Interesting. When I played, they had x-ray vision and would fire at my head despite there being a wall between us.
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AI: Why does it still suck in games?
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Interesting. When I played, they had x-ray vision and would fire at my head despite there being a wall between us.
Easily the most disappointing aspect of modern game design. When I played Halo CE back in 2001, I was so excited for the future.
Now that I think back, the AI in the game was relatively rudimentary, but Bungie did a great job expressing their varied contextual behaviors and giving them strengths and weaknesses related to the player's abilities in an emphatic way. I feel like the newer games weren't nearly as good at this, so the AI seemed worse as a result.
Now that I think back, the AI in the game was relatively rudimentary, but Bungie did a great job expressing their varied contextual behaviors and giving them strengths and weaknesses related to the player's abilities in an emphatic way. I feel like the newer games weren't nearly as good at this, so the AI seemed worse as a result.
You have to look at it from a rudimentary point of view.
I agree with all of OP's points too.
In addition to that its also about game sales.
If you look at something as basic as a chess game where the AI has different difficulty levels, at the easy level it can only calculate a certain number of moves but at the hard difficulty level it can calculate a lot more moves plus a number of moves ahead. Theoretically it should be able to plan out the entire game based on the moves made so far.
That's wear it gets tricky because then the human mind cannot win. In games a lot of the enjoyment comes from winning. If you create a game that is too hard, its not going to sell well.
The problem is for hardcore gamers, the game doesn't have good AI because the AI is targeting a mainstream audience, not somebody who's going to put in thousands of hours and pick on all the flaws. I imagine most mainstream gamers only put in 10-20 hours at most per game before moving onto the next one.
I agree with all of OP's points too.
In addition to that its also about game sales.
If you look at something as basic as a chess game where the AI has different difficulty levels, at the easy level it can only calculate a certain number of moves but at the hard difficulty level it can calculate a lot more moves plus a number of moves ahead. Theoretically it should be able to plan out the entire game based on the moves made so far.
That's wear it gets tricky because then the human mind cannot win. In games a lot of the enjoyment comes from winning. If you create a game that is too hard, its not going to sell well.
The problem is for hardcore gamers, the game doesn't have good AI because the AI is targeting a mainstream audience, not somebody who's going to put in thousands of hours and pick on all the flaws. I imagine most mainstream gamers only put in 10-20 hours at most per game before moving onto the next one.
Reasons against:
Time and cost
Performance impact
Difficulty
Difficulty for the players, they didn't win, this game sucks. Needs thinking wtf
Need to give the players more abilities to deal with smart ai - throwing back grenades, firing over cover, peering, flashbangs/whatever
Slows down the game
Reasons for:
Slows down the game
Interesting gameplay
Less immersion breaking
Something to talk about
I want it
Things like enemies playing defensively when they take damage sometimes. Not that much to ask for. Put your shield up. Retreat. Take some cover while calling for help. Making effective use of their abilities.
Reacting to the player faster, maybe even learning would be awesome.
Time and cost
Performance impact
Difficulty
Difficulty for the players, they didn't win, this game sucks. Needs thinking wtf
Need to give the players more abilities to deal with smart ai - throwing back grenades, firing over cover, peering, flashbangs/whatever
Slows down the game
Reasons for:
Slows down the game
Interesting gameplay
Less immersion breaking
Something to talk about
I want it
Things like enemies playing defensively when they take damage sometimes. Not that much to ask for. Put your shield up. Retreat. Take some cover while calling for help. Making effective use of their abilities.
Reacting to the player faster, maybe even learning would be awesome.
ZackieChan
Member
The reaction I heard from a lot of journalists on podcasts to the U3 AI illustrates why it is not "better." I remember Patrick Klepek and others complaining about how frustrating it was when you'd be hiding behind cover and a guy with a shotgun would come from behind you and kill you. The enemies flanked your position if you didn't keep moving (particularly in the ship graveyard) and it was awesome. For many, however, it was not "fun."
I thought it was rad, and I suck at shooters.
If you look at the Bungie presentations, you'll see that these simple patterns were deliberately dialled back or were replacing more complex systems. "Better" AI was possible 15 years ago, but it just didn't playtest well. The "smarter" enemies were no fun to fight and players would feel like they were interacting with random number generator.
The key factor is transparency. If there's a complex system driving the behaviour of a character, but that system is opaque to the player, then it's no fun to interact with. When a character makes a decision, it has to be clear to the player why that decision was made.
Consider these two scenarios:
A) When you kill the Elite, the Grunts get a reduction to their Morale stat, which is also dependent on ammo remaining, situational advantage, and current health. If it falls below a certain level, trigger the "panic" behaviour.
B) When you kill the Elite, the Grunts panic.
With A, you have no idea ahead of time whether it's worth killing the Elite. Sometimes it makes the Grunts panic, sometimes it doesn't. The Grunts aren't running around with Morale meters over their heads, so it feels random.
With B, you have a predictable behaviour that you can take advantage of. When combined with the other simple systems (grenades make Elites dive. Melee attacks from behind are one-hit kills etc.) there's enough complexity to be fun, but not so much complexity that it's indistinguishable from randomness.
This is also an excellent read, and follows on from my previous post: The AI in Halo 2 is obviously far more more sophisticated and improves on Halo CE in many ways, but does anyone remember it *playing* any differently? I don't.
Krappadizzle
Member
F.E.A.R and Halo:CE have some of the funniest AI to engage of pretty much all first person shooters. Sad but awesome at the same time considering the MCC coming out. FEAR is the king though of FPS in my opinion.
I remember it playing worse. Every subsequent game, in fact. Read my post above.
I don't know what it is about Halo CE, specifically, but the AI's combat pathways/"intelligence" in that game is way better represented and subsequently more satisfyingly challenging.
uomoartificiale
Member
I don't think that bad AI in games is due to computational restrictions. The problem to me seems to be that good AI has to be "authored" to be challenging but not unfair, unpredictable but readable, all of this having the player as a wild card moving and acting throught the playing field.
I recently played Alien Isolation, and after a while it was really apparent to me that the Alien AI was terrible, but the fact that you quite never looked at him, because you tried to hide and flee, made your imagination fill the gaps and so it seemed so much better than it really was.
Compare that to the MGS (2-3-4-GZ) soldiers, who did a lot of cool things, but they are always cited as a negative example because in those games you literally just sit and watch them act their routes.
I recently played Alien Isolation, and after a while it was really apparent to me that the Alien AI was terrible, but the fact that you quite never looked at him, because you tried to hide and flee, made your imagination fill the gaps and so it seemed so much better than it really was.
Compare that to the MGS (2-3-4-GZ) soldiers, who did a lot of cool things, but they are always cited as a negative example because in those games you literally just sit and watch them act their routes.