Ahh in other words they behaved much like your standard ranged gamer vs a melee gamer, with a combat style I believe is called Kiting aka running backwards or around a melee foe to keep the range open to something beyond where the melee foe can hit back.

The problem I can see with npc AI in games like Fallout vs Shooters is that in the shooters they can ignore a lot of the AI actions that gamers want to be included in cRPG's aka walking around, talking to each other, eating, drinking and such like. In a Shooter they can pretty much ignore those and try to refine the combat AI sequencing so that the foes at least try to take advantage of cover, flanking, crossfire and such like.

The only AI from an enemy that I thought was correct was the ferral ghoul, mindless ghoul racing toward you and sometimes crouching over something. Not bad in my opinion but yeah most AI needs a nice reworking.

In Point lookout swampfolk with shotguns would run tree to tree taking cover to close distance and open up at closer range. This here shows the improvement in the AI and i only assume it got better in new vegas. Swampfolk are awesome.

Creating really good AI isn't a problem. Really good AI is a problem. As wintermane said, players never actually like smarter AI, since it tends to ruthlessly destroy players, because one person against a group that can communicate instantaneously with one another and calculate tactics at lightning speed is suicide. Heck, 1 person against a group of people in real life is suicide. Combat situations in video games aren't realistic. You try rushing into a local supermarket filled with gun-toting psychopathic criminals and coming back out alive. Video games are designed to make players feel awesome, like we are the hero in an action film, clearing out the building of terrorists single-handedly.

Developers have long been able to make very complex AI that acts and plans reliably like a human (at least in a video game/fire fight scenario). The problem is in encounters with more than one enemy, players get destroyed more often than they win. And realistic and intelligent behavior for enemies isn't always fun - most players perceive related actions by the enemies as a bug or glitch. The enemy runs and hides when wounded - or just when it is outmatched or hears you killing everything on the way to it, so you never can find the enemies if you are winning. It lays in ambush, or traps item supplies and healing stations. It snipes you from a distance, while another enemy distracts you. It gets you to chase it into kill zones. It lures you into rooms and then locks you inside while another enemy tosses in grenades from above. You probably won't even see truly smart enemies that much. They will employ guerilla tactics to hurt you and then disappear. In playtest after playtest players just get frustrated - not happy - with the truly smart AI. It shatters their "action hero" bubble. I even read where during the development of one game years ago, they had to really dial back the AI because it was sabotaging the players objectives and making the game unwinnable. Imagine assaulting Vault 87 to get the GECK, and the super mutants know your objective, so they blow up the GECK. :blink:

While the AI in Fallout could be improved, most wouldn't like what they wished for.

I love shooters with realistic enemy ai / bullet damage. It makes you have to think and act like your life was really on the line out there. Really intense stuff, but not for everybody. See arma & flashpoint games on the hardest difficultys.

I think we merely want the basics down like have enemies who know their not going to win to just runaway or try to use a more powerful weapon or just flank you from the side or throw a grenade when you take some time to stay behind cover. Maybe have them actually layout ambushes and traps would be a nice change of pace and a challenge.

Instead of having every creature charge you head on. Think of the wild dogs, by themselves they probrably won't try anything but in a pack they could try to surround you and maybe even circle you. Be nice to see some enemies just flee in terror or try to surrender.

Yes having a superior intellect of an AI would be difficult but not all enemies lore wise would be that intelligent. Enemies like raiders should have common sense and know when to take cover and when to push. Some may just be on their daily physco high and you found them at a wrong time
It should be a variety of AI, some just raving lunatics who stop for nothing but a bullet, common sense/guerilla thinking enemies, and then some elite military tactics in use by some of special high end groups.


What I mean to say is we should have some very intelligent AI enemies but these would of course be elite groups, while most other nps would have a more common sense to dumb as rocks AI. Be nice to have a small portion of very intelligent and tricksy npcs.

You may be right about this, but then again there using the good parts of fallout 3 and adding better things. Obsedian knows were bethseda failed and succeded. They took what they succeded at and scraqed most of what was a failure. Tho i bet there was a few fails that they improved. Both bethseda and obsedian worked together on this game. Obsedian did most of the work but bethseda chiped in a few of there experts that were not busy making the games like brink, rage, etc. I do belive the game's AI will have difrent strategys. Raiders are excatly smart so they are known to charge at you like dumb {!@#$$#} While some groups like the trained groups, Ceaser's Legion, NCR, BoS will be better and actually take cover. Ethier way the game will be good. hardcoe mode will already make the game dificult and real, Smart AI will add a new challenge and i will have to come up with new strategy. (I love using strategy).

ghouls have no ablity to reason you havent heard that yet? (im not joking)

i hope they make better ai. Arwen's mod drastically improved AI, and she did for no money and in her own free time. im sure some professional programers could do the same.

I don't think this is correct at all, alot of players (myself included) Love very smart NPCs and enjoy as much challenge as the games can throw at us. It is a poor assumption to say that "players get destroyed more often than they win"... based on what? I found the vanilla Fallout3 game even on Very Hard mode to be a quite easily. The only time Fallout3 became a challenge with NPC AI that I saw is using Tarrant's more realistic AI tweaks mod, which actually made the NPC's do things that I would not expect (not always the super-smart thing, but things like taking cover, getting the right range on weapons, not blindly charging, etc). I can say I have not had more fun in all my Fo3 gaming.

I think the assumption falls apart when you presume that people would not enjoy smart mob AI because we would get killed (or even destroyed), where that is exactly the kind of experience I am looking for - something very hard and challenging, something that can kill me if I'm not very careful. I think it's great fun when the NPC's kick my butt in a particularly awesome way, and enjoy the challenge of Very difficult NPC AI. So really I think it comes down to personal preference on AI, and don't think you can simplify mob AI in this way. There are Lots of different things that NPC AI could do to make battles more challenging but not more deadly (if they wanted to), and everything in-between.

Indeed I think the trend in the gaming industry is to add More smarts and depth into NPCs, not less. Todd Howard even mentioned that adding depth to the NPCs is one of the challenges they are working on at Bethesda, so I fully expect NPCs to get smarter and more capable as times goes on. There are plenty of FPS games out there with Simple AI for people that only want to Win and can't handle loosing or being out-smarted by monsters, and that's exactly why I play Fallout instead.

Miax

Same here. AI has come a long way in recent years and I expect it will only get better but in the meantime, I was plenty happy with the AI in Fallout:3.


Nothing apathetic about being grateful and excited by what we had in FO:3. The AI was not wonderful but it was better than most games IMHO and in many games it's not present at all. Improvements have been made from Oblivion to FO:3 and I expect it will continue to improve. Of course folks would like to see improvements in everything under the sun but to accept something we deem "good enough" is not apathy and it would serve you well not to make such far reaching judgments of other members.

And there is much more to making a game. If you dare to call devs lazy I will give you a smack because they work hard to bring you the best that they can. Nobody wants to see a game succeed like the devs who put their name on it do. :nono: