Something I’ve wanted since I started playing back in Cata was the ability to group up with my own alts and have them become NPCs in-game. Blizz has already dabbled with NPC companions in Island Expeditions (and others) so this would basically just be an iteration on that. How could it work?
You’d have to have some system (perhaps an evolution of macros) in which to set their default rotation based on their spec. You’d also have to have the ability to create macros to call specific abilities (heals, interrupts, lusts, etc) for each character.
For progression, you would group up with 4 of your alts (or 9 for raid) and these NPC-Alts would have skill levels that would increase as you took the team through instances. At level 1, the NPC-Alts would be bad at doing the mechanics of a fight - avoiding damage, soaking zones, etc. As they level up, they’d “learn” the fights and become better and better. Each Alt-NPC would have a separate level per spec. Just because they are level 100 on DPS doesn’t mean they’d be level 100 on healing.
Blizz should probably limit these to just queueable instances (LFR and Heroic dungeons) and questing as these are meant for solo players anyways and solve the insane waiting times for certain instances.
With scaling, this could also be an easy way to add “content” to the game by making ALL past dungeons/raids relevant with respect to difficulty and rewards.
And as a bonus you could have an instanced Warband “base” where you see your alts walking around as NPCs.
I like this idea as instead of giving you a random npc to help you while questing or whatever you can pick through what alt you want to join you from the warband, but as something you could bring into dungeons and raid content i don’t really agree with its use. At that point you’re just taking the MM part out of the game if everyone could do that. I do think the part about them questing with you has a bit of merit though, instead of random NPCs you dont know.
“I want to be dismissive and try to belittle people, when other games have story modes where you can run stuff with your companions, but I’ll ignore that, because it doesn’t fit my narrative.”
Seriously, I’m not sure what’s up with that, but other games do have the ability to run content with companions and no, it’s not an AFK fest.
The jesus droid is one thing that wow does not need to borrow. Even in those story FPs, you have to actually do something. 4-24 Ally NPCs (instead of 1-2) would do enough that you actually didn’t have to.
If you want a separate story mode, find a different way to implement it, because this one will be too easily abused.
The companion content doesn’t even use that anymore. If you haven’t played in a while, there’s content where you can pick a companion or you get paired with one or two— none of them are OP.
How do you abuse a lower rank of content that doesn’t even give the same rewards?
Hunter (and warlock) pets quest and engage in other activities with you, and act in concert with you - while under a degree of control by you that is not insignificant but is less than the degree you have over your character.
I can imagine alts playing with you in a similar fashion.
The distinction is however that as much as anything in the game is balanced, hunters with pets are not wildly more powerful than those without.
So when applying this to any sort of progression content there would have to be significant care given to making sure players were not essentially 5-boxing their way into EZ mode.
If this was just some story mode version, that forced you to participate (running AI NPCs has a tendency to either completely solo the content, or do actually nothing), and gave no tangible rewards there would probably be fewer objections.
They aren’t. I’m not even sure where “extra rewards” came from. Wanting old stuff to be relevant and to “respect the difficulty and rewards” sounds more like, “scale it so that it makes sense.”
Heck, even if it’s just cosmetics, that’s still “respecting the difficulty and rewards.”
Yep. Old Republic tuned down the companions a LOT that come with you on certain flashpoint runs now. The rewards are lower, the companions can’t AFK kill it all for you, there’s still mechanics involved and it might actually be an interesting way to bring some life into old content.
No, it’s how YOU poorly interpreted it. If someone wants to “respect the difficulty and rewards,” it means they know it’s going to need to be different.
Do you have some special power the rest of us plebs do not posses? That allows you to read the minds of other posters, or was that just a troll response?
Years ago as a long-time hunter main I had a friend who would schedule questing with me on our PvP server. She had a druid and being something of a pacifist in roleplay would heal me and my pet and gather herbs and mine to fund our adventures. I’d do the killing and defending.
For the few years we played together we always joked that she was a druid that my hunter had tamed by mistake - but things worked out to our mutual benefit.
While she moved on with life and no longer plays I just happen to have a max level druid alt I’d not mind tagging along with my hunter main while questing - just for nostalgias sake
yessss omg i want this so bad. when the warbands were announced with that scene of the characters sitting around the fire i initially thought that meant player-customizable npcs/npc alts and was sad when that wasnt what it was lol
Would be nice to be able to venture with my alts all geared out as Scarlet Crusade members in stuff like Delves and such. The only thing left I could want from that scenario is a group photo at the end upon victory.
I don’t want to AFK away from the game while my NPC-Alts do the work. I don’t want any extra rewards with respect to the difficulty. Sometimes I don’t want to group with other players and it’d be cool to take all these alts I’ve been working on over the years and put them into a system where I can do a heroic dungeon or LFR-level raid.
You’d balance it by only allowing a player to bring their Warband into queueable content (normal dungeons, heroic dungeons, LFR, and now delves). I’m not saying I take my maxed out ultra equipped NPC-Alts into Mythic and get Mythic rewards.
The key system would be for players to set up their NPC-Alt’s rotation during a fight. I’d imagine some system to save presets based on fight. You’d also need the ability to macro their abilities to your action bar for specific mechanics like interrupts and cleanses.
Another key system would be that each of these NPC-Alts would have their own “Instance Level” that dictates how good they are at following fight mechanics. Low level NPC-Alts would stand in pools of lava until they learn to not do that. High level NPC-Alts would do things nearly perfectly.
And loot drops would operate just as they do now. Some NPC-Alts would get gear while others might not.
