Adding huge animals and such that go in groups that wander and when people come or a battle starts they can scatter to make it more interesting? People can probably also use them as cover or get killed in a stampede making footzerging even more enjoyable?
If this were possible then I would have said maybe. One of PS2's charms was that just about every death was caused directly by a player somehow (even if it was the player himself). Environmental hazards are good, but AI? The Spitfire, a stationary turret that locks on to any enemy in 50m, already barely fires in the direction its looking at. You are suggesting something that is not just more difficult, but orders of magnitude. That isn't a hyperbole. - you need to add an AI script into the game, even though the game isn't designed for it. Most games are designed around their AI scripts in one way or another, PS2 is not. That means you might need to disassemble half the engine and re-assemble it just to get it to work. - you need to add a pathing layer across all continents to allow the AI to roam free. - you need to prevent an AI from pathing too far in one go. Pathing is an exponential resource hog the farther you need to path. A single AI unit pathing from one end of a continent to the other side would fry entire servers. This is what actually happened a few times to another game which had smaller continents, was build for PVE from the start and had seperate dedicated servers that controlled the AI. - you probably need to control the AI by a seperate server in order to not kill the "regular" server. That does not seem worth adding to PS2 for some roaming animals. Some of these actions, like partially rebuilding the engine, would likely be harder than simply starting to build PS3 with animals included.
It does look like they are going to add some NPCs to the tutorial, so it's a step in that direction. I am atm though pretty much against adding in more AI random elements. (I would however be very much for them putting a couple moving npcs to shoot at in vr training - maybe they can do that once they have the tutorial ironed out.)
Where is the information about that? Because that seems interesting. I would expect with what I know right now that the AI would walk in specific regions, as if they use an extention of the auto-drive feature of tanks when you pull one, or they could perhaps just place them in modified and invisible gravlifts that only affect them to move them around while they have spitfire AI attached. Like you I'm against AI in the main game even if they could add it, unless they can truly be an environmental hazard for little to no serverside loss. Like a flock of birds that can lightly damage an aircraft or gore your screen if you pass through.
While I wouldn't hate the existence of animals in this game, I'd rather the dev resources went elsewhere.
Even adding some creatures that land or come out of the ground out of nowhere or tunnel/cave (that people cannot enter) can be cool.. like a mother AI animal then they just run away or die after getting shot a few times. Maybe on a new cont it would be cool? Kind of like zombie mode but zombie mode is dumb. It should be more like Starship troopers then people can take sanctity on a building roof or a playerbase to defend against the swarms that just happen. Not preset waves, this way it's more dynamic and a game like no other. New items to use on the cont such as infantry mortars and probably better HMGs where you can change ammo while in it like in World of Warships could be cool. It still should have the 3-way style and points to cap on a big continent like the regular continents. Not small like the Outfit wars continent. It should have weather, time of day as well and w/ all of that should determine when animals came out or sleep/hide. It could be controlled by the devs and/or AI/script. Could even add incentives for people to hold points such as rewards for holding "waves" or defeating huge creatures like in Runescape. It doesn't have to be too crazy like Left 4 Dead or Destiny, but at least to have creatures roam in mass to eat plants or w/e then having them disturbed while mass roaming or wandering can result in another battle like a 4-way. I think not having aerial AI animals like "tetradactylies" wouldn't be good to overwhelm but missing out on some good cargo drops like anvils they could pluck players off the ground or even drop "animal" reinforcements. What do you guys think? : ) Could even add new war assets that drop in AI animals and probably other AI animals that fight other AI animals that people drop. Game would be even crazier all of course in a New continent, not the ones we already have. Later on they can be added after a lot of stuff doesn't break the game. Could even have a War asset like stampede, like in Lion King. This is Planetside 2. All players have guns to fight back. It's not like they have to flee. If equipped enough, players wouldn't die. While taking on enemy faction fire, having AI animals stampede a faction or all factions would be crazy. There has to be a way for the animal bodies to disappear wisely though so they don't kill framerate too much of course. Need to test having too much spawn or it would end up like ArmA 3 on a full 150 player server in the same AO (Area of Operation).
The idea is to have more going on. Everyone has guns. Everyone won't get instantly trampled to death lol
I am not only for this, but am borderline homicidal that this is not so already due to the fact that the earliest commercials for Planetside made it seem like huge animals like Dune Mega Worms would be a factor that everyone had to deal with. I can see this being a problem for PS3, but a PS4 or 5? Lets face it, P.C. so long as you are rich, has never had an issue with Ram, graphics nor space, so this should be NOW! However, for the moment, I would settle for PlayStation users not being 40 years late to the party when it comes to fun updates. I still cannot buy any weapons for my Left Rear on my Colossus, NONE of the weapons on it have any upgrades in their list... STILL. I dread how long it will take for the N.S.O. update... Especially since it took well over a year and then some just to get the ANT; and ours cannot build anything.... All of the hackers, half of the fun....
Thanks thats a nice read. Looking at the scope and wording my guess would be they use a few scripted paths for the AI to take and hook up the spitfire AI to them. That way they seem like smart AI who can target and since you'll likely only see it once per faction its not that disturbing if they follow the same paths each time. Also nice to see them talk about Garrison Squads. Which as far as I'm aware I'm the only one suggesting. A more fluid squad that adds players in the local area and removes them if they go out of the area, letting the system take into account the way players can change area and be connected to a relevant squad without having to look for it each time.
NPCs like playing Titanfall is dumb imo. I want to face people only and if NPCs were to exist it should be in the form of continent unique animals.
I do not think it is worth the manpower to add. If the stampede can kill you it would turn into a lighting storm complaint. People are playing PS to fight people not the environment. While wildlife might sound cool bug fixes would be a better use of time.
So you want a understaffed game to spend time to create a few month thing. That seams like a waste of manpower. The storm on Esamire was something they took allot of flack for, why do it again.
It's not a waste. It can be a one-of-a-kind game until more people discover it. I prefer this over ArmA and at times Call of Duty.
