My few concerns with enemy AI

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Just chilling out? I'm right in your peripheral vision. Mabye I'm too fast for you.
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Sup, you gonna spread out or what? You suicidal?

I just have my concerns. Mabye I'm nitpicking. Game looks like a blast.
 
They seem to like to charge you a lot. I remember the AI in F.E.A.R., those suckers would flank you and use cover.
I have wondered how tough enemies will be. In Deus Ex, you are the best and always have an advantage with advanced cyberware. Geralt was usually the best. In CP2077, how good is the average opponent? Do they have kiroshi and mantis blades? Smart weapons? Seems like things could get dicey quick, which would be a good thing in my opinion. Either way I can't wait to find out. Cheers choombas!
 
That's why my first playthrough won't be a stealth one. I want to give time to CDPR so maybe they can improve it with some patches. Also, I was spoiled in terms of AI by TLOU2.
 
I've heard a story somewhere that developers can make smarter AI. Example was that a shooter (you) is in cover and other enemies in front of you use cover efficiently, but the other enemy team is surrounding you and coming behind your back. And the testers complained how enemies just respawns behind your back and felt frustrated for dying by such cheesy tactics.
Shooter games and difficulty never compliment each other, unless it's old rainbow six or something...
 
And the testers complained how enemies just respawns behind your back and felt frustrated for dying by such cheesy tactics.

Well that's the problem - the setup of enemies. If they respawn behind player without logical explanation ( like backup arrived or something), that would be annoying. But I think that would be cool if enemies did things, like flanking, surrounding etc).
 
Man.. you really gonna dislike this game...
Haha, no, I'm exited, but I see no issue in pointing out the little things.
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We are still in a young age with AI so you would expect some issues with it even may be after a decade as well.
I agree but I keep seeing similar issues is many RPGs today, they don't bother me that much but there is always room for improvement.
 
It would be awesome, if enemies had differen starategies based on their number. Like if they are one or two, they just cover and shoot or surrender and run. But if there are more, they would surround player ( some move and other support them with suppresing fire).
Or each enemy had different stats ( courage, inteligence, loyalty), that impacts their behaviour.
High courage and loyalty would eg. charge on player.
High courage and inteligence would flank
Low loyalty would surrender and run or even betray their own.
 
I'm really hoping, the enemy AI will be diverse and not just "melee/frontal attack guy" and "strafe and shoot-guy (with different weapons)", and it would be great if the enemies (not just the bosses) used smart weapons and cyberware to make things harder, especially in stealth mode.

I'm already bored if I imagine I have to do the "crouchwalk – hit in the back of the head – carry body behind the corner"-loop if I want to play stealthy. :sleep:
 
Guys you gonna dislike this game then.

Good AI is demanding AF on development and also on hardware.
Different strategies and stuff? Lol don’t be naive, that ain’t happening in open world rpg

this isn’t last of us 2.
 
We should probably make a distinction between two kind of A.I.s : The (gaming) A.I. is nothing more than programming a behaviour to a NPC that's more or less reacting with its environment with given patterns ; I would call that a "Programmed Behaviour" if I invented the term, in opposition to the (scientific) Artificial Intelligence which does learn and adapt in real time to unexpected scenarios. Both gameplay-wise A.I. and scientific A.I. share the same term and can be confusing.

When the scientific robot A.I. goal is to learn things to get better than humans, the gaming A.I. goal is to give the players a challenge they'll try to succeed, while the A.I. is maintaining the illusion that the player is in control of things. A role for a gaming A.I. isn't to perform, but to contribute to the reality the game is offering.

Now considering this, I believe that gaming A.I. could evolve to a very lifelike state since a decade ago, just the videogame industry don't seem to put interest on that, and there are reasons to that :

- It's a huge effort for what some people would say "a little/negligible payoff" because when the A.I. is so good you probably wouldn't even notice it, just like the good CGI in films. (Which ISN'T my point of view. I rather encourage devs to make good and believable A.I.s in their games for the sake of the art.)
- In MMO games the more players there are, the more popularity and money the game earns ; if there are robots to take the player's role (ex: team member, companion), then it means less money. That's why there are so much PvP and community games without bots (sometime there's not even training bots no more, fuck that).
- In a technical aspect, more NPCs on screen with more advanced A.I. means more computing resources taken, and more interactivity leads to more bugs to fix.

[EDIT] Haven't talked about solo games, this is one category of games that STILL need a good A.I. to function. For example in realistic setups we need realistic enemies to fight against. That's why I think CDPR should consider programming various "mindset" of enemies so the fights seem enjoyable, and believable. I can give examples of such "mindsets" : coward, careful, sneaky, etc.. + strategy level (rookie, average, master...)
 
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All in all, I believe that advanced AI system is not a core feature of Cyberpunk. It's not like Alien: Isolation, for instance, where a complex AI system is essential to have the proper thriller experience when encountering the Alien. So, to me, I am not expecting something unusual in this regard with Cyberpunk as it's probably something that I won't give much attention to even if it has several irregularities.
 
Let's face it... nobody wants smart A.I. in a game. A player, especially in a single player game, would be in a total disadvantage all the time... running guns blazing into every situation vs 5, 10, 15, or more NPC's... the moment A.I. starts engaging a player in a tactical manner that would make sense, every single one of the people complaining about A.I. would be the first to bitch about A.I. cheating. Finding a balance between completely dumb A.I. and the one that makes it completely not fun to play isn't easy... the previously mentioned F.E.A.R. has an absurdly simple A.I. but it worked brilliantly in that game... a happy accident that's hard to replicate.

As for the two screenshots from OP, IIRC correctly, the first situation was ~2-second scene selected specifically to showcase dismemberment. Is it possible a player used an A.I. hack to freeze an enemy? Absolutely, because we know that feature is in the game. Is it also possible, they just set that character to idle? Also possible.

I don't recall the second scene, but it looks like the group was just standing there, when the player got a jump on them.. makes sense for them to all stand there. :dunno:
 
Let's face it... nobody wants smart A.I. in a game. A player, especially in a single player game, would be in a total disadvantage all the time... running guns blazing into every situation vs 5, 10, 15, or more NPC's... the moment A.I. starts engaging a player in a tactical manner that would make sense, every single one of the people complaining about A.I. would be the first to bitch about A.I. cheating. Finding a balance between completely dumb A.I. and the one that makes it completely not fun to play isn't easy... the previously mentioned F.E.A.R. has an absurdly simple A.I. but it worked brilliantly in that game... a happy accident that's hard to replicate.

Everybody? Okay then :).

If game "AI" were smarter players might not blindly run and gun against insurmountable odds. They might not expect every future game to play this way. Wouldn't it be interesting if you had to stop and think about getting into a life-threatening conflict with NPC's in a video game when you're severely outnumbered? I would say yes.... Probably not in a twitchy FPS like a Halo title. In an RPG, definitely.

A good example here would be Disco Elysium. A game I recently finished. I tried really hard to diffuse a certain aggressive situation there. The game made it abundantly clear the player could suffer catastrophically for making poor decisions (and, boy did I make many in my playthrough). As a result I found myself thinking much more about what I would or wouldn't do before comitting to it. This is a mentality every RPG should aim to create.
 
Everybody? Okay then :).

If game "AI" were smarter players might not blindly run and gun against insurmountable odds. They might not expect every future game to play this way. Wouldn't it be interesting if you had to stop and think about getting into a life-threatening conflict with NPC's in a video game when you're severely outnumbered? I would say yes.... Probably not in a twitchy FPS like a Halo title. In an RPG, definitely.

A good example here would be Disco Elysium. A game I recently finished. I tried really hard to diffuse a certain aggressive situation there. The game made it abundantly clear the player could suffer catastrophically for making poor decisions (and, boy did I make many in my playthrough). As a result I found myself thinking much more about what I would or wouldn't do before comitting to it. This is a mentality every RPG should aim to create.

I don't think it would work in real time action rpg like new fallouts or cyberpunk. It works for Disco Elysium because almost everything in that game happens under super controlled dialogue section where all the options available in "combat" are restrictive skill checks and dialogue choices. Now that can lead to some intense moments like the ones you are mentioning but that's because they are super curated scenes with no real AI and real time moment to moment choice by player during the gameplay, even if it's twitch FPS style input.

It's a trade off of different aspects that some games can afford to do better than others. Due to the restrictive (restrictive as in everything happens under dialogue box) nature of how any encounter in Disco Elysium works it can afford to put players these into super intense life or death scenarios where every decision you make feels extremely important. While real time action games will require some suspension of disbelief just because there are so many player input and systems into play.

Though possibly i could see Cyberpunk using something like that in their dialogue system where they put you in an important situation, like that one meeting with Maelstroms where you can decide if you face Royce later as a boss or not by blowing his head off. But to my point i don't think moment to moment tension is easy to achieve in a different style of combat like this.
 
Hey CDPorjekt,

everything you have shown us about Cyberpunk 2077 is just amazing, a master piece.

Only thing I haven't seen is about AI of enemies. I am writing you this, because I have enjoy Witcher 3 a lot, and the only point I think it could be better is about AI.

In Cyberpunk I want to feel the pressure of the enemies pushing me from different locations at the same time, different paths they take to trying to kill, some of them hide, in fact it would be amazing if this AI learns from you and try to adapt to find your weakness.
I love shooters and I think this is the most hard thing to achieve, create great combat behaviours of the AI is very important, and if you don't do that all the visual and lore efforts of the game will feel less authentic.

The reason I write this is I have seen all the teasers about weapons and characters etc. But the AI shown in this videos was felling very flat, like "old" shooting games. (they were in a open areas, not trying to find coverage or do some covering fire to a AI friend) I hope this low behaviours were made because you were showing weapons and AI was set up in easy mode. Please don't forget this aspect of the game is very important.

I like this game called "Escape from Tarkov", they recently add a new update and change combat behaviour of AI, and it's feel amazing (excepting for the bugs), some of them push you hard, trying to surround you from different locations at the same time, others hide and listen carefully your steps. Also some of them have amazing aim and can kill you if you make a little mistake in less than a second. At some points, when they yell at you you feel scare and afraid because of what they can do, and it's super fun.

I hope we have this kind of combat system if we choose hard or challenging mode. I have all my hopes on this.

All the best,

JV
 
Hmm... Yeah, translating Disco Elysium mechanics directly to CP isn't going to work. The point was that particular game doesn't hand hold the player toward success at every turn. You can fail, and badly. You can be punished severely for it.

A good analogue to achieve this in a more interactive experience, like CP, is to create circumstances where barging into a room with 30 bad guys is a poor choice. No, sorry, you can't barge in that room and kill everything while suffering minimal scratches, bumps, bruises and chain puffing your inhaler to heal yourself. In this case the choice to barge into the room, or find a workable way to do so, vs taking an alternative approach becomes important.

"Smart" AI is one way to achieve this importance. The bad guys flank you, use cover, use miscellaneous weaponry to draw you out, retreat, call for backup, etc. The player barges into that room guns blazing and gets wrecked. Now they know barging into a room without proper planning results in being punished. So, they stop and think about the approach, or potential alternatives, whenever they're faced with this type of decision.

Create a distraction, blow up the building (Techie approach maybe?), hack the network and disable and/or turn bad guys against each other, bring buddies. Don't barge into the room at all maybe....

The fact a game from 15 years ago (F.E.A.R) at least made the attempt and somewhat pulled it off tells me it should be possible to have respectable NPC behavior in a modern, interactive game. If instead we get bullet spongy goodness, 3 different ways to barge into the room and cyberpunk of duty gameplay, featuring dimwit NPC behavior, then I can definitely say I'll be disappointed.
 
I want to take that demo at face value as just a vehicle for showing us how the weapons can be used. I would have some real concern if the AI were that special.

I'm expecting middle of the road AI that gives enough challenge that you need to think, but not so much challenge that you need to be thinking hard. Would I like to have to think harder about my choices? Definitely. If I go in expecting middling but and surprised with needing to really think, then it's win-win.
 
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