AI adjustment ~ SF/UW/FoW (fixing the gear/keg trick)

Wow... if they really do that nerf just imagine how much everything will cost.

A Brohn's rod will probably shoot to a million gold, kudo to all those who are backing it, you probably have your own *interests* to protect in the way of the few rods you have stashed away :|

Simple, because it is a game?

Because the AI algorithms are probably along the likes of a mini-max where they seek to stop you from completing a quest? What you are suggesting is that AI is so good that it rivals human players.

I have a even better suggestion for you.

Rename Guild Wars as "World of Guild Wars" and have players work as dredge, they can then log in, and stand in SF all day long waiting for human players to come and farm them just so they can kill them.

It's nice to see what some people care about in this game. I couldn't care less if there were as many Brohn's rods as there are devourers in Tyria. I have zero Brohn's rods and I see zero need of ever having a Brohn's rod. I do see the need to play a game where the AI doesn't feel like something I could code myself, though. I like to think that most people also value gameplay over the ease of getting an item.

And wouldn't that be nice? AI that seems truly intelligent and that is always capable of reacting to your input, even if it came in varying levels of intelligence as someone suggested a few posts above.

Hmm, no, that's a pretty bad idea. Doesn't sound like fun at all.

It's not even a good use of sarcasm.

Define "fun".

Fighting units that are as smart as humans, with GREATER hit points and energy, is not my idea of "fun".

some poor/lazy players need the "holder" trick so we should let them have it I think it would be better to nerf the drops, no rares, shards or greens if anyone is holding anything at any time during the fight.

The book/gear/keg/torch/etc/etc/etc is completely a matter of efficiency. It's much much more time consuming and difficult to farm without them- therefore everyone goes for them, every time, except for the people who are interested in a challenge. I could farm SF in my sleep, and often do. Sometimes I turn my monitor off and just play by sense of hearing. There's almost nothing you can do that can't be fixed with the 100% aggro catching of a gear tank, life barrier, and a decent monk.

I was going to put a reply to this, but realized it might get me banned so I'll leave it at that.

The point is... if you take the time to learn some basic fundamentals you can achieve the exact same desired result. It doesn't take that much effort people... seriously. Look at the radar; is that green blob representing your warrior in your big white circle? If you answered yes then move back out of it.

Can a few of you at least attempt to put some effort into this... geez. And if you're not, then I would suggest adding Racthoh Demini to your ignore list so I know to never group with you.

As I've said in my previous post, fighting units that are dumb as a door is not my idea of fun. I can do that in single-player games by just setting them to "braindead" difficulty.

When ANet said "an area for advanced players", I expected better than what SF is right now. I have no problem with the rest of the game being dead easy, as long as there's a challenge *somewhere*. I don't think it's in anyone's best interest for the whole thing to be easy.

I fail to understand why people are defending this obvious exploit (and still calling it a "trick") The very fact it's being refered to as a "trick" is implying that you are exploiting a flaw in the AI programming i.e. "tricking" it.


I've been in book/keg groups, a couple of times as the warrior and it is most mind numbing experience ever. The other night I wanted to go cap something from SF and only group I could get into at the time (due to large numbers of warriors at warcamp) was a "keg trick" group. I went because I needed to cap a skill, and even with this method some of the others who went along were so useless they still got themselves killed. There's no way at all they could possibly have got anywhere just by playing "normally" i.e. without resorting to this exploit. Finally got the skill (turned out to be the last boss we found unfortunately) and we decided to finish there and then, it was immensely boring. It helped a group through that under normal circumstances wouldn't have got inside the furnace. It's pretty obviously abused. It's not "nerfing" it's called "fixing"


It's really quite easy to show how it's an exploit as such: somehow I doubt the developers intended for people to just go in and pick up a keg and have ALL monsters attack the one person carrying the keg/gear/basket of apples and COMPLETELY IGNORE the other 7 people standing around (at point blank range even) pulverising them. Yes, you could stand right next to an enemy and poke its eye out with your wand and throw meteor showers on it, and it will complete ignore you because some guy is standing on the other side carrying something which isn't a weapon or focus item.

Come on, seriously.

Totally agree here (and with many of the posts above). This is what I was speaking to about "working as designed vs. intended." Basically, the coding is working as it was designed to. I'm sure Anet wanted agro to go to the PC carrying the object. However, I do not think they realized that people, being smart and intelligent, would use this auto-agro to their advantage.

Speaking to the item drop issue, it's easy to fix. Just increase the drop rate of the item, and tweak as necessary until balance is met. Issue resolved. Supply and demand is very easy to manage with a game, because the people coding the game control the amount of resources available (i.e. they can make as many brohn staves as they want).

Thanks for everyone's feedback on this thread! I was worried it was dead, and I refuse to bump threads to drive my own point. I'm also glad to see the number of people that agree and are looking for a more challenging game experience.

The Acolyte

Yes. Fix this exploit. Please, Anet, if there were anything I ever wanted you to correct, it would be this.

AFAIK I was one of the first who reported this exploit, somewhere back in june or so, after having discovered that as long as I carried a mine or a crystal the rest of the team was left completely alone on the Elona mission. Suddenly Elona went from pretty hard to do with henches to a complete no-brainer.

It was an exploit of weak AI then, it's an exploit of weak AI now.

So...

/Signed.