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Somewhat off topic question about AI
rosetyler51
Member Posts: 1,631 Arc User
I asked this before in Ten Forward and I think I got two answers. What are MMOs with good AI. I think the answers was EvE with burner missions (which gimp the player's ship choices) and Tabula Rasa (which closed down pretty badly).
So asking the question again here in order to get a bigger crowd for more data. What MMOs have the type of AI you want to see in STO?
So asking the question again here in order to get a bigger crowd for more data. What MMOs have the type of AI you want to see in STO?
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http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1425:_Tasks
It is a LOT harder than many people think it is. For a game, remember you need an ai that not only is intelligent but not like deepblue intelligent and crushing the best human players.
Not a task I envy, though I do enjoy watching from the sidelines.
Edit, moravec's paradox, or why good ai is a pain in the butt:
I remember one of the devs from wow way back before even the outlands expansion saying people don't really want a smart ai because a smart ai would figure out the fighter can't actually hurt him and go squish the healer first. People want a challenging encounter.
To the OP, sorry the only games with "good" ai I've ever seen were turn based strategy. A whole different beast than mmo. But if it helps, galciv by stardock. Best I've encountered.
Though the NPC ai from hitman seems like it might be adaptable to an mmo, maybe? They would surround you, cut off escape routes, alter patrols to plug gaps if you killed some and backed off etc. They didn't stand in place and wait for you, they actively defended their turf and worked as teams.
Games do not use True AI.. They use Simple AI. This simple AI does not have intelligence its just a set of rules.. eg if this happens... do this... It cant anticipate, it cant plan. It can only follow rule sets.
If they were to include True AI this game would not even run on most pc's.
This game could have much better Simple AI if it wanted. Currently i do not think there are too many rules in that code at all. If hull below 20 use ET... if shield offline use ST... Most of the time they dont even do that. But I honestly do not think 1/4 people in the game today could handle much more than we have right now.
A true AI would mop the floor with us in any situation. We would not be able to fire off abilities half as fast as a computer could.
MMOs....not one single MMO I have ever played had even a decent NPC AI. They were all garbage AIs, maybe because players are always a million times smarter or maybe it is just a lost cause trying to program decent AI.
This is the only statement I disagree with you on, because AI is handled by the server, not the client. Putting something like that client side would open up all kinds of abuse potential.
Yes I agree was not really thinking MMO... but in that case you are correct. I have not done any MMO types only single player with simple ai on the client.
I was trying to find the tactful way of saying but TRIBBLE it. Your comment does little further the topic on hand.
That game had a pretty wide range of abilities and the AI was generally competent at using different builds outside of some of the more oddball setups.
The problem here is that regardless of what you go up against. Say Borg Probe, Sphere, Cube, Tactical Cube. Youll get the same response from these four in terms of abilities and pattern with differing levels of strength. Even though they should be the equivalent of Weak/Normal, Strong, Elite and Champion in other MMOs. In any other MMO, each one would have a different set of skills to attack you with or atleast a different means of attacking you with those skills (differing pattern). Causing you to learn to deal with each differently. Including going up against a mixed group like two normal, one strong and one elite.
In any other game you would expect the strong and the elite to throw down different patterns from each other and the normals. But you dont get that here. The Borg, regardless of which type of mob it is. Will instantly throw down the same abilities and begin the same overall pattern minor one thing or another. So as long as you can drop their shields with ease. You can ignore whats being thrown at you in general. Only looking out for that one thing that might be different from the rest. Like a insta-kill torp (which is the laziest game developing method of them all).
Now they didnt get this wrong entirely because there are some mobs out there that work well with the Normal, Strong, Elite, Champion types. Like the Voth and Undine. But elsewhere in the game. You can mindlessly blow through the content because if youve fought one mob youve fought them all in a sense.
Thanks for doing your part to show why PvP is the best thing ever and players love it
Thank you everyone else for your answers.
valianttome, you did bring up a good point and as you said. Newer NPC groups do show Cryptic is fixing that.
tgo533, you are right but with the way powers can cover so much it would be hard I think to make simple y if x simple AI. I'm not a dev so odds are I'm wrong or I don't know the full story about it.
Also I would like everyone to remember what happen when the borg was given the same EPtE that players have. Also the TB changes. Don't want to be mean but we have seen how most players have handled harder content before.
Trolls going to troll. Little I can do to stop it.
Live and learn:rolleyes: (awesome music from an awesome game with tacked on pvp system like STO!)
I ask what baseball players are good and you kick down a door to say "There is no good baseball players, basketball players are the best."
That is pretty much what happen roughly.
This thread was to talk about AI in past games & STO...until you felt some need to cram PvP into a place where it does not belong.
Just like the devs.
Also as of right now these games are steam's top sellers. Not going to say this is a sure sign that you are blowing hot air but I felt some need to cram pointless factoids into places where they don't belong.
Edit:Yes I am and will forever be the Empress but as you can see or maybe you can't I keep PvP in one spot and PvE in the other. Also the idea that we are on the same side is...the most tactful way I can say this. SICKING. It is as bad as the so-called KDF players that farm N'Vak. Most of which belong to PvP fleets.
Now I'm getting off topic. Thanks for that
Except the EPtE the Borg Spheres had wasn't exactly the same was it? I never have any objections to any NPC AI being improved. Did a few mods for Armada 2 to prove this as well. My only objection was the Spheres could use EPtE in a manner a player could not. It had a far longer duration and it was much more effective than the same ability used by a player of an equivalent rank.
I liked the randomness the Sphere's EPtE introduced, though. I never knew when they were going to zip off to the edge of the map, which was a change from them simply charging into the mouths of my cannons. Cryptic was onto something there and I wish they'd had the gumption to see it through to a correct version.
I'd also suggest to Cryptic they study the procedures good players use and rewrite the entire AI for everything in PvE using this a baseline.
Or, if I want to be really radical, suggest to Cryptic they allow players the option of actually piloting those same Spheres during an STF. A live OPFOR would be enormously fun and very entertaining to me.
even if you try to build a better AI, eventually you will pick up its pattern and and it would be so predictable that you can use its strengths as its own downfall when you time it right. its a dead end coversation unless someone makes an adaptive ai, which would probably require more work then cryptic are willing to do.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Once more we are getting off topic but TRIBBLE it. I have a history of threads getting hijacked by someone on a soapbox.
How long was Spheres' EPtE? I want to say 30 seconds because when that change happen to players the borg got it too. I'm not so sure about the effectiveness of it.
There is two things I really try to push when it comes to STO. Devs to make a strong pass over all powers and the like also for players to show the same level of teamwork they used to make "Delta Rising the expansion ever that players love" to teach fellow players how they can handle advanced content without upgrading.
Which one do you think is going to happen first?
You're right. Bring up humans when talking about Artificial intelligence is 100% on topic and everyone should only play pvp games because they are the only kind of games that matters.
You have proved how smart and right you in front of everyone. I'm sure you and your echo chamber of friends is so proud.
I shall now banishes myself from the forums thanks you MIGHTY LOGIC and MEATY GIRTH OF KNOWLEDGE OF ALL THINGS!
*sets this to play on her way out*
This is what i think too...
Right now when fighting an NPC their default movement tactic seems to be to close distance until they are within 0.01km. Their default ability use seems to be use everything as soon as it is off CD.
Now i dont think they will add true AI or player-level thinking AI. So instead i would just ask for more scripted behavior. Like a few people have said though most NPCs have a pattern. Even if you were to add in a few extra scripted behaviors people would still pick up on it too, end up memorizing the new scripts and have a way to beat each script. But what i think they could do is have lets say 1 script but make it randomized in some way.
Like say for example a standard tac cube right now. The player with the highest dps/threat will get aggro and the borg cube will go through its standard rotation. BUT they add in a new attack that occurs once every 10 seconds that does moderate damage or something special whatever and it cannot target whoever is highest threat. Basically its like a "hateful strike" type mechanic. If you've played WoW you will know that a lot of bosses have that mechanic. Anyways every 10 seconds the system does a roll check or something if it rolls 1-33 condition A is met, if it rolls 34-66 condition B is met, if it rolls 67-100 condition C is met. The condition is what determines the kind of attack/special event that happens every 10 seconds. Condition A could be something like a random player gets a untargettable slow moving high yield plasma torp launched at them which explodes after it flies for 15 seconds. Condition B could be a cluster torpedo gets launched at a random player. Condition C could be drone is launched with a high power tractor beam targetting that random player and it doesnt go away until the drone is destroyed. All those conditions put together might create some interesting situations. You cant ignore A and B because what if C happens? or what if C happens and you are squatting on the boss and A and B happen next.
Anyways that was just an example of a script that i came up with. Instead of a series of scripts that players will memorize and react to in sequence, do a script with some kind of randomizer. So that people will have to think on their feet or think about how previous/future events from that script will affect how they react each time the script is triggered.
I want NPCs that actually do far more abilities to make them nastier, tougher and finally give an excuse to other builds as well as reducing the stupid hullpoints NPCs have now. Finally an excuse for some player, build out there to strip the half-dozen BUFFs that an NPC would be running. An excuse for higher end repair builds to keep others alive when something like a Borg Cube goes EPTW3, TT1, APO1, BO2. Or an NPC ship having TT1, APD1, EPTA, PH1, HE3, FBP3.
How many times do NPCs fire off a special ability in the span of 30 seconds? Compared to a player? It gets stupid, and somehow smashing the Mook NPCs of this game is an accomplishment? The overwhelming vast majority of them don't do things like Tactical Team, Emergency Powers, repair abilities. You'll be lucky to find an NPC do ONE ability before you blow them up.
It feels like we're visiting a school to beat up on handicapped children.
Again, not asking for super-smart genre-busting AI. I'm asking for the stupid hullpoints to get reduced some but compensated by NPCs having a pool of abilities that it can do.