Guild Wars 2

I spent a little time doing the Balthazar chain in Orr, and the Pact NPCs have way too small an attention span. If it were just players assaulting the temple we could have made it in half the time it took to ferry the NPCs up there, because any time an enemy came within visual range, “SQUIRREL!” and then off they’d go, chasing after it, then killing it, then jogging back, wasting thirty seconds or more of everyone’s time on a fight that didn’t need to happen, by which point another mass spawn of dozens of enemies had hit the core group.

It’s massively annoying when the NPCs effectively have a “time limit” after which they all just give up and go home.

They need to be tightened up, eye on the prize. Their route needs to be more direct (they seem to take the long path up the hill, zig-zagging rather than straight up), and they need to prioritize targets better so that they’re less likely to wander off. If it’s not in the general direction of the temple, they should ignore it completely. If that level of AI is impossible, then they need to either A: have a much slower enemy respawn rate so that they can get away from the enemy spawnpoints before they respawn, or B: remove the “morale” element and have them fight until the players all die. The morale element would be find if the Pact Squads were smarter, but they aren’t, so it doesn’t.