NPC "Class"

[John Adams]

Something I noticed when parsing NPCs a while back; they did not seem to have a "gameplayClass" value - that is, Warrior, Cleric, Ranger, Sorcerer, etc. All values were zeroes.

My question to the game experts: Did Vanguard really have no "classes" for their NPCs? Like, were they all neutered, and they all just attacked with whatever skills were assigned to them, regardless of class? Were there no DK guards, or Bloodmage Gnolls? and so on.

I need to know this to determine if the data is correct coming out of the bitstream. Pretty sure Xen and I determined it was valid, and there simply were no "classes" for NPCs... but wanted your expert opinions (and recolletions).

Thanks!

[Cyrcle]

As far as I know, they were only assigned a few abilities. I'm not 100% on that, but pretty sure.

Also, I am now somewhat curious what turning on a "class" would do.

[John Adams]

In EQ2Emulator, the NPCs class actually (helped) determined their abilities. Class, Level, Skill (proficiency) were matched against the list of Equipment, Skills and Spells configured to the NPC. I think the original intent was so level 1 snakes couldn't drop an Ice Comet on unsuspecting players

Since that's mostly server-side, I guess it's something we could consider down the road if needed. But I like the idea that NPCs only had "a few abilities". Makes our job easier

[Destante]

The only snippet I found was from a beta 5 article on IGN outlining what they were looking for in the test and one of the things was "Do creatures have abilities that make sense for their class and location? Are NPCs displaying decent or poor tactics? " For the life of me I can't remember one way or the other though.

[John Adams]

Thanks Destante. Another reason I am interested is because some Mobs in VG used to hit me with a knockback, while others did not. The Treants, for example, while the Moths did not. It's very likely Sigil/SOE merely configured abilities list (sets) for every NPC, rather than rely on their Race/Class. I'm hoping we can make it smarter, though that's secondary to making it work at all.

[Destante]

This has been bugging me all night now heh. I scoured some old patch notes from beta and came up with a few more instances.
Vanguard Build 01656 Patch Notes 1/8/2007
- Three Rivers: The adventuring classes of NPCs within Khegor?s End have been updated.
Vanguard Build 01677 Patch Notes 1/15/2007
- Fixed overland point values and NPC classes
Game Updates February 07,2007
- Fixed a problem that was applying incorrect armor types to NPCs. NPC armor should now work as expected, with warrior type NPCs mitigating the most damage, and caster type NPCs mitigating the least.
So it may have been an archtype system. I can't find any instance of a certain mob being tied to a specific class though.

[Cyrcle]

I still want to say they were not set up in classes, because if they were set up as a "class" wouldn't they have access to all the abilities of said class? If they would have access to all abilities of a class, then I definitely want to say with 95% certainty they were only assigned 3-6, maybe 8 tops abilities (minus boss mobs of course) that were somewhat similar. The reason I say this is because when you charm them on a bard or psi, you had access to abilities for that NPC which they seemed to use when fighting them normally.

[shargash]

NPCs definitely did not have access to all the abilities for their class. As a psi, I did my fair share of charming, and Cyrcle is correct that you normally had a pretty limited set of abilities to take over. On the other hand, it was pretty clear which mobs were casters, which were healers, which were melees (be it paladin, warrior, or dk). I don't remember ever seeing a mob that had, say, lay on hands, also having one of the DKs "harm touch" abilities.

So, I would say they definitely had a class, which affected the superset of abilities they had available to them, their HP, their mitigation, etc. On the other hand, they never had the full superset. Of course, mobs could also have unique abilities layered on top of their class abilities.

[Cyrcle]

[quote="shargash"]NPCs definitely did not have access to all the abilities for their class. As a psi, I did my fair share of charming, and Cyrcle is correct that you normally had a pretty limited set of abilities to take over. On the other hand, it was pretty clear which mobs were casters, which were healers, which were melees (be it paladin, warrior, or dk). I don't remember ever seeing a mob that had, say, lay on hands, also having one of the DKs "harm touch" abilities.

So, I would say they definitely had a class, which affected the superset of abilities they had available to them, their HP, their mitigation, etc. On the other hand, they never had the full superset. Of course, mobs could also have unique abilities layered on top of their class abilities.[/quote]
I wouldn't say they had to have a class assigned per say, but maybe just similar abilities assigned to them that did not contradict one another is another way it could have been done.

[John Adams]

Ahh, the charmed abilities... I forgot all about that. I am not sure if EQ2 had that for charmed/pets (Jab?) that when you took over, you had an actual bar of icons to mess with. I always thought pets were simply Attack, Stay, Go away.

If globally, all trash mobs had a static set of abilities, that will make our job hella easy. Thanks, continue if you have more thoughts.