Lets talk about AI and PVE

Rust general
#1

Hey everybody!

Intro
I’d like to talk about the PVE aspect for a little and the lack of a real AI enemy. Back in legacy we had zombies.
Their AI wasn’t revolutionary but it wasn’t much worse than the animals in the current version, who still think the only solution to standing on a slope is to start walking circles. Forever.
Zombies were removed and red/rad animals were introduced. I liked the Idea that rust tried to be somehow different than dayz and all the other upcoming ripoffs.
However, red animals were just a placeholder, something else was promised to come and it wasn’t a big thing to tell your friends. (“hey man you gotta check out rust they have red bears and wolves now and the zombies are gone”)
In the current state, I still miss a possible AI enemy, even if it was up to the server to decide if and how many of those entities there should be. (what those entities could be is open to discussion)
The only thing you can do is wander around and kill other players, or try to be friendly. Killing animals isn’t a challenge at all. What if there was a real PVE challenge?
Those should be quite rare to find and maybe even have their own lines in the server cfg to enable or disable.
Now lets get to the possible AI enemies that I came up with:

Bosses
This actually isnt a category itself, more like a general idea inspired by fantasy MMOs. A big group of players has to get together and kill one big monster.
Big monsters could be either dinos, human mutants or big animal mutants. They should have a lot of hit points and they should spawn very rarely and maybe even attack buildings at night when there’s light on.
Players will need to work together instead of against each other to kill one of those things. You could get raided by a giant mutant instead of players.

Humans
Implementing working (shooting) human AI sounds like a big task to me, especially if they should look and behave good. However, some military helicopters or troops who sometimes land or base somewhere on the map and who also kill on sight could be a PVE Idea for the far future. A military base the size of the airfield with helicopters…which you can steal…who doesnt dream of that?

Dinos
My friend said about a year ago, it would be cool to have dinos in rust. I didn’t really like it and now that ARK hit the shelves pretty good it will just make rust look like a ripoff. I still like the Idea of big AI enemies though.

Zombies, again.
They were slow and stupid, but it was PVE. Still not very sensational and like I said in the intro, there are lots of zombie survival games out there.

Human Mutants
What do you think about the Idea, that every human dying from radiation will become a mutant?
You could decide to control the mutant or respawn regularly and let the mutant be AI controlled. Mutants should be similar to zombies, but faster and more threatening than zombies.
If a Mutant kills a non Mutant player or animal, he could grow in size and strength. Maybe they could have some abilities like a leap jump or a stylish heavy melee attack.
Maybe they could carry usual melee weapons and even waterpipe shotguns.
A big, (AI or) player-controlled human mutant would be a nice thing to kill for a group of 3 or 4 players, instead of killing nakeds on the road.

Mutated animals
Soo what if the radiation or a mad scientist tempering with the genes made some mutations where the animals could get additional extremities, features from other animals and get bigger in general?
Some examples: (If you got more Ideas, please comment!)
Three-headed wolves, giant rats, Big ass insects, monkeys with 4 arms, hostile deer with razor sharp horns, bears on steroids, Big, fat and hostile boar…[I might come up with more, or even some concept art if the Idea is widely appreciated]

regular animals
Keeping rust a “wildlife survival game” is not a bad intent or Idea. However, Animals should still be a bigger threat, also to armed players.
How? Here are 3 points how to improve challenge.
First: Some animals aren’t wandering around alone! They come in herds!
Please implement packs of wolves of 3-8 Animals, same for deer and boar. Make boar hostile when attacked! They wouldn’t let anyone beat on them with a rock or torch and just run away.
Second: Poisonous animals! If you have a big ass gun and you get bit by a snake you can kill the snake but the snake’s gonna kill you aswell unless you get an antidote. Shooting snakes to craft antidotes…sounds lke fun :smiley:
Third: Certain animals should be limited to certain biomes. Bears in deserts and pigs in the snow…simply don’t fit.
Here are some ideas about new animals and where they could appear:
Desert: Cobra, Cheetah, Camel, Lion, Scorpion, Gazelle, Giraffe, Antilope, Buffalo
Forest: Wolf, Brown / Grizzly Bear, Boar, Deer, Fox, Horse
Tundra: Polar / Grizzly Bear, Tundra wolf, Caribou, Fox, Horse

That’s it so far, please tell me what you like and share your own ideas of new PVE aspects of the game. I’m not a hater of pvp. I’ve done plenty of killing and I’m getting bored or maybe I am just not evil enough to rob all those poor noobs.

#2

I agree to that. A survival game needs real pve aspects to work. All you wrote about the animals is true and should get fixed soon (with all the clitch and noclip bugs we all learn to hate over time).

I wouldnt get back to the zombies or introduce dinos in the game. Mutants are ok, because of the fact what radiation is a part of the game. But what kind of mutants? They shouldnt only be “fast zombies” or something like that.
The kind of mutants I would like to see should be more like the mutants in “Fallout” or the “Forest”. Living in communitys (maybe in the upcoming “dungeons”), attacking in packs and maybe being able to use primitive weapons and eventually primitive firearms.

Other possibe pve elements could be more unique and part of a background story…

Who send the airdrops? And why? Could they become more active and send something else? Robot Kill Teams? Deadly global events (like in “the hunger games”)? Or something like that.
The devs could also intruduce some more unique enemys like the creatures in “Nether” or the “deathclaw” from Fallout. Im sure they would have some really cool ideas for “a unique Rust monster”.

Many things are possible. And my opinion is… as soon they implement REAL pve threats, the people would spend less time for pvp. And this would be a good thing for noobs and singleplayers

#3

personally i’d love to see a few tiers of enemies.

wildlife tier 1 wolves, bears etc. normal animals, minor threat.
wildlife tier 2 rad wolves, bears etc. bigger tougher animals, moderate threat.
wildlife tier 3 epic animals. the boss types, require much more of a joint approach to knock off.

human tier 1 barbarians. basically just nakeds who hunt and cook food.
human tier 2 tribals. semi equipped primitives who make villages and do more than just hunt.
human tier 3 warriors. when the tribe gets big enough, they will actively send hunters out to raid nearby players.

#4

I like the questions “Who send the airdrops? And Why?”
A kind of story would be interesting, maybe one could find hints in notes. Maybe notes could be excerpts from diaries or letters to army officials or just crap notes like memos and reminders.
Actually I was thinking of super mutant behemoths from fallout 3 when writing about “bosses”. But I also thought about smaller mutants with weird mutations like additional hands on their arms. Not the usual lame zombie kinda thing.

#5

Its a prisonisle.

#6

So we need Jena Plissken :payne:

:smiley:

#7

FP ruined my back story of it being a genetic cloning test area when they added racial variation to Newmans.

#8

The big thing that I am not agreeing with, in terms of Facepunches’ resource efforts, is the lack of, at least transparent lack of, an A.I. specialist on their team, to push out regular A.I. updates. Facepunch has dedicated their resources into all kinds of specialists, from terrain code monkeys, to conceptual artists, to even someone that almost solely works on the item icons in-game.

Rust is still in Alpha - that is something that I understand, and I have been watching Garry and his team since the beginning, sending in reports, and testing their game out, to help see that the game has a future. I also understand that because of the game constantly changing, it needs to be properly decided as to where resources need to be sent to, and where they do not need to be sent to, because in a week or two, balance changes might see those resources swirling down the drain.

But this is an exception to the rule, I feel. If Rust is to truly be considered a survival sandbox game, instead of as a PvP shooter with building elements, then A.I. is something they should be seriously focusing on, and continually improving along with the other aspects of the game. Because since this game’s conception, the A.I. has hardly improved.

Horses I can understand, as they are a new addition to the game. But pigs and elk, are so mind-numbingly stupid, even after all of these years, that the chances are in your favour for them to just stare you in the eyes as you hack them to pieces. Wolves and bears, on the other end of the spectrum, have such horrible path-finding, that they cannot even get around single trees.

To put it simply, the A.I. is a joke - and that is perfectly fine! The game is in Alpha, which means there will definitely be certain aspects which are expected to be jokes in quality. That is not where my criticism is based; it just seems odd to me, that after all of these years, I am still seeing some of the most shoddy A.I. I have ever witnessed - and I have played ‘Warlocked’.

So in principle, I agree with this thread. But Garry and his team need to do some serious overhauls before any additional A.I. is added into the game. I hope that this can be considered fair criticism - I have always loved Rust, and still support it to this day (even if I have recently had to take another break as I wait for more updates). I have faith in their abilities - I get the feeling we will see some amazing A.I. once the game gets closer to being officially released as a full game.

#9

I want some rusty hk tanks roaming around. I feel it would encourage people to work together XD.

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#10

Yaaay they implemented a Helicopter :smiley:

#11

Man. I really hope that they do none of the things suggested in the OP. I can’t wait until they get some PVE elements into the game, but I really hope they don’t do anything so cliche as mutants, zombies or dinosaurs. That shit is so boring. Not that I have better ideas (I’m not a designer after all). I just hope it’s none of that stuff.

The helicopter is a good start. The mention made in the last Dev Blog regarding upcoming smaller encounters is even better.

#12

You gonna run to your friends now and tell em that they need to check out rust because it has helicopters? :stuck_out_tongue:

#13

Showed heli footage to friends - they were not impressed.

@Ash: What I tried was to sum up the possibilities I was able to come up with. I’m very happy the military helicopter made its way in, regardless if it was inspired by this topic or not.
But I’m a little sad too that you didn’t like my animal ideas.

#14

Dude…

#15

Don’t you think its a little coincidential at least that 2 weeks after I posted this they added a new PVE threat being a military helicopter killing on sight?
Don’t you think they might be also reading the Forums and checking for good Ideas in topics that exceed the length of 3 sentences which some people here are just too lazy to read?

#16

That heli model was probably being worked on for more than two weeks before it was ready to go live, unless it’s a stock asset.

Go back through the devblogs and look for mention of secrets in the few weeks before the announcement of the heli, it’s probably referring to the heli.

People have suggested military threats for two years; don’t they get any credit for having pretty much the same idea before you even registered here? It’s pretty presumptuous to assume you’re the first person to suggest this and that the devs are implementing the feature specifically because you proposed it.

#17

i agree we need some PVE challenge/threat

it should be dangerous to go outside at night…

or give us a T-Rex running around ^^ we need something that makes you look around in fear, or see a threat at the horizon coming at ya making you run away screaming at your wife to be quiet ^^

using torches at night attracts 10feet large blondes that will eat ya or something ^^

lets have some mutants like giant ants or spiders, or killier bee swarms, or worms that get out of the ground from survey charges or C4

or lets have some alien vs. predator shit on the island…

i think thats a bunch of good ideas!!!

#18

I need a “delusional” rating button.

#19

Sorry you can waste your time searching devblogs for hints if you wanna prove a point here. I won’t.
I never thought I was the first to propose those things and never said so. The only thing I did was assuming that they might have listened to the general request of a PVE element in rust due to this topic. Not more and not less.

We will never know.

But I think its sad that I’m now dealing with two smartasses who aren’t contributing to the topic with any useful Ideas but rather like to discuss if the heli was implemented due to this thread or not.

I don’t care. I wrote:

I never claimed it was. Even if you find some proof on wikileaks secret documents that show the heli was inspired by elixwhitetail’s useless comments I would not care and I would still be happy the helicopter is in the game.

I need a “shut up” rating button.

#20

What’s the fascination with bosses and zombies?

Why make this game like every other game?

These are just just general questions, not hating on you.

I think what has happened is that pretty much every game out there gives you guns, weapons, pvp, pve, location, and whatever else fairly quickly.

It’s dumbed people down to the point that every game is a race.

Get from point A to point B as fast as you can.
Collect as many weapons and supplies as fast as you can.
Kill the bad guys as fast as you can.
Beat the game as fast as you can.

And now Rust is developed with a slower paced gameplay and people play it as fast as they can and then run out stuff to do.

I agree there needs to be more PVE elements in the game, but playing it like there’s some kind of time limit to get things done…I just don’t understand.

Is not griefing the same as having the demolish tool ?