Curse

haggus71 · Aug 29, 2007, 08:23 AM // 08:23

I have read longer threads that didn't hurt this much.

The AI's are the same. Why? Because it takes a LOT of coding to design one AI for a hero character that enables you to set up a myriad of skill combos. They had ten of these AI's to design. Do you think that, first with GWEN, and with the ongoing R&D for GW2, that they are going to write up the AI's first for every single hero in Nightfall, then the ten more in GWEN? Between the skill adjustments, the bot wars, and trying to pander to every single person's wants for the game, not to mention designing a whole new game, I think they are busy enough. Anyway, it's not like they have EA's or Blizzard's numbers of designers working on this stuff. They will take the most efficient route to get the job done.

So it REALLY doesn't matter what you pick. It could be Norgu or Gwen or a freaking gerbil as a mesmer. They are going to use the same skills the same way, depending on the situation. MoW and Olias? Depends on whether you want the lead for Judas Priest or a Hobo. Maybe you are used to seeing Olias as MM in the game, and since MoW is set up as a caster, you gave him a curses build. You can easily perceive MoW as a great SS and Olias as a MM(though I've given Olias an SS build and he did great).

It's just your style of play that matters. As long as it fits that style, Jin can be just fine over So-sucky. As for Mesmer, gotta go with the cool emo chick Gwen. It's over, girl. Let go!

Kas · Aug 29, 2007, 09:31 AM // 09:31

Once you've setup a basic skeleton for the AI you can code in basic variables to include such things as preferences of skill usage. Please don't act all smart talking about AI if you've got no idea about the theory behind AIs. AIs are just a series of functions that go either this or that way based upon certain variables hitting a spot. Putting a one liner code into it that lowers the reaction variable for example (if the used attribute is the predetermined attribute) allready is enough to make them act quite different.

And yes, the heroes seem to have a preference for certain attribute lines. If there is no such thing, there is a lot of coincidence going on that borders on infinite impossibility.

Maybe it's even something as simple as a bug instead of a planned feature? Might be quite possible. Whenever I tried giving Tahlkora a HB Bar, it ended in epic failure. Most of the time she would just stand there, doing nothing while having full energy and the team receiving a serious pounding. Give Dunkoro the HB Bar and the same team composition otherwise, fighting the same mob, the team survives without coming even close to annihilation.
Likewise, try a protection based bar on Dunkoro and watch HIS energy stay almost completely full while the team gets murdered. Give the same bar to Tahlkora, et voilá... she keeps your team well protected.

So sure, could be complete coincidence. But the amount of coincidences is then just ridiculous. Open up your monk heroes skillbars when you've given them the same build and see for yourself.

zwei2stein · Aug 29, 2007, 10:55 AM // 10:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kas

Once you've setup a basic skeleton for the AI you can code in basic variables to include such things as preferences of skill usage. Please don't act all smart talking about AI if you've got no idea about the theory behind AIs. AIs are just a series of functions that go either this or that way based upon certain variables hitting a spot. Putting a one liner code into it that lowers the reaction variable for example (if the used attribute is the predetermined attribute) allready is enough to make them act quite different.

And yes, the heroes seem to have a preference for certain attribute lines. If there is no such thing, there is a lot of coincidence going on that borders on infinite impossibility.

Maybe it's even something as simple as a bug instead of a planned feature? Might be quite possible. Whenever I tried giving Tahlkora a HB Bar, it ended in epic failure. Most of the time she would just stand there, doing nothing while having full energy and the team receiving a serious pounding. Give Dunkoro the HB Bar and the same team composition otherwise, fighting the same mob, the team survives without coming even close to annihilation.
Likewise, try a protection based bar on Dunkoro and watch HIS energy stay almost completely full while the team gets murdered. Give the same bar to Tahlkora, et voilá... she keeps your team well protected.

So sure, could be complete coincidence. But the amount of coincidences is then just ridiculous. Open up your monk heroes skillbars when you've given them the same build and see for yourself.

Funny, i really have them identical builds and watched them. they both did fine.

(If you know about ai, that one liner is quite understatement, you can have framework to which you add "personal traits". you can have trained general neural nets and make clones and retrain them if you want "leet" stuff, but when you fork ai to 25 groups, it gets a hell to maintain, and if you leave it in one tree you get reall nasty code full of one liners and ifs.)

Besides, we have seen same traits for AI all over the game.

example: Healing Breeze.

Hench monks: they use it only on character that suffer degen.

Monsters: again, only under degen (monst people farming byzzr boss wont ever see him use it no matter how much beating he takes, but put any degen on him and he starts to spam it.)

Doppleganger: it is age old strategy to use heling breeze as self heal as he wont use it ... unless degened.

All Heroes: guess what.

Longasc · Aug 29, 2007, 11:22 AM // 11:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kas

Likewise, try a protection based bar on Dunkoro and watch HIS energy stay almost completely full while the team gets murdered. Give the same bar to Tahlkora, et voilá... she keeps your team well protected.

So sure, could be complete coincidence. But the amount of coincidences is then just ridiculous. Open up your monk heroes skillbars when you've given them the same build and see for yourself.

I fear you want that to believe, but I do not see these "coincidences" or patterns you see.

I used both Tahlkora and Dunkoro with the same runes, weapons and (prot) build. There was no difference at all.

I am fairly convinced there is only ONE Hero AI. Not even depending on class. It is rather depending on

1. The Skills on the bar
2. Attribute levels you assigned

You can give Dunkoro a Warrior build or Ranger build and weapons and he will follow the same patterns as proper Warrior/Rangers.

Kashrlyyk · Aug 29, 2007, 04:32 PM // 16:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Longasc

I fear you want that to believe, but I do not see these "coincidences" or patterns you see.

I used both Tahlkora and Dunkoro with the same runes, weapons and (prot) build. There was no difference at all.

I am fairly convinced there is only ONE Hero AI. Not even depending on class. It is rather depending on

1. The Skills on the bar
2. Attribute levels you assigned

You can give Dunkoro a Warrior build or Ranger build and weapons and he will follow the same patterns as proper Warrior/Rangers.

I am not sure about that. When I create a new Nightfalls character, I give Charge to Koss immediately. He very rarely uses it, until I used it a few times. Then he starts to use it whenever possible. Or look a Dragon Slash: The first skill right at the left side of his skill bar. He used it 3 or 4 times in 3 fights in the Echo forest, even though is was completely charged most of the time.

Coraline Jones · Aug 29, 2007, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by haggus71

I have read longer threads that didn't hurt this much.

The AI's are the same. Why? Because it takes a LOT of coding to design one AI for a hero character that enables you to set up a myriad of skill combos. They had ten of these AI's to design. Do you think that, first with GWEN, and with the ongoing R&D for GW2, that they are going to write up the AI's first for every single hero in Nightfall, then the ten more in GWEN? Between the skill adjustments, the bot wars, and trying to pander to every single person's wants for the game, not to mention designing a whole new game, I think they are busy enough. Anyway, it's not like they have EA's or Blizzard's numbers of designers working on this stuff. They will take the most efficient route to get the job done.

So it REALLY doesn't matter what you pick. It could be Norgu or Gwen or a freaking gerbil as a mesmer. They are going to use the same skills the same way, depending on the situation. MoW and Olias? Depends on whether you want the lead for Judas Priest or a Hobo. Maybe you are used to seeing Olias as MM in the game, and since MoW is set up as a caster, you gave him a curses build. You can easily perceive MoW as a great SS and Olias as a MM(though I've given Olias an SS build and he did great).

It's just your style of play that matters. As long as it fits that style, Jin can be just fine over So-sucky. As for Mesmer, gotta go with the cool emo chick Gwen. It's over, girl. Let go!

You, sir, are my hero. I lol'ed at your post.

But to get back to this rather odd thread, people that say that there's a "difference" between the heroes are just kidding themselves. First of all, Zhed is setup as a Earth build when you get him, and I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people using him have converted him to Fire Magic as soon as they got him.

There's so many factors that change how heroes react, such as what armor they are wearing, their attribute levels, order of the skills in the skill bar, and the overall composition in your party. Even the order of your party can determine a small amount. If you have Sousuke in slot 1 and Zhed in slot 2, this is slightly different than the other way around. For the most part, your heroes stand from left to right in the order that you put them into your party. This barely noticeable positioning probably affects the A.I. a little since one person is going to see aggro fractions of a second before the other depending on how you approach the monsters.

It really makes very little sense to put in a bunch of coding just to give every hero some kind of secret "personality" to favor certain builds and not tell anybody about it. What would be the point? They may as well have locked their skill bars and renamed "Tahlkora and Dunkoro" to "Lina and Mhenlo".

=====

And if that's not enough evidence, well, I can say that I did it. For a mission, because we had no minion master and we needed Master of Whispers, I was asked to run it. I transferred every rune, insignia, and weapon over to MoW from Olias, and gave him an exact copy of his skill bar. From what I can tell, there's no difference at all, and I have to pay attention to what the party is doing because I'm the monk.

The A.I. does the same things. It will spam Blood of the Master over and over if minions are dying and no corpses are nearby to summon new ones. It always puts Death Nova on minions that are going to die, sometimes casting it non-stop in tough battles rather than summoning new minions to help fight. I recently changed my build so I can't tell, but the game seems to favor the highest cost minion first, meaning that it will summon a Bone Fiend before it will summon a Flesh Golem, just because that's the way it operates.

I think that any bias between heroes is rarely fully tested, because most people aren't going to waste a lot of time transferring all the runes, insignia, etc. from one hero to another, and the "testing" is often in different missions or situations which can be blamed on anything from bad pulling, lousy builds in your team, or just unfortunate luck.

Obey The Cat · Aug 30, 2007, 12:16 AM // 00:16

this thread made me laugh (sorry I did not read all posts).

somebody is comparing hero behavior here.

I NEVER noticed any different ways my different heroes used their skills. when I take souzi and zhed both pwn in the exact same way. there is absolutely NO difference. same to olias and master. or talky and dunk. I think its random and these are only rumors.

the only thing i cant get is: why is erys >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> norgu/gwen in interrupting? damn i hate anet for this.

Iuris · Aug 30, 2007, 07:28 AM // 07:28

I would point out one thing that many people may forget:

The older heroes have usually been given some equipment. The new ones come clean. It sure made me wonder why Vekk was dying so much at the start before I figured out he had no runes on him.

In all other respects, I have seen no difference at all. The primary profession of the Hero is all that matters.