[Solved] reasons for horrible artificial intelligence in AAA games?

News & General Discussion
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Hey everyone, I’m not a frequent poster and normally keep most thoughts for myself but this has been bugging me a lot. Been increasingly trying to wrap my head around the reasons why multi-million-budget productions have dreadfully incompetent AI. While probably not being that prevalent in other genres, it seems to be common practice in the vast majority of games which have driving or racing elements. How is it possible that productions which have the necessary funds to hire the brightest brains release something so flawed. To illustrate, some examples, among many:

GTAV. Sure, some of the adressed “problems” in the following video are actually compromises to get better performance but some behaviors, like the fake PIT maneuver (starting at 25:49) are the worst examples of lazy, cheating, artificial stupidity:

Need For Speed. Cop AI is traditionally bad in the whole series, masking it’s incompetence by spawning cars in close proximity coming from all directions. Not the best video to show that, but nonetheless:

Subjectively, Driver SF seems to have a more decent driving AI. Unfortunately, it cheats heavily on the physics. Mafia II cheats less but it’s driving AI is incompetent. These are open-world examples and I could go on (The Crew, TDU, Watch Dogs, Sleeping Dogs, MC:LA…). Circuit-based racing games suffer too.

So, any logical reason(s) for this? The only explanation, which verges on conspiracy theories, I can think of:

All the big studio bosses sat around a table and agreed that no-one will ship a game with competent AI in the coming years. To cut down on production costs. The majority of players are not complaining, so why waste resources on this. Heck, it probably makes the players feel good when they beat dumb/cheating AI.

*To make sure I’m not delusional, I did check with gamers on different forums. Some of them are actually annoyed by stupid AI, and not just in driving/racing games. Fighting games, RPG’s and other genres were mentioned.

Would love to read your thoughts about this. From a game-dev perspective :slight_smile:

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They do not care about AI. It is not a factor. The AAA games are attempting to bedazzle user with visuals and special effects, scale, etc. & provide “movie-like” experience, occasionally praising the player and saying that they’re doing a good job.

Smart/challenging AI is not even on the list of things to do.

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To paraphrase someone well known in the FPS genre (don’t recall who), “Why should a huge amount of time be spent on creating clever AI when the average AI lifespan is 7 seconds?”

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It’s because clever AI is never fun AI in action games (or action films).

If it’s a suspense thriller or tactical game you’re likely to see the AI quality shoot up. It’s really that simple.

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Well they did have a good point, ironic thing is simple AI is technically the most accurate AI. Although it doesn’t mean players would like it, for example you make an RPG. It’s not difficult to calculate the position difference between the NPC and player, then you say when in range go chase player and finish them.

You can do that in a few lines of code in Unity etc. problem with that being, computers are very literal and the player probably wouldn’t last two minutes without a good whooping.

So you spend many more lines of code, randomising / dumbing down accuracy and trying to make it more “movie like”. Because I’m pretty sure in a real life FPS, your opponent wouldn’t give you the chance to go find cover and in terms of a game it would be very short lived.

So you have to compromise, as long as there isn’t any glaring issues. Like NPC’s in an FPS being so dumb you could walk up and give them a massage, then in most cases I believe it works.

Would be interested in hearing ideas on how to compromise?!

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Compromise is key to pretty much everything in game development it seems. It’s all smoke and mirrors. The compromises for an FPS are going to be different from RTS and RPG and racing.

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LOL!

Although, maybe player would spare NPC’s life if they saw signs of intelligence. Once NPC becomes boring and predictable it’s good as dead (or ignored and left behind).
So it’s a vicious cycle, no one works on AI because AI gets killed fast, and AI gets killed because no one works on AI.

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Thanks for your thoughts guys. What you’re saying does make sense to me, at least when your target audience is the majority - which is the case for AAA studios, no doubt. The thing is, a minority of players, me included, are annoyed by dumb AI. It breaks the immersion and is not-fun, at all.

I probably should have made this topic be more specifically about driving AI, my bad. Sure, in an FPS you shoot a vector from the NPC to the player’s head and have to randomize, dumb it down. But if you’re in a scenario where you’re being chased by cops and they suck so much at driving that you can escape within seconds, and/or they resort to blatantly cheating on the physics, it would seem beneficial, as opposed to the FPS example, to smarten up the AI. Yet no “driving” game, that I know of, manages to do that.

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Try GTA Online, no such things happen. The AI goes for you full throttle and does not cheat. The reason it cheats here is because it is attempting to entertain the player, and for most people, it does.

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Yeah, I know what you mean :slight_smile: Been playing TDU for 4 years… Many human players in an online game do drive better than AI - and as many will be annoying and turn the experience into a juvenile ramfest.
I’m aiming for an AI that drives better than a human player would. Beta testing will tell how that makes the players feel. Probably as good as getting beaten in chess by a computer :smile:

[Edit] @hippocoder Sorry, turns out I didn’t know what you meant. Thought you were talking about human players in GTA online. Checked out the online cop AI and while it does drive more aggressively, the cars are defying the in-game laws of physics all the time. Tires covered with suction cups, UFO braking and acceleration capabilities… not my kind of entertainment :frowning:

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It is probably a bad idea.

See, computers have been consistently defeating chess grandmasters since 2005 or 2006. Going against something like that will be no fun at all.

So, if you make an aI driver that drives better than human (that probably won’t be very hard), you’ll create undefeatable monster your player will have to face. It is one thing when you have a tough challenge. It is another thing when the challenge is impossible.

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Time will tell. For now it’s quite balanced, the AI is roughly as skilled as I am, and I’ve added behaviors that make it drive more like a human than a “machine”. Gamers seem to be quite entertained just by watching these videos but beta testing will show if that’s still the case when they actually play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua4S0eX4kwU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORI2rLsSK1I

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I think it is likely a combination of what others have stated. It is pretty obvious the AAA focus on presentation. Not really any way to miss that. However, a good game AI is generally more about being entertaining or at least interesting than it is to be “better than you” or “smarter than you”.

Definitely they could do a better job on the interaction than they are. For example the police car bumping the player from behind and the wheels always seeming to turn the same way or at least same amount. Just a little random range of turn angle could have helped that out. But better would have been to just check which side of the car took the greatest impact (left, right or even center which seems to be the case in the video) then they could have bumped you to the right, left or simply a little boost forward which would make more sense. In this case, it seems like it always turns left and the same amount.

And I get you and others being frustrated by this kind of thing. It is what makes people think their top priority is always presentation. The reason simply being it is obvious they spend a hell of a lot of effort and time on that aspect. And yet it is also obvious they don’t spend nearly the amount of thought, effort and time on the other aspects. And that results in the kind of stuff pointed out in the videos you posted.

It’s actually a good thing. Because if the AAA were focused equally on all aspects of a game there would be less reasons for Indies to exist. Sure there would still be niches and micro niches to go after but with them being so focused on the movie like / presentation stuff it creates holes in the other aspects creating more opportunities for Indies. And then an Indie can focus on that stuff and leave holes in the movie like / presentation stuff and go after the niche that cares about such things. :slight_smile:

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Yeah that definitely is a good thing for us indies. Concerning the “smarter than you” AI, what I meant is more an AI that would be a real but fair challenge, which you can always dumb down, to match player skill. I guess one of the reasons for my somewhat naive question, is the gut feeling that while technology and graphics have been evolving rapidly, over the last decade, AI has been stagnating, even regressing in some cases. An assumption would be that gamers are getting less demanding on that level - you know, a consequence of the dumbing-down of our society in general :slight_smile:

Anyway, I’m grateful to all for your insight on the subject.

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I think the regression in the GTA cop response is interesting and telling.

The sequence where the cops walk the guy they’re arresting into the car, etc, that’s a really impressive minor detail. That in later games they decided to scrap the sequence and just have the cops shoot is telling. Players either didn’t care or didn’t notice, and the devs decided that it was more worthwhile to cut straight to gun play.

When you dig into the details of AAA game AI, I think they often do a really, really impressive job. The details in how characters respond and the like is often extremely impressive.

That AI is stupid or ineffective generally revolves around the developer not wanting to pose too much challenge, and make sure the player can have fun being a super god dude. The cops in these games are more like props than like actual challenge.

Also - your game looks great man! How are you doing that fog and lighting? It looks volumetric.

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Seems to be the case. But what about a game like Driver SF, which is all about car chases. Why not make the driving AI competent (assuming it’s not very hard to code, as neginfinity wrote - I’m not sure I agree, but I’m just a noob coder) and dumb it down based on player skill. Because only an irelevant 5% of gamers will bitch about the AI being incompetent/unfair? Only 5% used cockpit view in Grid, so they removed it in Grid2. Doesn’t the rampant regression of AI sophistication over the last years educate gamers to expect even less sophistication in the future? What about all the gamers who are becoming old farts now and who grew up playing games that were much more challenging - are they OK with the dumbing-down too?

Thank you :). It’s just faked with particles. The ground fog are cross-plane meshes spawned above the terrain with a slightly modified vertex-lit shader.

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That 5% of gamers who are unsatisfied is basically the opportunity for indies. AAA games are targeted at AAA audience, that is, huge general audiences.

You can’t please everyone all the time, so the gamers who want more can look to more niche titles that provide more challenge, or realism, or smart AI. While the biggest efforts will target the 90% who just want to have some fun and feel like a bad ass.

Also, just because a title is AAA doesn’t mean it’s great, or that they made the best possible decisions. The big boys eff up too. At the end of the day, we’re all mere mortals.

I thought that this was faked, but it was faked well enough that I wasn’t sure. Kudos!

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@Soul-Challenger I think you got to the heart of it. AAA focus on “general gamers”. I mean they don’t go after niches… that 5% who care about such things. Always been this way. And that is why there have always been shareware and now Steam Indie titles available to fill in the cracks. Most folks don’t care. Hand them a superb looking game, bunch of cinematics and a bowl of popcorn… they will be entertained. The people who want something more (outside of graphics because AAA pretty much rule the presentation side) or different look to Indie games.

And I agree your game is looking great! Hopefully you will fill some of the cracks AAA are missing.

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@Soul-Challenger after watching the vids, I’m interested to know how you’ve gone about your AI? Does it use the same physics as the players car? At the moment that’s what I’m doing, with the AI following waypoints, but also using raycasts in some directions to know if it needs to avoid something. It works, but I’m not sure how robust a solution it really is.

As for driving games having bad AI, I think I agree with the general sentiment here- rubber banding and cheating physics is just there to try and make sure the player is being entertained. I’d not really noticed it in GTA V, but certainly in the last NFS title. But the whole driving physics in that title seem off to me, often it feels like cars are actually steering from somewhere near the centre of the car. It’ weird.

On the other hand recent iterations of Forza have had decent AI if you crank it up a bit. AI based on how real players race is probably a pretty good idea, but seems unachievable from a indy point of view.

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Sorry @frosted just noticed I basically just said the same thing as you had a post or two earlier. Hadn’t seen that one when I wrote mine. I really need to spend less time on thes forums. lol :wink: