Challenging AI not challenging

[elcapo29]

I fought an Imperial legionaire in the arena with basically 0 one handed prof. The legionaires have a lot of one handed prof. He managed to block me once or twice but it was an easy fight.

I know the devs changed blocking skill to be determined based on prof in that particular weapon which is fine, but many players have voiced their concern on the fighting skill of elite soldiers on the challenging difficulty level.

I should be sweating bullets fighting an elite footman of the Empire with my little 10 prof nobody wearing a t shirt on the hardest difficulty level. So please look at readjusting blocking skill for the AI.

 

[D0c1]

+1

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Yeah same experience here. Default melee at zero skill is way too good!
I wonder if that setting are bugged too. I always choose it but I don't feel the AI fights very well.

 

[Dabos37]

AI was pretty good in tournaments at release, while AI is now garbage in tournaments and even units with pretty high weapon skill do not block properly and rarely use feints.

 

[black_bulldog]

I don't use the term "dumbing down" very often, but that is exactly what happened to the ai after the change in npc fighting skill. I really hope that TW addresses this at some point or at least tie ai fighting skill to difficulty because 1v1 fights are boring as hell.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

The way the bots handle in the video should be for the basic difficulty levels and through percentages adapted in a difficulty/performance ratio.
The melee skills of the current Ai (1.5.4/1.5.5) are currently far below what is observed in that video.

 

[geala]

I use the AI module of Realistic Battle Mod (I don't like the combat module) and I regularly sweat because of NPCs blocking skills, at start it's usually my char who's 'guts are spilled out' when fighting against higher tier NPCs. So it would be possible in vanilla but maybe it would frustrate many players?

 

[Terco_Viejo]

[...] So it would be possible in vanilla but maybe it would frustrate many players?

This is why the levels of difficulty must be carefully defined. IMO:

Normal: Gentle difficulty for casual experiences and new players
Veteran: Moderate difficulty where high level bots make an impact
Challenging: Difficulty that emulates a medium to high MP skilled player environment.

 

[Dabos37]

This is why the levels of difficulty must be carefully defined. IMO:

Normal: Gentle difficulty for casual experiences and new players
Veteran: Moderate difficulty where high level bots make an impact
Challenging: Difficulty that emulates a medium to high MP skilled player environment.

Agree with this, this is exactly why we have combat difficulty settings. Would be great if the AI will get improved again. After the units using weapon skill instead of level change, the AI has been pretty much garbage in duels since a lot of time ago.

 

[elcapo29]

This is why the levels of difficulty must be carefully defined. IMO:

Normal: Gentle difficulty for casual experiences and new players
Veteran: Moderate difficulty where high level bots make an impact
Challenging: Difficulty that emulates a medium to high MP skilled player environment.

Well put Terco! Let's just hope the devs see and agree.

 

[froggyluv]

This is why the levels of difficulty must be carefully defined. IMO:

Normal: Gentle difficulty for casual experiences and new players
Veteran: Moderate difficulty where high level bots make an impact
Challenging: Difficulty that emulates a medium to high MP skilled player environment.

Whats worrisom is it shouldnt take a forum post for Developers of a long standing franchise to realize this. Like others have said -it started off great - the AI in Tourneys were hard as #### which they should be! What happened? They read a few online posts that the AI were too hard and changed the whole thing? Thats worrisome. Let new players play on Easy and Auto block or whatever but cater the game to skill minded players who want to better themselves through practice -THATS what makes a game rewarding

 

[black_bulldog]

This is why the levels of difficulty must be carefully defined. IMO:

Normal: Gentle difficulty for casual experiences and new players
Veteran: Moderate difficulty where high level bots make an impact
Challenging: Difficulty that emulates a medium to high MP skilled player environment.

My biggest issue with Challenging difficulty is all they did is speed up the ai animations and make blocking insanely hard, like you have to have super human reaction times to block effectively. They didn't change the ai because they still just spam attacks. It almost reminds me of Skyrim combat where every 1v1 battle comes down to a dps race.

 

[AJAJP_Juan]

What happened? They read a few online posts that the AI were too hard and changed the whole thing? Thats worrisome

Old AI was based on level, not skill, so a Caravan Master was just as good like any elite troop from any faction, and with all sorts of equipment. The new system takes into account their respective proficiencies, but is not well done or is simply bugged.

 

[froggyluv]

Old AI was based on level, not skill, so a Caravan Master was just as good like any elite troop from any faction, and with all sorts of equipment. The new system takes into account their respective proficiencies, but is not well done or is simply bugged.

Yeah i get that but like you said -the end result is horrible and im questioning why are they doing these half arsed attempts at calibrating if the end result is terrible? It should take less than a half a work day to put together a system which takes both levels and proficiencies into account in which someone who is obviously a high level warrior should be deadly in all weapons for gameplay reasons. ive argued on these forums in the past that there should be weapon specificity ie A trained swordsman is not necessarily that good with a polearm -but if given a choice to keep all high level soldiers deadly i would gladly they gloss it over for parities sake just to keep them a fun challenge

 

[stevehoos]

Realistic battle makes the tournaments a little harder, you have to at least pay attention.

 

[froggyluv]

Realistic battle makes the tournaments a little harder, you have to at least pay attention.

Thats good and im grateful modders are putting the work in to better calibrate - but this also shows a lack of vision at the top of this project. Meaning, someone up top hopefully the original creator has a vision of how tough this game should feel and sticks to his (her) guns in delivering that vision. As it stands now its all just after the fact "oh we have 12 new posts the game is too hard, pull out a sledgehammer and kill that code". Where as it should be done with a surgical knife, precise and to the point