State of the Game

This thread is not a complaint thread, it is merely a discussion thread about the issues in guild wars as seen by a small populous of people. Not all of the things posted here are my views, but the views of the people who collaborated with me on making this list and wished to remain anonymous.

1) AI runs from the player in a way that is not consistent with the notes on the guild wars website. For example, AI will now run from any type of AoE within seconds of the spell being used. Regardless of the condition of the monster, this happens. Even when the monster is within the 90% HP range.

2) Any AI that is engaged in this "flee" mode will continue to run untill either A: a new target is found or B: they are outside of the aggro bubble of the current target.

3) Enemy casters will now follow a player for as long as the zone will allow, which can make for some very difficult situations when running.

6) When a group of enemies has eliminated the majority of a party, they will hold aggro on the fleeing player untill they have either killed him or the player zones, this makes ressurect skills almost usless.

7) Enemies will now hold aggro even at the distance of a whole radar map. This can often be seen when a player actually manages to get away from aggro, and then attempts to cast a rez. The aggro will reingage while the player is still a few radar maps from the dead teammate.

8) Neither heroes or henchman will run from AoE damage. With any AoE they will just stand around untill you flag them out or they die.

9) Heroes do not prioritize the rez on the closest target, but they prioritize the other casters first. Often times this leads to heroes bypassing an easy rez, and charging straight into aggro.

10) Hero henchmen often cancel casts, even when the player is not moving in the least the caster will often cast,cancel, and then recast a spell. This can easily bee seen with the use of the ele henchmen, as this behavior is seen often among them.

11) Hero battles are there for a reason, to PvP with heroes. They don't belong in other types of competitive play, such as HA.

12) Anet has always urged that the deciding factor in a game should be the skill, but the skill of the player his/her self. This can be contradicting at times when one looks at various skills from the Elementalist line, among others.

13) Certain classes seem outdated and underpowered. Classes like the Warrior are still used, but many people are straying to other classes for sustained damage dealers, and classes such as the Ritualist are seeing relatively no use at all.

14) The fall of the economy. With the sudden decline in the worth of items due to the inscription feature, items that used to be worth 100k+ecto can now be seen sold for as little as 20k. The cost of keys can also be a problem because with items being worth so little, and the random rarity drops from chests effecting your items, the value of what you get often isn't enough to compensate for the cost of the key itself.

15) Many skills rendered useless with AI updates. Skills that were often seen on many a skillbar are now shunned because of the scatter of monters with constant damage. Skills like Gladiator's Defence, Shield of Judgement, Spiteful Spirit, and often even the normal attacks from dervishes themselves, can make the enemy scatter in a way that should not happen.

16) Suggested by Carth. Playing a caster with the new AI sucks because if you kite, even the smallest movement causes all the henchmen and heroes to move with you, break aggro, and stop whatever they were doing, and with the new AI, everything attacks the casters.

Now that i think about what i'm posting, this thread will probably get deleted.
I just want people to know what I think and what I feel on this subject, because there is no harm and certainly no foul in telling people what you think and i urge you all to do the same.

Feel free to add anything you think is necessary to this list, and i will try to update this post to keep everything in the same area.

Flame Away.

or maybe its because you see 3+ new threads about the AI every week


Editted because the confrontational remarks from 1st post were removed

Maybee there is a reason for that.

And to the opp.. good post.. i agree with most of them..

the one i dont agree with is the ele skill range.. they are fine.. I belive the ele is pretty solid as is.

but the paragons do need to get some downgrades.. i feel they are far overpowerd

And i also think the rit is just as strong now as ever.. but just not the spirit spammer rit.. so /do not agree on the rit.

The reason for that is because people are concerned and they want results.
Even if this topic gets deleted more people will post similar topics. Maybe we can keep this topic free of spam and flames and try and make a nice and constructive thread for people to express their opinions.

You forgot one: playing a caster with the new AI sucks because if you kite, even the smallest movement causes all the henchmen and heroes to move with you, break aggro, and stop whatever they were doing, and with the new AI, everything attacks the casters.

Thanks for your contribution, and i added it to my original post
I'll try and keep it updated so everything is there in the original list.

After looking at it again, i can see your point, and i will remove that portion from the list.

I agree with most points. Though I think the Ritualist is a great character in the hands of a good player. They're second only to a monk in their healing and their dmg spirits are awesome. I'm not sure how they are when compared to a maxed W.S. Ranger's traps, but they have to be close.

Agree with almost all of that =/

After all, everyone knows that shortly after a class implementation, all skills and classes are balanced! We've never had gimmickway skills before, no sir! NF is clearly poor because of this!

Saw it anyway, and those remarks were hilarious.

I really dislike what they've done with the enemy AI as well. I'm not an expert on these things nor am I a guy who plays GW constantly, but all the monsters running from battle and making you aggro other groups is ridiculous. Then when you bring the two other groups down on your head and you need to run, you can't just cause they follow you halfway across Tyria and back.

I'm feel differently about the AI, except that i does have some problems such as aggro lock, it's quite refreshing to have an AI thats more of a challenge.

it also introduces the need to bring a water ele, and/or crippling attacks into PvE.

I am hoping you claim most of these points are exceedingly rare happenings, as I just was able to log in and claim false to most of these in the 30ish minutes I spent fooling around in the Domain of Secrets.

Just one thing I want to comment on:
Outdated classes is a matter of suddenly the focus moves away from the same handful of skills that dominated parts of the game before. Its merely a shift to different skills, which favor different classes.
And Ritualists are a topic often discussed, basically the class was considered to be too strong in defense with its cookie cutter build Rit Lord, and people whined it away, in favor of the "core class only" gameplay so many seem to crave.

This is a good thread. Might aswell have most of the gripes in the same place instead of in different threads. However I think 1-7 are perfectly fine. So what if they chase you everywhere, or they run from AoE attacks straight away (don't we?). The AI is acting more like a human player imo and rightly so. May make the game harder but I've heard many people complaining about the game being to easy. Anet can't win.

While I agree that the AI has drastically changed, I don't really agree that it is a problem. I choose to see this as a challenge. I'm planning and stragegizing how I will deal with every mob I come across now before I rush in and engage. I did before the AI change but I'm doing so now more than ever.

If my target starts running away, I cast a slowdown spell or I switch to a new, closer target. The original target will come back and be dealt with accordingly. Sometimes the enemy will actually run a circle around me. I simply cast Crippling Anguish (or a similar slowdown spell) and my warrior hero/henchies deal with the target.

When I come across several mobs that are close together I send Koss by himself to aggro the nearest group and then bring him back and deal with that mob by itself, and then the next one and so on. You will have fewer problems of runners aggroing (is that even a word?) other mobs when you draw that first mob away from the others.

Sometimes I do find myself with a epic fight on my hands, like when I aggro one mob and one or two other mobs are also aggroed because they are somehow linked. Watch things closely. If me and my henchies can deal with it, great. If not I set my flag far away and relocate. I've noticed that not every enemy will continue the chase. The ones that do are now easier to deal with due to fewer numbers. Sometimes after a retreat the enemy will come at me piecemeal, one or two at a time. Works for me!

This one aggravates me the most. I wish the henchmen and heroes would stay locked on whatever I space-clicked on. Now, if I ever go to pick up an item during combat, they'll break aggro and walk over to me for those precious few seconds.

This is likely do to your own movement causing them to move and cancel.

This is already in the process of being changed.

Every season has seen its overpowered skills, but the only time people care to complain on Guru is when it's also lethal in PvE. Searing Flames is going to be balanced sometime after Dec. 11. I wish everyone would stop the threads in reference to certain skills. I honestly can't remember seeing threads about SB/RI or other overpowered PvP builds, so why should I care people can't spread out against elementalist bosses in PvE?

Warriors aren't outdated, and there's definitely no shortage of them anywhere in the game. Ritualists have always only been spirit spam for PvE, and that's about all they're good for in PvP. Don't expect ritualists to change in that respect.

Items were never ment to be sold for over 100k, and it shouldn't matter that items are selling for less. You might not be able to sell an item for nearly as much, but you can now buy at a cheaper price as well. The only people this hurts are power traders who will have to spend even more time trying to get their sets of FoW.

I'm sorry Anet is trying to make people think up new ways to play, instead of spamming the exact same fire elementalist skill bar from Prophecies through Nightfall. I'm sure that would have been damn fun. >.>

14) Prices fluctuate. GW is not a trading game. The new system is great, since it allows easy (not unexpensive, but easy) access to perfect items.

15). Those skills are neither outdated nor useless. Not only that, SS is still extremly viable and just as playable as it was before. Shield of Judgement is still used for farming. Gladiator's defense is what our group tank used against Shiro. And more. Unfortunately,

I stronlgy disagree with this point. These skills did lose some efficiency when used to solo farm (1 person only) a group of more than 3! melee! creatures. That is when they start running around and regening. Emphasis here is on Solo, 3 and melee. Any number of ranged attackers will still work as always. 3 mobs or less will never run away.

16) Fully agreed. Henchies are now allowed to kite, but players aren't. Caster characters are very handicapped by this.

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17, 18 19?) And another, very old problem. AI works in sync. Two heroes with rez will rez the same target. Two heroes with heavy heal will use it on same target, hugely overhealing, while a third member dies. AI using similar or idential hexes will use them on same target.

AI should have some group awarness, to not use same skills on same target. Only one hench with rez should use it on same target. For this very reason players call out "I'm using Ressurect on ...". Henchies should learn that for at least the most common situations.

the "sync rez" effect I was able to get rid of mostly by not always putting the hero rez in the same slot for all of my heroes. So, the one I want rezzing most often has it in slot 7, the others slot 8 etc.

Often helps.

You could wait til combat's over to collect items. o.o