That game is cheating!

[DoPo]

As someone else mentioned, I'm going with fighting games, the soul caliber series in particular. That game reads inputs like no one's business, even on lower difficulties.

Oh gods, this brings back memories of Mortal Kombat 4. Bad memories. It that game, the computer did literally impossible things - if you decide to grab them, it's almost a coin flip of whether you'd actually succeed or they would grab you. And I mean it - the game would pretty much read your input for "grab opponent" but may decide that your opponent would do that instead. Even if they are incapable of doing it. The computer opponents can fucking grab you as they are on the floor or otherwise unable to actually move/attack.

 

[bossfight1]

A lot of the bosses in Hearthstone's solo adventures, specifically on Heroic difficulty, can pull some shit that almost makes me wonder if I'm really playing against an AI or if a cackling dev on the far end is tweaking the game to ensure my defeat.

Also, I remember in Call of Duty 4, on Veteran difficulty EVERY ENEMY would OBLITERATE you if you so much as put a finger out of cover.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I tend to get this feeling in Dark Souls (both of them). Generally, though, I just have to calm down and realize that I really did mess something up. That isn't to say the game is flawlessly fair (I've certainly run into unfair deaths between the games), but it tends to feel like the game is cheating much more than it actually is.

Now racing, fighting, and strategy games -- all of those definitely cheat. Sorry, Bowser, but no one in the game can drive that fast, especially you!

 

[The_Lost_King]

AI opponents in every RTS ever.

I understand why they do it, as I'm sure it's much easier to just give it infinite resources and shorter build times instead of coding an entire set of dynamic rules and strategies that change depending on the player's actions. It doesn't mean I'm fond of it though, particularly when they don't try to hide it ("sweet Emperor, how many Defilers does Chaos have?!").

I completely and totally agree. I was playing Starcraft Brood war on easy. It was protoss v protoss and I have like 3 zealots, and the 18 fucking zealots come and destroy me! ON EASY! Fuck that was bullshit

Pazaak in KotOR. They always "magically" have the cards they need to get 20. That game was bullshit.

 

[Elfgore]

Three games have had me accuse them of cheating.

1st- One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3. The enemy has a button, I like to call the "fuck you button". They can trigger it whenever they choose as well. So keep that in mind as I tell you what it does. The ability makes them go completely invincible unless you hit them with a dash, even in the middle of your combo. Not to mention, they can recover in the middle of combos that should no be able to be broken.

2nd- Gwent in The Witcher 3. Those fucking AI have every card they need the moment they need it. Last match, I'm a few points ahead, be a real shame if they had that power level 7 card just sitting in their hand. I had to quit playing for fear I would snap my PS4 controller in half.

3rd- Third Age: Total War. Granted, this mod does straight up cheat and even admits it does so. So I have a tendency of cheating right back. To compensate for the AI(which the mod says should already be on very hard), the mod gives them entire armies and large amount of money when they near defeat. I tested this, they mean entire elite armies BTW. My strongest army could barely beat the army they threw at me at from their asses. Bullshit man.

 

[samgdawg]

Third, Dark Souls is not even close to fair. I absolutely love the game, but I still do not know why people describe it that way. The game will and does sucker punch you at every opportunity.

Well, to be clear on that point I'll use the Funhouse as an example. In Dark Souls 1, there is the location Sen's Fortress. At this point in the game the player will have rung both Bells of Awakening to gain access. At this point, after dealing with the horrendous blighttown, the player should have learned to no longer trust the game to put everything directly in the cameras view as they enter the room.

This location has been succinctly re titled "Sen's Funhouse" in remembrance of it's traps that many players will run into. This building will make the player walk narrow bridges while being shot at by Snakeman mages and dodging pendulum blades, wait for the proper moment to run through the path of rolling boulders lest they be crushed, identify Mimic enemies disguised as item chests, exit an elevator at the right time to avoid dying to spike ceilings, avoid pressure plates triggering arrow shots, and identify where bombs will be thrown once they reach the outside.

Now, while this all sounds harsh, unforgiving, and unnecessarily cruel, the player actually has every opportunity to circumvent these obstacles. The pressure plates actually appear on the floor as raised panels for the wary eye, the Mimic chest breaks several established patterns for chests, the elevator is extremely bloodstained, the Snakemen can be shot with impunity from range, the boulder has a clear track it runs on, and the outside has visible scorching from the bombs.

So long as a player treats the game world like it's Dark Souls and not CoD they can learn everything they need to know from the world around them.

 

[Dragonlayer]

People so often say the Souls series is "hard but fair", but one aspect makes this statement completely false. It's very simple: enemies can hit you across corners, while your weapon will bounce off the walls. This made fighting the Titanite Demons in the lowest level of Sen's Fortress and absolute pain in the ass, since there was no effective way of retreating, and their sweep attacks have insane reach. It's weird that even in Bloodborne this issue remains the unresolved. It can't be that hard to have the enemies' weapons obey the same collision detection rules as your character's, can it?

This, so much.

I'll bash my head against the walls of some of the more ferociously difficult enemies with a grin-and-bear-it-then-eat-own-face-in-impotent-fury attitude, but I seriously lose my temper when enemies hit me through physically impossible means. I'm going through the Forbidden Woods right now, dreading my NG+ encounter with the Shadows of Yharnam, and giant fucking snakes are plunging their heads directly through trees the size of small skyscrapers to bite me! I was nearly cut in half by one of the Executioners in Hemwick, even though he was swinging his axe in the room literally two stories below me! It came up through the fucking rafters!

BULL. SHIT.

Also it seems that enemies will pick and choose when they want to be staggered by my own attacks, which sucks a lot of the tactics out of combat.

 

[Dragonlayer]

I realize this is the wrong thread for it and nobody cares in the slightest, but I just beat the Shadows of Yharnam on Bloodborne New Game Plus - a fight that I had been dreading since the regular versions kicked my ass to Timbuktu and back - with two NPC summons and it was completely freaking awesome.

Sorry, just had to get that out there.

 

[samgdawg]

I just beat the Shadows of Yharnam on Bloodborne New Game Plus - a fight that I had been dreading since the regular versions kicked my ass to Timbuktu and back - with two NPC summons and it was completely freaking awesome.

Yeah, fuck the Shadows of Yharnam. Those guys are assholes. I never had any chance with them on New Game normal and had to actually summon another player for the first time in any Souls game. But when they finally go down is amazing.

 

[kasperbbs]

Final boss in tekken 5. I feel lucky if he only uses his half health draining death beam once in a row. If not that he can just beat the shit out of me while i'm stunned.

 

[Tony2077]

I just beat the Shadows of Yharnam on Bloodborne New Game Plus - a fight that I had been dreading since the regular versions kicked my ass to Timbuktu and back - with two NPC summons and it was completely freaking awesome.

Yeah, fuck the Shadows of Yharnam. Those guys are assholes. I never had any chance with them on New Game normal and had to actually summon another player for the first time in any Souls game. But when they finally go down is amazing.

i haven't beat them yet i wanted to use a item to screw them over but its drop rate is either nonexistent or just barely above that

 

[FoolKiller]

Racing games and Fighting games spring to mind. The rubber banding and in the case of combat pick ups of the AI in many racing games just drives me up the wall and just makes it a very unfun experience in many cases..

Yea... I would rather have a race where fucking up makes me fall out of contention rather than driving perfectly and having a little slip up in a corner costs me the race because no matter what I do, the other drivers are just glued to me.

I also hate older sports games for that reason. Normal difficulty on NHL 99 was too easy. On hard, I lost 3-2 and only gave up 4 shots. One of the ones that went in was from outside the blue line. I called bullshit immediately and stopped playing such a bad game.

 

[Harlemura]

100% Orange Juice's single player is either blatantly cheating or I've just been against the luckiest AI in history. Not that a Mario Party-esque game is made for the single player but still, the AI gets rolls to get them to the perfect spaces a suspicious amount of the time.

Even putting all the RNG aside, the three other players are still out to get you. Friggin' Poppo taking stars off me when I'm in 3rd and have like 50 stars when the guy who's about to win has like 300 and taking stars off him would stop him winning fuck I hate 100% Orange Juice.

 

[sXeth]

Heroes is even more blatant

Oh yeah, came into this thread to mention HoMM. It's not that I think the game is cheating, I KNOW for a fact that it is. The most hours I've sunk into any game from the franchise have been into number 3. And even more precisely, the Shadow of Death. Well, also Wake of Gods but whatever.

In HoMM 3, the AI does have advantages built into it. To the point where the difficulty setting is actually giving the AI mechanical handicaps to make them not stomp over the player. On lower difficulties, the - the most blatant restriction is that computer players can only build a structure in town every few days even if they have the resources for more buildings[footnote]I think it's around 3 on easier difficulties, and 2 on harder ones. At some point, possibly Impossible, the restriction is removed[/footnote].

The newer ones get right on ridiculous with it too.

In Heroes 5, the AI blatantly doesn't even simulate that its playing the same game, it happily ignores mines (unless you own them, then it will grab it from you) and resources while still maintaining steady build order and numbers.
In Heroes 6, it just straight on bull rushes you with impossible armies (final tier on day 5 and stuff) and seems to be able to build 2-3 buildings per day (or gets them for free, whatever).

Map control and economy at this point in the series isn't even an actual element anymore, its almost entirely about exploiting the AI (like letting it have a city so it will super-build it for you) and/or the battle grid layout in silly ways.

 

[DoPo]

In Heroes 6, it just straight on bull rushes you with impossible armies

Oh, have you seen the campaign? That shit is completely fucked there. As in, really fucked. By design no less!

Right, so the idea behind it is that the game designers didn't want you to just sit for months, raise a huge army and bulldoze the map. So, what they did to remedy this is that the AI would get reinforcements every once in a while. Say, in a months time, they suddenly get extra troops. This is to, uh, encourage you to be quick, otherwise you'd be overwhelmed. You can see how the idea is suppose to work and at it's heart, it's not completely bonkers. Maybe non-standard, but not just that bad.

Now, however, comes the implementation. In practice, it's a horrible, horrible idea. First of all, right from the beginning of each mission you are supposed to follow a rhythm and schedule...only you don't know them. The AI may get reinforcements in week 4 or week 6 - you don't know. It depends on whenver the map designer(s?) thought you should reach the enemy plus maybe a couple of weeks. But you don't know where the enemy is - it's easy to go explore somewhere off the path for a week and end up being crushed as a result because you were late getting to the AI. Furthermore, even if you have an idea where the AI is, you have no clue when the map designer thought you should reach them. In some maps, there is a huge army guarding a path or something that would otherwise lead you to the enemy town. You can beat them because it turns out you rushed and got there at week 3 instead of week 6 when you'd actually be prepared. Yet it took you a week to get there and you were supposed to go elsewhere and amass power in the mean time.

Uh, OK. So timing can be off and it's easy to get late. And that's bad. Sure, OK, maybe you can actually withstand the reinforcements - they don't tend to be enormous, but certainly substantial. Yet, if you're late for the first reinforcements...the AI doesn't just stop getting them. In few weeks, they'll get more. And in few weeks more. You're basically screwed unless you know where to go.

But then there there is the problem. Which I touched upon - you don't know where to go. There was one map which was particularly bad where you get attacked from two sides. There and there is a third direction you can go to for an optional quest. So early on in the map you're faced with choosing something like going east, north, or west and this can make or break your game. The order was something like go west to deal with the first computer, then go north and finish the side quest, which should take a week (but you're not strong enough before then), then go east. But take one wrong choice and you're fucked. Go north first - you get boned by the mini-boss. Leave north for last and you miss the mini-quest. Go east first, won't even be able to reach the computer there, as it's a lo-o-ong way, and you'd be destroyed by the armies from the east. Wander off in any other direction with your main hero and you get boned by either the east (if you don't manage to stop them when they come) or the west (if you do manage to stop the east). Worse yet, since you have no clue where you're supposed to go and what's your schedule, you can happily waste several house before suddenly the mother of all armies rushes towards you and you basically have to restart from the start.

So-o-o, you can't wait. Seems like absolute rush is the winning strategy, right? I mean, if you manage to get just enough forces, you can perhaps do well enough in battle to quickly deal with some of the objectives on the map, leaving you with more time for the rest. Hopefully enough. And hey, Heroes 6 is actually built more towards smart usage of armies, rather than just raw numbers - you can totally keep your army alive more and you actually can reduce your losses, so maybe rushing could actually work right? Right?

Well...

If it wasn't at all obvious from my tone, the answer is simple: WRONG! No, rushing is actually counterproductive. Why? Well, you know how the AI gets reinforcements if you're late? Well, they also get reinforcements if you're early. If you actually build too big an army (of, you know, what the designers think is "too big") then the AI also gets a boost, to keep them at even keel.

Only, this does not fucking work.

First of all, you don't know when they would get the "rush bonus". You have no clue, so you might trigger it by accident. Again, you won't know until it's too late. Your schedule suddenly becomes double sided - don't take too long, but not too fast, either. Yet you have no clue what either of these are supposed to be. Champion creatures on week 4 is too fast? Too slow? Answer is: who the fuck knows. It all depends on the map.

Second, the rush bonus for the AI is static. So you could trip it up by accident and still be unable to defend from what comes after you. Say, you get a power value of [footnote]however it's actually calculated. It'd be something vaguely like each unit having a power value so if you add all yours up, you get the total power value of the army[/footnote] of 155 which breaches the power threshold of 150, so the computer suddenly gets +35 power. If you had actually rushed, you could have had power of 170 which would more evenly match the enemy bonus. But alas - the thing to equalise power, doesn't always equalise it.

Third, the computer can get the "rush bonus" and the "late bonus". So you could develop too fast and then go left instead of right and suddenly - enemy armada comes and destroys you.

So, yeah. In the campaigns the AI is designed to pull armies out of its ass and it's supposed to be to keep players in check, but that's not what actually happens. And you know what's the best (well, opposite) part? It even happens on the easiest difficulties! Yeah, even if you just want to play casually, it comes in and bites you. One might say that's actually worse, since newcomers to the series would normally have even harder time trying to fight something they don't understand.

And on top of it, it doesn't make the game "hard". Oh, it ain't easy for sure - no walk in the park. You'd get murderized many times. But that's the thing, that's not hard that's just frustrating. Essentially, you'd play a map for 3-5 hours and maybe then you'd realise you need to restart and play it again because you screwed up, like, 30 minutes into it. When the enemy starts amassing power, they may get a snowball effect that absolutely destroys you. No, scratch that, that's the most likely scenario. You might be able to fight them if they only get one reinforcement but you have to kill stuff in (more or less) the specific order that the designers thoight up, or else you may go after objective 5 before objective 4 and objective 7 smashes you down the line.

It's badly designed, badly implemented, and it's quite blatant at that.

 

[sXeth]

In Heroes 6, it just straight on bull rushes you with impossible armies

Oh, have you seen the campaign? That shit is completely fucked there. As in, really fucked. By design no less!

(snipped for length)

Oh nah, I got it gifted on Steam and kind of humored it for a couple single maps before getting fed up with it. I got a bit dissatisfied with the campaigns in 5 even (Agrael's inferno campaign where you basically never even got a usable city, you could capture the elven ones, but the units constantly deserted, and your start city (if you had one) was capped to lower tier units and miles out of effective reinforcement range). I remember beating the Heroes 5 ones, but being kind of fed up with them.


Its struck me that Ubi basically can't be bothered with the detail management to make the SP enjoyably playable, and considers it a cheap pump out MP property (which I think is what 7 is now?) which is really the only way you're going to have an interesting game outside of pretty hefty custom map work/mods.

 

[Saltyk]

I played a game on PS1 called Vanguard Bandits. Basically, it's a Tactics game, but everyone is in mechs using swords and such. Actions cause you and opponents to build up fatigue, depending on what they do. Fatigue will decrease over time. Once any unit hits 100 Fatigue they become dizzy and unable to move, attack, or defend.

Knowing how to take advantage of this, I fatigued a particularly powerful opponent. Then, prepared to use the main character's most powerful attack to finish him off. It had a 100% chance of success. He parried the attack...

It was rare to see a character use parry at all, but I didn't think it was possible when Fatigued. Yeah, really felt like the game cheated on that one.

 

[DoPo]

Its struck me that Ubi basically can't be bothered with the detail management to make the SP enjoyably playable, and considers it a cheap pump out MP property (which I think is what 7 is now?) which is really the only way you're going to have an interesting game outside of pretty hefty custom map work/mods.

Heroes 7 seems...ugh, how do I explain it. When Heroes 6 was about to come out, I was really not looking forward to it. The screenshots and videos I had seen, looked like Heroes 5. While I like H5, getting somethenig that looks so similar (not only graphics but UI, as well) struck me as a step backwards. Heroes 5 was good because it managed to balance going forward with staying where it was. It was mostly Heroes 3 with a shiny coat of paint and some of the good ideas from Heroes 4 not only included but properly realised. Something that H4 didn't really manage to do, largely. So it was what Heroes 4 was supposed to be, only 4 years later. And Heroes 6 looked like it was just stagnating. I didn't really have any interest and I was seriously debating getting it, even if I have all the rest of Heroes, and it would feel strange to not just stop getting them.

As it happened, Heroes 6 had a demo. When I played it, I realised it was anything but stagnating. It was taking some bold steps forward for the franchise. Well, the choice for having the same UI was still a bit strange, considering how much they changed the game, but whatever. I liked the idea behind it. The game was moving the franchise into a new direction - something that Heroes did need, otherwise we'd just be getting rehashes of 1-3 with shinier and shinier coat of paint. OK, heroes 6 ended up a bit underachieving and some of the things need polish, but overall it was better than 4. At least the systems in 6 worked together.

So, for Heroes 6 I expected bland but got something that while somewhat bland was at least overall good and good for the series.

And then comes Heroes 7. It's mostly what I feared about 6. From what I've seen, at least. And I was at least lukewarm for 7, which was better than my attitude to its predecessor was.

Well, actually it manages to fit into my fears in a different way than I imagined, but it did actually fall into them. I have not gotten it yet and I'm seriously debating if I ever will.

From what I've seen there are some good things they've put in - there are new systems in place and they do spice up the game. There is backstabbing mechanics, for example, as well as others. But...it's somehow even more bland than Heroes 6. And they've started going backwards in some bizarre ways, too. I may yet get Heroes 7, as I've not quite lost faith in the franchise yet but it'd be at a steep discount or after some expansions come out that may attempt to make the game more appealing. More likely both. That, however, could be the last Heroes game I get.

I don't know, I am certainly not looking forward to 8. To my mind, Heroes 6 marked a change in the franchise. It would either continue uphill, trying to reinvent itself in a more modern way, without sacrificing its core...or, it would be lost to a constant flux of changes that turn it into an amorphous blob. Heroes 7 was supposed to decide itself. It seems to have chosen the latter option. There may be a chance for redemption yet, but it's slim.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

AI opponents in every RTS ever.

I understand why they do it, as I'm sure it's much easier to just give it infinite resources and shorter build times instead of coding an entire set of dynamic rules and strategies that change depending on the player's actions. It doesn't mean I'm fond of it though, particularly when they don't try to hide it ("sweet Emperor, how many Defilers does Chaos have?!").

You think that's bad? Try the Command and Conquer series. The AI starts with double the money that the player does, Their harvesters have double the capacity and get double the amount per harvest. So while it LOOKS like the AI is playing it straight they're actually at a minimum 2 to one advantage. Even if you destroy their command center, if they have the buildings to make another MCV, as long as a full harvester can get back to the refinery they can build a new one. And theat doesn't even factor into all the other cheating they do.

I can get on this 'fun'.

Civilization... 5 I think.

We all know Gandhi is a horrid bastard in the Civilization games. But I didn't know he was a cheating bastard as well.

I won the game, if not officially. I had the entire map. There was one city left and it was Gandhi's, and... well I can't help being petty. I put all of my army around his city. and I literally had legions coming in from all over the map to swarm him. He produced one Elephant trooper. That's cute. I missile launched him into space. Dead in one turn.

Next turn comes up, and I decide I'm going to nuke him instead. I just ended my turn.

Funny. An Elephant Troop just appeared from his city. I know those things take several turns to build. Maybe I didn't kill him the last time. This time, I make sure I missile launch him away, watch the death animation, and wait for my nukes to build. End turn, pass it along.

another Elephant trooper appears out of the city. Full blown cheating.

I decided I wanted to see how many turns the ai would do this. For all of the ten turns I passed, Gandhi's city produced another Elephant trooper. I made sure to level all his producing tiles to make sure he just didn't have a jacked up city. But nope, he was just producing these troops out of no where.

Civilization sometimes sucks.

 

[Dragonlayer]

I just beat the Shadows of Yharnam on Bloodborne New Game Plus - a fight that I had been dreading since the regular versions kicked my ass to Timbuktu and back - with two NPC summons and it was completely freaking awesome.

Yeah, fuck the Shadows of Yharnam. Those guys are assholes. I never had any chance with them on New Game normal and had to actually summon another player for the first time in any Souls game. But when they finally go down is amazing.

What made the battle different for me was that, unlike most fights that are just excercises in frustration with an extremely satisfying pay-off, taking on the Shadows with summoned allies was just fun throughout! Ducking and weaving in and out of their attacks, as NPCs paired off against other bosses, actually getting into swordfights and not "Ha ha, hit you once and now you need to use 4 blood vials!" routines, actually feeling a rush of exhilaration as blows missed me by inches instead of just screaming "FUCK OFF I'M OUT OF RANGE!" - it was the most fun I've had with the game in ages!