I don't think the devs mind if people mod their versions. But don't you think that Shibari or Hachem are setting an example for you? They *clearly* state what they are doing. However, they avoid major gameplay design changes (I think). It's not that I think people *must* play this game the way it is designed, but rather that they need to know what you are doing when evaluating the statements you offer, the suggestions you make, the criticisms you make, and the dumps you post. Using exploits or multiple addons, I'm afraid, means that they might ignore you. And when I learned this is what you were doing, this is what I did.minmay wrote:In a single-player, asymmetrical game, the point of enemy AI is to create interesting/fun tactical situations, not to survive or kill the player as efficiently as possible. AI optimized for the latter is usually really annoying and can actually be less interesting to fight.darkgod wrote:NPCs being smarter can never be a bad thing; I mean we don't want to play against target dummies do we?
If however being smarter exposes that they were too annoying/powerful/... but that it was unnoticed because they were stupid, the obvious solution is not to make them dumb but to make then less annoying/powerful/...That's more healthy in the long term
If you're writing an AI for chess or Go or Super Smash Bros or another symmetrical game where the AI is filling the role of another human player, then yeah, generally you want to make it as smart as possible. For PvE games, this is not the case. If the imps in Doom aimed their fireballs to lead your movements, it would be annoying. If centaurs in DCSS kited you it would be god-awful (and if you don't believe me you can try Crawl 4.1).
Even the current AI produces countless situations that are awful gameplay due to the "smart" things it does. Enemies that hang out of range of your attacks are just annoying. Enemies that dodge projectiles mean that you want to change the default target of every projectile so that it's aimed behind the enemy instead of directly at them - this behaviour does nothing but slow down the game. Enemies avoiding using talents you're resistant to means that e.g. having high lightning or fire resistance against multihued drakes is actually bad if you have stun immunity but not disarm/blind immunity, because it makes them more likely to use their breaths that cause disarm/blind. Having higher resistances should never be bad!
These AI "improvements" only make these problems worse, and I notice the AI has been going in this direction for quite a few years. I think you will ultimately find that this approach reduces the depth of the game rather than increasing it, and is unhealthy in the long term.
But since you insist on some sort of nay-saying campaign of sabotage, and since your influence here (unjustified imo) appears to matter, I feel compelled to address this. Since these claims ought not to be made lightly, I spent a couple of tedious hours offline looking at character dumps still present in the vault and found this one which I would guess to be the one were you first made the mod: https://te4.org/characters/53875/tome/9 ... ba6e9930cf (qhial the level 50 Higher Alchemist by minmay Tales of Maj'Eyal: Age of Ascendancy 1.3.1)
Ah, so you've been doing this all along, ever since 1.3.1. And things make more sense now.
At around this time, minmay was complaining about multiple qols that weren't implemented yet, sight issues in particular. I don't remember the particulars, but my take at the time was that here's another player with a scumming tactic lobbying for changes. Perhaps the devs were short with you? I don't remember. But I also don't remember any sort of argument either, and you usually don't argue anything, but assert, whine and that take snarky snipes when you don't get what you want. Anyway, you probably nagged for a while, but then stopped. I assumed this meant you were playing the game, perhaps even adjusting your playstyle, perhaps improving it ... just like everybody else. But now I see that you decided to get what you want, be sneaky about the fact, and continue to pass yourself off as someone who is actually playing the game, and not a fork. And plenty of other players here manage to play just fine as far as I can see, and will continue doing so even when the AI changes go live!
If this was all you did, I wouldn't overly care, and I wouldn't say anything. I don't see what you gain out of doing this sort of thing. Why not just play at home? Or, if you disagree with the game designer, why not create your own variant? I'd prefer the latter, and perhaps many other people would as well. But you know what really gets me? It's the fact that you have duped me for over a year and a half. More than any other player, some devs have bent over backwards trying to understand your comments and criticisms. I was taken in by the quantity and diversity and speed of your character dumps that happened at about this time and thought that hey, even if this guy rubs me the wrong way, he deserves consideration. Had I known what you were doing, I would have been spared much subsequent grief.
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I see. Very sad, it sounded super cool. Hopefully one day someone will discover anti-abuse enchantments that will make it possible to be included in the game