In-Progress Tiers/Difficulties of NPC spawns

[Hayden]

So after trying a SSTRP event with a few people, I noticed something that WN seems to lack is a 'difficulty' setting of sorts for NPC spawns, which can either cause default NPCs to either be too easy, or too difficult to fight against depending on the player.

A suggestion I have to counter that, and to make fights against NPCs more fun and allow more 'swarm' events without risking outright killing everyone involved if things mess up, is-

3-4 'difficulty' levels of NPCs.

Easy - Half the default NPC health
Normal - Default NPC health
Hard - Double default NPC health
Optional: Very hard - Triple/Quadruple default NPC health

For ease of access, the different difficulties would work best under their own subgroup of NPCs- "Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard Swarm NPCs"

With this, maybe the harder NPCs could also be scaled to be larger to easily show that they're a more difficult variant. Again, optional, as this could make pathfinding more difficult, glitch out hitboxes, or other unintended consequences.

To save this taking a long time to develop it could include only the usual 'swarm' NPCs that are often encountered - Antlions, for example, and possibly also zombies.

This would also save CT needing to manually set NPCs HP whenever they spawn some that are meant to be more of a challenge, and prevent NPCs with custom set HPs bugging out and being considerably higher than it's meant to be.

Of-course, this also possibly runs the risk of setting a bad example for future NPC spawns after easy has been used. I.E, a player who fights against a swarm of easy NPCs, could think that's the norm, and be confused when fighting against the harder tiers. The scale mechanic could prevent that happening, or instead harder NPCs could be a slightly different shade or colour.

 

[HOKI]

This would be great. NPCs are always woefully weak and easy to kill, this would make them more dangerous.

 

[Taliazure]

So after trying a SSTRP event with a few people, I noticed something that WN seems to lack is a 'difficulty' setting of sorts for NPC spawns, which can either cause default NPCs to either be too easy, or too difficult to fight against depending on the player.

A suggestion I have to counter that, and to make fights against NPCs more fun and allow more 'swarm' events without risking outright killing everyone involved if things mess up, is-

3-4 'difficulty' levels of NPCs.

Easy - Half the default NPC health
Normal - Default NPC health
Hard - Double default NPC health
Optional: Very hard - Triple/Quadruple default NPC health

For ease of access, the different difficulties would work best under their own subgroup of NPCs- "Easy/Normal/Hard/Very Hard Swarm NPCs"

With this, maybe the harder NPCs could also be scaled to be larger to easily show that they're a more difficult variant. Again, optional, as this could make pathfinding more difficult, glitch out hitboxes, or other unintended consequences.

To save this taking a long time to develop it could include only the usual 'swarm' NPCs that are often encountered - Antlions, for example, and possibly also zombies.

This would also save CT needing to manually set NPCs HP whenever they spawn some that are meant to be more of a challenge, and prevent NPCs with custom set HPs bugging out and being considerably higher than it's meant to be.

Of-course, this also possibly runs the risk of setting a bad example for future NPC spawns after easy has been used. I.E, a player who fights against a swarm of easy NPCs, could think that's the norm, and be confused when fighting against the harder tiers. The scale mechanic could prevent that happening, or instead harder NPCs could be a slightly different shade or colour.

You realize you can already change the health of a npc through admin commands.
That's already a thing if you spawn them on.

 

[Robert]

You realize you can already change the health of a npc through admin commands.
That's already a thing if you spawn them on.

They know, they are just referring to the idea that spawns themselves have a difficultly tier

No more manual edits after spawns, just set down a spawner and done.

 

[TheGoodHunter]

i'd say the NPCs are way too easy rn. i literally beat the fuck out of a headcrab zombie with another random civie and it died in a few punches, manhacks don't even do anything and they just stay stuck to the roof, and the headcrabs are very dumb.

the difficulty by default needs to be tweaked to something harder, cause if i can beat up just about anything in a few punches then its too easy.

 

[HOKI]

manhacks don't even do anything and they just stay stuck to the roof, and the headcrabs are very dumb.

That's just the map's fault

 

[Taliazure]

They know, they are just referring to the idea that spawns themselves have a difficultly tier

No more manual edits after spawns, just set down a spawner and done.

Oh coolio!
I tought perhaps they didn't knew about it.

 

[Imperator RAD-X]

This appropriately sets a tone for when (and if) you encounter a deadlier, additionally trained force when playing on incursions or expeditions.

We can do this specifically with the VJ Base health editor, though each NPC getting that done has to be committed manually. So we can technically already do this, but automating the process could be a stronger benefit for GMs. As I'd imagine that even though higher health values are bullet sponges, it still produces the effect that the NPCs are "higher trained" or "vastly mutated" that they're either dodging you or have an element of that sponginess being uparmoured.

 

[AppleFlavoredFox]

I would suggest a mild change of instead of it being hard, at 2x health do 1.5x so like 100 health turns into 150 instead of 200.

 

[Neonity]

I would suggest a mild change of instead of it being hard, at 2x health do 1.5x so like 100 health turns into 150 instead of 200.

A speed change is probably needed more, to be honest. Zombies can simply be dodged by stepping back right before they attack, for example. Giving them double HP just makes this process take longer with no additional risk to the player, except more time investment.

 

[BrennenW05]

A speed change is probably needed more, to be honest. Zombies can simply be dodged by stepping back right before they attack, for example. Giving them double HP just makes this process take longer with no additional risk to the player, except more time investment.

you have fast zombios for that, posion for those insta kills

 

[AppleFlavoredFox]

A speed change is probably needed more, to be honest. Zombies can simply be dodged by stepping back right before they attack, for example. Giving them double HP just makes this process take longer with no additional risk to the player, except more time investment.

you have fast zombios for that, posion for those insta kills

The biggest issue right here is; Neon you remember how much of a bitch it is to fight fast zombies. Especially with how hard zombies hit. I think their base damage is like 15-25 damage per swing, where 15 damage is the fast zombie's hit and 25 is the poison zombies. Normal is around 20-25 last i checked. So unless you're rocking a shotgun, fighting fast zombies is usually a pain in the ass, which is why they're not commonly used at least in cramped areas because they can outright decimate a group of heavily armed rebels without a shotgun present.

 

[Taliazure]

There is a add-on that adds shamblers, it makes normal zombies walk faster and shamble towards players at a increased speed, even make some jog towards the player.
Ao the speed part can be easily fixed with normal zombies.

 

[M!NT]

ACCEPTED


Will be done as part of the zone based NPC spawner system currently in development