Petition: Fix hero AI!

/Signed...especially as the monster AI has been so improved.

We need smarter heroes and henchies now.

/Signed...especially as the monster AI has been so improved.

We need smarter heroes and henchies now.

/Signet

See my previous post in topic.

Just yesterday I remember Koss running back and forth whie enemies were attacking him...I've had my Caster hench's also have an urge to run really close to the enemies even though they have no melee attacks. And why would my Ele cast meteor shower on a simple spirit with no other enemies around it? They need to make some spells have more conditions met before being atuomatically cast. I've noticed a lot of things half-assed in Guild Wars, this is just one of the hundreds, and thats why I'm hoping for another blizzard game to come out, particularly SC2.

Not-signed.

No notice in change if any of the NPC AI, only AI that has changed is monster AI. The NPC AI doesn't think like us, you actually have to control it and the first step of that is the build.

Heroes do not use Elites as much as they should etc, you need to tailor for this in your builds. A very difficult and timed build doesn't work on heroes for a reason. The game has been designed so you are able to complete it with hero/hench, but if you got all human players or mostly human players, it would be much easier.

Also remember that Heroes have slightly different codings. While you might have 3 Necro heroes, MoW makes a better MM than Olias because a small coding difference. These differences can prove the worth of heroes if applied correctly.

Sure it can take a lot of effort to find a right build that works perfectly, doesn't take that much effort to tweak them a bit to get them working decently. When the NPCs do something wrong, usually you have done something wrong, even if it's just cycling through your enemies with Tab.

I've discovered a very strange set of instances with the AI for heroes and henchies. I tested it, and amazingly enough I am, well, amazed. First off though, yes please ANet when I call a target, those little toons better run off to do battle and not just stand there until someone gets attacked or I do damage to the mob. grrr.

So, onto the strange discovery. It used to be in previous campaigns that whenever I'd get at -30 or so DP, I'd rage quit mostly and try it another time. I hate being that low in DP. Its true. I admit it. I think I missed the boat by being a rage quitter! Let me continue.

In GWEN, I have often been at a very high DP (-50 mostly), and I don't want to map out because I was in the middle of the blasted dungeonl I certainly could NOT/did NOT want to start over. So I kept chugging, and usually kept dying. Too poor for consumables, so, there I am.

As an example, I took Gwen's Master quest to stop another Searing by undertaking a mission to the great burning forest. The whole party of heroes/henchies and I were wiped/burned to a crisp on several occasions. We were down to -49 to -60 DP, and had maybe 200 hp between us.

Prior to the burning forest with full health and bars, the AI was generally its slow, only sometimes useful-doing-some-stupid-things nature. As soon as we hit the bottom of the DP barrel though, boom! The heroes and henchies were slaughtering things right and left. I couldn't stop them from finally doing their best to beat the living snot out of the Charr, the Charr Effigy, the Burning Spirits and Flowstones (which conveniently fell into aggro range all at once). The energy bars were low, the health bars tended to be way too low, but they were what I am now referring to as the Perfect Storm AI.

I'm thinking that there's levels of AI we may not be aware of, or at least by some odd coincidence the heroes/henchies get "smart" by pure coding adrenaline. Either ANet has a different set of AI code for a high DP, or I'm a lunatic.

I can't explain how suddenly a party of 8 heroes/henchies who couldn't take on 2 Grawl without doing something stupid were suddenly a Perfect Storm to counter the 15 aggro beasties in a burning forest. In the middle of all that fire, we were ALL on fire the entire time, stuck or sandwiched between Burning Spirits and Charr, and yet they died and we did not die once during that last battle.

It was quite epic to be in that burning forest battling for our lives, monsters bent on our destruction and my war band mowing them all down. So, ANet, please fix the part where the AI will not attack when I tell them too, but please keep up the good work with the levels of AI (or spiritual coding) that makes heroes smarter as they suffer more.

PRIME EXAMPLE:

Facing those damn condition spamming mandragors, mhenlo will not use LoD until our whole entire team is at around 5% health, hell then proceed to use it only ONCE, then let the team die. Lina doesnt do shit either all i see is hex removal on condition heavy encounters, come on, at least equate one kind of spell to each different purpose.

Seems like mhenlo is too busy talking about "whats for lunch?" w/ lina while my whole entire team is deep freezed, mind freezed, maelstrom away, and they just sit in maelstrom casting.......

/signed
agree, have nothing to say since everyone has said my words.

/signed

I flagged my hero's back, gathered PERFECT agroo of a bunch of destroyers, canceled flag, they never came back and I died ><

And seriously, they SPAM Blessed Light like there's no tomorrow...

It doesn't have to do with builds.

The heroes seem to be really stubborn lately:

-flatout ignoring your commands
-suddenly stop following you, and won't move, even when flagged
-just rushing in an enemy group, even when on 'Defensive', 'Avoid Combat' and when flagged.
-stop casting spells, so they still lose the energy cost. (I saw Zhed burn up 80 energy in a matter of seconds, cause he did Meteor Shower, canceled, Searing Flames, canceled, Meteor Shower etc.)


So... /sign

I had problems with my heroes rather often lately, it's like they're stubborn and deaf. Mutiny, I tell ye!

What I do is I disable 2-3 skills on their skill bars so they will be focus on their 3-4 skills that they can use. That works great.

Monsters AI are smarter than before.

/signed, stupid ogden is making dunkoro look like buddha!

/Signed.

At times I can't even make my heroes move without flagging them.

And don't even get me started at Gwen... I give her a wand, an interrupt setup and set her on defend, and the first thing she does in battle is RUSH INTO MELEE RANGE, about 1.5 aggro circles from the rest of the party.

Ok, the hero/hench AI has indeed gone down hill as even with pings and changing the aggressive/defence/passive stances. I have had times where Tahlkora will not even heal, she will stand there and I have to open her bar and force her to heal people myself. But what gets me is your comment insulting everyone who has signed this, or have not even read this but are having this problem. There are what? 4 million world wide, if say 50 of us here are having issues imagine how many more are "stupid" as you say. Just because yours works does not mean everyone else is stupid. The game is fun and good, but glitchy. The only reason I see them taking out hero AI is the fact that it is no longer "pass" or "fail" 99% of the time, it's you die, you rez, the NPC your with will rez and you try again with -60% DP. Thats instead of the message "You fail" like the GOLEM mission. Those who do not want to sign, well thats your choice how ever I do realize that online petitions really do not get anywhere, unlike actual paper signed ones that you will submit to your congressman/lady or member of parliament. Please do not insult everyone just because they have an in game issue and you do not. Maybe in the future you will sign it, if your lucky you will not have issues in game like the rest of us semi-satisfied customers.

Also, I /sign this as Gaile does infact have an account.

/Signed

I noticed the change after the Prerelease Weekend. An update within that timeframe could have messed with the AI.

Still works fine for me. All my heroes have very simple builds. I haven't noticed anything's changed. I started using LOD on monk heroes but they are fairly incompetent with it so i stopped. Some elites H/H just can't use very well. This could be changed but otherwise......

/signed

All my tank hench were chasing after 1 enemy so me and the healers got killed. While i waited for Koss to res me (he didn't even when told to) I watched vekk stand off to the side and not cast anything even though he had 80 energy.

Also I agree with who ever brought up the golemancer quest. Even if they were working right, the part where you follow the worker golem is near impossible with henchs.

/Not signed
They seem to work like they always did, just try to use them in the campaigns.
No clue why they wont work for you guys, they work as good for me as they always did.

The part of the Golemancer quest where you need to follow that warding golem is no big deal, just think a bit and you find the way to do it

Okay.

Normally I can pin my heroes back, and they'll move around a little or even make a little rush toward nearby groups (hi, Talon, looking directly at you), but they always turn right around and sit by the flag.

Koss cost me a primary quest last night by ignoring my flag and running halfway across the compass to aggro a group of dinosaurs. Twice.

While I've had similar problems when mobs skated a bit too close to the hero/hench bubbles, I could dismiss that as cutting it too close and expecting too much from AI. But it's getting to the point where they ignore the flag and Leeroy things on the other side of the red engine-ing map. This isn't gonna fly.

And you made sure to have no obstacles between the hero and the flag?

If they are set on attack or defend mode they will attack if something gets into the bubble or do so when a monster attacks, henches are permanent on attack.
I did not once having any troubles with the flag system.
Even in the Ooze pit, where I single flag them, it works flawless.

They sat right on the flag in the middle of a field. No obstacles. I watched the area to be DAMN sure there were no patrols coming through before I set it, so Koss went and found some. >_<

And I mean stuff that wanders CLOSE to the aggro bubble, not actually IN it. The monsters are usually closer to the edge of my bubble than his, but still not close enough to actually be aggroed, and Koss will turn around and dive at them. That doesn't bother me too much because I can handle most things he decides to drag back, but when I give him an order and he decides to sprint after raptors, we have a god damn problem to work out.

Maybe he's just getting me back. I often use him as live bait when I'm close to a portal and running for it -- set his flag in the middle of the mob and let him go down in a blaze of glory as I make my escape. XD

I didn't read every post so I hope no one made this point already, but I was 2 manning with someone and the other person was pulling and everytime I flagged my heroes well back and are set to guard not attack, Acolyte Jin would run right in and aggro everything...

Just had to put in a different hero...

I've had Acolyte Sousuke run away from the rest of the group to aggro enemies, who were barely on the circular mini-map. Believe me, the enemies he was going to attack were nowhere near my aggro bubble.

I agree completely! I play my ele almost exclusively (7 million experience, even with a 9 month hiatus), so I use it for everything. I made a tank build for one of the challenge missions (Shadow Nexus), with 2 monks and a paragon. I have no problem completing it with ease, until my monks(which have no touch spells, btw), decide that they want a piece of the action, and run PAST me, tanking on my ele. I never had this problem before GW:EN, so I have to assume it's a change in A.I. I have even tried flagging them as far back as possible yet still within range, but they seem to randomly ignore that, making it impossible to get more than 50-60 kills, not because of difficulty or anything else, but because my hero's go insane on me!

El Elementalist

What is the thing that people who are not complaining at all of AI has in common? I marked it on the quotes, as they say there are some builds that heroes are godly at and other where they suck, Im sorry you all who beat the game with a SF spike, MMing, <insert other common pve build>, people sometimes want to use a necro to SS the way out or another hench/hero but guess what? Henchies cannot play it in a decent way and lets not talk the random 'rush to the dead' problem that sometimes happens.

Of course playing with humans is far easy but who got time for making a group, people actualy stated that they didnt use some skills to avoid self killing (Order of Undead on Olias), you should actually be able to make a hero to use it correctly thats is why this topic was made, to complain about the poor response of heroes/henches at using some skills.

With that said i sign this thread

/sign

its not my heroes that are the problem...but lina and mhenlo are pretty much 1 hit kills...AT 0DP!! and they seem to have like have as much energy as a wammo using orison of healing with 0 healing prayers.sort those monks out anet.and /signed

EDIT:i would also like to point out,when my monks kite,they ALWAYS pull nearby groups and tell the spell range on my hench/heroes to get lost

I have also used heroes and henchies almost entirely since Nightfall came out, and I can safely say there is something different.

Sometimes, they don't even listen to my calls, which is very important in my spike build. This is frustrating as hell.

Also, they sometimes freeze for no reason.

Explain?

I think I can explain this AI change, based on Anets monster AI philosophy. Remember back when they changed the monster AI to flee AOE?? Well they said it was to make it more realistic because real players would flee. So this is my theory... They made the heros half brain dead to be more realistic and mirror the average real life players you would party up with.. What are your thoughts? Lol

They made Slavers' Exile an AI nightmare... it makes me wonder if any testing was done with heroes and henchies there. Between getting stuck at the back with the random spirits popping up to just not moving while I'm more than half a radar away and not attacking/doing anything at all, it's just a frustrating time.


Running as usual, they stop after a minute or two.


I flag them to where I am with no luck. I then flag them back a bit, and then cancel it and they start running towards me again... just to get stuck again. At least Zhed is somewhat close to me but Mhenlo and friends have their backs turned to me. xD

I'd also like to see hero AI improved. The other day, my Zenmai wouldn't always redo her dual after Mobius and would rather restart her combo chain. I eventually had to manually click the dual after she used mobius.

This is very bad news. I will be depending on my heroes to help me make my legendary survivors. I've already put working on them off until I had a faster Internet connection. Now, after being away from the game for a month, I see that maybe I will have to put off working on them for even longer. I want all the conditions to be good before working on any legendary survivors.

They failed it, then. Even with all the retardation I get from heroes and hench, they still play better than the average person spamming LFG in an outpost. :B

Mind if I ask how you know this ? I've never been able to find any difference between same profession heroes, though many people claim they act different. As far as I know they are just the same AI with a different skin.

I've had a group that refused to cast a rez, even though I had check-marked it on all 3 heros. We had to run off and attack something before they finally broke out of the non-rez trance and finally rezzed the henchie...

While having H/Hed pretty much everything before GWEN (including getting my Guardian of Elona with them, finally), but since the release my poor heroes also have had their IQ points reduced. Either that, or they've got a bunch of wax buildup in their ears so they can't hear me shoud "MOVE!".

I can't tell you how many times Livia or Talon have just started running out of nowhere at the mobs in Slaver's Exile. I'll flag them back a billion miles and they don't even seem to care.. You know I don't mind them not being able to understand the intricacies of combos or knowing not to cast Meteor Shower after all the enemies are dead, but for the love of God, Anet, can they please just stand/stay where I want them? Also, is it just me or does clicking the party and hero flags quickly not really work that well. Can't tell you how many times I'll click the Green flag to send heroes/henchies back and have it not register the click at all. So aggravating.

You think this is Anet's not so subtle way to get us to pair up with real people? There have been many threads about how H/H AI has dramatically gotten dumber. I've experienced it first hand on multiple occasions. We've seen everything from Casters tanking to healers not healing to H/H not rezing to H/H being too dumb to get out of an AoE storms. What have you done to my heroes Anet?!?!

/Signed!!

They have gotten so dumb the last couple of weeks its untrue.

see the thread about zhed for my comments.

its been annoying the snot out of me, because its resulted in so many deaths to me because they won't follow me. Or i'll die and they will all just start standing still as the monsters beat them to death.

Anet needs to fix what ever they broke in an update in the last week.

Hiya!

Please excuse me if this probable solution to the problem has been given already (haven't read through all posts).

I think what you're experiencing with your heroes going berserk and aggroing way off is an auto-targeting issue. Targeted foe dies, and the hero/hench switches to an auto-targeted enemy; sometimes, if not even most often, outside the current bunch of foes due to the narrow targeting angle.

When experiencing these problems; has anyone tried opening the general Options panel (F11) and turning off the auto-target option?

/Gwon

What i hate the most, especially now with the Char Firecallers;

why does the enemy AI do step aside of AoE spells, but are unpinned hero's (they can do what they want) so damn stupid they just stay in 2 firestorms, casting and attacking. It's not as if the game doesn't understand it, since the enemies do flee from AoE. And a hero running away from AoE I wouldn't call that ignoring my orders (like they never do that :P ).

Hope this will be fixed, since imo; the ai-code is already there (enemies), just add it to the hero's.