Why do Friendly AI suck?

Games Other Halo
1

T4R;
<mark>Warning</mark>: Wall of Text

so far, all of Halo’s Friendly AI are just a pinch less useful as cannon fodder, as they can’t drive, they can’t fight.

all they do is lay a few shots at enemies, nothing much,
they don’t actually help, unless you give them a big weapon, but where will find that many?

currently in reach, the marines and ODST’s alike don’t even fall under the category of cannon fodder, and they BARLEY fire their guns, sit around in corners, and lob grenades at walls

in H3, the AI is the best that i’ve seen, as they can shoot out at leas 1/2 of an Assault rifle clip in a burst, but even then, they are terrible

Yes, i know that one reason marines aren’t useful, is because if they did all the work for us, there would be no point in playing,
but Halo gives us the option to choose the difficulty level of our enemies, why can’t we do the same with our allies?

and don’t pull out real life scenarios either,
yes i know that plasma will burn through Marine BDU with ease, and that human weapons aren’t as powerful to the enemies as a tradeback,
But does that mean that the Marine Corps. 500 years in the future, will be unable to even hold their ground?

The US Marine Corps today is already relatively impressive, and now that all of the world’s nations combined together, against an even MORE POWERFUL enemy, with more advanced technology would mean that they would be MUCH more powerful than that of which they currently are

like i said, you can change enemy difficulty, but you can’t change allied AI
why not do the same thing, just the other way around?

Easy- For enemies, it means that damage is weakened, they shoot less often, and in shorter bursts and health is smaller, so for the allies, they would shot less often, less burst, and less health

Normal- everything is increased by some amount.

Heroic- “the way Halo was meant to be be played” Enemies are tough and powerful, so why not make the allies more formidable,

likewise with Legendary

now, i’m not asking for the allies to win the battle, i’m simply asking to make them more USEFUL, this way, you don’t need 30 marines all armed with assault rifles just to take down an elite and a few grunts on heroic difficulty

marines are meant to provide assistance, some poeple who want to ride the wave by themselves or with a fellow spartan, should be able to toggle all friendly AI off (except for objective characters like Johnson and characters required to complete the level like 343GS)

some people don’t mind marines, but don’t want them to get in the way all too much, so they can choose the Easy friendly AI difficulty

some people like the current state of the friendly AI, so they would choose Normal

some people would appreciate a sufficient amount of help from their comrades, but still want to be the lead man fighting the enemies off, so they would choose Heroic

and last but not least, some people just want to enjoy a fun part of the mission, or activate a fun Easter egg without the need to grind through the level, or quite simply, they are too lazy to fight the enemy. so they choose Legendary friendly AI

why do marines still suck?

2

It’s has always been that way. I really don’t know why they are that bad.

3

tl;dr

Hopefully it’s not as bad as Reach.

4

I hope they’ll be more like enemy AI. Marines SHOULD be able to kill at least two Covenant in their lifetime and should have a drivers licence.

5

Making a good AI is incredibly difficult, one of the hardest (if not the hardest) thing to do in a game. if you think about it, enemy AI is also horrible, but they hide that fact since they got better damage, shields and such so they seem “better”. They even give enemy AI cheats like seeing the player through rocks and such to make the Ai seem better, or as CoD, spam grenades and/or infinite respawn.
I do agree with you OP that the friendly AI should be better, instead of all having AR, give some Br or DMR, fewer AIs but better weapons and give them specific roles on the battlefield (rush, suppress, snipe).

I’d rather have a good AI that shot 1 burst/bullet every 20-30 seconds but at least hit the target, then the current ones that can spam 20 sniper rounds (june) against a grunt in CQC and still not get a hit, or Emile who thinks his shotty is a sniper and only tries to get long range kills :confused:
Sure, the AI shouldn’t do everything for us but at least they should do something, if they can’t get kills they should at least give support fire, suppress the enemy, draw attention to themselves, or vice versa. At least for Easy and Normal the Ai should be good, on heroic it should still be good, but campy (aka shot less, but make it count). For Legendary, pure DMR/sniper AI, hides at the back and fires seldom but make sure it counts (aka kill enemies without shield via HS, but not to often).

6

> I hope they’ll be more like enemy AI. Marines SHOULD be able to kill at least two Covenant in their lifetime and should have a drivers licence.

Yeah, Kat reinforced the saying about women being bad drivers, lol. Not saying this as a jerk, just saying it.

I got this crazy clip of her driving us off a cliff on the ONI mission. We respawn and she almost does it again, but this time she hopped out at the last second and ran off the cliff. I was like “ok what the poop just happened?”

7

Do you really think they are that smart in Halo 3? Have you seen them driving a vehicle with you as a passenger or turret guy!? You wouldn’t get far =P

8

Have you played Halo 1 or 2? The friendly AI in those games were awesome, even on legendary.

I feel the problem lies with the fact that Bungie tried to make the AI more complex and ‘smart’ in the more recent games. This resulted in them appearing stupid and made for a frustrating experience for the player. That applies to both friendly and hostile AI alike. If it has not been done for Halo 4, I vote for more simplistic AI in Halo 5.

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> Do you really think they are that smart in Halo 3? Have you seen them driving a vehicle with you as a passenger or turret guy!? You wouldn’t get far =P

they’re not that bad in h3

i’m good with vehicles, and i’ve managed to get trough all warthog levels on legendary with the LAAG hog, just the gunner

but NEVER let them drive

10

> they don’t actually help, unless you give them a big weapon, but where will find that many?

H3 has a lot of rocket launchers and fuel rod guns. For Elite allies, you can get swords from Arby.

> currently in reach, the marines and ODST’s alike don’t even fall under the category of cannon fodder, and they BARLEY fire their guns, sit around in corners, and lob grenades at walls

Yep.

> in H3, the AI is the best that i’ve seen, as they can shoot out at leas 1/2 of an Assault rifle clip in a burst, but even then, they are terrible

Yeah they were the most tactical. They used cover and stayed behind it whereas H2 AI often were scripted to run out of cover and engage Covies up close and personal (at the Cairo Station hangars) and CE AI were always getting up close and personal. Of course, the H3 marines were still terrible. If it weren’t for their damage sponge health, they’d be toast pretty quickly. Sometimes they need to learn to leave certain enemies for me.

> Yes, i know that one reason marines aren’t useful, is because if they did all the work for us, there would be no point in playing,
>
> but Halo gives us the option to choose the difficulty level of our enemies, why can’t we do the same with our allies?

Not necessarily. Some people like to work with their marines. Look at this player. He’s very competent to take on massive numbers of Covies solo while limiting himself to specific weapon combinations but he enjoys having company. Is that such a bad thing? The AI make up 2/3 of the campaign experience. Friendly AI shouldn’t be left out of that equation.

And I agree, it should be possible to control the friendly AI. Far too many times I have to put up with incompetences or allies that steal kills from me or allies that drive off with my vehicles or allies that just won’t stay put behind my blockade. It made collecting friendly AI on The Arbiter for a large Heretic collection battle inconvenient, it made collecting friendly AI on The Covenant for a 19 Brute collection battle inconvenient, it really drove me to tears at how disobedient they were.

> like i said, you can change enemy difficulty, but you can’t change allied AI
> why not do the same thing, just the other way around?
>
> Easy- For enemies, it means that damage is weakened, they shoot less often, and in shorter bursts and health is smaller, so for the allies, they would shot less often, less burst, and less health
>
> Normal- everything is increased by some amount.
>
> Heroic- “the way Halo was meant to be be played” Enemies are tough and powerful, so why not make the allies more formidable,
>
> likewise with Legendary

It’d be nice if it was more in-depth than that because I’d really like to see peak aggression even on Easy difficulty. Arby only fires 1 or 2 fuel rods in a sequence on Easy. Very unconvincing. I had to collect 29 marines just to see a fuel rod spam light show on Easy. Of course, if Angry skull returns, then I wouldn’t have bothered doing this.

> now, i’m not asking for the allies to win the battle, i’m simply asking to make them more USEFUL, this way, you don’t need 30 marines all armed with assault rifles just to take down an elite and a few grunts on heroic difficulty
>
> marines are meant to provide assistance, some poeple who want to ride the wave by themselves or with a fellow spartan, should be able to toggle all friendly AI off (except for objective characters like Johnson and characters required to complete the level like 343GS)

So true.

I think even invincible friendly AI should be able to be turned off. There is nothing more annoying than seeing them teleport back up and start racking up kills without leaving any for me.

I’d like to see these settings:

-invincible like in H2 but cannot teleport
invincible like in H2 but can teleport
-invincible like in H3 but cannot teleport
-invincible like in H3 but can teleport
-fully killable (AI only has 1 life just like every other AI)
-unarmed (AI spawns with no weapon)
-invisible (AI is ignored by enemies)
-invisible aggressive (AI is ignored by enemies and lays the hurt on them)
-invisible passive (AI is ignored by enemies and does not attack them)

Such great degree of control would be a godsend!

> why do marines still suck?

Because as Bungie got bigger, the brains behind Halo became corroded or were lost as new ones took their place. Simply put, Bungie had poor understanding of campaign difficulty:

-damage sponges
-cheating enemies
-depriving enemies (when you put your crosshair on a Brute bodyguard in H3, he will almost always deploy the Regenerator he’s holding. There are a lot of Brutes with bubble shields but they rarely actually use it, often stepping outside of it)
-weaker player
-poor enemy flaws:

*easy H3 Chieftain assassination
*easy beatdown and/or headshot on H3 Flood
*easy Elite baiting and assassinations using Hologram
*jumping on top of Reach Hunter
*jumping to higher ground when dealing with H3 hammer Chieftains (they can only leap after their Invincibility wears off) and sword Elites (no such provisions for this scenario in H2, H3, and Reach so they can do nothing)

11

They make Chief look good.

12

Actually the AI’s alltoghether in this game completely suck… Covies dont even take cover when taking shots or try to flank you (as Reach’s AI does) they just stand there, firing their guns at you, and sometimes moving in circles… what kind of cheap AI is this!? I thought this was Halo, no Call of Duty

13

AI = A LOT of programming, they are really hard to do

14

So the chief actually looks good.
For general gaming, AI suck because they are primarily there to look awesome and cause frustration because programming a good AI then having a bunch of them will cause lag which is why you will find a max of 32 AI on the field at almost any given time. Games such as strategy games can handle more because they require less resources.

granted that is my own solution with small experience so its probably wrong with a little bit of correctness to it.

Also, I don’t think its possible to actually have a good AI unless you want it to think like a human. Recall the terminator stories on why thinking AI could potentially be dangerous.

15

Since when the Marines helps you out? They have been always like that anyways.

16

The point is that the marines keep their difficulty standard, and should. In all the Halo canon, the Covenant basically tear through normal marines due to their increased weapon damage, and so that’s what they do. I’m actually moderately surprised by the marines durability on higher difficulties in this one (particularly in Spartan Ops).

If anything, the Legendary and Heroic difficulties should have the Friendly AI capped at Normal so people can’t just rely on them to do the work, even though this won’t be implemented.

17

Yeah, 343 why is it 4 Halo games in (excluding Reach) and the Marines STILL cannot drive. They drive worse then Kat and thats saying something!!