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Adaptive AI in Games - Does it Really Work?
qasimodo asks: "I was recently reading a preview of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, and then I came across this article at GameSpot saying Pandora Tomorrow will feature adaptive AI which 'will adjust itself to players' skill level'. I remember (and is also mentioned in the PT article) Max Payne also featured this, but I never noticed it. I guess that's the best way to know if it works, since it adapts to your gaming skills, but does it really work? Have you noticed it? Do you have proof of it?"
it wasn't really adaptive, simply when you die too many times, the difficulty level is reduced, which includes the accuracy of the enemies, their damage, and your damage, many games have similar features, Warcraft III comes to mind, the only difference is that Max Payne does it automatically, no big deal.
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After reading that little snippet on gamespot, I've got the feeling that the game will be 'letting you win'. It states that if it takes you 20 tries to do something, the game will lower it's standards for you. Why did finishing Splinter Cell make me feel good? Because it makes me feel I've accomplished something. I've mastered the game, no matter how difficult the timing was, no matter how pixel-perfect I had to aim to kill that guy, no matter how hard it was to master. Unless they (Ubisoft) implement this Adaptive AI perfectly and unnoticeable (and I hope they will), I'm going to feel as if no matter how bad I play, or how crummy my timing is, I'm still going to master the game. Adaptive AI could really take the challenge out of any game.
What's the main reason players get disinterested in a game? Because they come across a level that they can't beat, and they get sick of the same ol' stuff over and over again.
If less people are buying these games, because they just aren't the master that you apparently are and would rather not get halfway through the game only to quit in frustration, it hurts the company so this move makes sense.
However, to satiate you, they should add an option to set the AI on the hardest possible skill level.
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the catch 22 is: make the game too easy, and players will complain. make the game too tough, and players will complain.
personally, i don't think a 'difficulty' slider should come into affect with AI. The AI should always -try- to behave the same way.
Whether you intend for them to be tacticians, civilians, or just mindless grunts. on 'Easy' or 'Difficult' a bad guy should still know he should take cover, call for backup, etc.
The 'difficulty' should come into play when deciding their accuracy, movement speed, 'scoring' (penalties for shooting hostages, raizing conquested territory, etc). It could also come into play in deciding the scarcity of resources. on Easy, there should be extra resources for the hero, and less for the enemy.
Adaptive -AI- is the wrong approach. Adaptive -difficult- is still a good idea though. but don't make enemies dumber; just make them slower, more inaccurate, fewer in number - don't give them as many grenades and leave more health packs around.
oh, and i also don't appreciate the 'difficulty' sliders that just scale the damage you receive up and down. that is an awfully 'cheap' hack imo.
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IIRC, Doom and Quake had adaptive AI, too.
No, I guess it doesn't really do anything different from a random number generator.
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If there was a point where it became unbeatable, then it was not very good at adapting, was it?
The essential point in adaptive AI on games is to be difficult enough for anyone to be entertaining, without getting frustrating, or the opposite, that it's so trivial to beat it that it becomes uninteresting.
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I think people are confusing difficulty with intelligence. Use a game like Dead or Alive or Tekken as an example. Increasing the difficulty adaptively would involve the AI hitting faster or using more advanced moves the better you got. That is not adaptive AI, that is adaptive difficulty.
Adaptive AI in this case would be more like that if you only use a certain set of attacks the AI learns what you are likely to do and defends appropriately. Just like a real person would. These would be the end of using set-patterns of attack against a stupid AI. Its not just to make things harder, but to make them more realistic. No more "left jab, right kick, knee, knee, knee, rinse and repeat"
Or in a game like Age of Empires, if your strategy is to always use cavalry to rush the opposition, the AI would learn and create Pikemen to counter your repeated attacks. Having AI which adapts to your moves forces the player to continually revise their strategy... not neccesarily make it more difficult, but forcing the player to ALSO become adaptive instead of using a tried and true method to beat the AI.
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Well, adaptive AI in gaming has always meant that the AI adapts to the player's skill level. What you want is a Learning AI, which in gaming generally means that an AI adjusts a slider to better counter a move that a player will make.
This isn't rocket science people. There have been, for example, nearly perfect Ai's that have played within the rules of a game and can still kick a player's tail. All games are developed with the idea in mind that every move has a counter, and every counter has a counter. Now, the AI development team knows the best instantaneous moves to counter other moves, and as they are the development team know most of the higher-level strategies that will be tried. If a development company wants an AI to beat you senseless, it can do so without changing the rules of the game. Is that fun? No. So you weaken it, and change difficulty levels around. Now you have a system that isn't learning, but is playing with the player. And playing is fun.
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> The essential point in adaptive AI on games is to be difficult enough for
> anyone to be entertaining, without getting frustrating
I think you want the player to get *slightly* frustrated *occasionally*. Not
badly, and not often, but if the player always wins without putting in some
extra effort, that's no fun either. When the player's tactics and skills
stagnate, you want to start beating him some of the time. (Not all of the
time. Not, even, most of the time, I think. But some of the time.)
One way to make game difficulty adaptive, without serious AI, is to make
expectations scale with accomplishments. This is easier in some types of
games than in others. Tetris is a great example of a game that can become
infinitely hard. Is the player stacking perfectly, covering no empty spaces?
Well, then, raise the probabilities on the hard pieces. Is the player in
deep doodoo, stacked past the middle of the board? Throw him some easy
pieces. (Most tetris games don't do enough with easy and hard pieces.)
And of course there's the ever-increasing speed. Not all games have such
easy ways of raising or lowering the expectations, without fundamentally
changing the consequences of the player's actions and therefore the strategy.
Games like freeciv are particularly in need of good AI.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.