11 réponses à ce sujet

[Tomomi]

How often does any of you get upset when Hawke and companions just do not listen to what you tell them to do?  Or the Tactics just don't always function as intended?  Here are a few scenario to consider:

- Ranged tactic: it does not always work.  Sometimes it is nice if you see your mage or archer move away from an AE area or being closed in by some enemy.  It is what "Ranged" is supposed to do.  But it works half of the time at best.  More than often I find Varric hugging a Rage demon, or Anders being cornered by 5 mobs (when he had the chance to move earlier on).  Tree huggers I tell you.  70% of the time my ranged fighters die to hugging, so I always have to manually micromanage their every step.

-  Delay response: sometimes I know danger is coming, I ordered them to move by specifying a location in the far corner.  Somehow, even without being hit, stunned, or whatever, they would stand there to squeeze out 1 or 2 more arrows (or magic staff shooting) before moving.  If I really focus on them, and click move a couple times, then they will move instantly.  So I do know they can move instantly, but they chose to squeeze out more auto attack, not like it will make a huge difference in battle.  In contrary, their delay will end up costing their lives, which will negatively turn the battle's scale.

- Direct disobey of order: this is the worst of all.  When I ordered melee to run away to that far spot, they ran half way and ran back.  They are not even getting hit (that may reset command queue).  Sometimes (and only sometimes) I had to honestly wrestle with them by spam clicking the spot for them to get their as I intended.  This results in so much headache and heartache.  Especially when I click a spot for a melee to run away to give enough time for warrior to do an AE ability, he/she ran 1/3 the way and decided to run back, thus getting 1 shot by warrior's Whirlwind.  Or there are times when Aveline was so low on HP, and potion is almost ready.  I would have her run away to buy enough time for her to use the potion.  But she kept breaking off and ran back to die.  Only if I really focus on her and spam click about a million click per second, she would do what I asked.

Note: I practically clear 90% of Tactics when I play on Nightmare mode, so this is not to blame.  The only things I let Tactics do is maybe summon Mabari and cast 1 sustain spell per character.  Any: Activate Control for my warrior, nothing else.

Modifié par Tomomi, 31 mars 2011 - 03:42 .

[Metal_Gorby]

What about the stupid dog max.
I ask party to hold position and the idiot mut runs into the middle of a fracas.

[Tomomi]

Metal_Gorby wrote...

What about the stupid dog max.
I ask party to hold position and the idiot mut runs into the middle of a fracas.

Dog doesn't count.  He is 100% on his own.  The only way to stop him is to unsummon him.  But usually if he is to disappear anyway, may just let him fight to the death while holding up a few mobs from actually hurting your party.  The only time to consider unsummon is when you don't want him to go aggro extra enemy who otherwise would not attack you immediately.

[Zan Mura]

The part about telling someone to run to spot X, and then having them ignore that command halfway there and run back is just a normal part of the AI. I agree it shouldn't work like that, but basically when you release the control over them, they will start to think on their own and resume attacking if that's what their behaviour / AI tells them. The only way to be 90% sure the companion runs where you tell them, is by forcing the party on HOLD before issuing the command. Even in that case, getting hit while running wipes the command clean causing them to stand still like morons and typically die and force a reload.

Those are predictable however, and controllable. Just keep pausing and re-issuing the damned command, even taking personal control of whichever toon is too stupid to run where he's told.

My biggest problem is with how the behaviour and HOLD clash, for instance a "ranged" behaviour toon who's ordered to HOLD, will go braindead the second a mob walks too close. Because his behaviour commands him to run, while HOLD prevents that. So he doesn't attack, he doesn't use abilities, he does nothing at all. Even if you command him to attack, he'll forget that command the second you release control and leave it up to the AI.

In addition to that, there's something very peculiar about the Ancient Rock Wraith fight, which is my primary reason of typically just doing "runscript killallhostiles" on that one (there are 3 mobs I use that in the game). In that fight, HOLD doesn't work reliably. Sooner or later, when the whole group is on HOLD, WHOLE group selected, and whole group forced to stay behind a pillar... someone will just get the smart idea to nudge into the view anyway so they can attack the wraith. This happens to me on every single fight, sometimes sooner, but always at least by the the time the Wraith has some 2/3:rds hp remaining. They still do stop and hold still, but it doesn't stick for longer than a second, if that.

Basically at that point the NPC in question will die, or I'll just have to put a helluva lot extra effort into healing through magic and potions. Due to the fact that it's no fault of my own, I get such a feeling of imminent extreme nerd rage that I just have to abandon the fight then and there.

[Tomomi]

At least to my knowledge of the game, or knowledge of previous game, your direct command supersedes all AI features. I would expect them to act on their own once they finish my commands. This is one of my personal tactic when I order 1 melee to run to another spot (expecting him/her to run back per AI reaction after he/she finishes running to that spot) in order to execute a Whirlwind or the like. It usually works flawlessly in most cases, except a few cases like I mentioned before: I literately had to wrestle with them, even having them on focus. Which I also thought once you have a character on focus, they seize all AI actions.

Yes, the HOLD is not that effective either. Especially if your focused character is too far from the rest. And if they start moving when they are supposed to be on Hold, you have to un-Hold and Hold again for it to take effect. That I figured out since DA:O. Although in DA2, as you said, someone will get the smart idea to pop out and squeeze out some auto attack. This would be testing your observation and reaction time to hit Pause. If someone starts to move, you have to un-Hold and Hold again very quickly because once someone magically released from your Hold, they will do things on their own as if there is no Hold.

Talking about nerd rage, I have gone off on Varric a lot lately. As much as I like the guy in personality, I just can't seem to have him dying on me all the time, while I already gave him this passive talent to reduce threat by 25% and he carries the most CC abilities of all. Interestingly enough, even with the same "Ranged" setting and no Tactic, Merrill seems to be staying alive for the most part. I usually ignore her most of the time until I need her to Chain Lightning to finish a Stagger combo or cast Barrier. Given she has 2 sustainable for defense, she would just die like the rest if mobs get on her, and auto heal from Anders would do nothing to help. Speaking of which, I wonder if I can set Tactics for Anders to ignore Merrill on his Heal.

For playing on Nightmare mode, we already ask to spend a lot of effort anyway. So I truly don't mind the long battles and micromanagement. I just pull out "killallhostiles" when I was replaying to save time. Yes, due to numerous game breaking bugs, I had to replay about 20 hours this week because my latest save seems to have a corrupted Hawke. Not corrupted with Blood Magic, but rather with Bioware glitch.

[frustratemyself]

I know it's not the intended part to zero in on but lolz to the death by hugging.

[Waltzingbear]

Varric is problematic specifically- he tends to override movement orders given to him with actions from his tactics (or maybe it's just my illusion and he's just getting hit and "forgets" his last command- it's hard to tell, but from my experience he does that more often than others).
You have to be aware of that and if issuing orders to move, making sure he follows them.
With that said, he's also the best dodger I've seen in the game.

Mages have long cast-time. It's just possible that they haven't finished their current action.
Or again, it might just be that they're getting knocked back when someone attacks them and then "forgetting" their last issued order.

Modifié par Waltzingbear, 01 avril 2011 - 03:12 .

[Zan Mura]

The explanation to Varric's insane threat is rather simple though. Especially in late game, his auto-attack damage is completely off the charts. That threat is completely based on his ridiculous damage output that makes sure that if ANYONE beside the tank or the 2h will get the threat, then it's gonna be Varric.

Other than that, I do agree that there are issues in general with the AI carrying out directly issued commands. Not the exceptions like breaking HOLD to move anyway, or the "ranged vs. HOLD while nearby enemies = stuck" -behaviour.

I have had several times where when I take direct control of Varric and attempt to manually move to whichever direction, he just plain ignores it and keeps firing off 2-3+ shots on autofire. The only reliable way to override that is to mouse click on the land. Even then, the general gameplay just plain sucks when it comes to executing precision abilities or CCC's on command. The whole mage final attack dancing animation and Varric's uninterruptible autofire is costing lives, reloads and ripped out hairs at a rate that most of us likely don't even realise.

Personally I've become quite aware of the fact that I forgive these mistakes simply because I have no choice, I've gotten so used to the idea that when I miss a heal / barrier / CCC with a mage because of the random extra 2 second delay, or because Varric won't fire off that ability that was meant to save a life, that I just reload without even thinking about it anymore. I could throw out a random number like dying on average 10 times per an hour due to gameplay issues alone, and NO fault of my own.

I really, *really* wish they fixed that. Or that some modder had the skills and rage to summon the energy to fiddle around with the core files and take care of that problem. I can see the combat being thrice as fun the second your commands are actually RELIABLE, as opposed to routinely being ignored.

[TcheQ]

When I tell you to hold, I f***ING mean IT!

[Tomomi]

frustratemyself wrote...

I know it's not the intended part to zero in on but lolz to the death by hugging.

I know right?  DA2 gives me an affinity against tree huggers. I am done screaming at them. I just mutter "Damn tree huggers, never learn".

The "feature" to forget command is actually quite well known already. Indeed annoying, especially when you are in a tight situation and you have to micromanage every single move of all characters in which a failed move can cost the whole battle. You just can't honestly focus all of them to ensure they do what they were told while getting hit by enemy. A way around this is to group all of them and issue a move command; this is not possible if they are all scattered and moving them all in 1 direction means someone will run through even worse troubles than they already have.

To what I notice is that when you focus a character and move him with mouse click, he will guarantee to drop everything and move. I have not been stuck with any animation yet, or maybe I didn't notice.

Oh, about Varric, his auto attack is so great that I don't even put points in Archery. Instead, I put a lot of points in his CC abilities and that -25% threat passive ability which will do him much good.  Sadly, the tendency for tree hugging still gets him killed most of the time.

Modifié par Tomomi, 02 avril 2011 - 11:34 .

[Klystron]

Some boss fights seem designed to take advantage of poor party AI -- when a dragon flies up in the air and the party has no target, they all come running to me ... so when the dragon lands he can breathe on all 4 of us.  I typically hit HOLD, and then forget to take it off and my tank just stands there 

[shoggoth1890]

I gave Anders haste and then switched to one of the default tactic schemes to serve as a base upon which to customize. I left his haste tactic alone, since I the conditional fit what I wanted. I have just now figured out that this is (a major) reason why I have been having problems with him. His condition is "Ally: using melee attack". Problem is, they never coded that tactic into the list, so when he reaches it he just starts standing there.