The New AI: The Unpragmatic Rationale

I dunno what the complaints about.. I'm still having a great time. Go GW.!

I don't think everybody logs in each day and thinks to themselves, "How am I going to farm today?" or "What kind of drops will I get today?" or "How many cash runs should I do today?". I know I don't, and I don't see the AI in it's current state as being problematic to deal with really.

I'm working on taking a 4th character through the game, the first two characters were the new professions. From the Dervish and Paragon I took through I had little money because I was spending it on their skills and caps for elites, armor, etc. Now taking my canthan warrior and tyrian necro through (necro is in the realm of torment currently), I have saved up over 50k. So, from what I figure, I'll probably have close to 4 times that much saved up when I take my other 4 characters through. The money I make from runes, isignias, weapons, and dyes along the way without doing any farming "runs" is quite enough for me. I don't need a mil in the storage and a bunch of rare skinned weapons, because looking cool isn't important to me. Nor do I need 15k armors, but once I get my necro through the game, I could probably afford a set.

It pretty much works out for me this way money-wise, and I think it also does for the casual gamer, but I can't really speak for them. My point is that farming really isn't everything in this game, and it's not the only way to make money if you need it. Farming is still very possible in some areas, but I haven't even thought about it after all the gold I saved up just taking a couple of characters through the game that didn't need new armor and not many new skills. I suppose I could go back and get them some armor, but I would still have quite a bit of cash saved up from just going through the quests and missions in the game. And yes, 50k is quite a lot of gold for me since I'm usually broke or close to it.

Someone tell me when they find a game just like GW, but where the big scary monsters don't run away like little cry baby girls.

Hee, hee...that's quite simple. Guild Wars before the update. If it was always like it is now, people wouldn't have this to complain about. Well, at least not as a "nerf".

Here is a graphical representation of how I played GW before the update and after the update:



While I still find aspects of GW fun and ejoyable, I feel that the amount of different types of fun I get out of playing GW has dropped substantially because of the AI changes.

I think the Idea of the AI change is great, its implementation leaves alot to be desired, just like Communism, good idea, but not practical to the human spirit of competition.

Disclaimer: This is how I play the game, the way it was designed to be played (intentional or not by Anet). I do not expect anyone else to play GW this way or see things this way.

You make a lot of assumptions. First, you assume that the Guild Wars player is buying over a two year period. I would venture that there are many out there that have been playing for a year or less. I personally have been playing for slightly more than a year but nowhere near two years. You also only account for the extremely casual player who doesn't have a need for extra character slots as well as future storage upgrades which Anet will no doubt try to squeeze more money out of us for. Lets take a look at my figures:
1 Prophecies normal - $50
1 Prophecies CE - $70 (due to lack of character slots at the time and need for more storage)
1 Factions CE - $70
1 Nightfall CE - $70
6 extra character slots - $60

Time spent playing - ~15 months
Total Cost - $320
320 * 12/15 = $256/year

I'll make an assumption of my own that the average game will get boring after about 2 years of play. I feel like this is a very generous assumption as I know many who have quit playing in much less time. Newer and better games will likely come out and replace both WoW and Guild Wars. It would be naive to assume that you are getting five years of entertainment out of Guild Wars when most of us won't be playing it come next near at this time.

So lets say that I buy no more than one or two more expansion packs to Guild Wars. I'll even give Anet the benefit of the doubt and say that they aren't planning on charging for more in game features (*cough*, storage). In the two years that I play Guild Wars I will have spent somewhere between $390 and $460 playing.

Here are the figures for WoW:
Original Game - $40 (I paid this much for it at the same time I bought GW)
Burning Crusade - $40
23 months (24th month was free with the game) * 13 = $299
Total Cost for WoW in two years = $379


I guess the cost breakdown really depends on how you look at things. For someone who only played for a year, WoW, would be an even better deal. The original game has more PVE content than Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall combined. If you don't believe me then ask a WoW player how many lvl 60's they have with tier 3 gear. In GW I have 10 lvl 20's. 8 of those have been through 2 campaigns and have 15K armor. 2 of those have been through 3 campaigns and have FoW armor. If you ask me in a month or two, I will probably have 9 characters who have been through all three campaigns. So we haven't even considered the amount of value for your money.

Here is a graphical representation of my experience with guildwars community.

Indeed, I did make a number of assumptions and didn't really want to hijack the thread to explain what they all were.

A few things to clarify:
- Unless you stop playing NightFall now, your cost per year will decrease while your WoW cost remains the same. A nice little side effect for statistics of only including up until now instead of to next expansion pack release or whenever you decide to stop. If you don't plan on stopping now, your WoW cost will remain a nice constant while GW's cost decays, until next release of course.

- The calcs with the CE were a worst case, I don't expect a casual gamer needs the Collector's Edition and the additional cash can be spent on slots etc. if they need them (2 slots per CE -> SE downgrade = 6 extra slots). Since the CE doesn't actually effect gameplay, I see its purchase as a choice for the other contents, not the game value. That being said, I also expect non-casual gamers to be a bit more carefree with their money. :devil:

There's more but since 3 posts in the last 5 actually take this thread back to its roots, I'll try to let it return to its intended purpose.

Actually, your logic is flawed. The cost per year doesn't decrease at all, because, while you DO have the playability, you're still spending money on new chapters and extra slots and the like. With the growing amount of chapters and characters, no storage additions, and people going crazy over AI (compare the game's population to what it used to be. I don't think it rivals it at all.), I really don't think we're going to be "making" any money off of decreasing "rates" of Arenanet needs to charge the people still playing extra to keep on top of their output while developing the games. Not factoring in server loads, which, while distributed, are still losing them more money because they're hosting 3 games, some people don't even have all 3, and they're providing service for everybody who has had this for 2 years now, and still plays.

Whine whine whine... waaah wwaah wwwwaaaaaah!

If it truly affects you so much, next time round practice a bit of... you know... self restraint and NOT buy the damned game. While you are at it send a nice well worded letter by POST to their CEO explaining your rationale. If enough of you do it, perhaps something might change.

A 200 post thread on a forum representing 0.1% of the community? Please... The sales that were attributed to you are absolutely expendable to Anet regardless of the countless CEs you preordered.

His logic isn't flawed. Yearly cost of the GW versus yearly cost of the WoW. GW is lower.

I think most people just look at the literall cost instead of the most bang for your buck, like I did when I was deciding which one to play. I am happy I picked Gw, because I didn't lose my soul and I actually have a life now, instead of my nonstop WoW gaming friends.

PieMeister: Zomg I wan teh elite missionzes!!
ANets: No worries, I gib yuo teh elitez missions!
*ANets adds elite mission weekend*
PieMeister: Zomg teh elitor mischionz is teh HARD! mek ez pls!
ANets: O.O

PrinceRurik: Zomg teh henchies are teh stoopid!
ANets: lawl, okies we uppergreedes teh henchies!
PrinceRurik: zomgzomg now noone play wif me becuz henchies are teh rox ='(((((
ANets: ?.?

SumDuud: zomg teh AI is teh stoopid
ANetz: No fear SumDuud! We shall teh improve teh AIz!
*Anetz adds teh upgrades"
SumDuud: zomg teh AI is teh hard! GW is teh sux!!! /quit
ANetz: X.X

Be careful what you wish for -_-
My apologies... I really couldn't resist

Was that meant for the German forum? I coulnd't even bother with trying to read it.

I liked it, it was funny. You know what isn't funny? Why is this thread still open?

^ I liked it quite a bit myself and also don't understand why this thread wasn't locked 4 pages ago.

Indeed it does. Currently, the last calculation presented was:
320 * 12/15 = $256/year

If he plays NightFall until the next chapter (Exactly why I stated "until the next release" a number of times.) which should be in 4 months on the current schedule:
320 * 12/19 = $202/year

That all said, if you all dislike the game that much, I don't see why future chapters are figuring in cost calculations.

That might have been funny if elite mission access had actually been fixed, the henchies weren't still terminally stupid and perfectly happy to stand in lava/poison/the nearest AOE, and the overall AI had actually been improved rather than degraded to somewhere just below Keystone Cops level.

Nah... On second thought it wouldn't have been funny even in that fantasy world.

Actually, it was pretty funny if you aren't one of the ones complaining about the adjustments.

Though your keystone cops comment was pretty good too LOL

Elite missions? Last I checked there is still no alternate access to the 2 elite missions in Factions.

You know what's really sad? All this while I never had the chance to play the 2 elite faction missions.

I hate this game and how the pve and pvp arent separate entities and how things arent like they used to be. Why do they care so much about farming and why do they nerf the skills and AI for farming? Why not let it be a free game with freedom to do what you like ingame to better enjoy it instead of constant grind for everything you want/need? Farming as it used to be wasnt grind to me, it was enjoyable. If people botting are the cause for the farm ruin (and if they sell gwgold) then more emphasis needs to be put into stopping just that. Not ruin it for people who farm for themselves in order to better thier self & that help guildies by loaning gold and items, teaching to farm, etc... Of course there are other ways to make a little gold. But buying and selling, chest running, group farming, crafting materials just isnt fun. Its a waste of time. I loved the challenge of going into the cave and aggroing 20 trolls with my rit and watching them all go down or taking on the grawl, avicaria, warden. I took pride in being able to accomplish killing them solo.

What I did with the materials and weapons:

-Saved the crafting materials after salvaging salvageable stuff.
-Used some to craft other things to sell back for a little extra gold.
-Sold all the drops to the merchant.
-Saved vigor runes for future heros.
-Gave dyes and stuff to friends and saved some for my new armors.
-Hoarded all the gold for the nightfall release.
-Spent it all on my dervish.

I dont really need anymore gold now. I have like 40k but what if something comes up I want? Go wurm farming for 20 hours? Though I do want all the new skills, I am only 39.91% unlocked across all classes. If I calculated correctly I need another 679 skills to be fully unlocked. Ill never use them but it would be nice to have accomplished it. Yet if you pvp you can buy the unlock pack... Kinda useless to someone who pves.

So really, in this game if you want it all you need to be able to solo farm effectively. If not people will end up buying gold from people who risk botting or who can farm/make alot of gold quickly by other means. You just cant waste time away playing thru the game over and over to make money to support heros, skills, greens, armor, materials, runes, golds, trips to uw/fow, keys for chests, minipets, etc... Its just not possible or even logical. Things should be more available, drops need to be increased, golds more frequent, chests with better ratios, more gold dropped per enemy. If this ANTI Farming trend keeps up, soon it will be impossible. Otherwise we need farming, including skills and AI as it was.

-START OF RANT- (contains unpleasant language)

after all this time, i no longer care for guild wars.

irregardless of having costed me USD170, the issue is not financial but FUN and there is no fun logging into a game with hardly anyone in your guild, hardly anyone in your alliance, and hardly anyone in town who wants to play ... play anything anywhichway.

those still ingame have their heroes ... they do missions, quests and even farm all by themselves. christ the game is boring. if i wanted things this boring i'd go meditate in a convent.

even farming is boring, its so easy, nothing has any value anymore. and besides, nothing of value really drops anymore. clear out a map of level 22s-28s and all you get are NON MAX items??? from ai that runs and runs and runs ... jesus its not just the monks that run, it's nearly everything, even the warriors.

i pve because i want things to die, not to grief me. i play for FUN not to be griefed or annoyed. real life is already full of griefing and annoyances, you log-into a game to escape it, not to face it again.

ah what the hell, i really loved guild wars but since the 27 oct 06 update, this game and ANET (and every single bastard dev in it) can go ROT. never again will i shell out anything for these numbnuts just to let them SHAFT ME with their updates every six months.

-END OF RANT-

I'm pretty sure that posting complaints about the game isn't the same as discussing the game.

A post properly discussing the game and actually on topic would go something like this: The new ai does cause problems if you're trying to run through an area to try chest or green farm, but if you're play the game as Anet meant it to be played, you shouldn't have a problem.

With carefull pulling you should be able to pull a mob of enemies away from any near by mobs and wipe out that group with no problem. If one part of the mob starts running to another mob, quickly change and call a different target.

I'll admit the way the enemy responds to AoE is annoying, but so far it hasn't made defeating a mob more difficult imo.

I'm pretty sure Anet never intended any part of the game to be solo'd. It was intended to be played by a group of rp or with henchies or heroes. That's why I think they made the ai change.

If you believe that:

1: taking a party through an area, killing mobs between point A and B, and
2: when some, but not all of your party dies, you should be allowed to run out of aggro range, and return after aggro is lost to res your dead teammates

are both acceptable play, then the AI does cause a problem. Because mobs can and do re-aggro from at least radar-range. Doesn't matter how long you wait, return to the spot of death (which is always way away from the 'spawn' point of the enemy group if you pull properly), they will zerg you when you wander inside radar range.

Not every time, oddly enough, but often - which is why i consider the current AI to be bugged, and not functioning as intended. This happens; i don't care who claims that it doesn't, i have screenshots of an occurance of this in Nightfallen Gardens, although i suspect a video would demonstrate better.

Although honestly, it would be kinda nice if Anet shared exactly how the game is supposed to be played, so i can determine if it's worth continuing, whether the AI is currently bugged or not, and well, because that kind of thing is either important or not. If Anet believe that ressing dead teammates before the enemy group is dead is unintended play, then they should probably say so. If they don't believe that, then the AI is not functioning as intended, and should be worked on.

If it's bugged, i'm more than happy to give them examples of how/where it happens, and offers suggestions towards a fix. They've suggested this way of working with their community before, why not this time?

If it's working as intended, then it's an insane move on their part, but i'll accept it and move somewhere else. All i want is some sensible* clarification on this.

*Sensible != OMG U WHINE SO MUCH BECUZ U CANT FRAM BUT FRAMMING IS EAZY U SUXXOR STOP FRAMING GO PLAY WOW NOOB TEH AI IS UBAR**

**Not that you've said anything like this that i can see; i quote you purely because you seem capable of understanding my position, and that itself is somewhat rare in these kinds of discussion.


I don't farm. Well, not seriously anyway, not for profit; i don't have the patience or time. I don't chest run. I was going through the NF campaign with Guildies/Heroes/Henchies. I did occasionally solo for fun, Ranger+Pet, just to see how much i could take on at once, in between missions/quests/helping Guildies out etc. I don't mind losing this too much, although i think it's a silly response if the goal is to combat some items ingame becoming too expensive for most players.

The AI update should be pretty transparent for me, since i don't do any of these things which the AI update was supposedly intended to fix (I haven't tried soloing yet). It's not. I'm sick of playing tag, restarting missions because ressing is often impossible, and watching insane Benny Hill circular marathons when i'm using a purely Hero/Hench team.

I WANT to help them fix it if it's broken. If they don't want people being able to res teammates, i WILL accept it and move on. It'd be nice if they clarified it for me.

@ Shirosae -You're right. Sorry I left out the perma aggro problem that makes rezzing often impossible. I didn't say the ai didn't need some tweaking. I was mostly responding to the complaints from people that are trying to solo play.

I should have expanded my comment about the way enemys respond to AoE to also include the way they run in circles when they start getting low on health. That is also very annoying, but doesn't stop a group from killing that mob.

EDIT: My main purpose for that post was to get the thread back on topic. The last several posters were basically flaming each other and since I think this is a good thread, I didnt want it shut down by the mods.

@ Trvth Jvstice

I think, personally, that Anet are going about this farming thing the wrong way. If a number of items are growing too expensive, then it's far easier to increase the drop rate on those items. The price is determined by supply/demand, which is something Anet have directly in their control. The side they're currently messing with - adjusting playstyle, is inherrantly determined by the variance in time and effort their playerbase spend willing to get those items. There is no way that you can just put a cap on player effort so that the lowest demoninator becomes the standard. Not without seriously breaking their game, at least.

Okay, manually adjusting the market would require a serious level of research and continual maintenance, but aren't they already doing that by watching the skillsets used in PvP? If it's worth rewriting the AI rules to deal with the inequality of the market, it might be worth letting a few people keep an eye on it using the simplest method possible - just making the expensive stuff drop more.

Despite this, though, i think Anet should address the concerns. Make a post, somewhere, stating "We know that many of you are having issues with the AI. Please make records of the issues you have in format A, B, or C, and send them here, we'll do our best to work out if/where things are going wrong, and tell you about this as we work it out".

Until that happens, i think the complaints to the AI update are only going to leave when that portion of the GW playerbase leaves GW itself. I blieve that group is significantly larger than the 'farming/chestrunning' elite, mainly because i haven't seen anyone in my guild online in a fortnight, and none of them were farmers or chestrunners either.

I do agree with you though - complaints are not discussion. I think what needs to happen now is that people who are experience problems start putting together recordings of the issues, screenshots/videos and suchlike. At the very least, that would prove the people claiming that there are no issues wrong. At the very best, it might embarrass a response from someone at Anet if a whole bunch of AI horror videos started popping up on youtube.

That itself would require the people who are having problems to avoid the flamewars which invariably result when someone replies to a OMG U WHINERS GO PLAY WOW THER IS NO AI BUG post, and stick to gathering evidence.

I don't know how many times in UW/FoW/ToPK I saw this type of odd infini-aggro behavior well before the update. That being said, while it wasn't completely limited to these areas, it did seem to occur more often there. Then Factions came around and it got a bit worse. It seems this AI has now been applied to most mobs, but the thing to keep in mind is it has been always been there just not in the same prevalence.

With all that in mind, when I first saw it, I thought it was a very interesting approach and in fact an increased challenge. It made sense to me, and still does, that after you aggravate something, it stays aware that something might be coming for it even though you ran away for a while. Let's call it a heightened state of awareness (jumpy/trigger-happy). The best implementation of this would probably be an increased aggro bubble, though I'm not sure if this is ANets approach or by what factor it increases. That being said, it seems the factor (if that's how they do it) may be a bit large and, at least before the update, was inconsistently applied. Unfortunately, if your group lies dead inside this heightened-awareness aggro bubble, you are out of luck.

So, what could be used to reduce this effect. The one that seems most obvious is a time decay for the aggro bubble back to the typical. This seems the best implementation to make everyone happy but not necessarily very realistic. After life threatening situations, things don't necessarily become less jumpy once the adrenaline stops flowing, especially if it was a real attempt vs. a scare (a gunshot vs. a car backfiring, for example). Anyway, it definitely could use a bit of tweaking if they want it to be a group effort but it seems they may be going for more realistic behavior...if a bit inconsistently.

I know that bosses frequently did the infini-aggro thing with me. I believe i read somewhere that bosses would lock targets onto a player, and then hold it for five minutes or so. I used to use this behaviour to pull bosses away from groups actually.

There seem to be a couple of ranges in play. I was messing with it the other day, and i noticed that the mobs would aggro from radar range. In order to make them lose interest, i'd have to run beyond radar range. I tried it several times; the boundaries seemed fixed to the map itself, rather than being bound to the mobs themselves.

Playing with it again, trying to capture it on video, i noticed that they tend to do it if i'm in aggro range when the last party member dies, but not if i run out of aggro range before. I need to test that more, though.


Just to demonstrate the behaviour, and maybe to start a bandwagon of people posting records/proof of the bugs in action, i made a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA6tOY6KZgo

The other one (which is fullscreen) is too hard to see. I may eventually upload it to filefront or somewhere just to get it out.

Actually this has already been implemented.

In a parallel thread on GW Online, in her post of November, 10th, Gaile Gray asked the players to present the evidence of the erratic AI behaviour:
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...&postcount=247

This is page 25 of the discussion. (Later Ms Gray re-appeared on the page 26 to inform that the developers watch this thread).

Now the discussion is 34 pages long; since then, more evidence have been presented, with the detailed descriptions of classes, areas involved, AI behaviour, and such, from various players, under various circumstances.

Sadly, that was the last time we ever heard from her on the AI issue.

From my side, I can confirm that the last AI fix of November, 30, did not resolve the perma-lock and perma-aggro problem.

Sweet, thanks for bringing that to my attention, although bleh @ forced registration. I suppose this is as good a time as any to go make one though.

Thanks again.

Nor did it fix the seemingly wierd insta-monk aggro that happens often... which often causes the AI (allied and mob) to perma-lock chase; as seen here. - Course the video there is probably the funniest I've seen; it does show some of what many of us see while simply playing through the game. Only instead of the tree being what's run around, it's me (or the players with like problems)... happened again tonight...

So, back to waiting for a fix for me.

From what I saw in that youtube video, that kind of thing has been going on before nightfall and factions. Party wipes, one survivor runs back to rez dead teammates, and reinitiates aggro. They sort of create a zone around the area where they killed your teammates, and if you venture into that zone again, they're back on you.

It did occur prior to Nightfall, in both Prophecies and Factions. However, it was a rare occurence unlike now where it seems quite frequent. (At least for me, that is.)

... further proof that the current AI has made even long standing "bugs" more obvious and turn up more often. Meaning, AI is now worse than ever and rather than fix it; we are given an Elite mission where we can go in and watch the AI act like foolish little kids in an arena. Cute.

I have played gw off and on since the original campain. Got all pumped for Factions , and lost interest by the time i hit cavalon. Basicly lost sight of just what i was supposed to be doing. So when nightfall came out I came back at it again.
Sure a few things im not too happy with , getting chars from one campain to another sometimes .

I played a tyrian necro up as far as vabbia , seemes ok for the most part. I really like the new hero and henchie system myself.

But i have noticed some weird things the ai does.

Yesterday (dec 1) I was playing a new dervish char, was doing a quest (diamond in the rough) kill some harpies and check the nests. Well it turned sour , several of the heros went down and i ran. Lo and behold this super sized aggro zone stayed in effect, Needless to say after waiting some time i was unable to get anywhere near the heros to rez them and ended up having to zone.
I thought it was some fluke the first time i saw this a few days ago,was playing a warrior in factions starter isle , on the mothers quest from the harbor, (find her son where the horde of humans are,forget what its called).
Was really annoying trying to kill nagas there too, some would just run around in circles. Till you could slow them down with banes signet or something.

Had the hudge aggro zone problem on the nightfal mainland too but dont remember where.

Right now im playing the dervish on starter land, using 3 heros, dunkaro, koss, and the dervish one. The ai is starting to annoy me somewhat. You engage a group and everything splits or singlemindely attacks the monk.

I didnt notice it so much when i was using groups of 6 or more where I could use two monks, but in the 4 man group its getting annoying.
While it is not a new move I dont think to attack the monk. But i mean im beating on something and its totaly locked onto the monk.. and if its a group of 6 or 7 enemies , well your monk is probably going down. You kinda need him to heal in such small groups.
I know you need to protect him , but its preety hard with things runing all over and everything just about totaly focused on killing him.

Ehm.... generally I've not had huge problems with the AI or AoE changes (despite being a fire ele). Even the 'Benny Hill Syndrome' didn't bother me too much as I could stand in the middle and wand things while they ran round like headless chickens.

But... just now, I was kicking some Skree Harpy butt, and they start to run. Ok.. no probs, we'll just trail along like a conga line and keep up the pressure. We're two compasses away from a portal and what do they do?

Run right through it.

That's definitely a new one for me.. o.O

Oh, I forgot. Also Kournan Priests seem to have a death wish. They keep charging my parties before the rest of the pack get there. Makes it easier for me, mind. But a bit odd.

Yep, everytime I have been out killing off the Skree Harpies, a number of them run from us and right thru the portal. Thought it was a fluke, but I have been thru there several times and they do it every time.

Hah. Glad it's not just me. It happened again after I posted and we were about 4 compasses away that time. Knowing my luck one of them will have died just as they went through and dropped a lovely perfect weapon on the wrong side.

*Collapses with laughter at the thought of a perfect drop*

That harpy thing is not new to me.

Ive had it happen everytime in Vabbi. They have those 2 Paragon bosses, Screetcher and Scratcher or some such.

I noticed if you dont want to deal with harpies in there all you have to do is kill Screetcher and/or Scratcher and then the rest of the harpies will simply flee the map zone via that portal. It seems there willing to fight me up untill the boss is down then you might as well stop and watch a throng of red dots on your radar blitz for the portal.

Ive been around since the beggining and I love a challenge hence why I went for guld wars over other games for how its not so much how much time you spend in the game(level 20 cap being one of the points) but how well you plan out your character to maximise the runes, stats, and skills.

But this new AI attitude kinda blows and is irritating at times. The perma super aggro thing would be nice if fixed.