Guild Wars 2

Half the time they stand there doing nothing while im in combat as a minion master necro.

Will fixing minions create a substantial increase in gem purchases from users?

There’s your answer.

Neural.1824:

Will fixing minions create a substantial increase in gem purchases from users?

There’s your answer.

This is one of the reason I prefer sub based mmos.

Neural.1824:

Will fixing minions create a substantial increase in gem purchases from users?

There’s your answer.

It will when they start selling skins for your minions in there.

Ah, I remember when I first discovered cynicism. Memories~

Just so you’re all aware, you’re not automatically smart for being cynical. Nothing in the world is that simple, and you should do yourselves a favor and stop thinking it is.

However, the answer is still probably no, because kitten if I know why. Apparently they think pet AI is good enough to leave it, despite clearly being bad and rendering the Ranger’s entire profession mechanic mostly useless in PvE. Would love to hear a dev comment on this and if they’re ever going to look at it again.

Never, maybe.

Pity the souls in sPvP should it ever happen.
But I really hope so.

“We are heappy to release the new Necromancer GM Trait “Actually Working Minions” alongside Heart of Thorns! For the low low price of 500 Gems, you can have Minions that aren’t just Bones and Muscles, they now come with a brain! – Traits for Rangers sold seperately!"

Dang people are being salty here haha.
ANet hired a AI expert a time ago, so I really expect things changing soon.
Another problem is, you have any idea how hard it to improve AI from minons? It demands A LOT of time.

Also, better game in general attracts more players and maintain the current ones, making average gem sells higher, so any improvement makes more money.

While I don’t specifically know how hard it is to programmatically improve minion AI… the monsters don’t have any difficulty targeting me, so why can’t the <insert AI ally here — minion, wolf, hound, pet…> target whatever I’m targeting?

DeanBB.4268:

While I don’t specifically know how hard it is to programmatically improve minion AI… the monsters don’t have any difficulty targeting me, so why can’t the <insert AI ally here — minion, wolf, hound, pet…> target whatever I’m targeting?

Should be more like
Player status change (in combat) ->send Minion Status change (in combat)
While Minion Status (in combat) -> follow player target.

There, ill be expecting my gem cretdit compensation…

I feel like they should treat necro minions like elementalist summons. Give them an extra power that they use on your target. Then you could force them to act even if they weren’t.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I feel like they should treat necro minions like elementalist summons. Give them an extra power that they use on your target. Then you could force them to act even if they weren’t.

They have, you can force the cast and after the cast the minion still does nothing.

Yeah, this really needs to get fixed. It’s the terrain that seems to muck them up.

I stopped playing minion-master in favor of double dagger and wells. It’s more fun, but I really wanted my minions and scythe-staff. :\

It might have something to do with them being undead and their brains not functioning properly?

But yeah, don’t see why they can’t simply attack the same target the necro’s attacking, or a target the necro has pinged, or the first target that attacked the necro within a certain distance… Not much AI here as much as simple conditions.

Apolo.5942:

Kal Spiro.9745:

I feel like they should treat necro minions like elementalist summons. Give them an extra power that they use on your target. Then you could force them to act even if they weren’t.

They have, you can force the cast and after the cast the minion still does nothing.

Oh, well then that is obviously a bug and not working as intended.

For those of you who don’t understand and/or don’t remember, Minions USED to work properly, then an update happened that had nothing to do with minions and broke them (like most updates do these days). So I don’t understand why the kitten they are still broken. We got up in Anets face as soon as it started after the update and nothing was done then. They say it has to do with pathing now but it used to work fine. What part of pathing did they change to break the entire AI system? Note that the Sons of Svanir will now moonwalk when you interact with them now (good job on that AI or pathing) after the 30th update.

Anyway, I’ve completely lost hope in having a minion master build and do d/d staff wells. My ranger pet is somehow doing ok but I envision a day when it will fail me and I’ll abandon my ranger completely because it requires a pet for some reason.

DeanBB.4268:

While I don’t specifically know how hard it is to programmatically improve minion AI… the monsters don’t have any difficulty targeting me, so why can’t the <insert AI ally here — minion, wolf, hound, pet…> target whatever I’m targeting?

The difference between monster AI and player minion AI is that monsters only receive commands from the server side so they can be more agile, minions AI need to have an extra time to keep syncing their status to the server and the client.
When the player gives a command, the client send an update to the server then it checks the minion current status send the new status to stop it and start the new one, that is one of the reasons ranger shouts are the only ones that have cast time, so the shout can sync the pet with the new command.

Belzebu.3912:

Dang people are being salty here haha.
ANet hired a AI expert a time ago, so I really expect things changing soon.
Another problem is, you have any idea how hard it to improve AI from minons? It demands A LOT of time.

Also, better game in general attracts more players and maintain the current ones, making average gem sells higher, so any improvement makes more money.

The better AI is for new things. They said in the EDIT (forgot where, doubled checked CDIi and wasn’t there…) that they arn’t going to mess with the pet AI because of how they gave the pets the same AI as their pve mobs and didn’t want to risk it iirc. (Changing ranger pet ai would makes the pet’s family smart apparently… I remember this because I replied to the post as it rather irritated me at the time)

EDIT: After digging a bit I found some (OLD) old post saying they’d consider working on the AI in the future, but it was low priority

Andred.1087:

Ah, I remember when I first discovered cynicism. Memories~

Just so you’re all aware, you’re not automatically smart for being cynical. Nothing in the world is that simple, and you should do yourselves a favor and stop thinking it is.

The same can be said about condescension.

Lil Puppy.5216:

They say it has to do with pathing now but it used to work fine.

Pathing my kitten , they dont even work propperly in the training bots and that is as plain surface as you can possibly hope for.

Belzebu.3912:

Another problem is, you have any idea how hard it to improve AI from minons? It demands A LOT of time.

Actually, for an AI coder, this should be one of the easiest types of AI to fix/write – considering all you need to do is:

Am I attacking a target? >Yes=>Minion Attack my target – continue attacking target until target is dead or no longer targeted.

That’s not complex code, bud.