I agree. If raiders did things like attack deathclaws and yao guais and minigun armed Brotherhood squads in small groups or alone with weak weapons there wouldn't be many raiders. I remember in FO3 there is a building you can clear from raiders and on top floor there is a computer with some entries by their leader describing the raiders' plan to break into Vault 101 by digging under it. This shows that the raiders can have a fair amount of cunning.

The raiders should not be able to execute any kind of advanced military tactics but should at least recognise when they're completely outclassed. Ocassional suicidal attacks by drugged up raiders could be possible but they should not be a rule.

Springvale Elementary! I love clearing that place out! Dear lord if those Raiders had made it into 101, the vault dwellers would be [censored]. Literally, most likely.

Yep. You are talking about the elementary school not far from Megaton. This is exactly my point. Raiders aren't just a bunch of junkies who kill and [censored] anything they see. Raiders are survivors who are in it for themselves and have a hierarchy and an organization. You can't expect to survive in the wasteland if you don't have some cunning and common sense. Raiders aren't helpless. They are dangerous. If anything, the best comparison a raider would have would be to a tusken raider from Star Wars. One alone might not be a threat, but when they bring an army of tusken raiders, there is nothing more deadly.

Radiant AI was actually proven to be "too good"? All I can recall is a highly staged and somewhat fake E3 demo which showed a falsified barter system and a woman throw a fire spell at her dog. Then during the making of videos they talked about how guards would grow hungry, hunt deer in another town's territory and get killed by the guards over there. I kinda just assumed Radiant AI was total bs after that.

Sure they walk around farms and sit a tables during set times each day but I have never seen anything radiant about the AI, to be honest dropping a sword in Skyrim and having a NPC ask me if he could have it then is probably the most impressive thing NPC AI has done in a Beth game.

I don't think it would necessarily be that much of a problem. First there is still level scaling in the game. More importantly, to me combat is only fun if there is some challenge to it. If you outgun a group of enemies so much that they have 0 chance against you then combat becomes a grind and an option to skip it would be welcome. Also, fleeing may not be the only option for enemies who recognise that your firepower is vastly superior to theirs. They can surrender, so you will be able to loot them (down to their underwear if necessary). Or they can simply not attack, but you can still attack them if you're feeling especially bloodthirsty.

About valuable loot on fleeing enemies, random raiders who are so weak that they can surrender or flee have no business carrying quest items or unique weapons.

The Fiends are a good example.

Yeah. raiders shouldn't be tactical masterminds but they should be smart enough to utilize some basic tactics. I would realistically expect them to know simple things like to take cover to reload and things like that. Supermutants too, to a lesser extent. As people have said before, it makes sense for feral ghouls and animals to run at you, but not sentient (if dim-witted) raiders and super mutants

It's not that hard to understand: bullets bad, slim end of the gun pointed to the foe.

The E3 demo was definitely scripted, but it actually gave the fans a pretty good look at what Radiant AI actually was. There are far more stories of what Radiant AI was actually capable of. Drunken brawls happening dynamically. Guards stealing food from prisoners because they were hungry. Merchants leaving their store to come back with a rare and powerful weapon they got from a locked chest outside of town to attack the criminal. The problem is Radiant AI made NPCs too smart for their own good and made the game too unpredictable. Anarchy could easily transpire as every NPC was in it for themselves to the detriment of the game. The Radiant AI we have known since Oblivion is not the one we were ever meant to have.

Exactly. I really don't understand this argument for why raiders should just be cannon fodder. They might be low level enemies, but that doesn't mean they should be idiots too. Especially with humanoid enemies, there should be more challenge and strategy involved. If I can just run and gun through this game like DOOM from the early 90s, I'll be a little disappointed.

That's the reason I gave up on Sniper Rifles entirely in FO3, FO:NV. Hope they improve enemy reactions a bit more this time.

So an NPC was bothered by noise from a dog and killed it? That's the kind of depth in AI that impresses me and I wish we had more of it. I often complain that I feel like AI in games got stuck like 10+ years ago. Bit of an exaggeration but not entirely.

I believe the reason we don't have better AI in games is not because it isn't feasible, it's because not enough people care on both sides of the equation. If you spend the time and effort and I guess money to advance your game's AI, how many people will even notice or care? I think that's the attitude in the industry, why bother.

Or maybe we can just blame it on consoles .

Great. Now I'm getting a mental image of a game set in an asylum for the insane based on the pure chaos you guys are describing in the way radiant AI is supposed to work. Now I really want to play it lol

What always struck me as odd was how enemies like bandits, raiders, or fiends stumbled upon a dead buddy and instantly knew that there was an intruder (aka you). For a group of cut throat savages, they seem to have this strong brotherly/sisterly love that never makes them think, "hey, maybe someone within our own group is killing us one at a time in order to get all the chems/loot for himself.

It would be really cool to silently kill a raider and leave his body dumped in a room, and another raider (a close friend of his) stumbles upon his body. Instead of just immediately looking for the player, he might assume that a nemesis of his killed him off. So, he'll run after whoever he thinks is the nemesis and get into a scrap with him. The system might be bleeding over into being extremely complex and difficult to do entirely, but it would add a layer of depth to the AI to make them less presumptuous. It would really change up the direction of stealth playthroughs at least.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg

This is an infamous video because the entire demo was clearly scripted (Todd and BGS haven't done anything like this sense due to the outcry). However, it does give you an idea of how Radiant AI was actually going to work. On the contrary, BGS was on the cutting edge of really revolutionizing NPC behavior in video games. The problem is Radiant AI was too smart and too unpredictable. It would easily break the game and thus BGS reeled it back as a result.

Occasionally you'll see hints of that unpredictable nature in BGS's newer games, but it's definitely not what BGS ever intended the system to be. I'm hoping at some point it's something they revisit as it was by far one of the most exciting features of Oblivion. Sadly, so many amazing features that were supposed to be in Oblivion were cut either due to time constraints, console hardware limitations, or just not functioning as BGS had intended.

I actually think true Radiant AI would make for a rather comical experience. The problem is the game could be a lot of fun, or it could be absolutely miserable based entirely on the behavior of the various NPCs at the time. There's no way of controlling it, but it's that unpredictable nature that I always found compelling, even if it is scary from a game development standpoint.

BGS would have to be careful with that. The last thing they want to do is have the enemy NPCs killing each other off and the player just sitting back and watching. While I agree the NPCs shouldn't just automatically assume the player is around somewhere, I think it would be more conducive if the enemy NPC were to investigate and try to figure out what happened. What would be really interesting, ableit too difficult, is if enemy NPCs could identify different kinds of wounds and determine what the cause (what kind of weapon was used) of death was and who likely killed their fallen comrade.

Aside from making NPCs intelligent, it has to be considered what's fun, too. They could easily enable Radiant AI so that shifty NPCs can sneak up on and pickpocket the player character, or so that adventurers can clear and loot a dungeon before we have the chance; but even if you think that's cool, it should be obvious why most people would find that a pain in the ass. I think Radiant Story can bridge that gap, though, by having NPCs engage in or trigger radiant encounters without player input. So where in Skyrim we might trigger a quasi-scripted interaction by doing something, in the future NPCs could trigger interactions with each other. If that makes sense, beyond "This NPC stole my sweetroll, they must die" or "I saw a Mudcrab the other day".

There's also the matter of adding more randomness to NPC schedules, too, which is nice in theory. But I tried a mod for Skyrim that tried to do that, and got an idea of why Bethesda reins that in as well; it was a huge pain in the ass just to find anybody unless I had a quest marker pointing to them. I mean, that's already an occasional problem in their games, but this just made it way worse. Admittedly, it would have helped if the game was designed like that in the first place instead of modded in retrospect, so I don't know what Bethesda could do about that.

As the developers have explained, this demo is unscripted and it was set up with Radiant AI. In the demo, Todd Howard describes the function of Radiant AI as it was delivered in Oblivion. The demo doesn't just "give you an idea of how Radiant AI was actually going to work," but spells out for you how Radiant AI really does work. Oblivion and the Construction Set validate Todd's presentation.

To be honest, if they were THAT stupid there wouldn't be raiders to fight to begin with.

I think that some people are expecting a little to much of a single product. You should remember that this is not a military or governmental installation in any way. This is about the art of entertainment.

There are alot products and alot stuff people do into them.

If you get a product not having what you want, why not take another one?

You are not restricted to owning just one piece for common, except for you are restricted by your environmental authorities.

Censoring ever is a troublesome and live hindering happening.

There is no reason treading on all over Bethesda when this is the only object you ever new.

Maybe, your luck is waiting for you in a combination of products.

Like there is that one rule for dura-players. Asingle item only is good for making you sick alone.

sry, i forgot where i pointed this towards. guess there is nothing much insulting to anybody anyways

You Maniacs!

"These cases are more the exception than the rule though (and those people are probably already completely nuts).

They'd be more likely to jump out and talk rubbish at you until you shoot them in frustration."

Well, in my opinion all raiders are pretty nuts in the first place and adding drugs into the mix makes them act without any common sense.

This was BGS's fear when Radiant AI was in Oblivion. They don't want the NPCs ruining the experience of the game for the player. I think it's a valid concern, but one that can be worked with. As far as a more random schedule, BGS can track everything, including the NPCs. Quest markers are an obvious means of finding something, but I'm not even talking about NPCs related to quests or the main story. I'm referring more so to 90% of the NPCs that have little to no purpose in the game that you never engage with.

When I say "scripted," I mean the dialogue was obviously scripted to show off Radiant AI (dialogue would not have been able to take into consideration every minute and obscure detail). Yes, the actual NPC is using the full power of Radiant AI. Either way, this is the Radiant AI I would like to see return in some capacity, rather than the limited version we've had since Oblivion.

Exactly. This is the wasteland. Not Walt Disney World. You have to have some sense to survive.

Not all drugs are the same. Some can increase your alertness and boost your adrenaline, which is why some individuals who have been on cocaine, heroin, and meth have done some crazy things a normal human couldn't do under the circumstances. If BGS actually wanted to incorporate a realistic depiction of being under the influence for NPCs, that would be interesting.

Raiders shouldn't use tactics? Hell even packs of wolves IRL use flanking tactics. Why wouldn't fictional raiders?

Agreed. I recently installed the Immersive Citizens mod for Skyrim; http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/65013/?

Booted the game up, new character, walked to Whiterun. Saw the horse carriage guy sitting on a rock reading a book and Uthgerd the Unbroken walking out of town. For 4 years, she's always sat in the same corner of the tavern and he's sat on his carriage.

Just those two little moments made a huge impact as it created uncertainty in the game.

Please Bethesda, make sure dynamic situations occur and radiant AI extends to menial tasks as well as quests.

The A.I. should get better based on the difficulty setting.

Tactics like you describe are more along the lines of instincts and learned survival. I'm not saying that a group of Raiders could not learn those types of tactics, but implying they are more skilled at hunting than a pack of hungry wolves may be a poor assumption. Learning those "tactics" would suggest past experience with taking on more powerful opponents with superior numbers and stealth, something that Fallout Raiders do not appear to do well (because their AI svcks?). Of course, this leads to the question of how they have actually survived in the wasteland long enough to establish bases of operations at all , but that's another discussion.

The obvious answer is anyone that can survive in a godforsaken wasteland probably knows a thing or two about survival. It's not difficult to learn guerrilla warfare tactics. Using cover. Setting traps. Using numbers to overwhelm the opposition. This is all pretty basic common sense and doesn't require the expertise of a professional army. I think many here are being far too prejudicial about the capacity raiders have for survival. If they didn't have a clue of what they were doing, there wouldn't be many raiders left to start.