Why change the AI so that the enemies run away?

Unless they've changed the code in the last few days.... groups of more than three melee enemies DO run from VwK and SS. The worst part of it is that it is always 3 melee enemies that stay on the target and the rest run away... I have never seen any change in the amount, which makes the AoE script look even more poorly written.

Because we suggested this...

Sorry but... who sugested it???

First of all to whoever thinks that farmers drive up the prices are idiots, plain and simple. Think about the price of ectos or shards if no one farmed them, they would sell for 20k+ guaranteed. Farmers bring the price down, that is common sense (for intelligent people). The only time farmers can drive the price up is if there is a new item/chapter out, and even then they are not driving the prices up, they simply take offers and the highest bid wins.

The farming spots I use are still not nerfed and give a lot more gold than the places that did. The only people getting affected by these nerfs are botters, 55ers, and some others who only use cookie cutter builds. I still farm with my warrior in places other classes can't and always have, the reason for that is because I know those other places will get nerfed, you just have to plan ahead or come up with new builds, it's not that difficult.

The ai change is stupid no matter what way you look at it, for example, if there were to be 20 warriors on one team and 1 55 monk on the other team, real players would not only send in 3 at a time, it makes no sense. The warriors would all attack at once to try to kill that last remaining person because it is the only option they have, they are going to die either way so it does not matter. (Looking at it in a PvP situation since that seems to be what ANET is trying to go for)

Personally I love to solo because I hate pugs and henchies, I like the challenge, like most solo farmers do. They can keep adding "elite" missions but that is no fun for me since it takes too long most of the time and I just do not feel like dealing with pugs, that is a completely different challenge all together.

It's technically not the skills that the enemies run from. When they get to about 1/4 health, they run if there's more than 3 melee enemies on the 1 target. If you engage 1 enemy, that enemy will not run away. Once you've dwindled them down to 3 or less, they no longer run when low on health.

It was not poorly written, they did it that way on purpose.

Yes the crystalinne farmes have been lowering prices. To bad they can only really farm purples. dont believe check out Soroows furnace and the killroy quests. each chest has a chance for a purple crystalline. Now if your pissed at the prices for gold ones well you only have Anerf to blame for that. Since they removed them from everywhere but HA.

there are ppl farming crystallines (why do you think you can actually buy decent purples for like 100k+10ectoish???). and chest runs are still considered a form of farm aint they.. so there go your ele swords and scimitars and etc

ppl even use the term "hoh chest farming"...
everything that u use (apart from stuff from merchant) has been farmed in one way or another imo.

Loviatar, are you blind dude, items prices are about 1/3 of what they used to be. why do you think that is?
ectos for example are a bit higher than 5-6 months ago. why do you think THAT is?
coz of the ai change imo

buh, ecto farmer will spamm his shit all day,no way even 1 farmer will sell to npc to drive prices down lol,he would screw him self.So yeah, i want my monsters dumb! I want to farm the shit out of them if i want to, thats why i payed my money for it.All those who want smart AI can go play pvp.

I try to solo every quest, mission, etc., WITHOUT henchmen.

Personally, I love the current AI. Not only does it discourage certain AoE cookie-cutter farming builds in many areas, it also makes enemies much easier to kill. Why?

1. The AI is so intent on running, that you can often isolate one or more of the enemies to pick off as they are all running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

2. You can use AoE spells to immediately "get the heck outta Dodge" when you're getting swamped.

If you are having difficulty against the new AI, you simply need to learn how to play against the AI better, IMO.

The problem with running mobs is: While running neither they do any damage nor they cast any spell or hex. Running mobs are way easier to kill than not running mobs imho. That's why I hate the change. But I know they needed to change it cause of farming bots.

I think alot of us are starting to feel this way. Anet's changes have not solved any problems and have instead annoyed people to no end with the endless parade of gestapo tactics. I've got to say WoW is looking more and more appealing as everyone I've ever known leaves GW and I'm left to play by myself in empty districts.

I can totally see how Anet's changes to AI behavior in PVE directly impacted sigil prices, something that only drops in PVP. Please don't ever stop posting, your words are a source of joy for all of us.

Here's some things I don't particularly care for:

The monster AI seems to have not been distributed properly. For instance, trying to take out monk bosses.

The mursaat monk boss in Abbadon's will just stand there and let you hit her, she doesn't really move around all that much. Oh sure she'll move for the Meteor Shower, but not crazy running, moving just enough to not be in the AOE. She has an endless supply of energy as I'm sure most people will agree with, but that's a separate issue.

Now the monk boss in the Elona Reach mission is just freaking crazy. It runs all over the freaking place, it is constantly on the go. You wand that stupid snake and he's off to the freaking races, he's running around as if somebody let loose with Fire Storm. And no I didn't even have fire storm on my skill bar, nor did my heroes, and I didn't bring either crappy henchie Ele either. Anyway, you stop going after the monk boss and target something else and guess what, monk boss immediately stops running, heals the crap out of whomever you are trying to attack. So you turn back to him and he's back to the races.

HOW IS THIS FUN? HOW IS THIS ENTERTAINING?

What is the deal here? Is it just that Mursaat monk bosses are too cool, or are they that cocky thinking you can't kill them? Is it just a matter of them being two different species so they react differently?

Oh and another thing speaking of that Monk Mursaat boss in Abbadon's...

How many people have found it nearly impossible to beat the Monk Mursaat boss and the Elementalist Mursaat boss when they are standing next to each other? And if your team has no interrupts? You should just run past them and move on or give up and rebuild and try again.

OK, and now on to the fact that there are some bosses out there that seem to have an unlimited supply of energy. Now I ask all you good people, why the heck (insert stronger word here, you all know the one I mean) do we have so many energy burning skills? You will never drain enemies of all their energy. Oh they can drain the hell out of you, make it so you have zero energy and zero chance of getting any back. Are these just PvP only skills? Or only here to look pretty?

I realize I'm ranting and not making much sense. Then again, what makes sense these days? It's freaking 70 degrees in NYC today and tomorrow it's going to be 29 degrees and snow. God I sure hope the world isn't ending and I spent valuable time typing this stupid crap.

Well didn't count the purple crystallines, because purple isn't very popular compared to gold. What I mean is that the gold Crystallines (with chances on 15^50) can't be farmed. ^^

Colossal Scimitars can't actually be farmed, since only thing that drops them are Corsairs, and I don't think there's a good solo build for Corsairs yet? (The high level ones I mean).

And even if there was, the chance of a max damage req 9 Scimitar drop would be very very VERY small.

Same goes for Elemental Sword. They can be dropped from anything in the Desolation, but only a few people actually saw one drop. Sure, you can farm monsters in the Desolation over and over again, but it's almost impossible to get a perfect Ele Sword in that way.



Say I have an idea, next to hard and normal mode, they should also make 'circus mode'. We're actually in circus mode now, with enemies and heroes/henchies running all over the place, 1 profession being screwed over and hundreds of skills being useless.

Normal mode would be the AI before the Nightfall-release-update, cause it'd... be normal

And hard mode can be something hard. Like enemies focussing fire on 1 target and actually kill it, having enchant removals and stance removals so that tanking can't be done etc. A bit like Death On Arrival, but then a bit less hard, just easy enough so that cookie cutter isn't necessary.


Everyone would be happy!

It is true that farming material will bring down the price of material.
However, the side effect of massive farming is the rapid increase of gold for a group of players among the whole community. The result should be easily spotted by the intelligent light of you, am I right??

you mean pvp match in Chinese beta right??
A lot of them dont even know any skills outside their own classes? Give them time.
Its hard to imagine that any experience pvp melee will go head on with a 55monk knowing they cant bring them down by mindless bashing.(but I haven't been to RA for a month...so maybe the skill level took a dive again??)
the thing is, there are a lot of thing a warrior can do in pvp facing a 55 monk. one thing is to sit there and drink a cup of coffee and read a book, cause knowing 55 monk will not have the ability to out put any damage that is critical enough to kill you. In this case, A-net has not been cruel I mean, they can kill 55 simply by giving the AI the stop attacking command on 55 monk or any build alike And that is "similar to pvp". I am sure in the race of passion, human will not stand against machine
Not to mention a lot of pvp warrior use their 2nd profession for the purpose of pull enchantments and stop cast class
If pve is truly like or anywhere close to pvp, 55 wont even be praise (and yes as one who do pve, I admit 55mo is a mind breaking build)

A-Net want to bring a smarter AI to pve, simple and that, and yes, by smarter they will try to make it more "life like" as they can and I doubt any muti-cell animal will "eat themselves to dead", but I doubt it is anything to make pve to pvp. If it is, it will be a lot less brutal force and better skill set up.

I thought challenge is beating harder foes, and go threw harsh situation??
accomplishment and challenge arent the same right??

I am sure comeing up with the map and build to earn 10k in 5 min its challenge, but doing that again and again knowing there is not mcuh change in such action anymore...that is just the accomplishment of "weeeee all this money are mine" Not saying its a bad thing, but I dont think they can be mix up.
(BTW if you want crazy solo action, GOW2 is out....it was so cool I wasnt able to close my mouth for the first hour I played it...but that is if you like action game )
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now in a personal level, I like A-Net's take on making foes react in different situation(of course, they arent there yet). Even insect know stoping on a hot plat is a bad idea, and I hope I am fighting something beyond the brain of insect. However, I do belive the way of AOE work should also be improve. Take MS for example, it will bring far more tactical sense to the game play if MS target an area rather then a foe. SOJ will be a lot more useful in pve and pvp if it have shorter duration, but less energy and recharge, rather then something ppl only think about when they want to farm. And so on..... In other words, I believe there need to be a makeover on some of the skills.

The very reason why this was done was to it feel like you were playing and PvP style.I would say it is failing even I can't get use to it with some many red dots around me and it is a lot differerent than PvP mode.I would suggest reverting it back if you want to learn how to play PvP learn it there as in true PvP everyone has some sort of voice comm eg TS or Vent.There are those in PvE that don't have it the whole idea behind cooperative mission is just to be cooperative not to have it feel like PvP.

The Warrior is now utterly useless in PvE as they can't hold aggro as the only thing they can go after is the more softer targets.The Dervish on the other hand seems to be able to out class the Warrior in every aspect of PvE with throws them out of balance since they can go for harder targets and be able to do the droks run with no problems that the Warrior can no longer do or most of them.I won't bring the topic of farming in to this as this is normal game play we are talking about.Revert it back.

If you are PvP guild than teach you players how to play it enough said mixing the 2 just doesn't work and often creats heated debates.

Agree. I pick warrior npcs/heroes for "Charge!" only.

Actually, I am talking about farming. Did you even read the first post of the thread, the one I wrote? It is asking why does A-net discourage farmers from PvE by making AI changes to counter builds such as the solo 55 SoJ farmer, VwK solo farmer, and 55/SS combo in UW? I know that this thread has gotten a little off topic but come on, at least read what the thread is supposed to be about...

Simply put, in the overall gameplay, farmers are irrelevant. Who really cares if a change that makes PvE more challenging (to a degree, at least) hurts the solo farmer? Farmers tend to act as though they're a super-class of player when in fact they're a minor sub-class at best.

The more challenging they make it, the better for the vast majority.

Why would they care is what you should be asking? The anwer is they don't care about Farmers they are a nuisance to them?They want you to play the game as it was intended.

i stoped farming at least 4 months ago, and i have to say that that i hate this type of Ai specialy wen playing with heroes/henches, since they will start to follow the monster and aggro another group that will be nearby. Dont tell me to bring a cripple lol i always have one on me .

Imo, Mmo's shouldn't have a right or wrong way to play.

Still don't know what the problem is. I've made more money now farming than ever before, and I don't sell to other players, run UW/FOW or any of the elite missions.

Yet once a week there's another thread by someone whining because they can't farm. Like I said, I still don't know what the fuss is all aboot. Oh well, off to make another 20k.

KANE

I really don't understand either. I've made roughly 75k in maybe 3 hours of farming in the last two days. Farming using the ZOMG SO RUINED SoJ, even.

I aggree with Kane and explodemyheart. Yeah, I had to change tactics slightly with my nuke in PvE.....so what? I shifted my skills around voilia! Instant un-nerf nuker. Same for farming. Do as well now gold per run as before the change. I was irritated as hell at first that my spiteful necro that I farmed UW with my guy's 55 was "ruined"...then I got up and got the hell over it and tried somthing new. new builds new techniques and he and I are UWing away lol.

@KESKI - I was just making an example of why the ai is actually worse than before, if they want to improve it then they need to make the enemies do something useful, not stand there like they went afk waiting for their health to regen. Farmers DO bring the price down for many items in the game, I remember when perfect fellblades were selling for 700k+ same with chaos axes, if it was not for the farmers the price would still be really high because you still have ebayers and people who got really lucky drops that will pay for it. I do not farm, I solo many different areas and will sometimes spend weeks figuring out a solo build for a certain area, I don't only farm certain mobs, I try to solo everything in the zone and then post the build on my guilds forums if someone would like to farm. The ai change does not really affect me because I do not use cookie cutter builds, it is just annoying and makes the enemies dumber imo.

@AGE - Warriors are far from useless in PvE, tanks were ALWAYS useless in PvE, they wasted space, warriors can do great damage and to not take a warrior to deal damage just makes killing take longer. I have NEVER played a tank with my warrior in the 20 months I have been playing, the only tank skill you need is dolyak sig, fill the rest of the spots with a rez, heal sig, and attack skills, if your party cannot stay alive that is THEIR problem because THEY do not have the right build. I took a tank with me to FoW to try the book trick back when it was around and I found that it took almost an hour longer to clear. People are so used to playing other MMO's that they think tanks are needed but in this game they are useless plain and simple. Droks runs have actually gotten easier for W/MO's thanks to signet of stamina, just replace smite hex with signet of stamina and you should have no problems making it every time.

Actually, you should know that, the price of fullblade went down as many weapon a like(FDS??) is because its no longer "Desire".
Why it isn't desired??
1. its there since the very begining of GW...in other words most of people who want it will have it by now.
2. The introduce of new skins, for every new chapter we get few more skins...a lot of people are attract to the new one.

All farmers might have done is making a skin's "getting old" speed went up....hardly any cycle breaking

And let me ask you. how can people easily come up with 700k price tag and even make a sell back then??
I mean, if A-Net don't sell ingame gold themselves...where did all those money come from.
From massive farming of course(yes power trade earn money faster, but note that there need to be "that many money" in the market for you to power trade)
So it was massive farming that put the price way up in the first place saying farming save the day?? woo I am shock

No, farming isn't something bad or forbid, if anyone tell me people shouldn't find joy in farming I will say...."so why does those monster even hold items??"
But I also know that massive farming with out an equal amount of gold sink will cause problem in a game economic system(which they already have in GW )...of course I am not going to stop farming myself, but I wont point my finger at A-Net saying they should sit idly by.

And please define your meaning of dumb. I agree that the current AI is not what I call smart....realy lack tactical senses But I do find it better then the "eat themselves to dead" AI...and I mean better by acting little more logical as an intelligent life form capable of endanger human civilization(far from this level of intelligent yet, but ....well maybe in another 2 years?? )

They just need to actually do something about the ai instead of make them run around like chickens with their head cut off or go stand somewhere until their health regens. Right now I look at the ai as I would the last guy alive on the opposing team in RA who just runs, he knows he is going to die but he is just delaying his death. The monsters do almost the same thing, but its not the last one, its all but 3, its stupid and not human like at all.

The ai is just as bad for henchies, I cannot even count the number of times I have died recently because the monk hench is running around like an idiot which usually ends up drawing more aggro to him so nobody gets healed.

The main reason they made the ai changes is because of bots, and as much as I hate to say it the only way to get rid of them would be to completely nerf the 55 builds, I love playing my 55 characters and would hate to see them get nerfed, but that is really the only option available.

What annoys me is that your heroes and henches won't run from the same kind of AoE ... "Oh it's raining fire.... Nevermind"

Haha that's right. Why can't casters simply run back if mobs are coming closer like players instead of moving to another mob group in front of you? Oh and yes, I also noticed that your npcs won't run from AoE. Very annoying. Without use of flags or interrupts, 2 hydras can bash them all.

What ruined Fellblades is that these weapons now come with inscriptions, and a req 8 15>50 fellblade is basicly worth just as much as a req 8 20<50 fellblade. Fellblades didn't get killed by desire, they got killed by inscriptions (like MANY, MANY other weapons). What's the use of a skin that everyone has, and can be obtained very easy? (Except if you actually like the skin, but in that case nothing would ruin it for you, except your own taste.)



Massive farming does NEVER make prices higher. Drop rates do. People who sell the weapon do. But farming itself doesn't. If you find a perfect Crystalline Sword req 7 15^50, would you sell it for 100K with the knowledge alot of people would buy for 100K + 250 ecto's?

The less an item drops, the more people are willing to give for that item.



Also, this is dumb: An army of gigantic monsters with great armor, great weapons, perfect reflexes, loads of HP running away for 1 level 20 guy.

A 'smart' troll would try and kill the guy. A 'smart' vermin would get his friends, and try to beat up the lvl 20 guy.

If you see a nerd in a pub, would you get your muscular friends and beat him up, or run away from him?

Also, what's even more dumb than the monsters are the heroes/henchies. COME ON, MHENLO STOP RUNNING FROM A LEVEL 4 WARRIOR AND ACTUALLY HEAL SOMEONE!

Edit: Also, monster are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SMART. Just look at a troll. Does it look highly intelligent? No. Leave thinking to us humans and PvP'ers. Leave brute force to monsters. In brute force, monsters would always win. In tactics, humans win, and that's good, cause monsters are supposed to be killed by humans.

Meteor Shower: Rain colossal flaming rocks down upon somebody's head.
Sandstorm: Big ol' windstorm moving sand around, ripping off your flesh.
Spiteful Spirit: Ghost beats the shit out of you when you attack.
VwK: Your life-force is stolen as you attack the person

It'd make me run...

Then everyone would bitch because they weren't fighting. No Win situation FTL.

KANE

Its realy not as bad as a pvp runner
And I hope you arent those who cant do nothing to a runner, and only capable of calling them names
Pluse, those monster do come back for more after regen right??
if you want to talk about pvp, that is perfectly normal to stop attacking retreat to a distance and get you hp back. Go ahead ask any pvper, or do a few run yourself.

um...well if you dont know this yet I guess that prove your purity??
Bot are capable of other build like 600 monk, E/A farmor and so(you can find this with google search, but I wont sugest visiting any of them...why risk your own account for that)
For a totaly defensive build like 55, the monster is taking the right tactic might not be the best tactic, but it is a right choice

and for the hench AI...well ya, I have no idea why they dont run from AOE....not even during critical condition, which I been mailing A-Net ever since...but that is a different topic

you do know you are backing me up right??
the fact is, desire level among community for a skin is what cause a skin's price to go up and down in the game like this.(assuming the status are the same that is)
Let it be investment desire or fashion, its all the same

And all those money/ecto must come from somewhere.
Did you even read your quote??

They did I believe, and when they see their attack arent effective and they are the only one getting own, they take the smart choice of backing out.(but not smart enough to say, "hell I am out of here and log out " which is a good thing I guess)

um...srry I personaly dont involve in any bar/pub fight.
but I can tell you, if he is holding something or using something that look like I will be the one dead on the ground...hell I am out and I am not risking my friend too, what kind of friend will I be??
and if its a nerd that shows no threat at all....why do I need my friend?? I have my own legs and arms...I am more then capable of doing my own fighting What kind of person will I be if I get other 7 friend just to beat up some guy??

never read any fiction??
Brute force will never be the only factor evil domain others, they must had done some smart(or tricky) things.
LOR, is demon smart?? of course, the Ring trick is so out their it owns every other race.(only elves figure it out ) Even after their Sauron's seal, the generals did a fine job on caring out his terror. Using their advantage(air force??) and other cool equipment, that prove they are capable of intelligent thinking.
I am sure monster can be kill by human, dont know if they should, but they can. But not by any human right??
Look at how many monsters and demons Aragorn slay in combat, and look at how many our sideshow friend "un-name warrior" slay in combat.....
So if you find the monster is too hard to kill...maybe you want ask yourself
"AM I ARAGORN ENOUGH??"
and its not like you cant kill 1, you are complaining you cant kill "10+" monster a time

P.S: If A-Net offer multi-AI for different foes, then I might agree that some should be dumb and some should be smart, but saying all warrior should be dumb is just so not true But untile then...yes I will perfer they pick the most likley the smartest race and put in on all foes. As I said, I want to fight the smartest A-Net can offer, not some 3rd rate living dead that is a pity even be created

Yes the money/ecto's come from mass-farming. mass-farmers can buy rare skins. People who don't farm cannot, and that is a good thing. You can't get everything without doing something for it people. (Well in GW you almost can :S)

If I had the brains of a troll, I wouldn't even know that the enemy was stronger, I mean... "Me strong! You die! *goes berserk*" Running away for a level 20 guy with less armor, health, damage output, reaction time would be kind of... cowardly.

If monsters should be 'smart' enough to predict danger, they should all step aside in the first place. *Does THK, all monsters do /beg and stay out of our way because our skillbar is too good for them*

With the nerd thing... I mean a guy who's kicking you in the balls all the time or something like that Getting your friends equals what the trolls do, as they come with the entire group.

I don't really read fiction, actually, but I did see LotR, and it also had orcs who mindlessly run into battle and mindlessly try to take down a stronghold. Monsters in Guild Wars often don't have a smart master, cause they are not humanoid but just monsters. Also, they're not evil, we're barging in their homelands ^^

Well put.

The topic (about the AI, not farming) is pretty close to my heart, because my Lord of Fiery Doom is a pyromancer. I do not want to change him, but it's still sad that I can't even pull off a Phoenix - Lava Burst - Inferno combo without the monsters running off before I even start Inferno. And that AoE spells are not all that effective if the monsters only take about 2-3 seconds worth of damage.

The Main Point of the thread:


Reet they already do that, all you gotta do is press alt-f4 and you win!

Seriously, farming is a delicate subject in a sense, but like I have been saying it's not the farming nerfs that have affected the playerbase more.(at least i think so) It rather the lack of things, lack of variety, except to do missions, quests, missions, quests and wash rinse and repeat.

I don't play your classical Tank like in other MMOs as I know this game is different and I play a damage dealing Warrior it just sems to me from having a debate with Derv.s they can do it better.It would seem that they have better skills than a Warrior for all out damage and even the Droks run and I have seen one use the signet of stamina didn't work well.

I know what you mean that Tanks can't deal damage and I agree with you they can't all they can do is absorb it and let the spell castors do the real damage.This is what most are acustomed to in GW when in a coop mission.I have seen bad wipes because of AI change as Warriors need to change.They need to change from strengh to weapon mastery but with all those 15K sentinal Warriors that is going to be hard.I do agree it is harder to get henchies or heros to do what you want them to do and for them to know it and playing a Monk I don't like calling targets in a mission.