sentiant NPCs will also investigate where it may have came from. Hiding spots dont stay hidden for long.


@: akvii: The smith in Riverwood told me "You need iron or steel, leave that elven stuff to the elves." As i was traiding with him in my elven armor and i am argonian.

Guards keep asking me to enchant their weapons because they can't cut through butter

Yeah I did this a couple of times once they turn their back look at the where the noise is coming from - whap !!! Quite immersive actually!

True dat. MGS1 is also the only game I know of where the AI will track you by foot-prints you leave. Granted, it was only in the very beginning of the game where you could leave them, but gosh darnit! The AI followed them!

The most impressive thing about the AI in Skyrim, to me, is that the NPCs will react to your deeds and actions around them. Such as wetting themselves when I use my Fire Breath shout while facing straight up or gathering around the body of a dragon I just slew. Or how they will pick up things you dropped and even talk to you about it or fight over it if it's an item of worth.

Its still really easy to exploit the AI. Even if they have a stealth-shot arrow in thier face or their friend just died next to them, they will go back to loitering after abou 30 seconds.

I had on a Ebony blade, and a guard passed by and said something like "Fine blade you have there, like a sliver of midnight." O.O

It's the little things like this, the attention to detail, that just makes TES so worthwhile.

Yeah, I'm not knocking Bethesda for their AI - because it has vastly improved over Oblivion's...

...but Kojima & Company truly are the AI masters.

I do like the AI, but companions make me faceroll. On a Thieves guild quest you get 2 companions(Supposedly the best thieves around and masters of stealth) They warn me to be careful of traps, I spot the trap and walk around 3 pressure plates, then here come my companions galloping over those plates that unleashed a firestorm on me.....I hate you companions. And I cant stand to have Cicsero as a companion after the first 10 minutes he just repeats all his old junk. Can't wait for AI/Companion mod.

All that aside I absolutely love this game.

I dropped an axe in the Dragonsreach once, a guard came up to me and told me off for it

LOL. Nice story

I dropped some hide armor in Windhelm...
A woman asked me If she could take everything I dropped...

That was really really nice

I dabble in programming, and of course being a gamer, I tend to make games.

Making believable, functioning AI, to me, is not actually all that difficult. Adding things like spotting blood trails, footprints, footsteps, and glimpses of light are very simple things to accomplish, really. Pathing is what I find more difficult to do in a believable fashion. There's only few standard pathing uses in most games (looking at them from a designer point of view); they can just go straight to the player, taking the quickest route to do so; they can follow a pre-determined path; they can move away from the player; or they can simply not move at all. Modern games, because they can do more, tend to more commonly use the set path in addition to the go straight to the player method.

What I think would be cool to see, and unfortunately I can't really think of a way to do it myself, is to have the AI stalk the player. In a game like Skyrim, stealth is a HUGE advantage to the player because he/she is the only person in that world that is able to sneak. Could you imagine playing Skyrim and you're walking through a city minding your business and you turn and see a dark figure quickly dart out of view as you turn. You ignore it, thinking it's just another townsperson who turned the corner. You turn back continuing on your merry way, but unknown to you, that dark figure comes back out of the alley he slipped into and begins to pursue you again, slowly. Every time you turn in his direction, he either darts into a hiding spot or just acts casual. Then, when you least expect it... BAM! He knifes you in the back, whispering, "You've made enemies of the wrong people, boy!" Before you die and have to reload.

Yeah, it might seem like a cheap thing at first; but once you know it's there, you would start to notice the figure and maybe confront him. A simple change of AI like that would make a world of difference in the experience one had in a game such as this.

a person once commented on how i obtained a full set of dwarven armor. it made my day

The AI is pretty limitied and if you go out of your way to exploit it, well, you're gonna see some stupid NPC's. I was expecting this however, and I'm not disapointed at all. They actually turned out to be better than I initially expected, especially the schedules for bandits and stuff. There is but one problem with the AI in my experience:

Childbot 2: This Time It's Personal.

It sits there, in shops, in the private quarters of the Jarl, in random places which I would like to steal from. It sees everything with its god-vision. It's unkillable, unharmable, it never sleeps and it never eats. In short, it's really [censored] annoying and needs fixing, please give the kids proper sleeping schedules, if I was 8 years old and up at 3 AM in the morning in the entrance hall to our home me parents would say "screw this no harming kids policy, you need a decent strike with a wooden spoon!".

I had a guard tell me, "Best not steal anything around here, thief!" I started to get a little indignant, since I had no bounty and wondered at the seeming psychic powers of this guard, when he continued - "I'm not stupid! I recognize Thieves Guild armor when I see it!" Then I wasn't upset, cause that made a lot of sense. I was dressed for trouble and the guard recognized it.

I have no idea what you're talking about, I have seen children NPCs sleeping and eating. I don't think they have any higher detection than your average town NPC either...Maybe i'm wrong, but it's nowhere near that bad for me.

"The gods gave you two hands, and you use them both for your weapon. I can respect that."
"Ah, Steel Plate. A fine choice of armor."
"Orcish Armor. I once had a set. Ugly and strong, like the people who make it."
"Yo-You're the Harbinger of the Companions! I'm honored to be in your presence."

I hate to say it, but I like the guards in Skyrim more than Imperial Legion Wes Johnsons.

AWESOME

I ended up taking some studded armor from a bandit I killed on my warrior to make him the iconic Dova outfit from the game posters, and while walking in Whiterun a guard said something about me taking my armor from bandits,... I was like, huh?