First it is only going to tanks and healers but eventually it will expand to other classes. I wonder if SOE's version of a botted healer/tank will be more efficient than a MQ'd one? Even if they are only passable in their roles it will allow those that can 3 box to now have a full group... How many here will rethinking their group makeup with this new feature available? Anyone here have opinions on the pros/cons of this?
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Mercenaries in new expansion....
- Thread starter SneakyDaddy
- Start date
I have one word for you: Shrouds.
Personally, I strongly doubt that either the tank or healer version would even come remotely close to the capabilities of a real character with a decent macro. I know they are apparently reworking AI for it, but even that isn't going to compare with a bot.
Is it a good idea? Probably, will help out some people, or groups lacking that one little nudge. I think adding in a dps type mercenary would have been easy enough to throw in with the tank and healer, but maybe they're saving it for another expansion.
Personally, I strongly doubt that either the tank or healer version would even come remotely close to the capabilities of a real character with a decent macro. I know they are apparently reworking AI for it, but even that isn't going to compare with a bot.
Is it a good idea? Probably, will help out some people, or groups lacking that one little nudge. I think adding in a dps type mercenary would have been easy enough to throw in with the tank and healer, but maybe they're saving it for another expansion.
Shrouds allow you to play missing classes...this allows you to play more toons. So instead of turning your rogue into that healer you need you can keep your rogue and add a healer. So lets say now you can 3 box...after expansion you can effectively 6 box.
I wonder is you can bring mercs on raids...do they count towards the cap...WOW I could field a 24 person raid with my 12 accounts hehe.
JimJohnson
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Back to the shroud statement.. yea they let you play missing classes but they are SUB par versions. I think he means they are basically going to suck ass like shrouds do for real game use.
I think you are correct that they will be less efficient than "most" human controlled clerics/tanks but I am optimistic that the healers will heal/cure/buff good enough to allow many to see content that would otherwise be out of there reach. It would also be nice to have a tank that would grab aggro on any mobs attacking the grp...
On the road I can 3 box and I have been using Pally,Enc and Clr... I hope this works out well enough for me to use Pally,Enc,Shm..AIhealer,AItank the last spot would go to AIhealer or tank depending on how much dps they do.
From Dev....Steven S. Klug
EverQuest Assistant Lead Programmer
Some questions I've seen that haven't been answered yet.
Will merc healers heal pets? Yes, they should.
Are they restricted to SoD content? No, though most will likely require that you own the expansion.
Will they count toward requirements for missions? This is the intent, though we're still investigating to see if there are any technical issues with that.
Will the AI suck? I hope not. Maddoc and I have been putting a lot of time and effort into this. Though certainly, we have tuning knobs that we can use the make for better or worse performing mercenares (you get what you pay for).
RE: Concerns about people preferring to use mercenaries over players due to mercs not wanting loot: We've discussed some ideas to address this problem, but the consensus was that making mercenaries take item loot would be very unpopular. Please discuss any other ideas you guys have on this.
RE: Concerns that making them require plat will cause mercs to not be usable by the players that need them the most. While this is partially true, we do intend to carefully balance the costs. Players without much in the way of funds will likely be able to hire cheaper mercenaries that may not be as powerful or have as responsive of an AI, but that can still give them a big boost in power, thereby enabling them to start earning more plat that they can eventually use to hire a better mecenary.
What does it mean that mercs are not allowed in raids? Well, as they are part of your group, you have to dismiss them in order to for your group to join a raid.
Why only Tank and Healer? We're going for quality over quantity. The AI system is very extensible and we will be able to create all kinds of nifty AI's in the future. DPS is next on the list, but we're not willing to say when it will be available yet.
EverQuest Assistant Lead Programmer
Some questions I've seen that haven't been answered yet.
Will merc healers heal pets? Yes, they should.
Are they restricted to SoD content? No, though most will likely require that you own the expansion.
Will they count toward requirements for missions? This is the intent, though we're still investigating to see if there are any technical issues with that.
Will the AI suck? I hope not. Maddoc and I have been putting a lot of time and effort into this. Though certainly, we have tuning knobs that we can use the make for better or worse performing mercenares (you get what you pay for).
RE: Concerns about people preferring to use mercenaries over players due to mercs not wanting loot: We've discussed some ideas to address this problem, but the consensus was that making mercenaries take item loot would be very unpopular. Please discuss any other ideas you guys have on this.
RE: Concerns that making them require plat will cause mercs to not be usable by the players that need them the most. While this is partially true, we do intend to carefully balance the costs. Players without much in the way of funds will likely be able to hire cheaper mercenaries that may not be as powerful or have as responsive of an AI, but that can still give them a big boost in power, thereby enabling them to start earning more plat that they can eventually use to hire a better mecenary.
What does it mean that mercs are not allowed in raids? Well, as they are part of your group, you have to dismiss them in order to for your group to join a raid.
Why only Tank and Healer? We're going for quality over quantity. The AI system is very extensible and we will be able to create all kinds of nifty AI's in the future. DPS is next on the list, but we're not willing to say when it will be available yet.
More from same dev....
RE: Telling how much mana a mercenary has...Yes, the upgraded group window now shows mana and endurance as well as health for all party members.
RE: Will the mobs always choose to attack an in range player over mercenareis...no. Mercenaries are not pets, they are using a totally new system. They are being designed to as much as is technically possible react and be treated just like real players.
RE: Will the mobs get some AI loving? Yes, eventually. The AI system has been designed to be used both by mercenaries and regular NPCs. Though the focus for the expansion is writing mercenary AIs, I will be training the designers on how to use the AI system to create AIs for NPCs. I have no ETA on when such things will appear however.
RE: Telling how much mana a mercenary has...Yes, the upgraded group window now shows mana and endurance as well as health for all party members.
RE: Will the mobs always choose to attack an in range player over mercenareis...no. Mercenaries are not pets, they are using a totally new system. They are being designed to as much as is technically possible react and be treated just like real players.
RE: Will the mobs get some AI loving? Yes, eventually. The AI system has been designed to be used both by mercenaries and regular NPCs. Though the focus for the expansion is writing mercenary AIs, I will be training the designers on how to use the AI system to create AIs for NPCs. I have no ETA on when such things will appear however.
JimJohnson
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Even more from same dev...
Wow, I think you guys are going to quickly overwhelm my ability to answer all of your questions!
Answers after the questions:
Are mercenaries ignored if you do a coin-split with the /split command?
Yes.
Also, how aggressively do they follow you around? I already have a sprit-dog riding my leg and getting in the way when I'm trying to loot. Will I now also have a mercenary standing directly in front of me?
Mercenary movement is very context dependent. When you're not in combat, however, they follow you similar to the way pets do. The distances are easily tweaked if they become an issue. In combat, they try to position themselves in good tactical positions that will depend on their type and what stance they are in.
Does the tanking mercenary do more than just taunt to hold agro? Or does it just taunt like a pet would and leave it at that?
It will do more than just taunt.
If a mercenary kills a mob after you die, will the mob's corpse poof like it does if a DoT kills the mob after you die?
I suspect there will be some cases where the corpse may poof if you did not contribute to the fight, to prevent you from going AFK and letting your mercenary grind XP for you.
Will a mercenary sit down to med? (And more to the point, can you prevent that since sitting is a sure way to die in some zones).
Yes, caster mercenaries sit down to med. You can prevent them from doing this by putting them in the "Do nothing" stance (all mercenaries have this stance).
For the healer mercenary, can you give as an idea of how effectively it heals? What I mean is, will it generally use fast heals whenever your health reaches a certain threshold or will it blindly chain-cast CH?
This greatly depends on the situation and quality level of the mercenary, but in general it will try to cast the most efficient heal it has that will land before it estimates you will die.
Can a mercenary change its mind and interupt its own casting to cast a different spell?
Yes. This comes up fairly often if you get bursty mob damage with the healer AI.
Will the mercenary complain if I choose to send him to certain death without buffs while I execute a "Brave, Brave Sir Robin" manouver if I do a bad pull?
You can't really send him anywhere. Mercenaries currently will not attack mobs without the mob being aggro on the group. This could require some skill for some of the more squishy classes, but then, most of the squishy classes can solo pretty well already (soloing being the main situation where this would matter).
Will (future non-tank and non-healer) mercenaries understand the concept of root-rotting? I'd sure hate to get a necro mercenary to help with dotting and find out that it prefers nuking or some-such. I guess this questions could be better worded as "can there be a dotting only version of a caster DPS mercenary if you happen to make a caster DPS mercenary".
The sky is the limit as far as making AIs. I'm sure we'll have fun making them for quite a while as long as they are popular.
RE: Requests for a "fair share" payment method--we have discussed this as a possibility, but we didn't think it would be very popular. If during beta we get feedback to the contrary we can re-visit this idea. It is something that could take a fair amount of coding time to do correctly though, so I'm not sure at this point we could fit it in even if we decided we wanted the option. I'm certainly interested in hearing more feedback on it though. That case of fighting the named mob and having the mercenary ninja the cool loot is something that we felt would leave a sour taste in player's mouths. Now, of course, they could simply dismiss the mercenary before fighthing the named, but perhaps they wouldn't be able to take the named without it. Yeah, there's a lot of things to think about with that particular solution. How to make it non-exploitable could be very tricky.
Wow, I think you guys are going to quickly overwhelm my ability to answer all of your questions!
Answers after the questions:
Are mercenaries ignored if you do a coin-split with the /split command?
Yes.
Also, how aggressively do they follow you around? I already have a sprit-dog riding my leg and getting in the way when I'm trying to loot. Will I now also have a mercenary standing directly in front of me?
Mercenary movement is very context dependent. When you're not in combat, however, they follow you similar to the way pets do. The distances are easily tweaked if they become an issue. In combat, they try to position themselves in good tactical positions that will depend on their type and what stance they are in.
Does the tanking mercenary do more than just taunt to hold agro? Or does it just taunt like a pet would and leave it at that?
It will do more than just taunt.
If a mercenary kills a mob after you die, will the mob's corpse poof like it does if a DoT kills the mob after you die?
I suspect there will be some cases where the corpse may poof if you did not contribute to the fight, to prevent you from going AFK and letting your mercenary grind XP for you.
Will a mercenary sit down to med? (And more to the point, can you prevent that since sitting is a sure way to die in some zones).
Yes, caster mercenaries sit down to med. You can prevent them from doing this by putting them in the "Do nothing" stance (all mercenaries have this stance).
For the healer mercenary, can you give as an idea of how effectively it heals? What I mean is, will it generally use fast heals whenever your health reaches a certain threshold or will it blindly chain-cast CH?
This greatly depends on the situation and quality level of the mercenary, but in general it will try to cast the most efficient heal it has that will land before it estimates you will die.
Can a mercenary change its mind and interupt its own casting to cast a different spell?
Yes. This comes up fairly often if you get bursty mob damage with the healer AI.
Will the mercenary complain if I choose to send him to certain death without buffs while I execute a "Brave, Brave Sir Robin" manouver if I do a bad pull?
You can't really send him anywhere. Mercenaries currently will not attack mobs without the mob being aggro on the group. This could require some skill for some of the more squishy classes, but then, most of the squishy classes can solo pretty well already (soloing being the main situation where this would matter).
Will (future non-tank and non-healer) mercenaries understand the concept of root-rotting? I'd sure hate to get a necro mercenary to help with dotting and find out that it prefers nuking or some-such. I guess this questions could be better worded as "can there be a dotting only version of a caster DPS mercenary if you happen to make a caster DPS mercenary".
The sky is the limit as far as making AIs. I'm sure we'll have fun making them for quite a while as long as they are popular.
RE: Requests for a "fair share" payment method--we have discussed this as a possibility, but we didn't think it would be very popular. If during beta we get feedback to the contrary we can re-visit this idea. It is something that could take a fair amount of coding time to do correctly though, so I'm not sure at this point we could fit it in even if we decided we wanted the option. I'm certainly interested in hearing more feedback on it though. That case of fighting the named mob and having the mercenary ninja the cool loot is something that we felt would leave a sour taste in player's mouths. Now, of course, they could simply dismiss the mercenary before fighthing the named, but perhaps they wouldn't be able to take the named without it. Yeah, there's a lot of things to think about with that particular solution. How to make it non-exploitable could be very tricky.
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I really like the sound of this from EQ Dev Elidroth....
No.. what it means is you can flag real players with a 'role' flag that tells the mercenary AI how to behave. In the example you mention, you set your puller to 'puller' and the healer won't try to do stupid things like heal you from 400' away or throw heals on you when trying to split mobs.
No.. what it means is you can flag real players with a 'role' flag that tells the mercenary AI how to behave. In the example you mention, you set your puller to 'puller' and the healer won't try to do stupid things like heal you from 400' away or throw heals on you when trying to split mobs.
Hmm. If they DONT suck this could be insanely crazy. Even if they arent allowed in a raid instance there are a lot of places I would love to have an extra 15 or so tanks/healers that I dont have to script or buy computers for for an army of asswhoopin.
I wonder if the NPC healers will rez, or do they just heal?
I wonder if the NPC healers will rez, or do they just heal?
Rez and buff...they will interupt a CH if they think you are dying to fast for it to land also...
I have not heard anything about how 2 tank or 2 healers will handle being in the same grp...if anyone knows please share hehe
JimJohnson
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People complain about population numbers this will hurt the population so muh more as people wont group. I realy dont see how this is a good thing at all for anyone but the people to cheap to pay for 2 subs.
So basically their making eq .. guild war's... the merc's in that game were GIMP!! willin to bet its guna be a huge let down and no one is going to use them...
bingo... ala shrouds.
These are going to suck, or be such a huge plat sink that 90% of people won't use them. Sony is going to do 3 things effectively:
1) Encourage ppl to stop paying for multiple accounts,
2) Kill what grouping game still exists,
3) Rev up the plat buyers/sellers as demand for large sums goes through the roof.
What a fucking waste of multiple devs time. One of them even talked about how they could make AI to do different things other than tank and heal... for example root rot and kite and shit like that. I don't want devs taking their time to fucking make necros or druids solo any better than they already can when other classes have major issues (bards, druids, chanters).
These are going to suck, or be such a huge plat sink that 90% of people won't use them. Sony is going to do 3 things effectively:
1) Encourage ppl to stop paying for multiple accounts,
2) Kill what grouping game still exists,
3) Rev up the plat buyers/sellers as demand for large sums goes through the roof.
What a fucking waste of multiple devs time. One of them even talked about how they could make AI to do different things other than tank and heal... for example root rot and kite and shit like that. I don't want devs taking their time to fucking make necros or druids solo any better than they already can when other classes have major issues (bards, druids, chanters).
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