AI shooting through hills, houses and walls - Impressions of the game

[strelnikoff 2]

Disclaimer: the following post contains my own personal experience and impression of the game, as seen through the eyes of someone that's been with the series ever since Flashpoint 1985 was announced in 1999 (or 98, can't remember anymore) and the story was still about NATO and USSR fighting over the last three islands left after WWIII. The newest part of the series has serious issues with the AI (and other stuff). Note that my game is updated to the latest patch.

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A lot has been said about the AI in the Opf/Arma series during the last 14 years and for me personally the saddest fact is that as the technology and tools advance, so does AI in BI games degrade.

I still remember with fondness the AI from Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis demo from year 2000 (I think). The best example was a single savegame after which I originally got killed by an enemy that ran up to me for a frontal attack, halfway down the hill to the village from the houses. After reload I waited for him, but he didn't show up. I advanced and fell into his ambush a minute later. Reload and this time he attacked me with three buddies he'd brought along. Reload and he flanked me and fragged me from behind. That playthrough turned from simply enjoying the amazing new game to testing the AI of what it was capable of. And I was astounded. Oh, with all possible ways of doing (aka screwing up) things, Opf had 47 missions IIRC in the main campaign.

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Then came Armed Assault, that left plot questions wide open and never answered.

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After that Arma 2 that wanted to kill my computer, refusing to render at more than 8 fps what little it rendered and an expensive upgrade of the system to run (after I finally did it a year or two later and not because of Arma).

Even then, with a computer that powered through the most modern games like Cryis and Far Cry on highest settings, she did under extreme protests sometimes, especially noticable online. Not counting memory leaks, of course.

Then there were extremely unbalanced factions, one sporting brand new and future vehicles, weapons and equipment, while the other trodding around with stuff they got rid of 10+ years ago and stuff that either got rejected or is used in very small quantity instead of something that's been standard issue for last 10 years and more. Lack of optimisation in A2 was also something I had hoped would be corrected in A3, but wasn't.

Next to imbalance and optimisation AND lack of Opfor campaign (Red Hammer was a blast, too bad it ran off rails halfway through plot-wise), the worst issue was AI which took a nose dive compared to Opf.

We now had to contend with enemies that saw and attacked through trees and bushes.

Which is a really big problem if your consider Chernarus...

There were attempts to fix that, but never truly did. Led to a lot of cursing from players, can remember many colourful remarks online from players that got killed by AI through thick bushes. ACR DLC is best left untouched, there were very few people that I know of actually bought it due to it's problems.

ACE, even with it's issues, inconsistencies and bias, at least put players on a slightly fairer ground towards AI than vanilla.

God (whichever god you worship) help you though if you are in command of an AI squad! Even at x4 time it took the Lame Duck Squad from BAF first mission over 30 seconds to execute something as simple as getting into a measly extraction chopper! In Opf it took only half that time. The campaign also had a significantly less missions, less than a quarter.

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While much better looking (4 years HAVE passed in the meantime), with new stuff like underwater operations (disregarding how little they are used online) and possibility to mod your weapons and chose your uniform and each of the other pieces of equipment - especially when used through the Arsenal system (BIS, for that I do give you a big high-five), Arma3 came not only with more issues, but sadly at the cost of some elements.

Gone is the stuff we've gotten used to since Opf, like quasi-realistic hits-consequence (crawling if hit in legs, inability to aim if hit in arms or head, etc.), no campaign AT ALL at release (which is a bloody disgrace for any single-player game and developer and speaks more of a rushed release than anything else - - by now I've given up hope for Opfor campaign), gone is intuitive aiming from prequels (for example, when you shift your aim left, when you finish your move it goes back slightly) and so on.

In return we get physics that have 4 ton armored vehicles jumping around like ping-pong balls, futuristic stuff that is used mostly on Life, Wasteland and some-other-mission-I-don't-care-to-remember, while "serious mission" servers rather use... well, mods.

Optimisation is even worse than A2.

The well-received and eagerly awaited mods and projects that either bring A2 content into A3 en masse or create familiar from scratch - best of them being RHS Escalation.

Sadly we also get the AI that is the worst of the whole series and has no place appearing in 2013 and staying up to 2015.

I can't shake off the impression of an unfinished game - even more than a year since release (15 months).

Some of the features that were expected for A3, but never arrived in vanilla is for example a way to support a weapon on bipods or environment (even though many weapons have bipods on the models), even though that was already present in A2 with mods like ACE, so the BI dev team could've at least borrowed the mechanics from ACE and implemented it into their game, but haven't done that. Who knows, maybe the ACE team would've even given the code for free just to insure a better game.

The same for the medical system from ACE, which was pretty good, light-years better than vanilla A3. Or, heck, kept the one from A2, it's still better having to crawl from having my knee shattered than just walk a little bit slower with no change in animation.

AI now die much slower and take more hits. In A2 (replayed Harvest Red to confirm) it normally took 2 hits in the chest to take down AI, sometimes even 1 if you were lucky. Now at least twice as that. Coupled with the fact that until they're dead their combat capabilities are untouched.

The fact that the AI's aim just twitches upwards for a moment upon getting hit, but otherwise appearing completely well, adds another element to the dissatisfaction.

Hit/health system in A3 has a creppy Call of Duty feel to it that I can't shake off, where there is one hit-point amount representing the entire body instead of body-part hit/failure and you keep your combat efficiency until the very last health point.

Then there's also clipping through the world and infrastructure.

No notification in MP on rejection for the reason - which mods you are missing.

No 64-bit support and thus no usage of all available RAM (for god's sake, this is 2014!!! even laptops no longer have just 2 gigs of RAM!).

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Then there's the AI...

Where do I start?

Well, to explain, I got A3 only this Autumn, so more than a year since it was released, thus I am operating with a "mature" version of the game. Thus, my view of A3 AI is not sullied by memory of it's beta state.

My first impressions of enemy AI were soldiers continuing to lie in the middle of a street even though they were being fired upon. That was not the worst though and not the reason that I finally got fed up and decided to write and post this.

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Anyway, back to the worst:

- driver AI was never a shining point of the series, it's still pretty bad

- enemies can see and attack through the ground. Map Altis, enemies were in a 20m deep ditch, I was 100m away, laying down behind a small rock wall in a position where the ground was descending, thus making an effect of a small hill between me and the enemy. I got detected and KILLED by them through a 100m of rock, dirt and hill!

- enemies can see through walls and attack with accuracy. I've been experiencing this from the very beginning up to yesterday night when I played this game last. It can be either a metal, concrete or a stone wall, it doesn't matter. Was moving in a compound with a solid metal wall last night - entered it through a side opposite of the enemy - when the to-me-invisible enemies started ripping out at me from 200m (position of enemy force). Other time I was on one side of a concrete wall and popped out to take out an emplaced machine gunner. Even before I could let out one single shot I was already dead, he was just waiting for me to look out even though I had gotten there by way of cover (out of his sight). There were countless cases of enemy AI letting it rip at the side of a house in which I was hiding.

- enemy can see and attack through entire buildings. Got shot through the lowest story of a house by an enemy that by right shouldn't even have known I was there

- enemies got eyes on the back of their heads. By 3rd person view I watched through a window an enemy laying down and facing away from me. Getting back into 1st person I popped out to take him out, but he, as soon as I popped out, in the space of one second, turned and one-shot killed me by a hit in the head at 70m!

- the night doesn't hamper their superhuman skillz any. It's simply impossible to sneak up on an enemy and kill him from close range.

These are just a few examples of superhuman AI skills that have brought me to the end of my patience with this game.

So that no-one can accuse me of just criticising without providing a constructive solution, here it is: bring back Opf AI (or at least A2)! At least in my own opinion it would've been better if BIS were to transplant the AI from those older games into this one.

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After A2 I decided not to buy A3, especially since the proclamations that A3 was to be more geared up towards wider audiences than it's old fanbase (which many time means making a game dumber, easier and more generalised - aka sacrifising it's soul for more sales), but this Autumn I broke down to persuasions of my friends who wanted to play online with me. Even though I waited for a Steam sale, so got the game 50% off, I regret not using that money amount for something better, worthier. Like 2 full tanks of fuel that would get me 500+ kilometers, days of glorious enjoyment on my bike and even possibly memories for a lifetime.

Then just recently I saw an advert and a claim in a review of A3 that made me laugh in disbelief.

Arma 3 the most accurate combat simulator ever? I think not!

Edited December 20, 2014 by strelnikoff

[Tacti-Cool 10]

Is there a question or discussion topic hidden somewhere in here? To me this looks more like a blog.

[strelnikoff 2]

Is there a question or discussion topic hidden somewhere in here? To me this looks more like a blog.

If you can't figure that out yourself, then I can't help you, sorry, mate.

[old_painless 182]

strelnikoff, for what it's worth, they have stated that they are now lending more attention to the AI, their driving, commanding them etc. So if you have had those experiences and want to provide constructive solutions, do make at least a video of the scenario that you have experienced. That will be valuable evidence for some obvious shortcomings that BI can replicate

-OP

[chrisb 196]

You just have to use mods for the AI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edQzO5oIg7o&list=UUzF27w20Ta55Eu96rcW9Bow

These mods doing the work in these videos, are all available to everyone, fairly old, but still work provided you test.

[tebsuuu 10]

i agree 100% to the first post. its also not the communities task to actually make a game playable. its the task of the game developers and then, the modders can bring in even more joy. it still feels like a beta version to me. but give it a few years and it will be a good game :) I am a developer myself and know how hard it can be from time to time. Also, there is a problem that sometimes, the wrong people decide when and what to release.

[chrisb 196]

i agree 100% to the first post. its also not the communities task to actually make a game playable. its the task of the game developers and then, the modders can bring in even more joy. it still feels like a beta version to me. but give it a few years and it will be a good game :) I am a developer myself and know how hard it can be from time to time. Also, there is a problem that sometimes, the wrong people decide when and what to release.

You'll wait much longer than a few years before they get AI anywhere near the level of modded AI. But enjoy the wait.;)

[the_demongod 31]

Arma 3 the most accurate combat simulator ever? I think not!

We've all been over this so many times X(

[strelnikoff 2]

do make at least a video of the scenario that you have experienced. That will be valuable evidence for some obvious shortcomings that BI can replicate

Will try, the problem is though I'm quickly running out of hard-drive space and since I play online it will mean letting FRAPS (with it's gigantic filesizes) record for hours on end in hopes of catching that single moment. xD Thing is though, from discussion just a few hours ago on some server, it's obvious exactly these AI superhuman abilities have been noticed by other players as well since there was a lot of anger over being shot through walls when the AI shouldn't have even known they were there.

You just have to use mods for the AI:

These mods doing the work in these videos, are all available to everyone, fairly old, but still work provided you test.

The problem is I'm playing online and the servers themselves don't have these mods. :(

The bigger point, at least from where I'm looking at it, is, that it's not modders (players) job to fix these bugs, shortcomings, flaws, etc., but that of developers. They are, after all, getting paid for that and it is, literally, in their job description and contract.

For the last few years I've also been getting the impression with the increasing number of devs that they consider us players as not just buyers, but also beta-testers that are paying to beta-test and also free fixers of most of the bugs at the same time. Thus, free labor that is on top of it paying to work for free... Then there's the fact that free demos are a thing of the past what with payable Alphas and Betas, second-hand market is being systematically destroyed or disabled and I'm not sure I like where everything altogether is heading in the gaming industry.

To paraphrase Hamlet, there is something rotten in the land of multimedia.

We've all been over this so many times X(

Don't worry, this time it's not up for discussion or debate, just an expression of my PERSONAL OPINION. :)

i agree 100% to the first post. its also not the communities task to actually make a game playable. its the task of the game developers and then, the modders can bring in even more joy. it still feels like a beta version to me. but give it a few years and it will be a good game :) I am a developer myself and know how hard it can be from time to time. Also, there is a problem that sometimes, the wrong people decide when and what to release.

Agreed! Not to repeat myself, I'm old fashioned in the regard that think Betas should be free demos and released games should also be finished products with as little bugs as possible. I still remember time when bugged-out games (for example SIN) were an abberation and exception rather than the rule and the demos were free to play, rather different to how it is nowadays.

Personally, I would rather wait another year for a game to be released, than get an unplayable, unsable or "unfit for purpose" product. :)

You'll wait much longer than a few years before they get AI anywhere near the level of modded AI.

Sadly I have to admit I am of the same opinion, I don't see the game reaching a satisfactory state for years yet. It HAS been 15 months since release (and more since it became open to public with payable Alpha - has nobody noticed these problems in Alpha and Beta already? how did the game even get through the bug-searching stage and get released in the first place?), which is a lot of time for something to still be in such a state, and we still have this situation.

The best temporary, ONLINE, solution for the AI problems would be large-scale TvT (please note I'm not talking about Life or Wasteland or anything like that, but more along of Domination, etc.), but until a suitable successor to ACE arrives (I know for example that a certain community is waiting to see what will happen with the Veterans mod - VTN, that they consider the biggest potential right now) the biggest TvT A2 communities will wait with moving over to A3 and still continue to play A2.

Until then we can only hope that the devs will instead of giving us nice, but not urgent candy like shooting from the back and vortex ring effect (for minutely realistic flying there is DCS which provides realistic simulation for REALISTIC and real-life aircraft instead of futuristic aircraft for which I at least am not even sure if it should act like that), rather concentrate on the truly pressing issues, problems and bugs.

I'm not saying this game is a steaming pile of dung, there's a lot of good stuff in it and stuff I like, sadly it just has issues, long-standing and ignored issues, that in some situations can become game-breaking. After all, how long would anyone want to play against an opponent that sees and kills through walls before the player can even make a bit of difference, before getting to the point of giving up and walking away?

[maturin 12]

We now had to contend with enemies that saw and attacked through trees and bushes.

Blah blah blah blah, more myths, and blah blah blah.

So OFP AI was better?

Nostalgia is a powerful hallucinogen.

[dnk 13]

I can't compare to OFP. I've played it, but not much, just enough to get a taste after I learned about A1, to see if it was a good series. I started on A1 basically.

Driving AI was definitely better in OFP, I'll say that. It's horrendous now. I do not understand how you can go so far backwards on something that, for as far as I can see, shouldn't have changed at all.

Accuracy is a huge issue, and something I've been complaining about and trying to give constructive feedback on for years, I think. I have little hope of it being changed before A4, or thereafter really.

Tactics are somewhat better now, compared to A2, maybe not OFP. Lots of stupidities persist from A1, though. AI have never really figured out cover, probably because the devs have never really tried to overhaul the way they find it. It's always script changes.

That said, the scripts have changed for the better, but that still hasn't led to an AI that looks, to the player, a whole lot better than in A2 or A1, to some it's worse since the #1 most obvious traits are both their ability to snipe anyone anywhere with 2 shots, and their inability to spot obvious targets and ability to spot impossibly concealed ones also.

I have no clue what it's going to take for BIS to fix the AI in this game, I have low hopes. Given how long hyper-accurate AI have been an issue, and how that's only gotten WORSE since alpha, given it's such an EASY FIX - a damned TWEAK nothing more...

I just play PvP mostly now, and do coop when I want something slower with more teamwork, even if it means a very frustrating and unconvincing experience with the AI.

[Rydygier 1309]

Immensity of some AI problems in Arma and its impact on overall impression is proven to me by a fact, it was discussed so many times and one (like myself) has still a will to do it again. Disturbing fact. So, more exhaustively this time perhaps, to not be too repetitive. To me biggest issues of AI are:

- driving. Stucking (sometimes infinite eg due to inability to using reverse) on the corners, bridges, trees itp, stucking on the stone walls, ramming own infantry or other vehicles, wild behavior in traffic jam situation, mainly when safe (they should stick to the their side of the road, not trying to turn off road, and wait patiently if blocked. Some car horn and bad language usage suggested. Current behaviour (going offroad/back to detour) is expected in combat mode/panic situations or after long wait or in the situation, when obviously road will be not cleared (static object blocking)) - one of the causes of the next problem, which is convoy driving. Finally - armored vehicles behaviour in combat situations - not keeping thickest armor towards main threat. Not using cover opportunities to reduce silhuette/hide from overwhelming fire. Reckless moving in open under AT fire;

- spotting&recognizing and other inhuman behaviour. It's not about tweaking, it's about whole concept leading to inhuman results, includes also "grass syndrome" due to surface based spotting - when fighting agains AI seems fair turn off the grass. AI can recognize side of the unit from far, even if in the neutral/friendly looking vehice. Whole knowledge mechanism is inhuman as for results. As long knowledge about the target is high, its position will be in the AI mind updated precisely and right away even if target made unexpected maneuvers out of LOS. Inhuman ability to follow with focused mind multiple targets at a time. Group telepathy with fast and perfectly accurate(!) knowledge sharing about target's position etc. Like shouting in stress "he is over there! At that house! Not this one. That one, damn!". Could be that reliable, especialy if you can't point with your finger and communicate only by voice, like via radio. Lack of focus level effect at all - careless or distracted AI shouldn't be that vigilant, able to recognize threats as fast, as when it's in the aware/combat. Also belonged keeping focused is mind tiring and impacts reflexes. Lack of confusion simulation when surprised, eg when in ambush, no problems with determining who is shooting from where exactly. Not so easy in RL I would suppose - compare with the player in such situation. Lack of human errors simulation in judgement and actions. Background doesn't affect spotting and recognizing. Its about similarity of the not contrast colors (camo pattern useless), but also many other moving objects (strong wind in the forest - not so easy to spot movement in such case) or when target hidden amongst many other similar units (feathering in the crowd effect not counted). It's also about recognizing by sounds, when there is many similar sounds around or simply too loud. Where is smell factor? Human-like reactions on wounds/wounded/bodies? Also not sure, how fatigue affects AI. I would guess, doesn't affect at least spotting/recognition. Not mentioning about such fancy aspects like long term weariness and its impact on reaction times. reflex etc. Some chance for surprising, not typical reaction. Stupor effect. Panic shooting. Friendly fire risks eg due to bad recognizing or situation judgement - such things, and most of listed bounded with the skill of course. Etc. - basically all, what differes AI behavior in given situation from expeceted human behavior in RL in same situation. Name it.;

- tardiness, mostly when under player's control - no way, even scripted, to overwrite some combat behaviours, which leads to more general problem of lack scripting tools to get really full control over AI behaviour.

- any kind of coordinated efforts between groups (or even simple sharing informations), long range arty support etc. needs scripts sadly, so arty by itself is nearly as useless as in A2;

- accuracy? Maybe, but it's at least tweakable easy enough...

Code efficiency (like each unit with separate FSM thread) is another matter.

When I'm saying, AI issues are most annoying problem to me in Arma, I have in mind all above.

I started to suspect some serious, deep misunderstanding between community and BI devs working with AI as for the nature of the AI problems and ways to fix it. Something like devs see AI state quite differently than the players. Lately I saw a post nailing again main, old like the time itself AI problems in Arma (no, not shooting through the bushes, which obviously should be possible, it's rather about accuracy of shooting at consealed, but known target, nor through the terrain, which I never seen). It was answered by a dev (!), and he in the response requested... a repro mission. Like it was about some newly discovered, unexpected small bug hard to reproduce and easy to tweak out or fixing via finding failing code line. Disturbing again.

Edited December 21, 2014 by Rydygier

[eymerich 11]

Those are the issue that destroy the game in my opinion:

- Ai is unable to Drive;

- Ai SuperHuman which destroy the immersion;

- Bad optimization. I usually play with 25/35 fps with some Ai units (15/20 on the map) which is a standard i can't accept. Just to be honest and Fair, I have an Amd esacore 1090 at 3.2 Gn and an Ati 280 my pc is a bit old (Visibility 2500 and object 1850). But I can play at Dragon's Age Inquisition at max rate with no lag or stutter so, if the code is welle executed, my rig is able to execute a game of the last generation.

- Sound issues and stutter I can no more play until it's fixed.

So, yes, I agree with the OP.

[chrisb 196]

Will try, the problem is though I'm quickly running out of hard-drive space and since I play online it will mean letting FRAPS (with it's gigantic filesizes) record for hours on end in hopes of catching that single moment. xD Thing is though, from discussion just a few hours ago on some server, it's obvious exactly these AI superhuman abilities have been noticed by other players as well since there was a lot of anger over being shot through walls when the AI shouldn't have even known they were there.

..snip..

Sadly I have to admit I am of the same opinion, I don't see the game reaching a satisfactory state for years yet. It HAS been 15 months since release (and more since it became open to public with payable Alpha - has nobody noticed these problems in Alpha and Beta already? how did the game even get through the bug-searching stage and get released in the first place?), which is a lot of time for something to still be in such a state, and we still have this situation.

Regards servers and mods, probably why playing in a group is better, that way everyone tends to decide on which mod/addons to use. But I can see your problem concerning public servers & mods.:(

I agree with you that its not the communities place to fix problems for the developers.

But just a thought. Players play differently, some love to be a pilot and play sky warfare/combat. For that you'll need great AI pilots to play against. Some players like tank warfare, others small spec op type things, then there's the huge battlefield scenarios and so on. You can see where this is going.:rolleyes:

We play this series because we want to do all these things, or lets face it, we’d be playing games dedicated to those particular aspects of war, if all we wanted to be was one thing.

The reason why most of us play this series, is the fact we can do all the various war-gaming things in one place. This series covers most all warfare types. So we have to settle for a middle ground concerning AI, an AI that can do all these things to a certain degree. After that we have to accept, that there is every likelihood we'll have to use other things to help tweak AI up another few notches if we want, even better, game-play. That usually means using mod/addons.;)

The other night our group was stuck on an enemy island, having lost our lift out (heli). We had enemy trucks with search lights (it was night time), random motorised patrols, search teams, enemy heli's overhead and we were trying to get to the coastline to look for some type of boat to get us off the island. For the last two hours of that mission, there was not a shot fired, until the very quick end. But so immersive it felt like we were there. Sneaking around, worried at each step that we'd get found. Enemy troops (all AI modded), everywhere, searching every building, yard, wooded area, we could see. With us sneaking from place to place not knowing where they would search next. Thinking could that enemy heli be bringing in more troops, we had seen two heli's drop off units.

We were slowly edging towards the coast. When we finally got to the coast, they had coastal patrols (boats). We had to take our time, waiting for the right opportunity to get a fishing boat and get out, it was very immersive game-play. Knowing that at any moment a patrol could stop us in our tracks. It was great, nothing like it in any other war game. Helped of course by mod/addons. (this was in A2CO). We got a boat, then got spotted by a ground team searching along the coastline, they couldn't do us much damage and they knew it, they only fired a few shots. But we knew why they weren't really trying that hard, they would be communicating back and sure enough, a heli arrived just minutes later. Then it was just a case of goodbye, we tried our best. It ended very quickly.

That's why I play and don't think too much about what's wrong, when there is soo much right, once you get to a level of play with the right mod/addons in place. Really you can't get much better, well any better war-game to be fair.

But, yes, you will need to use some mod/addons to get that really good stable/reliable game-play.:)

[dnk 13]

seems fair turn off the grass.

AI can recognize side of the unit from far, even if in the neutral/friendly looking vehice. Whole knowledge mechanism is inhuman as for results.

precisely and right away even if target made unexpected maneuvers out of LOS.

Inhuman ability to follow with focused mind multiple targets at a time.

Group telepathy with fast and perfectly accurate(!) knowledge sharing about target's position etc.

Agreed.

Also, I'll mention another biggie: AI suck at micromovements. It seems they're still on a placement grid with a resolution of about 1m. Trying to move them anywhere really specific is flat-out impossible. I have never seen this in another game. At least a few issues probably boil down to this huge issue.

[strelnikoff 2]

- Sound issues and stutter I can no more play until it's fixed.

Thank you for mentioning that as I completely forgot about one very weird problem I had 2 weeks ago while playing Wasteland. I don't know how, I don't know why, but there was some conflict between A3 and Teamspeak. End result was that I had absolutely no sound in the game from the start, which I started with TS already running. Only when I closed down the game and steam and restarted both, then reconnected to the server did I have sound again. Absolutely puzzling.

For that you'll need great AI pilots to play against.

Now that you mention it, last night I played on a server (I won't say which for their and my protection ;-) ) where, after the end of the round a pilot complained about having been shot and killed by a ground AI with a rifle while he was flying. I've never played with him before so I can't say whether I believe him (it does sound pretty unbelievable), but the others who know him did. Then again, with what I saw online after I wrote my last post last night, it is possible. And I can remember my own experience in A2 about being killed by an Land Rover mounted SPG on 2 or 3 km while flying a Cobra perpendicular to it at 190 kmh - those deadly accurate SPG's had me cursing a lot in A2. One can imagine what it was like having to explain to the ground leader (who was also the community leader) that their only CAS has been killed by an unguided rocket.

Lack of focus level effect at all - careless or distracted AI shouldn't be that vigilant, able to recognize threats as fast, as when it's in the aware/combat. Also belonged keeping focused is mind tiring and impacts reflexes.

I read recently (I think on this forum, another thread) a good description about AI: it's got only two modes: aware and combat and nothing else.

[froggyluv 2136]

Disagree on 'seeing through the Earth', agree on AI needs some long needed TLC to humanize them abit. The fact that most military gunfights are about suppressing with overwhelming firepower, morale, fear, surprise and ambush -seems to have been largely ignored in what is essentially an infantry sim still boggles the mind. Yes the AI infantry have made some great strides from OFP and those that think OFP was better simply dont remember "Can't get there".

But I also remember mention of a new team who's sole job was to focus on believability and competancy of the AI. The entire focus up until now seems to be that of small, streamlining steps rather than any real change or improvements to the AI's behavior. For instance, "The Flinch" was added as a bullet hit reaction as an improvement to the non-responsive, stoic, bullet hitting of Arm2. Did it help improve immersion -not really. Very little to nothing was done to add better battlefield animations for behavours like ducking and running for cover, lateral movement, quicker transitions for direction changes to make them look less robotic, and worst, animation and action to match their scream outs "Go! I'll cover" -while not covering at all....

How about a team or hell, 2 real world combat vets that do nothing other than explain and calibrate the AI's accuracy and detecting levels? It's been years of people individually trying to find a sweet spot in the accuracy dept which should be solidly set in stone as a system. The default setting s are almost to no ones liking and just assuming for their fanbase to calibrate is to offer up a game of chess in which pawns can move wherever they like. Fun games need tight rules of believability -even sandbox. MANW money could cover their salary.

I prefer CQB, urban battles and without question, they are better than OFP which was literally non-existent. AI are no longer hindered by trivial landscape obstacles and the use of corners and complicated landscape is far, far better. Shame that they went as far as to make them aware of wall corners and ducking fences but retreating to and/or firing from house windows and doors totally ignored - a huge part of real world insurgent conflict. AI that have zero chance of counterfighting ie. Riflemen vs nearby Armor should have built in defense awareness like run like hell, hide inside etc...

Just hope that someone there really has vision and wants to move forward with AI rather than just streamline it and ask for repros for obvious issues.

[teach 1]

Evidence: Game does not fully use all four cores limiting cycles for AI processing (not to mention no hyperthreading support)

Evidence: Game engine AMAZINGLY not designed for 64bit OS thus having access to all RAM. Why? You know why.

Also, as a Operation Flashpoint till now player, I really really really dislike the greek isle locale and futuristic era chosen. Why not current battlefields modern weapons? So much to chose from (IRAQ, SYRIA, UKRAINE, RUSSIA, USA, CHINA, on and on.) yet we get weird nations, weird weapons, and goofy locations.

[strelnikoff 2]

Disagree on 'seeing through the Earth',

Sure, call me a liar, why don't you? :(

Yes the AI infantry have made some great strides from OFP and those that think OFP was better simply dont remember "Can't get there".

Which wasn't as frequent as the all-present superhuman AI in A3... It happened, but not every time. Enemy combat AI in A3 is tons worse than in Opf as it's evident from other threads and even from the posts of people in this thread.

Frustration with stupid pathfinding (re the time it takes for squad to board a chopper in A2, many times ending with them standing around uselessly because even in A2 they are basically saying "Can't get there!") is a different type of cake than combat AI of the enemy that can and will sour the game with already-mentioned superhuman abilities.

Like the first parts of the Medal of Honor series (which took place in WWII) where a German sniper would kill you from 1km the very first fraction of a second your first hair peeked out from behind a house as you turned that corner for the very first time. IIRC most of the early MoH games were notorious for ultra accurate and fast AI.

There was also the Delta Force series by Novalogic, which I otherwise liked, where they would hit you with an RPG head-on at 300m, but just wouldn't see you when you were standing in front of them. No joking, I actually tried it in Black Hawk Down part - located an enemy in an alley and rushed towards him, stopping about 1.5m in front of him and waiting. What did he do? He continued crouching and looking around for enemy, took him more than 10 seconds to get a clue I was getting into his face. and even then he didn't care to terminate me with prejudice, rather taking a few haphazard pot-shots in my direction.

You can get around friendly AI pathfinding problems by eventually just leaving them at the starting position or letting them get slaughtered and then finishing the misison by yourself, but you can't get around AI spotting and attacking you through hard cover considering that contact with them is the very goal of the mission and thus unavoidable.

I personally find AI killing me in every possible and impossible way much more frustrating than a friendly AI that doesn't want to cooperate. Either I leave him there or simply shoot him in the head to save myself complaints about being too far and loot his body for weapons; but AI that's slaughtering me every step of the way doesn't leave me much chance to dealt with except for eventually giving up.

The entire focus up until now seems to be that of small, streamlining steps rather than any real change or improvements to the AI's behavior. ... snipped... Very little to nothing was done to add better battlefield animations for behavours .... snipped... How about a team or hell, 2 real world combat vets that do nothing other than explain and calibrate the AI's accuracy and detecting levels? .... snipped.... The default setting s are almost to no ones liking and just assuming for their fanbase to calibrate is to offer up a game of chess in which pawns can move wherever they like. Fun games need tight rules of believability -even sandbox.

Agreed.

I prefer CQB, urban battles and without question,

To each his own. :) I personally loved the challenge of adapting to varied terrain and conditions. Got more thrill out of devising tactics for new situations and then executing a perfect assault, using every advantage and then finishing with no casualties, than the fast-paced combat of CQB. If I had a wish for that I had America's Army and CoD to fulfill it.

they are better than OFP which was literally non-existent.

Well, of course it was inexistent in Opf, what with urban environments consisting of 5-10 houses sparsely thrown around and the maps being mostly rural or wilderness. :p :D

[Westonsammy 1]

- enemies can see and attack through the ground. Map Altis, enemies were in a 20m deep ditch, I was 100m away, laying down behind a small rock wall in a position where the ground was descending, thus making an effect of a small hill between me and the enemy. I got detected and KILLED by them through a 100m of rock, dirt and hill!

The theory that AI can see through terrain has already been disproved multiple times with tests and the like, also in my 700+ hours of ArmA 3 I have never, ever seen AI shoot through the terrain, and have never seen or heard of it happening before.

- enemies can see through walls and attack with accuracy. I've been experiencing this from the very beginning up to yesterday night when I played this game last. It can be either a metal, concrete or a stone wall, it doesn't matter. Was moving in a compound with a solid metal wall last night - entered it through a side opposite of the enemy - when the to-me-invisible enemies started ripping out at me from 200m (position of enemy force). Other time I was on one side of a concrete wall and popped out to take out an emplaced machine gunner. Even before I could let out one single shot I was already dead, he was just waiting for me to look out even though I had gotten there by way of cover (out of his sight). There were countless cases of enemy AI letting it rip at the side of a house in which I was hiding.

- enemy can see and attack through entire buildings. Got shot through the lowest story of a house by an enemy that by right shouldn't even have known I was there

AI cannot necessarily "see" where you are when you run behind a building or wall, but they can guess. Usually when you run behind something the AI can penetrate, they will keep shooting in your general direction in an attempt to kill you, like any normal person would. As for their accuracy when blasting the side of a house or wall, I haven't noticed too much of a problem, I rarely get hit by this and i'm pretty sure I have never been killed this way.

Just wanted to clarify on those two points, you do make some other legitimate criticisms about the AI, but I want people to focus on those, not on the ones that have been disproved time and time again.

[ProfTournesol 956]

The theory that AI can see through terrain has already been disproved multiple times with tests and the like, also in my 700+ hours of ArmA 3 I have never, ever seen AI shoot through the terrain, and have never seen or heard of it happening before.

Agreed. That's only a lack of comprehension of AI guess work.

[strelnikoff 2]

The theory that AI can see through terrain has already been disproved multiple times with tests and the like, also in my 700+ hours of ArmA 3 I have never, ever seen AI shoot through the terrain, and have never seen or heard of it happening before.

A theory stops being a theory when it happens. Then it become empirical. There was no other AI around and I got killed by gunshots from AI.

Just because you yourself never experienced it doesn't mean it hasn't or can't happen. Which I guess means you're still either regarding me as a liar or a fool. :icon_rolleyes:

AI cannot necessarily "see" where you are when you run behind a building or wall, but they can guess. Usually when you run behind something the AI can penetrate, they will keep shooting in your general direction in an attempt to kill you, like any normal person would. As for their accuracy when blasting the side of a house or wall, I haven't noticed too much of a problem, I rarely get hit by this and i'm pretty sure I have never been killed this way.

Well, I guess you're pretty lucky then, because many people HAVE been. Just look around, scroll through the forums and talk to players on servers. I have and I've long since confirmed through personal talks and listening to others talk among each other that it's also happening to them. Otherwise I wouldn't have been making these claims.

[Greenfist 1863]

He's not calling you a liar, he's disagreeing, i.e. saying you're probably wrong. And frankly, so am I.

I've never witnessed the AI seeing through solid terrain, nor have I seen any proof of that by other players. In most cases which may seem like the AI is spotting or shooting through terrain, the AI has seen you before you enter the cover and starts shooting at your general direction where they think you are, or they're seeing some very small part of you even though you can't see them. If the bullets really do go through terrain then we have very serious problem. Or maybe this is an issue with terrain grid detail? You know, when distant objects are floating because the ground they're on isn't rendered? Maybe the AI sees different terrain grid than you? I don't know.

And the AI generally can't see through buildings and vegetation. Those models have visual geometries which obscure the AI's line of sight. Although in some rare occasions the buildings have "leaks" in their models, so especially when the AI is already aware of your presence, seeing a glimpse of you through these holes is enough for them to engage you. And they will keep firing at the position where they predict you are if they see you enter a cover, even though it completely blocks their LOS. And they will keep shooting if their bullets will penetrate the obstacle. This is exactly what a human player would do too.

In addition, often there are tiny cracks between two objects, like concrete fences which consist of multiple segments lined up; the two models don't overlap and correctly block the line of sight. So while it's impossible for a human to detect someone through these cracks, the skilled AI will have no trouble.

Also the bushes are tricky. Their view blocking geometry is most likely just a simple box in the thickest center. Hence their outmost semi-transparent branches will make a target behind them invisible to human eye, but AI will clearly see a small piece of you and start shooting at it.

And the AI does not have eyes on the back of the head. Their field of view is ridiculously high and their hearing is impeccable, but you can still easily sneak up behind them undetected, at least at a decent distance. And at night you can move pretty close right in front of them.

The spotting and accuracy can be adjusted with AI skill settings, but it usually makes the AI either superhuman or totally blind, deaf and stupid.

I agree, the system is flawed, partly even completely broken, but not as badly as you make it sound, in my opinion. :)

[roshnak 41]

I have and I've long since confirmed through personal talks and listening to others talk among each other that it's also happening to them. Otherwise I wouldn't have been making these claims.

This is not how you confirm something.

It wouldn't be that hard to set up a test to make sure that what you are describing is actually happening. Although, it really couldn't be, since bullets don't pass through terrain, and when they pass through walls/objects their trajectories are altered in way that would make any sort of exceptional accuracy that the AI has pretty much irrelevant (with the exception of high caliber weapons).

I agree with Greenfist. The system is broken, but probably not in the ways that you think it is.

Edited December 23, 2014 by roshnak

[chrisb 196]

I don't play A3 much, so can't really talk for that. However the seeing through bushes, buildings, walls etc, just didn't happen for me in A2/A2CO, BAF, ACR etc. I have done tests on my YT channel showing that ai don't see through things ( for me anyway). Now if that has changed a great deal in A3, I don't know, because I'm never in the game that long to find out.

Driving wise, it is a part from SLX that I use for ai driving, works great, provided you plan their route wisely. Didn't really have many problems when I used that.

Another issue players mentioned a while back concerning A2, was the instant detection of the player on detonating explosives. Again I have tests on YT showing that I didn't have that problem either. Some of these problems I believe, could be system related.

Regards ai tracking your movement when you go behind a wall or something solid. They do track, but provided you don't appear where they think your going to, then you tend to be o.k. It is a problem that they track movement from inside buildings, it can be a little off putting, tends to happen with heli's or armoured vehicles. But its easy enough to catch out an ai unit in a building by going around and coming at them from the back. So they can't track movement when they don't know your there, or they would be stood waiting for you to appear, surely.;)

Now if all this has changed in A3, then BI have stepped back instead of forward ai behaviour wise.

Edit: I should add that I play user made missions not the campaign, so can't speak for those either.