In Baldur's Gate there were all sorts of behavior scripts for every class combinations for playable characters, which made the life a bit easier there. Will there be anything like that in PoE, or will we have to issue all commands manually?

I'm guessing they'll add them later.

At least proper auto-attack would be good. Right now even that is failing.

I'm guessing they'll add them later.

I really hope you're right. This is a must have feature in a game like this.

I don't know if these are doable in the time they've got left. Might be something best left for the expansion.

I don't know if these are doable in the time they've got left. Might be something best left for the expansion.

Are they so difficult? They just gotta write some code, like macros . No need for any extra work on animations, art or other time consuming stuff.

Yeah but they only have a few programmers and there's A LOT of work left to do.

Yeah but they only have a few programmers and there's A LOT of work left to do.

Yea, but they've still got time till winter. You'd be amazed to see what devs can do in a few months, Divinity: Original Sin is a shining example. From messy alpha to brilliant release version in less than half a year? They've done it. And they've listened closely to what beta testers said and implemented a lot - that all only made the game better overall.

Edited August 19, 201411 yr by Aramintai

No news about that from the devs?

Doing everything manually was a total bummer when I tried the beta.

Personally, I think party AI in a game like this is absolutely essential.

 

When I picture playing an RPG where you're in a party of characters, I've always thought that idealized gameplay in this type of game would feel simiilar to being the leader of a party of players in an MMO. That is, you would control one main character full time, which itself would have enough buttons, commands, and options to occupy most of your time, and you'd depend on everybody else in the party to do their jobs fairly autonomously, with you occasionally interjecting the odd command here and there based on the dynamics of the situation.

 

I think the equivalent of the MMO party scenario in a single player party-based RPG would be for the player to have the capability of automating all character's combat behavior through scripting, each character adhereing to its own script, and for every character you do not have currently selected to follow those AI instructions. Any character you currently have selected would only auto-attack and would require the player's manual control for everything else. This to me would feel about as close to being a contributor in a party of RPG characters as a single player game could get.

 

This style of gameplay would obviously feel very different than fully micromanaging 6 characters worth of skills and abilities all the time, like how Pillars is currently setup, mainly in that I believe it would allow you to become much more attached to your main character because it would mean you'd be able to spend a larger amount of time using your chosen class in combat relative to other characters, as opposed to feeling like your main character choice is just an insignifficant 1/6th of the total game experience. Also I believe this would help make the game more fluid. You could still make all the important decisions you'd need to on the fly, I'm not talking about making an auto-pilot mode, just a way to automate the small things you'd do during every fight to make things move a bit smoother.

 

This to me would allow the player to put much greater weight on the decision to play any particular class, because under these conditions you'd be choosing your play experience for 85-90% of your game time as opposed to the playstyle of only 1/6th of your game time.

I'm definitely missing the AI scripts as I play through the beta. There's so much micromanagement that it feels like the game wants to be turn-based rather than real-time pause-and-play. I made heavy use of the simpler pre-made scripts in the IE games. They let me not worry about dumb things like whether my summoned bear was just standing around.

Edited August 22, 201411 yr by PrimeHydra

Let us write our own scripts. See Dragon Age Origins and Final Fantasy 12 for examples of well implemented player scripting for NPCs.

Although I would personally prefer if it was not tied to stats or skills as in both those games. Should just be something you can do.

I personally don't like using scripts for games like this, but it would definitely be a nice addition for the many people who do.

I've been away from the forums for awhile, are there any news about the scripts in PoE? Will we have to manually do everything and pause like mad, or are there going to be AI behaviour scripts like in other IE games?

No news on AI behavior scripts.

Don't need scripts, just standard attack.

It would seem likely to me that at the very least they would plan to have somewhat robust AI scripts for the "official" companions but suspect these may be more about the companions creators view of how they would act than a more generic view of how the class might react - similar to the default AI for companions in BG2 perhaps.

 

Personally I went through several phases with AI scripts in the IE games in general and BG in particular where I started off with default scripts but micromanaged spellcasters - then went through a period of assigning scripts and downloading new more complete script mods and allowing the party to run on auto unless things started to go south (which became boring quite quickly - I much prefer to play hands on than to watch the game play itself )

 

In the end I went back to leaving the default script and/or assigning a simple auto attack and then micromanaging everyone as needed.

 

That being the case I would be satisfied with just a decent auto attack script that kept characters I was not issuing orders to from standing idle but would also welcome some multiple script choices based on class (mostly for the adventurers).

Yea, I agree, some standard IE-like AI scripts would be most welcome, but at the very least devs should make auto attack script. Micromanaging every attack of every character is a real pain.

Anything new about the scripts? Do party members have some sort of AI now? I want to try out beta again, but if its combat is still as micromanagement heavy as it was before then I'm not sure I want to bother.

Anything new about the scripts? Do party members have some sort of AI now? I want to try out beta again, but if its combat is still as micromanagement heavy as it was before then I'm not sure I want to bother.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=85114404&v=o0TpxooPOcc&x-yt-ts=1422579428&feature=player_detailpage#t=1641

Anything new about the scripts? Do party members have some sort of AI now? I want to try out beta again, but if its combat is still as micromanagement heavy as it was before then I'm not sure I want to bother.

There will be no AI scripting for the initial PoE release, but they have mentioned that it might be included in the expansion.

Edited February 2, 201510 yr by Night Stalker

 

Anything new about the scripts? Do party members have some sort of AI now? I want to try out beta again, but if its combat is still as micromanagement heavy as it was before then I'm not sure I want to bother.

There will be no AI scripting for the initial PoE release, but they have mentioned that it might be included in the expansion.

 

  It's very strange that in this modern day and age it is so difficult to implement them, even though PoE is modeled after Infinity Engine games and those old games had scripts. I guess I'll just wait until release date and if combat's still going to be a chore I'll just wait until that expansion, or better yet, go and play BG/BG2/IWD: EE.

Edited February 2, 201510 yr by Aramintai

 

 

Anything new about the scripts? Do party members have some sort of AI now? I want to try out beta again, but if its combat is still as micromanagement heavy as it was before then I'm not sure I want to bother.

There will be no AI scripting for the initial PoE release, but they have mentioned that it might be included in the expansion.

 

  It's very strange that in this modern day and age it is so difficult to implement them, even though PoE is modeled after Infinity Engine games and those old games had scripts. I guess I'll just wait until release date and if combat's still going to be a chore I'll just wait until that expansion, or better yet, go and play BG/BG2/IWD: EE.

 

 

It's not necessarily difficult, it's time consuming and many other features were considered more important for the first game.

 

 

 

Anything new about the scripts? Do party members have some sort of AI now? I want to try out beta again, but if its combat is still as micromanagement heavy as it was before then I'm not sure I want to bother.

There will be no AI scripting for the initial PoE release, but they have mentioned that it might be included in the expansion.

 

  It's very strange that in this modern day and age it is so difficult to implement them, even though PoE is modeled after Infinity Engine games and those old games had scripts. I guess I'll just wait until release date and if combat's still going to be a chore I'll just wait until that expansion, or better yet, go and play BG/BG2/IWD: EE.

 

 

It's not necessarily difficult, it's time consuming and many other features were considered more important for the first game.

 

Isn't combat predominant in this game, like in IWD? How making it more manageable for the players is less important than anything else? If I'm gonna spend majority of the game in combat that I can't enjoy, how can I enjoy the game in general?

Edited February 2, 201510 yr by Aramintai