Suggestions As To How [De] Can Fix Enemy Ai?

[AnOldAlias]

Seen this come up a bunch as of late, in relation to Artificial Difficulty and the generalized wants of the community.

How would you suggest that [DE] fix their AI in the game/Warframe?


What differences in AI would you recommend when it comes to Corpus, Grineer, Infested, etc?


All the ETC. You get my point~


Be Civil. <3

[Artekkor]

Let's be honest here: none of us (or at least a majority) knows how one makes an AI.

One of my friends always says a lot of good things about AI of F.E.A.R.

Maybe DE should crack open that game and learn something from their AI?

I'm always in for smarter and "alive" enemies, not idiots that either rush at us or hide behind covers in a very primitive way.

I want to see a squad of grineer slowly advancing at me with shield lancers standing in front, while heavy gunners stand behind them and shoot at you (because they're taller than those shields and you have to aim for the head)

Edited October 26, 2015 by Artek94

[[DE]Grzegorz]

There is a possibility of super smart AI that just knows that every vertical object higher than half a meter can be used as cover.

There is also possibility that AI uses navigation nodes most of the time.

 

In first case, well, DE gotta rewrite good chunk of what they have now so things like this don't happen.

 

Else, they need to rebuild the hell out of navigation meshes so things like this don't happen.

 

And maybe Ospreys will finally be capable of flying over handrails? Maybe?

[Dalimir]

Grineer: Aggressive military tactics. Run n' gun, suppressing fire, constant room sweeps, squad tactics. Tenno's hiding but they know you're there? Split up and cover each other's backs as they steadily hunt you down, occasionally one splits to allow for silent takedowns and they get more jumpy the more they lose as they can't find you.If there's more than one Shield Lancer, have them link up into a shield wall. Less bleed proc chance. (Not entirely AI related but still throwing it out there) Rollers should not be able to alert everyone in the room you're there unless they have some kind of noise to sound out in response to your detected presence.

 

Corpus: Crewmen stay in the back, provide limited fire support, possibly doing minor repairs to Moas. Moas take the front and hunker down, still assailing you with a constant barrage of laser fire (so long as they remain stationary, as they always have). The hunkering down bit is to allow Crewmen or taller Moas in the back to get a clear shot. Not much else at the moment.

 

Both of the above: Bring back PA announcements and give it to both factions, be they from local commanders, ship captains, the planet's boss, ship Cephalons (Corpus exclusive). Also add extra crew. I want to see more than just the ship/location security. I want to see engineers running maintenance, I want to see Captains commanding their bridge crew when we stumble onto the Ship's bridge. I want to see people relaxing during a break before you stumble onto them or a ship hand operating a terminal/doing some form of labour. Give the location more life than those that want to kill us then and there.

 

Infested: Current AI mechanics seem to fit them well for now, others might disagree, but that's what I can come up with.

 

I am suggesting all this knowing that it would take colossal effort and time to make this a reality.

[(XBOX)General D1rtbag]

Yeah the AI is horrible. Shield Lancers are a prime example. There's been many times where they'd approach me but instead of attacking with their gun or shield bashing they just walk right past me like I don't exist.

[AdunSaveMe]

"Fix" implies it's broken as a whole. Only a few things actually bug out, but it's functional for the most part. As for improve, it's not a matter of what can change, but how to change it without increasing the strain.

 

Advanced AI would often mean lowering enemy count, which is something they do not want to do, and should never do.

[Shreiko]

     In honour of your request to be civil I wont reply with the first thoughts that came to mind. I cant really say how to improve but I can say what I see as issues with enemy AI and what I think is being done wrongly. In warframe all enemies seem to have roughly the same behavioral patterns and there is not really much in particular that is specific to each individual archetype. Another major failing will be the failure of enemies to telegraph their attacks or them actually giving tenno a fair chance to evade. You see we as players are led to believe that evasion from attacks is our only option because in truth we cannot hide behind cover due to lack of a cover system, intentional design decision to force players to constantly be on the move and keep gameplay fast-paced. Problem with that see, is that moving doesnt help for S#&$ because the few bullets out of the many fired that hit you are sure to deal devastating damage. So what is the response as players to this obstacle? We simply spam abilities that either, grant invulnerability,heal us or render the enemies inept by many avenues or death. DE seeing this has only rewarded this meta by making sure almost all frames have an ability that can do one of what was listed above. Any frame that is incapable of such is easily killed at later levels because you have to be able to take a beating,stop the enemy from attacking entirely or make them completely oblivious to you.

     I've veered off topic, but I really do believe that alot of issues in the game stem from badly thought out enemy mechanics, behaviours and poor AI all together. I really dont think this will be worked on anytime soon if at all really, it takes too much time and resources and with the sheer amount of enemy types in game the roles of different ones are sure to overlap making some somewhat redundant and not unique. Level design is also another hindrance to this. so many things come into play to cripple the game. The game is losing its spark for it.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Shreiko

[TrinityPrime]

Every encounter has been just standard first encounter type tactics.  I mean, it's like there's no AI difference between enemies on Mercury and enemies on Ceres.

 

Would like to see enemies adopt tactics like setting up ambushes, locking down more defensive positions, spec ops style squads fighting with each other (instead of the normal enemies who are generally oblivious to each other except when taking a spot in cover), lure you with insults or some kinda shiny bait into a trap like locking down a section of ship/station and set it to get launched into space (common method in sci-fi horror movies/games when dealing with space monsters), or maybe a security director like a command room that once they detect you make things progressively difficult like the above (until you go out of your way to find and purge the security/command center).

Edited October 26, 2015 by KnotOfMetal

[(XBOX)General D1rtbag]

If anything I think the AI should try to be improved to learn. Games like Dark Souls, Demon Souls, and Bloodborne has an AI like this. Use the same tactic too much and they'll eventually find a counter for it forcing you to try different methods.

[GhostSwordsman]

I'd just like to see the hivemind behavior disappear from enemies(except when fighting the infested).

 

I see no reason for one guy to catch me out of the corner of his eye and mumble right before I slice him in half and have 10 guys from the next room over come charging in on the opposite side of the room like they actually heard something, also it's not too fun that way either, especially when stealth running a mission.

 

Oh, and I'd like to not have one enemy that knows exactly where I am mean that every enemy knows exactly where I am.(unless the alarms are actually on)

Edited October 26, 2015 by GhostSwordsman

[X5934-078FR1]

The need to make the enemies stop what they are doing every 2 minutes, and make them chant "ALL HAIL X5"  o/

[Arachne.]

I'd just like to see the hivemind behavior disappear from enemies(except when fighting the infested).

 

I see no reason for one guy to catch me out of the corner of his eye and mumble right before I slice him in half and have 10 guys from the next room over come charging in on the opposite side of the room like they actually heard something, also it's not too fun that way either, especially when stealth running a mission.

 

Oh, and I'd like to not have one enemy that knows exactly where I am mean that every enemy knows exactly where I am.(unless the alarms are actually on)

this

[Xerdn]

Want more interesting enemies? make enemies interact with eachother

i dont know much about coding, but ots be nice to make it so that x amount of enemy types y and z would cause them take a specific type of formation and fighting style. this way, if you killed a few out of that formation, theyd be forced to reorganize.

and when i say take formation, i mean to fight in a way that would maximize their effectiveness, not stand in a square shape. So if there is a ballista, 2 elite lancers and a shield lancer, the balista would post up behind the shield lancer and theyd take a direct route to you while the 2 elite lancers would try to flank you. or how about you have a corpus tech, a crewman, 3 moas, a leech osprey and a shockwave moa. how about have the corpus tech and crewman stay way behind cover, the tech deploys a shield drone which follows the moas as they post up closer to the tenno, the leech osprey would be between the moas and crewman doing its thing, and rather than the shockwave moa charge straight at you, how about it tries to take a less direct path to catch you offguard

again, i know little about coding so maybe these things would be a tad difficult, but its still worth mentioning.

[Ziegrif]

I thought the enemies do exhibit basic unit tactics.

But they also get stuck in weird loops that break immersion like spinning in place.

But really. Enemies die way before they'll be able to exhibit any sort of tactics.

[(XBOX)Papa Requiem]

All of these suggestions sound great and I don't really have anything to add other than it would be awesome if DE could add it. However, it would be a HUGE undertaking because what we're talking about here is basically overhauling a fundamental part of the game. They've already got their hands full doing something similar *cough, cough* mod system *cough*

[Xerdn]

Yeah, theyve overhauled so much already and are doing more as we speak a-aaaa-aaAACHOOSTARMAP3.0OOOO. *sniffle*

Imo, the AI work, and given what DE is trying to do atm, that is more than enough. and when they dont get bugged, they do function pretty well. i just would like to see the enemies try to adapt to the player.

also, the person saying they want to see ship technicians etc in tilesets. that is brilliant, its really bring the place to life

[Mastikator2]

What's the point of having awesome AI on enemies that die in less than 1 second?

[(PSN)robotwars7]

well, a good start would be to stop them from getting stuck in small rooms and watching them run around in circles (or as it's called here, "Attack Formation Bravo")...

[TennoPain]

I prefer my chicken headless 

[Chhkt]

What's the point of having awesome AI on enemies that die in less than 1 second?

This. I think the only thing that is going to bring us better AI in the long run is the flattening of 4 to win powers. Make said powers drain energy based upon how many enemies they effect. Nova's M Prime drains more energy than base cost as it spreads out and tags mobs,etc.