Please fix hirelings...Please please..

[rocky0]

Ok Ok I know there have been many threads about the hirelings but it seems that the situation is getting worse or they are getting dumber or something. I just TRIED to do the last quest in the Sharm Syndicate quest, not a major chain I know, with my 7th level Dwarf. I figured I should be able to handle it so I went in on Elite. I had no trouble until the last part of the quest, where you exit to the marketplace.

So I am going around the ledges and trying to pick off one or two bad guys before I jump down into the mess. I start getting hit pretty hard from the archers and the spellcasters and I am close to dying but I am not being healed. My hireling cleric is still STUCK around a few boxes. It seems that the follow logic really cant follow and they get hung up on obstacles. Luckily I see it in time and manage to make it back to get healed. So I move forward again, this time doing my best to bring him with me.

So I get to the point across from the warforged and I head to the far side to clear out the archers above. I never drop down to ground level but for some reason, my cleric decided to run down there. Needless to say, he gets killed and he never made an attempt to move back where I was even though I made many requests for him to do so.

So I jump down to get his stone, had a hard time in finding it because he was running AWAY from me before he died, but I manage to find it and get back to a shrine with maybe 10 points of health left. So he comes back to life and we push forward again. This time I give him the stay command, I figure I will fight then head back to him and attempt to keep him alive. I engage another archer and when again my cleric hireling who is not to move, comes charging by me and drops down AGAIN to fight. He stands there not doing anything and of course gets killed. At this point I am so fed up I just recall out. I then drop him from my pack and I am going to try using Flower.

I wont begin to pretend I know what goes into programming but it cant be that hard to get them to obey commands. Heck, even just to follow the player would have to be somewhat easy to fix. What is the point of having a hireling when it will not even do the most basic of commands, follow and stay. Its frustrating to fail a quest not because i did someonething wrong but because hirelings cant follow the most simple commands.

Sorry for ranting but it kinda just boiled over. I know others have bigger problems in the game than this, just had to let off steam.

/rant off

[Elixxer]

The other day my hireling died - shocking I know! And became unresponsive. I wasted 10 minutes trying to get it to take orders to use the res shrine. She would just stand wherever she loaded with being out of range of soul stone...

I ended up just dismissing her and finishing alone.

As for the coding... I wonder if they get paid by the hour? ;)

[AZgreentea]

You just have to learn how to work with them. You cant think of them as people, they are NPC's. They work on a set of rules, not necessarily on what a normal person would do.

The stay command works in conjunction with the three levels of aggression. You tell them to stay, and they stay in that spot but from there they can:

In aggro mode - Attack anything that comes into their aggro range.

In Defend mode - Run to defend you if you are attacked.

In passive mode - They will just stand in the spot you told them too unless you give them a specific command.

The only real difference between "Stay" and "follow" is if they stand three inches from you, or they do their stuff from the location you told them to stay in. If they perceive you are under attack in defend mode, they will attempt to come help you, even if they are far away (though they dont usually perceive you are under attack from really far away).

**EDIT
The AI can also get confused when trying to attack an enemy on a much different height than they are, or is not in their line of sight. You can understand "That archer over there is far away and I need to move closer" The hireling sees "I was told to stay here and defend my boss if he needs it, but the creature attacking him is outside of the range I am supposed to go when I am told to stay."

[varusso]

<snip>

Set your hireling to passive and stay/ If they are set to defensive or offensive, they will try to attack whatever attacks them OR YOU. If an archer shoots you, the hireling will try to attack the archer. Due to bizaro world pathing, blocked enemies, different 'styles' of play programmed into the hirelings, this may result in the hireling running in circles trying to find a clear shot on the enemy, all the while getting pelted and constantly trying to re-decide which mob it should now be attacking, due to the fact that its 'instincts' are telling it to kill everything that just shot it.

If you set to passive, the hireling will ONLY try to execute commands you give it. It will literally stand there and die (or follow you and die) while a hellhound chews its leg off, not even trying to heal itself. This also pretty much guarantees that when you DO say 'HEAL ME!!' there wont be another AI command queued up, conflicting with your command. Telling the hireling to stay accomplishes 2 things :
(1) It (generally) keeps the hireling out of harm's way until you need it -- assuming you chose a safe place to park it.
(2) It allows a bit of forced behavior that many ppl just dont know about: The ability to force a hireling to teleport EVERY time.

When you are far enough away from your hireling, it will ignore pathing and simply teleport to you. This doesnt always work as expected, however. Sometimes the hireling will try to run to you anyway. This is where the second trick comes in. Find something relatively high up to jump from (preferably with FF on). While in mid-air, call the hireling. If you jump from high enough, the hireling will instantly teleport to you. Period. A good example would be the crates in the lever room near the end. You only need 2-3 crates' worth of height to force a teleport. You can often even tell them to heal you while they are falling. Park the hireling, repeat (such as jumping down into the courtyard, call them to force them to join you in the courtyard).

In most quests/explorers, you can find places like this to force the hireling to come to you immediately, rather than gambling on bad pathing and distance. I use this constantly when soloing with my hirelings.

But yes, the hireling AI/pathing definitely needs some work. In the meantime, you can use this.

[Waylayer]

I feel your pain.

On the plus side, I always enjoyed using Flower - one of the better Clerics, IMO

[rocky0]

I did have the cleric on defensive mode but I did forget about passive. I might try that but I will have to remember to tell them to heal me or I will kill myself. One way or the other Im gonna get killed....lol :D

As far as Flower goes, I dont think I ever used her, dont know why but on my other characters I never did. I always seemed to have good luck with Kendra. At one point I was using her when I was at 10th or 11th level. Seemed to always work fine

Thanks for the advice, I will try when I actually feel like playing again. I hvae toa dmit that this kinda soured me on playing again tonight...

[varusso]

I did have the cleric on defensive mode but I did forget about passive. I might try that but I will have to remember to tell them to heal me or I will kill myself. One way or the other Im gonna get killed....lol :D

As far as Flower goes, I dont think I ever used her, dont know why but on my other characters I never did. I always seemed to have good luck with Kendra. At one point I was using her when I was at 10th or 11th level. Seemed to always work fine

Thanks for the advice, I will try when I actually feel like playing again. I hvae toa dmit that this kinda soured me on playing again tonight...

Another Pro Tip:
I actually have the hireling command bar set to hotkeys, so I can tell them what to do with a simple keypress, rather than mousing to it and clicking it. This is fundamentally the same as hitting a hotkey for your heal spell or HP pot. The DOWNside of this is that, while all hirelings have the same movement commands and aggression modes in the same spots on their bars, their spells and abilities are in different positions. This means you have to take a moment when you first summon a new hireling, to familiarize yourself with which hotkey will actually be your heal button(s) with that particular hireling. If you use the same hireling for an extended amount of time, not much of an issue, though. And really, you get used to it after a while. Or you load up on pots :D

[ceiswyn]

Its frustrating to fail a quest not because i did someonething wrong but because hirelings cant follow the most simple commands.

But you didn't fail. You /ragequit. Why didn't you try to go it alone?

Sure the hireling AI sucks like a very sucky thing, but I think you did make an error in trying to retrieve your pocket cleric after they'd done the stupid and suicided. Soloing the last part is... tricky... but it sounds like you had it half-done by then anyway, so finishing solo would have been a way better use of resources than half-killing yourself getting the stone.

[rocky0]

Well that is true that I didnt actually fail the quest but I dont think it was able to be saved. My health was low, health pots were low, shrine was alreayd used, and the bad guys were in big numbers. I should have tried to fight through, I was just so irritated at this point.

My fault I know

[Falco_Easts]

I ran with the lvl 16 FS hireling today. Ran Delirium with my Pali 16 with him on passive. Kept me healed no worries at all. He must have thought "screw you having all the fun" because next quest was Mired in Kobolds and he was nuking everything in sight while still being in passive mode. Didn;t mind, it he actaulyl made it more fun and faster but a little consistency would be nice :)

[varusso]

I ran with the lvl 16 FS hireling today. Ran Delirium with my Pali 16 with him on passive. Kept me healed no worries at all. He must have thought "screw you having all the fun" because next quest was Mired in Kobolds and he was nuking everything in sight while still being in passive mode. Didn;t mind, it he actaulyl made it more fun and faster but a little consistency would be nice :)

If you had him in passive mode, then he wasnt doing anything unless you were pushing his buttons. Literally.

[kitsune_ko]

I actually saw something fairly amusing yesterday with a cleric hirling.

We were running Deleras on elite to get a guildmate favor, and in the process of running the quest somehow his cleric hirling managed to die. I was at the shrine at the time and I see this hireling ghost come running to the shine room and I think to myself "Nice! They are smart enough to revive themselves when they know a shrine is near"

I was quite impressed by this AI behaviour, right up to the point where it ran up to the rest shrine, then just stood there until it was called back to its soul stone. Then it runs in yet again, just stands by the rest shrine, and recalls.

I think this repeated 3 times until my guildmate retrieved the stone; then manually directed the hirling to the correct shrine. Close, but no bananna.


Kit

[Faerbaste]

I have always been convinced that hirelings are actually very smart and that their dumb behaviour is deliberate. Much like the sort of behaviour you'd get from a teenager who is asked to help around the house instead of being allowed to go out with their friends.

[varusso]

I actually saw something fairly amusing yesterday with a cleric hirling.

We were running Deleras on elite to get a guildmate favor, and in the process of running the quest somehow his cleric hirling managed to die. I was at the shrine at the time and I see this hireling ghost come running to the shine room and I think to myself "Nice! They are smart enough to revive themselves when they know a shrine is near"

I was quite impressed by this AI behaviour, right up to the point where it ran up to the rest shrine, then just stood there until it was called back to its soul stone. Then it runs in yet again, just stands by the rest shrine, and recalls.

I think this repeated 3 times until my guildmate retrieved the stone; then manually directed the hirling to the correct shrine. Close, but no bananna.


Kit

You sure it was a hireling? Sounds like at least half a dozen players I have met O.o

Oddly enough, hirelings WILL try to use the shrine if they are close enough, all on their own. Sometimes they will even pick up your Soulstone without being asked. The problem is, hirelings get an 'out of range' error alot of times when attempting to use the shrine, even when they are right next to it. (Click on the shrine, tell the hireling to use it, and you will often get the error, and the hireling stands there like an idiot). What you saw was probably the hireling trying to use the shrine, getting the error, then stopping. You may or may not get the error message when they are trying to use the shrine on their own (sometimes you do, sometimes you dont). Same with levers, etc. The only way I have found to fix this is to spam the USE button until they actually execute. Happens with the rest shrine, too.

[donfilibuster]

Pathing problems are common when the route is too complex.
They recommend to bug report them noting the name of the hireling and the spot in the path that gives trouble.

You may get used to it after a while and know when to park your hireling and thus avoid some of the issues with vertical terrain.
This is specially true when they are actively attacking, as they will try to run to foes by doing a long way around.
Like on the chamber of raiyum, where you may want them parked yet keep trying to run upstairs.
And through traps, but hey, can't blame them when the lich itself tends to forget about his traps.

Other times you just find a spot where they can't path, such as the entrance to outer splinterskull.
Most of these times you just have to walk a little further so it teleports to you.
(the problem here is they might run into the bug that makes them ragequit, literally)

Another issue is when they try to path around an obstacle and end up running a long way and back for no reason.
Like in the maze of crucible, they might be in front of the lever yet try to move to you before using it, which may mean crossing the whole maze twice.

[Falco_Easts]

If you had him in passive mode, then he wasnt doing anything unless you were pushing his buttons. Literally.

How so? Passive will follow and heal. In this case, follow and heal AND nuke.
It was like one quest he behaved as if in aggresive mode mode despite being set to passive.

[taurolyon]

That's a rough ambush.

Did you try toggling other hireling modes such as switching him/her to passive/aggressive then back to defensive. A lot of times this will toggle the AI and reset it, and the hireling will become responsive and begin working again.

I know in a lot of obsticle/jumping quests, you basically have to keep spamming the follow button on the hireling bar, otherwise the hireling AI will just stay on the level you just jumped from, and will not come to you unless called using the follow button. From my experience, follow tends to be on a lower priority than all other spell casts (so it won't interfere with heal casts), but it is above melee attack, so don't hesitate to spam this button to get this hireling to stick by your side.

Mostly playing a rogue, I've often been designated the hireling pilot when healers are shorthanded, and I try to do the best with the tools at hand.
It's always best to keep the tools well within reach!

I've often been commented that I'm as good as (if not better than some*) live healers.

[uthanak69]

Sometimes hirelings are a pain, sometimes not...kinda like real players... ;)

[Tom318]

Ok Ok I know there have been many threads about the hirelings but it seems that the situation is getting worse or they are getting dumber or something. I just TRIED to do the last quest in the Sharm Syndicate quest, not a major chain I know, with my 7th level Dwarf. I figured I should be able to handle it so I went in on Elite. I had no trouble until the last part of the quest, where you exit to the marketplace.

So I am going around the ledges and trying to pick off one or two bad guys before I jump down into the mess. I start getting hit pretty hard from the archers and the spellcasters and I am close to dying but I am not being healed. My hireling cleric is still STUCK around a few boxes. It seems that the follow logic really cant follow and they get hung up on obstacles. Luckily I see it in time and manage to make it back to get healed. So I move forward again, this time doing my best to bring him with me.

So I get to the point across from the warforged and I head to the far side to clear out the archers above. I never drop down to ground level but for some reason, my cleric decided to run down there. Needless to say, he gets killed and he never made an attempt to move back where I was even though I made many requests for him to do so.

So I jump down to get his stone, had a hard time in finding it because he was running AWAY from me before he died, but I manage to find it and get back to a shrine with maybe 10 points of health left. So he comes back to life and we push forward again. This time I give him the stay command, I figure I will fight then head back to him and attempt to keep him alive. I engage another archer and when again my cleric hireling who is not to move, comes charging by me and drops down AGAIN to fight. He stands there not doing anything and of course gets killed. At this point I am so fed up I just recall out. I then drop him from my pack and I am going to try using Flower.

I wont begin to pretend I know what goes into programming but it cant be that hard to get them to obey commands. Heck, even just to follow the player would have to be somewhat easy to fix. What is the point of having a hireling when it will not even do the most basic of commands, follow and stay. Its frustrating to fail a quest not because i did someonething wrong but because hirelings cant follow the most simple commands.

Sorry for ranting but it kinda just boiled over. I know others have bigger problems in the game than this, just had to let off steam.

/rant off

Yea the clerics do seem to have gotten a lot dumber :P

[little_me]

not only clerics. favored souls also.

and some fighters, who refuse to ATTACK unless you do.

so they hit enemy once if you hit it once, 2nd time after you hit it 2nd time.

i was completely baffled by that. *that* thing should kill trash? and only if i beat them half dead first?

luckily, after first few kills she wisened up and got bit more active.

generally, i've not had trouble with hirelings staying where they should and come, stay, sit, defend, attack things.
telling them to cast certain spells at certain times? yes, they sometimes refuse that. usually when they see monsters. so there is likely some threat=do as i wish trigger there.

hireling AI has gone down the scale though, that i can say. it'd be nice to have it back up to stupid level instead of blind and deaf idiot level though

[varusso]

How so? Passive will follow and heal. In this case, follow and heal AND nuke.
It was like one quest he behaved as if in aggresive mode mode despite being set to passive.

No, PASSIVE will NOT heal or nuke. Its the point of passive. They will only follow you (unless told to stay). In DEFENSIVE they will follow you and help heal, as well nuke if you or they are attacked. In OFFENSIVE they will actively seek out nearby targets and attempt to kill them (although each hireling has some variations in their 'personalities' that vary exactly how, and how aggressively, they do so).

Passive, they just stand there and die like twits and watch you do so as well, unless you specifically give them a command to do something.

[My2Cents]

I'm still having some problems with hireling clerics and FVS always following me and healing me but I figured I'd wait until I could carefully explain what I see before reporting it....

But I've noticed that I seem to have trouble asking my cleric hirelings to cast Blade Barrier and my Wizards to cast Wall of Fire...am not sure if I'm doing something wrong, if there is a message delay for the hireling getting the messages while battle busy, or what....

[varusso]

I'm still having some problems with hireling clerics and FVS always following me and healing me but I figured I'd wait until I could carefully explain what I see before reporting it....

But I've noticed that I seem to have trouble asking my cleric hirelings to cast Blade Barrier and my Wizards to cast Wall of Fire...am not sure if I'm doing something wrong, if there is a message delay for the hireling getting the messages while battle busy, or what....

Target something. Damage spells and abilities on hirelings (esp casters) usually will not fire unless you give them a specific target to use it on. This is true for both AOEs (firewall, etc) and direct damage spells (magic missile, etc). The hireling will even try to run up within firing distance of the target; if the target is too far away, however, the hireling will run up (usually actually IN RANGE), you will get an out of range error, and the hireling will run back without actually doing anything -- similar to its behavior at shrines. Play with it and find the right balance for each one, but thats the gist.

To stop them following you, set them to passive (not defensive) and click the stay button. Make sure they are actually staying; toggling the button turns stay on and off, so its easy to accidentally deactivate it again. Also, the follow command once again overrides the stay command, so if you tell them to follow,they will ignore stay. If you have them set to BOTH stay and passive, they will just stand there, no matter what, including their death (and yours). If you do ANYTHING else with them, they will attempt to nannybot you and/or come to your current position.

Oh, and you can tell them passive/stay, then tell them to heal you, and they will attempt to run to you, heal you, then run back...keep that in mind when trying to spam heals, as the queued commands can end up borking their responses and result in no heals whlie they are running back and forth between you and their last stay position.

[Falco_Easts]

No, PASSIVE will NOT heal or nuke. Its the point of passive. They will only follow you (unless told to stay). In DEFENSIVE they will follow you and help heal, as well nuke if you or they are attacked. In OFFENSIVE they will actively seek out nearby targets and attempt to kill them (although each hireling has some variations in their 'personalities' that vary exactly how, and how aggressively, they do so).

Passive, they just stand there and die like twits and watch you do so as well, unless you specifically give them a command to do something.

Yeah? Logged on and you are right. Turns out I have never used passive mode :)
Well in that case in DEFENSIVE mode it was continually nuking everything like it was in OFFENSIVE mode.

[varusso]

Yeah? Logged on and you are right. Turns out I have never used passive mode :)
Well in that case in DEFENSIVE mode it was continually nuking everything like it was in OFFENSIVE mode.

Yah, some of the hirelings are programmed to be more aggressive than others, intended to give them 'personality'. Some of them you have to set on fire to get them to attack even in offensive, others zerg like the son of Arlos in defensive O.o I personally seldom take them out of passive for this very reason. There is enough personality in my groups with an AI horning in on my action :D