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It wouldn't be so bad if they actually went down when i shot them in the head. THEY AREN'T EVEN WEARING HEAD GEAR! THIS IS SOME BS!!
It wouldn't be so bad if they actually went down when i shot them in the head. THEY AREN'T EVEN WEARING HEAD GEAR! THIS IS SOME BS!!
You record a lot so do you have footage of this happening? Should be impossible.
Awesome vid!
I hope AI gets smarter and less super human in the future and behave like the character they are e.g. meth addict vs. street thug vs. security ex military as a classification of different skill levels for suspects.
Definitely planned!
Excellent video that perfectly summarizes just how game breaking the AI is. I do hope these issues are addressed by VOID in a meaningful way. “Tweaks” here and there aren’t going to cut it, the AI needs a serious overhaul. I think this game has a ton of potential, but if these fundamental problems aren’t addressed, I don’t see myself playing much longer. Unfortunately I can’t recommend the game to others in its current state.
We are definitely working to address issues like the ones listed in the video as well as other ones. The content posted is very comprehensive and works well to highlight issues with our ai, but I’m not sure why it points towards our hiring a programmer (and speculation about firing one??) at the end, and a steam estimate figure (which anyone could do online, it’s not accurate) posted by one of our moderators, who doesn’t have access to steam sales figures. I feel as if the video goes from a very thoughtful critique to something else at that stage, but I understand. You guys work with what you’re given, and if you’re not given information then you will draw your own conclusions.
We’re not trying to be shady by any stretch of the imagination, and we love our game. We spend every day working on it and planning out ways of making it better, or things that just flat out need to be reworked. There’s stuff in there i wouldn’t have ever dreamed of having (the dynamic cover system itself is crazy if you think about it), but honestly yeah some more critical things may have been glanced over or left by the wayside with the recent update. We will aim to resolve these problems and make the experience feel less ridiculous. More states, ai types based on environment, etc. The goal, of course, is to improve it over time until we are satisfied.
As usual it takes a lot of time to do so, and some tasks expand beyond ai logic, such as animation and sound. These work hand-in-hand with the ai logic to convey intent to the player. It does take a fair bit of time to handle these things and improve their state.
Rest assured it will happen, if you can’t recommend the game or enjoy it, it’s unfortunate and as someone who spends every day on Ready or Not, it sucks to hear — but that’s okay. It’s important feedback that we will use to improve the game and hopefully drag you back in!
All in all the parts of the video that focused on AI were good to see, and it’s a very deep critique with some very important notes about AI reaction time and preparedness.
I just feel it falls off at the end there, as if we had an inordinate amount of cash to just throw at problems and they will just get fixed because there’s money there (see any AAA studio ever with massive budgets — too many cooks is a thing, so is programming debt). That’s obviously not that easy, and development is much more complex. I understand the point that OP is trying to illustrate though, just speaking from the inside of development I suggest that it’s not as simple as it seems!
Regarding banning, this is hardly “the video VOID doesn’t want you to see!!1!1” — I’m not entirely sure why it’s happening, and I’ll have an ask around. The issues listed here have been listed elsewhere, and this doesn’t show a side of our product we’re afraid of having people see. Least I would hope not. Again, I’ll chase that up.
Oh my god. I do but I didn't even think to send it to you guys I usually just delete the ones and move on but I'll see if I can dig up the recordings and send them.
Definitely do(rag)!
I believe this has happened to me as well. But it is often hard to tell if I am actually impacting their head but I do believe I have hit them in the head and they would continue on fighting. Considering the other poster's upvotes I am assuming this seems to happen a bit.
I will see if I have recorded footage myself.
I have gameplay videos uploaded but don't think they would have any surviving headshot parts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFdwmXVRWR4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjBv0gdhhY4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyUCIH_PdcY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WIb2JLQ670
I have other videos not uploaded so I will check those ones when I get the time.
What you can see in my videos is other quirky AI behavior, mainly on the officers part. I believe in one or two of the videos you will see officers failing to restrain suspects or them hanging when trying to open and flashbang a room. Those are fairly common.
Thanks. I’ll have a look thru your vids. It really should never happen, especially since it’s so easy to test. If it exists it could be legacy headgear on some old ai roster or even lag possibly, so gotta see.
I appreciate this honest and thoughtful reply, and I actually completely agree with your point that maybe the video took a perhaps, inappropriate turn at the end. I have no opinion on any perceived "shadiness", my issues are strictly with the gameplay.
I also get that fixing these problems is no small feat and that the AI goes hand-in-hand with other complex mechanics like animation. Like the video says though, this game IS the AI, and if that part of the game is lacking then no amount of polish in other areas will make up for that.
I really enjoyed this game when I first started playing it 8 months ago. I still do sometimes. But it does seem like the issues presented in the video have been a bit of an afterthought to the developers. I think fixing these issues should be the number one priority right now, even at the expense of other additions to the game (new levels, environmental storytelling, etc).
When I first started playing this game it was with a few friends of mine. I don't bother asking them to play anymore because it's simply not fun to be cheated by the game time and time again. Like I said, I think it has a lot of potential, I really do, but I find myself closing the game out of frustration more often than not these days.
I do believe you guys are sincere in your dedication to creating a quality experience, and I hope you achieve that, but right now it's simply not there IMO, and the AI is the number one reason why.
Much appreciated response. I definitely want to make it clear that fixing these issues and creating a much more realistic experience is priority number one for us. But that’s just for programming, as you could expect we have level artists and other on the team, and they need to keep working too!
So these things can happen in tandem as even if we had no staff BUT ai programmers and relevant faculty, these things would still take around the same amount of time. Either way, we’re on the case. Not just for suspects but for SWAT and civilians, too.
I've gotta ask this to you directly Gruntr, but there is word of a build which has some miracle AI... which was apparently removed from the game before Steam launch? Is this true? I've heard this from several different community members across discord and so on. If this has any truth to it could you explain to us why the change was made? thanks.
I’m happy to talk about this! Just got some errands. I’ll edit this comment with a bit of info on this supposed build.
I will say in short, it’s baloney. There was a better looking AI movement system with motion matching but man, we couldn’t do half the stuff we do with them now if we used that system. Navigation was such a pain in the ass, which is most of what makes ai even remotely workable imo.
Edit:
Some links for you! Link 1, and Link 2!
Our older motion matching and AI system, which wasn't using behavior trees like it is now (it was using a finite state machine written from the ground-up), didn't scale at all. Motion matching was incredibly expensive to run, and the code to handle the AI was cumbersome and hard to tweak, let alone introduce new features into. Working with it was a nightmare as a designer.
So, we were just constantly battling our motion matching system and AI system for months and months -- trying to cram a square peg inside a round hole.
As a note, I see our regular "state machine" animated AI and "behavior tree" logic as early days currently, with a very clear internal idea on what is required to make it work really well. Just takes time, and with the game in the position it's in, there are a lot of eyes on us at all times. By the time we are done with it there should be a heap of detailed transitions and stuff to make it feel very weighty and grounded.
Below, raihaku has gone into a bit more detail as well. He helped on the system, as well as playtested the f*ck out of it right up until we decided to cut the features out and start again.
I'll go and view my other gameplay and see if I can find it. I haven't played much since the most recent patch that doubled file size.
Speaking of, this should be fixed now. The file size I mean.
59.6GB, looks like file size is fixed.
I'll play around in the Park Homes map. That seemed to give me the oddest AI behavior from suspects, some of which is covered in the OP. Do the suspects on different maps have different behavior and damage values outside of body armor?
Behavior not really, this is something planned for our next update. Damage values are based on the weapon they use. :) We affect their accuracy, time to fire after raising weapon, time to fire after changing target, time spent on target last known LOS, suspect moving accuracy, fake chance, flee chance, etc., Suspect health, time to fire door after kick to name a few.