Poll: Rubber Band AI: Yay or Nay?

[veloper]

Give me difficulty settings instead.

Adaptive AI, rubber-banding and level scaling just punish players for playing well.

Satisfying is setting the bar high and then making that jump after a few tries.
When a bar gets raised mid-jump, that's just painful.

 

[Bad Jim]

a game that I seem to recall really suffered for its LACK of Rubber Band AI was Full Auto for the Xbox 360. There was no rubber band AI in that game so consequently, the player could become so skilled that they could just choose the fastest car, quickly outpace every single AI car and blow them away so completely that the game ceased to be challenging even on the hardest difficulty.

Couldn't that problem just as easily be solved by adding harder difficulty settings?

Rubber band AI is where the better you play, the stronger the AI becomes, as if they are tied to you by a rubber band.

What exactly do you mean by "stronger"?

Better stats. Just better stats. I doubt the AI gets smarter, because if the smartest achievable code is still stupid, there is no reason to make it even dumber on low skill settings.

A fair race against smart AI would be nice, but without smart AI, we must race dumb cheating AIs or human opponents. There's not much point in getting angry about that. If a smart racing AI existed I'm sure it would be licensed to all the big franchises.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

That I know.
But still its worrisome that as games progress in detail the AI is basically still at Quake 3 levels (aka run and gun)

Its kind of hard to immerse yourself in a game like Skyrim for example, when you shoot an npc with an arrow and miss and they don't react at all (Any general NPC that's not an enemy wont react if your attack doesn't connect)

I agree with you there. In a game like Skyrim you need a lot of attention to detail with how characters behave, otherwise they just don't feel human at all. Like the thing you can do where you put pots on people's heads and they just stand there blithely while you nick their stuff. It's funny, but it completely kills immersion.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Depends. For racing games, a little bit of rubber-banding is necessary to make playing against other players fun; if you can never catch up because you fell behind and your kart is too slow, then you might as well give up. However, the AI's rubber banding should never exceed the rubber banding that applies to players, and the AI itself should remain constant at a given difficulty level. That "constant AI" thing applies to nearly everything, apart from things that are intended to have a difficulty curve, like a Story or Arcade mode.

Basically, unless you're playing some kind of story/progression mode, the AI should stay the same, and if the AI starts doing things that players can't do, then that's bad.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I recently figured they tend to do it for RTS games too with Red Alert 3 being a prime example, enemy AI can see everything on the map regardless of fog of war which is really quite poor considering the human is the one with the disadvantage and the AI with the complete upper hand at all times, it also doesn't help that when you set the AI to Brutal it then gets indefinite resources meaning it can run out of ore yet still generate 10x more income than you ever will meaning the waiting game is pointless when the AI can out resource you along with seeing everything at all times, really sucks how poorly programmed the AI in that game is, especially some of the commander AI personalities like Zhana where she just spams Twinblades and calls it a day or Moskvin who spams kirovs and Naomi who spams shoguns or Giga fortresses, the other AI seem to be in the middle and somewhat fair when it comes to strats, I just wish future RTS games had AI that were on a more human level and don't need to rely on cheats or just spam 1 unit, you know actually varying up the gameplay and tactics.

 

[Gergar12_v1legacy]

Rubber band AI is lazy, and is why I depise the civilization games. You are NEVER reward for being powerful, it's a cat, and mouse game from what I hear. And Gandhi right now is chuckling in heavon somewhere about how the game portrays him as nuking other players, and stealing world wonders. The arrogant devs respone on this issue has not helped either.

In Ace of combat 6 it was. Got a F-16 the other side gets F-18's, got a Mirage or A-10A the other side gets F-15E, got a F-15E the other side gets F-22's, Got a Su-27, they get a Su-33. Get a F-22 they get uber Su-47's. Got a CFA-44 they get better CFA-44's.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Rubber band AI is lazy, and is why I depise the civilization games. You are NEVER reward for being powerful, it's a cat, and mouse game from what I hear. And Gandhi right now is chuckling in heavon somewhere about how the game portrays him as nuking other players, and stealing world wonders. The arrogant devs respone on this issue has not helped either.

In Ace of combat 6 it was. Got a F-16 the other side gets F-18's, got a Mirage or A-10A the other side gets F-15E, got a F-15E the other side gets F-22's, Got a Su-27, they get a Su-33. Get a F-22 they get uber Su-47's. Got a CFA-44 they get better CFA-44's.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard

I'm afraid I'm not up to date on military hardware. Are you effectively saying that the enemy team gets the superior equipment?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

All the GTA and Saints Row games. You are being chased by cops/NPCs, and even if you use a speed boost, they will be able to keep pace and force you off the road because their cars are mad of ultra dense uranium. I hate it. It's immersion breaking.

 

[Bad Jim]

I recently figured they tend to do it for RTS games too with Red Alert 3 being a prime example, enemy AI can see everything on the map regardless of fog of war which is really quite poor considering the human is the one with the disadvantage and the AI with the complete upper hand at all times, it also doesn't help that when you set the AI to Brutal it then gets indefinite resources meaning it can run out of ore yet still generate 10x more income than you ever will meaning the waiting game is pointless when the AI can out resource you along with seeing everything at all times, really sucks how poorly programmed the AI in that game is, especially some of the commander AI personalities like Zhana where she just spams Twinblades and calls it a day or Moskvin who spams kirovs and Naomi who spams shoguns or Giga fortresses, the other AI seem to be in the middle and somewhat fair when it comes to strats, I just wish future RTS games had AI that were on a more human level and don't need to rely on cheats or just spam 1 unit, you know actually varying up the gameplay and tactics.

You are confusing rubber band AI with cheating bastard AI. RTS AIs are usually cheating bastards, seeing everything and getting resources from nowhere, but they generally don't rubber band. Rubber banding is where the AI gets stronger if you are doing well, for example in race games where you can easily overtake but never get a big lead, or in Madden(ing) where getting a big lead makes them magically invincible.

The key difference is that rubber band AI only cheats if you are doing reasonably well. Most RTS AI will cheat and murder you even if you do nothing, so it is not rubberbanding, just standard cheating bastard AI.

 

[Varis]

AI should be an intelligence, not an automaton. So, rubber banding bad, thing that uses it's virtual brains as best it can, good. In racing games I think this would translate as the opponents maybe trying to PIT maneuver the other AI opponents as well as you, and driving to the best of their ability, not by being helped by a godlike figure that is the CPU to boost their innate abilities, but making them equal to you. Maybe by programming them to being able to make mistakes. RNG, albeit a nasty thing in most cases, is good in small doses. Thus giving you as a player an even match. If you're good, you're good. If they're better by not making as many mistakes, they're good, you're not. Try again?

 

[Jiggle Counter]

Three different types of Rubberbanding AI in racing games:

1. The type that has the same driving capabilities yet gets added acceleration and top speed until he is neck and neck with the rest.

2. An AI that becomes an aggressive driver only on the final lap.

3. An AI that increases its difficulty after you've gained winning streaks.


My opinion:

1. I hate this one.

2. I love this one, seems realistic that every driver tries their hardest on the final lap.

3. I hate this one. I prefer a set difficulty. Either easy for testing cars or professional for the actual money-on-the-line racing.