Animal/Alien NPC's that attack players?

Right... no life was on Auraxis when it was first discovered... please explain this monster growl, then:

This has given me an idea: Animal/Alien NPC's that spawn ONLY if the base is empty or has a a low amount of either enemy or ally population. If the base is populated by both enemies and allies, they won't spawn. These things can help keep those ghost-capping pests away from precious bases. And I repeat, they do not spawn in bases with heavy battles going on, so they just run away or disappear like how a carcass of a destroyed vehicle does when a huge firefight breaks out.

This can even be an addition the PS2 lore. The Vanu attempt to create many variations of aliens to do their bidding and destroy their enemies for them. But a ******* Vanu recruit accidentally makes the creation of the aliens go wrong and now the beasts are loose all over Auraxis (No offense to the VS).

Ideas for the NPC's, what they should like, what they can do, and where do they spawn:

A large yeti that resembles a wampa from Star Wars and spawns in the continent of Esamir and can 3 shot people and vehicles (regardless of health and/or defense) with it's behemoth claws. Powerful and with lots of health, but slow and players can easily outrun and kite it.

A feline cat creature that also spawns in Esamir. It is futile to attempt to outrun it and its attacks are fast. But the damage dealt by it is low and it is fragile.

A white, falcon-like bird that is almost as lengthy and large as a human. It also spawns in Esamir. It flies high up in the skies and swoops down to a player to claw at him/her with its talons. It flies back up high for 10 seconds and then attacks again. It can bring your whole shield down with just one attack and the second attack will result in dying if the shield doesn't regenerate to full capacity in time, or if the bird is given a chance to attack again. Can be killed with just 2 shots (One shot if using a sniper)

A bipedal, near-humanoid alien reptile with a frightening appearance and can cloak like an infiltrator, but can still be seen if close; spawns in Amerish and deals moderate damage. It cloaks whenever it hits you once and attacks again after 5-10 seconds. Each attack it makes deals 200 damage, making it an annoying, yet horrific pest if not taken out quickly.

A small swarm of mosquito-like insects that spawn in the same continent the reptile spawns in. They ignore your shields and directly damage your health and are not so easily killed because they move around too much. Each mosquito deals 10 damage and can be killed with just one shot.

A small, electricity-filled lizard that can shoot bolts of electricity at you from a distance; Can be killed with just one shot. The bolts immediately bring your shield and power needed for abilities down. In a nutshell, it's a living EMP grenade. Spawns in Amerish.

A large, scorpion-like creature that burrows under the sand and stings you with its stinger, injecting you with a poison that deals 50 damage to your health every 15 seconds (Medkits can remove the poison). It can still be hit and damaged when it's burrowed, and a large amount of particles of sand fly off and trace to the the creature whenever it moves. Spawns in Indar.

Killing an Animal NPC grants 100XP and these NPC's take a rather long time to respawn (We can't just make grinding certs easy, right?).

I'm afraid the scorpion is going to be the only animal NPC on Indar until someone gives me more Indar animal ideas.

Indar Scorpion: Lonely... I'm mister lonely... I have nobody... All on my own, ooooh...

Let me know about what you think of my ideas.

i think a small amount of AI could be fun.

but it would make life hell for infiltrators going ahead/behind the lines for sabotage stuff

I disagree with any AI at all in the game.

First off, AI's take a lot of server power. In an MMOFPS like PS2 you have a lot of problems with pathing, so these creatures would need a very, very narrow area where they can move around (Anchoring), as well as separate servers that control these creatures.

Second off, why make it harder for solo players? I can understand a want for reducing the amount of ghost-caps, but many of my strategies involve getting behind enemy lines. It would be an incredible blow if you avoid all the enemy players to get behind enemy lines, then get attacked by a random NPC creature that might get you killed/discovered through no fault of your own. It's already dangerous enough to run into a random player spawning there, there's no need to add NPC creatures.

it would be fun to have some AI on hossin
maybe even make one of the bases on the back of a flying "skywhale" that flies around the map

At least it would make sense to the huge amount bioluminescence on the plants. Glowing plants everywhere yet no animals to make use of it.

why not let some nanites to become a threat like a big blob of goo or something ?

If you avoid all of the players and get caught by AI, how is it not still your own fault?

I won't take up the torch on server resources to run AI, perhaps Zaspacer can help there, but somehow I doubt it can't be done or would break the servers/game, or even degrade performance in a meaningful way. I would like to see AI in this MMO, because then it wouldn't be the only MMO ever that doesn't have NPC's.

the terminals are our npcs

We need some hostile flora on Auraxis... maybe those giant Venus Flytraps that were in Evolve would be pretty hilarious xD

That's Nanite Ned from Nanite Systems.

We already have NPCs. They're grue's. People commonly mistake them for Mines or C4. Whenever you roll off a vehicle pad or sit in a tank still for too long.. there's a good chance you'll get eaten by a grue.

If you're not careful, the grues will get ya.

Giant enemy crabs?

Because these NPC's will always be there (since they will spawn and you will have to pass them) and they will ruin a perfectly executed infiltration/flank simply because they will always be there and will draw attention since you'll break stealth (especially when you have stealth equipped) when you fire.

Did I say it was impossible? I said it would take a lot of server power, anchoring NPC's (which bring it's own problems), and depending on how it works it can definitely degrade performance. This is going to cost a lot of money, extra servers&server communication just to make it work smoothly and it will definitely not be worth it for the little fluff of a few NPC's in empty bases.

Sand worms for Indar, obviously.

I didn't see anything about seeing through stealth or cloak. Every roaming mob has a visibility cone, aggro range, a pathing or pat system (anchoring, is it?) and no one said they have omnipotent awareness. NPCs are far easier to avoid than players.

I've seen it done on a massive scale in every MMO I've ever played, and while the list is not exhaustive, it is extensive. This game is run on an MMO engine, not a shooter, from what I understand. I'm willing to bet that the mechanics are already in place.

Oh wait, they are. Spitfires OP for server clutter.

Suffice to say, if you want NPCs, you've got to make a sacrifice elsewhere. Either in effective range across the board. Or the tater salads and french fries people run PS2 on.

Right now in a fight, server render range of MOBs (Mobile Objects, which are NPCs) and Players is limited to reduce server load. In a 24v24 fight there's 2304 (48 people doing different stuff being updated to the other 48 people) event to connections made. This goes up exponentially the more you add in. Lets say we add 5 sandworms to the mix. Its now 2544 events to connections. Five little NPCs just increased the load for that area by 10%

So are these NPCs hostile? Lets say they are. Lets say they are a large threat in fact that has priority in rendering.

Lets go to a 96vs96 fight. 37k events to connections here. Now add 5 sandworms and it becomes 38k. But to render out to 300m you have to cut those connections down. Because of where the NPCs are (outside base right?). You just cut into the budget of what is shown in the base.

You want to know what happens? You avoid the worms. But enter an empty building. Only its not empty, its got a squad of enemy in it. You get gibbed. This already happens now. But unneeded NPCs will cause it to happen more often.

That's just on the server side of things.

Now you've got the potato chips people call computers and NPCs will further drop their FPS. Especially since its additional animated and dynamic textures and models.

Unless you want the Aliens to be simple like this:




Judging by the Cone of Fire dice roll fans in previous threads, this might just be up their alley. A simple polygoned orb with simple animated legs and 3 framed animation face might not stress out the tater tots running around. Maybe.

Personally if we're going to drop framerates and stress out the server more. I'd like to see the render range increased across the board. That would improve my gameplay drastically more than any dinky little alien thing or NPCs.

I'm just picturing southpark flappy head flat animations and laughing.

We already have NC players.

Dammit you beat me to it. Nothing's more fun than hunting rogue NCs

How are the creatures supposed to attack you when they just immediately disappear if the base is populated by both enemies and allies? Didn't you read the entire post?

Ok. Then they are entirely pointless then.

I can just dual box my main and an alt on a 2nd account to despawn all the NPCs:



4th faction the NPC faction to death lol. Do you all hate the ability to create free accounts yet?