Cheating AI

[hoboman29]

Fighting games. Just, all of them. They do that all the time and it sucks. It makes me want to beat my head against a brick wall.

It's especially annoying when you get really steep difficulty curves as well. I was playing SSFIV and even though I'm not particularly good at it I can get to the final stage relatively easily on normal difficulty. Then I spent about an hour trying to beat Seth. It was the worst hour of my life.

You think that is bad in Guilty Gear the I sat there FOR 3 HOURS trying to beat the final boss (fucking uber-powered super moved) and then I just gave up and turned off. While a lot of fighting games do this none that I've played (sorry KoF) have been this cheap
CAPATCHA: love-hate

 

[Odbarc]

They AI does cheat if it's set to a high enough difficulty (Insane?)
But in regular comp stomp matches, I think they're only on hard.

 

[Derek_the_Dodo]

yesterday I played a hand of red dead redemption poker and there were three people left in it when i turned over my hand. I didn't have much only the three of a kind (4s) which was on the table and high card king.

the other guy turned over his hand and had the same 3 of a kind with 4s on the table king in hand.

Herbert fucking Moon had the exact same thing but with a queen instead of a king.

so it should be split between me and the other guy right? nope herbert moon takes the entire fucking pot. fucking herbert moon. hes a racist on top of everything else.

needless to say i stood up from the table and put a bullet through his skull.

 

[mooncalf]

The rubberbanding in Mario Kart immediately comes to mind. Fucking cheating bastards.

This. Mario Kart AI was as intensely frustrating to play against as it was satisfying to beat.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I'd say any fighting game on the harder difficulties. Simply because the AI is just looking at your button inputs and just countering the shit out of them. I'm sure it was setting up unblockables every five seconds in as well. (using UMVC3 as the example)

Also the final boss of Skullgirls is ridiculous. I honestly couldn't tell you how to beat her if you don't have an air super (Filia!) for her final form. Spent so long trying to beat her with the grapple character... This boss scorns any attempts to use a throw or command grab DX

Yes the final boss is a keepaway character with far too much health and a bullshit final form. Still nowhere near as bad as the final boss of DoA4 though. Fuck your bullshit to hell Alpha 152. You are nothing to me!

 

[BoogieManFL]

Most AIs in games, especially strategy/fighting games cheat. It's a lazy and cheap alternative to making them smarter.

StarCraft AI does in fact cheat, as is common in most games of the type they know where everything is despite having never seen it and the fog of war. You could make a map with 500 paths to player starts, load 1 on 1 and they'd always choose the right path to your base. They also cheat with resources. I've used the map editor to give them 1 mineral and 1 gas and no resources and they built a whole base. But I believe they had to have at least 1 of the resource type to use it. If they had 0 vespene, they wouldn't build stuff that required it. Combining those types of things and their ability to micromanage everything, every millisecond is what gives them a chance of competing against human players.

I don't mind that AI players cheat so long as it's not obvious. When it is obvious it's irritating. It can make it a good challenge, but one of the most obvious cheating AIs is in Company of Heroes. Especially if you put them on Expert, but that's what you're getting in exchange for a good challenge. It'd work better if they'd tone down the omniscience and occasional fog of war cheating so their AT guns can nail you from two screen away without any visibility assistance.

Off the top of my head the games that cheat the most excessively and obviously is Civilization V, every fighting game ever (especially Soul Calibur 3 and Mortal Kombat 2/3), Need for Speed games (really bad imo) and Mario Kart games. In Mario Kart 64 they would literally teleport extreme distances to catch up to you. You can use hacks/cheats to drive at super speeds in Need for Speed and they'd magically keep up with you. So it doesn't matter how much you upgrade or how well you drive, they'll always be there and that's when I gave up on the series. It made it feel so artificial and pointless.


Check this site out for some good reading on the subject:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard

 

[BoogieManFL]

In the Pokemon subway, they get to a point to where they KNOW every move you make

They don't cheat per-se since the pokemon they use come from a fixed list, which is specific to every trainer. They also don't specifically know what you are about to do, at least I have never seen proof of this. Even on very high (multiple hundred) streaks in subway/tower/whatever they don't play perfectly.

Also S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The odd thing is that in many ways this game is perfectly fair, (you are EXACTLY the same as every NPC in the world, with only your gear making a difference), although you still fight multiple opponents most of the time. Everyone goes down very quickly, including you, and the AI is reasonable on low difficulties, and very very hard on the harder difficulties, (which is what you'd want after all).

The problem is grenades. Any grenade thrown by an enemy literally homes in on the PC, and will not touch the ground unless it is within its explosion radius of the player. It is still possible to dodge them once they land, but the AI is programmed to have all grenade using enemies throw them at once. This means that you will very often get into a situation where it is impossible to survive, because there are multiple grenades around you, and you will die no matter which way you run.

I forgot about the grenade cheating in STALKER, brings back memories. I remember standing on a fence that was like 2inches wide and some dude tosses a grenade that lands perfectly on the fence at my feet (no bouncing or rolling off) and blows me away. Riiiight. Those guys could throw a key into a lock.

 

[Grygor]

Goddamn Phantoms and Banshees in Mass Effect 3's multiplayer: Both have intant kill attacks and do huge damge from half a continent away.

Phantoms' Iron Man palm lasers kill in four hits, and their intant kill attack actually causes you to gravitate towards them like they're magnetic. Banshees do the same thing, except their attack can be interrupted (somehow) and they are much easier to hit.

Now granted, players themselves have the instant kill over-cover grab attack that causes enemies to move slightly closer for the animation to play, but you have to be in cover, and the enemies have to stand still long enough for you to attack. And it doesn't work on Phantoms! Goddamnit Bioware!

You know what's kinda funny though? If you use Sabotage on an Atlas, their instant-kill attack does work on Phantoms.

 

[Scrubiii]

The Insane AI in Starcraft 2 does actually cheat. It gathers 8 minerals per carry instead of 5 and 6 vespene instead of 4, meaning it can fund far more off one base than a normal player. It just does ridiculous early attacks that you can't defend without tricking it (doing things like putting a spine crawler behind the mineral line, so all the AI's zerglings sit in the choke attacking it one at a time).

 

[joe-h2o]

I forgot about the last level of Quake III Arena, when playing against Xearo.

I know he's meant to be tough, but

a) he has *absurd* accuracy
b) he has a high rate of fire
b) the map is set up to be extremely open so he always knows where you are
c) the map has a railgun on each platform

On anything above "hardcore" he's virtually impossible to beat since he can nail you with a railgun round the millisecond you come out of cover. Your only chance is to wait for him to come to you and kill him quickly, then he respawns on the same platform as you. If he spawns on the other he'll grab a railgun and you're back to square one.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I personally nominate the Virtua Fighter series, mostly because of their counter system which rewards you for guessing your opponents attacks. Since the AI knows what buttons you pressed, it makes fighting certain characters (Aoi) really really hard.

I second this notion but for DoA 4 as it has the same problem. Serious that games end game boss suffers from a severe case of SNK syndrome. Sure, I may be able to roflstomp her on occasion with Kasumi but the boss is just so damn inconsistent and god help me if I want to play it with another character let alone a slow throw based one.

When you go through the arcade or time attack with times around a minute or 2 and then spend a full hour on 1 character something has gone awry(Happened on Jann Lee). God forbid you have to beat her twice in a row like in Time Attack.

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

Every FPS campaign ever. Seriously, I'll be sneaking around and just have a guy turn around and target me before I turn the corner, before he's even seen me. Seriously fuck Brink's security campaign, it happens all the time while I play it.

Call of Duty does it too. Those are the only two FPS games in existence right? Nah, but seriously, almost all of them do it.

 

[Cyfu]

Whoo, boy, Starcraft...yeah. I think the AI doesn't cheat per se, it's just able to do 100-ish APM with a high degree of precision and almost no thinking time. In short, yes, cheating.

But as for my worst, I'd definitely nominate Worms. The enemy can pull of shots that should be impossible for any human. sometimes it manages to get a bazooka through a gap that's smaller than in. By using the wind to guide the projectile. Oh, and then hits your worm square in the body for maximum damage. But the bazookas are somewhat easy, they totally mock you with grenades. Bazookas miss occasionally, or at least don't inflict maximum damage, grenades almost exclusively do full damage when the AI is using them. To make it worse, the slimy bastards set up the timer and the throw so the grenade would explode exactly before it hits your worm, even if it had to ricochet one or three times beforehand. The AI is actively trolling with those shots. They suck with pretty much everything else but damn the bazooka and the grenade.

Also, Heroes 3. The AI is a cheating bastard it is. At least it's slightly more manageable...until you are hit with an army that you simply cannot counter even had you had awesome resource influx from the beginning.

Heroes 6 is exactly the same though.. unless you play on the easiest difficulty, you will lose.

 

[Kroxile]

Fighting games come to mind.. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter in particular, when an AI opponent can suddenly put up a block or insert a counter attack when you finally manage to get that combo off is a pain in the ass.. and to make it worse is that the AI doesn't follow the same rules players do because I have tried to block in the middle of said combos and etc and it doesn't work.

/rant off

But yeah a lot of AI cheats its ass off.

 

[nothingspringstomind]

All the Tekken's after Tekken 3. After reaching near God-like status on Tekken 3, i pop in Tekken 4 and think; "Most of the characters still have the same move lists and work the same way, i should rule at this."

20 minutes later, i'm throwing my pad at the wall because Yoshimitsu just cannot be grabbed for a throw, and dodges every attack i make.

 

[joe-h2o]

Every FPS campaign ever. Seriously, I'll be sneaking around and just have a guy turn around and target me before I turn the corner, before he's even seen me. Seriously fuck Brink's security campaign, it happens all the time while I play it.

Call of Duty does it too. Those are the only two FPS games in existence right? Nah, but seriously, almost all of them do it.

Actually, Halo doesn't - at least the original one. If you want to use stealth you can in many parts of the game. Enemies, even on Legendary, have "realistic" detection allowing you to sneak past them, creep up and stealth kill Elites, dodge around and flank them quietly etc.

Not sure if they kept that up in the later versions. I don't have an Xbox 360 so I have not played them.

 

[Unsilenced]

Hard mode in Mario Party (1,2), The AI is PROGRAMED to click buttons faster than the controller can pick up.

You know what would be awesome? If the game had an Impossible difficulty setting and was literally made impossible. xD

That'd be some serious trolling right there.

I wonder how long it would be before people figured it out.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Recently Sniper Elite V2 on highest difficulty. Enemies have telescopic X Ray vision. I can get shot and killed by a German soldier 200 meters away with pin point accuracy (with MP 40's), they know where I am at all times even if I stay out of sight and move to another location.

Enemy snipers also have wallhacks. I literally cannot avoid enemy snipers, at all. Aside from one situation, they always see and shoot me the moment I'm in their general field of view, even when I'm behind cover. I tested it, popped in and out of cover for a split second and was shot the moment my elbow came out, before I could even look down the sight, it was that fast. On "Sniper elite" difficulty it's incredibly difficult to play counter sniper to the point where you'll die a few dozen times and rage quit.

I can understand making it difficult, but this is just stupid. The AI in the game is so badly designed that it actually breaks the game by making things impossibly difficult.

 

[Palmerama]

I would have to say the Gears of War games! The AI for the bots in multiplayer is ludicrous! The bots on the opposing team will hit you most of the time from the other side of the map. When you're in a shotgun duel with one of them they will kill you while not even facing in your direction. Of course these are the bots on the other team. The bots on your team will run in to cover, fire a couple of shots then stand up and swing a smoke grenade until their head gets popped off. Not to mention they all seem to take at least twice the amount of damage as you can take.
In Gears 3 in Capture the Leader if an enemy bot captures your leader its near impossible to rescue them, they seem to be able to move about the map with no hindrance & their pistol seems to be more powerful than a rifle!

Also I have encountered a fair few henchman on the Arkham City predator challenges that were able to detect me throgh a wall or spot me from across the map and shoot me with supreme accuracy.

 

[Arakasi]

The Dark Sims in Perfect Dark would cheat.

They'd do shit like teleport when you weren't looking. It was pro.