AI is hard. Really really hard. Games with bigger dev teams and bigger budgets than STO can't do AI. All they can do is give NPCs more defensive abilities to use on themselves, and more debuff and control abilities to use on players- and with the Voth and Undine, that's happened. And that stuff is all easy to counter if you know what you're doing.
Expecting more than this really is expecting too much.
AI is hard. Really really hard. Games with bigger dev teams and bigger budgets than STO can't do AI. All they can do is give NPCs more defensive abilities to use on themselves, and more debuff and control abilities to use on players- and with the Voth and Undine, that's happened. And that stuff is all easy to counter if you know what you're doing.
Expecting more than this really is expecting too much.
They had stuff going, a good start when the Elachi first hit Tribble. But...
"And that stuff is all easy to counter if you know what you're doing."
...got the Elachi nerfed multiple times, cause folks didn't and didn't want to bother figuring out or even bother listening to folks that had figured it out.
If they could just stick to leaving elites elite it wouldn't be an issue, but they love trying to make average players feel like they are good players. We can't have Joe Average not thinking he is superman or he will revolt...
I once again match my character. Behold the power of PINK!
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
If they could just stick to leaving elites elite it wouldn't be an issue, but they love trying to make average players feel like they are good players. We can't have Joe Average not thinking he is superman or he will revolt...
That's the line Cryptic crossed long ago...and there's no going back on it.
I'm not Elite. I shouldn't be flying around going wheeee in Elite content without a care in the world knowing that my half-baked build and half-assed flying is going to get me 5-10k DPS without any fear of dying outside of some bad RNG.
Normal (Casual)
Advanced (Average)
Elite (not Average & not Casual)
Nightmare ("Come at me, mutha...")
I used to say Casual, Normal, Elite...but nobody wanted to be called Casual.
Course, splitting the queues up like that would create way too many queues - they'd have to be clustered/combined. Instead of Cure, Hive, Infected, Khitomer...it would just be Borg/Omega. Folks could private queue whatever, but the public queues would have to be merged, eh?
They had stuff going, a good start when the Elachi first hit Tribble. But...
"And that stuff is all easy to counter if you know what you're doing."
...got the Elachi nerfed multiple times, cause folks didn't and didn't want to bother figuring out or even bother listening to folks that had figured it out.
I think that was largely a case of one screwed up mission, and a new bag of tricks, leading too people whining about elachi in general, not the one mission that needed tweaking, and that's all it needed, tweaking.
AI is hard. Really really hard. Games with bigger dev teams and bigger budgets than STO can't do AI. All they can do is give NPCs more defensive abilities to use on themselves, and more debuff and control abilities to use on players- and with the Voth and Undine, that's happened. And that stuff is all easy to counter if you know what you're doing.
Expecting more than this really is expecting too much.
its not hard too do really, well conceptually, the software could be a problem in terms of what it allows, but its not hard to set up a ai that sees combat like as a xyz approach, heck pvp players do this already, if target does x, do y, of it does z, do a, if it does g well I don't have anything for g hope I don't explode as I use what defensive powers I do have.
Its not all that complex of a thing when you examine it from the outside, the average pvp fight can be broken down into these same sort of steps, the real skill is usually adapting to unforeseen changes.
granted the ai will be a bit predictable still, if I do x,y,z, it will respond with a,b,c. you can add some variance with powers, and weighting which might be used for a given situation, but its always going to be a formulaic response. which isn't bad, and would make the AI better, but its not so much smart, and just responding more intuitively too threats.
that all being said this idea that's its impossible to make more engaging AI is false, its possible, the real questions is can the software handle it. and the thing is it will still never really be smart, as in it wont adapt to situations, just apply a formula too what its doing, so nothing really out of the box.
Comments
Expecting more than this really is expecting too much.
you mean... like hive?
i wonder why nobody plays those.
free jkname
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I do! But then again... I got all 3 optionals on my second run... both in pugs... on elite... so perhaps I am not the best example hehe.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
They had stuff going, a good start when the Elachi first hit Tribble. But...
"And that stuff is all easy to counter if you know what you're doing."
...got the Elachi nerfed multiple times, cause folks didn't and didn't want to bother figuring out or even bother listening to folks that had figured it out.
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
That's the line Cryptic crossed long ago...and there's no going back on it.
I'm not Elite. I shouldn't be flying around going wheeee in Elite content without a care in the world knowing that my half-baked build and half-assed flying is going to get me 5-10k DPS without any fear of dying outside of some bad RNG.
Normal (Casual)
Advanced (Average)
Elite (not Average & not Casual)
Nightmare ("Come at me, mutha...")
I used to say Casual, Normal, Elite...but nobody wanted to be called Casual.
Course, splitting the queues up like that would create way too many queues - they'd have to be clustered/combined. Instead of Cure, Hive, Infected, Khitomer...it would just be Borg/Omega. Folks could private queue whatever, but the public queues would have to be merged, eh?
Fleet Admiral Space Orphidian Possiblities Wizard
I think that was largely a case of one screwed up mission, and a new bag of tricks, leading too people whining about elachi in general, not the one mission that needed tweaking, and that's all it needed, tweaking.
its not hard too do really, well conceptually, the software could be a problem in terms of what it allows, but its not hard to set up a ai that sees combat like as a xyz approach, heck pvp players do this already, if target does x, do y, of it does z, do a, if it does g well I don't have anything for g hope I don't explode as I use what defensive powers I do have.
Its not all that complex of a thing when you examine it from the outside, the average pvp fight can be broken down into these same sort of steps, the real skill is usually adapting to unforeseen changes.
granted the ai will be a bit predictable still, if I do x,y,z, it will respond with a,b,c. you can add some variance with powers, and weighting which might be used for a given situation, but its always going to be a formulaic response. which isn't bad, and would make the AI better, but its not so much smart, and just responding more intuitively too threats.
that all being said this idea that's its impossible to make more engaging AI is false, its possible, the real questions is can the software handle it. and the thing is it will still never really be smart, as in it wont adapt to situations, just apply a formula too what its doing, so nothing really out of the box.