Guild Wars 2

So, I redid HoT story this week because of a collection, and I never really noticed until now, but it was extremely apparant in this case
In the course of the HoT story, your friends don’t do much.. if anything at all.
I don’t mean they’re weak and do little damage. I mean they stand around with sheathed weapons while I fight with enemies.
Sometimes if they get hit by a hostile AoE or something they’ll draw their weapon and attack it, but then resheathe it after it’s dead.
Do they have that little compassion for their commander?
Do they have that little desire to save their friends?
I mean.. I know zojja said the commander was 74.3% of the Pact’s firepower, but that doesn’t mean the other 25.7% can just sit back and relax

One of the developers commented on this a while ago. Originally, NPCs would do a lot of heavy lifting in group fights, which presented two issued: people didn’t feel as engaged in the story and some took advantage and let the NPCs do most of the work.

So they changed the AI so that the NPCs don’t get involved as often or for as long or as intensely.

One thing I find that they are good for is absorbing damage — you kite the foes to be on the opposite side of allies and they’ll block projectiles and sometimes absorb damage.

There’s no perfect balance between the NPCs doing nothing and them doing everything. Whatever choice the developers make will be the wrong one for some players.

yea, I can see the point, but there’s doing a little, and there’s doing “nothing”.
I mean.. when they stand there with their weapons drawn and do attacks like.. 1% of what I do, then they won’t do anything really, but at least visually it looks like they’re involved.
But right now, they stand there with their weapons sheathed. Meaning that whhen I look at them, I don’t think of them as weak, I think of them as indifferent, and that’s something else entirely.

What would you think if you watched a game of soccer and your team had like 5 players that were standing still in their spot. Not turning around, not taking a single step, just standing there. I mean if they at leats ran after the ball, they don’t even need to hit it, but just run

Amaimon.7823:

yea, I can see the point, but there’s doing a little, and there’s doing “nothing”.
I mean.. when they stand there with their weapons drawn and do attacks like.. 1% of what I do, then they won’t do anything really, but at least visually it looks like they’re involved.
But right now, they stand there with their weapons sheathed. Meaning that whhen I look at them, I don’t think of them as weak, I think of them as indifferent, and that’s something else entirely.

What would you think if you watched a game of soccer and your team had like 5 players that were standing still in their spot. Not turning around, not taking a single step, just standing there. I mean if they at leats ran after the ball, they don’t even need to hit it, but just run

Except this isn’t a soccer team. It’s an MMO instance designed for up to five players and you (or I) sometimes choose to go it alone. The NPCs are there for lore, not to play the game for us. I’d like to see them rez us from dead (rather than ‘restart from checkpoint’) and I’d love to see a mechanic like Arkk’s from Nightmare Fractal (“Quickly, retreat inside my shielding!”).

But for now, it seems ‘fair’ that they do too little rather than too much for the sake of gameplay.

I wouldn’t mind if they did more. All the same, I think it’s fine — and perhaps even better — that they do little.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Amaimon.7823:

yea, I can see the point, but there’s doing a little, and there’s doing “nothing”.
I mean.. when they stand there with their weapons drawn and do attacks like.. 1% of what I do, then they won’t do anything really, but at least visually it looks like they’re involved.
But right now, they stand there with their weapons sheathed. Meaning that whhen I look at them, I don’t think of them as weak, I think of them as indifferent, and that’s something else entirely.

What would you think if you watched a game of soccer and your team had like 5 players that were standing still in their spot. Not turning around, not taking a single step, just standing there. I mean if they at leats ran after the ball, they don’t even need to hit it, but just run

Except this isn’t a soccer team. It’s an MMO instance designed for up to five players and you (or I) sometimes choose to go it alone. The NPCs are there for lore, not to play the game for us. I’d like to see them rez us from dead (rather than ‘restart from checkpoint’) and I’d love to see a mechanic like Arkk’s from Nightmare Fractal (“Quickly, retreat inside my shielding!”).

But for now, it seems ‘fair’ that they do too little rather than too much for the sake of gameplay.

I wouldn’t mind if they did more. All the same, I think it’s fine — and perhaps even better — that they do little.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you, but my point wasn’t that they do too little damage or apply too little support. My point was the fact they stand still with sheathed weapons. and THAT seems more like a bug than a design flaw to me. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if I was 100% of the pact’s firepower, all the more glory to me, but it just annoys me to no end to see Rytlock Killjoy aka uncle Trombone standing still with his Magdear sheathed staring at the mordrem violently attacking us. It’s fine if he does no damage, but it just hurts my eye to see him standing still, do you get my point?

I mean, all they have to do is run around and do attack animations, that’s all, they don’t have to do damage, apply conditions, supply boons, but just do attack animations, that’s all I’m asking for.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Except this isn’t a soccer team. It’s an MMO instance designed for up to five players and you (or I) sometimes choose to go it alone. The NPCs are there for lore, not to play the game for us. I’d like to see them rez us from dead (rather than ‘restart from checkpoint’) and I’d love to see a mechanic like Arkk’s from Nightmare Fractal (“Quickly, retreat inside my shielding!”).

But for now, it seems ‘fair’ that they do too little rather than too much for the sake of gameplay.

I wouldn’t mind if they did more. All the same, I think it’s fine — and perhaps even better — that they do little.

Wut? Its okay that a real player can play the game for you, but if an ai does “part of it” thats wrong? lol.

having experienced the opposite extreme of gw2: I have to tell you that having the friendly ai actually act like friendly ai is what pulls people into games and gets them invested.

You should play x-wing alliance. You enter new missions in teh story not knowing what the heck will hit you. But on the missions where you run with your fleet and comrades you KNOW that some1 has your back. They mimic actual humans while still making you feel like the center of attention. There are plenty of missions where your teammates do all the work without you. You can fly off in the opposite direction and they can complete teh mission without you doing a single thing. Is this bad? no, not at all cause you don’t know the script of the scenario. You don’t know if it will be alright or not. Its realism at its finest. gw2 is just closed isntance spam 1 and advance the story…spam 1 and advance story.blah blah…

I noticed this in the personal story as well (pre-HoT). All NPC allies will just stand there and watch you fight. They will have their weapons sheathed and are obviously not engaged in combat mode. You can get them to aggro to enemies if you get an enemy to hit them, otherwise they will do literally nothing. It’s not a matter of them being weak, they’re clearly bugged in some way.

I think people are misunderstanding the problem. Go into any story instance with a lot of fighting and an ally and you will see. It’s really apparent on the Claw Island missions for instance. Ally NPCs will not fight unless they are struck by an enemy (often incidentally as enemies don’t seem to aggro on them either).