138 réponses à ce sujet

[Mechwarrior6]

I think I can shed some light on the Shadow situation.

Now I can't be exactly sure since I don't own it, but from what I've heard it uses the exact same mechanics are biotic charge, and I've played the Kroguard quite a lot.

The way teleports (biotic charge, shadow strike, banshee teleport, and maybe fury/slayer dodge) is that they don't travel to the location, they teleport directly there. Now when you use biotic charge (this is way more noticeable on the kroguard's slower charge) the character plays an animation, then travels to the position, then the power does damage.

The thing is, your position never blinks out of existence or travels, the moment your character starts traveling your position is immediately changed to the target location. Because the power hits after the travel time, there's a period where your character is considered directly next to the enemy and the damage hasn't been dealt and they have a chance to react to that. It's very common to charge a guardian and rather than staggering him, he starts to melee, and hits me as soon as I come out of charge.

Now it looks to me like shadow strike is even slower than biotic charge, which gives the enemy even more time to react. So I think that whatever is happening is either a sound caused during the travel or a footstep made by when the position changed.

[mrwizeguy]

This is so much good stuff.

I wonder how much more we could ask ...

Thank you again Mr Holmes for all the feedback.

You have my vote as BSN's favorite dev.

Modifié par mrwizeguy, 28 juillet 2012 - 11:48 .

[Hypertion]

hey, why are Rocket Troopers seemingly able to fire several Rockets back to back at random? also how is it that Hunters can still Fire while preforming the stunned animation, while knocked to the ground, or held in stasis?

[DnVill]

Really informative responses thanks.

Though I have a question that might be slightly off-topic.

The Geth Primes curving plasma shots, are they considered a bug or a feature?

I find it kinda silly that these shots seem to track you. I know this applies to the GPS as well which makes it really effective.

[.458]

NewStrings wrote...

Brenon Holmes wrote...

Also to mention about detections after using a medic gel where enemies immediately start attacking you before you even got up. Especially for phantoms and geth turrets, it kinda feel like being spawn camped when you're the last one alive...

I am kind of curious... what would you expect them to do in that case? You do currently have 100% immunity to damage until you regain control...

I know I'm going back a bit here, but this is a frustrating issue. When you say that we have 100% immunity until we regain control, you're talking AI time. If I go down beside a Phantom (I know, my fault for dying, but still), the Phantom camps my corpse even though there are three other people alive on the map. And if I medi-gel she hits me within a hundredth of a second of regaining control and I'm insta-killed at worst, or dead again at best. It's all very well having immunity until you regain control but if you can't do anything (e.g. escape, shoot, fire a power) before getting killed again then it's pointless.

I know that phantoms seem to never offer a chance to recover...they're sometimes worse on stun lock than geth. I'm guessing though that this won't happen if you are host. But let's say you 200 ms latency to host, your control time might take 400 ms to really do something. Non-hosts may never recover and have a disadvantage. The enemy has no latency to host.

Modifié par .458, 28 juillet 2012 - 12:47 .

[Pifase]

Very interesting discussion indeed

I would love to hear more about enemy's AI:
- pathfinding
- tactical intelligence, how many infantry tactical manuals you had to read etc.
- use of cover, it varies in all enemy factions. Is there somekind of damage treshold when to cover?
- Do enemies react player formations? 4x lone wolfs vs. very tight group formation? Is there a difference?
- Have developers ever been suprised by the players? For example do we perform poorly in some situations or very well on others?

[.458]

Pifase wrote...
...
- Have developers ever been suprised by the players? For example do we perform poorly in some situations or very well on others?

Unchained Humanity...oh, that is a nasty combination indeed.

It's probably outside the scope of this thread, but I would find it very interesting to know if the devs talk about more complex AI behavior on bigger/newer maps/scenarios...something that would be more challenging to the brain even without more buffed enemy.

[neurovore]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

neurovore wrote...
But I wasn't satisfied with it myself. Could there not have been an "explore behavior" for right after spawning? ie. the enemy simply starts exploring the battlefield, until first contact, after which the gunfire would draw the others in, possibly causing some flanking to occur. Sure, most of the time there's already gunfire going on when the enemy is spawning. But in order to encourage flanking, randomly choose a few midlevel units (hunters, pyros, centurions, brutes, anything semi-durable and reasonably fast) to explore for 10-15 seconds and then get drawn towards gunfire, unless they run into a "first contact" before that. Dunno. Just hyperbole, like I said. No effect on this game, but perhaps in the future.

And drones being able to crowd control Banshees due to glitches... This annoys me a fair bit. People are clamoring for difficulty, but instead of asking for AI-crippling issues to be fixed, they want a new difficulty level.

Well, I think you could look at this one of several ways:

* If we did have an explore behaviour - they'd explore for a short duration (as you point out), then have contact with the player force and start to fight... from that point on, you'd basically have what you have now for all intents and purposes.

This is true, but at the moment, many people consider the fact that the enemy basically tries to zerg directly towards the player a problem; the enemy is too predictable. They want to be challenged (not me, mind you. Gold is plenty challenging for me.) and surprised. This "explore mode" was my humble attempt at addressing that problem to a small degree, though due to the fact that a lot of the maps are very compact it is impossible to eliminate this problem entirely.

Brenon Holmes wrote...
The issue being that we would have had to make additional behaviours (patrol? search?), plus ambient behaviours... (if the players are all cloaked... the enemies need to look somewhat intelligent while sitting around doing basically nothing). The feature set for the AI starts to get a bit out of hand when you start including all these additional behaviours that don't necessarily support the primary gameplay... :happy:

* We don't really have stealth gameplay across all classes... so while it might be pretty interesting for one of six classes, it isn't really something that everyone could benefit from easily.

I understand that the enemy needs to look as smart as possible with as simple an AI as possible, so that it doesn't start doing anything twitchy at the slightest adjustments. I don't know if stealthing is a real issue in this regard, since you can't spend 80%+ of your time stealthed. Of course, if you just stand in corners quietly between stealth cycles, the enemy won't hear you. That's where the enemy would have to get inventive.

Nevertheless, I would consider that normal battlefield behavior and perhaps apply an increased capacity for stealth detection (since the it doesn't make the player invisible) and a hefty accuracy penalty (if there isn't one, which I'm not sure of, since enemies seem perfectly capable of some pretty incredible marksmanship against cloaked targets) instead. But as I said, this is mostly just hyperbole, since I am not a coder and know next to nothing. I just construct systems

Brenon Holmes wrote...
* Narratively, you're being inserted into a hostile space... I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that they know you're coming.

I'm rather reluctant to bring narrative into the Multiplayer, since I don't really think it works in this type of game... Too many questions. "If they want victory, why do they make us pay for weapons? And even then, why give them at random? And whom are they making their payments anyways?" There are ways to fill in the blanks, sure, but that works both ways

In conclusion, I'm really taken by the fact that you're taking time to answer our questions. This is the kind of customer support we (or I have, at least) have yearned for since... a long time ago. Keep up the awesome work, Brenon!

Modifié par neurovore, 28 juillet 2012 - 06:05 .

[.458]

This thread makes me wonder something very arcane...if the use of a power or biotic makes noise, does that mean that the very act of an infiltrator going into tactical cloak can be heard and attract the bad guys?

[YIRAWK]

How do enemy turrets and drones targeting system work? I notice that they can shoot cloaked enemies from a long distance away without seeing them cloak and without being in footstep range. Is this the mentioned peeking or do they have a special targeting system?

[Brenon Holmes]

reioni wrote...

Ok this post has answered most of my questions about when Decoy fails it's mostly due to someone drawing the enemy's attention away from the decoy but you're saying there are certain enemies it's NOT supposed to agro.  Does this include a decoy with shock traited to help draw the attention?  Or is it shock that's causing the bug to happen and drawing their attention?  Also, are banshees the only ones that are supposed to ignore the decoys (because it seems like when a well place/use decoy is ignored it's by an elite [atlas, prime, etc])?  The description on the skill itself doesnt specify that certain targets will ignore it.  It just says "Distract opponents with this decoy".  I had always thought there was just a chance that the elites might "see through" the deception of the decoy.

I don't really want to go into the specifics of how the bug is reproduced... but basically certain enemies (bosses and  some melee only enemies) are supposed to ignore some player pets entirely. As if they weren't there... so speccing it differently wouldn't affect that.

Shadow Strike -  I had a wierd bug where i came around a corner a good distrance from a Non-leaping Banshee, far enough away I wasnt worried about magnet hands and to get some distance from her I Cloaked and then used Shadow Strike on a target farther behind her.  As I was using my space magic to fly though the air with shadow strike, when i whooshed past her, before i had landed at my target, good ol' magnet hands McBanshee grabbed me mid air.  Shouldnt I have had less weight because I was cloaked?  How does your system justify that one?

It depends on how Shadow strike works - again I'm not really sure about the specifics. If you teleport, that doesn't really make any sense to have occurred... if you physically move across the intervening space, it makes a bit more sense - either you aren't actually "cloaked" as far as the game is concerned, or she heard you as you were moving past. Again though, I'd have to look at the code to get a better idea.

Fury (and I think these questions work for slayer as well be I dont have one) - 2 questions about this one. 

When you dodge through a wall how does that effect your threat wieght?  I do realize you are now out of their LOS but they dont really see where you've gone from there (did you go left, right or straight) are they going to "cheat" and see what direction you ran off in before you are in their LOS again?

Nope, they'll get pretty confused. The teleport doesn't have any directionality for the AI... so from their perspective, if you go through the wall - it's basically like you just vanished. If they can see where you end up, they'll react normally (as if you'd just moved laterally incredibly quickly).

Second question.... those Banshee Magnet hands...I've poofed through a wall away from a banshee and she has somehow managed to teleport just her hands through the wall and pull me right back in to the room.  The time between my poof and my surpise reapperance thanks to Magnet Hands McBanshee I thought would have been sufficient to account for server lag.   I guess this would go back to my first question on the fury/slayer and ask is the threat just the same even though you're now out of the line of site and she bugged and grabbed me or was this just a very wierd server lag thing?

I've mentioned it in a couple other threads, but there are some bugs with the Banshee sync kill - mostly related to how long it takes her to turn. Essentially there can be a 1-2 second delay after she decides to kill you (while she's turning to face you) in worst cases... after that delay you're going to get synced. Throw in a bit of latency and the problem is a bit worse. There's a fix in a future patch that will makes that particular issue better.

haisho wrote...

Interesting question: does suppressive fire force the AI into a defensive position, or will they move as they normally would?

 

Sort of - when in cover they don't like to shoot when they're under fire. So if you spray at them, they'll keep their heads down until you stop for a bit. :happy:

.458 wrote...

I also want to thank Brenon for his replies. Feedback is incredibly nice to have.

I was just thinking, because of replies above, it might be nice to have a new attachment to weapons: A supressor to eliminate enough noise to become even harder to find. That's a big part of the real world sniper. Also for people who don't lose their hearing. Hmm, one more thing...since walking makes noise, and so do weapons, it would be fun to have gear for quiet walking, and suppressor for weapons. Detection is a huge part of the game.

 

That's an interesting idea, I can poke Eric and the guys about it.

NewStrings wrote...

I know I'm going back a bit here, but this is a frustrating issue. When you say that we have 100% immunity until we regain control, you're talking AI time. If I go down beside a Phantom (I know, my fault for dying, but still), the Phantom camps my corpse even though there are three other people alive on the map. And if I medi-gel she hits me within a hundredth of a second of regaining control and I'm insta-killed at worst, or dead again at best. It's all very well having immunity until you regain control but if you can't do anything (e.g. escape, shoot, fire a power) before getting killed again then it's pointless. 

 

Well, technically she should be ignoring you now... since dead people aren't really valid targets. I know what you mean though as I've definitely experienced that myself. I'm not exactly sure what she (and some other enemies) is/are doing. We can add that to the list of things to look into.

Hypertion wrote...

hey, why are Rocket Troopers seemingly able to fire several Rockets back to back at random? also how is it that Hunters can still Fire while preforming the stunned animation, while knocked to the ground, or held in stasis?

The rocket issue has to do with in-cover fire delays vs. out of cover fire delays. They work through different systems, so if a Rocket Trooper transitions from in-cover to out of cover rapidly he can sometimes get off two shots with his rocket since they're tracked with separate timers. Other enemies can do this as well, but it's no-where near as noticeable.

With Hunters, I'm not really sure - I don't know that I've seen that particular issue. If I had to guess though, I suspect it would have something to do with the mechanics of the Geth Shotgun and it being a charge weapon. Most likely the shot will just go off if their shot was cancelled in mid-shot.

DnVill wrote...

Really informative responses thanks.

Though I have a question that might be slightly off-topic.

The Geth Primes curving plasma shots, are they considered a bug or a feature?

I find it kinda silly that these shots seem to track you. I know this applies to the GPS as well which makes it really effective.

 

It's intentional - certain projectile shots have seeking on them. Banshee, Geth Rocket, Atlas Rocket, Ravager Shot, Geth Prime, Geth Prime Rocket Drone. The amount varies a bit, when we didn't have it on them Geth Primes were pretty trivial... and that (the seeking) felt better than cranking up the speed on the projectiles. :happy:

Modifié par Brenon Holmes, 28 juillet 2012 - 10:41 .

[Razerath]

I tried looking to see if you already said it but what is the average distance in which an enemy can "hear" you run, shoot, get an objective, cloak etc...?

[Brenon Holmes]

Pifase wrote...

Very interesting discussion indeed  

I would love to hear more about enemy's AI:
- pathfinding
- tactical intelligence, how many infantry tactical manuals you had to read etc.

The AIs use standard Unreal pathfinding, path nodes that define what you could think of as train rails all over the level. The AIs can evaluate if a particular section of the path is dangerous (exposed to enemy fire, people died there recently... etc) and incorporate that into the path they'd like to take when closing with the player.

Well... there's a difference between actual intelligence and perceived intelligence. It's actually pretty easy to make an AI that can be murderous and beat the crap out of the player - since they generally have a lot more information about the simulation than the player does... however that's not usually very fun.

We focused more on behaviours and abilities that could easily be understood - and thus easily dealt with by players. The interesting part was when those behaviours were then combined... all in all I think we're relatively happy with the result. :happy:

- use of cover, it varies in all enemy factions. Is there somekind of damage treshold when to cover? 
- Do enemies react player formations? 4x lone wolfs vs. very tight group formation? Is there a difference?
- Have developers ever been suprised by the players? For example do we perform poorly in some situations or very well on others? 

There are thresholds on when to stop leaning out of cover, yes. The enemies will *seem* to react to players spreading out :happy:. That mostly has to do with targetting algorithms and pathfinding though.

.458 wrote...

It's probably outside the scope of this thread, but I would find it very interesting to know if the devs talk about more complex AI behavior on bigger/newer maps/scenarios...something that would be more challenging to the brain even without more buffed enemy.

 

A little, but large scale AI changes aren't really in the cards... it took us a long time to develop the systems that we have now - it'd take a fair chunk of time to work out something new. :happy:

.458 wrote...

This thread makes me wonder something very arcane...if the use of a power or biotic makes noise, does that mean that the very act of an infiltrator going into tactical cloak can be heard and attract the bad guys?

 

Ah... I think it might actually. Heh, I never really thought about that... but yeah. I guess if you were undetected behind an enemy a small ways away and you cloaked - they might hear that. 

YIRAWK wrote...

How do enemy turrets and drones targeting system work? I notice that they can shoot cloaked enemies from a long distance away without seeing them cloak and without being in footstep range. Is this the mentioned peeking or do they have a special targeting system?

They should work in the same way as the regular AIs... if you cloak out of LOS and walk across out into the street they shouldn't be able to see you. If they do, perhaps there's a bug there... it's not something I've noticed personally though.

It is possible that you could be detected by a nearby enemy, and that makes its way back to the Turret somehow.

Razerath wrote...

I tried looking to see if you already said it but what is the average distance in which an enemy can "hear" you run, shoot, get an objective, cloak etc...?

 

Ah, it varies from enemy to enemy... but something like 3-6 meters maybe? It'll also depend on the type of sound being made. Footsteps are relatively quiet... guns are quite loud - so some sounds can be heard a small ways past the normal distance.

Modifié par Brenon Holmes, 28 juillet 2012 - 11:02 .

[Razerath]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

Razerath wrote...

I tried looking to see if you already said it but what is the average distance in which an enemy can "hear" you run, shoot, get an objective, cloak etc...?

 

Ah, it varies from enemy to enemy... but something like 3-6 meters maybe? It'll also depend on the type of sound being made. Footsteps are relatively quiet... guns are quite loud - so some sounds can be heard a small ways past the normal distance.

Thanks for the info! This should make my infiltrator gold solos a bit easier. I'm always so close to the enemy with a shotgun wondering why they're still shooting me after I cloak.

[Razerath]

A friend - "Does the targeting weight for player pets decreases on higher difficulties?

I'm having issues using a combat drone to draw attention on platinum. On gold if you target an enemy directly with a drone and the drone attacks them, they are virtually guranteed to turn around. On platinum my drone isn't nearly as effective at drawing attention to itself, instead it just continues attacking until something hits it with an AOE or it gets between an enemy and a player."

[tecmo bo]

Does anyone know if targeting weight for player pets decreases on higher difficulties?

There are issues using a combat drone to draw attention on platinum. On gold if you target an enemy directly with a drone and the drone attacks them, they are virtually guranteed to turn around. On platinum my drone isn't nearly as effective at drawing attention to itself, instead it just continues attacking until something hits it with an AOE or it gets between an enemy and a player.

Modifié par tecmo bo, 28 juillet 2012 - 11:38 .

[holdenagincourt]

I just read through this whole thread, and I should have done so earlier. It's especially enlightening to know that there is no independent threat mechanism in gameplay, but that the illusion of player threat is created by the interactivity of relative player-enemy positioning, the rails in the map perceived as optimal by the enemies, and other minute details.

Excellent job by Lynx as always, and major thanks to Brenon for the time he's taken to answer our questions.

[DarthVarner]

Fantastic thread! I just now read it all the way through.

I have a question regarding the AI and flanking. Certain enemies (usually armored or heavies) seem to beeline for players, but others may take a more circumspect route. Specifically: Phantoms, Pyros, Hunters, Rocket Troopers, and to a lesser extent Marauders appear to have a higher chance to attempt flanking maneuvers.

I don't believe this is just enemies coming in from flanking spawns, because it occurs even in camping groups on Firebase White (by no means what I prefer to play, but it's a great example for this).

This is actually really cool, even as you die from it. I'm guessing most players have experienced it. The reason I ask is because with the advent of Platinum, this seems to happen more frequently. Has there been any increase in certain sneaky mooks' preference to try and flank an entrenched group in Platinum?

Thanks for all the replies!

[reioni]

This info was really great! Thanks for answering our questions. And if you guys do ever implement the player map making and mods this is good info to have.

[Exosnake]

I can only agree with the rest. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions.
I have a few myself so maybe somebody can answer those for me

- Enemies targetting system:
Does it make a difference if enemies target you when you use the "cover" system or just "aim-out" of cover?
Example: Player A is 6m away from an enemy and uses Spacebar to get into cover. From there he aims and shoots at the enemy, peeking his head out.
Player B is 10m away and also just barely visible behind cover but he's not using the cover mechanism (spacebar) bust is just standing behind it. Will that effect if enemies choose Player A or B as an "easier" target? Again the visible part of the body that enemies could hit would be the same. Only difference would be the use of the cover mechanism...I hope this is understandable.

- I like the idea of some suppresser gear/equipment. Also many players have already stated that detection is a very important aspect of the game. Now you already mentioned that enemies can hear out footsteps but why is it than that we can't hear enemy footsteps?
I'm using a fairly good gaming headset but the only way for me to spot enemies is either by the sound of their gunfire or if they blabber something.
Whille this is all good and well footsteps are non existent. Especially when Hunters, Phantoms, Pyros or even Maurauders are creeping up behind the player it'd be awesome to have a chance to actually see it coming.
Is there a reason why the players can't hear footsteps?
Is there any way to implement this? New abbility/gear/equipment?

- banshee sync kill
Is there a higher % chance for a sync kill right after she spawns and does one or two of her teleports? Dunno if I'm just unlucky but I swear that probably 3/5 times a banshee sync kills me it's always at the very start of a round without even one enemy being killed. Spawn, teleport, dead.
Also all the other classes only(?) can sync kill after the already have done a melee attack. When it comes to Banshees it often seems to be random. On some waves she she teleports right next to me 4 or 5 times and nothing happens. Instead sync kill she does that double hand melee attack. On other times she immediately grabs me without me even shooting her.

A Banshee has a 50% of sync kill right? Does this count for every teleport she does and you find yourself "inside the sync kill radius" ? Is there any way to predict when a Banshee may do a sync or is it really supposed to be the way that there is a 50% (?) chance she can sync kill you for every teleport move she does?

Would appreciate some answers.

Modifié par Exosnake, 29 juillet 2012 - 12:35 .

[Legendaryred]

That was very informative.

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

   Hugely informative. I'll be making some adjustments based on this thread.

   The thread has covered some info about spawning, regarding how in the ideal players wouldn't see it, and AIs  need to "peek" when they spawn to begin moving.
   I've noticed there are a handful of spawn locations that coincide with mission objective locations. The most noticeable one is just North of the Reactor. When players are hacking at that location, the spawns appear to be occuring directly over their heads (every few seconds, a small group mix of troopers/lieutenants drops onto a structure beside the players, about 4M above ground level). It seems this happens every time that particular location is hacked.
   Is this bugged behaviour, or is the Reactor Base designed to create particularly hairy hack locations (the center of the Reactor is pretty crazy, too).

   Thanks for all the answers

Modifié par Jeremiah12LGeek, 21 mars 2013 - 11:17 .

[ParanoidDrone]

Brenon Holmes wrote...

Well, technically she should be ignoring you now... since dead people aren't really valid targets. I know what you mean though as I've definitely experienced that myself. I'm not exactly sure what she (and some other enemies) is/are doing. We can add that to the list of things to look into.

Is it possible that the AIs judge players as valid targets based on whether or not they are still capable of meaningful input? If you're on the ground but not bled out yet, you can still use spacebar to extend your life or use a medigel to revive yourself, thus the game considers you still "active?" That could explain the Phantom camping your corpse (closest target since she already downed you) but not doing anything (no execution move available).

[Urdnot Trex]

Hey Brenon, the problem I've seen with medigels is when you "get up" there is a dmg immunity, but it doesn't stop sync kills and the like. ie a husk can only grab you after a melee, and I went down, last man standing surrounded by 3 husks, and as you stand up they all hit you once doing no dmg, but after this one of em jumped me and gave me a very nice shoulder massage. After getting it off of me the other two had caused death for me again, and upon using the second medigel it happened AGAIN! I was so frustrated but my teammates said no its almost over get up! So last time I do it, te last of the 3 is massaging me, but over the course of this the banshee has been charging towards me, and the second my foot was in the husks head, I was lifted into the air and perma-killed. Wave 9 platinum failure.

I think they're need to be at least a 2 second sync kill and dmg immunity after standing up with medigel, as well as stagger immunity- happens when a phantom is camping your corpse, staggered to death upon standing up. I'd appreciate a response on this!

[DarthVarner]

I think when you are revived, you do have 100% damage immunity - but at least for the Phantom, she can't just step up and insta-kill. She always melees first.

The problem is the not-very-uncommon case where you revive on top of one. You're immune through her pre-melee, but then she's primed and ready to put that sword through your gut, just as you gain control of your char. That's one of the most depressing wastes of a medigel - what feels like an insta-sync-kill.

Same thing happens with Banshees, but it doesn't seem like they have to melee first.

Modifié par DarthVarner, 29 juillet 2012 - 03:05 .