The Dragon Empires newsletter for today just dropped into my mailbox, with a large "Beta is Underway" header on it. It seems like everything has been going pretty well so far in the current beta0 stage of the testing. Additionally they promise to gradually add more testers, especially towards the end of the year. Can't wait!
The feature of the week in the newsletter is about Monster AI. Here's the whole bunch:
Monster AI is one of those features that if it is bad can utterly frustrate and annoy players. For this reason we have been working hard on creating interesting creatures that act in a variety of interesting ways. Firstly, every creature has different levels of intelligence. Some are stupid and will only attack the last person to hit them, some are smart and will focus on the person who seems most dangerous, or the weakest. What's more, some creatures hate certain races or even specific items or colours. You can use this to your advantage when hunting or if you're not careful it could be your downfall as you, quite literally, do the red rag and bull thing.
Also, every monster can learn from their experiences. If a monster is wounded and escapes from the players (some will try to avoid all players) it might get angry and the next players it sees it will try to fight, perhaps totally out of character for its species. Monsters as a group can learn too. Spawns may move as a monster group finds success or failure in an area and some monsters will be strictly nocturnal.
We believe this combination of interesting features will help to make monster hunting less of a chore and more of an adventure. While experienced players will get a feeling for the behaviour of each monster there will always be the chance of the monster doing something unexpected to keep things exciting!
Also there's an interesting article to be found over here about the different religions and gods in the world of Dragon Empires. |