f13.net

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/age-of-conan-hyborian-adventures/747430p1.html

Interesting stuff. Not sure what to think about mobs having 'eyesight, smell, and hearing' ... is that a fancy term for aggro range? I know its not much, but the AoC talk has been pretty dead recently.




November 22 Video:  http://media.pc.gamespy.com/media/743/743392/vids_1.html

Little fly by video.

I've been getting these regional profiles in Funcom newsletter form.

Still kinda looking forward to what this will be, but so far, there's nothing hypeworthy as of it. That's why no one is talking about it.

Giving enemies a sense of smell... is this some perverse way of reminding MMO catasses to bathe now and then?

I'm guessing it just means multiple aggro/awareness radii and mechanisms based on three separately-tracked factors. Still, kind of neat.

FFXI enemies have sight, smell and hearing. Some details:

1. Most enemies aggro on sight, but some aggro on hearing or other things. For example undead aggro on hearing or low HP. (Which makes for some really fun times when your group is low on HP trying to escape a dungeon and undead are aggroing from everwhere) Elementals aggro on magic usage only.

2. Most enemies track using smell. Once they aggro you if you are out of sight range (running away) they continue to track you via smell.

3. You can cast invis/sneak to make yourself invis/silent, and deodorize to make yourself have no smell. AFAIK no enemies aggro on smell, they just track that way.

4. What this ends up meaning is that there is a bit more variation, and variety is always good. An elemental can spawn right next to you and nothing happens until someone in your group that didn't see it casts heal, then everything goes to hell. It also means you can cast sneak without invis then run circles around a skeleton without it doing anything.

It is nothing amazingly revolutionary but it does make things a bit more interesting.

Actually it is. But in FFXI it's impossible to figure out if you don't know already.

What the average player knows is that once aggroed the mobs chase you till the zone border, which is incredibly annoying and one of those features that almost everyone complains about.

at least now they don't wander BACK from the border to their spawn points, they used to do it (goblins in the ytenga(?) jungle) and it would mess up all sorts of people who would zone it again... and it would walk back and aggro some other poor fool. Now they just vanish and respawn.

Guys, this is Funcom.  I don't trust them to get one source of aggro correctly done.  This is one company that any time I hear they're adding complexity, I just cringe.

One interesting thing in that article: "The game's encounter system takes the attributes and experience of characters into consideration to design ambushes on the fly". I guess that means if a high level players wanders through the area it creates high level mobs to attack it, and low level mobs for low level players. It's not clear if these zones are instanced or not, or what happens if a low level char goes to their favourite hunting ground to find a high level has spawned the ubermobs.

Done in EQ2. Accepting a particular world event quest, you could get ambushed ANY moment in any part of the world by a roekillik assassin, a little armed rat that chased you swearing and badmouthing you. The assassin level used to scale with your character so it could be a couple of levels higher or lower than you. It wasn't too tough, but it had the bad habit of "spawning" while you were fighting other monsters or when you were sneaking past some heroic guards. The rat menace stayed with you until you completed the very long quest or decided to drop it. I got personally ambushed by roekillik assassins for like a year before finally completing a quest. Kinda funny after all, and definitely refreshing.

The most fun was when you were mentoring (temporary adjusting your level to those of chosen friend) lower level players. The roekillik assassin's level used to stay the same as your un-mentored level so if you were a level 60 char mentoring a group of lev 15 friends, actually lowering your level to 15 to, that usually ended up in as overkill, overwipe, and revenge for the often abused rat contract killer.

Still, good idea. Hope Funcom can get the basic of it and evolving into something working and interesting.