Poll: Rubber Band AI: Yay or Nay?

[Aethien]

Ah, that could be. I haven't played MK64 in years and years and back then I was still a kid. I certainly never had a problem with it in Double Dash, if anything that game was just too easy. There was some wonkiness with AI racers as the heavy ones were always the best and all AI always aims all items at you (at least if you're in the lead) which leads to some stupid cases like AI throwing a banana ahead because that's where you are and then drive over it themselves.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I guess the concept could potentially work and not being annoying, but I've only ever seen it used as a crutch so that games with shite AI don't end up being too easy and boring.

Simple fact, Its 2014, approaching 2015 and AI in games in general hasnt changed AT ALL in the past 10-11 years.
Gimmicks like Bioshock infinite/The last of Us for example, she cant die at all and enemy's wont target her

I'm confused, how is that a gimmick? They just made it that way so the game didn't turn into a massive, annoying escort quest.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Snip

EscapistBuddy gave the examples of NFS: The Run and Most Wanted. I'll add Underground in the later races. I spend most of my time lagging just behind the enemies before blasting in front at the last second.

 

[LaoJim]

Need for Speed: The Run - It was a one on one race down a snowy mountain avalanche. Computer AI hit a boulder and I got a good 30 seconds ahead of him, then suddenly as I was barreling down a straight away going full speed, I notice the AI catching up very rapidly (keep in mind he still has sharp turns to make as well). Yet that 30 second lead I had was evaporated to a "6 second lead" in just 4 seconds... while I was driving at full speed down a straight away on a mountain slope.

Ah, yes, I remember this level. I didn't notice the rubber banding because I was never clearly in the lead, but it was very obvious that the AI cars were able to do the corners in a way that I simply wasn't.

EscapistBuddy gave the examples of NFS: The Run and Most Wanted. I'll add Underground in the later races. I spend most of my time lagging just behind the enemies before blasting in front at the last second.

Fair enough, I played a bit of Underground but I don't think I got to the later races. I don't remember it being a problem on Underground 2, which I did complete, but then I haven't played that game for years so maybe I've forgotten.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I'm really starting ti dislike the AI in Sleeping dogs, many a time do I have the vehicle that's roughly the same as the one I'm chasing and they somehow are able to outpace me which in turn extends the chase to a stupid length when I should have been able to easily knock the vehicle off the road due to my skill/smarts, the same goes for chasing after a person type event, they are always able to outrun me from the beginning and it really dampens my experience because 99% of the time it's the same outcome with it being a stupidly drawn out chase which I could have ended near the beginning with my skills.

I find rubber banding a very cheap concept of AI, it doesn't make me feel like I outsmarted them, it doesn't give me any sense of victory and only fills me with "why do I even bother?" type feelings towards the games that use it.

 

[Bad Jim]

I understand completely why rubber band AI is there. Let's face it, without rubber banding, the AI drive like shit. I haven't played a single racing game with good AI, it is ridiculously easy to out-drive them in fair circumstances.

That is not a reason to have rubber banding. It is a reason for them to cheat, with higher speed, better handling etc. There is no reason for those advantages to suddenly activate as soon as the player overtakes them.

 

[VincentX3]

I guess the concept could potentially work and not being annoying, but I've only ever seen it used as a crutch so that games with shite AI don't end up being too easy and boring.

Simple fact, Its 2014, approaching 2015 and AI in games in general hasnt changed AT ALL in the past 10-11 years.
Gimmicks like Bioshock infinite/The last of Us for example, she cant die at all and enemy's wont target her

I'm confused, how is that a gimmick? They just made it that way so the game didn't turn into a massive, annoying escort quest.

So in both games ALL the enemies ignore your companion. It doesn't matter if there's 20 of them on screen and your companion is in the middle of you and your enemies, she wont get shot plus no enemies will react to her existence.

That in my eyes is a gimmick, sure they did it with the intention that you stated (So the game wont turn into a giant annoying escort quest) and in a way that's fine.

But a true AI would (Both your partner and enemies) should have dynamic reactions and feel smart, make their existence feel more alive instead of brushing them under the rug when the action starts on screen.

An example would be in The last of us when there's clickers nearby and your trying to crouch and not make noise.
Yet your partner is sprinting across the hallway without a care in the world or talking loudly yet enemies don't even care.

That for me is gimmicky AI, only being valuable in key moments and generally not existing in others.

 

[SomeGuyOnHisComputer]

I consider it bad game design. It pretty much ruined Mario Kart Wii and Split/Second for me. If you're good enough to lap everyone the game should just let you. If the game is boring because of the player's skill, maybe you should work on the AI or hire a better designer. It pretty much only works with scripted sequences in my opinion.

 

[doomrider7]

I think there's a mine cart race in Banjo-Tooie where the trick is to game the AI by going really slow for the first 3/4ths of the race, then mash the A button to accelerate faster than the AI can adjust for. That sounds like textbook rubber band AI exploiting to me.

Please don't remind me of that. The only I managed to beat her was by cheating and using a turbo controller.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I'm a middle of the road kind of guy. I like it conditionally. The first game I noticed it in was in Crash Team Racing. At first I was like "What the fuck? The cheating bastards!" (or however I would have phrased that sentiment when I was 7). But honestly, I think it's a good mechanic in racing games and not just for AI.

I find racing games really dull when you're just at the front of the pack and nobody can come close to catching up to you. So often there's points where no matter how good the player or computer is, if you don't make a mistake they've already lost the race. There's no engagement, and you might not even see the other racers for the remainder of the race. The game also did it for you when you were racing against bosses, so you always had a bit of a chance against them, so that was definitely nice.

So I eventually grew to be a little more fond of it, it at least keeps you on your toes.

 

[Fishyash]

I understand completely why rubber band AI is there. Let's face it, without rubber banding, the AI drive like shit. I haven't played a single racing game with good AI, it is ridiculously easy to out-drive them in fair circumstances.

That is not a reason to have rubber banding. It is a reason for them to cheat, with higher speed, better handling etc. There is no reason for those advantages to suddenly activate as soon as the player overtakes them.

Hey man, I didn't say it was a good reason, but it's an explanation as to why it's there.

As I said the best solution to the lack of challenge in fair driving games is to improve the A.I., but it's plainly obvious that either developers are holding back or the technology isn't advanced enough yet. Making the games unfair is a poor, but acceptable substitute.

Simply put, racing games get too easy without it. If I wanted to race on my own, I would rather do so under a practice/time trial mode. The only situation I think it's truly unacceptable is in a racing sim, since being able to drive the cars is not only challenging, but also incredibly enjoyable with or without opponents.

 

[Bad Jim]

I understand completely why rubber band AI is there. Let's face it, without rubber banding, the AI drive like shit. I haven't played a single racing game with good AI, it is ridiculously easy to out-drive them in fair circumstances.

That is not a reason to have rubber banding. It is a reason for them to cheat, with higher speed, better handling etc. There is no reason for those advantages to suddenly activate as soon as the player overtakes them.

Hey man, I didn't say it was a good reason, but it's an explanation as to why it's there.

As I said the best solution to the lack of challenge in fair driving games is to improve the A.I., but it's plainly obvious that either developers are holding back or the technology isn't advanced enough yet. Making the games unfair is a poor, but acceptable substitute.

Simply put, racing games get too easy without it. If I wanted to race on my own, I would rather do so under a practice/time trial mode. The only situation I think it's truly unacceptable is in a racing sim, since being able to drive the cars is not only challenging, but also incredibly enjoyable with or without opponents.

You are still working with a faulty definition of "rubber band AI". 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. It is not a solution to poor racing AI, since the devs could just as easily give the AI a fixed advantage in speed/handling that would make the race challenging but would not be rubber banding.

 

[Davey Woo]

I'm not sure if this comes under rubber-band AI as far as I know it isn't based on how well the player is doing, but the problem I have with a lot of racing games is that the 'difficulty' of the opponents is usually handled by simply altering the basic stats of their cars.
For example, rather than making the opponents take better racing lines or attempt risky maneuvers to improve the difficulty, they'll just make their cars faster.

This was most apparent in Forza 2 and 3, the easier bots would have limited acceleration, so even in the same car they'd go slower than you, then to make it more difficult the opponents got boosted acceleration. Considering this was a simulation game I was always a bit disappointed at this cheap way of making the game harder, when they could have done so much more given the great physics in the games.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

snip.

Ah I see. I agree with you, but I don't think gimmick is the right word. A gimmick is generally something that you use in advertising, that makes our product superficially stand out but doesn't actually improve it very much. I'd call the morality system in Fable a gimmick, for example.

But in Bioshock and the last of us I don't remember them ever drawing attention to the fact that your AI companion is invulnerable.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the topic and it seems to me that developers probably just don't sink as much money into AI as they do into graphics and stuff because it's so much harder to show off good AI in the space of a short advertising spot or demonstration. The kind of AI we tend to think of when we say 'good AI' is incredibly hard to code. The best you can usually do is come up with a very general rule that produces results which look like clever AI. For example, a very simple bit of coding to make enemy groups always spread out in a circular motion around the player's coordinates produces something that looks like intelligent flanking movement. But it isn't, there's no complex analysis and response type stuff going on at all.

 

[Fishyash]

You are still working with a faulty definition of "rubber band AI". 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. It is not a solution to poor racing AI, since the devs could just as easily give the AI a fixed advantage in speed/handling that would make the race challenging but would not be rubber banding.

What exactly do you mean by "stronger"?

If you mean "the AI starts cheating once you overtake them to keep up with you", then that's the definition I am using.

If you mean "the AI becomes smarter once you overtake them to keep up with you", then that may exist but at the moment AI in racing games simply isn't smart enough to compete against a competent player. Looking at my first post again it did seem like I was saying rubber banding makes the AI better drivers.

Giving AI a fixed advantage is a much better solution to the challenge issue than rubber banding, but making a smarter AI would mean that experienced players would still be challenged but under fair conditions.
At the moment to defeat unfair AI you have to trick it. If it's faster than you (with a fixed speed/handling advantage), you can take advantage of its poor driving skills by being agressive. If it uses rubber banding, you trick the AI by keeping to a slower pace than you normally drive, and then overtake it just before the end.

 

[Torque2100]

Rubber Banding AI can be done well, but it is a delicate balancing act and all too many games get the balance wrong. However, there are some game genres, such as driving or racing games, where Rubber Banding is almost a necessity.

Case in point: 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.

 

[Suhi89]

I hate it. In a 3 lap race (say) it essentially makes the first 2-2 and a half laps completely pointless. In carting games, giving racers behind better weapons should be enough. In non carting racing games, it should be about how good you are not about making it more fun or interesting.

You should at least be able to turn it off if you don't want it.

 

[VincentX3]

snip.

Ah I see. I agree with you, but I don't think gimmick is the right word. A gimmick is generally something that you use in advertising, that makes our product superficially stand out but doesn't actually improve it very much. I'd call the morality system in Fable a gimmick, for example.

But in Bioshock and the last of us I don't remember them ever drawing attention to the fact that your AI companion is invulnerable.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the topic and it seems to me that developers probably just don't sink as much money into AI as they do into graphics and stuff because it's so much harder to show off good AI in the space of a short advertising spot or demonstration. The kind of AI we tend to think of when we say 'good AI' is incredibly hard to code. The best you can usually do is come up with a very general rule that produces results which look like clever AI. For example, a very simple bit of coding to make enemy groups always spread out in a circular motion around the player's coordinates produces something that looks like intelligent flanking movement. But it isn't, there's no complex analysis and response type stuff going on at all.

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)