Rather than complain or call you names which would accomplish nothing, I would like to humbly ask for a chance to possibly change your mind -and I promise not to include either a "it's been done" argument, or "garry already said this would be boring" argument. Interested? Thanks.
Okay so far I've read some 'for it' arguments, and some are pretty good. It can fit in with the nuclear setting, rationalize the addition of vehicles, military weapons etc. So far so good.
Here's why I think Military would be problematic, and why I think you should consider voting for something else.
1. AI will not be what you are imagining in your head. Yes, the game will certainly improve, but put "Military" enemies into the context of what we have seen so far, or something even considerably improved in the future.
This will not be Pay Day 2 cops rolling and taking cover and busting through windows. For a game this size, hundreds of players on a huge world map, AI will not be Military grade, they simply won't be able to push that kind of AI simultaneously to so many enemies and players.
Bears and Wolves right now are kind of dumb right? But that's okay because they are bears and wolves, which are kind of dumb. Human, especially trained Military enemies will come off really dumb, and not behave like humans, and detract from the overall feel of the game.
If I lost you, here are some examples of what I mean:
-Trained military that can "see" you line of sight, but are not close enough to be aggro'd so are therefore oblivious to you.
-Trained military that chase you for X distance, then just decide to pack it up and go home.
-A real player being able to see and shoot at trained military outside of their aggro range.
-A real player shooting at a military NPC and missing, trained military is oblivious and doesn't react.
-1 military NPC rushes in to attack 4 heavily armed players by himself. Something pretty expected for a animal/creature/mutant to do, something that feels pretty stupid when it's supposed to be a military human.
- Trained Military is outsmarted by simple things like climbing on a rock, losing line of sight, etc.
2. Military Grade Ranged NPC attacks. This is another problem. With melee attacking NPC's the battle is fairly understandable, if enemy is close enough, it will hit you once every X seconds. Right? So far so good.
Even some sort of ranged spitting monster thing etc. could work fine. The problem is when you introduce Military grade weapons that have a really long range, and supposedly human NPC's firing it.
Combine this with the fact that combat is real time (actual aiming, hitbox etc.) as opposed to calculator (like WoW) then you introduce a whole new set of issues.
The game is essentially in control of everything, so that NPC COULD hit you perfectly with every shot. At unbelievable ranges. Zig zag or not, it knows where you are at all times.
So to combat this we introduce accuracy, military now has X% chance to hit you, adds some realism right? Well what the heck, I'm farther away now, or I'm zig zagging, or there's only 10% of my body showing while I'm hiding behind this tree.
So we have to code military AI shooting to account for all of these circumstances? There's a LOT of variables that should, and DO come into play when another REAL player is shooting at us.
So much so that I don't believe most of that will be handled by enemy NPC AI, and leave us with some pretty "cheap" feeling enemy encounters, however it get's implemented.
So AI in this game will probably be limited. That's OK! There are plenty of enemy types that could be chosen that would fit with that.
Mutants, animals, dinosaurs, zombies, and hordes of OTHER things are NOT negatively affected by these issues. A monster is supposed to charge into four heavily armed guys, because he doesn't care, he's a monster.
We don't have to worry about coding realistic long range sniper shooting, because this X monster only needs to know that if it gets this close, it mauls you, or spits acid, or lifts the player high into the air and drops them, or whatever else they want to do with it.
To sum it up, whatever the enemy NPC's end up being, the source of their threat should be overwhelming numbers (ex: pack of X) and raw stats (health/speed/damage/size) among other things.
There's plenty of room for other creative enemy dangers, like camouflaged enemies, flying enemies, or jumping enemies that will all feel real, fair, and satisfying.
But Military human NPC's will need a a whole different set of AI, skills, and requirements to achieve that same level of "real, fair, and satisfying" that we just won't get. It will only be a detriment to the overall feel of the game.
Whether I changed your mind or not, thanks for your time, and for giving me the chance. Hopefully you got something out of it.
-Kneon
I guess so many people voted for military because it would fit the theme of the high end weapons and drops you can aquire right now. My suggestion would be to overlook what you can gain from red animals / former zombies right now, ignore the fact that the predefined structures have a military feel and think about what would be fitting not only instead of zombies but also instead of high end military drops and instead of military structures.
I for my self see dinosaurs working. I can also imagine mutated critter. I can also imagine aliens trying to get up a base on rust-island. As soon as you free yourself from blueprint- and m4-drops, most of the available voting options become pretty solid, believable and lorefriendly.
This is pretty much the reason I dislike the idea of human AI enemies, playing games like tf2 and CS:GO against bots is dull, that experience really doesn't need to be in rust where there are potentially 200 other people. Real people should build up from cave men to be the military groups seen roaming around.
Melee enemies especially wild/mutant animals and dinosaurs make sense, there is very little AI to implement, they simply run at you and start an attack animation, if your in range you get hit.
I myself voted for military because:
I'd of thought they have bases that other players could raid together and high end equipment and military armour that could be lootable. That way the helicopter what is supposed to be added can have an actual logical place that it came from and not just appearing out of no where. Also this gives a reason for less Kos because high end players would most likely go for the military npcs and not the naked noobs.
Also I imagined myself running into rad town meat a bunch of people with decent equipment and scream "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, the military is coming! They have vehicles and heli-BOOM" died and everyone goes running and shooting as they run from the soldiers. :dance:
Also I think if they did add military they'd make them much smarter than wolves and bears because garry wouldn't allow such a shitty game after all.
[QUOTE=GavGod'sGift;43995234]I myself voted for military because:
I'd of thought they have bases that other players could raid together and high end equipment and military armour that could be lootable. That way the helicopter what is supposed to be added can have an actual logical place that it came from and not just appearing out of no where. Also this gives a reason for less Kos because high end players would most likely go for the military npcs and not the naked noobs.
Also I imagined myself running into rad town meat a bunch of people with decent equipment and scream "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, the military is coming! They have vehicles and heli-BOOM" died and everyone goes running and shooting as they run from the soldiers. :dance:
Also I think if they did add military they'd make them much smarter than wolves and bears because garry wouldn't allow such a shitty game after all.[/QUOTE]
I do agree those would be some cool scenarios! As you are someone who voted military, did my OP affect your opinion at all going forward? Or some new things to consider?
I agree with you 100% but I would rather have military or maybe native tribes than dinosaurs, one idea was to have military deposit loot in rad areas, rathe than it spawning randomly as it is now, but thats just my opinion, and I honestly dobt think rust will be as great of a game if it had dimosaurs.
[QUOTE=Kneon;43995249]I do agree those would be some cool scenarios! As you are someone who voted military, did my OP affect your opinion at all going forward? Or some new things to consider?[/QUOTE]
It did partially but i think garry's team are skilled enough to rule those problems out in the futur :)
As someone who voted military, your post did cause me to reconsider the other options. I guess the main problem is that the road, airdrop, and the rad areas and towns all scream "sentient NPC" (i.e. military, mutant human, alien, sentient robot) so dinosaurs, mutants, monsters don't really seem to fit. It really depends on whether Garry wants to put a whole lot of work into making smart NPCs instead of using current AI and mutants/dinosaurs/monsters.
Great post.
There is the possibility that the military is there to control dinosaurs and maybe they don’t attack you unless attacked themselves. This would also be cool if you required a strike force of some sort to attack them because they would have C4 and explosives, who knows what will happen. Just like dinosaurs you cannot kill them by yourself but a group of people.
[QUOTE=ArrowHead98;43997006]As someone who voted military, your post did cause me to reconsider the other options. I guess the main problem is that the road, airdrop, and the rad areas and towns all scream "sentient NPC" (i.e. military, mutant human, alien, sentient robot) so dinosaurs, mutants, monsters don't really seem to fit. It really depends on whether Garry wants to put a whole lot of work into making smart NPCs instead of using current AI and mutants/dinosaurs/monsters.
Great post.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I want to hear well thought out feedback from people who want military (like yours^) so I appreciate it.
I see where you're coming from with the civilized things in the game fitting in with human NPCs. That would make sense if we the player, were in "their" world.
But what do you think about if the ruins of civilization, were left over from us, the survivors, and the "monster" or whatever type of enemy they decide to go with,
is simply what has resulted from the apocalypse, or even what caused it.
Basically what I'm saying is, having monster enemies (for lack of a better non-human term) could still fit logically because humans made those roads, builds etc. but they are now abandoned due to the radiation.
Whatever NPC they pick doesn't have to be the "owner" of those structures lore-wise. Would that be satisfactory for you? Or would it be too odd?
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