Smarter game AI hopes

Games Other Halo
#1

Though the Reach NPC AI has come leaps and bounds since CE, I hope they smarten up the AI a little more at least in the area of “prioritizing” targets. A quick example is on Tip of the Spear and you have a marine or Kat on the rocket hog turret. I’ll be driving and strafing an enemy wraith and as soon as a skirmisher makes his way in the area the npc will quit firing on the wraith until the apparently much deadlier threat of the single skirmisher is wiped clean of the battlefield with 6 rockets to the face.

It’s nothing thats really game breaking but It’d be nice if in Halo 4 your teammates (especially since they could be spartan IV’s) atleast act like they are trained marines/spartans and not just have the philosphy of shoot everything small first then if we have time get around to the massive tank that can kill us with one hit

#2

About friendly AI:

I think they should programme friendly AI similar to enemy. Friendly AI should be able to last a good while fighting enemies well. I hate how they die so quickly, I don’t see why you shouldn’t get four at the start and if you protect them well enough, it’d be possible to complete the mission with one or two remaining men.

#3

I would hope AI driving would become viable one day.

And here comes the Kat+Me+Warthog nightmares…

#4

I can understand how they don’t want it to be so good that it just demolishes everything in front of you and makes it too easy, but atleast let them hold their own. and yes pass a driving test.

#5

Agreed.

They should also prioritize on where to aim (trooper vs. Jackals turns out badly if there isn’t a rocket launcher wielding trooper among them. And even then, it can be epic fail).

They also need to exert better control of their firing. Funny thing is that rocket hog AI gunners can stop firing at anytime unlike the player but often persist anyway. They are practically fixed on their target.

This is often how friendly AI caused accidents occur in Reach campaign (other than being run over by vehicles or some random bs):

  1. being shot by your own allies when doing an assassination. They regard the victim as still alive and don’t regard the player’s proximity

  2. firing at corpses is alright with non-explosive weapons but the ones with explosives should know better. Again, they don’t regard the player’s proximity. This problem could have occurred in CE (Keyes would shoot at dead bodies, blowing himself up with the Needler) but Bungie had the decency to prevent it from occurring

  3. firing at departing distant dropships instead of nearby enemies

#6

I really hope the AI in halo 4 is more realistically smart. Not a, I know everything AI, but judged on what it saw, perhaps dialogue between the AI to coordinate what’s going on and all that.

#7

I assume you weren’t impressed by the Bull Frog’s superior jumping capabilities.

#8

Friendly AI in Halo has been a disaster after Halo CE, which did it right for the most part.

There’s some good points made in this thread, like prioritizing targets and player proximity.

#9

I would love to have a sneaky Spec-op AI that will sneak up behind you and perform and assassination on you. It will make the game much more engaging as you will have to be watching your back instead of the usual move forward and keep shooting approach. Then again, the AI seems to always improve, and the best of the best are working at 343i so I can’t wait to see how great it is going to end up.

#10

I hope more than anything the Marines/ODSTs/etc are quicker to react to threats and have a fast roll like they did in CE.

I also want to see more friendly AI taking cover and moving up or retreating. Out friendly AI should have behavior that is more akin to modern shooters than the Covenant. When out of cover they should be quick and mobile like the CE Marines and when they are fighting at range they should be fighting similarly to the enemies in cover based shooters.

Grunts, crawlers, flood have numbers to make up for a lack of cover, Skirmishers and Drones have speed and numbers, Jackals have either shields or range on their side, Brutes/Elites/Knights have shields and strength, Hunters are Hunters. Human AI should behave more tactically to make up for their general weaknesses.

As for Friendly/Invincible AI don’t bother adding them if they do slightly more than half damage. The Arbiter was a good example because he could still “die” but he still did decent damage, especially in close quarters. What is the point of Kat wielding an Assault rifle that does half of its already pitiful damage. Spartans and other BA friendlies should feel powerful, like someone you would send on these missions.

#11

> I hope more than anything the Marines/ODSTs/etc are quicker to react to threats and have a fast roll like they did in CE.
>
> <mark>I also want to see more friendly AI taking cover and moving up or retreating. Out friendly AI should have behavior that is more akin to modern shooters than the Covenant. When out of cover they should be quick and mobile like the CE Marines and when they are fighting at range they should be fighting similarly to the enemies in cover based shooters.</mark>
>
> Grunts, crawlers, flood have numbers to make up for a lack of cover, Skirmishers and Drones have speed and numbers, Jackals have either shields or range on their side, Brutes/Elites/Knights have shields and strength, Hunters are Hunters. Human AI should behave more tactically to make up for their general weaknesses.
>
> As for Friendly/Invincible AI don’t bother adding them if they do slightly more than half damage. The Arbiter was a good example because he could still “die” but he still did decent damage, especially in close quarters. What is the point of Kat wielding an Assault rifle that does half of its already pitiful damage. Spartans and other BA friendlies should feel powerful, like someone you would send on these missions.

I agree. 343i should definitely put forth a good amount of effort to make the friendly Marine AI more closely emulate the tactics and movement of actual military soldiers, complete with appropriate combat chatter and strategy. The Halos of the past seemed to be absent of this.

#12

> > I hope more than anything the Marines/ODSTs/etc are quicker to react to threats and have a fast roll like they did in CE.
> >
> > <mark>I also want to see more friendly AI taking cover and moving up or retreating. Out friendly AI should have behavior that is more akin to modern shooters than the Covenant. When out of cover they should be quick and mobile like the CE Marines and when they are fighting at range they should be fighting similarly to the enemies in cover based shooters.</mark>
> >
> > Grunts, crawlers, flood have numbers to make up for a lack of cover, Skirmishers and Drones have speed and numbers, Jackals have either shields or range on their side, Brutes/Elites/Knights have shields and strength, Hunters are Hunters. Human AI should behave more tactically to make up for their general weaknesses.
> >
> > As for Friendly/Invincible AI don’t bother adding them if they do slightly more than half damage. The Arbiter was a good example because he could still “die” but he still did decent damage, especially in close quarters. What is the point of Kat wielding an Assault rifle that does half of its already pitiful damage. Spartans and other BA friendlies should feel powerful, like someone you would send on these missions.
>
> I agree. 343i should definitely put forth a good amount of effort to make the friendly Marine AI more closely emulate the tactics and movement of actual military soldiers, complete with appropriate combat chatter and strategy. The Halos of the past seemed to be absent of this.

I agree, Allies seem to run straight into masses of enemies and stand there while firing off a few poorly placed burts just to inevitably die.

#13

I hope the AI is better in Halo 4. Everyone has seem to brought up good points. For now, I would just rely on yourself and don’t worry about AI, I mean that gameplay wise.

#14

> I would love to have a sneaky Spec-op AI that will sneak up behind you and perform and assassination on you. It will make the game much more engaging as you will have to be watching your back instead of the usual move forward and keep shooting approach. Then again, the AI seems to always improve, and the best of the best are working at 343i so I can’t wait to see how great it is going to end up.

In H2, I’ve noticed Elites withholding fire on me until I faced them. This was in the bomb room on Cairo Station on Legendary. They are very playful if given the chance to fight back. As allies, the Elites had a little stealth but they often revealed themselves (except for the Spec Ops Elites on The Arbiter).

H3 Elites also had a little bit of stealth but they just weren’t fast enough.

Reach Elites didn’t use stealth at all.

> I hope more than anything the Marines/ODSTs/etc are quicker to react to threats and have a fast roll like they did in CE.
>
> I also want to see more friendly AI taking cover and moving up or retreating. Out friendly AI should have behavior that is more akin to modern shooters than the Covenant. When out of cover they should be quick and mobile like the CE Marines and when they are fighting at range they should be fighting similarly to the enemies in cover based shooters.
>
> Grunts, crawlers, flood have numbers to make up for a lack of cover, Skirmishers and Drones have speed and numbers, Jackals have either shields or range on their side, Brutes/Elites/Knights have shields and strength, Hunters are Hunters. Human AI should behave more tactically to make up for their general weaknesses.
>
> As for Friendly/Invincible AI don’t bother adding them if they do slightly more than half damage. The Arbiter was a good example because he could still “die” but he still did decent damage, especially in close quarters. What is the point of Kat wielding an Assault rifle that does half of its already pitiful damage. Spartans and other BA friendlies should feel powerful, like someone you would send on these missions.

H3 friendly AI were the most tactical (the 2 marines that accompany you at The Ark’s rally point bravo take cover when fighting the Brutes and Jackals and don’t charge out like the doomed marines in Cairo’s second hangar) but they could have been better.

Seems Reach tried to make the friendly AI into cannon fodder since there could be up to 10 of them in one area or dropped off by a Pelican and they, well, all charge at the enemies, only retreating when there’s only a few left (it took them this long to learn their lesson).

Agreed. It’d be great if it was possible for important NPCs to die and get back up like in H3. When Arby decided to kill steal, most of the time I could do something about him. Even with severely nerfed AI and damage, Noble Team are still too damn effective.

#15

I like games where allies are actually at least halfway competent, and aren’t just 10 to 15-second distractions (like Halo Marines in many situations on Legendary, at least).

I remember when I played Crysis 2 and met some Marine allies for the first time, they were actually pretty competent fighters that didn’t require infinite respawns to keep the action going, yet still weren’t quite good enough for you to just sit back and do nothing. I thought to myself that if Halo’s Marines were anything like those guys, it would be pretty awesome.

#16

Yeah CE’s marines weren’t all that great… in fact all they did was distract and hardly did any damage to the enemies… Halo 2 had the best friendly AI. They were actually USEFUL and actually took down the enemy INCLUDING Elites and Brutes… Even on Legendary mode they were awesome. Now H3 they were a pretty big step back from H2 but they were competent enough to at least hurt the Covenant…

Now Reach is where they went completely DOWNHILL… The Reach marines were useless! They couldnt even kill one Grunt without help from the player… Last i checked they were so bad, it took 10 marines to kill ONE… yes… just ONE Jackal!! -____-… I really hope friendly AI in Halo 4 are like Halo 2 helpful cause its a bit tiring to have to do all the work when your ally’s are idiots…

#17

343’s description of Halo 4’s AIs make them sound really advanced.

#18

> 343’s description of Halo 4’s AIs make them sound really advanced.

Any link by chance, I haven’t heard anything

#19

> and hardly did any damage to the enemies…

That’s because they were getting shot and there weren’t enough of them to keep Covies on the move.

> Halo 2 had the best friendly AI. They were actually USEFUL and actually took down the enemy INCLUDING Elites and Brutes… Even on Legendary mode they were awesome.

Yep, though keep in mind they had advantages like never reacting to shots (other than their shouts) and having a lot of health.

> > 343’s description of Halo 4’s AIs make them sound really advanced.
>
> Any link by chance, I haven’t heard anything

Try checking http://www.littleenglishhaloblog.com/

There are some summaries, videos, and links to articles that have info about the AI, such as:

-AI not falling for Hologram so easily
-343 making sure Crawlers don’t feel like Drones
-when dealing with Prometheans, you can’t prioritize the same enemies in every encounter