No party AI?

[Falconhurst]

I'm a fan of BG, BG2, IWD (yes the originals, back in the day) and appreciate PoE. The designers have obviously invested considerable effort in creating a thoughtful new RPG with great classes and options, an engaging story line, and enjoyable (mostly) game play.

 

One rather glaring flaw or omission however is the lack of any party AI.  Even old games like BG (1998!) have AI options for basic functions of party members - melee, defend, range attack, healer, mage - with subsequent refinements.  So far as I can tell, PoE has no party AI.  It's really quite obnoxious because it takes considerable micromanagement to do repetitive no-brain tasks that could be easily handled with a few lines of script.  This takes away a lot of the fun from the game when every combat is micromanaging every character every turn, and effectively downgrades PoE from the real-time RPG genre it aspires to, to a turn-based RPG.  It also severely limits the attractiveness of classes that are micro-heavy, like Chanters or Wizards, which should be fun but turn out to be tedious without some kind of AI.  Even rangers get repetitive with mark, wound etc. II've ended up going with mostly fighters and a couple other low-micro classes because the spellcasting classes are too tedious to deal with in a productive way, unless one has loads of time on one's hands and enjoys microing every encounter.

 

It's not believable that this is WAD or "a feature not a bug" or omission as having some kind of passable AI, even if not ideal or fully optimized, has really been a fundamental concept and standard of BG and all related games in the genre for close to two decades now.  There's a clear benefit to party AI scripts, or even enabling the feature for modders to do the hard work.  Recognizing that many of the kickstarter backers are hard-core players who don't mind the micro, party AI is an essential feature for many casual players like myself.

 

So, I like many things about PoE...but my copy is going on the shelf (or will be suspended on steam) until it has party AI.

[Emptiness]

The development team had a choice of devoting a lot of resources to making a party AI that would have been really bad (due to limitations of modern computing) and not being able to devote those resources to the game itself (resulting in less content or the same amount of content with less quality), or skipping party AI and bringing us the game that we have now.

 

I think they made the right choice, because the niche of the game is "active entertainment", meaning that you participate in what is happening.  The more decisions the game makes for you, and by extension the more automation of gameplay that takes place, the less well the game fits into its intended niche.  The development team has tried to make this game appeal to as wide an audience as possible, but adding a variety of optional features to suit many different playstyles and preferences, but ultimately, nothing will satisfy everyone.

 

A player who finds themself unhappy about all of the decisions they are constantly having to make ("micromanagement") simply hasn't selected the type of entertainment that they are craving.  There is plenty of "passive entertainment" out there waiting to be enjoyed.  Time spent complaining that this game isn't passive enough is time that could have been spent enjoying entertainment that was meant to be passive.

[Xharlie]

So, basically, you're saying that PoE is NOT for Infinity Engine fans who used to trust the party A.I. to reduce tedium in uninteresting battles, it's for the neurotic types who enjoy micro-managing their whole party all the time?

 

Funny, I thought PoE was specifically made for I.E. fans.

 

The glaring lack of Party A.I. is not the real problem, it's a symptom. The real problem is the vast over-population of trash-mobs that make the game incredibly boring to play. Micro-managing a party of characters to win an important battle is one thing, having to do it over and over for every other group of junk-spiders, for zero reward, is another.

[omgFIREBALLS]

And here I thought the thread was going to be about what little party A.I. there actually is causing them to attack charmed/confused/dominated team members with impassioned vehemence.

 

I have to agree about the trash mobs. Hotkeys would do so much to alleviate some of these problems though.

[brionkj]

Considering that most thrash mobs are easily killed with auto-attacking (in Act 2 / 3):

 

1. Bind a key to select all team members.

2. When encounter thrash mob, select all

3. Press A

4. Click on mob to kill

5. Rinse & repeat until all thrash mobs are dead.

 

What Obs need to do is rebalance Act 2 and 3, so that the mobs are a little more challenging IMO.

[Yellow Rabbit]

While I can perfectly understand where all these complaints about tediousness of micromanagement coming from, I don't miss AI scripts for companions in a bit. AI scripts from IE games worked terribly for spellcasters, and there's no reason to believe they would do otherwise in PoE if implemented. Even simple auto-attack option this game has I had to turn off after the fourth time my fragile cipher PC stupidly rushed into the fray to face her unconsciousness.

[brionkj]

Just to add, I believe your team will continue auto-attack once you've given any attacking style command, and they will also switch to a new target when the previous target is dead or charmed. So there's little need to micromanage their auto-attacks unless you'd like concentrate fire. However utility casters like the Chanter and Priest do need some micromanagement, as they will just stay put after casting utility, summons and buff spells.

[Luj1]

I'm a fan of BG, BG2, IWD (yes the originals, back in the day) and appreciate PoE. The designers have obviously invested considerable effort in creating a thoughtful new RPG with great classes and options, an engaging story line, and enjoyable (mostly) game play.

 

One rather glaring flaw or omission however is the lack of any party AI. Even old games like BG (1998!) have AI options for basic functions of party members - melee, defend, range attack, healer, mage - with subsequent refinements. So far as I can tell, PoE has no party AI. It's really quite obnoxious because it takes considerable micromanagement to do repetitive no-brain tasks that could be easily handled with a few lines of script. This takes away a lot of the fun from the game when every combat is micromanaging every character every turn, and effectively downgrades PoE from the real-time RPG genre it aspires to, to a turn-based RPG. It also severely limits the attractiveness of classes that are micro-heavy, like Chanters or Wizards, which should be fun but turn out to be tedious without some kind of AI. Even rangers get repetitive with mark, wound etc. II've ended up going with mostly fighters and a couple other low-micro classes because the spellcasting classes are too tedious to deal with in a productive way, unless one has loads of time on one's hands and enjoys microing every encounter.

 

It's not believable that this is WAD or "a feature not a bug" or omission as having some kind of passable AI, even if not ideal or fully optimized, has really been a fundamental concept and standard of BG and all related games in the genre for close to two decades now. There's a clear benefit to party AI scripts, or even enabling the feature for modders to do the hard work. Recognizing that many of the kickstarter backers are hard-core players who don't mind the micro, party AI is an essential feature for many casual players like myself.

 

So, I like many things about PoE...but my copy is going on the shelf (or will be suspended on steam) until it has party AI.

I don't think a full-fledged party AI is necessary. However we need companions to auto attack if idle, seeing how they'll do nothing after using an ability or spell. I found that a tad annoying.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Luj1

[Emptiness]

So, basically, you're saying that PoE is NOT for Infinity Engine fans who used to trust the party A.I. to reduce tedium in uninteresting battles, it's for the neurotic types who enjoy micro-managing their whole party all the time?

 

Funny, I thought PoE was specifically made for I.E. fans.

 

The glaring lack of Party A.I. is not the real problem, it's a symptom. The real problem is the vast over-population of trash-mobs that make the game incredibly boring to play. Micro-managing a party of characters to win an important battle is one thing, having to do it over and over for every other group of junk-spiders, for zero reward, is another.

 

No game is going to satisfy everyone.  If automation of your party members' combat actions is critical to your enjoyment of this type of game then naturally PoE will fail to satisfy.  I defend the devs decision to skip party AI because if they had added it then instead of threads about there not being a party AI we'd be seeing threads about the party AI sucking.

 

In other words, satisfying the "we want party AI" players was never going to happen, because a good party AI is impossible.  The party AI in the IE games was awful, but you might be able to tolerate it because of the fact that you could rest after every combat.  In a limited-rest situation like PoE presents, nothing short of human-level intelligence will do to answer important questions like "Do I use this once-per-rest ability now, or save it?" or "Do I knock out my own teammate with AoE damage to take out those four enemies at the same time?".

 

Even if somehow the devs had written a human-intelligence-level AI to help us play this game, and somehow it was capable of being run on your home computer, you'd still be unhappy because then you'd have to debate strategy and tactics with it.

[Hebruixe]

Emptiness wins the debate.

[kat7ra]

Have to admit, I even forgot there was a party AI in BG...

Can't say I eve used it so for me there isn't any transition, and if your chars was confused or charmed in BG and hit one of your teammates you had to make sure your party didn't make him/her a pincushion!

 

I can't really see why people want an party AI in these games though, easy fights are right-click only anyway, and do you really want your NPCs to do stuff "on their own" in harder fights?

[Wulfram]

I think a system like Dragon Age 2's would have suited well.  Probably not for the dailies, true, but there's quite a few Encounter powers, and Cypher/Monk powers, that could be profitably automated.

 

Of course, Bioware scrapped that system for its latest game so perhaps it's not so easy as to implement as I'd think,

Edited April 8, 2015 by Wulfram

[Noriym]

Was gonna start a thread on this but the OP here is spot on.

 

Main points:

• All Original Infinity Engine games had party AI, including default scripts and means to build your own.
• Trash mobs are tedious and a chore, and we're sick of seeing our characters stop actions mid battle when a target is close by.  We're sick of the hand holding.
• There are some of us who actualy ....*gasp* ....enjoy making complex scripts and watching them play out.  I used to spend hours making IE .bs scripts back in the day.   If you don't want this feature, don't use it, nothing is being forced on you "purest".

We can understand that they had to ommit party AI in the initial release to get this game out on a limited budget.  But now that they are swimming in cash due to this games success I'd like to hear them announce plans for adding this.  Hell I'd pay good money for a party AI DLC.

 

Noriym

Edited April 11, 2015 by Noriym

[yaggaz]

The glaring lack of Party A.I. is not the real problem, it's a symptom. The real problem is the vast over-population of trash-mobs that make the game incredibly boring to play.

 

Ugh, I never liked Icewind HacknSlashAllNight Dale.   I thought the game was meant to be more BG2/Torment, not Diablo

[Caerdon]

Did anyone actually use spellcaster scripts in IE games?