Not Agreeing With The Rants, But... De Needs To Back Track.

[Arlayn]

Digital Extremes needs to back track.. I am not going to side with the ranters in the other two threads, but lets be serious... Digital Extremes helped with Bioshock, and Darkness 2... two AWESOME GAMES... and then lets go back in time... the unpublished Dark Sector had an amazing concept. (Look it up there is a few articles scattered around on it, not to mention even the trailer for it looked awesome)

 

 

 

and the published Dark Sector... IS STILL BETTER THEN WARFRAME!!! Why? Simply... play Dark Sector.. the AI is better, the enemies are better, and just about every other function outside of wall sticking, and the slow movement was AWESOME in that game. Even if the Proto-frame came late, and did absolutely nothing but to make you look cool. The game had an over all well made system. The infected enemies were amazing, hard, and challenging they weren't just bullet sponges... they were hard, and they required you to think a lot. Sometimes you get trapped with a cyber-tech elite and end up having to get behind them to break the generators then kill them. Sometimes enemies were invisible and snuck up on you... The enemies in Warframe are so plain and basic they make the turtles in Mario that throw hammers at you something that has never been done before. Even Mario had enemies that were different and changed through out the game... and that's an 8-bit game...  Warframe has enemies so generic it makes you feel like your playing Atari... and not the good games...

 

If you haven't had the chance to play it and see its very challenging levels, and AI then watch the walkthroughs...

I died several times to Stinger/Chroma ambushes

 

The game had an air of challenge to it that required more then run and gun... Not every enemy could be beaten by just simply gunning them down, and even if they did take abit to kill they were challenging to kill due to AI, and function. Bosses were even better as well. I mean if you think about Dark Sector bosses, to Warframe bosses is a serious downgrade. I can only hope Golem is the boss we have all been waiting for. Even a Chroma is harder to kill then a charger... no the chroma isn't a sponge enemy like charger is in the higher level areas... its simply because it throws darts, turns invisible leaps to another location and reappears repeating this same tactic till you killed it. Packs of them would get you killed if you allowed them to ambush you.

 

Maybe it isn't RNG that has us all freaking out... Because I like RNG the way it is... What bothers me is game functionality... and how enemies function. I would find this game far more addicting if people had a favorite enemy to kill, or fight against. Everyone has that boss that was totally fun to fight in every game, and every player has that enemy that was thrilling to fight in groups. It would get you going like yeah I am going to fight these guys again I wonder how they are going to attack me this time, and how should I counter?

 

We just don't have that fun enemy, or boss. Maybe people would be more satisfied with RNG if the enemies, and bosses were more interesting, and fun... and made people want to go kill that boss more often for the thrills. Possible other incentives for killing bosses would be neat too, or maybe if we kill a certain amount of a certain faction we get special emblems that go where the sling stone emblem goes, and the more we kill of that faction the more fancier versions of that emblem we get. Kill a boss once get an emblem, kill that boss more often get more fancy emblems. Show that were veterans of killing said boss every where we go. Show how much we enjoyed killing that boss, or that faction because they were interesting.

 

So how about it? Think DE should back track and rework the games AI to function better in levels, similar to how their old AIs functioned so perfectly with their older environments? Think maybe the bosses should be reworked to be more enjoyable and memorable vs. just constant grinding of a boring boss that gives no real enjoyment from beating a giant sponge? (Jackal is fine the way it is actually possible the only enemy DE made fun to kill. If Jackal had something worth while to go back to him for I would fight him every day just for that item maybe give Jackal Control mods. Since Jackal is just more fun to fight then Hyena)

[notlamprey]

Good points here.

Without going into the theory, my gut tells me that Quality over Quantity in enemies would be good for Warframe.

I have a tradition with a good buddy of mine. When one of us gets the "new HALO game" (going back to Combat Evolved), we sit down and play the campaign together on Legendary. We die a lot. We have awesome firefights and epic maneuvers a lot, too. Part of what makes that possible is that Master Chief is powerful, but he doesn't outclass all his enemies. HALO delivered great co-op experiences for me, and the best moments came from tactical strength applied against small numbers of strong enemies.

[Mak_Gohae]

DS plays exactly like a slower version of Warframe.

The enemy dont behave any different or better and as you go into the later levels the take more damage.

 

This new tide of higher levels enemies having higher stats being bad is a tremendously humorous argument. This is how any game that has enemy in it works. Going on this weird wave of calling it lazy is calling the gaming industry lazy cause this is how it's done. By the way, this doesnt mean that there shouldn't try to better AI, etc, etc.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Mak_Gohae

[Shion963]

Agreed, enemies needs to be more than just harder-hitting sponges. More varieties, more tactics. But don't straight out ignore the mooks.

 

With the addition of Elite Lancers, I actually missed fighting normal Lancers, and how they run around while shooting everywhere. They're stupid, but they're the good kind. Elite Lancers aren't as fun to gun down, especially when there's tens of them in a room. I'd rather they have Elites deploy some mobile cover that normal lancers can use, instead of just be beefed up mooks that replaces Lancers.

 

And for the love of Gears of War and Mass Effect: Lancers and Crewman need to learn how to vault/slide/jump into cover, instead of waddling around the edges and crouching after they feels safe enough. They either just stand there shooting, or run around jumping from cover-to-cover without doing anything else.

 

And bloody quit springing for the lockdown every chance they get. Like, only allow Heavies and Techs to initiate lockdowns.

[Arlayn]

Good points here.

Without going into the theory, my gut tells me that Quality over Quantity in enemies would be good for Warframe.

I have a tradition with a good buddy of mine. When one of us gets the "new HALO game" (going back to Combat Evolved), we sit down and play the campaign together on Legendary. We die a lot. We have awesome firefights and epic maneuvers a lot, too. Part of what makes that possible is that Master Chief is powerful, but he doesn't outclass all his enemies. HALO delivered great co-op experiences for me, and the best moments came from tactical strength applied against small numbers of strong enemies.

Halo is a wonderful example of exactly what I am talking about... GOOD enemies that are smart and make it difficult, not the brain dead things... Co-op was simply amazing with that game. It really forced 2 people to work together. If one person died no the team on legendary you had to start all over again which made it mean, but enjoyable in the end. They really built up an AI that adapted to your every movement, but at the same time could be fooled. Everything was made down to the last detail with such careful planning, and the enemies fit perfectly with their environment as if they took the time to study it.

 

The enemies in Warframe have no TRUE variation in combat styles outside of grineer run forward Corpus run backward, and Infested just horde attack everything without reason, or tactics... so much for the hive mind...

[Shion963]

Everything was made down to the last detail with such careful planning, and the enemies fit perfectly with their environment as if they took the time to study it.

 

But you have to remember that those were static, constant maps that they could control where enemy spawns are, and how the combat flows. Places where we fight Sangheili are made so that they can fight behind cover, or deploy long-range snipers, and Flood areas have more blind spots where they could ambush us from.

 

Warframe employs a more random, less predictable random-string-of-tiles maps. The enemies have to be programmed so that they use whatever at hand, which complicates things. Making them interact/use the environment is one thing, but making sure they use it well is another.

[Loswaith]

Honestly those enemies did the exact same thing, every time.  How entertaining do you really think they would be after you have killed 1000s of them? 

 

One hugely glaring difference aside from that though is the tempo of the game, Dark Sector appears to be a slow paced horror/cover style game, Warframe is a fast paced shooter.  You are meant to feel way more powerful than a single enemy unit in Warframe.

 

That said the AI could use some more work, there are still allot of bugs in enemy actions with pathing, speed of animations and them just looking like they are confused at what to do.  While personally I'd like to see less replacing of the various units and just have more of a mix.

 

Even in halo enemies did stupid things regularly, and yes legendary was dangerous (it's the highest difficulity setting for a reason), but try comparing normal difficulity halo co-op to warframe, as thats more where the difficulity levels are comparable.  You can quite happily stomp on everything with little concern for yourself or your team mates.

Though again static maps and planning go a long way to make that work too.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Loswaith

[Khranitel]

Good points here.

Without going into the theory, my gut tells me that Quality over Quantity in enemies would be good for Warframe.

I have a tradition with a good buddy of mine. When one of us gets the "new HALO game" (going back to Combat Evolved), we sit down and play the campaign together on Legendary. We die a lot. We have awesome firefights and epic maneuvers a lot, too. Part of what makes that possible is that Master Chief is powerful, but he doesn't outclass all his enemies. HALO delivered great co-op experiences for me, and the best moments came from tactical strength applied against small numbers of strong enemies.

 

 

Halo is a wonderful example of exactly what I am talking about... GOOD enemies that are smart and make it difficult, not the brain dead things... Co-op was simply amazing with that game. It really forced 2 people to work together. If one person died no the team on legendary you had to start all over again which made it mean, but enjoyable in the end. They really built up an AI that adapted to your every movement, but at the same time could be fooled. Everything was made down to the last detail with such careful planning, and the enemies fit perfectly with their environment as if they took the time to study it.

 

The enemies in Warframe have no TRUE variation in combat styles outside of grineer run forward Corpus run backward, and Infested just horde attack everything without reason, or tactics... so much for the hive mind...

You're reading my mind, fellow Tenno :)

[Aspari]

Wait, so now we agree that Warframe's AI is $&*&*#(%&?

 

 

I'd also like to point out that Warframe's current AI was designed for first person shooters only. If you look at The Darkness 2 then at Warframe, you'll notice that the AI behaves exactly the same. The only reason The Darkness 2 was challenging with that particular AI is because the AI was designed for a linear first person shooter. It really shows too, especially when using Frost's Snowglobe. You can spend as long as you want watching the enemy go full retard over Snowglobe.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Aspari

[Heroicleopard]

Wait, so now we agree that Warframe's AI is retaded?

 

 

I'd also like to point out that Warframe's current AI was designed for first person shooters only. If you look at The Darkness 2 then at Warframe, you'll notice that the AI behaves exactly the same. The only reason The Darkness 2 was challenging with that particular AI is because the AI was designed for a linear first person shooter. It really shows too, especially when using Frost's Snowglobe. You can spend as long as you want watching the enemy go full retard over Snowglobe.

retated?

 

 

Sorry, just had to point it out.

[ShadowTail]

Good Enemy AI requires lots of CPU cycles.

From my experience many people struggle to even host a 4 player coop game session.

Simply because they have outdated or inferior hardware.

They cannot spare the CPU cycles required to make the AI pretend to act smart.

Also, as DE explained here (http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/26/gdc-2013-the-ai-tricks-behind-xcom-assassins-creed-3-and-warframe/), their way of generating maps makes pre-scripted AI stuff impossible as players may enter a room from any of a given number of entrances.

[Letter13]

Good Enemy AI requires lots of CPU cycles.

Not always true... the issue here though is the scale at which the AI is applied. At any given time, there may be 30~60 enemies spawned in, all of which may or may not be aware of the player(s). THIS is tasking for the CPU. I doubt the game assigns each enemy a separate 'thread' to run on the CPU, but if we assume that's the way it works, then you have a lot of operations that the game wants to have executed concurrently.

When they're not aware, they wander randomly, and if they bump into another they might engage in conversation, etc.

When they are aware of the player(s), the AI becomes much more complex, call for backup, etc.

As for the AI in the game, I do notice some differences between the factions, and it isn't all that bad...

-Grineer Soldiers/Grunts will duck for cover, take potshots at the player and then duck behind cover again. If alert hasn't been triggered, usually 1 enemy in the group will make a beeline for the nearest console.

-Grineer Heavies will assault the player mercilessly, they have a sturdy shield and good armor and they know it--they don't back down.

-Corpus Moas rush the player mercilessly; they are expendable robots and try to swarm/overwhelm the player

-Corpus Walkers/Techs will actually hide behind cover, as if they fear for their lives (unlike the moas)

-Corpus Shield Ospreys... well, maybe they try to guilt the player into not shooting them.

-Infested rush the player like an unintelligible wild animal would.

I mean, some neat things would be if enemies reacted to certain player skills a bit better; i.e. enemies rushing in to try to get within Frost's snow globe, or making a retreat to try and hide and wait out the snowglobe, etc. Maybe if they see Bastille, they make it a priority not to walk into it (except for infested. Infested are dumb, and should have dumb AI).

Of course this would mess up a lot of the aggro mechanics that are sort of 'required' for certain frames... What if enemies were smart enough NOT to shoot Trinity while link is active? What if enemies are smart enough to not shoot the decoy because they see it's a decoy? What if enemies were smart enough to decide to completely avoid teslas and wormholes and that stuff?

Point is, if the AI is improved too much, it renders many warframe abilities entirely useless.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Letter13

[fatpig84]

Make the enemies have more powerful abilities like Nervos.

 

*duck*

[Arlayn]

Good Enemy AI requires lots of CPU cycles.

From my experience many people struggle to even host a 4 player coop game session.

Simply because they have outdated or inferior hardware.

They cannot spare the CPU cycles required to make the AI pretend to act smart.

Also, as DE explained here (http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/26/gdc-2013-the-ai-tricks-behind-xcom-assassins-creed-3-and-warframe/), their way of generating maps makes pre-scripted AI stuff impossible as players may enter a room from any of a given number of entrances.

Impossible? There is only so many tiles for each tileset. Why not just program them to start functioning differently the moment they enter a tile. That way all their AI programing allows them to properly use a room they enter.

 

 

 

 

And for the love of Gears of War and Mass Effect: Lancers and Crewman need to learn how to vault/slide/jump into cover, instead of waddling around the edges and crouching after they feels safe enough. They either just stand there shooting, or run around jumping from cover-to-cover without doing anything else.

 

Yes why can't we at least have them vaulting, sliding, and jumping into cover? Why can't they move like we do. Why can't we have enemies move similar to Stalker but slightly better? Even Stalker is a challenge that's worth mentioning... and fun to hunt when he hunts us LOL... If stalker can be somewhat smarter then grineer, and more interesting... then surely they could make the grineer just as interesting...

[jibbahjabbah]

You can't really compare a game built around a single player campaign to one built around online play. It's like comparing a sports car to a SUV.