Day: August 23, 2006

How legitimate is it to “game the system”? If you exploit flaws in the AI, is that cheating or just making the best of the situation? Two instances from last night:

1. I was attacked by two enemies, and they kicked my ass. When I came back, I discovered that if I shot one with a distance weapon where there was a fence between me and the other guy, the one I hit ran up and attacked me but the other stayed behind the fence. This enabled me to kill them one at a time which was way easier.
2. A “boss character” of a minor quest came up and attacked me while I was busy attacking his lackey. He kicked my ass. When I came back, his AI was acting weird – I’d shoot an arrow at him, and he’d run half the distance between us and then run back to where he was. I’d shoot another arrow, and he did the same thing. I got 3 or 4 good hits in that way before finally closing with him and defeating him in hand-to-hand.

I’m participating in a beta for a new MMORPG, which one I probably can’t say because of the NDA that I clicked to agree to without reading very carefully. I’ve never played an MMORPG before and I can really see the appeal – far better for us old farts than the fast twitch first person shooters that I used to play.

I’m playing a “hunter” class, and the hints say to stand back and fire distance weapons rather than getting involved in the hand-to-hand, but I’m also in the initial quests that are very small and don’t make much sense to do in a group. So I spot an enemy, fire an arrow or maybe two, and the enemy comes over and starts hand-to-hand, so I respond in kind. That’s fine and dandy, since so far I’ve had not much trouble with the hand-to-hand either. But on one of the quests I found myself in a very target poor environment with dozens of players running around trying to find enemies to defeat and every enemy already engaged in some battle or other. I basically had to spawn-camp. While waiting for an enemy to spawn, I’d see other players fighting enemies nearby. In order to experience that “hunter” life-style, I’d fire some arrows at the enemy they were fighting to give them some help. Is giving this sort of help a good thing or a bad thing? I’m pretty sure the game system will give the kill to them and not me. But I don’t know if I get XP for the kill or not, and if so would the other players think I’m stealing from them?