Hireling customizable AI

[Lynix]

Hey, if this has been posted / suggested before, I'm sorry.

I love DDO. It would be my favorite MMO to play if it wasn't because of a few things:

1) I live in Europe, and I only knew about the game after the European servers were shut down. This means I have to play with 120-200 ping, regardless of the server. This means that as a Monk, I'm flying all over the place and "rubber banding" everywhere. (I go forward for 10 meters on my screen, then get teleported back 5 as the server cannot keep up. Not all the time but enough for it to get annoying) I could play with this, but I have one other major issue.

2) As I live in Europe, and I have little friends over here to play with, which means I pretty much can't play. I'm almost only online in off-peak hours so it's hard to find anyone. So I have to resort to using hirelings. My main issue is the hirelings being impossible to work with. They will either spend literally all of their mana casting spells you don't want them to (which also means they can't heal you when you need it), or they just straight up wont heal you when you need them to.

Anyways, on to the actual point of this.

I would love to see a tactics system implemented like the one in the Dragon Age games.

They have a system in which you have "tactical slots" for them, allowing you to customize what they do when.


As an example, a healing hireling could look like this: "When ally falls below 50% health, Cast: Cure Serious Wounds" or "When ally gets effect, Negative Level, Cast: Restoration"
A sorcerer hireling could look like this: "When enemy is clustered with at least 3 enemies, Cast: Fireball" or "When Enemy is attacking, "X": Cast Blindness" (Here you can set X to be a party member or a class ideally)
A tanking hireling could look like this: "When Ally is, attacked, Cast: Intimidate" or "If Enemy is type: Spell caster, Cast: Trip"

Then allow the players to fill in however many tactical slots with tactics that they want. This will allow hirelings to function how the player wants them to, not how the game feels like it wants them to.
It would also, in my opinion, make it feel more rewarding when beating a dungeon with hirelings, and not just like pure luck because the planets aligned and the hirelings performed semi well.

I get that, as it is now, Hirelings probably aren't meant to be a complete replacement to players, but for me, I cannot even complete any dungeons when I get the time to play, as there's little to no players on, and the hirelings are worthless at the moment.


This tactics system could also be used on pets / minions. Making it a lot more enjoyable to play classes with pets and minions.

Sorry for my wall of text, but thank you if you've been with me so far.
DDO really is a great game, and I hope to see at least some improvement on the hireling system, so I can get to enjoy it some more.

-Lynix

--Edit--
Grammar

[bohemian3]

Hey, if this has been posted / suggested before, I'm sorry.

I would love to see a tactics system implemented like the one in the Dragon Age games.

-Lynix

yes, yes, yes!!! I'm resurrecting this old post because this is my number one wish for DDO !!! It's a quite a challenge - dwindling servers, difficulty in PUGs (especially for beginners!), Guildmates on at the same time at similar levels, keeping Turbine profitable. Revamped AI for Hirelings remains my number one wish for DDO as well as the ability to have permanent Hirelings that level with you. I would gladly pay for that.

[Lynix]

yes, yes, yes!!! I'm resurrecting this old post because this is my number one wish for DDO !!! It's a quite a challenge - dwindling servers, difficulty in PUGs (especially for beginners!), Guildmates on at the same time at similar levels, keeping Turbine profitable. Revamped AI for Hirelings remains my number one wish for DDO as well as the ability to have permanent Hirelings that level with you. I would gladly pay for that.

Glad you like it.

Like I said in the post, I really do hope they do something to implement a new hireling system / AI.

All I really want is to get more awesome experiences from the dungeons, as the system it uses with a dungeon master and such is not used in any other game out there as far as I know.

-Lynix

[Uska]

First it would take to much def time and more importantly I want hirelings gone I know I hold unpopular opinion but I feel MMO's should be multiplayer and I hate hirelings so much and I would even if they worked like you desire.

But if they wasted the time needed to do as you wanted I would feel super cheated!

[bsquishwizzy]

Honestly, this is a really dumb idea for hirelings. If you need one, players will spend 20 minutes or more configuring the hirelings before entering a quest, which is 20 minutes of fun time lost.


On the other hand, if DDO were to implement henchmen, sell them as a store item, and allow you to configure their modes of operation - now THAT would work well. Mainly because you'd buy them once, configure them maybe once per level or every couple of levels.

[rosedarkthorn]

If they were to create hirelings that leveled up with you that you could configure the AI for, this would work really well, and I'd be all for it. Not sure it would ever happen though. As it stands, I don't have a lot of problems with the hirelings as they are as long as I use specific ones, but even they mess up sometimes.

[Lynix]

First it would take to much def time and more importantly I want hirelings gone I know I hold unpopular opinion but I feel MMO's should be multiplayer and I hate hirelings so much and I would even if they worked like you desire.

But if they wasted the time needed to do as you wanted I would feel super cheated!

Why would you feel cheated? I get that it could be time spent elsewhere, but hear me out.

It could be kinda neat if you could buy them once (or maybe obtain them via quests or something) and then you got them as more of a companion, rather than a hireling.

You could have your own private adventuring squad of companions. Or you could play with your real friends and get and even better experience. Maybe make it so that you can only do a certain amount of dungeons every day with your companions (maybe they become tired? ) so you couldn't just do everything on your own. I feel a reward for doing it with others, or a penalty for doing it with hirelings could also be in order, but I'll let the devs figure that out.

It was mostly a suggestion so people wouldn't be unable to play from time to time. I know there's been (at least as far as I've heard / seen) problems with not having enough people on the servers, or people requesting server merges.

I'm all for merging servers to get bigger player bases on fewer servers, instead of a smaller amount of players on more servers. But I also feel like this would be a nice way of actually improving on the hireling system they have at the moment, which I feel is broken.

[Uska]

Why would you feel cheated? I get that it could be time spent elsewhere, but hear me out.

It could be kinda neat if you could buy them once (or maybe obtain them via quests or something) and then you got them as more of a companion, rather than a hireling.

You could have your own private adventuring squad of companions. Or you could play with your real friends and get and even better experience. Maybe make it so that you can only do a certain amount of dungeons every day with your companions (maybe they become tired? ) so you couldn't just do everything on your own. I feel a reward for doing it with others, or a penalty for doing it with hirelings could also be in order, but I'll let the devs figure that out.

It was mostly a suggestion so people wouldn't be unable to play from time to time. I know there's been (at least as far as I've heard / seen) problems with not having enough people on the servers, or people requesting server merges.

I'm all for merging servers to get bigger player bases on fewer servers, instead of a smaller amount of players on more servers. But I also feel like this would be a nice way of actually improving on the hireling system they have at the moment, which I feel is broken.

Because I hate hirelings they don't help promote grouping this is a MMO and the dev time need to do this would be entirely wasted for me wasting my sub money in my mind. I would love it if they had never done the darn things.

[Bogenbroom]

I don't think customizable AI really fits the intent of what hirelings are supposed to be. They aren't robots, they are supposed to have individuality, quirks, and personality.

That said, my argument is not "bad idea" so much as I think it would be more fittingly presented as an improved list of orders.

[Uska]

Glad you like it.

Like I said in the post, I really do hope they do something to implement a new hireling system / AI.

All I really want is to get more awesome experiences from the dungeons, as the system it uses with a dungeon master and such is not used in any other game out there as far as I know.

-Lynix

So play with real people

[Lynix]

So play with real people

Please read the entire post before commenting.

With the decline in people playing the game, and people being spread out over more servers, with no realm merging capabilities and me playing from Europe with no European servers (again, Turbine please..) means that I'll always be playing in off-peak hours so there's little to no people around.

Next to that the ms is high enough that I've already had several people complain that while I performed well enough, I was too laggy for them to want to play with me.

It's obvious to me that the hireling AI is not perfect, in any way. Whether you chose to either ignore it, or genuinely don't know (because you only play with other people), it's still bad.

I don't want hirelings to completely replace players, but as it is right now, they're my only option for playing the game.

[Uska]

Please read the entire post before commenting.

With the decline in people playing the game, and people being spread out over more servers, with no realm merging capabilities and me playing from Europe with no European servers (again, Turbine please..) means that I'll always be playing in off-peak hours so there's little to no people around.

Next to that the ms is high enough that I've already had several people complain that while I performed well enough, I was too laggy for them to want to play with me.

It's obvious to me that the hireling AI is not perfect, in any way. Whether you chose to either ignore it, or genuinely don't know (because you only play with other people), it's still bad.

I don't want hirelings to completely replace players, but as it is right now, they're my only option for playing the game.

I work nights and have no problem finding people to play with in the day and before I worked nights I had no problem finding groups and yes both are recently. As to hirelings I hate them even more than I hate the realms (see my sig on how I feel about the realms) if I play solo I do so without the hirelings that I would pay double my current sub to get rid of the stinking things so if they work on the AI for even a nano-second I would consider it a waste of my money.

[ssgcmwatson]

I would be happy if we just had a simple list of AI options, like in Baldur's Gate. Specifically, I would like to be able to set my heal-bots to "heal me only," "heal entire party" or "heal party and friendly NPCs, summoned/charmed monsters, etc".

[Lynix]

I work nights and have no problem finding people to play with in the day and before I worked nights I had no problem finding groups and yes both are recently. As to hirelings I hate them even more than I hate the realms (see my sig on how I feel about the realms) if I play solo I do so without the hirelings that I would pay double my current sub to get rid of the stinking things so if they work on the AI for even a nano-second I would consider it a waste of my money.

What I hear you saying is something along the lines of:

"Well I only do challenges so how DARE they do anything that isn't related to what I pay to play the game for"

Just because you won't use them doesn't mean it's not something that they could / should implement.
I don't usually PvP in other MMO's, but it's still an option. I don't go ranting about how mad I am that they spend time balancing PvP because that's not what I do.

It was a suggestion so that I'd have the option of playing without hearing people complain about my horrible rubber banding.

[Ancient]

Because I hate hirelings they don't help promote grouping this is a MMO and the dev time need to do this would be entirely wasted for me wasting my sub money in my mind. I would love it if they had never done the darn things.

And I'm glad they did, and think this would be a great game enhancement.

[SonilasFx]

raise again! it is a great ideia! when u need run a reaper quest and need bring a hireling healer :X This can save the day.

[cpw_acc]

Nobody seems to have mentioned the fact that hirelings DO already have customised AI.

Right-click on their name in the party and there is an option to bring up a little window with checkboxes that, at least partially, says what actions you want to allow for them.

Of course, in my experience they don't actually work and the checkboxes just appear to reset as soon as you close the window, but at least the thought is there.

[vryxnr]

Nobody seems to have mentioned the fact that hirelings DO already have customised AI.

Right-click on their name in the party and there is an option to bring up a little window with checkboxes that, at least partially, says what actions you want to allow for them.

Of course, in my experience they don't actually work and the checkboxes just appear to reset as soon as you close the window, but at least the thought is there.

This is because every post in this thread save yours and the one before yours was from 3 YEARS ago. Back then, this did not exist. Since then, the customizable UI for hirelings that you mention was implemented. Of course, you are correct in saying that it doesn't really work either. Even if it did work, it's incredibly limited regardless. :/

Still, this is not just a necro, but not a very good one. *wonders if/when it will get locked now*