Improving Trash Enemies

[Forger101]

I've edited the first post to contain some general ideas for improvements. I will hopefully whip up an addon to test these ideas on, but working a job and going to university it might take me a while.

On the topic of "rush" skills, I personally feel that ranged combat/kiting is WAY WAY too strong in tome. I am however in agreement with the annoyances of the status effects. One idea could be to have an opener buff that gives enemies higher movement speed. This would have to have a longish cooldown so that the player can still escape if they need to.

And to just further clarify, the improvements I'm trying to suggest is to make monsters more mechanically interesting or just more synergistic. I'm attempting to make trash monsters more tactical targets beyond;See monster, Shoot monster, and Sleepwalk the rest of the level. Slapping on more stats or powerful talents fails to accomplish this.

[donkatsu]

And to just further clarify, the improvements I'm trying to suggest is to make monsters more mechanically interesting or just more synergistic. I'm attempting to make trash monsters more tactical targets beyond;See monster, Shoot monster, and Sleepwalk the rest of the level. Slapping on more stats or powerful talents fails to accomplish this.

It is not a sufficient step, but a necessary one. In order to have meaningful mechanics the monsters must first be capable of doing something to the player. It doesn't matter if wolves alert each other, or if slimes merge, or if the baby bear's porridge is too cold, if the end result is still that the monster is completely incapable of affecting the player in any way. For example, molds getting a teleport was cool, but by itself it's a wasted effort because molds can't actually do anything to you. Just something to keep in mind before coding an elaborate song and dance number that accomplishes nothing.

[Mex]

If this is a question of difficulty, play a harder mode. You can't have creatures that are all equally intense, besides it's relative, on Madness for example rares become trash mobs with unique/bosses being the only threats eventually. Arguably on NM everything becomes a trash mob after Dreadfell for some classes, but I digress.

If this is an issue of making trash mobs more interesting, well frankly they're trash mobs. I don't want every common fox asking me a 10 turn riddle, I'll kill it and move on. There's potential in making the game more annoying than interesting. We already have ant nests in Old Forest for example and I think the current standing of trash mobs is honestly fine.

On letting your guard down because of too many easy mobs, really, that's something you need to work on yourself I'm afraid.

Abilities that change or force you to change your position are linearly powerful and giving them to trash mobs is going to just get you into trouble much more often (see Ashes starter area as a minor example).

Giving weak enemies a lot of linearly powerful abilities like stuns as well will risk getting you overwhelmed by literally the weakest enemies on the map, that's pretty sad.

[Forger101]

If this is an issue of making trash mobs more interesting, well frankly they're trash mobs. I don't want every common fox asking me a 10 turn riddle, I'll kill it and move on. There's potential in making the game more annoying than interesting. We already have ant nests in Old Forest for example and I think the current standing of trash mobs is honestly fine.

The real issue is the amount of trash mobs in general. You basically have to grind your way through way too many of them and you can't skip them because you really need xp.

Difficulty settings should be left out entirely of this discussion, as all that that does is make the game harder. It doesn't reduce the amount of grinding through low level mobs that pose absolutely zero threat even on the highest difficulty. The goal is to keep grindiness to a low level.

Also I thought this was supposed to be a discussion on improving trash mobs, not debating hypothetical difficulty increases or more annoying enemies. If those things happen things can be fine tuned. It doesn't hurt to try now does it.

[HousePet]

No you can't. It's a side effect of the way rush and rushing claws work, not the AI. The same issue crops up with the Pathfinder d20 charge rules where monsters (or players) run on natural intelligence because you can only charge into the closest square adjacent to the enemy. Unless that changes, which would complicate the UI for the player, charge cannot be pack friendly.

I'm pretty sure that what is happening is that one of the creatures can see you and the rest can't. If this wasn't the case, then the others would rush you when the first one dies, not when you can finally move. By adding pack AI, we can get the whole group to be alerted to your location when just one of them sees you.
It doesn't solve the problem of blocked rushes, but that wasn't the problem being addressed.

[Mex]

This already happens, if you are spotted by an enemy they will always alert any other enemies it sees as to your whereabouts. This is pretty important on Insane for example if you come across an enemy that can teleport, because they can quite quickly alert the entire floor.

[edge2054]

Pack AI would be more like hounds in Angband. Keeping distant until they can surround you. I have no idea how to go about programming it or how resource intensive it would be if done in Lua.

But it's something I've wanted to see in the game for a long time. I'll talk to Darkgod about it and if it can be done in Lua I'll see if I can figure it out.

[Atarlost]

No you can't. It's a side effect of the way rush and rushing claws work, not the AI. The same issue crops up with the Pathfinder d20 charge rules where monsters (or players) run on natural intelligence because you can only charge into the closest square adjacent to the enemy. Unless that changes, which would complicate the UI for the player, charge cannot be pack friendly.

I'm pretty sure that what is happening is that one of the creatures can see you and the rest can't. If this wasn't the case, then the others would rush you when the first one dies, not when you can finally move. By adding pack AI, we can get the whole group to be alerted to your location when just one of them sees you.
It doesn't solve the problem of blocked rushes, but that wasn't the problem being addressed.

Blocked rushes make the packing concept not work for creatures with rusher or rushes inappropriate for pack monsters. Wolves should be pack monsters before rushers. If cats showed up outside that one dream, the infinite dungeon, and Poosh they make sense as solo monsters with rusn, but wolves don't.

[grayswandir]

One idea I had was to give wolves a shadowstep-style attack that is only usable if the target already has a wolf next to them. If you kept the range short that'd let wolves swarm you in a "pack" style fairly well, I think.

[Zizzo]

If this wasn't the case, then the others would rush you when the first one dies, not when you can finally move.

Are we still talking about wretchlings? Because what you describe here is pretty much exactly how every pack of wretchlings I've evern encountered has behaved.

As for the general thread, aren't there addons for this sort of thing? [sound F/X: searching] All Rare Monsters and Everything is Unique sound like they do what you want.

[HousePet]

I always get Wretchlings attacking me one at a time.

[darkgod]

This is a stamp of approval!

More seriously, I dont think the point is to have harder foes; but more interresting ones; which is cool!

[Groggeneral]

I don't know that every enemy needs to be a serious threat. If that's what someone wants, they should play on Insane or Madness. Making them spawn in larger groups sounds reasonable, but then you end up indirectly buffing classes with lots of AoE and nerfing the others.

+1

I do like the ideas however. Perhaps add new skills and the like to monsters on insane and/or madness mode, but not on normal ?

[edge2054]

Again it's not about making them stronger, it's about making them feel more alive.

What's more interesting, one wolf with 15 atk and 15 damage or three wolves with 5 atk and 5 damage that buff each other when another wolf is within one tile?

For all the naysayers play a TW or PM once 1.3 releases and you'll understand where we're coming from. Monsters can be designed to work better in groups without raising the overall challenge of the game.

[Effigy]

This idea is stolen from NetHack, but you could make slime cause status effects on you when you hit them. For instance, yellow slimes could have a chance to cause confusion, green slime could poison or disarm, and so on.