Originally Posted by Epinephrine
Hah, truly laughable.
Let me say this: Gaile, you have the unenviable job of defending this, but it's truly horrid. You say to let support know, but they just reply that we should post in the forums. Your testers apparently fell asleep for a few weeks, as the AI was ridiculously bad, and still is. It's a joke trying to make a suggestion through forums such as this one, since a valid, simple suggestion like "allow customizing of colours on the minimap for colourblind players" which would be easy to accomplish and would help a significant number of players gets buried under the tripe like "dual wielding" and the 1000s of suggestions of moronic, overpowered skills/classes and requests for nerfs. We're also restricted to posting in the threads about the patch, which means that good suggesions get buried among the whines and rants. Here are the reasons the patch is horrid: 1) Enemies can't play like players. If they did all the Charr on a map should bunch up; the mission would be deserted until you found the huge group of Charr. Why would they split up? Why would they allow each other to die just out of aggro range? The fact is that the heroes are against impossible odds, and if the AI truly had any intelligence it would wipe us out impossibly fast. That and the fact that a small group of them should take one look at the party and scram - they shouldn't ever aggro a party in fact, as they know damn well that 2 monks and a pile of guys will outlast them, they'd hightail it back to find some healers themselves. a) not pursuing players: This makes no sense; I think it's an attempt to restrict players from farming (dragging foes into packs) but it is illogical - a fleeing foe is a great target - why would they stop? The sentient ones should eliminate intruders anyway, not stop feet away from them because of an invisiible line, and most natural predators have huge ranges and are encouraged by flight. While some critters might realisitically stay in a smaller region (plant types, the devourers who behave like antlions/wolf spiders and prey only in a small area) the vast majority should be chasing us. b) Fleeing AoE: Ok, a part of this is needed - it is true that they were too dumb before, but the behaviour is ludicrous. You obviously have nobody with any AI design experience. Heck, bring in some undergrad co-op students from a local cognitive science program, you get free labour that actually can find their butts with a map. You say you want them smarter? You haven't managed it - they're dumber, just a different kind of dumb. Honestly, you need decent testers and someone who can actually do AI. If the enemies were smart we'd die. You'd meet a small pack of Charr, they'd send a runner to round up the others and play a stalling game till reinforcements came. They'd probably get involved when you slaughter them withing eyesight/earshot of each oteher. They might not stand and shooot a wall while you curse them from behind it. Maybe they'd even learn to avoid players. But the fact is that we aren't strong enough to deal with truly smart foes. So you need dumb foes, and you have to pick your flavour of dumb. The current dumb-ness is unpalatable and ludicrous - after all, they'll happily stay near a warrior dealing out massive damage, instead of kiting, while they'll flee an AoE spell? Either hurts! Getting away from a creature hitting you with an axe would seem to be a priority to me... As to the PvP vs. PvE thing, I know I've made many suggestions about ways to either improve the links between them or to dissolve them, but they'll never be read as they get buried. If you want to chat give me a shout, but I'm completely discouraged from trying to get any ideas across. The forums may get perused by ANet, but it's incredibly inefficient. |
Plus, since this is an obvious attempt to start farming as well, only they really did is make it take a few minutes longer to do the job.