Bjond
Well-known member
IMHO the entire reason hirelings are "bad" stems from SSG's patent desire for hires to express "personalities" in their behavior; eg. everyone that has ever used "Bombs away Larafay" knows exactly how that hire behaves. She actually has a play style and it's vastly different than most hires.
It's one of those "cool story, Bro" features. Things that sound great, but lead to something too niche to be worth the time to develop.
The other more obvious reason is a desire not to make hires so good that people start playing solo with hires instead of grouping with real people. Anyone that has played SWTOR knows this fear is unfounded. Hires there ARE better than most real players.
IMHO, SSG should seriously consider deprecating existing hires and adding a new system for future ones. Express personality with party banter (not play-style), perhaps even voice major hirelings (expansion hires), and code them to diligently pursue their true role in party: heal, tank, dps. Of those, heal is the 98% use case. Do that first.
Make all hirelings level-independent; ie. they set their level to yours when summoned. Combined with separating play-style coding from behavioral coding, this will future-proof hires. Updates to hire play can proceed without impacting personality & vice-versa.
For play quality, I'd aim at making the heal hire as good as a first-life player that does nothing but cast healing spells and avoid combat. I would not worry about making them too good; other games have made hires BETTER than most players and people still punt them for real humans -- there's not even a discusion, it's assumed that everyone will punt a hire for a player and they do.
It's one of those "cool story, Bro" features. Things that sound great, but lead to something too niche to be worth the time to develop.
The other more obvious reason is a desire not to make hires so good that people start playing solo with hires instead of grouping with real people. Anyone that has played SWTOR knows this fear is unfounded. Hires there ARE better than most real players.
IMHO, SSG should seriously consider deprecating existing hires and adding a new system for future ones. Express personality with party banter (not play-style), perhaps even voice major hirelings (expansion hires), and code them to diligently pursue their true role in party: heal, tank, dps. Of those, heal is the 98% use case. Do that first.
Make all hirelings level-independent; ie. they set their level to yours when summoned. Combined with separating play-style coding from behavioral coding, this will future-proof hires. Updates to hire play can proceed without impacting personality & vice-versa.
For play quality, I'd aim at making the heal hire as good as a first-life player that does nothing but cast healing spells and avoid combat. I would not worry about making them too good; other games have made hires BETTER than most players and people still punt them for real humans -- there's not even a discusion, it's assumed that everyone will punt a hire for a player and they do.
