Yet again, fix hireling AI

[AlcoArgo]

Yes, this has been asked for again and again, I know. Apparently SSG has decided that this is not an issue they give a f*ck about, but hireling AI desperately needs to be fixed. Specifically for this rant: when a hireling has been pegged to stand still they really should stand still rather than run around.

Because of my particular timeslot I often solo quest and will bring a hireling healer along. I have to be very careful, though. If I park the hireling too close to the action then, even though I have pegged the hireling to stand still they will run into the middle of the fight and invariably get killed, leaving me without any heals. Most of the time I can fight through it but when I can't it is extremely frustrating.

How difficult it is to have "do not move" actually mean "do not move"?

In other cases if a hireling has been placed in a safe spot and told not to move the instant that you engage the hireling, it moves. Case in point: Gianthold Tor. When I place a hireling in an alcove near the entrance I expect it to stay there as I will be running around the middle fighting giants. If I do need a heal I swing by and get one but WHY DOES THE HIRELING THEN RUN OUT INTO THE FIGHT? Just stay still.

Yes, the hirelings in question are on passive mode. It makes no difference.

This sucks. This seriously sucks. I will often give deference to the programmers because I am a programmer and I know how things can get funky within a system that I don't know, but this should be trivial. JUST DON'T MOVE.

*end rant*

[kamimitsu]

Yes, this has been asked for again and again, I know. Apparently SSG has decided that this is not an issue they give a f*ck about, but hireling AI desperately needs to be fixed. Specifically for this rant: when a hireling has been pegged to stand still they really should stand still rather than run around.

Because of my particular timeslot I often solo quest and will bring a hireling healer along. I have to be very careful, though. If I park the hireling too close to the action then, even though I have pegged the hireling to stand still they will run into the middle of the fight and invariably get killed, leaving me without any heals. Most of the time I can fight through it but when I can't it is extremely frustrating.

How difficult it is to have "do not move" actually mean "do not move"?

In other cases if a hireling has been placed in a safe spot and told not to move the instant that you engage the hireling, it moves. Case in point: Gianthold Tor. When I place a hireling in an alcove near the entrance I expect it to stay there as I will be running around the middle fighting giants. If I do need a heal I swing by and get one but WHY DOES THE HIRELING THEN RUN OUT INTO THE FIGHT? Just stay still.

Yes, the hirelings in question are on passive mode. It makes no difference.

This sucks. This seriously sucks. I will often give deference to the programmers because I am a programmer and I know how things can get funky within a system that I don't know, but this should be trivial. JUST DON'T MOVE.

*end rant*

I totally agree on the DON'T MOVE thing. If pinned, there is no reason they shouldn't stay rooted like a 1000 year old oak. I have a pretty lenghty wish-list of hireling changes, but that is #1 through #3 at the top of this list. Trying to get the hireling to lever pull for you in Crucible is an exercise in patience and serenity. I'm surprised my keyboard has survived the various attempts I've made (and not been smashed to bits against the wall of my office/playroom).

That said, the Devs have previously stated that they are reluctant to fiddle with hireling AI again (wish I could find the post, but I remember it clearly) as every attempt only ends up breaking something else and making all kinds of trouble. My impression and memory was that they are deeply afraid to meddle, as doing so had implications farther reaching than hireline behavior alone.

[Evean]

JUST DON'T MOVE.

My favourite: Whenever I use hand-guy to haste kobolds for a challenge, after clicking haste, the hire almost always runs off down a hallway for no reason at all. When they’re parked. And passive. What really makes me laugh is not how f'd up this is, but that it’s not 100% consistent. Sometimes they actually don’t move, like they’re supposed to.

[RockHeavy]

JUST DON'T MOVE.

This should be easy to implement as the code is clearly already present in the game - all hirelings consistently stand stock still and refuse to move... whenever they are in the AoE of a trap!

[LightBear]

What makes this difficult apparently is:

The follow me vs stand your ground toggle can have 8 different meanings, which rely on the toggles fight, defend, snooze, action.
What the hire does prob depends on the type AI given to the hire, like if your cleric or FvS has an offensive spell in their activation slots it is more likely to run off and do bad things like blowing through their entire sp bar with spamming Cometfalls in a single fight.

Second thing that seems to be hard (program wise) is for the hire to know where it is vs where it perceives the action should take place.
That last one when no hard target has been given can easily still hold the last known target value.
(Not that you prob want that but still.)

[Bjond]

Second thing that seems to be hard (program wise) is for the hire to know where it is vs where it perceives the action should take place.

From a general coding standpoint, it's trivial. The only "hard" problem is pathing. From a DDO standpoint, if you see a mob able to do something (like buff or heal friendlies, stand still, chase you down, try to maintain range, etc), it should be trivial for SSG to add that functionality to hires.

I suspect they don't want to make the game too easy to solo. Because if you had a hire that actually worked, solo'ing would be ridiculously easy even for bad builds -- much the same way solo'ing is easy in SWTOR, a game with working "hires" and where anyone can solo the most difficult group content. SSG might also be worried about supplanting real healers. For comparison, even in SWTOR where a hire is better than about 2/3 of the players, almost everyone will punt a hire to take a real. And, well, in DDO there really aren't any healer players to supplant.