So is the hench AI every going to get fixed?

Or are we back to having drooling morons for backup like the original henches from the first days of Proph? I'm half inclined to start doing PUGs again, these henches are so freaking dumb all of a sudden.

I mean... christ.. c'mon. My entire party of henches and heroes just got stuck on a Symbiosis spirit in the middle of an open snow field and just stood there for an entire fight until I killed it. If I give Fierceshot touch skills he tries to blind those same spirits. That guy Vekk keeps using Air Attunement AFTER the fight is over.

Not being able to get a competent mesmer or sin is one thing, those guys actually require intelligent decision making, but these sorts of pathing and basic decision-making problems are just ridiculous.

Its been buggy lately.

Do you use your flags though?

I had the henches just kinda stand there last night till i flagged them next to me, then they started moving around again...The only one doing stuff was Olias.

when i flag my H/H they still run forwards and attack things, even the damn monks ..


Also, my olias is the worst, he will stop, put death nova on each minion and then follow again, but by the time hes done that im out of range so he ends up running in circles on the spot -.-

There was an entire thread dedicated to this issue. (I forget where it went though). But no, they have not fixed the AI issue yet.

There's a thread in the EOTN forum. But yes, its severely broken since GWEN was released.

More worrying, there's been no acknowledgement at all from anet

This is their way of getting them to play with real people. Stealth Nerfing. Guess what? It won't work on me. They're STILL more intelligent than most PUGs AND they're silent. Maybe they'll realise this and actually fix the AI.

I think its obvious when even though your heroes are flagged to one side of your radar, one of them goes rogue and aggros everyone on the other side of your radar.

This is extremely annoying for me as I like luring and trapping foes.

Yea, I've noticed my heroes and henchies acting even stupider than usual. Especially when they decide to run off and Leeroy everything within a 3 zone radius.

I be happy with the Henchmen's AI if they ress when you spam your*or someones else* is dead, or they ATTACK the target your spamming, instead of only if they arn't atacking anything at the moment. Least the hero's do this, but having half your team attacking the priest, while the other 4 are attacking each a completly different random mob really gets annoying fast.

Probably exactly what Anet WANTS us to do. >.>

Yes, the AI is very buggy now. Heros/hench stop following if there's a spirit anywhere on the map, Mhenlo refuses to res, even after the fight is over, and they just LOVE to aggro everything on the map. I watched Devona run past the mob we were fighting to aggro a SECOND mob, then run back to the original mob, the second mob right behind her. It really is quite pathetic.

There hasn't been any acknowledgement on practically ANY of the GW:EN issues that have been brought up since it was released. Guess they're too busy with GW2 to give a damn. -_-

I cant care less about anything other then a damn PS fix...

They still use PS to heal DEGEN!

/whine.

And yet, you can still win the game with them.

To get to the question, I don't think Anet will fix them fully. Sure they will fix them somewhat but not to a degree where you will forsake human interaction. Then again, its just my opinion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stolen Souls Guess they're too busy with GW2 to give a damn. -_-

Spot on, Cap'n. Set a course for the third star to the right.

I disagree, even the worst of PuG's were better then Henchies. Just take some lead and tell people what skills to bring, where to stand, when to use the skills, basically just treat them as henchmen and hope they end up being smarter.

Just a question. Haven't those who play 100% with heros/hench pretty much done that already? :/

All people ever do these days is reminisce about what Prophecies used to be like before "Factions ruined everything" and then "Nightfall ruined everything" and now "Eye of the North ruined everything"....maybe this is ANet's way of saying "do you really want things back the way they were?".

If that is the reasoning behind all this, there is a huge flaw in Anets logic.

The quality of the hero/hench AI have nearly no impact for the majority of players on the decision wether or not to use them - or to play with other humans.

People who play with PUGs primarily or even just occationally, in general does so because they enjoy playing with other human beings.
They enjoy the added challenge of playing with a more or less random lot of strangers, meeting new people, etc. and so forth.

The same could be said with people who don't PUG but play with people they already know, guild mates, friends, etc. - Well not the meeting new people, and it is less random. But the in general, they do it because they enjoy playing with other people, is the main factor in choosing between hero/hench-way and other people.
(In general of course, does not mean that there are not people out there that have other motivations behind their choice in this matter.)

The AI of heroes/hench doesn't even enter the equation.

While some of the decisions Anet have made lately would certainly not discount that they are stupid enough to use that as a reasoning for not fixing the AI. It is more likely that they're just plain lazy and don't give a rat's arse about GW. Working under the assumption that they've milked what they can from it, and putting all their efforts into GW2.

Well, I haven't noticed the henchies being any more stupid than before GWEN, but most of the same errors I found annoying from before are still in place. I generally play by myself with henchies and heroes cause I'm not patient enough to get a group (everything seems so deserted nowadays!), so I've experienced quite a few annoying bugs.

Things I noticed today that I didn't like include: The fact that when you're attacking, the second you move to flank a monster to trap it or to get out of aoe, all your henchies start running with you, no matter where they're standing.

Flagging party to one place, then having a single guy run halfway across the minimap (the one 'U' brings up) to agro monsters while I'm doing the same to another group. Gets really annoying when I tell them to run away by flagging them after I accidentally die, and they go really far away, then run all the way back to get one more blow in, which causes everything to kill them while they're running back to the flag.

The inability for the entire party added together to out damage my gimped only for fun builds. WTF is up with that?

The fact that even though I take off every skill from my monk hero's skill bar except for Protective Spirit and a few energy regain skills, NONE of my party members ever seem to be enchanted. Having to manually enchant everyone with PS is a pain in the ass.

The henchies/heroes to run slower than everybody else. Began a map, and ran to a buncha mobs and started wailing at them. Was wondering why the heck it was taking so long to kill the group, and then I finally notice my necro and melee henchies were hanging around at the entrance still. It was a straight run from the portal thingie to the mob, so there wasn't anything blocking. They only got to me after I finally beat the mobs with only myself, 2 healers, interrupt, and earth ele henchies.

Henchies/Heroes amazing ability to agro things from halfway across the map. Might be related to the flagging problem, but the opposite where the single monsters come to me and whack once before retreating.

Not really henchie or hero related, but my ranger's pet still doesn't seem to follow my commands. I can never get it to tank the enemies, while I sit out of range with my flat bow.

lol, i don't know how ur hench got stuck behind a spirit! lmao. you should've taken a screenshot. but for vekk it's quite simple. heroe's do keep it up all the time. it probably expired during the fight - his energy was probably depleted - and his dmg skills has priority over the attunement. so he could only cast it again after battle. simple really.

i think the heroe's are fine. i've never had any problems with them. maybe it's the way you use your hench? or maybe it's coz i'm in luv with livia and keep zooming in when she summons a minion, hehe

I havent noticed H/H getting any worse, the monks still spam skills at stupid times (whoever gave the prot hero ZB has no idea how to play GW).

I think it would be fun if they removed H/H for a weekend, just to see how the game changes.

I haven't run into any such major bugs.... but I'm guessing that just means that General Morgahn and Hayda are immune to them. Dunkoro apparently isn't though, as he dies more often than any Prot Monk should, often despite the efforts of the parapair.


Worst I've had is herohench being completely oblivious to the presence of poison-jets and Leeroying through them and into hoardes of enemies the moment I pull out my flatbow despite my flagging them well back out of immediate range of either.
It is annoying, but most of the time I cope...

Whether you have them set to Attack, Defend or Passive makes a hell of a difference.


And under most circumstances they're STILL better than PuGs....
They will not suddenly need to answer the phone or take a toilet break or leave for dinner.... nor will they spontaneously disconnect or rage-quit. And even when they run off to do stupid AI things.... at least they don't have their own long-term agenda that means fvcking off and leaving you behind to fend for yourself.

Well, I agree that some hero/hench need some AI fix...

Specially the Elementalists one. It's kinda comic when I go to Slavers with them, and suddenly a Meteor Shower starts rainning down at the spirits

Here's a screen I took the other night. It's posted over in the EotN forum. You can clearly see that I have Gwen set to guard, but she's run waaay off on her own and gotten herself killed. And yes, I submitted a ticket to Anet...

EDIT-> Reduced size of SS as requested.

If that's actually true, they can pretty much forget about selling me a copy of GW2. Nothing pisses me off more than a company that fails to fix a broken product in favor of trying to sell me a new one.

That said, I think it's too soon to say that's what they're doing. We'll see.

The funny fact about AI is:

The monster AI knows exactly on who use throw dirt and ineptude, but H/H AI puts backfire on melee foes.

IMHO, ANet could release a tool to enable the community to build their own AI scripts. Some old-school games (like Baldurs Gate 2) had such option.

No H/H would be crazy... love to see it sometime.

Well, for me that'd just mean a weekend where I didn't play GW. Kind of stupid and annoying, really, but it's not like I haven't got other games that can occupy my time.

How about a weekend where you have to play solo? Folks that like to group in this game are always trying to change the way soloers play the game, I think turn about would be fair play.

I wish they would just stay in your agro circle... unless flagged in which case they would stay within the agro circle of the flag. Creating scripts would be nice, but even just prioritizing skills for the heros would be nice.

Since we are gripping about AI....

Aggro control sucks with H/H
Monster AI runs from AoE but H/H like to see how fast they can die from it (Seriously it must be a contest for them)
I can't plant a hero and get them to stay EXACTLY in place.
STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF....., HEALING MY F'ING MINIONS YOU STUPID ASSSS IDIOT.
Make hero's ping team chat that they are rezing some one. If you think that is to much to ask, I say that the zaishen ping "gg" after a win in the zaishen challenge.

Heh, I would love to see that one too. The amount of ghost towns that one would create.

This happens to me all the time, and is getting old real fast. How can I depend on my h/h monks to keep the team alive when they can't navigate past a freakin spirit!

-I'm sick of Mhenlo trying to out tank Koss/Talon

-I'm sick of Olias casting Death Nova on me and the H/H as opposed to casting on his damn minions

-I'm sick of Zhed being a suicide Bomber (WE ARENT IN IRAQ ZHED!!!)

-I'm sick of watching my heroes standing there confused as I die a horrid death not 10 feet away

-I'm sick of my Heores/Hench targeting spirits and minions ahead of more powerful enemies

-I'm sick of watching MoW casting SS on enemies with less than 10% health

-I'm sick of Heroes and Hench! But I will take them (broken even) any day over n00b pugs or people telling me I have to play a certain build or I can't join...

Yesterday my wife and I were playing through Rragar's Menagerie when we experienced the "follow your foe forever" bug with Kahmu. Despite being in Guard mode, he pursued the fleeing Charr on the second level all the way down the corridor. I flagged him back and he continued pursuit for another 10 seconds, reaching the edge of the radar before finally turning back.

I've also experienced the bug with Gwen numerous times. She insists on being the first into battle, usually by wasting Web of Disruption on an enemy that's not casting. Even after I replaced that skill with a non-hex interrupt, she still runs headlong toward the baddies so she's always the first one targeted by the six Charr Seekers, who turn her into a flaming pincushion because Ogden refuses to use Protective Spirit on a caster.

Oh, and Woody, please reduce the width of your screenshot; it's breaking the page width of the thread. Thanks.

Where the hell is an Anet rep to give us some info on this. They seem non-exsistent since the release of GW:EN.

Gaile??? Where art thou???

LOL The other day I was questing and had all the raptors attacking me (Rit). Later, I put Light of Deldrimor on my skill bar as I was planning some dungeon crawling. For those not familiar with this skill it also hits anything adjacent to you. Raptors didn't come anywhere near me. Seems like the AI knows what skills you have on your bar.

I don't, and I would refrain from playing that weekend if they did it.

I only use them where it is really easy other than that I PuG as we can communicate.The only place I have noticed the H/H bad is in the EoTN.I hope else where it is not bugged for the sake of the survivial of PuGs.

Here's what would most likely happen:

-There would be an epic amount of whining/complaining here
-The people that use only heros/henchies would take a break from GW for the weekend -OR-
-The people that use only heros/henchies would see it as a good opportunity to get some solo farming in

-The people that do PUGs would still do PUGs

Was vanquishing Bukdek Byway just a bit ago. With a 400 ping, I was still nailing heals nearly a whole second faster than Sister Whatsherface. That's just sad. :[

I'm used to those AI's kicking the hell out of my reaction times.

Haha! That would be an awesome event weekend. I'd come back online for that. I've gotten tired for a while of dragging H/H around. Some all-human player parties for a weekend would be a hoot. Good times heh.

To support the topic though, yes, H/H need AI improvement, clearly. Its telling one can cite clear examples of monsters doing successfully what H/H should and its sad to read on this another topic that since GWEN H/H have been dumbed down (?).

I havent been on in a bit to see Heroes ignoring flags as reported, that is pretty bad, but Margrid has always been keen on aggroing things well out of range even when she is set on guard. She usually needs to be flagged a little further back than anyone else to avoid that.

One small thing that annoyed me is you can be dying and the rest of the party is healthy and H/H wont heal you. I'm usually playing a monk so can take care of myself but when playing another class I've had a few choice words when that would happen. Granted, you can always make one of your heroes the monk in that case and control their bar to avoid that happening, but you really shouldnt have to.

I like that too, but most don't listen : (.

And here's to why a no H/H weekend would suck:

-People not playing EOTN would be pretty *#%(ed: You been to Cantha recently? Not a whole lot of people there right now.
-No clear-cut order to do anything: Since the story is so spliced up and with so many things to do, there would be a very slim chance of finding someone to do the same thing you want to do.
-Still not enough people: The game's way too damn big as it is.

The only good thing that would come out of this would be promoting PvP and guild activity.

It's not just heroes, fortunately. I've had incidents of groups of monsters and bosses just not attacking, moving, anything. The best recent example of this was when I went against Frostmaw, the idiot didn't attack for the whole fight!