Skeleton AI Protecting Their Buried Treasure are Useless, No Real Threat, or of Any Concern Because of our Infinite Re-Spawns

the truth is that it is very easy to eliminate the skeletons in this game and have no merit whatsoever

It would be fun if they had a bit more tact to the skeletons, circling lone players, trying to sneak up behind, etc.
I'd much prefer they try and pick up and run off a bit with a chest instead of permanently vanishing it. You should always be able to steal treasure back imo.

@GotGabriele
I would be against any quest failure mechanics, some of these can take 60+ minutes to complete, with potentially hours added on that if you have people trying to PvP you.

@GotGabriele
I see, I think I still like the idea of the chests having a certain amount of persistence. (As long as any player is nearby, the chest should remain thievable)

Giving the Skeletons some pirate styled tactics to try and protect or re-steal chests would be a fun way to add some difficulty.
One of the big questions I still have is what sort of AI we can expect for different things in the game.

I strongly agree with this idea. I understand that Rare wants to appeal to casual players for a fun cooperative adventure experience, but there needs to be some form of risk or excitement involved besides PvP while you're questing. I'm sure the Kraken will offer this (if it sinks your ship, bye bye chests), but as far as we know there may be only one on the map as a rare encounter.

EDIT: I'm not saying clog up the ocean with a myriad of threats. I'd prefer if they added more threats on islands besides skellies.

@im-axis-rahl said in Skeleton AI Protecting Their Buried Treasure are Useless, No Real Threat, or of Any Concern Because of our Infinite Re-Spawns:

You don't actually get anything for completing voyages though. You only get rewarded for bringing back chests. Voyage failure is basically pointless.

Just in response to this, OP is saying the skeletons would have the ability to steal or despawn the chest through some way (maybe ingame it would look like some magic ritual which eventually teleports it away).

This would make them more of a real threat, and also provides more incentive for chest carriers to focus on escaping rather than dropping the chest to fight skeletons then running once they're all defeated.

When I saw the title I was about to say something like "Well then blame the Respawn system, not the AI" but the rest your post really raised an interesting topic.

I think this would be a great idea, I like the fact that Skeletons couldn't care less about you and only want to protect their chests.

Staf'

@gotgabriele said in Skeleton AI Protecting Their Buried Treasure are Useless, No Real Threat, or of Any Concern Because of our Infinite Re-Spawns:

I'd like some sort of "quest failure" system.

I can assist you with that. You will get "quest failure" when I sneak onboard your ship and run off with your treasure chest, leaving you to sail to the outpost and find your cargohold empty :)

I'm sure there will be some failure mechanics in the game though. The trading ones seem to be vulnerable to failures at least, considering they (at least appear to be from the limited footage seen) to rely on timers as well as animals and cargo that can be killed / destroyed.

Who knows how the pirate lords will work. Maybe they are on a timer too after they spawn, so you have to kill them within X minutes of spawning/triggering them or they disappear again and you can't spawn them again.

I think it's a bit too early to worry about quest failure mechanics when we really don't know how the quests themselves will work in the first place.

I would like Harder AI as well, also maybe other enemies other than skeletons?

@mysticdragon297 said in Skeleton AI Protecting Their Buried Treasure are Useless, No Real Threat, or of Any Concern Because of our Infinite Re-Spawns:

not saying that they are too weak, because i know more Skeleton AI types are going to be in the game.

so here is the real issue:

say your entire crew dies to a group of skeletons as you are searching for treasure or had the treasure chest in-hand. well, you have not necessarily lost the treasure even when your entire crew dies. in fact i'ts almost impossible to lose, because your crew can just remember were you dropped the chest, you all re-spawn, and just try to grab the chest again. this can be repeated multiple times and you will ultimately loose nothing but your time. in short, no matter how many times you die, the chest will always end up on your ship so long as you know where it is when you drop it.

this only applies to AI, because actual players can steal your chest and have the ability to sink your ship.

so here is my suggestion:

first, rework how skeleton AI prioritizes their targets. make sure at least one enemy AI is attacking the player holding the treasure chest.

second, add a system where skeleton AI can actually steal the treasure chests. they dont have to pick it up or anything like that. they can just use some magic or something to take the chest permanently from the players so long as it is not held by them. imagine just one of them hovering their hand over the chest as green mist surrounds it until the entire things disappears for good.

third, along with second, make sure at least one skeleton AI is stealing the treasure chest.

in general, rework how Skeleton AI prioritizes targets
first priority: steal the chest.
second priority: attack players holding the chest.
third priority: target random player if there is either no chest, if there is one AI stealing the chest, or if one AI is already attacking players carrying a chest.

This guy knows what he is talking about. I too would like the difficulty increased. In every game I love the challenges they throw at me and love dying many times until I figure out how to do something right. Its what gets me interested in continuing to play a game.

The current skeleton AI you can just run away from or jump in the water. Its a waste of time to kill them and completely pointless. It might be cool for a 5 year old though but I really hope that they are making this game for young adults and not children so please, make this game challenging.

@mysticdragon297 said in Skeleton AI Protecting Their Buried Treasure are Useless, No Real Threat, or of Any Concern Because of our Infinite Re-Spawns:

@blair187

the thing is, getting treasure chests and skulls to outposts are going to be the ONLY "problem." which will place more focus on PvP, leaving PvE to be far less interesting.

I can't disagree with this. It would make it more interesting if the AI provided more of a challenge rather than just being a novelty to provide us with a bit more of the pirate theme.

I like the skellies, I love how they made them, but having them be more of a challenge would make it much more fun and interesting.

As a start I think they should scale with the crew size. E.g. if you are alone you should encounter enough skeletons that they might overwhelm you. However, the amount of skeletons that overwhelm a single player will only be a minor annoyance for a crew of 4.

With skeletons that scale up in numbers, difficulty or both depending on the crew size it would be more fun when getting a chest. I would like it to be so challenging that you would legit have to make a choice between fight or flight rather than, as it was in the beta, you always fight cause they die so easy anyhow.

Also having skeletons focus fire and target the chest-carrier first would really have you yelling for help when you carry the chest since you are defenseless and will be cut down fast if the crew doesn't help out.

@mysticdragon297 said in Skeleton AI Protecting Their Buried Treasure are Useless, No Real Threat, or of Any Concern Because of our Infinite Re-Spawns:

@vrtroper said in Skeleton AI Protecting Their Buried Treasure are Useless, No Real Threat, or of Any Concern Because of our Infinite Re-Spawns:

the truth is that it is very easy to eliminate the skeletons in this game and have no merit whatsoever

not really. your can have the strongest and most powerful enemy guarding their buried treasure, but because of your infinite re-spawns, all you have to do is just grab the chest after each re-spawn and get as close to your ship as possible before dying. you have no reason to give up; the chest will eventually get to your ship.

now, if "super-ulta-captain-skeleton" could steal the chest as you are re-spawning, then there is a possibility of failure, and the enemy AI would be much more threatening, meaning that is is 100% necessary to protect the one carrying the chest or pick up the chest ASAP as soon as it is dropped.

In each summary death more time in the ghost ship, so I would avoid going crazy giving me the same dying.

Forgive my English is very bad.