Are NPC Party Members An Inevitability?

[uuuhname]

I don't see this ever happening. the game would sooner just shut down before I can see an scenario where that would ever come up as an idea "to save the game". WoW isn't going away, ever, people still play EverQuest 2 for god sakes.

[Azerate]

I disagree that this is an inevitability. But it's also true it's not impossible. As mentioned here by other posters, such systems exist in other popular MMOs nowadays. I tried it out in FF14 and didn't like it. The 'spirit of the mmo' is one thing, but the other is that it's actually harder than going with a group of real people, because if you die with those NPCs, your party automatically wipes. At least that's how it was in the dungeons I did. In other words - you actually have to learn the mechanics yourself and you can't get carried with the NPC party, which doesn't work too well for casuals who just want to experience the story. It might have been changed later, but that was my experience with it.

I also think it's more understandable in a game such as FF14 though - because it literally has dungeons/instances within the main story quest and you cannot progress your solo game without completing them. Wow has no such thing. There are dungeon quests, but they aren't part of the main quest lines and usually not even side quest lines. They are completely optional and off the beaten path available for people who want to do them. I think I still have some of the dungeon quests incomplete on my main that has curve, ksm and most of the stuff in the open world done in SL - because there's no point.

I don't think I'd ever use such a mode, but I don't really care either way. My only problem with this would be the dev time required for implementation of such feature, which could otherwise be spent on new content instead.

[Sagenod]

As long as the NPC group member can be controlled directly if necessary I would be okay with this.

[Makabreska]

I also think it's more understandable in a game such as FF14 though - because it literally has dungeons/instances within the main story quest and you cannot progress your solo game without completing them. Wow has no such thing. There are dungeon quests, but they aren't part of the main quest lines and usually not even side quest lines. They are completely optional and off the beaten path available for people who want to do them. I think I still have some of the dungeon quests incomplete on my main that has curve, ksm and most of the stuff in the open world done in SL - because there's no point.

Dude, what? Dungeons been part of main story lines for ages and they were usually a zone story culmination. We go to HoA to kick Chamberlain in the nuts and retrieve Medallion of Pride, we go to Spires to deal with Devos and end Foresworn rebellion. Freehold allowed us to defeat Harlan, Siege ended Ashvane rebellion. Throne of the Tides in Cata, Draktharon Keep in WotLK and the list goes on.

[Azerate]

Dude, what? Dungeons been part of main story lines for ages and they were usually a zone story culmination. We go to HoA to kick Chamberlain in the nuts and retrieve Medallion of Pride, we go to Spires to deal with Devos and end Foresworn rebellion. Freehold allowed us to defeat Harlan, Siege ended Ashvane rebellion. Throne of the Tides in Cata, Draktharon Keep in WotLK and the list goes on.

The dungeons make sense when it comes to the lore, yes.
They do get unlocked after you are done with the zone's story, yes.
Do you get a post-campaign, additional optional quest that sends you to a dungeon? Yes.

Are they a part of the actual leveling campaign / quest lines? No. You can finish every single zone quest line and be awarded achievement for completion of it without doing the dungeon. I'm pretty sure there is not a single case of you being required to complete the dungeon to be considered "done" with the zone/quest line.

In FF14 you literally cannot continue the main story quest, which is pretty much the only way to progress your character in that game (even if you level via other means, if you haven't completed the story you aren't getting to the endgame). That's a major difference between these two games. In FF it's a hard requirement to finish the dungeons to move on. In WoW you can get to the level cap without touching any dungeon content at all.

[Swnem]

While it would be cool to develop the solo player experience, i don't see it happening until the game is on it's last legs or if Blizz changes their storytelling model to something more like SWTOR, GW2 or FFXIV.
Which would be much better than their current leveling system, imo. But, i don't see it anytime soon.

[Maxilian]

Not a fan, but I'm not gonna lie, i really liked the event where we had a "fake" Battleground, where the enemies were bots.

[Zaktar]

People are all upset about the thought of playing with NPCs, but they'd probably be nicer and more competent than ~50% of players so what's the downside? Oh damn, I'd miss socializing with people whose communication styles generally sort to: a) silence b) repetitive stupid jokes c) temper tantrums.

[Kuja]

It would be such an amazing feature. FFXIV did it, and I loved it.

Wow can even improve from it. World is full of NPCs, make many of them recruitable simply by visiting them and paying for their services. Train them, gear them, do dungeons, raids and island expeditions with them. Apply timewalking so you can even do old content with a challenge in it.

I know I would spend so much time on it.

[arkanon]

It would be such an amazing feature. FFXIV did it, and I loved it.

Wow can even improve from it. World is full of NPCs, make many of them recruitable simply by visiting them and paying for their services. Train them, gear them, do dungeons, raids and island expeditions with them. Apply timewalking so you can even do old content with a challenge in it.

I know I would spend so much time on it.

In your opinion, why would this be better than just doing LFR? This kind of system can work, but only at extremely low difficulty. A scripted fight between an NPC tank and an NPC boss means it has to be pre determined who wins, if you are a dps for example it would be absolutely terrible if the tank could just randomly die without you doing anything wrong, so like I said, it would be MAX lfr difficulty. So why not just queue for lfr?

Say you queue as tank, now you need to rely on your npc healer pumping out enough heals go keep you alive, yet another reason it must be lfr or lower difficulty.

I could see this system working well on OLD raids - a chance to solo old mythical for xmog etc, but nothing current tier, as we already have lfr for the "story mode" people.

[JABoyle3875]

Would be the only way I see the dungeons and raids. I will not subject myself to the pug community in WoW EVER again.

[Wowplayer2021]

Yeah, I think it could happen. With Blizzard improving their AI I don't see why not.

[JABoyle3875]

Cata and MoP call to Arms rewards were great.

They were. But they also didn't have the toxic sewage cesspool that is the PUG community today. And they got nerfed, hard.

Even if I had a decently geared tank, you couldn't get me to tank for a PUG today for a CTA bag guaranteed to have enough tokens to sell so I max out my gold, 4 ultra rare mounts, and a full set of whatever the highest ilvl gear is right now.

And that would be for one dungeon, let alone an LFR wing.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

NPC party members would be really cool but I wouldn't want them half assed. It'd be preferred if NPC party members were programmed to do the mechanics of each boss in an instance, just like in FFXIV. However, the FFXIV dev team has gone on record and talked about how incredibly time consuming it is to program the party members to respond to each mechanic in a dungeon. So in FFXIV, you only have NPC party members for the dungeons of the latest expansion, and only for the dungeons of the next expansion. No plans to program them to do raid mechanics, or to do the dungeon boss mechanics of prior expansion dungeons.

FFXIV's dev team is about 300 people. Last I checked, that was about twice the size of WoW's dev team. If FFXIV struggles to find enough manpower and time to program party members to do the mechanics of every instance in the game, I find it hard to believe that WoW's dev team would be able to do it either. So more than likely... WoW would have to half-ass its party member programming: they'll just get a 90% damage reduction to standing in AoEs and taking DoT damage and don't anything really complicated like in FFXIV.

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in what scenario?you didnt actualy mention that lol,we already have this system for some stuff,but do you mean for lfr and rdf?

Actually, this could be nice for group content. Could do the Heroes of the Storm thing where if a player disconnects (but is still in the instance), their character is run by a bot until the player manages to relog (or gets votekicked from the instance by the other players).

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Seems like something that would appeal to people who really want to solo current content all the way to the end to see like, story and stuff.

To me, the appeal of NPC party members is that 1. I don't have to wait for a queue to do a specific old dungeon I want. Ie, if I am questing through Mists of Pandaria's story, I won't have to wait upwards of 45 minutes trying to get into the Shadopan Monastery dungeon. I can just tick the "do with NPC party members" box and go instantly. And 2. I can go at my own pace. No other players around with the "rush" mentality. I can actually stop to look at the scenery and read the notes in dungeons, or walk away to go get food. And 3. it would be immersive going through these dungeons with characters from the story.

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I would hope not. Not for 5-man content at least. Maybe for Scenario/Island Expedition type content designed specifically for AI teams but to have NPC's tackle regular dungeons would essentially mean scripting every dungeon as an Escort quest with multiple variations of escort NPC's depending on what role you're going in as.

The way NPC party members are done in FFXIV is that they follow the player around, like Bodyguard followers in WoD. If you're not a tank role, then if you pull aggro, the tank NPC party member will immediately start running towards those aggroed mobs and taunt and AoE them to draw aggro. The party members pop their cooldowns and heal as needed. The NPC party members will also dodge AoEs (WoW already did this once), interrupt/stun dangerous casts, etc. Nothing too hard. The real problem is, again, trying to program the party members to react to crucial boss mechanics (like flipping switch in the dungeon, or pulling the boss to a particularly side of the room, etc).

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Solo focused content/features hurts the game

WoW has been effectively singleplayer outside of raiding and PvP for a decade now. Little point pretending otherwise. More singleplayer features aren't going to hurt the game.

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Reading mmo-c, often I feel like I am in a minority of people that regularly plays with friends. WTF

Last friend I knew who played WoW stopped playing in Legion.

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FFXIV and wow are too different to compare how dungeons work.
In FFXIV dungeons are linear there is not so many ways you can plan your route only how many fights between bosses you want.

Wow has as many ways to do the dungeon as there is tanks.

Not really. Starting with Wrath, dungeons in WoW started becoming extremely linear. By MoP they're all a straight line pretty much. And for the one off dungeon with multiple paths like the Bloodmaul Slag Mines, the party members follow the player around anyway so that's okay.

[ippollite]

To me, the appeal of NPC party members is that 1. I don't have to wait for a queue to do a specific old dungeon I want. Ie, if I am questing through Mists of Pandaria's story, I won't have to wait upwards of 45 minutes trying to get into the Shadopan Monastery dungeon. I can just tick the "do with NPC party members" box and go instantly. And 2. I can go at my own pace. No other players around with the "rush" mentality. I can actually stop to look at the scenery and read the notes in dungeons, or walk away to go get food. And 3. it would be immersive going through these dungeons with characters from the story.

This is definitely the key thing to me. If its just to plug a hole for players who dont like playing with other players... naaaah. In heroic dungeons in particular, everyone might as well be an npc. Plus, as mentioned earlier, your power scales WAY beyond these dungeons even at the most casual level of the game making them pretty much 'no drama'. If you aint pulling your weight, your real life-npc companions will carry you just to get through it asap.

But, if its a complete gameplay system? Well now we're having a conversation! The nice thing is we have glimpses of its potential in various other systems: Mission tables and follower systems; timewalking and scaling; AI 'enemies' on islands; scenarios, islands, and instanced content in general. Just smoosh the components together and you've got yourself the core of a meaty soup. Then you throw in the actual progression system on top of it (ie. how it paces out over the course of several patches), and blam! you got yourself a fun little mini game feature with lots of scope for nostalgia gaming. Heck, why not just turn it into the binding of isaac mini game they wanted torghast to be. Have you seen those cute 'raiding mechanics practice' things in 8 bit? Imagine if you could do some of those quests in the lead up to a raid with your companions, then you take them through the dungeons (ez mode), and THEN (if raiding is too hard), you take them into the 8-bit raid to help them get the gear drops from the raid... not only do you have a challenge mode thats silly and fun, but you get to have a mechanics tutorial on top of it teaching players how to play their game.

So fun! Sorry, i know im getting carried away with the possibilities, but i think the scope is really broad. Theres so much they can pull from in the current game and turn it on its head. Itd be ultra meta (textual meta, not power meta).

OMG! can you imagine! you can even have mythic plus! Little 8 bit tornadoes whipping around you to dodge. The scope is GIGANTIC!

Hey blizzard! If it helps! Just think how cool you could make this for MOBILE!!! Just design that mini game. Make a deadmines proof of concept. Like, i mean, it doesnt have to be 1 on 1... but just captures the idea of the deadmines run whilst also adds in fun gameplay thats more in keeping with a roguelike rather than 'pull pack' wait. Pull pack. Wait. But make sure you keep the bosses of original deadmines. Plus their catchphrases! VANCLEEF PAY BIG FOR YOUR HEAD!!!

Oh god, i need to be in the parallel universe where this exists.

[Azerate]

In your opinion, why would this be better than just doing LFR? This kind of system can work, but only at extremely low difficulty. A scripted fight between an NPC tank and an NPC boss means it has to be pre determined who wins, if you are a dps for example it would be absolutely terrible if the tank could just randomly die without you doing anything wrong, so like I said, it would be MAX lfr difficulty. So why not just queue for lfr?

In LFR you can just go in and suicide and get carried by the remaining people who are alive. The chief difference is that with npc dungeon party the player is expected to actually perform the mechanics and learn the encounters, because if they don't, the group wipes. This kind of feature quite simply turns a dungeon into a solo challenge, with indeed low difficulty

NPC party members would be really cool but I wouldn't want them half assed. It'd be preferred if NPC party members were programmed to do the mechanics of each boss in an instance, just like in FFXIV. However, the FFXIV dev team has gone on record and talked about how incredibly time consuming it is to program the party members to respond to each mechanic in a dungeon. So in FFXIV, you only have NPC party members for the dungeons of the latest expansion, and only for the dungeons of the next expansion. No plans to program them to do raid mechanics, or to do the dungeon boss mechanics of prior expansion dungeons.

Yeah that is basically the biggest problem with it. It probably requires crazy dev time so doing that in WoW where we are kind of struggling with content releases recently wouldn't be ideal.

[RemasteredClassic]

I remember there was a bot that Blizzard just had to kill no matter the cost *honorbuddy - that bot was able to do everything, almost, knew how to handle all boss fights...etc. If they could do it *a team of two people, so can blizz. Legion had amazing NPC party bots, same as with islands expedition and pvp in AB against bots...etc. A good way for Blizz to differentiate itself if this goes ahead, is AI driven player made alts - that would be new and exciting...all toons are player owned and made, basically a multiboxer built in that allows you to play multiple toons from the same account.

[Aurabolt]

As long as the NPC group member can be controlled directly if necessary I would be okay with this.

Naturally, the player would have some control and I mean more than existing Bodyguards/Champions from WoD/Legion. In those instances, they just shadowed you and attacked your target at best or we little more than meatbags otherwise. They also didn't have any special skills other than Tanks pulling aggro. No heals was a huge turnoff for me.

With NPC Party Members you can give each of them preset behaviors (Go All out, Focus on Offense/Defense, Heal HP, etc.). They would also have access to most if not all class skills. The player can pick the NPC Party member's spec and switch as needed between two. You can put their skills into keybinds for them as well as use shortcut keys to manually use them if need be. This would make them much more useful overall.

Would be the only way I see the dungeons and raids. I will not subject myself to the pug community in WoW EVER again.

You are not alone in this. More people than are able willing to admit feel the same way.

Blizzard is and always has been about giving players choices or options. I do think NPC Party Members are an inevitability and more so these days. It's already been proven you can't force people to play together if they don't want to. LFD/LFR was introduced to make dungeons and raids accessible. NPC Party Members mean a player can do a dungeon or raid solo (or with less than than required number of human players). It also gives players going through content solo have some flexability.

[crusadernero]

I used to be against it, but now? sure, i'd gladly take it. If they could make a system with your followers(from adventure table) that you could run dungeons with. You could gear them and all that. The better your NPCs are, the more difficult content you can do.

Most of my friends dont play anymore and I cant be bothered with searching for a guild. Done that so many times and its really difficult to find a good fit, and when you finally do it collapses one way or another.

I cant be bothered with the pugging in retail wow anymore. its a shitshow in the end no matter what. IM tierd of it and it has ruined especially dungeons as a endgame content activity for me.

[Dartz1979]

The only npc i'd want in my party would be jaina she's a goddess and my waifu