An individual zombie from l4d has more brains than One of skyrim's characters in combat. Only in l4d there can be loads of them whilst skyrim's battle for cities involved a general and 10 attacking men.



stealth
*gets hit by arrow"
*goes to area where arrow came from
*walks back to original position and says "it must have been the wind" (with a growing number of arrows in each time this is repeated)

plus Npc's can detect you at impossible times and Not detect you at obvious times

(and aren't falmer blind? Why do they all learn to see when One of them heard the now-silent you a few seconds ago?!)


Non stealth
Mellee- runs at the player along the most simple path. even if the player is using a ranged weapon!!
Magic- often Casts a ward spell despite those not seeming to work on non magic attacks
Ranged- Moves from side to side

Other things

- All npcs have a ridiculous amount of magicka/ stamina to compensate for their lack of knowing how to use it.
- Npcs neither sprint nor jump (and why don't floating enemies fly?)
- Npc's neither communicate or work well with friends
- path finding.. ugh

Thanks, that's nice to know. Reading your post made me decide to not play Skyrim any more. I guess the entertainment I got during my 170+ hours of gameplay was just my imagination. I have been enlightened, OP.

But I do agree, smarter enemies would make each fight more interesting. It doesn't stop me from enjoying the game such as it is, but smarter enemies and definately smarter dragons would be more interesting, using more shouts.

I had to lol at the point that "Npc's neither communicate or work well with friends" when the fact is that they do this all TOO well, even animals and beasts of all kinds will work together in a concerted effort to kill you. In fact, the idea of deer and other passive animals leading you into predator territory when the predator will kill the passive animal is just too silly. It ranks right up there with bears operating in tandem by one charging you while the other flanks you. Wolves I can see as they are pack animals, but not bears.

But here's a scenario that troubles me a lot. When you shoot someone with an arrow, from hiding, they will have a quick glance, and then go "Oh it was probably nothing" while their friend lies there dead, what they should do is SEARCH the whole area for an intruder. They should shout "LARS, HELGA, WE GOT AN INTRUDER!!"

That would be much, much more fun, but dungeons would mostly need to lose the easy exit option so if you were able to get behind their search pattern, you'd still need to deal with them on your way out.

Also, I said it before but, I'd like dragons to actually shout more, giving us more of a challenge rather than a grind.

I love gingerly stepping around pressure plates as to not trigger them, taking another step forward and then getting slammed by a spiked gate as Lydia comes charging through like an armored puppy dog.

What do you mean by still limited in number?


I do agree that the AI is hilariously stupid. like for instance stringing along 8 bandits by making them follow were my arrow hits so they come out in the open, and then shooting them. thing is once you shoot one they come to your position.


would keeping them in an Alarmed state AND prioritizing what audiables they make when they giev up suit better? for instance yes I find them saying "must be the wind" with an arrow sticking out their rump....disconcerting. so what about the just sticking to the phrases, "must have run off" or "damn got away"?

AI isn't going to get better until next-gen when consoles have a more powerful CPU to handle more AI instructions.

I believe it's established in lore that the Falmer's hearing compensated for their lack of sight. It actually does translate to the game, because light levels don't affect their ability to detect you. With a muffle effect, anything short of stumbling into one will keep them in the dark (GET IT?!). Magic isn't my thing, but I was under the impression that ward spells increase armor rating as well as deflecting spell damage.

Of course, it is headbangingly stupid that NPCs are willing to chalk up arrow-induced piercings as a trick of the wind...

The one example of bad AI, when shooting an enemy and they suddenly forget theyve been shot or there friends been shot, is really the only one that is blatant from my experience. So overall thats pretty good, when suggesting there is hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of AI scripting.

Really. They're most certainly powerful enough to handle this. It's just a matter of scripting, or if lazy, create pathways in the map which they follow when they search for enemies. It's even more so easy to do in this game, where most dungeons are linear.

All of these issues are valid. But you're forgetting one thing...

The reactions and interactions of NPC's in Skyrim is still exponentially better than either Oblivion or Morrowind.

If you are allowing these kinds of things to ruin your game, I'd kindly suggest going back and playing those games again.

Sure, if you strip away all the graphics and physics, then the AI can really be realistic, but no one wants those kinds of games.

Graphics and physics are handled by the GPU, not the CPU.

They are more intelligent in this game than Oblivion or Morrowind.

Something I want fixed is the path finding. My atronachs get stuck in one spot or on rocks and stay there until I resummon or they fade away.

If that were entirely true, people wouldn't be needing Core i7s

Yes, on a PC, but on a console, there is the CPU to process everything.

If they can make your PC compute a chess game, the can make a NPC search a cave. Honestly.

The Xbox has a CPU and a GPU.

On topic, there is no such thing as a true AI and I don't know when we will see one (an NPC that can actually learn, or create strategies that aren't scripted). There does need to be a much greater emphasis on AI (what we call AI anyway) though. It is one of the few things that, IMO, can add amazing depth to gameplay.

Try talking to this thing.
http://cleverbot.com/

Edit: You can talk to this thing about Skyrim.

Heed the words people. Heed the words...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI

Ok, just for the fun of it, made me laugh out loud.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY

You also, can not ever get it to reference a previous part of your conversation, because it is not a true AI. It is a really, really complex script with many many variable outputs.

There is no learning, there is no memory, there is no reasoning, etc...