Um back to the original topic, another story is pretty bad. In Convincing the Faithful, the stupid frog I have as a buddy literally, and I mean absolutely without question, does NOTHING. He stands around the entire time. Meanwhile, before every fight, all I hear him babble about is how “WE” should clear the next group out of the way of the procession. I don’t mind being the focus of my story, but I really hate it when these NPC’s act like they are helping but clearly do not.
I just checked “Dredging Up the Past” and Sieran wasn’t flagged to resurrect players. I’ve fixed that and it should go live in a future update—though I don’t have an ETA. Thanks!
Awesome! Nice to see you guys actually fix things I hope the AI is getting some tweaks
I would also like to know why the AI doesn’t help me get up from being downed…. I’m down, all the mobs are dead, and my Ally is standing there doing jack. Is it too hard to program AI that will help heal you if you are down and a fight is over?
Mission was “Dredging up the past.” My dumb ally was Sieran, but I assume all NPC are this dumb as well. Also, She does nothing but use her basic attack. I guess it’s too hard to have her use all of her powers, right?
I’ll agree the AI needs a bit of work, but something people need to realize is that The lighter classes should be dieing more if you’re not playing them well. The whole concept is that the lower your armor class, the harder you have to play.
I personally find Mesmers and Ele’s OP, but I know that they have to be played pretty hard to do well and aren’t easy to play (Don’t think that justifies them being able to 1v3 a lot of the time in PVP though).
There’s a few quest I’ll agree are ridiculous, such as the Human’s defense of the Queen quest when you use the Vigil since the NPCs die super fast, but for the most part, death is your own fault for picking a class and not working to play to its fullest. The story side of things is often there to teach you mechanics for the rest of the game. You need to learn to fight mobs that swarm you or survive in harsh situations, because you’ll do that in dungeons and in PVP.
I disagree with you. You should not have to WORK harder to play a ranged damage class. The classes should be dying the same amount of times, whether you are an ele or a guardian. The idea is that a mob has x hp, you can stand up close and absorb a lot of damage and slowly kill it or you can stay at range and do a lot of damage, but you cannot absorb as much damage. It has always been that more armor means more defense/less damage and more damage means/less defense.
This has nothing to do with complexity. If a class is so complex it is hard to do well with it is broken. All classes need to be playable( I’m not saying OP, I’m saying playable) for the average player to do PVE without getting frustrated. If a class is so complex it cannot be learned by someone who doesn’t read the forums and Spams google for builds it is not well designed. I’m sorry.
The problem here is that the NPC they provide as COVER are not covering the player. I had another mission in this quest line where Captain Thackery was supposed to be helping and all he did was stand around while a turncoat Seraph ran around shooting me. He never helped grab agro or buff me. Just stood there, like a mindless AI he is. It was not HARD to beat the guy, but like someone else in this thread mentioned, it wasn’t fun. I had to run around a well over and over to block his line of sight while my heal regened. When I finally was able to heal I’d blast him a bit and rinse/repeat. It was very BORING.
I was intentionally hanging back a bit, I didn’t mean to imply that the only way to win is to stay at a distance. I also play the story steps as a d/p thief who melees everything, but I tried engineer since it’s considered one of the weaker/lighter classes. The simple truth is that we can’t take every single class/build/play style into account when we build the story steps, so they do require some flexibility. They’re also intended to be challenging, so charging directly into fights (especially when you have a handful of NPCs with you) is generally not the best route. It’s a tricky balancing act, since we can’t make the NPCs powerful enough to complete the story step with no player intervention, but in general they should act as enough of a speed bump for you to deal with the enemy. We don’t always get it right, though, which is why I’m always asking for specific information on troublesome story steps so I can give them a try and see if they should be adjusted.
Jeffrey, I really don’t think the allied NPC’s help enough. I am stuck on “The Queen’s Justice” with my elementalist because the NPC’s cannot handle the all of the agro of the Risen, plus the ELITE BOSS you dropped in there. Either the Elite kills me because my Allied NPC are dealing with the normal Risen, or they DIE and I can’t res them because I’m now running for my life from 5-10 Risen and an ELITE BOSS.
The Captain of the Seraph is pretty lame. He stands around most of the time not doing anything and when he does get involved he usually dies. His AI needs some work for sure, because he rarely is buffing me or anyone in the party. If he is a true guardian he should act like one.
Another thing a friend of mine mentioned was that you’ve built a game that is very much based on dodging and evading damage, but your NPC’s do not do this. This causes them to take a lot more damage than they should. If they were to avoid attacks they would be much more help with agro control without boosting any damage they do.
Why is there no developer comment on this subject? This is still a huge issue that seems to have been accepted as “the way it is.” I have looked around the interwebs for a few days and there seems to be no comment by the Devs that this is even an issue.
I’m slowly getting tired of this game after a month of playing because of how dumb the NPC’s appear to be. I completely understand that I am supposed to be the hero here, but the game would be immensely improved if the NPC’s did help.
The main issue is that an allied NPC vs an enemy NPC of the same level seems to lose, always. I don’t think I have played a single story mission where my companion NPC’s won the fight.
I understand that I am supposed to make up for their weakness but when they are decimated and I have to kill 15 enemies all grouped into a small legion it’s very boring.
I hope the AI is getting some tweaks