I am working on my first single player online RPG akin to Adventure Quest or Fable, etc. and I just wanted to get everyones opinion on how to manage the damage for the MOBs. The options I am considering are: 1. Each MOB has a set damage range, set resistance, etc. So every time I attack an Orc, I know what its damage range is, the resistances it has, the moves it will do, etc. 2. The second way I was thinking of was to base it more towards how the players operate. Each mob would have their own 'equipment' of sorts where if they are wielding an axe, they will do slashing damage, and use the axe moves. If they are wearing leather, they will have different resistances than if they were wearing plate, etc. On top of this, each MOB would need their own stats, to base the damage from. So if one MOB has high str, they would do much more damage than a MOB that has less str. Should damage be a set thing, void of stats, gear, etc. such as in the first example, or should it be based more dynamically? What have you guys seen or done in your game design adventures?

I rather like the way it's done in Perfect World: all mobs come in about 6 specific 'flavors' - standard, weak (easier to kill, less reward for killing them), increased speed, increased magic attack, increased hp... erm I don't remember them all but basically the ones with a bonus give bonus reward for killing them. MixMaster is a stupid MMO but one of its few features that I like is that it does a similar thing, all monsters come in standard 'flavors': Elemental, Nimble, Strong, I think Agile... even better, in Mixmaster mobs captured as pets actually retain these bonuses, while in PW they don't.

Dofus takes a somewhat similar approach but only with certain types of monsters - the monster comes in 4 elemental varieties (air, water, fire, and earth) and they get an appropriate elemental magic attack and weakness to opposite element attacks. In this case though they four types are not really the same monster because they don't give the same drops. It works out to be rather annoying - the one which drops the appropriate gear or gearmats for your class is always the one it's hardest for your class to kill because it's strong against your class's elements. But visually I like Dofus' approach the best because color-rotating the monsters makes it much faster, easier, and immersive to identify which monsters are the type you want to fight than just adding an adjective or phrase to their name.

I like the idea of mobs doing damage based on the equipment they are using. The way I would do it - Have a range of stats for each monster. eg:

Orc -
Strength 12 - 16
Dexterity 8 - 12
etc...

When spawning a monster, choose a random value for each stat based on their range, and then give them equipment from an equipment pool.

eg.. an orc can spawn with either NO ARMOUR, LEATHER ARMOUR, or MAIL ARMOUR.
Then choose a weapon from one of the weapons an orc may spawn with. SHORT SWORD, AXE, SPEAR.

You can then base the orcs armour on the armour it's wearing, damage based on the weapon its holding, etc.

Now all orcs are approximately the same strength, but all different in a way.

I think it makes it a bit more interesting than all orcs doing the same damage, having the same amount of health etc.


Just my £0.02

I agree with DaveMS - it would also probably make sense to abstract the MOBs' gear to just an "armour" and "weapon" item, while the player might have boots, helmet, legs etc.

On the other hand, you could have a system where every individual piece of gear can always be looted from a mob - although you would have to give this gear a relatively low value.

Ok so I was thinking along the same lines.

I like that idea of taking the gear that the MOB was wearing and use that in the actual dropped equipment. I wouldn't necessarily drop EVERYTHING the MOB is wearing, but more like one random item or something.

I agree it would make the game much more interesting and exciting.

I also like the idea from sunandshadow, about having various 'flavors' of MOBs. Perhaps this can help dictate what gear they are wearing, and thus the strength and attacks they do.

For example, the Orcish Brute would wear a few plate items and use a 2h weapon, but an Orcish Rogue would wear a few leather items and duel wield 1h weapons, etc.

I appreciate your feedback and ideas guys, thanks a lot!

Quote:

Original post by BUnzaga I also like the idea from sunandshadow, about having various 'flavors' of MOBs. Perhaps this can help dictate what gear they are wearing, and thus the strength and attacks they do.

Perhaps like WoW sets of gear which are labeled. "of the Owl", "of the Eagle" "of the Whale", "of the Tiger", "of the Bear" etc. It would have been nice in WoW if those categories were actually attached to monster 'flavors'.

This is more about memory requirements. It is easy enough to randomly assign a set of gear to an enemy, but you have to retain each variation. If you only have a single "typical" creature and each individual creature is just a copy of that stored while the combat is taking place, then the memory requirements are going to be different.

There will also be a small overhead of art in the form of models and animations, but with a bit of thought you can reduce the effort needed for this quite a bit.

So, if you are willing to put in a bit more effort into the art, and you don't have restrictions to the memory resources, then I would favour your second option (having individualised enemies in a mob) as it gives the players a more diverse experience.