AI in NS2
mezimors
Join Date: 2005-01-16 Member: 35865Members
Join Date: 2005-01-16 Member: 35865Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Anyone else hate it?</div>So am I the only one that thinks we lose a lot with AI/commandable units in NS2? Part of the glory of NS 1 was that EVERYTHING was a real player... No mass of arcs being rolled in by one commander.... not that I mind arcs... but what about requiring them to be player controlled (vehicle implementation anyone?) or something? Primarily as a comm I feel like there's too much AI going on, and as a marine it feels a little synthetic to be fighting along side arcs. I dont mind macs because a marine has no place being a technician.... though on the alien side, those damned drifters have no place taking a gorgies rightful spot! Anyone else feel this way or am I alone?
Comments
/Wishes sunk cost could be recognized as sunk cost
Personally I find the actual 'units are players' thing to be probably the worst part of the game.
I mean aside from that, it's a quite interesting asymmetric warfare game, and the RTS aspect itself adds a more interesting objective than the usual 'cap flags' approach for territory control warfare games.
I've always seen the 'units are players' bit to be an unfortunate side effect. The RTS part is important and adds good things to the FPS part of the game, but having to rely on players to do everything is not often fun from the player's perspective. I spend far more time doing annoying busywork than I get to spend doing interesting RTS stuff, for every enjoyable defence or tense capture there are many 'run across the entire map to fix a problem' or 'rebuild the same extractor for the fifth time because it got destroyed by a lone alien getting past the defences'.
I also really don't like having units that don't do what I say as a commander, which even the cooperative players don't do. I would much rather have dumb but reliable AI than 'smart' but unreliable players. I can't build a bunch of units and put them in a room to guard it indefinitely, I can't send out builders to build stuff for me, at least not practically, and I can't have any direct effect on the game. In an RTS your units are supposed to be your guns, your hitpoints, your aim, your means of attacking enemies and taking hits, in NS2 they aren't that, it's like watching someone else play an RTS, because you don't control your units, making it a fundamentally unpleasant RTS experience. Maybe it's a good something else, but it is a very bad RTS without commander controlled units.
The addition of the arcs, the macs, and drifters make the game much better for both sides, the aliens don't benefit <i>massively</i> from it, as gorges were already in direct control of their own RTS elements, towers were a gorge's weapons and armor, as they should be in an rts, but the marine commander had a fundamental disconnect between his actions and his effects, his actions were to drop structures, but to make them have any effect, marines had to build them.
ARCs mean that commanders can carry out siege gameplay without needing players to constantly build siege turrets, which is a major improvement for both players and commander, as it gives the commander more input and removes busy work from players. MACs do much the same thing, although their build speed is a bit slow for my taste, I'd prefer them to be tougher, slower, better at building, but a little more expensive, sacrificing the ability to deploy them everywhere for being better where you do put them. But adding AI is a major step in the right direction in NS2, it adds much needed functionality to the commander role.
About sums it up my friend.
My apologies, I thought you were trolling me.
Here:
This is not an RTS. This is a FPS/RTS hybrid that is amazing because it requires human interaction. If I wanted instantaneous responses, I could get that experience playing starcraft or any number of RTS games. This is not about the commander experience alone, or else why bother having the marines? It is a team game in which the commander and the units tug and pull on each other and work together.
"it's like watching someone else play an RTS, because you don't control your units, making it a fundamentally unpleasant RTS experience. Maybe it's a good something else, but it is a very bad RTS without commander controlled units."
It is not, again, an RTS. It is the top down experience of someone that is supposed to be fulfilling a leadership role. It is an experience that requires more than just learning how to most effectively place turrets, command units, and build structures - it requires interacting with and leading your team - which was one of the most satisfying aspects of ns1 (being on a team that was lead by a good commander, or, rarely for me, being that commander). This is not SC2 or C&C where everything is robot, contrived, and will respond to our every click, but a real life interactive experience of playing with other people in a way that no other game has. Yes BF2 has a commander, but if you notice, the commander doesnt need to interact at all with his team in that one. Drop supplies, respond to calls, hit mission objectives, but he does not rely on his team the way a commander in NS1 does.
My apologies again Chris, I just couldn't imagine you were serious when you said that "Personally I find the actual 'units are players' thing to be probably the worst part of the game." I mean, if that is the case, why not just play an RTS?
I did say the RTS aspect adds a lot to the game, it provides one of only two things that separates NS from any other team based territory control style game, the other of course being the different sides.
As an RTS game however, it is not fun, and if commanding is actually intended to be its own genre, it is a very shoddy one. It feels like a badly made RTS, and nothing more. I do not find that players add anything to the game in that regard, but they take away a lot.
The game would be much better if the commander was a proper RTS experience, because RTS is a good genre with much to recommend it, and it already has a solid FPS component, which relies on the RTS part for much of its structure. Thus you get a good FPS game and a good RTS game, which are linked by the players being an important combat component of the RTS game, and the RTS structures being an important component of the FPS game.
As opposed to now, where you have a good FPS game in which RTS structures are an important component, and a very rudementary RTS-style control system for placing those structures. Which is about as fun as it sounds. NS without AI is not really FPSRTS, it's more like CnC renegade only with player placed buildings and an rts-ish interface for placing them, but the RTS side of the game is very incomplete. If it were at all practical I would probably suggest dropping the commander entirely and making an AI to do building placement and assign orders, however that would require an amazingly good AI, which we aren't likely to get. So instead I have to suggest that the commander get a proper RTS role to play, if you have to have the commander, at least make it fun.
<ol type='1'><li>Voice communications is too quiet in the game and you are unable to set the volume thus you can't usually hear anything the commander says</li><li>Objective marker is almost nonexistant making it very difficult to follow rapidly changing objectives in the middle of a game. The line on the ground is too thin and not being able to see the circle objective marker on the minimap and trough walls doesn't help either.</li><li>There are no ingame stats system to distinct the good commanders from the bad ones like in some other FPS/RTS games. So often you see terrible commanders trying to execute hive rushes without GLs and neglecting rt capping etc. Honestly I don't think people should even obey some of the commanders, so having win / lose stats as a commander could help atleast the good commander out there.</li><li>The commanders can't often see structures and players making it very difficult to do strategical decisions. Therefore players often rely on their own strategical sense rather than letting the commander do that.</li><li>The overall design of alien commander is like a solo RTS without any interaction with the players.</li></ol>
I'm an RTS player by heart but currently i find the commander role much worse than it was in ns1.
This.
I love comming because its such a great challenge, but I am a glutton for punishment in that respect. Remember, that most of the NS2 playerbase is/will be FPS players who have limited RTS experience and likely no RTS/FPS comm experience. AI/Bots/NPC are a great way to significantly lessen the learning curve and reduce the stress of commanding, expanding the group of players who can experience the RTS side of NS2.
While comming a team of players who follow and execute my strategy is a great experience, I've rarely encountered that outside of competitive NS2. In a public match, my preference is
Players who follow my orders > AI/Bots/NPC > Players who don't follow my orders > No Players
Also, AI/Bots/NPC are a great way for people to learn the basic components of commanding before jumping into a full scale game. Frankly, I see the benefits of AI in NS2 much outweighing the negatives.
That's why i love comming too. If i want 100% obediant units i'll go and play an RTS game. But the synergy and cooperation between commander and players is not working as well as it worked in ns1 making it frustrating for the commander.
Players who follow my orders > AI/Bots/NPC > Players who don't follow my orders > No Players<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I will admit I do like smart players for some things, they do tend to be more surviable than an AI equivalent, but on the other hand I like the predictability of AI. I can rely on it, players are hard to rely on, as even good players are inconsistent, sometimes they might be very good, sometimes they might have an off moment, sometimes they might be an entirely different player and I can't tell because they all look identical.
I would rather command a decent AI team than a decent player team, because the AIs would be much easier to command, I know exactly what each one is capable of, how many I need to send to get things done, what each one is doing, all of the stuff you need to know to have any sort of strategy.
In the military the whole point of the training process is to give every single solider the same reactions, same aiming skills, same responsiveness, same resiliance, same capabilities. Every rifleman should perform a certain way, and even if they don't you use them in such large numbers that they will average out.
RTS games simulate this by making all of your units absolutely identical, it isn't perfectly realistic, but it does make strategy possible.
Having the units be untrained, unknown players makes this kind of impossible. I need some sort of reliable units in the game to be able to enjoy it, even if they aren't neccesarily the best units, as long as I understand them I will be happy.
In an actual RTS, you create structures/units, and then <i><u>command</u></i> them. NS2 is missing half of what makes an RTS a RTS with the command element having been taken away. So there needs to be some major changes to enhance the synergy between the commander and the other players, as well as giving the commander a more direct role in choosing the overall strategy of the game. AI alone doesn't achieve this.
I would rather command a decent AI team than a decent player team, because the AIs would be much easier to command, I know exactly what each one is capable of, how many I need to send to get things done, what each one is doing, all of the stuff you need to know to have any sort of strategy.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why are you playing NS then? I think the whole point of commanding in NS2 is that your units peform as humans do. Unreliably, inconsistently and intelligently. They do their own deicsions and you can only try to get them to do what you want to. Commanding your units still plays a big role in the game, or atleast should play. Using voicecomm and giving orders should be big part of it like in ns1. All good public commanders should spend a lot of time commanding their players. The problem here is that the commander's tools for commanding your units are pretty much broken now as voicecomm is too quiet and objectives are too hard to see.
I heard they are putting in a sort of shield like ability in the next patch. I think it'd be cool if it only lasted a couple of seconds so that the com was required to micro it and click on the players just before they get attacked. These kinds of abilities make the com much more important in combat situations rather than just being a spectator to the action.
As well as this, there just isn't enough stuff to upgrade at the moment and therefore there isn't any strategy required in choosing the upgrades. The tech tree needs to be much bigger for both teams to give the commanders some strategic choices. IMO in a typical 30 minute game you should only been seeing about 40% of the tech, rather than everything being researched every game.
I think most of this stuff will improve as development continues.
My view is that I want units that have enough strategic awareness to carry out general orders without needing a lot of micromanagement. For example, I like to give orders like defend the left side of the map. With good players, if they are in heliport and flight control comes under attack, they generally have enough strategic awareness to go defend flight control. With AI, I'd have to micro them to do the same thing. However, in public matches, when I give such an order I frequently have players who decide instead to try to solo a fade in crossroads instead, hence, the preference for AI in such cases.
<!--quoteo(post=1885588:date=Nov 18 2011, 04:27 PM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ Nov 18 2011, 04:27 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1885588"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I agree that the commanding experience is a bit lackluster at the moment, but that answer isn't to add in more AI controlled units. Since you can't actively control the attacking units on the ground, the next best thing is supporting them. Giving both coms lots of support abilities like med/ammo packs, scans etc. is IMO the best way to improve the RTS experience.
I heard they are putting in a sort of shield like ability in the next patch. I think it'd be cool if it only lasted a couple of seconds so that the com was required to micro it and click on the players just before they get attacked. These kinds of abilities make the com much more important in combat situations rather than just being a spectator to the action.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd generally agree, but there are limits. Micro is frankly the most tedious aspect of RTS and/or RTS/FPS commanding imo and is one of the most likely things to drive fps players away from comm. So some comm-combat micro is good, but I think it should be heavily limited. In general, I think NS2 commanding could benefit more from passive or autocasting type structure/chamber abilities and area-of-effect micro (e.g. instead of dropping a med pack, the comm drops a healing kit that heals all marines in a certain radius) rather than active abilities and other heavy micro actions.
I think in some ways ns2 commanders aspect did/does need to change to give a more "commercial" feel for lack of a better word. There was a lot of room for the commander to ruin the experience for a lot of people in ns1. I don't play a lot of fps so I don't know if this is common but it was pretty much essential to have a server admin on hand to ban people on a pub in ns. I think the devs are well aware of this and they are doing a good job.
However some things seem to be changing that worked so well in ns. Bring back welders plz haha. On the surface it was 2 marines welding a vent shut so skulks couldn't get in but actually it was you with your back to the world welding for what felt like forever knowing at any moment an alien could attack you from behind while relying on your fellow marine to protect you. You trusted that guy after that, assuming he hadn't ran away or died himself.
For macs I think it would be interesting if there could be only one built at a time, possibly with some special ability, more hp, etc. if this hasn't been tried already. Drifters I think work pretty well as they are now, aside from the fact that both drifters and macs need more reliable pathing. Or perhaps just more evident like a line drawn along the path they are taking to their goal. Even an audible ETA in the macs case would be funny and functional. A follow marine/follow squad command would be cool if not OP. It would be cool if having good mac micro became an important part of being com, but not in the traditional sense as the action is too fast in ns.
The problem with that is it becomes too easy to use the abilities successfully 100% of the time and then there's no skill difference between players. Having micro abilities that take skill and accuracy makes the game more challenging for the commander. Also, the abilities can then be a lot more powerful as they won't be successful every time they are used.
I don't agree that micro is the most tedious aspect of RTS games. I think it's one of the best aspects as it really differentiates the best players from the rest and adds those cool moments when a player pulls off some crazy awesome micro that can turn a game around.
Hmm, I think it depends. If you take company of heroes for example, that is in some ways all micro, and in some ways not micro at all.
It has very good unit AI to make them use the level sensibly, but it also rewards good micromanagement to optimise it further, but your units respond to threats in their local area fairly well, most of the time.
A better example might be total war, where again, it's sort of all micro, but also very simple, it favours precision, but not excessive interference.
So good AI generally works better than players for important jobs, as you can guarantee a certain level of quality from the AI, whereas good players are hard to come by, and harder to keep track of. I find it far more micro intensive trying to figure out who's who and who's using what gun, moreso than any actual RTS I play.
I like that the comm can build a robot instead of getting out of his chair.
If the AI and path-finding improve i would not be opposed to AI filling out teams.
But the improvements must come first.
Unreal Tournament vs. Quake 3
Unreal Tournament bots were fun to play against and filled out a team.
Quake 3 there should have not been bots.
Basically:
-Remove MACs.
-Commander once again <u>needs</u> his players.
I read this post which was basically about the connection of the commander and players.
Marines should get welder back and do their job...
I would love some Vote by UWE about the MACs and other moving A.I.
So first you make an AI unit to save the players from the hassle to walk all over the map to build the buildings and then you destroy the whole point of it by making it controllable in first person view. Sure! Sounds like a great idea to me too!
What an idiot...
He clearly meant that the alien commander could control the drifters to create a more tactical defence etc....
If he could control them in first person view then he could place whips where they could actually be useful. Currently they are crap (Everyone knows this).
It would also allow him to place structures in vents.
Basically, he wants the ability to make crazy structure placements, such as ceiling whips, or vent crags/shades, etc. Personally, I wouldn't mind allowing structures/AI much more freedom in where they can be placed/go, but it can be fairly gamebreaking. For example, just think of marines being able to place sentries in vents as something that would really screw up current map design and balance.
Once again, the idea is sound but in gameplay it removes actual player involvement from his commander.
Once again, the idea is sound but in gameplay it removes actual player involvement from his commander.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is exactly my point!
MACs are just plain horrible and I have noticed that the amount of MACs has gone down since the last time I played this (Got my graphics card today, played 1 game atm :D). Removing it wouldn't actually have that much of an impact of gameplay other than making it better.
He clearly meant that the alien commander could control the drifters to create a more tactical defence etc....
If he could control them in first person view then he could place whips where they could actually be useful. Currently they are crap (Everyone knows this).
It would also allow him to place structures in vents.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Personal insults serve only to make you look like what you are claiming others are...
Currently, first person control of drifters would not help at all. Whips, in their current form, are mostly useless where ever you put them. Infact being able to place them on walls/ceilings would just put them further away making them worse. There could be small gains from crags/shades being placed more creatively, but the game is mostly decided well before any of that would have an impact.
That aside, as Zeikko pointed out, the AI units were designed to cut down the time players spent wondering around just building things, allowing them to focus on fighting. It makes no sense to undo this to any degree. There have been much better suggestions so far, if that is a direction the developers are even considering, like allowing gorges to make 'mini' structures that can be upgraded to full by the commander.