Hirelings Fixed????

[crimsonknights2]

What I really want to know about Update 10 is .... Have they fixed the hirelings? Will they heal me now? Will they heal themselves? Will they stay a safe distance away from me so they don't die from splash damage? ETC.

[Thoon]

There are no changes to hirelings in Update 10.

[crimsonknights2]

I'm sorry to hear that. Is that because of time and scope constraints, or is there a lack of recognition of just how badly they are performing now?

[Tolero]

I'm sorry to hear that. Is that because of time and scope constraints, or is there a lack of recognition of just how badly they are performing now?

Mostly lack of repro until very recently. We have a lot of good reports and circumstances where we can get the bad behavior to happen, it's just a question of them doing brain surgery to figure out why it's happening now.

Issues with them are not out of mind. (no pun intended).

[crimsonknights2]

That makes sense, thank you both for your very timely and helpful responses. I (and I'm sure many others) look forward to seeing these ones fixed. If you need screen shots or more information on what hires are causing the issues and when, let us know!

[Scraap]

Any particular verified actions we can take to avoid putting them under enough pressure to spaz out? (Perhaps even Known Issues worthy for the time being?)

[danotmano1998]

Mostly lack of repro until very recently. We have a lot of good reports and circumstances where we can get the bad behavior to happen, it's just a question of them doing brain surgery to figure out why it's happening now.

Issues with them are not out of mind. (no pun intended).

It seems like whenever there is an NPC that is not full of health, the clerics will spam heals on them. I would start by checking on the NPC's that the clerics are obsessing over and see if they are listed as "wounded" somehow.

Also, you may want to check the % threshold of healing. Many times they will not heal until you get very very low on health. Is this because the threshold is set too low?

Or.. you could just remove the "let's heal every npc in the party" option completely and set it back to pre U9. I don't mind having to manually tell the cleric to heal others. It's my health that I'm mostly concerned with. (And I think you will find many others that agree)

[Seikojin]

Mostly lack of repro until very recently. We have a lot of good reports and circumstances where we can get the bad behavior to happen, it's just a question of them doing brain surgery to figure out why it's happening now.

Issues with them are not out of mind. (no pun intended).

Any workarounds to offer that won't violate any disclosure agreements?

[Ryiah]

Mostly lack of repro until very recently. We have a lot of good reports and circumstances where we can get the bad behavior to happen, it's just a question of them doing brain surgery to figure out why it's happening now.

How about just reverting to the old version until the developers have determined what went wrong? Hirelings as they stand are barely useful and only if you babysit them all the time.

[Nysrock]

It seems like whenever there is an NPC that is not full of health, the clerics will spam heals on them. I would start by checking on the NPC's that the clerics are obsessing over and see if they are listed as "wounded" somehow.

Also, you may want to check the % threshold of healing. Many times they will not heal until you get very very low on health. Is this because the threshold is set too low?

Or.. you could just remove the "let's heal every npc in the party" option completely and set it back to pre U9. I don't mind having to manually tell the cleric to heal others. It's my health that I'm mostly concerned with. (And I think you will find many others that agree)

It is not just NPCs that they spam heal. Try using a GS clickie to summon an earth elemental sometime. I swear everything single NPC healer is obsessed with them.

[Robai]

How about these UI options for hirelings:
- heal NPC yes/no
- don't heal heal summons yes/no (sometimes I like when Klin heals his Hezrou)
- heal party members yes/no
- only heal (no damaging spells, no attacks, etc.) yes/no

Each hireling has some specific list of spells (some spells are automatically cast, but before buying hireling I can only see the list of clickable spells, automatically cast spells are more important).
But I'd like to be able to choose:
- which spells will be clickable
- which spells will be automatically cast (especially Greater Restoration needed here, I'm still not sure if there is any hireling, who automatically restores negatives levels, none of them did that for me automatically so far and I hate to click on that button in the middle of the fight)

[Zachski]

Will we potentially see a fix for Hirelings in, say, a 10.1 patch?

[thouston]

There are no changes to hirelings in Update 10.

so they are still more of a liability than an asset

[Aeolwind]

I could only WISH hirelings were as intent on healing me as they were pets. I counted up a full 30 seconds of them standing next me with less than 10% life before they automatically healed me. The air elemental I had up though was healed (The big one) every time an arrow hit it.

Tried running the Lofts on hard with them. I assure you, I caused a spike in spirit cake sales.

[justhavinfun]

Alot of the problems with the cleric hirelings seem to stem from the fact that people wanted them to automatically heal other party members. Well we got that. Who can blame them just because they consider every npc, summoned creature, and charmed mob as part of the party. All of the above are fighting on the side of the party if even for a short period of time. Since we all know that npcs like Coyle are completely gimp of course it takes the spaming of every spell point a hireling has in less than 30 seconds to keep him alive.

Well I guess this just goes to prove that you should watch what you ask for you just may get it.

[Zachski]

Alot of the problems with the cleric hirelings seem to stem from the fact that people wanted them to automatically heal other party members. Well we got that. Who can blame them just because they consider every npc, summoned creature, and charmed mob as part of the party. All of the above are fighting on the side of the party if even for a short period of time. Since we all know that npcs like Coyle are completely gimp of course it takes the spaming of every spell point a hireling has in less than 30 seconds to keep him alive.

Well I guess this just goes to prove that you should watch what you ask for you just may get it.

Except for the fact that hirelings will continuously heal allies that are at full health while ignoring the fact that the player is dying.

So no, we didn't get anything close to what we asked for. We got a buggy mess.

[Faent]

The way hirelings treat traps is hilarious. They are all completely blind, and will simply stand in traps. Funnier is when you're running two cleric hirelings. Hireling 1 tries to make it through a trap. He takes damage. Hireling 2 runs into the trap to heal Hireling 1. Hireling 2 takes damage. Hireling 1 and 2 then stand in the trap healing each other until they both die. Awesome. =)

[Sleepsalot]

It is The Hireling AI scripts that seem to be their biggest issue. They just do not follow what you ask of them. Like a new Puppy does what it wants and needs to be trained. AI for the hirelings needs a major revamp. Although I find the Cleric's the worst of the Lot
Sleeps

[rocky0]

Its hard to use the hirelings right now because there are so many ways they are not helpful in a quest, some stated by others already:

-refusal to heal players no matter how low the health or how many times you tell them to heal you. Of course those dogs you rescue in "Where there's smoke.... are always constantly healed, whether they are injured or not

-they seem to have a terrible time in just following, many times they get hung up or stuck and take forever to get to your location even after repeated calls

-traps and dying really don't need more elaboration as it seems well known what they do or do not do

-this one really frustrates me - unless you have your hireling on passive setting, they rush off and attack whatever enemy happens to be near by. Then they return to your group bring whatever mobs they encoutered with them

-to stop the above from happening you put your hireling on passive and this stops. Sadly this causes another issue to arise. When you take your hireling off of passive their follow logic seems even more messed up. They stay farther behind you and unless you call them, they stay out of a room no matter what is happening inside. If you get into a fight and forget to call them, you could have a tough time

Obviously these are my own experiences and they could be different than others. Honestly, I was hoping that a fix for them would be in update 10 because they do need serious work. I can understand trying to figure out why they do what they do can be hard, just was hoping for a positive fix for them this time around

[uthanak69]

Mostly lack of repro until very recently. We have a lot of good reports and circumstances where we can get the bad behavior to happen, it's just a question of them doing brain surgery to figure out why it's happening now.

Issues with them are not out of mind. (no pun intended).

Could it be because of the changes that were made to them, to have them heal party members? Myself and some friends are guessing that those changes broke their AI. Is that possible?