Malf on 13/3/2018 at 15:37
Quote Posted by catbarf
Bullet sponges. Drives me nuts. I played the beta for The Division and liked a lot about that game, but holy crap the enemies were so hard to kill. It's not even a matter of balance, because the player character is pretty tanky too, it's just frustrating to play against.
Then I played Ghost Recon Wildlands and it's like why couldn't this be the dynamic for The Division? Enemies die quickly, the player dies quickly, it's more intelligent and tactical.
That's definitely one of The Division's failings early on before you've reached a decent gear level. And to be honest, I think it's a fairly stupid decision, locking the fun stuff behind hours of MMORPG-style grind.
Once you're at a decent power level and comfortable with certain difficulties, the sponginess lessens significantly, and the game's really enjoyable. But I suspect that getting to a decent power level takes more time than most players are comfortable with. I know Jesh also has the same complaint, and even though I've boosted him significantly, building a viable 6-piece set is more time consuming than it should be.
I heard a rumour the devs might be looking to address that, but then The Division 2 got announced. Pisses me off a bit, as I'd rather they continued developing the existing game and charging for expansions rather than abandoning the original.
Thirith on 13/3/2018 at 15:52
I'm okay with tank-type enemies being bullet sponges, though it's not my favourite gameplay, but especially if you're fighting against human (or humanoid) beings it immediately makes a game feel more gamey. Ideally, devs should make such enemies more difficult to kill by making them smarter. Obviously it's much more difficult to create smart, challenging, interesting AI than it is to add tons of HP, but it feels like on average AI hasn't really improved at all since Half-Life.
Sulphur on 13/3/2018 at 16:12
You do have F.E.A.R and Halo that iterated on the HL1 AI routines, but those definitely are more exceptions than the rule. I suppose the puny mobile CPUs on the current consoles aren't much help in this department either.
Pyrian on 13/3/2018 at 16:21
"And then we did the pathing with a GPU shader."
Thirith on 13/3/2018 at 16:24
I wonder if it's technical restrictions; my gut feeling is more that most devs simply don't try because they don't consider smarter AI worth it. I've not played F.E.A.R. but I've heard very good things about the AI - so much so that most modern AI seems to do a worse job, so why hasn't that AI been matched more frequently? I expect that some AI tasks would require more CPU cycles these days (such as navigating geometrically more complex environments), but it seems that AI smarts have plateaued a dozen years ago, and I wonder whether that can be blamed on CPUs. I'm sure a PS4 would be up to powering F.E.A.R.-level AI.
Sulphur on 13/3/2018 at 16:36
F.E.A.R's AI was effective smoke and mirrors, essentially. IIRC, levels were dotted with cover nodes that the AI could dynamically choose to move to, and when doing that they'd execute barks that gave them the appearance of working as a team to flank you. It's also the reason why 90% of the game is office corridors and industrial warehouses -- that sort of system isn't going to work so well in wide-open spaces. Still, Halo's proved that you can do decent AI on a console, so I think the overarching question is whether it's a priority for the gamedevs - as you implied, it does take more work than may be worthwhile in the larger scheme of things.
Pyrian: hah, that's really where it should go, given that GPUs are what power deep learning these days. Maybe we could fight a cloud-enabled datamining algorithm in the future.
Malf on 13/3/2018 at 16:54
I'm not sure AI is actually any worse than it used to be. It's just that we no longer see the massive advances we used to see back then. Game AI is hard, so noticeable advances happen far less often.
On top of that, what most game developers are really chasing is virtual stupidity.
Writing an AI that has perfect aim is pretty simple. Making an AI that makes questionable tactical decisions and believably misses shots is a lot harder.
One of my favourite examples of excellent AI is a game that doesn't get enough credit for it: the original Guild Wars.
As well as having enemy groups that would intelligently exploit weak points in player groups, it blossomed when players were given control over assigning skills to NPC group members, or "Heroes" in the game's vernacular.
Every character could dual-class in Guild Wars, and every class had a choice of between 85-140 skills, only 8 of which could be equipped at any one time. It was a CCG MMO before that was even considered a thing. That you could drop any combination of these dramatically different skills on to a hero's skill bar and they would then use them intelligently was remarkable.
You could choose to trigger the skills yourself if you really wanted, but the real joy was that the AI was so adaptable, you didn't have to.
Ironically, there's a big argument to be made for this robust AI being somewhat responsible for the death of co-op play in the game.
The healing class, monk, was always in demand in Guild Wars, and before the advent of heroes, you could spend hours waiting for a decent monk player to join your group. And while a lot of people enjoyed playing monk, the majority didn't. On top of that, human monks were prone to mistakes.
Then along came AI-driven hero monks, who rarely made mistakes and could be tailored to use a very effective skillset. *Poof*, no more waiting around for pesky humans.
And this gradually seeped through to other classes, so eventually, the majority of people were playing alone with seven AI heroes.
Twist on 13/3/2018 at 17:29
I don't think technical restrictions limit the existence of AI behavior like we saw in FEAR.
I think it's design priority.
Like Sulphur said, I don't think FEAR features particularly sophisticated AI. The player perceives the AI to be more compelling and sophisticated than it really is with the careful, meticulous way the designer sculpts encounters. Part of this requires a deliberately limited context in which the player can encounter and interact with the AI, and part of it requires a greater over-arching focus on scripting close-quarter combat with each individual AI.
Thirith on 13/3/2018 at 17:31
It's a shame: Arma's AI goes from brilliant moments, where the different units truly seem to be cooperating to great effect (especially with certain AI tweaks and mods), to ones where you wonder if a random action generator couldn't do a better job. If they could get the good moments to happen more consistently, they'd really be onto something.
Jeshibu on 13/3/2018 at 18:43
Really? I've never had the impression Operation Flashpoint and Arma had intelligent AI. The best I can say is that enemies sometimes stick together, and they respond to being fired upon.
Last session, I saw one stare at a wall out in the open while there was gunfire at its back. Moments like that make me feel like them flanking is just a lucky roll of the dice, rather than that they switch between good and bad AI.