Yeah I know, stupid title, but it relates to my idea, although i''m not sure how game design related it is. So, how fun would it be for the player, after having had a really tough fight with an enemy, if the next encounter with that enemy was much tougher. Basically, the enemies family/comrades would have learned from the combat and a particular attack would no longer affect them. So a lightning bolt, after fighting three orcs whose village you just raided, does only half damage and continues doing less the more orcs you fight, until they have become immune. You could determine learning speed via statistics, or you could make it story related, ie like the borgs(sp?) in StarTrek, becoming immune to certain phaser frequencies. Would this be considered as an AI issue, or should it be part of our goal, to make a more believable game design?

The question is
"Is it fun?"
What you will do with this is basically make an enemy that can''t be beaten. This might really be the thing for the hardcore gamer, but even then, he will be focused on finding ways to exploit your code, instead of playing the game. Meanwhile, you will have alienated the entire ( and large ) casual gamer market.

This has been done before, and the best scenarios that use this are the ones that use it to a limited degree.

Ut

good idea, would most likely have something to do with AI
depending on the Game design.
What you described would not be an AI "issue"
unless you wanted to really get fancy and have
a "smart" AI.

btw the plural of borg is borg
just like the plural of ninja is ninja

I was replaying the old game Starflight not too long ago and found that it effectively did EXACTLY what you describe. In each subsequent encounter the same enemies were tougher and tougher until my weapons were practically useless.

The verdict: NOT FUN!!!!!!!

It''s a great idea if you want to discourage the player from doing something without outright disallowing it. In the case of Starflight I was being a pirate, so I deserved what I got.

If used to control the player and keep them on track, while also enhancing the illusion of freedom. But ultimately, it makes the player go do something else, so don''t make it the main activity!





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Just waiting for the mothership...

I don''t like the example you mentioned. It would make more sense if your odds of hitting an enemy decreased, and the odds of him hitting you increased, especially for melee combat in a medieval game. The idea is that he''d learn your fighting style, and thus be better at dodging your blows and striking you despite your attempts at dodging. I suppose resisting magic attacks is feasible too, if he learns what attacks you use often and beefs up his resistances to those elements at the cost of others... or something.

~CGameProgrammer( );

Ok, a few questions:

1) If you fry one orc with lightning, how do the others find out that you did this?

2) How would orcs become resistant to lightning in a very short period of time?

3) If these orcs had this immense adaptability, why are they not already invulnerable? Others would have tried frying them with lightning, fire, etc., before.

4) How is the player expected to get past/defeat these uber-orc-borg creatures? Would this be fun/interesting to figure out, or nearly impossible?

5) If you have a super-adaptive species with a sort of hive mind, how do other species survive at all? Or are they merely being herded for the orcs food?

In other words, the end result of a super adaptive species is ecological disaster.

The mighty cockroach, while very well adapted, took a long, long time to get there. Maybe faster at adapting than other species, but not on the time scale of a few days. And, they''ll always be easily squished.

A single, recurring nemesis using this idea could work. You could come close to vanquishing him, he would retreat, regroup and try to come up with some sort of magical/technological protection against the tactic that you used against him before. There should be a way for the player to ultimately outwit this nemesis (perhaps even using some of these defenses against him).

-pwd

Thank you pwd for making that point... less typing for me. So basically "ditto" what pwd said here. To add, i think this problem with the orcs can better be served with AI. After a while you can make the orcs learn to come at you in groups, or with a different weapon, or similar to groups: would run to others and get help. This would not only solve the coach roach effect but will also make for some smarter orcs at the same time.
That is, unless you want the roachs taking over the game... yuck!

aka John M.
Never give up. Never surrender!

bacteria and the HIV virus, both adapt and become harder to destroy... So no... No fun....

confused by earlier errors, bailing out....

Definitely don''t make all of the enemies in a game adapt like this! but, i think that one, rare, adaptive species the player only brushes with a few times could be very intresting...

How about instead of superevolution (even cockroaches don''t really change in their own lifetime, right?) create different forms of strategy for creatures like Orcs.

The first time when they meet you, they use their worst strategy (they just do an all-out run towards you, giving you time to use range weapons and magic). After a few complete losses the Orcs will reconsider their strategies and now when the group encounters Orcs (and expects the same strategy) all of a sudden the Orcs pull out their bows, some Orcish magic users appear and the group is all of a sudden attacked in a different way than before. The group has to adjust etc. If each intelligent creature type would have different tactics like this, they could always use a different one from last time (when they lost).

This is a little bit how human wars went as well. One side wins, the other side tries to come up with a counter to what won the battle. Then <that> side might win the next battle, after which the previous winner now tries to come up with something to best the latest winning tactic.

(just for some casual research I''ve been reading up on some Medieval warfare books... it''s amazing to see the flow of power change from battle to battle)