Customizable hero tactics

Like my suggestion in the "allow us to play as our heroes" thread, this suggestion also originates from Dragon Age.

I figured, since there are so many skills that heroes simply don't use well, why don't Anet make it so that we can set our own hero AI. In Dragon Age, you can set your heroes to use certain talents or spells (the equivelent of skills in this game) when certain conditions are met. In battle, the heroes will try to follow the "tactics" you set for them as their closely as possible. I thought it would be cool, rather than fixing the hero AI for skills every time a new skill update comes out, to allow us to set our own AI's for heroes. We could have a wide variety of conditions to choose from, and we could set it so that our hero uses the skill if the condition is met. For those of you who don't have Dragon Age, there are also premade tactics presets. For those who are new to the game or who don't want to bother making hero tactics, there could be a "default tactics" option that gives the hero the same AI as enemy NPCs in the game.

So what do you all think?

I like the idea of setting our own hero AI. The only customizable AI we have is Avoid Combat Guard and Attack.

As for playing as our heros, anet gave us the ability to micromanage our hero skills.

I would not expect anything major in regards to this because GW is on its way out and GW2 is checking in.

I think this is a great idea, I really do.

I also think it's going to be a lot to program, and ANet will have to pay their employees a lot more to do this, and since they're focusing on GW2, we shouldn't hope for it.

It would make it easier for H/H, but given the difficulty of 99% of PvE this is waste of effort and resources for Anet. If it was simple to implement I'd be in favour of this, but we don't need it. Besides, do Anet even want to give us less reasons to group with other players?

Maybe if this was a single player game.
(contrary to popular belief, it isn't)

...that doesn't change the fact that heroes will still exist to give players the option to play either single player or multiplayer. Contrary to your belief, this is a game where players can choose whether they want to play single or multi player. Even when I do play with my guildies, I often have to take at least one or two heroes to fill in slots.

The heroes AI don't work half as good as the enemy AI does, so there clearly is better AI out there.

I was fighting Charr in Grothmar Wardowns and they have a wardkeeper. The Charr, except for the melee ones, all form up when engaged, cast all wards and spirits, and then STAND THEIR GROUND inside the wards and radius of the spirits' attacks.

So I made a wardkeeper, of course I don't have the pseudocheat skill Gloat to boost my energy, but elementalist have got it anyway (what is with monster skills for Charr if my Charr hero can't even get it?).

I put a flag there and Zhed does cast the wards, but after some harassment from Bladestorms or so, the whole hero/henchmen brigade scatters beyond the ward radius, and immediately die as well. They just don't get the idea of wards or spirits at all. Whereas when I attack the Charr Prophets, they stand their ground inside the wardkeepers wards! Most excellent. Why cannot I hire this far superior Charr mob? They even have 20 in domination magic. Again, if my Charr Hero isn't able to get 20 in domination magic, isn't this uh... not by the rulebook?

I'm definitely in favor of better customization, or even RTS-style orders like stand ground, attack move, and most importantly for casters: ATTACK GROUND.

I pretty sure that the monster AI is not programmed to kite in normal mode. That's why they stay in the wards. They won't kite damage. Heroes and henchmen however, are programmed to kite. That's why they run out of wards. I know, it's inconvenient. Perhaps the h/h ai can be updated so that they can recognize when they are in a ward and they will stop kiting. I know that it's very possible for Anet to do this since heroes are programmed not to kite when they are crippled.

At this point of the game, i wouldn't want the developers to waste their time on it - it would require too much to do just to enhance an already working feature of the game. There still are all those things that need immediate fix - dervishes and paragons need to be balanced, some imba-builds need to be tweaked, this and that has to be remade; there is still GW: B going on and i'd prefer to see more of it rather than be able to programme heroes...

On the other hand, if the devs launch the whole GW: B content and fix all the major issues of the game (ha ha ha...), and there's still time before GW2 release, why not?
As of right now, /unsigned.

Eh, making an AI that's capable of that kinda stuff would take an extreme amount of resources. It's not going to happen and we should be happy with that. It's not worth the effort.

How can it take any more resources than the existing Charr mobs in hard mode?