mobs cheating, xp loss, etc

Posted by Beam on 08/01

I've spent the last 4 or 5 months playing another mud, namely duris. And after playing here quite a bit in the last week or so a couple things are more noticeable than before. Duris is a much harder mud, when it comes to mob killing, basically because the mobs have a bit of intelligence. A while back a trend started to make this mud harder it seems to me anyway. First thing that stands out in my mind was removal of sanc rings. This has worked out ok as far as I'm concerned but it magnifies a couple things. Like the other things that are used here to make mobs harder, and I think its poor mob construction. Specifically, specials and mob cheats.

For those that aren't sure, a special by my definition is when a mob arbitrarily hits you for a certain amount of hp every once in a while. On certain mobs it seems to be every other round or so. Mob cheats are things like a mob headbutting you as soon as you enter the room, even if you use a character separator so that you enter a direction and a command at the same time. Ie East;head billybob. Another example is making a mob nonheadbuttable, but not having it give you a "you can't headbutt that" message, but letting you try and fail. I once headbutted the dhurtah, (silly me) stunned myself, and was kicked in the same round. Although ironically enough except for this one cheat, the dhurtah best exemplifies how a mob can be very hard to kill without resorting to cheating or specials.

The problem is any mob that doesn't hunt and stays in one spot for the most part, can be killed very easily. Simple solution to me is to put some thought into what skills you give mobs. Any high level mob should hunt you if you run off, but since it would be run locally with less lag, hunt for mobs would need to have an associated lag, depending on level and not be just range limited. (I played a mud before where mobs tracked with no lag and it was horrible, everyone carried recall scrolls and triggers to recite scroll on a successful flee)

Xp loss is one thing that is due to the unintelligent mobs here, getting xp here is just a matter of time, and um the time to level 50 can still be done in under a week.

The only arguement i've heard for specials is that they are special and people enjoy the neato messages. This isn't much of an arguement in my mind, first im not sure how many people would really miss them, but more to the point, they could be tied into a skill or spell that checks against a players stat or stats; or you could just have your special as you want it, not tie it to a skill and still have it check against a player stat so that its not infallible.

I guess the lack of coders, and the use mob acts system is partly the reason for all of this, but I would like to hear some of the details.

beam

p.s. personally I would love to see a mob that had some nice skills, hunted, didn't cheat, or use specials, was hard, and gasp didn't have 100 in all stats.

From: Tad Friday, August 01, 07:49AM

Although high level mobs don't necessarily need 100's across the board, if you give them a low dex, or a low mind, there is a very easy way to kill them, and they will offer little or no challenge to a group of two fighters or mages (depending on which is low). Once the fight system comes in, then any mob without a high dex, con, AND strength will be much more easily killed by a particular type of fighter than another. (although you could argue a high dex and str aren't essential, a low con will yield the same conditions under the new system as a low dex does under the current one.

I agree that many of the mobs specials should prolly have some sort of success check in them, but changing them is a pretty major hassle for the building staff. (btw, I'm pretty sure our mobacts allows for specials with stat checks, but its alot more work for the builder, since they basic basically have to write the "code" for whatever "skill" they're trying to emulate. (unless its one of the skills available to the players)

-Tad