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Killing AI with arrows--too easy


Springheel

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I think one should not generalise based on the playstyle of one person (or even a few). And anyway, what is the difference between killing every AI in a map and KOing everyone and just running around in a deserted map (which seems to be quite common practise) - imho, the player that does that made a choice not to play the game as intended, and thats all theres to it.

 

You should be able to kill a guard with a head/chest shot, either with an arrow or with the sword. No matter how much metal armor they are carrying, if you hit on of those areas on an open spot, you kill them. Thats literally what makes melee in TDM tactical and exciting, its accuracy, fairness and realism. The fact that you can train so much that you can rapid fire and kill AI one after the other is no different or preventable than people mastering pressing the sneaking key and walking around the map without ever being heard by a patrolling AI.

 

Difficulties for snipping are all already there - helmets are impenetrable, its hard to hit such a small target and you need lots of training that most never go through, and, above all, design choices, of not leaving AI alone, making them work together, so an unnecessary kill would mean total disaster for the mission.

 

AI killed by surprise should, more often than not, reward the player with a silent death. An alerted AIshould always emit a loud death cry, to alert people around. This I think would go a long way in making it hard for you to clean the map one guy at a time. In fact, in my experience, there could even be a problem here to correct, I remember reporting an issue where AI is very slow to get alarmed by cries of help.

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Testing -35 for "Normal". That seems to still allow one-shot kills if they are unalert, but it takes two or three shots to kill them once alert.

 

Wow, -50 for Normal sounds a lot! Esp. because guard should be tough and Normal is what probably everyone plays at. Still -35 and +35 for difference betwen Normal and Expert is still a lot. Wha does Easy do, subtract -100? :o

 

And what does this mean:

 

"diff_2_class_1" "atdm:ai_citywatch_elite"
"diff_2_change_1" "health"
"diff_2_arg_1" "*0.1"

 

That Elite watches get 10% of their health on Expert? *confused*

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I think one should not generalise based on the playstyle of one person (or even a few). And anyway, what is the difference between killing every AI in a map and KOing everyone and just running around in a deserted map (which seems to be quite common practise) - imho, the player that does that made a choice not to play the game as intended, and thats all theres to it.

 

You should be able to kill a guard with a head/chest shot, either with an arrow or with the sword. No matter how much metal armor they are carrying, if you hit on of those areas on an open spot, you kill them. Thats literally what makes melee in TDM tactical and exciting, its accuracy, fairness and realism. The fact that you can train so much that you can rapid fire and kill AI one after the other is no different or preventable than people mastering pressing the sneaking key and walking around the map without ever being heard by a patrolling AI.

 

Difficulties for snipping are all already there - helmets are impenetrable, its hard to hit such a small target and you need lots of training that most never go through, and, above all, design choices, of not leaving AI alone, making them work together, so an unnecessary kill would mean total disaster for the mission.

 

AI killed by surprise should, more often than not, reward the player with a silent death. An alerted AIshould always emit a loud death cry, to alert people around. This I think would go a long way in making it hard for you to clean the map one guy at a time. In fact, in my experience, there could even be a problem here to correct, I remember reporting an issue where AI is very slow to get alarmed by cries of help.

 

This is all fine, and we don't want to make killing impossible, even sneak kills. However, we are talking here about kiling rampages killing multiple alert guards in a row with out the player even getting scratched (and in extreme cases, recovering the single arrow between shots).

 

There is this notion that guards are tough, that you can survive a fight against one if you are good and against two if you are lucky and three if you run fast enough. But all that is changed because in almost every map you have 10 broadsheads, a bow and can just kill everyone w/o any bad side effects.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Good catch with the AI health maybe that will fix the issue partly.

 

I think the bow is too accurate. Maybe the 'hit rushing AI in the face' issue can be fixed like this:

Quick shots with the bow are very inaccurate. Holding the attack button before firing will increase the accuracy.

 

The arrow will not hit where the player aimed in the case of the quick shot. Similarily to recoil in FPS games, the arrow hits randmly a region in the screen. Holding the aim so that the view zooms, makes the bow gradually more accurate (makes the cone smaller) until it is one pixel accurate in the maximum zoom.

 

I think the zoom time should be made quicker though, so that the zooming starts more quickly. At present, I never use the zoom. It would be nice to make an incentive to using it.

 

With this system, you could still get a lucky face shot to a rushing guard, but rarely.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Good catch with the AI health maybe that will fix the issue partly.

 

I think the bow is too accurate. Maybe the 'hit rushing AI in the face' issue can be fixed like this:

Quick shots with the bow are very inaccurate. Holding the attack button before firing will increase the accuracy.

 

The arrow will not hit where the player aimed in the case of the quick shot. Similarily to recoil in FPS games, the arrow hits randmly a region in the screen. Holding the aim so that the view zooms, makes the bow gradually more accurate (makes the cone smaller) until it is one pixel accurate in the maximum zoom.

 

I think the zoom time should be made quicker though, so that the zooming starts more quickly. At present, I never use the zoom. It would be nice to make an incentive to using it.

 

With this system, you could still get a lucky face shot to a rushing guard, but rarely.

 

Yeah, I think it will be a combination of these: adjust the health to a bit more sane values, and make quick shots with the bow more inaccurate (by whatever method we use). Plus make alerted AI shot in the head scream and swear a lot, even if they die right away.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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* make the AI cry/shriek really really loud, so if you shoot someone in the face, they run around for 1..2 seconds screaming on top of their lungs (in the video he passes a guy on an arched door, then gets spotted and hits the incoming two guys in the head.

You try running around at all with an arrow in the head..(oh wait isnt a that to the knee, he he)

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You try running around at all with an arrow in the head..(oh wait isnt a that to the knee, he he)

 

LOL :D

 

But seriously, it's amazing what people with a bullet in the head can still do in some cases - remember the chicken without head :D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Testing -35 for "Normal". That seems to still allow one-shot kills if they are unalert, but it takes two or three shots to kill them once alert.

 

I always play undr the highest difficulty level and I'm quite sure you can kill alerted guards with one shot to the head there. I'm confused.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I always play undr the highest difficulty level and I'm quite sure you can kill alerted guards with one shot to the head there. I'm confused.

 

This refers to the Combat Difficulty setting in the menu.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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The damage levels are fine, I dont know when wad the last time you guys tested this. You kill a normal guard with one blow to the head, a couple to the body, 4-5 to the arms/legs (they'll try to flee before the end). I see nothing wrong with this at all. At high difficulty, you shoot an arrow by surprise you still get a kill, but everything else forces you to hit them in the head twice (a lot more on the body). Yes, they will run around taunting you with an arrow on the head, or with a huge bloody cut on the face. That, by the way, adds no difficulty to melee fights but making you waste more time downing them.

 

Maybe making bow aim slower as some are suggesting might work to stop rapid-fire (I have no objections to that, even though I never felt the current set up was wrong), but I dont see why anything else should change. The fact you can play as an assassin guy as well as (or as opposed to) a sneaking ghost is not a design flaw in my eyes, but a great thing about the game's mechanics.

 

 

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. Wha does Easy do, subtract -100?

 

Well "Normal" difficulty actually is the easiest, for some reason.

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No, that would mean an imaginary arrow, the one you just hit him with but he hasnt died. Hard to imagine why an arrow would kill a guy in one situation, but actually take 2, 3 or more times to kill him in another situation.

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No, that would mean an imaginary arrow, the one you just hit him with but he hasnt died. Hard to imagine why an arrow would kill a guy in one situation, but actually take 2, 3 or more times to kill him in another situation.

 

It worked for Thief 1 & 2 & DS, so why not for us? It is a way of making a gameplay decision, not one about realism. If you really need to think about it then you could go with "He has seen you so he's dodging the arrows." No matter if this is possible in real life - well it is in this game! :D

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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I loaded up some arrows in my map to play around.

 

Honestly I think the idea of pulling the bow back and having it wander for 2-3 seconds before 'locking into place' is a great idea. It doesn't make aiming harder it just makes you not be able to reload 3 times in 3 seconds. You can fire arrows off in really quick succession.

 

Of course guards need to work properly, but no matter what we do there will still be the issue that the player can get a lot of arrows off accurately and fast! Having a bit of warm up period is realistic (as realistic as a guard taking an arrow to the head and still charging at least)

 

Other wise what other option do we have to fix semi-automatic bow? Make AI invincible?

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Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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- imho, the player that does that made a choice not to play the game as intended, and thats all theres to it.

 

 

I wouldn't say that they play it as unintended. Obviously BJing and killing was a game design choice and a possible way to play. It's more like a game flaw that you can clear the map of ai and have a free for all.

 

Most games don't have this issue. Say Halflife, very linear game with spawning ai and one way points. Once you reach a certain point you can't turn back and revisit an 'empty map'. They are always throwing you into a new area with newly spawning ai so the action never ends.

We could have spawning ai but how many guards would be in any given map? It could get weird.

 

Mappers could use time limits which makes the player rush and even if the bj everyone they won't have time to run around an empty map. But players hate time limits and they do like to run around empty maps.

 

I used to bj everyone, now I find it much better to only bj a few if I have to.

 

So it might be a game flaw, it might be unintended. But it really does suit a large range of players. If they aren't limited by Objectives (no kill, no bj, etc...) they can play TDM in any fashion that pleases them. That's what makes this game so great, it's got a high level and sandbox action.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Pain barks already propogate to AI (the beggars are not friends so they don't care, and the other guard was probably already alerted by seeing the body). So I don't know that this would gain us much. When AI hear a pain bark or see a dead body, they head for that spot, so it doesn't necessarily make them more likely to find the player.

 

 

Beggars might not care that guards just died, but they should have some sense of self-preservation and cower or run away screaming or something. The beggars have no idea that you are on their side so they should be a little worried that you might kill them also.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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Are y'all ready to post a proposal so we can determine what work is needed?

 

If nobody else is trying... Here is my attempt:

The problem is probably not the AI health but it may contribute to the issue. Headshot=kill (normal human, unarmored) is a standard in FPS gaming and it is an expectation we should try to satisfy.

 

The problem is the ability to launch multiple pixel accurate arrows in quick succession. It should be difficult to drop a rushing AI attacking the player with an arrow to the face. It should still be doable but with a lucky shot.

 

Make the quick shots more inaccuare. When the arrow is readied, the shot is notoriously inaccurate and if fired now, the shot hits a wide random cone.

 

The bow zoom feature could be used to visually represent the accuracy. Almost instantly after the readying, the zoom starts to focus the aim. Once the zoom is the highest, the shot will be the usual pixel accurate one.

 

This change makes the bow zoom important for routine gameplay. This means it needs to zoom in faster and maybe slightly smaller magnification. The magification should be reduced because the player should not be distracted too much from his surroundings as the zoom is required for standard play.

 

Some guestimate times:

Ready bow with an arrow

0.5 s

start zooming

3-5 s

Maximum zoom and accuracy reached. Maximum zoom maginifcation maybe 75% of the current maximum magnification.

 

The time justification principle is this:

The player should be able to launch one poorly aimed, yet deadly, arrow at a rushing AI. After that the bow should be completely useless as the player is now in melee. The AI should be able to follow the player and land hits faster than the player can shoot another arrow.

 

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I agree with almost everything Sotha has mentioned, except three points:

 

1. I would not use the zoom function as an equivalent to precicion. I, and so maybe others, always found that a "bow zoom" is unlogical and distracting. Therefore I never make use of it. Beeing forced to do so just to land a precise shot isn't a good idea IMHO.

 

Actually I think it would be fairly enough if the bow needs roughly 1-2 seconds to become precise. A "swinging" animation that shows the player the bow is still innaccurate wiuld be needed for this time.

 

2. When the bow is at highest accuracy, it shouldn't be pixel accurate. I'm not sure it is used now as Sotha refers to it as "usual" but I think there should be a limit range before this weapon becomes unpractical.

 

3. The headshot topic is obviously a matter of taste and one of Gameplay vs. Realism: Anyways, I think the former is more important then the first. So I would stick to the "alarmed AI can not be taken down with one shot" mentality or, as a comprmise, give the ai abilities to protect against such things.

 

Examples for the latter would be: Let the ai hold/swing his weapon in front of his head, let them swing their heads more when rnning (or run ont that straight) or give the helmets ventails. I guess the last option would only fit to elite guards.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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By "latter option", it sounds like you're actually describing the "former option", that gameplay should trump. Anyway my vote is on the gameplay side too.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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