I have weapons for fighting long range. I have skills for fighting long range. I have PAs for long range.

But when I try to stay long range to attack, mostly bosses, the AIs just crowd around me.

It's stupid.

Maybe you wanted to stop people just using the AIs to win? But this makes it impossible to actually be a long range player and use AIs.

I'm not going to sit next to the enemies and waste all the things I have for long range just so the AIs can fight.

Use a better method than just "proximity". If there's a single boss and there's me and 3 AIs, and I'm hitting it, they should be hitting it too. If I'm actively engaged with enemies, shouldn't that be enough to say to the AIs ... "Hey they aren't just a lazy bum who wants us to do all the work" ?

When you have AI partners, you're really just soloing it with some help here and there. It's frustrating, but it seems like an integral part of the game that can't (or won't) be easily changed. I would say just have support characters (like Force) so they can continue to buff you or melee to attack stuff that approaches you while you're drawing distance.

I suggested that we have more instructions we can give to our partner AIs. I think one of those included engaging in combat in long range.

@ApollosAmour Using support AIs isn't enough. They're stupid too. They barely help. The character AIs don't help when needed and the Player-based AIs depend if the player has them set up to be support or not.

@Meow2835 That's what I mean about it basically being solo. Using Echo (EP1) or Io helps if you're going to be long range, but ultimately you're still only going to receive minimal help.

Only summoner allies even contribute to damage remotely, because of how pets bypass the regular AI system in place.

Edit: But I will note regardless you should not be expecting anything from the NPCs than standing there pretty, this is not a game where they are designed to actually be useful. In fact they all receive a massive damage penalty to go with a massive HP buff.

Basically if you are playing with AI pretend they are not there, its effectively the same thing.

real people help much better than npcs

I agree, make the AI better.