Why are NPCs so blind?

mcurley

This has been bothering me since the first time I logged on and started killing things. Why are the NPCs so terribly blind? You would think if I'm in an open courtyard killing your buddies 10 feet away from you that you would want to help them out, right? But they just stand there and calmly wait their turn.

I can understand having a slightly smaller field of vision than in the real world but ESO seems to take that to the extreme. Would it be so much to ask to have NPCs that are slightly more aware of their surroundings? Or maybe instead of having 20 groups of 3 in an area you can have 10 groups of 3 that are much stronger but more spaced out? Or just keep them weak and increase their range vision... I should not be killing 3-4 NPCs 10ft away from 3-4 other NPCs without them attacking me, unless they are enemies too I guess.

BRogueNZ

Odd yes but you can imagine the threads about how you can't get anywhere or do anything without being overwhelmed by NPC's

PinoZino

mcurley wrote: »

This has been bothering me since the first time I logged on and started killing things. Why are the NPCs so terribly blind? You would think if I'm in an open courtyard killing your buddies 10 feet away from you that you would want to help them out, right? But they just stand there and calmly wait their turn.

I can understand having a slightly smaller field of vision than in the real world but ESO seems to take that to the extreme. Would it be so much to ask to have NPCs that are slightly more aware of their surroundings? Or maybe instead of having 20 groups of 3 in an area you can have 10 groups of 3 that are much stronger but more spaced out? Or just keep them weak and increase their range vision... I should not be killing 3-4 NPCs 10ft away from 3-4 other NPCs without them attacking me, unless they are enemies too I guess.

Good point, but then there would be less NPC's. You can bet that others would cry for this one.

mcurley

BRogueNZ wrote: »

Odd yes but you can imagine the threads about how you can't get anywhere or do anything without being overwhelmed by NPC's

Yea, that's why I mentioned maybe spreading them out and making them stronger instead. Any improvement to this would be welcomed. I don't remember my EQ2 days very well but I definitely don't remember ever thinking "Why the F is that guy not attacking me right now?". That's my issue, I think that all the time in this game.

Slurg

If you play a sorc, get an unstable clannfear. He'll bring everyone to the party.

Lightninvash

because I've already stabbed their eyes out

Forestd16b14_ESO

With the whole courtyard and entering thing I'm assuming you mean PvP and yes it is kinda silly how you litterly tear open the side of the keep and they do nothing but that's cause some players were QQ about how they were getting pulled out of stealth and being hit by guards 30+ meters away. So want to know why the guards stopped eating carrots blame the bad stealth players.

Smitch_59

My wife relies heavily on her bow and she moves around a lot while fighting. I've often seen her accidentally pull in other nearby groups of enemies that would have otherwise ignored her. She hates when that happens. Either that or she'll backpedal so much that the enemies heal and run back to their original positions. I tell her not to run around so much. She doesn't always appreciate my advice...

Prof_Bawbag

TES games have always been hilarious when it comes to npcs & combat and their interactions before, during and after. In Oblivion you hit someone in the head with an arrow and remained in sneak they'd say something like "Uh, it must have been a rat". It was very similar in Skyrim too. I suppose they fixed it a little in Skyrim insofar they'd react for a second or two after discovering a dead body. Then it would be back to like nothing happened.

Forestd16b14_ESO

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

TES games have always been hilarious when it comes to npcs & combat and their interactions before during and after. In Oblivion you hit someone in the head with an arrow and remained in sneak they'd say something like "Uh, it must have been a rat". It was very similar in Skyrim too. I suppose they fixed it a little in Skyrim insofar they'd react for a second or two after discovering a dead body. Then it would be back like nothing happened.

NPC> walking around sees giant pile of naked dead bodies. "Huh must have been a rat."
NPC> walks away to eat soup.

True F'ing story.

Rikal

It's very unrealistic, but it's a fundamental part of the game's design. This horse is already out of the barn, and run across the country, and boarded a cruise ship and sailed around the world. But at least you get turn off the horses butt straps if you want to;)

Lord Xanhorn

If you were to somehow use real sight as an indicator, the game world would have to be 4 times bigger and then you'd complain that there's too much empty space and its a horse simulator....See Cyrodil.

WillhelmBlack

Have you played any previous ES titles? You can literally steal the clothes off their back.

It's not even ES games actually. All games are like this.

Alagras

Rikal wrote: »

It's very unrealistic, but it's a fundamental part of the game's design.

Agree but it participates A LOT to the "lifeless" feeling of Tamriel. No possible immersion if all npcs have this absurd and highly predictable behavior.

And what for? As it's been said, to allow many little repetitive fights to take place in a limited space. Outside mobs are like annoying flies swarm and I'm not sure that most players enjoy that

And it wasn't the same in Skyrim as I remember. Yes mobz could find normal to see their buddy lying dead when he was alive 10 secs before, but they spotted you from further away and were more spread out, giving a very different feeling. There would be no need to change the system that much to make it a lot more immersive.

Belidos

mcurley wrote: »

I don't remember my EQ2 days very well but I definitely don't remember ever thinking "Why the F is that guy not attacking me right now?". That's my issue, I think that all the time in this game.

I remember the early days of the original EQ, you would step outside town and suddenly almost every mob in the zone would turn and look at you as if you were a piece of meat, then charge, now that was fun! LOL

TheShadowScout

The problem is in balancing the need to not have all the NPCs in the vincinity gang up on one hapless player with the need for there to be enough NPCs to serve as cannon fodder for providing a bit of challenge to multiple players using the same region (It is an MMO after all) while keeping the regions small enough to fit into our computers available memory and not overtax the players patience for travel time between quests...

Yes, it does make the mobs somewhat short sighted. Okay, -Very- shortsighted. But sadly... that's the price to pay for fulfilling the parameters.

Personally I would have preferred all the regions to be twice the size for the same amount of mobs. But then, for one I am more roleplaying oriented and thgus actually often enjoy walking through empty landscape feeling all "lone adventurer", and for another... I doubt it help the load times any if the regions had twice the size, four times the area, four times the trees, four times the rocks, four times the birds and whatnot... so I am turning a nearsighted eye to the nearsighted mobs...

mcurley

WillhelmBlack wrote: »

Have you played any previous ES titles? You can literally steal the clothes off their back.

It's not even ES games actually. All games are like this.

If all games are like this then I would have felt this way before. I have no problem if an NPC can't see me sneaking up behind them... but when I'm hacking their friends to death right next to them and they stand there like statues... it's pretty ridiculous.

I'm not saying a realistic field of vision is the way to go at all, that would cause chaos. But if I'm close enough to hit them with a ranged attack (and I'm not in stealth) then they should be able to see me.

Belidos

mcurley wrote: »

WillhelmBlack wrote: »

Have you played any previous ES titles? You can literally steal the clothes off their back.

It's not even ES games actually. All games are like this.

If all games are like this then I would have felt this way before. I have no problem if an NPC can't see me sneaking up behind them... but when I'm hacking their friends to death right next to them and they stand there like statues... it's pretty ridiculous.

I'm not saying a realistic field of vision is the way to go at all, that would cause chaos. But if I'm close enough to hit them with a ranged attack (and I'm not in stealth) then they should be able to see me.

I've seen this exact same argument almost to the word in every mmo forum I have been on.

Saltypretzels

The confusing part is... You go to a craglorn delve, aggro a small group, and then the entire room charges at you! 10+ mobs at once.

Whoops! A bit of a learning curve there... Things change depending where you are in the game.

Pallmor

mcurley wrote: »

This has been bothering me since the first time I logged on and started killing things. Why are the NPCs so terribly blind? You would think if I'm in an open courtyard killing your buddies 10 feet away from you that you would want to help them out, right? But they just stand there and calmly wait their turn.

I can understand having a slightly smaller field of vision than in the real world but ESO seems to take that to the extreme. Would it be so much to ask to have NPCs that are slightly more aware of their surroundings? Or maybe instead of having 20 groups of 3 in an area you can have 10 groups of 3 that are much stronger but more spaced out? Or just keep them weak and increase their range vision... I should not be killing 3-4 NPCs 10ft away from 3-4 other NPCs without them attacking me, unless they are enemies too I guess.

Because it's a game, not real life. If it were real life, the captain of the town militia also wouldn't be asking a random stranger who just happened by to mount a lone-wolf attack to defeat the town's invaders. Also, if it were real life, said lone-wolf attack against a organized military force would last about 30 seconds and would end with the invaders parading your head around on a pike. And if it were real life, local farmers would probably make more of an effort to rescue their own damned family, instead of pitifully holding their arm and begging passing strangers to go do it all for them.

Dagoth_Rac

This is to allow multiple groups of players to get in battles at the same time. Joe approaches field from south. Mary approaches field from north 5 seconds later. Mary has nothing to fight because the entire field already aggro'ed on Joe and ran to the other side of the field.

Does the NPC "sight" make no sense when only looked at from your perspective? Yes. But it makes perfect sense when you take into account that solo players, small groups, big groups, etc., can all interact with enemies. From different directions. At slightly different times.

Ever been solo questing and had a grind group roll through and pull everything in the area, leaving you with nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs? It is annoying. Now imagine if instead of the occasional grind group doing that, every single other player in the game did that all the time without even trying!

Alucardo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHbF9ynGZV0

Moonshadow66

Slurg wrote: »

If you play a sorc, get an unstable clannfear. He'll bring everyone to the party.

Even when the party hasn't started yet^^

QuebraRegra

Not blind... they just don't care.

traigusb14_ESO2

Belidos wrote: »

mcurley wrote: »

I don't remember my EQ2 days very well but I definitely don't remember ever thinking "Why the F is that guy not attacking me right now?". That's my issue, I think that all the time in this game.

I remember the early days of the original EQ, you would step outside town and suddenly almost every mob in the zone would turn and look at you as if you were a piece of meat, then charge, now that was fun! LOL

Yeah Aggro in EQ1 was fun.. .especially if you were under-level for a zone.

In EQ2, stuff was actually linked until the 3rd expansion (didn't play afterward). If a mob was less thasn a full mob (down arrows) it was linked to a bunch of other mobs so they squalled a normal mob... while in dungeons the same was true to make mobs equal to a ^^^. EQ2 was allergic to EQ1's mob splitting... so they were actually linked together into "encounters".

ESO seems to have both. Sometimes mobs are placed together, but if one wanders off, you can chain it away solo etc., other times (especially in dungeons) mobs seems to be linked in weird ways (you will get right half of room... but 2 guys talking to each other in the back... you will only get one of them. Bosses definitely are linked to other people in encounters.

mcurley

Pallmor wrote: »

mcurley wrote: »

This has been bothering me since the first time I logged on and started killing things. Why are the NPCs so terribly blind? You would think if I'm in an open courtyard killing your buddies 10 feet away from you that you would want to help them out, right? But they just stand there and calmly wait their turn.

I can understand having a slightly smaller field of vision than in the real world but ESO seems to take that to the extreme. Would it be so much to ask to have NPCs that are slightly more aware of their surroundings? Or maybe instead of having 20 groups of 3 in an area you can have 10 groups of 3 that are much stronger but more spaced out? Or just keep them weak and increase their range vision... I should not be killing 3-4 NPCs 10ft away from 3-4 other NPCs without them attacking me, unless they are enemies too I guess.

Because it's a game, not real life. If it were real life, the captain of the town militia also wouldn't be asking a random stranger who just happened by to mount a lone-wolf attack to defeat the town's invaders. Also, if it were real life, said lone-wolf attack against a organized military force would last about 30 seconds and would end with the invaders parading your head around on a pike. And if it were real life, local farmers would probably make more of an effort to rescue their own damned family, instead of pitifully holding their arm and begging passing strangers to go do it all for them.

Idk how me requesting increased fields of vision made you jump to "because it's not real life"... I even posted that real life vision wouldn't make sense... sooo yea... good reply though.

For people reading this thinking I want the game to be like real life... please stop. That is not anywhere close to what I'm talking about.

I'm just saying that this game has the most extreme version of NPC "blindness" that I personally have encountered... and no I have not played every MMO out to date... obviously.

I'm not asking for an entire zone to aggro someone who attacks an NPC either (people really jump to extremes) just saying I would enjoy a slightly more realistic field of vision.... again.... SLIGHTLY more realistic. As in not real. Clear?

Callous2208

mcurley wrote: »

Pallmor wrote: »

mcurley wrote: »

This has been bothering me since the first time I logged on and started killing things. Why are the NPCs so terribly blind? You would think if I'm in an open courtyard killing your buddies 10 feet away from you that you would want to help them out, right? But they just stand there and calmly wait their turn.

I can understand having a slightly smaller field of vision than in the real world but ESO seems to take that to the extreme. Would it be so much to ask to have NPCs that are slightly more aware of their surroundings? Or maybe instead of having 20 groups of 3 in an area you can have 10 groups of 3 that are much stronger but more spaced out? Or just keep them weak and increase their range vision... I should not be killing 3-4 NPCs 10ft away from 3-4 other NPCs without them attacking me, unless they are enemies too I guess.

Because it's a game, not real life. If it were real life, the captain of the town militia also wouldn't be asking a random stranger who just happened by to mount a lone-wolf attack to defeat the town's invaders. Also, if it were real life, said lone-wolf attack against a organized military force would last about 30 seconds and would end with the invaders parading your head around on a pike. And if it were real life, local farmers would probably make more of an effort to rescue their own damned family, instead of pitifully holding their arm and begging passing strangers to go do it all for them.

Idk how me requesting increased fields of vision made you jump to "because it's not real life"... I even posted that real life vision wouldn't make sense... sooo yea... good reply though.

For people reading this thinking I want the game to be like real life... please stop. That is not anywhere close to what I'm talking about.

I'm just saying that this game has the most extreme version of NPC "blindness" that I personally have encountered... and no I have not played every MMO out to date... obviously.

I'm not asking for an entire zone to aggro someone who attacks an NPC either (people really jump to extremes) just saying I would enjoy a slightly more realistic field of vision.... again.... SLIGHTLY more realistic. As in not real. Clear?

I get what you're saying but, I've played dang near every mmo in recent years and the "blindness," in eso is pretty par for the course as far as mmo's go. Not saying it's good or bad, just saying you'd be hard pressed to find any games that do it differently these days.

rb2001

Because the enemies basically have no AI programmed into them, and so the solution made to other problems that result because of the lack of decent AI is a short detection range bubble.

In games with properly done AI, these problems do not occur, and the enemies walk and make rounds and track based on actual sight and sound events and their own tracked memory of sights and sounds. They behave like people would in the situation (at least, externally, to some reasonable level).

Bethesda didn't make this game, but it is at least continuing the trend of Bethsoft games having abysmally bad AI (looking at you, Skyrim, with your senseless AI routines slapped on top of each other, none of which actually work together or provide any reasonable behavior, ever).

To anyone saying or thinking "but its a game what do you expect", please go look into to play S.TA.L.K.E.R, hell even Crysis, F.E.A.R. ARMA.. There is a large list of games that have reasonable AI.

Being an MMO is no excuse anymore. The technology is past that.

Prof_Bawbag

rb2001 wrote: »

Because the enemies basically have no AI programmed into them, and so the solution made to other problems that result because of the lack of decent AI is a short detection range bubble.

In games with properly done AI, these problems do not occur, and the enemies walk and make rounds and track based on actual sight and sound events and their own tracked memory of sights and sounds. They behave like people would in the situation (at least, externally, to some reasonable level).

Bethesda didn't make this game, but it is at least continuing the trend of Bethsoft games having abysmally bad AI (looking at you, Skyrim, with your senseless AI routines slapped on top of each other, none of which actually work together or provide any reasonable behavior, ever).

To anyone saying or thinking "but its a game what do you expect", please go look into to play S.TA.L.K.E.R, hell even Crysis, F.E.A.R. ARMA.. There is a large list of games that have reasonable AI.

Being an MMO is no excuse anymore. The technology is past that.

I thought S.T.A.L.K.E.R overcooked the AI at times. They could hear a pin drop from a mile away, yet failed to spot you from 10 yards away at times.

KhajitFurTrader

rb2001 wrote: »

To anyone saying or thinking "but its a game what do you expect", please go look into to play S.TA.L.K.E.R, hell even Crysis, F.E.A.R. ARMA.. There is a large list of games that have reasonable AI.

Being an MMO is no excuse anymore. The technology is past that.

Well, not quiet. It's easy for single player games to have decent A.I. now, because with modern CPUs they can have whole execution threads/cores to themselves, and with the pervasion of 64-bit OS's, there are hardly any memory constraints now. In contrast, MMO MOB A.I. needs to be done server-side, because the client is open to manipulation and cannot be trusted (cf. Raph Koster's Laws of Online World Design). And the A.I. code doesn't run for singular players, but for masses of them, concurrently (hence the name).

So, A.I. routines like LOS calculations, aggro distances, pathing, MOB skill usage etc. need to run server-side, as does everything else, with the exception of the actual graphics rendering. Every single MOB in every instance of every zone (there are at least three copies for every faction, more if one gets too crowded; then there are a lot more instanced group dungeons at all times) is handled by the cluster, and every spawned MOB, idle or not, uses small amounts of memory and CPU cycles -- get too fancy with A.I.routines, i.e. use code that gets too greedy with memory usage and CPU cycles, and the best thing you can hope for is getting dirty looks from the server administrators.

MMOs are inherently build to simultaneously handle masses -- not only masses of players, but masses of objects as well. The run-time database can and will grow to obscene sizes north of hundreds on gigabytes, all of which ideally fits into the physical RAM of the cluster (reading from and writing data to disk is still slower by one order of magnitude). Regular maintenances are absolutely needed, to truncate logs, and to clear the run-time database and start with a clean sheet. Those strange issues that tend to creep up after weeks of skipped maintenance? Well, that's why we need maintenance in the first place.

MMOs today still don't have all of the luxuries that single player titles can count on. I surely would appreciate a more realistic behavior in NPC MOBs as well, but then again, I'm not sure whether we as players would really want to face the consequences: imagine a player group visiting a dungeon, but the NPCs there would give a daedrat's ass about the tank and always go straight for the healer, then for DD, no matter what. Isn't it part of the charm (and sales pitch) of MMOs that we the players are almost insurmountable heroes, and mere (and stupid) mortals pose next to threat to us? Except maybe bosses and mobs of MOBs (sorry).

rb2001

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

rb2001 wrote: »

To anyone saying or thinking "but its a game what do you expect", please go look into to play S.TA.L.K.E.R, hell even Crysis, F.E.A.R. ARMA.. There is a large list of games that have reasonable AI.

Being an MMO is no excuse anymore. The technology is past that.

Well, not quiet. It's easy for single player games to have decent A.I. now, because with modern CPUs they can have whole execution threads/cores to themselves, and with the pervasion of 64-bit OS's, there are hardly any memory constraints now. In contrast, MMO MOB A.I. needs to be done server-side, because the client is open to manipulation and cannot be trusted (cf. Raph Koster's Laws of Online World Design). And the A.I. code doesn't run for singular players, but for masses of them, concurrently (hence the name).

So, A.I. routines like LOS calculations, aggro distances, pathing, MOB skill usage etc. need to run server-side, as does everything else, with the exception of the actual graphics rendering. Every single MOB in every instance of every zone (there are at least three copies for every faction, more if one gets too crowded; then there are a lot more instanced group dungeons at all times) is handled by the cluster, and every spawned MOB, idle or not, uses small amounts of memory and CPU cycles -- get too fancy with A.I.routines, i.e. use code that gets too greedy with memory usage and CPU cycles, and the best thing you can hope for is getting dirty looks from the server administrators.

MMOs are inherently build to simultaneously handle masses -- not only masses of players, but masses of objects as well. The run-time database can and will grow to obscene sizes north of hundreds on gigabytes, all of which ideally fits into the physical RAM of the cluster (reading from and writing data to disk is still slower by one order of magnitude). Regular maintenances are absolutely needed, to truncate logs, and to clear the run-time database and start with a clean sheet. Those strange issues that tend to creep up after weeks of skipped maintenance? Well, that's why we need maintenance in the first place.

MMOs today still don't have all of the luxuries that single player titles can count on. I surly would appreciate a more realistic behavior in NPC MOBs as well, but then again, I'm not sure whether we as players would really want to face the consequences: imagine a player group visiting a dungeon, but the NPCs there would give a daedrat's ass about the tank and always go straight for the healer, then for DD, no matter what. Isn't it part of the charm (and sales pitch) of MMOs that we the players are almost insurmountable heroes, and mere (and stupid) mortals pose next to threat to us? Except maybe bosses and mobs of MOBs (sorry).

Wow, thanks for the detailed reply. You make some great points.

To be clear, I didn't mean that I expect the same performance/routines to be able to be done in an MMO that we have in single player titles, but surely, certainly some of it could be brought in, and that's what I want to see.

We're already having the server do these basic checks on distance and line of sight right now, and what I am saying is that there is a way to get more out of it without adding too much more latency.

Having NPCs make (the appearance of) decisions about who to attack and act as if they are using sight and sound would be a step forward.

If the answer involves less actual NPCs to track, but them acting more reasonably, which will give me more tactical gameplay, and less total boring conflicts with trash enemies, then that's all good in my books.

Said another way, I understand that we need a lot of enemies out there for a lot of players to play, and we have that now, but if we are choosing between 1) Many boring, dumb enemies who provide little challenge or require almost no tactics, just stats, or 2) Less enemies that provide interesting reactions to you, and require interesting reactions from you, I'll choose the latter every time.