Just Thinking - Mob Placement

Occasionally, there's a few thoughts, or ideas that I have about games in general that I'd like to share, so when I post them, they'll be 'Just Thinking' posts. I may have a rant, suggestion, story, or some random thought that I'll be posting to these, so don't be surprised if they're all over the place.

In this post, I'm going to be talking about one of my biggest pet peeves to do with MMO's, a particular immersion killer. A lot of draw to playing a MMO is being able to get lost withing the world that the creators have built for you to explore. I realize that in order for a game to stay fun, that the creators can't make a game TOO realistic. A game could quickly become bogged down in tasks which aren't fun... such as having to do laundry or some such. However, there is one thing in particular, that has begun to really bug me in MMO's, can be fixed relatively easy, and it seems that every MMO out there is guilty of it...

Mob Placement

A huge part of every MMO is going out and hunting critters, bandits, monsters, etc. And this is usually about how it goes...

So after strapping on your armor, grabbing your favorite sword (or shotgun), and visiting the local quest giver, you head out to the jungle to slay a dozen panther' for the safety of the guards. After a surprisingly short distance off the main road, you arrive at your quest location, and prepare to hunt. But low and behold, there before you in the open field....  a sea of panthers wandering about, just waiting to be slaughtered. Convenient, yes. Immersive? No.

These are supposed to be deadly predators, leaping from the bushes, or tackling you from a treetop by surprise, not domesticated putty tats wandering aimlessly in a field for your ease of killing. Every MMO I've played has suffered from this lack of creativity. I'd expect to find a herd of grazing herbivores chilling in a field, but not forty predatory cats in once place. You would rarely find more than one panther in the wild, let alone forty.

To me, there are three things missing from the current mob systems...

Purpose:

Sure, our panthers are there to kill to complete your quest, but that's not the kind of purpose I'm talking about. Why are our panthers out in the field? Are they playing whack-a-mole out there? Not likely. At the moment, there's no good reason for a mob to be there, in most cases. Some games at least give you a story behind as to why a mob camps is around, which will give it purpose.

How can we fix this? One way I can think of, is developing the world itself more, to give a reason for our panther to be there. Instead of having a sea of panthers in this field, lets change it to a herd or gazelle, and add a pond to the field. Now we have something for the a panther or two to munch on, and a reason for the gazelles to be there as well. 

To take this one step further, give the mobs a better routine. Instead of wandering from point a to point b, have them search for food. Once they've eaten, have them find a water source, then perhaps find some cover to nap under. It's these kind of things that could really add to the immersion of a game.

Proper Difficulty:

Most MMO's have some sort of common/rare/elite/boss system in place. This works well in a way, but can also become tedious because of the current mob designs. In most games, if you're hunting a level 39 deer (Super-Doe!), it's going to be as dangerous, or nearly as dangerous as the nearby level 39 bear. Both are going to be a cakewalk as long as you're level appropriate.

The problem with this is that the world becomes a game of attrition. You no longer have to think of how to defeat the bear, but only begin to count how many you can take down before you have to stop and rest. To me, this is both boring, and silly.

Did hunters ever talk about how many bears they took down in one day? Possible, but it's more likely that they celebrated the fact that they actually killed one, and survived! That's what I feel is missing now. If you have an opponent that should be hard to kill, it's not really, unless it's a boss of a dungeon.

I want to have a hard time taking down some tough monster. Let me carve my way through the rabbits, and sheep, but make the monsters interesting. And don't forget to make it more rewarding, as you'll be risking more. The added bonus to this, is that you can tuck a bear away in a cave, or by a stream somewhere, and you don't need to have a field full of them.

On the other end of this, large scale battles could be made to make you feel more super-heroic by scaling the difficulty of the enemies more. Peons could take very little damage, warriors may take some work, while the captain giving directions in the back may take a whole group to take down. Done right, you could feel as if you were a powerhouse, but still have to use your head as to who to engage.

Proper Respawn:

MMO's in general suffer from a stale respawn mechanic. After it's killed, mob X takes X amount of time before it suddenly pops back up, and wanders about aimlessly just as it did before.

I hate this mechanic with a passion. The only good part to it, is that it can keep you on your toes, but there's plenty of ways around this. Otherwise, the fact that the monster appears from nothing, out of nowhere, with no warning, tends to take away from your sense of achievement. After you've clear an entire camp on bandits, and turn around to find another one wandering about like nothing happened, it's kind of a downer.

The fix for this can go back to our panthers, and by putting a little thought behind it, could make a game a whole lot more fun. Having a panther suddenly lunge from a bush, or drop out a tree, would be much more exciting than having one phase in from nowhere. If you were careful, and observant enough, perhaps you could even catch one resting in a tree.

As for the bandits, reinforcements could be transported in on a truck,  they could crawl out of a tent, or a patrol could return to camp. Bears, or wolves, could crawl out of a den and begin to hunt. Giant spiders could climb out of a tree stump, or drop from the trees. If developers would put a little more thought into this, it would create a much more immersive world for us all.

Wrap Up:

Sadly, a lot of developers have become lazy in their monster spawning designs. I'm sure a lot of gamers have also become used to having their mobs served to them on a golden platter. I for one, would be willing to to spend ten minutes, hunting for an elusive panther, only to have it ambush me instead, and then be stuck in a life or death battle with a truly fearsome foe. Walking away alive from that would be a lot more rewarding to me, than the 'kill 30 demons, rest for 20 seconds, and repeat until boredom ensues' that is the current make up of most MMO's today.