New Enemy AI

That's fine if you're fighting against a mob of one. I brought two slow-down skills while playing my P/Me today, but that did little to stop the crazy running-around of the three other monsters in that mob. And the problem isn't just that they run around - they seem to target only the casters in the group and attack en masse. All I seemed to do today was kite. Not much fun in that.

its a bug period.. they run away from you till they hit a wall or object then run back to the group.

i've chased a corsair for almost a minute till he hit a ridge then he started to U-turn back to the mob he came from..... oh yea i had sprint and knockdowns but i just wanted to see how retarded it could get.. lol

The whole situation is very frustrating - I chased a boss at Thirsty River for a couple of minutes - seen i was getting nowhere fast - so I took the shard and ran with it, thinking I would just skip him. The boss chased me and the team all the way back to the ghost and beyond! I totally give up on Guild Wars till they do something different with the AI.

Just in case ANET does read these annoying threads that constantly pop up, I just want to say that I LOVE THE NEW A.I.

It's made PVE a lot more fun than the previous two chapters were. No longer am I just clicking buttons mindlessly. Now I can actually get out of the stupor of playing PVE and actually enjoy it because I'm using strategy.

Is the A.I. perfect? No. But there seems to be too many people who refuse to adapt here. Please don't dumb the A.I. down again.

Sid you must be a runner to enjoy kiting so much!

Since you gave a subjective opinion I'll give mine.....
The intent of improving the AI is correct but the implementation is horrible today.

Agro circles are useless - henchies have cancel skill problems - running after stuff across the whole map or something running after you for the whole map.
Minion problems may be fixed now but for a while they were useless.

If this is what was intended for the AI then fine - Anet did a great job in implementing what was intended - um... it's just not fun for me anymore (and judging by the threads here and on GWO - I'm not alone).

If not then Anet screwed up and it's still not right.
Ah well....NWN2/Oblivion/Gothic3 here I come.

The kiting is quite "realistic" behavior, actually.

A human being does it... if you are alone and being chased by a mob of high level opponents, you run! So, the logic is perfectly valid, and very smart for hero AI that needs to act as human-like as possible.

However, for random mobs in the PvE world, such behavior is simply frustrating to play against. Even a human knows when to give up when they are outnumbered. And, in certain circumstances, it makes encounters impossible because the very design of the encounter assumes that you should strategically nix the monks/mesmers/elementalists first as part of the strategy of "solving" the encounter.

Im sure the mobs of enemies love it when you guys kite x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x the AI is ok... its better then slaughtering your way through things and beating the game in 2 hours x.X

Look, the point of PvE shouldn't be to play with aggro bubbles and exploit the already decadent AI system; it should be a strategic and cooperative venture fully utilizing the skills you're given.

If the AI kites, then bring an ice ele or a crip shot. There are PLENTY of snares out there, more than you would ever need to stop kiting cold, at least in PVE. Hell, even dropping a Ward V Foes behind the enemy mob will pretty much solve that problem.

THINK.

ADAPT.

What are you saying, that 10,000 years of evolution has given you a brain less reactive than a few thousand lines of computer code?

I think the big problem here is going back to the old Tyria/Cantha missions and quests, where it's your 8 chars overlooking a valley with 30+ lvl20+ mobs. The design of the mission/map/etc was built on the idea that the AI was weak, and thus overcompensated with overpowering force.

While I agree that the AI is more realistic, I think the devs need to review how this impacts the previously designed areas. Consider "Althea's Ashes" in Proph, or "Captured Son" in Factions: There's no way that chars of the intended level, in the local group size could take out the massive concentration of mobs without careful pulling and kiting. Now all it takes is one NPC to barely start chasing one of these runners, and your party's wiped.

Mithie, your asuming the complaints are due to making battles harder or taking longer... The current version of Ai does neither. The game is now extremely easy and I somehow gained the ability to see into the future with this build. How? If I have a monk, I can forsee the mob AI will go straight for him/her.
Adapting to a broken AI is exactly what Anet wants you and everyone to do, that way they don't have to fix it. Problem this time with the Adapt and "grow" concept, is that the current version is not fun, challenging, entertaining or enjoyable. I'm sure it's great for people who need their hands held through missions and quests (via locked gates); but for the rest of us, it becomes a pure and simple bore.

What many of us here are looking for is what Gaile said we would have:

First bolded: This is utter bull. The melee mobs used to back off when near death in the 25th to 31st build, I've yet to see one back off now. Perhaps because they are to busy chasing the monks?
Second bolded: No complaints till the 31st when it was changed. Now it's insta-monk aggro and every fight is the exact same.

The "bugged" build needed some work on how it chose targets, more randomness perhaps, but now... each and every single fight is the exact same thing over and over again.

So the end question is this: Is the current build worth adapting too, or should Anet get with the program and fix this slop to make the players happy?

I agree there are some aspects of the AI that are improved, but when you're in an area with 4 or 5 mobs closely placed together, and you're trying to pull a mob, and one member begins kiting one of your henchmen into another mob, whether you cripple them or not, it's basically an aggro fest.
Yes, you can control your heros to stay, however, in recent missions that I've done, I've commanded all heros/henchies to STAY, and yet when I target an enemy, at least ONE of them always runs forth to attack when I don't want them to. This was intended? Please.
I'll take Dunkoro, Tahlkora and Koss, and all of them will react perfectly fine, and yet, in a mission where I'm required to take Master of Whispers, he randomly runs off to aggro close patrolling mobs. And by run off, I literally mean, RUN OFF. Whether I control him or not, whether the mob is in his/mine LoS or NOT. This is ridiculous.
Not to mention when you're trying to focus on one enemy, you can't, because they chase your monks, thus causing your monks to stop healing, while you get pummled by all the other mob members.
You can't kill the enemy chasing your Monk because he just keeps running and running and running and running. Then you decide to target another monster, and this one too, targets a weaker party-member (which is intended, yes, because all weaker party-members are targeted first unless you attack first IE. Tank). However, I think this is extremely frustrating, whether the enemy is crippled or not, they continue to move around, constantly causing YOU to move around, thus breaking your concretrated area and possibly, ever so slowly, inching towards other mobs.
It's annoying, and I don't ever remember mobs reacting this way.
Not only to the enemies kite the shit out of you, your party members kite the shit out of them. How am I supposed to rely on monks to keep me alive if they're busy running around trying to avoid ONE warrior or dervish?

Not to mention that every time I CALL this target, so that all party members attack it (heros/henchies), for some reason unbeknownst to me, my party members decide to target other enemies instead, even when I order them to lock. Yet, I can only lock on with 3 heros, thus allowing the remaining henchmen to target whoever they want.
Nothing is organized anymore because everything just runs around trying to avoid death, it's stupid. Whether some people have no problem with it or not, it's a general neusance. That's all I'm saying, is that the new AI is a neusance. Yes, there are ways to work around it, but in a mission where you're attempting to rbeak 6 minutes to gain Masters, and you spend 25 minutes because every mob you try to eliminate wastes more time running around fleeing and avoiding attacks than actually fighting, it gets old real fast.

What is with you people and snares. Bringing a snare would reduce my damage output so no can do sorry. But enemies don't run from me either, and if they do, they don't come back so I don't chase them I just kill whatever is attacking and not running, and since I was smart enough not to bring a snare I can outdamage any heals unless it's a boss heal. But boss monks don't run away for me in NF, not yet at least. Also henchies don't have snares, I'm not putting a slowdown on my hero monks, and have you seen how Heroes use skills? I'd be a waste of energy to put something like Pin Down on my ranger. Because they are to busy using Broad Head on warriors.

How about Anet fix, because adaptation is..overrated. For you guys that is, I don't have a problem with enemy AI.

I've found an awsoem solution to this, I've stopped playing PvE till the AI changes. My cantha rit got to suspear sanctuary and i left him.
I can still farm UW, and a few otehr places, its jsut longer, more boring, and really doesn't accomplish much but make the game less enjoyable.

so i go play PvP where belive it or not, monks dont run in straight lines across the map.

Untill the PvE stops being an anti farming, no endgame, carebear fest, I'm not going to play it.

I will say that guild wars has THE best PvP system of any MMORPG that I've played. love that part of the game to death.

That's probably because GW isn't a MMORPG. I also agree, I do like PvPing from time to time and it is fun. Although the AI both hero and enemy is proving a 50/50 Fun/Annoyance factor for me, I'm still a PvE kinda person.

Its a swords and magic type of game. it plays on the internet, and it doesn't really have a reflex based system like blocking,hitting puncing playstation xbox type thing. So i think of it as a MMORPG.

also I can PvP 100% of the time because i play about 10 horus a week. thats about 3-4 GvG games 10-20 HvH games, and RA in my spare time. Luckily I'm with XoO so i can pickup GvG alot of the time.

Haven't noticed this problem. Sure they run, but not that far. And even then thats fine. There's actually a ton of stuff you can't do to people unless they're moving. Otherwise, bring sprint, rush whatever if you can't be bothered to bring a snare.

And for those who say they don't have one... Even a typical pve fire ele has snares. Its called water, you don't even need to drop more than like 3 points in water to snare someone for like 8 secs. If you and your team can't drop a caster in 8 secs thats not the AI's problem. For others, its called a secondary. Just change to something with an easy snare, usually doesn't even take many points either, after all, you just want the slow affect, you've got other stuff to do the damage right?

Anyway, makes things more realistic. After all, you're complaining about AI right? So lets ask the AI whats more intelligent. Monster stands there like a fool and tries to tank with caster AL? Or monster runs off after cripshoting and poisoning the chaser? Which option has monster alive and chaser dead?
I know if I was the monster I'd throw up escape and stay just out of reach while you hobble after me. Probably throw in some /dance to make sure you keep chasing me. I mean, if any of you decide to play pvp and aren't willing to set aside one slot in case of runners, I feel sorry for you teammates.

Which is the other point you bring up. Monsters FORCE you to chase them into 3 or 4 mobs of other monsters? You do know that you can stop at anytime right? And they come back once they realise you're not after them anymore and are instead killing all their buddies they ran out on. I mean, you know the hundreds of topics about whammo's ruriking everything in sight? That whammo -> You. Chase and kill if possible. If being lead into a deathtrap, back up and go kill something else. And sure, some areas in tyria and massed, but even then a full party should be able to take like 3 mobs and come out on top. And if you have Nightfall, a hench way with 2 MM's? And AI reflex interrupts. You don't even need the new hench controls. You just steam roll everthing in your way anyway. If you're solo, even easier to control what you aggro, since you only have to watch your own radar.

Sorry if I'm ranting, just sick and tired of people complaining about this.

Sorry, I don't like the GW PvP at all... after tonights pointless crap update; I think I'm about done till the AI is fixed. This is freakin stupid. It's too easy and no fun at all; AI is just too stupid and dumb to even be remotely entertaining.

Two things:

1) if your tired of people complaining about it, that means there are a lot of people complaining about it, therefore there is a problem. Which means, the problem you are really having, is your own problem... that of reading the people asking for a fixed AI.
2) adapting to broken AI is not an option; it's like telling Anet "your crap AI is ok, we are all fanboys and love you and worship you"... so, umm No. Not adapting to crap funless AI. If it were at least challenging and each fight was interesting, then I would be all for adapting... as is, every single fight is the same. Don't agree? Then why is a single skill type needed and suggested... that of a "snare"... get with the program and wake up. Anet screwed up the AI, hold them responsible for it and demand a fix.

You think it is realistic that trained combatants with 'on the ground' combat experience run away everytime their line of soilders is attacked by single opponents?

Even single warriors are trained not to give ground until they must give ground.

And this isn't an idea of modern armies, nor even just trained armies. Sure, trained professional armies hold the line better than hordes - this why Caesar beat the Gauls despite being heavily outnumbered in enemy territory - but only a 'green' flees in panic (and by 'green' I mean a soldier who hasn't yet been in actual combat) at the first sign of resistance.

Mobs should not let any of their members flee until as a group they are below some percentage of their original health / numbers - and this percentage should be level dependent (low level mobs might flee after only losing perhaps 40%, but a level 20 mob shouldn't flee at all - but fight to bitter end).

Exactly.
And to put this in more perspective, the enemies you fight in this game are (for the most part) demons/monsters whatever bent on taking over the world.

Do you think a mass army (for example) of monsters, with the understanding that they are fighting to conquer the world for some great God's cause, are going to flee from a group of 4-8 adventurers? No, if anything I would think they would stand their ground to put up the fight. That would be more logical to me. Maybe not necessarily with all the monsters, such as skales and what not and all the simple creatures, but later in the game, like Margonites, who fight for a cause. I don't think they should run. Even VARESH runs. I fought Varesh and for a good 5 minutes she would attack me, attack another party member, attack another party member, and then run around for a couple minutes trying to run around. That doesn't sound like a person trying to conquer the world.

I appologize if I'm overreacting, but I'm ranting, and I keep pointing out instances of this 'fleeing' AI neusance because, to me, as annoying (and albeit, possible to deal with) it is also illogical. In some instances.
I dunno.
I would much rather stand ground with a mob of 8 enemies and spend a few minutes trying to kill it with some measure of difficulty, than run back and forth like clowns trying to find which one is going to stay still for a few seconds so I can cripple/kill it.

Three things, first, you can't conquer the world if you're dead. Don't believe it? From Caesar to Alexander the Great to Napolean, each had his tactical retreats.

Second. Is it fleeing? Or luring an unsuspecting and unprepared foe into a deathtrap with backup. Or just keeping out of the way while they degen to death.

Third, this doesn't happen all the time. Is it the new patch? I don't know. But I spent ages yesterday and NO caster fled half way across the map. At most the neared the edge of my aggro bubble. Or maybe because I didn't blindly chase them.