I have talked with a few friends and we are tired of NPCs that get in the way of our gameplay. Allies summoned with pickups bust vana's ice, mechas/rescued knights knock things out of our attack paths while dealing very little damage themselves, and do a variety of other stupid things. Why fix this? Because it's awful and it doesn't make sense.
1) why would a knight sabotage our efforts. Are they spies for enemy forces!?
2) a knight that we rescue would probably be too exhausted to fight properly - so I understand the pathetic dmg, but lifting gear to fight takes effort too. Why not just have them follow you timidly with no weapons? I mean where do they even get their weapons? Weren't they in prison? (Game logic). You could still be an awful person and use them as a damage sponge.
3) Rhendon with a blitz needle trying to shoot through solid walls. While talking. Good job Rhendon.
4) Vaelyn making herself scarce. Frequently.
5) Knights going completely spaztastic and running around and continuously into walls. Who fed them sugar?
My solution is (well, not for 3 or 4, that's just nonsense):
Toggle an NPC's offensive behavior by talking to them - make them hold position or follow. Alternatively, have more options - follow passive, hold position passive, and both of those aggressive. You could even select a command from a menu, like you do when interacting with players (like starting a trade in Haven etc.) if they can stand in one spot and attack from there, that would actually be pretty cool. Another game, Warframe, implemented something like this recently, because the playerbase complained about various stupid things NPCs do in that game too. In warframe, you can tell the NPCs to stay in one place or follow you. They'll attack anything in range under both conditions.
Suddenly, we have knight turrets. Use them to knock enemies into your attack path! Yeah! I try to do this anyway...but sheesh. There are a few problems with this...probably party buttons and cutscenes would override any player commands...blahblah.
This has been complained about/suggested a few times I think. Sorry if it's completely repetitive.
From Feedback:
This was a problem in 2012. It's 2015! And the NPCs have been fed sugar, so it's worse.
Suggested:
1) Make the Attack/Fall Back/Follow Me/Help Me commands already in the game apply to NPCs. Variations in behavior have been suggested in another thread and this one, but the general idea is to make use of these otherwise annoying spam commands.
2) improve the general AI to seem less spastastic and more aware of their environment. This includes not shooting through walls (looking at you, Rhendon!) Comment #2 has more details.
3) add the NPCs to the squad with their own icons like players, with an interactive menu to command them from anywhere (instead of mine, where you have to be near them, take a second to target them to click them, and hope to Vog they don't run around on their sugar high as you do so).
4) All of these available so players can have a customized experience.
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/45396#comment-295673