#Feedback - IA behaviour

15 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lilac thicket
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Here go ou first impressions on bots new behaviour. Please do not hesitate To share your own opinion below.

Positive: - AI movement has been improved. Angles and positioning are better. They appear less "suicidal" and "brainless". Encounters are more challenging.

Negative points: - They spawn too fast on some maps (even in rooms which you have clear like 30 seconds before). It feels that we cannot clear the map no matters what. It felt more natural before the update.

  • They shout way, WAY too much. Even when they are alone (to ask cover...). It could make sense immersion-wise in SAS Outpost and Cruiser, but not with the raiders. A F1 from time to time is fine to create some confusion, but now they shout constantly, even in instances where they cannot see you, and you can barely see the tip of their feet.

  • For the above reasons, combined to the fact that they are more pushu, it became too easy to track (or be tracked by) enemies. Before, the bots would spot us and shoot from a distance and that's was it, and it was hard to tell where was the marauder who was shot at. But now they shout at us from a distance and push towards the marauders, leaving no doubt as to his presence and location. It feels that we continuously give up our position, a little bit as if in Hunt we could not avoid all the sounding traps. And since they spot us so easily and shout right away, even though they have seen 1mm of our body, we know that they are bots. Before, we could not be certain in some instances.
    -Some bots (SAS) pass me a few metres away without even reacting to me (I was not in cover) because they're rushing another enemy Marauder who was that's further away and a floor below (and after checking its corpse, less well stuffed).

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Generally, I like the bots new movements/gunplay, but not necesarily how all the changes impacted the gameplay, the most annoying thing being the constant shouting which reveals too easily our position or the other players' location. I consider Marauders to be mainly a PvP game, where bots and PvE are more accessory. Being sneaky is becoming harder (unless you stay totally fixed in a corner).

@icy spade

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Maybe @lusty arch could share his opinion in a better way, it seemed he agreed with me in the general chat.

lusty arch
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I agree with basically everything you said.
The AI "feel" better, but they also are way, way easier to identify.
I think the AI should be an unknown, and one of the things that made it hard to tell who was who before was the sparing usage of the voice lines. Right now it's entirely too easy to tell AI from players because almost every AI I ran into was shouting at me. players don't yell before they fire at you, and if they do it's in voip.

inner stone
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If a bot's shouts could alert other AI to your presence and location, or attract other AI to their location to help them hunt you down then yelling could make sense in some situations. Bots yelling "Enemy spotted." and then hearing a few more AI that are nearby responding to the call out and running toward my location would seem fine and immersive. That would remind me of the AI in F.E.A.R. because they'd call out all kinds of relevant info to each other and their AI behaviour at the time was way beyond any other game I played back then.

However AI simply yelling various phrases just so I know they're about to attack or just spamming voice lines for no apparent reason? Not so much. Maybe after they attack the first time they start goading me, or yelling then moving to distract me, but certainly not yelling all the time just so I can know roughly where they are.

As for bot spawning maybe with the changes the bot spawns should be moved to locations at or near airlocks, to breach points, or to locations where the bots could logically be coming from other "off map" locations. Give them a location to move toward after they spawn in, and maybe have some of them spawn in and move in pairs or in small teams exactly like player crews do?

lilac thicket
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Thanks for your input!

jaunty parrot
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I also gotta say the bots aren't just rushers they started sniping again and I mean the shotty bots snipe again.

icy spade
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appreciate it @lilac thicket

lilac thicket
jaunty parrot
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Just got two tapped from a shotty bot on prison from 25m away. The shotgun bots need to be fixed again cause it can't be I can't get a kill with a shotgun from 5m away but those guys snipe me in a second.

inner stone
jaunty parrot
inner stone
# jaunty parrot I thought they never fixed that in the first place.

I'm fairly certain the double barrel bots firing more than 2 shots without reloading and the liberator bots firing more than 4 shots without reloading was fixed at one point. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, and perhaps it was just luck that those issues stopped happening in my matches for a while.

lilac thicket
lilac thicket
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Back from vacations, and played quite a bit to Marauders, and I must say that the new bots are unfun. Overall, new bots are unfun and seem to promote ratting even more than before. Particularly in small maps, as Mines, you don't want to move anymore since they will spot you, even through walls, and give up your position, at every step. They do make raids harder, but not in a good way.

I stand by what I originally stated, but I'd like to stress again:

(i) Overaccurate and quick bots: I died once, and almost die a few times to over-accurate bots. This is also the case with bots who do small left-right-left movements while shooting. I faced one Marine like that with a Johnson, it ended badly. Bots don't feel like players, they feel like hackers.

Some other annoying aspect, is the fact that they react and start shooting really quick. You pass by a door, and as soon as 1 mm of your body is in front of such door, a bot 50 meters away will shot at you. Luger bots are particularly annoying since they tend to make you bleed. So, you walk minind your own business, and Luger Raider will spot you from a great distance, shot you from an human-impossible angle, make you bleed.

(ii) They constantly spot you through walls, and start shooting or shooting through the wall. You can easily notice where people are, even more than before, since they tend to block they target and aim, even if the player is a floor below or above.

(iii) In too many instances, a group of bots will run towards you, particularly SAS and Marines bots, and these bots will not react even if another player stand in their way, or like two meters next to their path.

(iv) They shout waaaaaaay to much, really. It's quite both a gameplay and an immersion breaker.