so I if I've missed existing discriminating features between creatures, I apologise.

 

Lack of Discrimination between Creatures

 

One frustration I have is that for all the effort Roja puts into making their models distinct, this does not appear to be carried over into their abilities in game; only stats scale.

• Can we use monsters and creatures better?
  
• Can we make them more different than just the magnitude of the same set of stats?
  
• Can we stop a monster from being profiled simply as a walking "A/D" figure?
  

What am I talking about?

...people ask me that too often...

Surprise people. Just because a critter has low A/D and low health, shouldn't mean that it is harmless -- it could be immune to non-magic damage.

 

We have some different type of damage in the game (physical [1], heat, cold, thermal/radiation, magical). Monsters could have more in the way of strengths and weaknesses in regard to these, and deal damage other than physical.

 

Most fighters are overly comfortable with their big sword, armour, and a pile of potions. What if they met a creature against which all those where irrelevant?

 

 

What do we already have? I can only think of one at the moment, are there any others?

• Snakes poison on a critical hit.
  
• Unicorns?
  

What could we have?

• Leprechauns that attack by stealing gold or other items instead of damage.
  
• Imps which are immune to, and deliver fire damage.
  
• Ghosts which are immune to all but magical damage.
  
• Woodsprites with a huge defense, small fast and nimble.
  
• Spiders paralyzing their victim on a critical hit.
  
• Creatures that can disengage from combat.
  
• Creatures with inherent perks; the Hydra with 'there is no fork'.
  
• Creatures with magic spell effects as attacks; the Vampire with 'life drain'.
  
• Invisible creatures (maybe there are already!); the Wraiths less friendly cousins.
  
• Creatures with unusual A/D ratios (or other attribute ratios well off the normal curve).
  
• Creatures which apply damage to other attributes than health; wear away physique, coordination, attack and defense skill levels, which must recover at 1/min as usual (1).
  
• Creatures only harmed by iron weapons (not steel), or wooden weapons, or some other mundane weapon type etc.
  

How do you think professional fighers will react when they meet something which doesnt just lie like the rest? The tomb contains an invisble wraith, immune to all but magical damage, which feeds on the life force of intruders...

(1) From a

comment

made

here

: If A/D are reduced by damage, then combat experience must be based on maximum A/D skill values, and not current, otherwise it could be exploited.

Postive Interactions?

So far the only interaction characters have with monsters and creatures is in fighting them. Couldn't there be other forms of interaction?

 

I think that this would take more work than varying the combat, as the existing toolset of postive interactions is virtually non-existant. The charm attribute could come into the success chance.

• Heal a Leprechaun and it drops some gold (the problem here is that there are few injured leprechauns!).
  
• Feed the Unicorn and receive a blessing ('use with' fruit or veg, but don't try to use meat!).
  
• Bribe intelligent monsters to be your lacky for some duration (act as summoned creature).
  
• Give a Brownie some boots and receive a manu blessing.
  

Thoughts? Implications? Cost analysis?

See Also:

• Posting under Poison Ivy on damaging attributes other than health.
  
• Posting under Taverns on non-lethal damage.
  
  

[1] I would divide physical damage into different forms as well, as I have previously posted on missiles and recently on non-lethal damage.

Edited June 23, 2009 by trollson

[Derin]

Ohh, I would love to see that in the game. As a long term project this could be really nice and offer a twist to some monsters.

[trollson]

As a starting point; how difficult would it be for creatures to make use of the different types of damage?

 

Could we, say, change a Phantom to have 100 points of protection against physical damage, and to inflict its damage as magical instead of physical?

 

These are already in the system for players; are they represented in the creatures as well? (If not, why ever not?)

 

 

How would these variations affect the experience value for a creature?

 

If based just on A/D, then it no longer represents the real threat of a creature; which may have low A/D, 100pts armour and that does 100pts radiation damage while stealing your pants.

[Acelon]

Well, currently, isn't the arctic chimeran very resistant to physical damage, and weak against magic damage?

 

If that's so, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard.

[trollson]

Pack Behaviour

 

Pack behaviour was mentioned recently in the (misnamed?) Ants topic:

Creatures come to the aid of their kin, joining the fight, regardless of whether they would normally ignore the opponent character (monster magnetism or defense).

This is not too dissimilar to how summoned creatures behave wrt their Guild (from what I understand)?

 

Multiple spawns (on multi-combat [1] maps) serve as opponents for the strongest fighters; easier to add new spawns than new monsters.

Pack behaviour should ignore restrictions of single-combat maps, and normal monster-ignore levels (including Monster Magnetism). This makes pack behaviour on single-combat maps actually more dangerous, since allies cannot join the fight on the side of the player!

 

Alternatively, Guilds could be considered to follow 'pack behavour' rules as well.

While the definition of "kin" as creatures of the same type is an appropriate starting point, it should be more flexible:

• Male and female Orcs should support one another.
  
• A tribe may keep wolves as guard animals, which would protect their "pack".
  
• The Orc tribe ruled by an Ogre [2].
  

A seperate "group id" would be needed for spawns.

Note

: A group id is synonymous with a guild tag, but needn't be displayed.

Event Triggered Spawns

 

While this may be a slight deviation from the main thread; consider the uses of having spawns triggered by events, as a scenario building device:

• Combat occuring in a defined area -- the Orcs' wolves come running.
  
• using some object.
  
• talking on local chat within an area (hussh!).
  

Give a probability to these triggers to keep the behaviour in an area from being entirely predictable.

 

 

[1] is it appropriate to still have this distinction? does it really serve a useful purpose which cannot be satisfied by other means?

[2] named monsters would work well at this point.

Edited October 21, 2006 by trollson

[Entropy]

Those are very pertinent ideas, and I wanted to do something like this for quite a while. I guess I will start implementing some of them soon. But, of course, there will be a lot of bitching...

[Acelon]

Should we start throwing out some ideas then for this (in addition to Trollson's).

Edited May 1, 2007 by Acelon

[Acelon]

Some ideas for these monsters (I'll add in Trollson's to the list as well)

 

White Rabbits - Attracted to bags with veggies in them

 

Brownie - "Use with" some boots on the brownie, and recieve a manu blessing (maybe like 500 experience?). The challenge is that the brownies are damn hard to capture.

 

Wood Sprite - Casts poison spell, small mana pool.

 

Leprechaun - While fighting a leprechaun,it has a low chance of stealing one of your stackable items. It has a much higher chance of stealing gold. In turn, Leprechauns have a higher gold drop. Also, if you heal an injured leprechaun, it drops a random amount of gold.

 

Spiders - Poison and cause paralysis.

 

Brown Snakes - Cause paralysis

 

Skunks - "Spray you" and poison you in turn. Would be interesting if people you walk nearby lose health as well (from the stench).

 

Male Goblin - Has a higher chance than leprechaun to steal gold in battle.

 

Armed Male Goblin - Has Body Piecing Perk

 

Gargoyles - Cast Mana Drain, low mana pool

 

Skeletons - Cast Life Drain, low mana pool

 

Female Goblin - Heals self and other goblins, medium mana pool

 

Feran - Storylinewise..its a magical creature so.. it deals not only magic damage, but also has magic immunity.

 

Snow Leopards - Immune to cold damage

 

Tigers - Have Body Piercing Perk

 

Female Orc - Cast Shield Spell, Medium Mana Pool

 

Male Orc - Has Evanescense perk

 

Troll - Wicked high defense, fast regeneration perk.

 

Desert Chimeran - Deals Fire Damage, immune to fire damage

 

Arctic Chimeran - Deals Ice Damage, immune to ice damage

 

Forest Chimeran - Has low chance of casting Mirror Skin

 

Mountain Chimeran - Casts Shield

[trollson]

It looks like some new monster abilities are in place; wow that was quick!

Note

: With regards to the

Phantom

's high physical armour -- this is bypassed by critical hits, so it can be taken down with normal attacks. This should be a rare fluke (what did your sword hit?); if it is too frequent an occurance, then up the critical defense? At present, the weapon of choice would be a Rapier.

 

Another consideration is the combat experience value (mentioned above in passing). As I understand, this is based on attack/defense levels of the creature. One of the points of this thread is that A/D is no longer a fair summary of the threat of a creature. What alternatives? Extra xp for critical hits (adding in critical defense), use a virtual A/D assessed for the threat level, or some inclusion of armour factor in the xp of a successful attack?

Some comments on Acelon's post:

White Rabbits - Attracted to bags with veggies in them

It may cost too much for rabbits to actively seek veg in bags. However, if they stand on a veg bag, things can happen; it would be very appropriate if rabbits produced more rabbits.

 

Rabbit eats veg, recovers health to maximum if necessary, then starts to spawn "summoned" rabbits.

Prevent overpopulation by restricting the parent rabbit to a limited number of children. Eating more veg could then act to heal, first the parent, then the children.

Brownie - "Use with" some boots on the brownie, and receive a manu blessing (maybe like 500 experience?). The challenge is that the brownies are damn hard to capture.

On a positive interaction like this, the creature should also vanish (to be respawned); it has gone off to repair the boots. The experience bonus is then reasonable, since you lose the boots and the brownies are a limited resource.

 

How to make something hard to catch?

"Use with"

would have to trigger some skill or attribute test.

Spiders - Poison and cause paralysis.

Brown Snakes - Cause paralysis

Paralysis could be very deadly; while paralysed your attack, defense, coordination are effectively zero'ed, so you only have your armour for protection, and cannot move or dissengage.

 

A lesser form of paralysis could "damage" these attributes and skills instead, wearing you down (they recover at 1/min as normal). This would become dangerous if the spiders had

pack

behaviour.

 

Now, if only the spider could start to coccoon its victims in its web (sticky web, decreases physique by 1 point per strand)...

Skunks - "Spray you" and poison you in turn. Would be interesting if people you walk nearby lose health as well (from the stench).

Could be represented by temporary "antisocial" and "monster magnetism" perks, and damage "Charm". Not sure how easy it would be to affect passersby, but maybe a temporary variant of "I glow" perk would affect opponents in combat.

 

So it maybe an advantage to get skunk'ed if you can take the damage...

Troll - Wicked high defense, fast regeneration perk.

Can creatures recover health and mana over time? This would become significant if creatures can disengage and act in packs (wounded ons back off to recover while their kin keep up the attack).

 

If they can survive and recover, then they also need to improve over time, otherwise it is more of an advantage to die and respawn. This is possible if a creature's instance data includes a full set of attributes, and not just hitpoints and mana.

Mountain Chimeran - Casts Shield

For shield to make a difference, particulary for high end creatures, then its effects need to be level based. Creatures who can use multiple spells need to have some logic to choose when and what to use, given limited mana pool (which is open to draining).

Edited June 23, 2009 by trollson

[trollson]

Updates:

• Pack behaviour ignores the limitation of single combat maps, and normal monster-ignore rules (Defense level and Monster Magnetism). This would actually make single-combat maps more dangerous in places, since allies cannot come to your help against a pack!
  
• Phantoms vunerable to critical hits makes Rapier the choice weapon for fighting ghosts...
  
• Consider general gifts to creatures ('use with' gold, food, items they crave) as positive interactions.
  

It would be even more interesting

not to announce

some of these changes, but let players find out for themselves. Ideally I'd add information to in-game books (representing a library of all in-game information). See the suggested implementation

all-books-readable

in my thread on

Interaction with the Map

to understand where I am coming from. This really needs an extenstion to the client to take a

URL

to a book, to save server bandwidth (modify '

read_network_book()

' to have a third branch where a

URL

is given).

Edited October 24, 2006 by trollson

[duran]

about that stealing leprecaun, how about when it dies it drops everything it have stolen so far? that way, if the same leprecaun have not been killed in a while (do monsters heal back up over time?) it can be packing quite a drop

 

heh, attribute drain is a classic. like having vampires, ghosts and similar drain life related attribues to heal themselfs or something. or maybe some lovecraftian horror that drains away mental attributes as the very act of trying to comprehend its existence cause brain damage

 

question is, should it be healable? and if so, how? spells, potions, playing npc priests?

[trollson]

Leprechauns -- unless monsters have there own inventorys, it would be hard to make it remember what it has stolen. It could go into a hidden hyperspace bag at the end of a rainbow though (now, that would be a cool effect).

 

Attribute drain -- afaik attributes already recover a 1/min, and the potions which boost attributes will also serve to "heal" them. The same applies to skills.

Edited October 21, 2006 by trollson

[duran]

ah, noted. still, it could make a monster realy scary if said attribute damage didnt heal as normal

 

still, there is a risk of creating a poor d&d clone out of it all...

Edited October 22, 2006 by duran

[trollson]

Permanent Damage Effects -- Ah yes, I see what you where thinking about with the "life drain" approach; real permanent damage which doesn't just recover naturally or through regular potions or magic. Nasty that will make some players wet themselves.

 

What would be the best attribute to touch here? Pick-points are the most valuable commodity in character development, so anything which costs in pick points is nasty. How about linking it to (primary) attribute drain?

If a monster is attacking a characters primary attribute, and reduces it from zero, then the character loses one permanent point in that attribute and dies.

So what happens if a character's permanent attribute reaches zero? Permanent death? Ouch.

 

 

Pack Behaviour and Guild Tags -- There is a current topic on guild map spawns, which may be served well by pack behaviour; if a pack group and guild tags are one and the same, then monsters spawning on a guild map are "in the guild". They don't attack fellow members, and will come to their aid (as per pack behaviour). They may attack non-guild members following normal rules.

 

If guild tag and pack group are equivalent, then the following can be argued for consistency:

• Summoned creatures are "in your guild", so you can no longer attack them.
  
• Somebody attacking a character or creature in your guild (including summoned) can be attacked by you.
  

Interesting consequences...

 

Update 2006-11-24 -- Creatures that run away

From the

BigFoot

thread: An evasive creature that runs away from other entities. There are several ways this could be done, and presumable we'd want the cheapest calculation. Just take three random destinations and choose the one furthest from other actors or characters; eg, destination with minimum sum(1/distance(entity)).

Edited November 24, 2006 by trollson

[duran]

well i wasnt thinking that permanent. but atleast more permanent then something that can be healed while in the field.

 

death should not change. irevocably killing a character will just piss people off...

[trollson]

An Invunerable Creature

A very rare and unannounced beastie which you

cannot

kill

(though this is not obvious, as it will appear to take damage and self-heal). It would have to be aggressive and ignore monster magnetism.

Indeed, it would work best if players thought that they had

"almost got it"

that time.

This ensures that there is always something out there that any character should be afraid of, and players should learn to avoid engaging the creature.

 

Possible exploit would be to use the creature as a continual training object, with disengagement. This would need to be offset by either relatively low experience source, or large critical damage (enough to kill outright).

Invisible/TrueSight Creatures

Creatures who exist only in the invisible realm, and possess truesight. They are only hostile to other invisible creatures and characters (or optionally, also to those with truesight, since they are infringing on the invisible realm).

 

Ideally, these creatures shouldn't block movement of unaffected entitites.

 

This is treating invisible as a slightly different plane of existance (ala LotR).

Edited May 25, 2007 by trollson

[Schmurk]

I would like to add a new kind of monster into the list. I'm thinking of an animal or monster that attacks you only if you have metallic items equipped. Put a high coordination to him and if he hits you, he destroys your metallic items

Then put a bunch of them in a PK map and you'll be sure that most of the people will come only with leather and wooden stuff

It doesn't avoid you to wear a sword or such weapon if you're not afraid of loosing it...

[scullsyk]

Also, wouldnt it be neat if, there were "spells" that cost no mana, but had a cooldown of like 5-10 seconds where they have like stab or cut, where it does high damage. But this would mean that they should increase our health bar for more challenging fights and a good reason to do it because i know i dont have a COL and i have lost iron plate, fr cape, steel shield, you name it - do female gobs. ut i wouldnt have died if i knew my last hit would have crit them

[masterpiter]

Sorry to say that trollson, but instead of making this suggestion u should just play a game a bit, kill some beavers or deers, so u know something about a/d lvling, coz now it looks to me that u r jealous of others a/d lvls so u suggested to make mobs harder and less fun to train on.

 

U wont become more pr0 by spending 24/7 of ur time on suggestion forums, u need to actually play the game 4 that

It would be cool if there was a small chance that monster respawn with bigger stats or some special effect, so it would be some kind of monster boss, but ur suggestion is about something different.

 

If monsters dont have constant strenght u cannot addjust ur strenght to them.

U would have to become so strong that u can easly train on the strongest version, which would make training on the weaker versions very less fun( and decrease the xp made per hour but thats not important as long as all players would have the same problem).

Imho choosing the right strenght of ur character is very important thing at training, many ppl train not only hard but also smart. We take lower p/c, save pickpoints after we make some a/d and oa lvls but r still too weak to go to next monster. It adds more strategy to the game.

 

Combat system that is in eL now is very good+ very hard to write a macro for it( ppl made client with auto-restore but its still nothing compared to other games where i saw ppl afking on spawns and a bot that they were using made big exp for them, i hope eL never will be like those kind of games).

 

If i was to harsh, than sorry, i only wanted best for the players and the gameplay.

 

eMPi

[Schmurk]

Sorry but I totally disagree with you masterpiter.

I'm training on monsters (I'm on cyclops actually) and I find it quite boring...

I can only play a few hours per day and when I play, I want to have fun and not spend all my time leveling my skills like a mad. So I completely agree with trollson ideas and I'm very happy that some of his suggestions have been taken in account.

IMO, a game where you are never surprised is quite boring, so more variety = more fun

[bkc56]

I can only play a few hours per day and when I play, I want to have fun and not spend all my time leveling my skills like a mad.

 

Then it would seem to me when you play you should have fun instead of leveling like mad.

 

I'm serious, and this has nothing to do with the topic of this thread and how monsters work. There are clearly several "ways" to play EL. I notice a huge difference between (for example) when I'm on simply working on leveling a skill, or when I'm on just to explore, fight, and have fun, or when I'm on to simply get my hourly harvest and chat some.

 

Any leveling work can get boring and needs to be broken up with other activities (unless you're only goal is to get very high in some skill). I see masterpiter's position in that if monsters have to much variation it will make it harder to train on them. But that's a separate topic from the play style of having fun vs level grinding (and I've done both).

[Schmurk]

I agree with you and this is why I'm doing a lot of things out of fighting. My goal is not to absolutely increase my skills. I've done it for manu in order to be able to make the biggest armors but now I've totally stopped training in it.

 

Like you said, training a skill is boring so adding a bit of diversity can be nice and the other post I've made about random attributes for monsters goes in this sense.

 

BTW, invasions were never so funny than the last ones with monsters than can mana burn/paralyse you and such things. I doubt that anybody else will go against that and the ideas came from this thread...

[ZureKnightofDarkWorld]

Ogres have "there is no fork perk" would be nice because their big and mean and multi'ing them wouldn't mean anything.

 

Skeletons have gelitine bones perk would be nice since their just a stack of bones

 

Cyclops will only attack if u r infront of him (he can't see beside him cuz he has no perifrial vision.

 

I like the ideas mine are probably crappy but heck its an idea

 

Ogres have "there is no fork perk" would be nice because their big and mean and multi'ing them wouldn't mean anything.

 

Skeletons have gelitine bones perk would be nice since their just a stack of bones

 

Cyclops will only attack if u r infront of him (he can't see beside him cuz he has no perifrial vision.

 

I like the ideas mine are probably crappy but heck its an idea

[Garnoo]

I got a few ideas about the bears cuz atm theire a bit too weak i say.When you see a bear in real you don't exacly know what will it do, it could atack you or just ignore so

1) should be added a random chance that when bear spawns it could be atacking(like monsters).

Let's say you learned fighting tactics, kung-fu etc. but when a bear hits you I don't think you remember those you learned cuz in that moment the only thing you got in mind is how to get off the fight alive so you start hitting the bear like mad without concentrating so you miss a lot:

2)Add to bear a/d/coord temp removal and phys temp boost

In the game if you are a/d 30s you go draw a nice cutty and kill bear in 3~ hits and if you are higher you give it two kicks in the butt and it is dead, well in real I think it's a bit different so:

3)Add to the bears more HP

When bear draws claws at you and rips off a piece of you and eats it you get weakened and he stronger so:

4)Add life drain to the bear

 

 

*Sorry for bad spelling but i think you get my ideas

 

Thanks

Edited May 1, 2007 by Garnoo

[trollson]

Ridable Creatures (no wait! read on...)

Originally posted as follow up on yet-another-faster-movement thread recently. Since that has been deleted, I thought I'd capture the approach here, which is practical for EL...

 

Ridable mounts eh? That old horse chestnut. Well, this is a practical representation of riding a creature, given the existing game limits, as it doesn't require any new graphics or movement.

 

EL only supports

two

movement speeds:

• Walking pace
  (and Benny Hill style chases)
  .
  
  
• Instant travel by boats and teleportation.
  
  

It is the latter that could be used to represent the result of riding an animal.

 

We can extend the public transport system (the boats) to include horse rental; as stable-to-stable transport. However, this thread is about extending the possible interactions with animals and creatures encounted in the wild.

 

So here we consider mounts that are wild animals; be they deer, horses, unicorns, or even dragons

(

remember slapping a Dragon into submission in D&D?)

.

"Riding"

is a case of catching and holding on for dear life, until you fall off, which, depending on the creature, maybe on another map, continent, or even a special location. Dexterity would be useful to hold on longer, and to fall off more gracefully.

 

Visually

, the character engages the creature, and if they succeed in mounting them

(stop tittering in the back rows!)

, both rider and creature vanish. The creature respawns as normal (no deathbag), and the character is "teleported" to the destination (possibly with a few bruises).

 

For correct effect, a destination must be another spawn area for the same type of creature, and is also limited by the movement available to the creature

(so horses cannot cross seas

unless they are sea horses...

)

.

 

How do you capture the creature? There may be different methods for different creatures, which may include:

• Attack and defeat it armed with a
  "lasso"
  (the warriors' approach).
  
  
• "Use bridle with"
  the creature, and match wills.
  
  
• "Use fruit (apple) with"
  it, and match charm (the princess and the unicorn).
  
  

To add some spice to the day, mythic creatures may provide access to

special locations

, maps not otherwise reachable.

What places could the

Unicorn

or

Dragon

take you?