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GAF, let's talk about troll AI/ gameplay mechanics.

McNum

Member
Reminds me of the Fire Emblem AI. It's not out to win as such, it's out to make you rage quit. It doesn't go for safe minor damage, it goes for the longshots of outright killing one of your characters. Need to hit three 10%s in a row? It'll do it. It'll probably fail, but it will try.

Of course, that's not to say that you can't mess with the troll AI, because if there's one thing it loves when it can't outright kill anyone, it's getting a free attack without getting hit back. So, you take your toughest guy and put his weapon away. Now they'll go for him unless they can kill someone.

I can't remember if this still works in Awakening, but for Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn, it works perfectly. Awakening has that side mission where you have to defend Tiki, though. That has the most excellent AI. It will outright ignore any non-Tiki units unless they block access to Tiki. You cannot bait it unless you block it. Pretty clever, actually.
 
Far Cry 2

Every person's sole purpose in life is to destroy you. If a guy spots you in a meadow half a mile away from the road, he will veer his car straight into the field just to try to run you over

Right? It's ridiculous how every single person needs to murder you. One of the reasons I dropped it.
 
The stage 5 boss from Touhou 14 Double Dealing Character.

HGh1xHY.gif
XaSe276.jpg


Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down.
 
Far Cry 2

Every person's sole purpose in life is to destroy you. If a guy spots you in a meadow half a mile away from the road, he will veer his car straight into the field just to try to run you over

I know this feeling all too well.
The stage 5 boss from Touhou 14 Double Dealing Character.

HGh1xHY.gif
XaSe276.jpg


Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down.

I havent played a Touhou game since 12. What the hell?
 

Junahu

Member
Roaming Pokemon. You have to physically chase them down, as they teleport to random routes constantly. When you encounter them, their first action will be to run away, forcing you to go find them all over again. They will do this even if you put them to sleep or freeze them. You can stop them from running away if you use a trapping move, such as Block, or Fire Spin.

... But if you're playing Firered or Leafgreen, and you trap a roaming legendary, they can use Roar to force YOU to flee. And if they do that, they will NEVER show up in the wild again.
 
Itagaki high level enemies are troll masters they abuse the camera to avoid your vision and sneak off screen attacks like Dirk from Final Fight except on 3D. Not to mention they're fast and vicious. Classics are that damn bird tho.
 
Reminds me of the Fire Emblem AI. It's not out to win as such, it's out to make you rage quit. It doesn't go for safe minor damage, it goes for the longshots of outright killing one of your characters. Need to hit three 10%s in a row? It'll do it. It'll probably fail, but it will try.

Of course, that's not to say that you can't mess with the troll AI, because if there's one thing it loves when it can't outright kill anyone, it's getting a free attack without getting hit back. So, you take your toughest guy and put his weapon away. Now they'll go for him unless they can kill someone.

I can't remember if this still works in Awakening, but for Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn, it works perfectly. Awakening has that side mission where you have to defend Tiki, though. That has the most excellent AI. It will outright ignore any non-Tiki units unless they block access to Tiki. You cannot bait it unless you block it. Pretty clever, actually.
I just tried this on Awakening; nada. They seem to have recalibrated it so it favors (exclusively, really) the chance to kill one of your units over everything else. If that means every single guy they have dogpiles desperately onto that one guy, so be it.
 

finley83

Banned
Far Cry 2

Every person's sole purpose in life is to destroy you. If a guy spots you in a meadow half a mile away from the road, he will veer his car straight into the field just to try to run you over

I loved this, it felt like Final Destination with the way guns would just explode on you at random.. Only thing that game was missing was a late title card saying "FUCK YOU" just before the credits roll
 
Haven't played V yet, but in GTA IV and I believe before, the NPC cars are programmed to try and change lanes right in front of you to cause a collision.

Basically if you're blazing down the 1 lane and there are cars in the 2 lane, they will intentionally try and change lanes right in front of you.

There's actually a lot in the GTA games where they try and "cause" chaos by messing with the AI and placement of things.
 

Lowmelody

Member
My buddy and I would swear Dark Sims in Perfect Dark would run through walls when not in the direct sight of the players back in the day. They were as freaky as they were cheap as hell!
 

McNum

Member
I just tried this on Awakening; nada. They seem to have recalibrated it so it favors (exclusively, really) the chance to kill one of your units over everything else. If that means every single guy they have dogpiles desperately onto that one guy, so be it.
Which can lead to Death by Awesome on the Enemy Phase. Let's take a unit at random. I randomly choose Vaike. He has a phenomenal damage output with a good axe. He is also likely to have a defense stat around the same as the mages. He can, on the Enemy Phase kill everyone who challenges him, but he'll take damage every time. So if the CPU can, it'll gladly send wave after wave of soldiers at him to each chip off 3-5 HP before falling to his mighty axe. Meaning if ten of them attack, he'll take 30-50 damage. For most of the game, he will not have 50 HP.

So, Vaike will on the enemy phase be a complete monster, likely leveling up a few times, and then just fall over dead on the pile of enemies he's been slaughtering. Because he was just too awesome. But so fragile. Funny enough, on my first game, he and Lissa married, simply because she healed him so many times. They didn't even pair up, he just got hurt THAT often. The CPU singled him out on every single map.

Learning how to spot and prevent that is a lesson that can only be learned in blood. I first saw it with Oscar in Path of Radiance. He single-handedly held a chokepoint, killing all enemies... and then he died.
 

abadguy

Banned
GTA

AI drivers shift lanes to create collisions or make sudden turns across the road and worst of all, they will drive into the oncoming lane causing a head on collision.

Assassins Creed thieves, hate these guys, I never let them go, I always chase them down.

There is also Pazaak in KOTOR which is heavily biased towards AI players.

List some other examples GAF.

This shit here. It's especially "fun" during car chases or trying to get away, or trying not to fuck up a vehicle while delivering it.
 
Halo: Enemies that have a spider sense and start juking around when you have them scoped up with your sniper rifle.

Destiny: Enemies with their backs to you that'll still miraculously dodge your rockets.

And any shooters where the AI enemies huddle behind cover and blind-fire in games where the player character can't do either of those things.
 

rrs

Member
on the subject of gtav, the AI can pull some crazy shots off sometimes

also, the lost love their sawed off gta3 shotguns that will destroy your lifebar faster than you can say "I failed the finale of series A yet again"
 

Drencrom

Member
Haha, one of my favorite game summaries ever is about that game.

Perfect summary. Those fucking militias had camps and outposts everywhere and they always collide into your car while shooting you with the mounted machineguns on their jeeps. And after you've killed everyone in an outpost and repaired your car, you drive for 30 seconds only to reach another outpost with men in jeeps that drive into you and fuck up your shit. It's at this point your gun starts jamming and your character loses health, which forces you to snap your arm in place only to get blurry and delirious vision because your malaria strikes in.

Just fuck this game.
 
My buddy and I would swear Dark Sims in Perfect Dark would run through walls when not in the direct sight of the players back in the day. They were as freaky as they were cheap as hell!

I'm pretty sure they teleport or at least run at super speed when off screen, Dark sims will basically kill you and then when you spawn on the complete opposite side of a map they'll be over in a flash, probably before you even pick up a gun.

So obviously fighting an army of Dark Fist Sims has to be tried, picking up a gun? disarmed out of nowhere!
 
Which can lead to Death by Awesome on the Enemy Phase. Let's take a unit at random. I randomly choose Vaike. He has a phenomenal damage output with a good axe. He is also likely to have a defense stat around the same as the mages. He can, on the Enemy Phase kill everyone who challenges him, but he'll take damage every time. So if the CPU can, it'll gladly send wave after wave of soldiers at him to each chip off 3-5 HP before falling to his mighty axe. Meaning if ten of them attack, he'll take 30-50 damage. For most of the game, he will not have 50 HP.

So, Vaike will on the enemy phase be a complete monster, likely leveling up a few times, and then just fall over dead on the pile of enemies he's been slaughtering. Because he was just too awesome. But so fragile. Funny enough, on my first game, he and Lissa married, simply because she healed him so many times. They didn't even pair up, he just got hurt THAT often. The CPU singled him out on every single map.

Learning how to spot and prevent that is a lesson that can only be learned in blood. I first saw it with Oscar in Path of Radiance. He single-handedly held a chokepoint, killing all enemies... and then he died.

Yeah. It's making leveling up anybody a pain; I have to stick any fleshy vulnerable types in Pair Up behind someone tougher/better able to dodge, and then I can never let them out again because the moment I do the screaming hordes will descend and the next thing you know I'm restarting the level. Gaaaaah.
 
Hired fucking Help in Spelunky. Their way of "helping" you is to trigger angry shopkeepers immediately, get in way of your attacks, pick up any item you put down, "accidentally " kill you for the lulz and just be anything except helpful.
 
The worst thing about the "death by awesome" situation in Fire Emblem is when just the act of one enemy surviving would stop the stream of suicidal soldiers from continuing, so obviously if you have a Swordmaster he decides now is a wonderful time to cash in all those killer critical hits while failing to dodge.
 
I would place bosses in SNK fighters in here, reads your moves and counters, near defeat use special unblockable attack which takes away half of your health bar.
 

Oozer3993

Member
NBA 2k on hall of fame difficulty. Players making ridiculous shots like Dwight Howard sinking jumpers as if it was nothing to him, every last second shot goes in for them, etc.

On a related note: I have EA Access and decided to try out NBA Live 15 a couple weeks ago. I'm playing against Kendrick Perkins and the Thunder. I'm leading with Kendrick, because with how well he played, he was clearly their best player. Durant and Westbrook were mere role players. At one point he got the ball just outside the 3 pt line (goofily wrong in it's own right), flashed a sick crossover (break with reality number 2), then smoothly glided to the basket for a full speed reverse lay up in traffic. Because, you know, Kendrick Perkins can totally do that. I wasn't even mad. It was amazing.
 

Thraktor

Member
Dark sims in Perfect Dark are the obvious answer here, although them cheating is kind of the point.

I'm going to go for Far Cry 4 (somewhat 3 as well since I played those as well as Blood Dragon).

-The enemies can see you from a great distance that if you aren't super far away and tucked behind shrubbery there is almost no point in hiding. Their notice of you is ridiculously good and then EVERYONE in the area knows where you are shooting from.

-Asshole animals that attack at the perfectly wrong time. Like a tiger flanking you when you are scoping your sniper rifle to take over a camp. And shooting at it with the wrong weapon will alert the camp.

-Eagles

I actually disagree with the first point, I find they were fairly good about giving the enemies a relatively realistic sight distance, and shrubbery almost always worked for me (except against archers, but they're specifically supposed to have better sight). My only real issue was that when they found a body (say one you killed with a silenced sniper rifle), they could always tell the direction the shot came from, as if the country's entire GDP had been poured into giving their army comprehensive forensic ballistics training.

Animals could be very annoying, especially as you say when you're about to take a carefully timed sniper shot, or if you're close to a base but without any suitable silenced weapons, and have to alert everyone in a mile radius in order to take out the bear which just tried to tear your arms off.

Eagles are the worst of them all, though. You can get hit by them anywhere on the map, at any time, and without any warning, and there's effectively nothing you can do to stop them except machine-gun them out of the air afterwards to prevent them doing it again. They're like the Mario Kart blue shell of Kyrat.
 

Horp

Member
Pretty much any kind of AI cheating is such a turn off for me. I realize there are a few occasions where its needed, but many games are just filled with totally unnecessary, annoying AI-cheating.

I remember back in NFS2, one of the first times I saw this, I was racing with me having a car with 2x top speed compared to the only other AI opponent, and the map was pretty much all max speed. But after I reached a certain lead the AI kept up with me. Fucking cheater. If Im half a map aheaf who the f*** cares if there is more tension if he can keep up? Just diaf AI scum.

This is obviously a light example, but it was the first I remember.
 
That one asshole traffic driver in Cruisn USA that comes in zig-zagging crazy fast and always tries to hit you head-on. Fuck that guy!
 

Horp

Member
Cops/Guards in (most) Hitman games.

"Oh, that fire fighter just passed the metal detector in this open hotel lobby with a clearly visible fire axe, but the metal detector went off, OMG LETS KILL EEEEVERYONE IN HERE. SHOOT EVERYTHING EVERYONE MUST DIE, OH SWEET LORD I'M LUCKY WE HAVE INFINITE AMMO :')"

-_-
 

Adaren

Member
The stage 5 boss from Touhou 14 Double Dealing Character.

HGh1xHY.gif
XaSe276.jpg


Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down.

I havent played a Touhou game since 12. What the hell?

It might not be clear from the gif, but it messes with your controls too! It plays as if you've literally flipped your screen around.

It's actually by far the easiest of the reversing attacks, imo. The others are much worse. Thankfully, there are only 3 of these attacks in the game (Touhou 14).
 

h#shdem0n

Member
Borderlands' "Fight for your Life" mechanic.

It's either incredibly easy to get back up on your feet, or it's a 10 second long middle finger being smacked against your face as hard as possible. Combine that with how enemies will get as "in your face" as possible, then *retreat behind cover* or just flat out run out of the area once you're downed and you have a formula for perfect anti-fun.

Oh, and there are bosses that don't deploy minions or sub-enemies to let you even have a *chance* of getting on your feet again, in encounters that are obviously balanced around the ability to "Fight for your Life."

Oh,and if you go down too many times in a row the game will decide that you literally don't even deserve the chance, and will just kill you instantly. Combine *this* with the bullet-sponge-pinball nature of several enemies and you have a game that's designed to cause aneurysms.

I wish Borderlands would just double the stats on HP and Shields and stop trying to pretend that "Fight for your Life" is some kind of fun or even halfway-coherent gameplay mechanic.

So many furious moments when AI companions in BL2 would steal your kill while you were downed.
 

a.wd

Member
Need for Speed Rivals, I've no idea what they were going for. The whole online world thing was bad enough. Then they thought that an app were people who weren't playing could troll you for no reason was a good idea.
Then the Coup De Grace, some sort of stupid Dark Souls mechanic were if you got busted you lost all the XP you've gained to that point.
Which probably wouldn't be so bad, if wasn't for the fact that you ended up driving round in circles loading in and out of your safe house.
Of course if you got a half decent score every police officer in the world started chasing you. It turned into the Blues Brothers at one stage which thousands of these peeler cars chasing you and just o top it off other players in your world at the time could crash into you too.

I don't know how Gaf feels about this game but I thought it was a nightmare all round.

Jesus christ this, the game is one loop of trolling that's so insidious that you start feeling the urge to take it out on some poor bastards just desperately trying to finish a race.
 

Syril

Member
Reminds me of the Fire Emblem AI. It's not out to win as such, it's out to make you rage quit. It doesn't go for safe minor damage, it goes for the longshots of outright killing one of your characters. Need to hit three 10%s in a row? It'll do it. It'll probably fail, but it will try.

Of course, that's not to say that you can't mess with the troll AI, because if there's one thing it loves when it can't outright kill anyone, it's getting a free attack without getting hit back. So, you take your toughest guy and put his weapon away. Now they'll go for him unless they can kill someone.

I can't remember if this still works in Awakening, but for Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn, it works perfectly. Awakening has that side mission where you have to defend Tiki, though. That has the most excellent AI. It will outright ignore any non-Tiki units unless they block access to Tiki. You cannot bait it unless you block it. Pretty clever, actually.
Yeah, Fire Emblem seems to have a weird sense of difficulty in general. I'm playing Path of Radiance with a friend right now, and it seems like past the beginning of the game, our characters are so powerful that there's practically no way we can lose a battle. It feels like the difficulty is balanced around the possibility of a single character being killed rather than the possibility of straight up losing.
 

Sayad

Member
GTA

AI drivers shift lanes to create collisions or make sudden turns across the road and worst of all, they will drive into the oncoming lane causing a head on collision.
GTA AI actually try to help you, most drivers make a sudden turn if you're driving in their lane to avoid you, the problem is that they are driving way slower than you are and they do it way too late, ie, they do it when you start changing lane to overtake them, which make appear as if they're trying to hit you.


As for my example, input reading final bosses in fighting games, SNK and older MK games being the worst offenders.
 

DeaviL

Banned
Fatal Racing (aka whiplash), a classic Dos game has some glorious AI quirks.
Offensive tactics

- When one driver of a given team is in a high position and the other driver is doing poorly, the latter may turn around and go the wrong way to cause chaos and head-on collisions. Although this usually leads to its own destruction, a stricken opponent loses speed, is forced to pit and may even be destroyed, allowing its teammate to move up in the pack. This is usually a tactic employed by the lighter and more reckless teams, or as a suicide tactic when a driver is down to its last life.

- Some drivers may race through the pit lane at full speed instead of following the regular track. Because damaged vehicles need to stand still in the pit lane to get repaired, this may lead to a high speed collision, launching the damaged car back onto the track with even more damage than before. The crippled car is usually eliminated shortly thereafter unless the driver is exceptionally good at damage avoidance. This tactic can be avoided by hugging the pitlane wall, staying on the inside if the pitlane is curved, parking against another car or if you are in an agile car, parking backwards in the pitlane. This tactic is unavoidable on the Bonus Cup tracks with a pitlane in the middle of the road, making these tracks very difficult to complete.

The game was great.
 

DeathoftheEndless

Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
The other cars on your side of the road in Simpson's Hit and Run automatically switch into your lane to ram into you. This makes the races and timed missions that make up 90% of the game really frustrating.
 
GTA

AI drivers shift lanes to create collisions or make sudden turns across the road and worst of all, they will drive into the oncoming lane causing a head on collision.

Assassins Creed thieves, hate these guys, I never let them go, I always chase them down.

There is also Pazaak in KOTOR which is heavily biased towards AI players.

List some other examples GAF.

Watch Dogs was the worst for this. If you are playing it, or remember. As soon as you change the traffic lights, the cars auto go into animation to cause accidents. It's so scripted.
 
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