Should I Expect Bad AI. . .

[ImFour20]

. . .because this is a Free to Play game?

Whether it's due to poor coding. . .or poor server response with the code. . .something HAS to be done with the AI system that hirelings and the Artificer dog uses.

Whether it's. . .

- A divine hireling never healing me
- Artificer dog staring around boxes(when he has the box hunter enhancement) to never break a box
- Artificer dog being issued a command(like trip) yet he continues to chase and attack some other target he's after.

I could only imagine how useless the DPS/Tank hirelings are.

Call me spoiled, since I just came back from a pay to play MMO, but your companions/hirelings should 'just work'. I shouldn't have to fight with them to get it to break a box or attack a certain mob. You guys have no idea how spoiled I am from this last game with having a pocket healer as a companion/hireling and it's actually able to keep my DPS/Tank toon alive.

This bug alone is going to turn away SOOOOOOO many potential players. I know if I was new to DDO and was a DPS/Tank toon and assumed I was supposed to get through quests with cleric hirelings. . .I would NEVER make it out of Korthos. Yes I know thew work around(to get hp pots), but new players wont. . .and they shouldn't have to figure it out. A new gamer is going to look at these hirelings/dogs and think the rest of the game is poorly coded like this.

tl:dr - If Turbine is going to offer a service/feature like they do with the hirelings and the dogs, they should work. If not it's going to turn away a LOT of potential new customers/players.

[easyaction]

This bug alone is going to turn away SOOOOOOO many potential players. I know if I was new to DDO and was a DPS/Tank toon and assumed I was supposed to get through quests with cleric hirelings. . .I would NEVER make it out of Korthos.

i never knew they had hirelings in korthos, nor did i use one until i hit lvl 10. and i soloed a lot. then i found grouping, then i found hirelings. you aren't SUPPOSED to get through quests with a hireling, its an option. just like grouping is an option... a better option.

Yes I know thew work around(to get hp pots), but new players wont. . .and they shouldn't have to figure it out. A new gamer is going to look at these DUMB hirelings/dogs and think the rest of the game is poorly coded like this.

the work around for hirelings isnt pots, its actually the other way around. hirelings should be a last resort, if you cant pot your way through or Pug your way through, then try a hireling, but they sure as hell arent the meat and potato mechanic of this game. CRUTCH i scream, CRUTCH!!! buuuuuut..... i do agree, they need to make those bastards smarter, what i disagree is that its going to turn away valuable patronage.


oh, btw, you're spoiled.

[Zenthalas]

[Welcome to DDO! Sorry to hear that you're having pet problems]

[Matuse]

You guys have no idea how spoiled I am from this last game with having a pocket healer as a companion/hireling and it's actually able to keep my DPS/Tank toon alive.

We actually do know how spoiled you are from a super EZ mode game where you have to deliberately TRY to die, and where your companion has bottomless resources and all the AI of a turnip.

Also, no traps in that game. At all.

[Zyerz]

Just because its free to play doesnt mean the game has crappy AI. Just FYI DDO makes a lot of money from the non vip players, and also it has been pay to play since the beginning and recently became free to play... The AI isnt that good because the game [COLOR="Red" Is not designed for using automated npc's to follow you around and heal you[/COLOR]. Its designed for interacting with real people in a fantasy roleplaying setting.

Please stop complaining about things that have been discussed time and time again. The devs mentioned theyd try and improve hirelings for the expansion, and if not, for update 14. Its an issue, like any other issue in any other situaton. I personally dont really use hirelings, and if I do, I know they'll disobey commands and stand in the traps.... You get used to it and move on.
Its like complaining because your house needs remodeling and it will take a year to be done. Complaining wont make it go faster. You need time to fix things. The devs are testing a new engine for ddo and it's on lammania. All these things will be fixed soon.

[yawumpus]

Thank you for the feedback guys.

We, designers, try to make the encounters unique and interesting first, challenging second. Some things we have control over, some we don't, as to the inflated hitpoints, those come with the expectation of players' dps output. If you balance a dungeon for a six man group, the fights will feel 'slow' to a solo player, and vice versa, a dungeon balanced for solo play will cause a full group to enter a zerging trance as you try to get a hit in before the monster falls down dead.

Monster AI tends to be a limitation of the engine - smart AIs cause more server lag. Boy am I going to get quoted on that or what.

I might be rumbling after a long day and coming down with a cold, but I guess all I wanted to say here is that by all means post your feedback. At the end of the day it's all about you having fun in our game.

We want to hear when you do and we definitely want to hear when you don't. What worked and what didn't: it helps us make you a better game.

Thanks.

If monster AI is a limitation of the engine, certainly friendly NPC AI is equally likely to summon the lag monster. Still, try out various hirelings: some are less stupid than others. Remember, all you often need a hireling is to grab a switch or stand in one spot (and that can be hard enough sometimes).

Hireling clerics already have given a generation of DDO players a bad idea of how human players should play their clerics. A hireling will dump mana into you to try to keep you alive (eventually). Some of them might notice their own wounds and heal them as well (bring those along). They will also keep chugging SP pots one after another (only expect human players to do this if you have already handed them the pots to chug).

Play without a hireling to learn the game. You never get a good feel to how much damage you are taking and how much of a mana sponge you are with a hireling. A hireling will simply keep dumping mana until killed. A player has to balance healing you vs. healing the rest of the party, buffing, and effective offensive casting (hint, it is much, much smarter to command the ogre to lie down than to try to heal the barbarian after he has taken a few crits from an ogre. If you simply expect the cleric to keep pouring sp into you, you will be shocked when the healer cuts you off and if feeling generous takes you to a res/rest shrine.

[Talias006]

If not it's going to turn away a LOT of potential new customers/players.

Honestly, and this goes with knowing the game has been F2P for quite a while already, this is a semi-devil's advocate:
The problems you see have had a long enough time to potentially turn away a large sum of players.
The problems you face have had plenty of time to turn player retention around and into an exodus.

One of these is true. The other is just an unspoken possibility that surrounds ALL MMO's.

[ImFour20]

i never knew they had hirelings in korthos, nor did i use one until i hit lvl 10. and i soloed a lot. then i found grouping, then i found hirelings. you aren't SUPPOSED to get through quests with a hireling, its an option. just like grouping is an option... a better option.

ty for telling me your experience

buuuuuut..... i do agree, they need to make those bastards smarter, what i disagree is that its going to turn away valuable patronage.

when someone pays for a class, like artificer. and they dont even have the code running properly enough to get your dog to break boxes as you walk by them. that's gonna turn away customers.

same thing with the dog not attacking the person I tell it to. a new player is going to look at that and laugh. not because it's funny, but because it's sad.

oh, btw, you're spoiled.

I know

Go back to SWTOR then, problem solved.

thankfully ddo doesn't pay you to work for them. this is a HUGE opportunity for DDO to pick up straggling swtor players while they're disappointed, bored, and waiting for things like guild wars 2.

We actually do know how spoiled you are from a super EZ mode game where you have to deliberately TRY to die, and where your companion has bottomless resources and all the AI of a turnip.

Also, no traps in that game. At all.

now you're just trolling. yes the game is easy, but for different reasons(guaranteed loot letting you get best in slot gear in like a week)

swtor doesn't have bottomless resources. yes they do regen, but the fights are setup WAAAAY differently than in ddo. many times in swtor you will come out of a group of trash mobs with 5% hp left. then of course you regen before going onto the next one, but the scale of the fights are on a different level than in ddo where it's drawn out from shrine to shrine.

sad troll is sad

Just because its free to play doesnt mean the game has crappy AI. Just FYI DDO makes a lot of money from the non vip players, and also it has been pay to play since the beginning and recently became free to play... The AI isnt that good because the game [COLOR="Red" Is not designed for using automated npc's to follow you around and heal you[/COLOR]. Its designed for interacting with real people in a fantasy roleplaying setting.

Please stop complaining about things that have been discussed time and time again. The devs mentioned theyd try and improve hirelings for the expansion, and if not, for update 14. Its an issue, like any other issue in any other situaton. I personally dont really use hirelings, and if I do, I know they'll disobey commands and stand in the traps.... You get used to it and move on.
Its like complaining because your house needs remodeling and it will take a year to be done. Complaining wont make it go faster. You need time to fix things. The devs are testing a new engine for ddo and it's on lammania. All these things will be fixed soon.

I was giving ddo the benefit of the doubt, blaming the crappy AI engine on the fact that turbine/wb can't afford to properly write this code. yes, i've spent some money on this game, a lot more than i would have liked, which makes me even more ****ed when I still see STUPID bugs in the game like this.

devs have mentioned about improving hireling AI all the way back to update 9 and 10. im just communicating to turbine that this needs to be a higher priority than they're making it out to be. sorry if you saying this will be fixed soon(tm) doesn't mean much to me. I've been hearing it for 2 years.

If monster AI is a limitation of the engine, certainly friendly NPC AI is equally likely to summon the lag monster. Still, try out various hirelings: some are less stupid than others. Remember, all you often need a hireling is to grab a switch or stand in one spot (and that can be hard enough sometimes).

Hireling clerics already have given a generation of DDO players a bad idea of how human players should play their clerics. A hireling will dump mana into you to try to keep you alive (eventually). Some of them might notice their own wounds and heal them as well (bring those along). They will also keep chugging SP pots one after another (only expect human players to do this if you have already handed them the pots to chug).

Play without a hireling to learn the game. You never get a good feel to how much damage you are taking and how much of a mana sponge you are with a hireling. A hireling will simply keep dumping mana until killed. A player has to balance healing you vs. healing the rest of the party, buffing, and effective offensive casting (hint, it is much, much smarter to command the ogre to lie down than to try to heal the barbarian after he has taken a few crits from an ogre. If you simply expect the cleric to keep pouring sp into you, you will be shocked when the healer cuts you off and if feeling generous takes you to a res/rest shrine.

you're acting like i use hirelings daily or that I dont know how the play the game. my reason for making the thread is from my experience with the artificer dog. which is just logical to assume they're running on the same code as the hirelings. and look, no one has come in saying 'the hirelings work now' so i assumed right.

Honestly, and this goes with knowing the game has been F2P for quite a while already, this is a semi-devil's advocate:
The problems you see have had a long enough time to potentially turn away a large sum of players.
The problems you face have had plenty of time to turn player retention around and into an exodus.

One of these is true. The other is just an unspoken possibility that surrounds ALL MMO's.

im not spouting doom and saying that unless you fix hirelings the game will fail. just pointing something out

btw - how DARE someone come into a suggestion forum and ask the devs to fix a certain aspect of the game that has been broken for YEARS.

[Havok.cry]

Talking about neg rep you get is against the rules, FYI. However, you can contest the neg rep by reporting your own post and in the comments say that your contesting neg rep.

On topic, /signed to fixing minions. Not only would I like them to work properly, I also want them castrated for saying things like, "You should heal me" to a barbarian, while they have full bluebar... Too bad bits of code cant feel pain. And the arti dogs really need attention, although they have gotten better. I reccomend unsummoning them outside of quests, they seem to bug out less for me when I do that.

[Delt]

blaaargh *snip*

I actually don't have much feedback on hirelings -- to be honest I never used them except as an insurance rez or sp battery while soloing. I do know their AI is a hell of a lot better than it used to be and if your main complaint is "my dog don't hit boxes!", then...well...big deal, report the issue and move on.

As an ex-SWtOR player, I find your comparison funny. With Mythic's...pardon me, Bioware's huge budget, companions still have the same corrupt/non-responsive bugs from beta.

I like the persistent "pet" nature of swtor companions though --- hopefully turbine adopts that.

[ImFour20]

Talking about neg rep you get is against the rules, FYI. However, you can contest the neg rep by reporting your own post and in the comments say that your contesting neg rep.

On topic, /signed to fixing minions. Not only would I like them to work properly, I also want them castrated for saying things like, "You should heal me" to a barbarian, while they have full bluebar... Too bad bits of code cant feel pain. And the arti dogs really need attention, although they have gotten better. I reccomend unsummoning them outside of quests, they seem to bug out less for me when I do that.

woot, a constructive post. ty

I actually don't have much feedback on hirelings -- to be honest I never used them except as an insurance rez or sp battery while soloing. I do know their AI is a hell of a lot better than it used to be and if your main complaint is "my dog don't hit boxes!", then...well...big deal, report the issue and move on.

As an ex-SWtOR player, I find your comparison funny. With Mythic's...pardon me, Bioware's huge budget, companions still have the same corrupt/non-responsive bugs from beta.

I like the persistent "pet" nature of swtor companions though --- hopefully turbine adopts that.

thats great that you dont use hirelings. neither do i. but a lot of new players will since they dont have a guild to grind lvls with, nor do they have the gear/knowledge from 2+ TR lives to solo them. but saying because YOU dont use hirelings they dont need work is very ignorant.

funny, because i've seen zero improvements on the AI system. unless there was one hireling that just did absolutely nothing. . .and they fixed it to work like all the other hirelings.

report the bug? you mean by clicking the in-game bug report tool and it doing nothing. im reporting it via the forums like I always did since this 'feature' is broken too.

oo nice jab at Bioware by calling them Mythic. i never played the swtor beta, so i have no idea what specific bugs you're talking about. but guess what, the tank companions tank, the dps companions dps, and the healing ones actually heal you enough to keep you alive. if I click an ability on the companion toolbar, they execute that command, not spin in circles chasing an irrelevant mob

im not saying ddo needs to be exactly like swtor. nor am i saying that turbine needs to spend 200 million to fix the hireling/pet AI. but something needs to be done.

[FranOhmsford]

I do know their AI is a hell of a lot better than it used to be

Say what?

When I started playing this game {around 2 years ago now} the hirelings were far far better than they are now*.

Somewhere around update 8 or 9 the devs messed with them and over the next few updates went back in and messed around some more.

Today's hirelings are indeed better than they were after update 8? But are nowhere near where they were beforehand.

I regularly use hirelings btw - Have done since lvl 1 {Willowisp} and right up to my capped toons {Wyoh}.

The Arti dogs were amazing when they first came out - Then the devs went and messed with them {clearly they were just too good} and made them the borked mutts they are today.

*Kendra for instance used to own Dryden's Crypt - It was all I could do to keep up with her - Try taking her in there now.
Willowisp went into Harbour quests with me on elite back when I started playing this game - Nowadays she's out of Spell Points in the first room.
K'Zurth used to put the hammer down with Firewalls all over the place - He got nerfed and now spams Enervation instead {Gets the same amount of aggro but has no way to deal with it so dies instantly}.

There are still some hirelings btw with the opposite issue of being OP - Examples include:

Zeran - Has Acid Blast, Haste and Displacement on his bar {all Lvl 3 spells} and spams Chain Missiles as well as basic MM at Lvl 5.
Kelorn - Has Mechanic Repair on his bar {Prestige enhancement} at Lvl 5.

I'm also pretty certain that Duerim should not have Mass Deathward - The icon on his bar shows as Deathward {He casts Mass}.

[BOgre]

1) I agree that DDO's AI, in general, is about a decade behind the curve. I've said it before, and i'll say it until it's fixed: Devs, go play quake 2 with Eraser, Reaper, and their friends. 20 year old AI and it's miles above what we have here.

2) Hireling AI has been improved a TON in the last few updates. It was atrocious before, but now is actually pretty reliable. If your divine hireling is having trouble, switch him or her to offensive mode. Also, try a FvS instead of a Clr. Some of the souls are REALLy good... well, relatively.

3) Learn to use your hires based on what you know about them. That is, Park them in safety. Use their passive mode when necessary. Hotkey their 2 or 3 main spells, as well as their Come Here command, and learn to tab (or F1, F2) to targets and hotkey to attack or heal.

F) Yes, AI development could use a major injection of $ and talent. No, hirelings aren't useless.

[Sgt_Hart]

Next time they turn dumb.. try this.

1. Set AI selector to Passive.
2. Set AI selector to Defensive.
3. Set AI selector to Active.

nine out of then times, that fixes 'em for me.