Its not just companions.. which are horrible and moronic, its followers as well. all the escort quests, rescue quests, any damn quest you have to have some stupid npc follow you around..

They constantly are up your butt, pushing you forward, standing up while your sneaking, its a huge cripple effect to the game.

They follow in some kind of rubber band logic where if you stop they run past you a good 20 feet before they stop and just stand their like a brainless vessel while aggroing every enemy for 40 yards around.

If you try to stop at a doorway and peek around to throw a grenade or moltov, they will come from behind you, push you forward out thru the door way for NO reason, they aren't trying to go through the door, they are secretly trying to kill you.

A few examples. Tried throwing a cocktail at some raiders while sneaking, npc follower (for a quest) runs up and pushes me from behind just as I try to throw it and it hits the door frame crippling and nearly killing me, alerts the raiders who then shoot me....

Going through some tunnels I see a big room thats no doubt an ambush with raised platforms on each side. I go into sneak mode, the npc i'm escorting runs up, pushes me to the side without even slowing down, runs through the door way and then just STOPS in the middle of the room, triggering the ambush and every raider (5) jumps up and starts shooting and for some damn reason they attack me and not the npc so they instantly throw 2 grenades at the doorway where I AM HIDING, not at the stupid npc.. wtf.

NPC companions. this is one that makes me rage quit on a regular basis. Just trying to talk to them, especially dogmeat. they keep walking away after you initiate talking to them and before you can hit any dialog options, so you end up running around after their stupid ass trying to tell them you want to trade. This is just freaking moronic.

These companions, npc followers need a massive overhaul in their pathing and logic, I can't play this game for more then a couple hours without rage quiting because i'm forced thru quests to drag someone along who makes my gaming experience a complete nightmare. I spend half the time refraining from unloading an entire magazine into the back of their skulls, all I can do is just quit the game because its so frustrating.

If it was just Companions you could not use them, which I don't. but these npc followers from quests are even worse cause you can't order them to do anything like stay, go there and stay.

I agree, any NPC assigned to you is a massive handicap. Whether it be a companion or NPC for a quest. There are only 3 that I've come across that basically don't go out of their way to kill you and they're Dogmeat, Curie and that female scientist that accompanies you when you go to get the Beryllium Core for the reactor.

they need to do what they did in fallout 3 with companions

There is Rescue the Kidnapped person quests, I've gotten a few of those, There is one quest which has 2!!! people follow you through a long series of tunnels.. That made me want to throw my keyboard out a window.. 1 is bad enough, but 2 uncontrollable pieces of crap pushing you around and blocking you in at the same time in a confined space! Physiques is entirely on their side too, when they want to go somewhere they push you out of the way like they weigh 2,000lbs and your just shoved aside, but if you want them to move, they are immovable objects... I had a few occurances where they would actually shove me aside trying to get past me, again for NO Damn reason and they pushed me into some odd location where I became trapped between a doorway and a cabinet, or on some broken chairs and couldn't move or jump my way out of it and had to reload it...

This is just a freaking nightmare. I despise 'Rescue' missions for this very reason, cause I know that the npc you rescue will then follow you around till you exit the building, I just want to put a bullet in their face and go back and tell them. i found their loved one but the raiders had already killed them. it was tragic loss to bad I didn't get their sooner..

Do you remember the mission where you took Diamond City Radio guy to an enemy base ? You could actually had an option to tell him to stay BEHIND you.

Haha, that was a god joke. The dude stood behind me until almost entered a big room where all enemies were at. As soon as he saw them, he went Rambo aggro-ing everybody...facepalm. The rubber band syndrome you talked about, as I stopped in the doorway to see where enemies were at. I have level 5 sneak and 11 agility also for sneaking (and AP) and this guy just pissed on them. Like all the other forced companions of course.

is it possible they are tied to your charisma or something? I took Piper with me into the witchcraft museum. I don't want to spoil anything so I will just say she pretty much stayed behind me the whole time I was creeping around [censored]ting my pants. Even dogmeat gets down low when I crouch.

You just have to plan for your followers. Spin around and give them the command to stay put when you are creeping through a building. I have done it successfully several times. Not saying the AI is perfect or even all that great just saying its workable.

yep drive me nuts too

my worst annoyance is how they somehow manage to teleport away from you then run back

constantly happens to me im on say first floor of dungeon sneaking around doing my thing when all of a sudden ill here a huge gunfight going on on the third floor, run up there and theres piper engaging the enemy???

seems just randomly gets respawned somewhere then tries to get back to you (as they are supposed to be by your side) which unfortunately sets off all enemies on the way.

kinda making my stealth game pointless.

i could just not use companions but then id miss out on all the things they say and i like piper and i because of the insane weights of weapons i need an extra mule

plus "just dont use them" is not good enough answer

I seem to have the complete opposite experience most of the time where they are nowhere to be found. Sometimes i wish they were hugging my butt, especially when trying to get them in stupid elevators, even if i manually tell them to get their butt in the elevator they straight up refuse so i often end up having to finish the area by myself because they get stuck there on the bottom (or top depending on the area) floor and i don't want to sit there for 20 minutes trying to get them in the elevator.

yeah get that too, lost count the amount of times follow was right behind me, picked up something, overloaded, turned around to offload to companion and they nowhere to be found.

skyvers

For me it is usually when the crap starts hitting the fan. Like when i encountered Swan early on (way too early in the game) and was getting wrecked and my damn follower was nowhere to be found until i finally beat him after lots of kiting and blowing through countless food and when i walked up to loot the body my follower strolls up like nothing happened.

that one hasnt worried me too much as they are not really combat effective and far far far faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too in love with the rifle butt melee attack instead of oh i dont know maybe shooting the damn enemy

when i found swan (id say too early too) he went after piper luckily as all i had on was hazmat suit and those two went toe to toe with melee attacks (despite piper having a combat rifle that was better than mine sigh) and i just sat there filling him full of lead till he died, he didnt target me once

i dont know how piper survived as she never went down.

but yeah thats reminded me another problem with companions is they use the gun melee attack too much its stupid, guess what companions the hunk of lead hurtling out of you barrel at anywhere from 1x - 3x the speed of sound is alot more effective than using the butt as a melee weapon.

one time in the nationa lguard depot (think was in barracks) she did the teleport away from me thing and got in fight, when finally caught up to her she was going toe to toe with a ghoul. I stopped and watched her smacking him with her rifle at least 6 x before i shot it. her combat rifle would have killed it in one shot.

would like an option to turn off the gun melee smack for companions.

i suggest the following changes :

- a button to " hold ground " ( right now it goes there and then move in another place searching for cover )

- a button to " return to follow the player mode "

you don't need to reinvent the wheel just do what the guys at mass effect did with controls and it will be ok

Sorry, i had to get that out of my system. I see literally hundreds of posts claiming the NPC AI and follower AI and pathing behavior is all wonky. It must be true because there are so many but i gotta be honest here, I only use Dogmeat as a companion and he does NONE of the stuff people describe. Haven't had any issues with followers either but then again my movements in the game are fluid and deliberate. I can see how it might mess with the AI if your movement is extremely eradicate such as jumping over all kinds of obstacles, back tracking frequently and generally being unsure of where you are and which way your going. If you have a habit of sprinting everywhere and dropping into sneak suddenly, yeah they will run right up your [censored]. It takes a human follower a couple seconds to realize what your doing and copy you, and they have freewill to some extent so whether or not they follow your lead is up to them. Dogmeat is the only companion/follower that responds to your actions in real time and it's because he behaves like a real dog.

I have no idea why they removed the basic tactics you could issue your companions that you had in NV. You could tell them how aggressive to be and whether to stay close or keep their distance. Seems like basic stuff. Of course they also had their own SPECIAL attributes and skills. As far as I can tell all these companions seem the same in that regard.

I'm move slowly and in stealth literally the entire game and companions still constantly step in front of you or push you aside through doorways. It doesn't effect me much because even though they aggro crap like mad the enemies still don't see me but the patching AI is horrible. If you're not moving your companion should stop moving too but they don't.

Dogmeat does while sneaking. I'm going to make a video of the Companion Ai in my game so others can see for themselves.