Guild Wars 2

I’ve been reading a lot of comments about how pets (ranger pets, necro minions, engie turrets, etc…) are useless in PvP, or in general.

So I’ve been thinking: Why not just let players write their own pet AI?

Then they can fix all the problems that they see for themselves, make their pets do exactly what they want.

It’s the only solution that I see, because each player wants their pet to do something slightly different. (It might even make minion necros interesting in sPvP)

I was thinking about this pre-release, and I have written up a spec for what I’d like to see in the way of the api, but I’ll save that until I get a positive response, rather than dumping a wall of text that most people here won’t be interested in.

I support this, as long as there’s a nice intuitive GUI where I can really micromanage the crap out of my pet’s behavior.

Maybe with a little trial and error, I can keep this stupid animal alive through a fight.

Hah, this would be awesome, not that it would ever happen.

By “pet” I’m including Necro Minions, Ranger Pets, Mesmer Illusions, Guardian Spirit Weapons, Engineer Turrets, Elementalist Elemental Summons, Thieves’ Guild… Every player-summoned NPC. All of which have AI issues.

The only way I can see to let you micro-manage all of those would be to give you direct control of their AI. Lua springs to mind as the language designed for this.

not everyone can learn scripting, so unfair advantage.

However, I would like my spirit weapons not to disengage every time I turn my back

kaffaljidhma.1496:

not everyone can learn scripting, so unfair advantage

False. Anyone can learn scripting. It’s no more an unfair advantage than allowing people with fancy mice to rebind their controls to the myriad of buttons they can access easily, rather than having to go through contorted hand motions. It’s actually less of an advantage, as it requires no extra outlay of cash to use, just your brain.

Also, how long do you really think it will be before there’s a site where you can go and download good stable scripts? I’d give it a month on the outside, probably less than a week. So if you don’t want to put the time in to learn, you will always be able to get something decent.

maybe things like

100% – 75% health
- attack enemy

75% – 50% health
- return

etc

kinda like those ai scripts in baldurs gate, never winter nights etc.

The only pet I have is the bird procced by the pirate runes, and I have to say I Love IT!

Nothing like a mad parrot attacking everything that is less than a mile away like a blood hungry berserker to make a boring harvesting trip into an interesting “keep up with my bird, and stay alive” expedition.

Highly recommended!

Illiander.8049:

kaffaljidhma.1496:

not everyone can learn scripting, so unfair advantage

False. Anyone can learn scripting. It’s no more an unfair advantage than allowing people with fancy mice to rebind their controls to the myriad of buttons they can access easily, rather than having to go through contorted hand motions. It’s actually less of an advantage, as it requires no extra outlay of cash to use, just your brain.

Also, how long do you really think it will be before there’s a site where you can go and download good stable scripts? I’d give it a month on the outside, probably less than a week. So if you don’t want to put the time in to learn, you will always be able to get something decent.

MMOs cannot give the go-ahead on 3rd party solutions.

Where did you find any reference to 3rd party applications here?

This thread is about adding pet scripting into the game as a feature. Not about using a 3rd-party bot to just control your pet.

Scripting in MMOs has been done before (WoW). Pet AI scripting specifically been done before (Ragnarok Online). If you think there weren’t sites with decent scripts around for anyone to download in those games you’re kidding yourself.

All that allowing players to write their own AI for their summoned NPCs does is make them useful (and remove all the raging about stupid pet AI). Give me a legitimate downside.