CaptHawkeye wrote:Currently, my biggest gripe with AI is its obvious lack of self-preservation. Every enemy i've ever faced in a game was a die-hard, "glorious death" screaming fanatic that had zero concerns jumping into the meat grinder I had so lovingly built for and used on about 40 of his comrades.
I know some games have solved this--in part--but rarely for the enemy. So I'm inclined to believe the earlier hypothesis that it's about players enjoying easily murdered foes and less enjoying enemies that actually defeat the player and tactically withdraw to areas of strength. In Quake4 I spawned a bunch of friendly soldiers into an area with pillars to help me with a firefight I found long and boring, and to my amazement they actually located cover and hid behind it, firing out from the pillar as if it had been one of the obstacles in their normal spawning locations. Now, if the enemy not only did that, but had a higher avoidance rate, to the point it was very hard to ever fire on them at all, I could see that as being not only annoying but also very difficult to beat.
But I think that players would respect such an AI more. It should not be a challenge for the game-makers to do this and also allow the player to win. Players usually have firepower far in excess of anything the AI has, so at least in a First Person Shooter game, making the AI duck whenever it's visible to you only forces the player to exploit more of their arsenal. Honestly, stuff like drawing rays from the AI to check if it can see you, that's only necessary in a stealth game--and in such games we've already seen Thief manage to make it work. Why not check to see if the enemy is visible to the player? If I can see them, they should duck. If I can't, let them chase me. Such simple logic is much more obvious (drawing rays to the player already happens) and more functional. Sure, it would lead the AI to act as if it knows where you are even if it can't, but giving the AI a little "gut instinct" wouldn't break SoD except in sneaky games. Games where the player is able to sneak around, use cloaks, etc, sure--let them be braindead. In real life people act moronically when faced with an invisible attacker too. I suppose if you're going to let the player go invisible, you might as well stop asking the AI to intelligently handle it.