AI Bots- Why are they hardly used anymore?

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25 comments, last by Bluefirehawk 10 years, 11 months ago

If your internet isn't very good now a days odds are your not buying games either, or paying for memberships. So there isn't a point to catering to them because they don't have as much spare money to spend on video games.

From what I've seen the quality of internet connections depends completely on where you live, not how much disposable income you have. Especially true in areas where there's only one ISP available (way more common than it should in the US from what I've heard), those tend to have it the worst since there isn't any competition so the ISP can get away with pretty much anything.

Don't pay much attention to "the hedgehog" in my nick, it's just because "Sik" was already taken =/ By the way, Sik is pronounced like seek, not like sick.
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Its isn't a solid fact I will admit, however even if there is only one isp (like around here) they have different plans you can buy. More money = faster internet. And yes I will agree that other things like having to share your internet with family will slow it down, and yeah youtube for sure because it works like a torrent program and attempts to give you the highest quality video your internet can handle unless you tell it not to. But no matter how many odd flaws you find in my statement, in a world ruled by money and the bottom line (like earth) large game makers devote their resources to the things they feel will appeal most to the people who pay for the game.

Its isn't a solid fact I will admit, however even if there is only one isp (like around here) they have different plans you can buy. More money = faster internet. And yes I will agree that other things like having to share your internet with family will slow it down, and yeah youtube for sure because it works like a torrent program and attempts to give you the highest quality video your internet can handle unless you tell it not to. But no matter how many odd flaws you find in my statement, in a world ruled by money and the bottom line (like earth) large game makers devote their resources to the things they feel will appeal most to the people who pay for the game.


Its a sad but true reality, but I think as long as these technical and economic barriers exist, there will always be room for playing solo (Bioshock Infinite) or online (Battlefield 3 and 4).

Still, AI bots would be very cool to have in our multiplayer games.

I loved battlefront 1&2 even though it had stupid AI bots. Killing them in multi-player was part of the fun in that game. The more stuff to blowup and destroy the better.

I think it is a matter of priorities. Making an interesting AI is hard and hard things costs money. That money is usually better spent on multiplayer. The only game where I have AI experience is StarCraft II, where Blizzard invested in improving the AI experience for Heart of the Swarm to help beginners transfer to the ladder in a nicer manner.

Personally I think it would be cool if AI scripting could be automated somehow, like some neural network AI playing against humans and then automatically translating its discoveries to some decision tree that could be played locally. Programming those decision trees manually is.... hard...

That money is usually better spent on multiplayer DRM, marketing, yet another content distribution network, or more preloaded DLC's.

ftfy

“If I understand the standard right it is legal and safe to do this but the resulting value could be anything.”

At first glance, you might think that games like COD would already have a decent AI implementation for their Single Player Campaign, at least that was my first thought.

But these implementations are probably less sophisticated than you think: the only thing they have to do is run to cover and shoot at you. And maybe a very trivial "spotted" method for stealth missions. Everything else, any tactics behind it, is probably done via level design, backspawns for flanking etc. So multiplayer AI takes up a lot more resources than you might think.

The last game I played that had multiplayer AI was Counter Strike, here you really don't have a Single Player Campagin. Multiplayer matches are sort of the only thing. On the other hand you have games like MOW/COD that have a full blown SP Campaign, the single players are likely already satisfied with this.

Project: Project
Setting fire to these damn cows one entry at a time!

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