I just read this article that talks about how crappy game Ai is..even in the "next-gen" era. I, for one, see no problem with it at all. The article talks about how crappy the Ai in Assassin's Creed is, but I recently played through the game and absolutely loved it. I thought the AI in that game was definitely revolutionary. Sometimes it seemed as though enemies were able to predict my movements. Am I crazy or is this author completely mad???

Here is the source article:

Source Article - GameAlmighty

What do you guys think?

Give a decent example of how the games AI could predict your movements.

The AI is so retarded. I mean if you climb up a building after an assassin and he's no-where to be seen then.. um.. look in the fricken' big hiding place thing!

I mean its not terrible, like crowds are well done, but when it comes to guards..not so much. I mean if your standing watch and you notice your guard buddy drop dead and some dude with his hands to his face standing over the corpse, with a sword attached to his back, I mean my mom always said not to jump to conclusions, but you kind of assume..

Haha.

quote:

Originally posted by McMasterJ:
I mean its not terrible, like crowds are well done, but when it comes to guards..not so much. I mean if your standing watch and you notice your guard buddy drop dead and some dude with his hands to his face standing over the corpse, with a sword attached to his back, I mean my mom always said not to jump to conclusions, but you kind of assume..

I agree. I believe the AI in this game is not remotely 'intelligent', which is why I asked the original poster to give a good example of how it can predict your movements. I suspect b1ack0ut3 will not be able to come up with such an example. :-)

The game's AI is revolutionary not in how tough it is but in how realistic it is. It makes the NPCs behave less like supermen and more like real humans. When NPCs are attacking you they actually act scared - they cower, they fail to attack even when goaded into it by a leader, they even run away. They represent real people quite well, and I think it's for that reason that the AI is criticized. Players are used to AI that is so poor that developers mask it by making it superhuman. This makes the player think that tough AI is good AI, but that's not the case. Real good AI makes NPCs behave like humans, and that's exactly what AC's AI does. The problem is that 'more human' is not necessarily tougher, but it is better.

I'd much prefer having AC's AI, which makes NPCs seem more human, than any number of games in which the AI is tough but not human-seeming. After all, it's not like the realistic AI is not challenging - it's very challenging when two or more leaders are facing you at the same time.

The thing is, some people just don't get that in this game NPCs aren't supposed to be elite fighters. Altair is the elite fighter. Everyone else is cannon fodder.

'Beeryus', you make some interesting, and valid points. I agree with your assessment, but there are some laughable aspects of the games AI, for example: when I kill a guard and just wait within several feet, and then kill the guy who says "Who did this!?", and then I kill the next guy, and the next guy, and the next guy, until there's a pile of 20 dead guards, and I'm the only one within 10 feet that's wielding a long sword and throwing blades.

Yes, there are some clever aspects to AC's AI, but there are also some ridiculous short-comings to it.

If you stealth assassinate a guard just out of the eyeline of another guard he's not going to notice even if he's within two feet of the other guard. This is a game mechanic that exists to make it a little easier to stealth assassinate folks than it would be in real life. If the game didn't have this it wouldn't be even possible to call the game stealth-based because there would be no way to get away with any stealth moves.

Anyway, at some point you have to accept the fact that it's a game and that games can't accurately model all aspects of human experience or human intelligence. In the end you have to ask yourself if it's enjoyable despite its flaws. I think it is, so I play it and I don't worry too much about the NPCs' lack of situational awareness. The game is challenging enough for me as it is and the AI makes up for the NPCs' lack of situational awareness by their realism in other areas.

The fact that AC even has people EXPECTING guards who will look in the roof gardens or on benches for a guy they have lost sight of anyway, expecting guards to have purifrial vision that'll catch action done JUST out of their eyeline... says lots for the AI that they DID succeed in making. An AI that notices you climbing a wall and thinks it's odd enough to slow it's walk and stare before moving on would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Now we take it as a given.

The article doesn't hold water for wanting to have their cake and evicerate it too: it complains about being able to escape notice just by moving slowly while forgetting that you're a heavily armed dude with blades and swords strapped everywhere: if you catch someone's eye for ANY reason you're probably going to blow your cover, and the fact is, even today, someone dashing along a public road is going to catch attention far faster then someone just strolling along with the crowd is.

I love this AI: I have never before encountered fighters who CRINGE when I evicerate their friends, who will end the fight by dropping their weapons and running in fear, who will WARN me that I'm doing something wrong rather then instantly shooting to kill. They have personalities on top of just programming, and it's pretty impressive.

That people are STILL complaining about it says less about any real flaws in the AI and more about the stunning, life-like environments that makes gamers somehow EXPECT real, life-like opponants.

quote:

Originally posted by Paladin_1962:
'Beeryus', you make some interesting, and valid points. I agree with your assessment, but there are some laughable aspects of the games AI, for example: when I kill a guard and just wait within several feet, and then kill the guy who says "Who did this!?", and then I kill the next guy, and the next guy, and the next guy, until there's a pile of 20 dead guards, and I'm the only one within 10 feet that's wielding a long sword and throwing blades.

Yes, there are some clever aspects to AC's AI, but there are also some ridiculous short-comings to it.

well you're half-right.
though it is funny when there's 20 dead bodies and the next guard comes and says "Where is the one responsible?!"
I mean how does he know it's only one man that took them all down.

quote:

Originally posted by katz_bg:

quote:

Originally posted by Paladin_1962:
'Beeryus', you make some interesting, and valid points. I agree with your assessment, but there are some laughable aspects of the games AI, for example: when I kill a guard and just wait within several feet, and then kill the guy who says "Who did this!?", and then I kill the next guy, and the next guy, and the next guy, until there's a pile of 20 dead guards, and I'm the only one within 10 feet that's wielding a long sword and throwing blades.

Yes, there are some clever aspects to AC's AI, but there are also some ridiculous short-comings to it.

well you're half-right.
though it is funny when there's 20 dead bodies and the next guard comes and says "Where is the one responsible?!"
I mean how does he know it's only one man that took them all down.

Yep, that's the most ridiculous thing in the game! How could they let such a thing slip into the game?

Lol I kinda agree that the AI looks like it still isn't that good. They should get some tips from Splinter Cell. Now that had some good AI, especially after Pandora Tomorrow. Honestly in this game u can just walk behind people, with your footsteps so obvious, yet in Splinter Cell if u do that, you get shot at so quickly. I really hope you can crouch at any time in this game, because walking and even running up behind your enemies and kill them an assassination does not make.

quote:

Originally posted by puffydude1:
Lol I kinda agree that the AI looks like it still isn't that good. They should get some tips from Splinter Cell. Now that had some good AI, especially after Pandora Tomorrow. Honestly in this game u can just walk behind people, with your footsteps so obvious, yet in Splinter Cell if u do that, you get shot at so quickly. I really hope you can crouch at any time in this game, because walking and even running up behind your enemies and kill them an assassination does not make.

I don't think you got what they were going for. The stealth is about social stealth, not about hiding in shadows and squatting on the floor.

The problem isn't the AI really, it just doesn't make sense half the time.

Sometimes you hide in a garden in a corner, sit on a bench in plain view, or jump into so hay right next to the guard and everyone forgets who you are. It's bad because the AI has no memory of previous events. You go out of your hiding spot and the guards chasing you suddenly don't know who you are.

On the flip side, the guards sometimes notice you too much. This is very apparent in the kingdom sector. If you are galloping or even walk your horse, then the guards know who you are and yell "Assassin!" Yet when you press a button that makes you go slightly slower, non of the guards know who you are. Same thing if you kill someone. When you pray, you're safe. When you walk, you're spotted.

This doesn't necessarily make the AI bad. It makes it underdeveloped. The AI needs a script to react to particular situations. You can make the argument that it was part of the adamus program, but it's unimmersive to the player when all you are doing is sitting on a bench or praying to hide. The AI has to be programed to react to these situations.

With that, it seems that they have done that for AC2. AI will sometimes recognize when you're sitting on a bench and will stab hay piles if they think something is in there.

quote:

Originally posted by OniLinkSword:
The problem isn't the AI really, it just doesn't make sense half the time.

Sometimes you hide in a garden in a corner, sit on a bench in plain view, or jump into so hay right next to the guard and everyone forgets who you are. It's bad because the AI has no memory of previous events. You go out of your hiding spot and the guards chasing you suddenly don't know who you are.

On the flip side, the guards sometimes notice you too much. This is very apparent in the kingdom sector. If you are galloping or even walk your horse, then the guards know who you are and yell "Assassin!" Yet when you press a button that makes you go slightly slower, non of the guards know who you are. Same thing if you kill someone. When you pray, you're safe. When you walk, you're spotted.

This doesn't necessarily make the AI bad. It makes it underdeveloped. The AI needs a script to react to particular situations. You can make the argument that it was part of the adamus program, but it's unimmersive to the player when all you are doing is sitting on a bench or praying to hide. The AI has to be programed to react to these situations.

With that, it seems that they have done that for AC2. AI will sometimes recognize when you're sitting on a bench and will stab hay piles if they think something is in there.

I agree. Also the social stealth appears to be improved. They've talked about how you can hide in different crowds, instead of just the monks. Im looking forward to see how many different sort of "casual crowd interactions" Ezio will have.

The main area I think the AI needs improvement is in combat. The cringing, and panicking, and yelling "How did he do that?" is all great.

BUT.... There are a couple of problems.

1. Guards have three basic moves they rely on. Regular blocks, which are damaging when they happen to you but not when they happen to a guard, deflections, which are less common, and can lead into counters, though these are even more rare still, and regular attacks, which some enemies will lead into combo attacks from, but again VERY rarely. Increase the variety of attacks. And if possible, have them adapt to your fighting style - if you're defensive, they'll use guard-breaks more, if you're agressive, they'll use counters more.

2. Teamwork. Overall, the way combat plays out is more realistic than most games - in a real swordfight, it's rare for many-on-one fights to actually involve more than one person attacking the lone fighter at once, for risk of interfering with one another's strikes. If you can get the opponent surrounded, however, attacks from front and back, or both sides at once, CAN be done effectively, and will be if you have people with decent combat training. This was lacking in AC1, and while not a big deal, would be nice to see fixed in AC2.

quote:

Originally posted by puffydude1:
Lol I kinda agree that the AI looks like it still isn't that good. They should get some tips from Splinter Cell. Now that had some good AI, especially after Pandora Tomorrow. Honestly in this game u can just walk behind people, with your footsteps so obvious, yet in Splinter Cell if u do that, you get shot at so quickly. I really hope you can crouch at any time in this game, because walking and even running up behind your enemies and kill them an assassination does not make.

How did you found this one year old thread?!

quote:

Originally posted by sensationikke:
...
How did you found this one year old thread?!

Lol :3.
My two cents... XD

No matter what the game's AI is going to be predictable. It doesn't matter how hard you try to make it realistic it's still a game. There are still going to be things that might have been "improved on", but it wouldn't be fun if you had to run around a whole city all the time trying to lose an army of guards, and not have a way to hide from them.

OMG! zombi post KILL IT!!!!