Hello SigylVanz, thanks for the questions.

Yes, it is intended they remain in the Hall of Storms until a player pings them to follow. They will attempt to return to the Hall of Storms if they are no longer following a player.

Yes, this is intended. I will explain. During testing there was feedback that AI agents who are following humans were too difficult to pull back for retreat because their leash ranges was too large. You had to run really far away in order for AI to begin leashing back to the player. We dialed the leash range down pretty significantly so that the AI will follow their player much more closely. Consequently, this means that having a melee AI follow a melee player hero makes them per...

Hey, thanks for the comment.

Good question, I can provide some insight into how an agent would approach each situation.

The way AI travels to a Goal (like a map objective) is the same as a move command. It’s the same as if you right clicked a tribute and just let the game take you there. This is our pathfinding at work and it’s what our agents use for traveling to Goals. While it will get you where you clicked by taking the shortest route, it does not consider other possibilities like flanks or shortcuts. Those types of decisions are simple for human minds to make, but would require a much more sophisticated pathfinding system for AI to replicate.

Once agents get within a certain range of their goal they will then begin using Tactical fight logic...

Hi Teo!

Thanks for your notes! I can give you some insight into some of your points.

The reason why AI ignore Deathwing fire breath is because we made a conscious decision for them to ignore it. Otherwise, AI agents would be constantly running away from Deathwing. This is due to our pathing system. It isn’t sophisticated enough to navigate around dangerous areas like how a human player would. Unfortunately, “fixing” pathfinding is not a trivial task as it would require substantial engineering efforts.

T...

Hey, Stavros. This is reasonable, I can look into Nova (love her) decoy A.I.

I think this is reasonable, thank you. I will take a look at the health thresholds that govern the healing fountain goal and see if it’s safe to adjust.

Hey AnaBanana, this is something I will look into.

Hey, mynd.

I agree with the frustration of watching disconnect replacement A.I. try to help, but often end up becoming a liability to your team. I want to share with you more details of additional changes related to your feedback that we are hoping to ship in the next release, details that we did not have time to include in my original post or the blog.

When your ally disconnects from the game, their replacement A.I. is put into a precarious position. It’s like suddenly dropping a Silver player into a match with 9 Master players. It’s very difficult for the AI to keep up with humans. In the past we have tried to make A.I. more sophisticated by attempting to capture more and more game context into their decision making, hoping that it would make them react more intelligently. Our collective observations have lead us to accept that disconnect replacement A.I. will never be strong enough in its decision making to play well with human players on their own. Instead, we want to focus on addr...

Yes, this is something that I have fixed for the next release.

Hello, and good day to you all!

My name is Kevin Gu, and I am a Senior Designer on the Heroes team. I have been working alongside Jeff Beaudoin, our Lead Gameplay Engineer, on our game’s A.I. We wanted to take a moment to update you all on where we are and how our three major A.I. initiatives are progressing.

Reconciliation of the Goal and Tactical Systems

There are two systems under the hood of Heroes that work together to drive agent behavior: the Goal system and the Tactical system. The Goal system is responsible for determining where A.I. agents should move, while the Tactical system provides agents with awareness of their surroundings so that they use and target their abilities intelligently. Last year, in an effort to improve agent in-combat positioning, we made it possible for the Tactical system to override the Goal system. Although we believe the changes were ultimately a good iteration, they did expose several underlying issues that we are addressing.

Moving forward we will ...