Has The Time Come For Adaptive AI?

[shadragon]

Since the new AI was introduced, many people have stated it was too hard, not hard enough, or just right and they were all correct. At least, they were right according to their own subjective opinions. There was talk of a difficulty slider bar, but that was (thankfully) shot down because it can be abused easily.

The issue is we are all unique individuals. Some players are teenagers, hepped up on Red Bull and sugar snacks; while some like myself are quite a bit older with our twitch combat days well behind us. Some gamers have physical and cognitive disabilities or various combinations of other challenges. How do you satisfy all those camps and maintain a seamless game experience?

For a solution, Karl Marx said it best, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

I remembered a paper I'd read about ten years ago and it took me a while to find it (link below). Essentially, it is a treatise on how AI can dynamically adapt to individual game play. Those who find combat too easy will have their difficulty ramped up and those who find things too hard can have an easier time.

I think this is the way forward to even out the bumps in the road for those who have issues. The advantages should be obvious. The game continually adapts to your individual game play over time. The logic will track if you go into RES or CZ actually looking for a fight, someone who does missions, or see if you are a trader or explorer who tends to avoid combat all together. That can be taken into account to shape your overall experience as far as interdictions, AI ability and combat frequency go. Frontier tracks all sorts of data and has done since day one. They should have the basic building blocks in place already. All they need to do is come up with the algorithms to process that data and give players an experience they will enjoy. As abilities develop (or degenerate as the case may be) the game will adapt.

Some will claim this sort of system can be corrupted. You can purposely play below your talents and have the AI be subsequently easy to kill. And while that is perfectly true, such a player would be bored out of their minds after a week of play. Yet, even if that were the case, their experience would not affect yours, or any others. They play the way they want, you play the way you want. Under this system, combat should be within, or very close to, your ability range. Occasional powerful AI can appear and test your abilities. If you rise to the challenge and defeat them, the AI ramps up slightly the next time. If you run with 14% hull, the AI tones it down on the next round. This does not mean it gets progressively harder and harder. You'll have some easy fights and some hard ones, but hopefully none that are impossible.

Now, implementing this system will neither be easy, nor quick. This will take a considerable amount of effort and testing to get right. If it were any other game company I'd be worried, but Frontier has shown that it has a deep talent pool of devs to pull these sorts of rabbits out of hats.

I'm interested to know if you'd support such an initiative and any reasons you have that are for and/or against.

Improving Adaptive Game AI With Evolutionary Learning
Paper available here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.109.6055&rep=rep1&type=pdf

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I used to play a game with adaptive AI, can't remember what it was now.
A strategy maybe.

But if you died alot, it became easier, and if you ploughed through the levels. It became increasingly harder.
It was very well done. And I never felt like the game was ever too easy or too hard.

The only issue being, that players of different levels, playing together would cause conflicts with the AI.
Should it cater to the lower level, or higher? Or a happy medium?

A simple hidden, dynamic "combat" rank would work, if you kill endlessly without seeing the rebuy screen(like me), the game will spawn a higher combat rank AI around you.
if you die all the time, and lose every fight, it will spawn lower ranked AI around you.
If 2 (or more)vastly different players meet, the one who created the instance will override the rest. That prevents towing Elite AI in to a low res and watching jobs burn... lol
Unless you're the first one there of course.

Also, the "dynamic combat rank" is only effected by your Kill/Death Ratio, from combat. It's not effected by suicide or crashing.

 

[Craith]

Please no.

Make it possible to play according to your level of skill, in theory is already there, want simple enemies, don't take elite missions (balancing required).

But please none of that scaling difficulty with level that poisons (IMO) so many modern games.

Here there be dragons should mean exactly that, don't go there unless you want to slay a dragon. It shouldn't become a lizard just because you stumbled over it at the start.

I want a believable galaxy, I know it's not perfect , there are compromises to make it playable, compromises to broaden the target audience, but don't destroy one of the few things in a gaming world that still maces a little bit of sense.

Still room for improvements though, Fett shouldn't hunt you for not paying your parking fine, and a harmless eagle should not attack a fully armed elite corvette for 2t of biowaste.

 

[babelfisch]

SJA already said she thinks about adding adaptive AI, so it's possible that we see something like this in the future.

 

[Craith]

I personally hope it stays with thinking about it ... I prefer to lose and know I tried than win because the computer took pity in my flying.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The way that it can be done is with your combat rank. The way it is now is that you get a + points to your combat rank depending on rank of NPC.

Wouldnt it be wise to get a negative when you got killed by NPC's as well.If you get promoted to master, and then the NPC's start to kill you, you will go down in rank again, which will make the NPC's easier for you, and hopefully by the time you get up to master again you will have leanrt more skills to survive the higher rank.

Makes combat difficulty a bit more self regulating. Of course it can be abused by letting yourself get blow up in a sidewinder etc, but that wastes time, costs money and isn't fun. I can only see a few people doing that. There are far worse exploits out there.

 

[Jack Schitt]

It's a nice idea for a single player game, but in a multiplayer environment -- even one where players are effectively alone but sharing the same universe -- I don't see how it could work. Some would claim it was unfair, because less aggressive pilots could just "coast" slowly through the game. Personally, even playing solo, I'd find it hard to suspend disbelief when flying through a given region of space, knowing that it wasn't the political situation that was determining the sort of enemies I faced but rather how well I'd played in the past. It would, to invoke an overused but appropriate phrase, ruin my immersion.

With the security levels, BGS and player ratings the game already provides all the information FD needs to "balance" NPC frequency and strength, but so far they keep dropping the ball. The latest idea of "bracketing" the player's rating with little regard to where they are or what they're doing is beyond ridiculous.

I can only assume that part of the reason they won't tie NPCs strongly into the security level is that certain popular systems would effectively become no-go zones for less combat-capable players. But that's how the game should be, just as the original Elite was. If FD are prioritising potential whining from players over sensible design choices then I worry about what other features may get lost in the desire not to upset anyone. I hope my interpretation is wrong.

 

[askavir]

Please no.

Make it possible to play according to your level of skill, in theory is already there, want simple enemies, don't take elite missions (balancing required).

But please none of that scaling difficulty with level that poisons (IMO) so many modern games.

Here there be dragons should mean exactly that, don't go there unless you want to slay a dragon. It shouldn't become a lizard just because you stumbled over it at the start.

I want a believable galaxy, I know it's not perfect , there are compromises to make it playable, compromises to broaden the target audience, but don't destroy one of the few things in a gaming world that still maces a little bit of sense.

Still room for improvements though, Fett shouldn't hunt you for not paying your parking fine, and a harmless eagle should not attack a fully armed elite corvette for 2t of biowaste.

Pretty much what he said. ^^^

No level scaling with incremental counters (player rank) please, no "mirrored universe", no dragon to lizard / lizard to dragon transformations please.

This game was advertised as the player not being the center of the galaxy, please continue as advertised.

The more FD tries to implement "difficulty guessing" mechanics, the more time is lost in something that will never, ever work well. THe game should not try to guess the desired difficulty. It should merely present all kinds of difficulty, in a manner that makes sense, and let the player decide where to go and if to engage it or not.

Simply use existing mechanics (sec level, low/high CZs/RES, mission rank) and spawn NPC according to the situation and location. This way people can estimate the risk of every activity/location and either embrace it or avoid it at his own will. There is some balance to be made, like Craith mentioned, but this is the only really plausible way to deal with this, without throwing any attempt at maintaining believability into the trash bin..

Its not a perfect solution, but all the alternatives are far, far worse.

 

[Chazzie]

A good thread, made for interesting reading.

I feel adaptive AI would be a good thing if it was done right - but therein lies the problem - doing it right.

I was one of the few that was okay with the intial release of 2.1, it was very difficult but being an old EvE player - I did apply 'adapt or die' gameplay. I bought a Fer-de-lance for combat and equipped it to fight only and I did okay, the subsequent patches have IMHO made it too easy again, but I'm speaking for myself here - not the entire community.

If FD could introduce an AI that could at least partially adapt to your skill and your combat ranking, I feel it could be an answer for everyone.

As an afterthought, the people that are complaining the game is still too hard now are in for a terrible shock when the Thargoids arrive. (If they are anything like the previous incarnations).

 

[babelfisch]

Without having an opinion (well maybe I have an opinion, but I am not sure about it), I just want to point out the difference between leveling AI (Oblivion...) and adaptive AI. Leveling AI is already in game (your rank influences NPC ranks) while adaptive AI means you'll still encounter Elite NPCs but they shoot less accurate if the game detects that you are constantly dying.

 

[Craith]

Without having an opinion (well maybe I have an opinion, but I am not sure about it), I just want to point out the difference between leveling AI (Oblivion...) and adaptive AI. Leveling AI is already in game (your rank influences NPC ranks) while adaptive AI means you'll still encounter Elite NPCs but they shoot less accurate if the game detects that you are constantly dying.

Thanks for pointing out the difference
Leveled enemies (harmless to elite) are already in the game, and they make sense in the universe - if players have ranks, npcs should too
Levelling enemies (harmless for harmless players, elite for elite players) are partly in the game, and I do find them kind of annoying. Still, it makes a bit of sense that a lowly npc wouldn't attack a high ranked player (except suicide eagles), and a high ranked pirate is not interested in the peanuts of a low rank player. He would still be interested in the harmless elite trader's cargo, but should not shoot to kill, but with the goal of getting his hold full (but thats another, if related problem)
Adaptive enemies (elite misses you, if you are a bad pilot) are a really bad idea in my opinion, since it not only ruins immersion, it also robs you of any sense of progress (like many MMOs, I do more damage to enemies with more HP ...), punishes you for getting better and makes it impossible to decide if an enemy is beatable or not. Now, if I am not a combat pilot, I might be able to win against e.g. a competent Viper, so if I encounter one, I will fight. Then, I have to guess if I have won to many combats in the last days, so the Viper gets better and kills me, or maybe it would miss anyhow, and I could even beat the elite anaconda over there ...

I'd love to have the security level and location specify what enemies I encounter, like askavir said, and the comparison between my ship, equipment, rank (combat, trade, explorer, faction!) and theirs should decide how they react. If I am an Imperial, and they are Feds, they might even punch slightly above their weight class, while a police that I am allied with might scan others first. They might even react to lower ranked players slightly faster, since these might need their help even more. If a policeman has to decide whom he helps first, the marine or the old granny, when both get into trouble with a robber, most would help the granny first (doesnt mean they should ignore the marine).

That is also a kind of adaptive AI, but in a good, immersion improving way. There would still be harmless T6s flying around when I am Triple Elite, but none of the Eagles would interdict my Combat-Corvette for some biowaste. I even think it should be possible to implement since the decisionfinding logic is not that complicated.

 

[shadragon]

More examples of successful AI in video games.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...game_AI_that_every_developer_should_study.php

The current ranking mechanic in place now means every kill gives you an extra step up on the ladder. At some point, and I'll us myself as an example, your combat ability will plateau, but you will continue to advance up in rank as you kill more and more. Therefore the AI gets more difficult, even though you've already reached your maximum ability for whatever reason. The longer you play, the more you struggle against harder and harder AI.

Perfect example of the Peter Principle.

 

[Craith]

More examples of successful AI in video games.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...game_AI_that_every_developer_should_study.php

The current ranking mechanic in place now means every kill gives you an extra step up on the ladder. At some point, and I'll us myself as an example, your combat ability will plateau, but you will continue to advance up in rank as you kill more and more. Therefore the AI gets more difficult, even though you've already reached your maximum ability for whatever reason. The longer you play, the more you struggle against harder and harder AI.

Perfect example of the Peter Principle.

That is one of the problems with scaling enemies. If your location decides what enemies you may encounter, that wouldn't be much of a problem. If I can't fight in a Hazres anymore, I'll switch to high res or even low res. Here I can already choose my difficulty. Doesn't work add well with combat zones atm.
If I can't survive in anarchy, I'll stick to low sec or high sec.
Ideally (for me) your standing with a faction would be a bit more volatile, so you'd get hostile faster,when you kill ships of a faction. Want to trade in an anarchy system with pirates? Better get on their good side.
(Above is the way I hope it will be one day)

 

[Ndarain]

http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?botprize is another stab at bot logic. Good bots that also happen to behave like people. They're adaptive, but not by scaling. They learn to mimic players, and their inestimable qualities. So that elite bots behave like elite players and noob bots behave like noob players.

I also think level scaling is Satan's unholy spawn.

 

[Jukelo]

Adaptive AI is just as gamey and immersion breaking as level scaling, I certainly don't want it.
There are ways of providing challenge for everyone that don't involve bending reality around the player, use them please.

 

[Nervi]

please no level scaling.

I think the problem is that many player can't accept that best player have the better reward. level scaling is like:
"oh you are playing better? the game go harder but you got nothing better".

i don't care about challenge if i didn't get a good reward for my effort.

FD should simply make area with different level of difficulty/reward.
So even if i am not the best pilot i can play in area for my level, and when my skill will improve i can simply move in an area more dangerous, but with more reward.

 

[Bacalao]

I always despised Karl Marx and his "ideals", just say no to adaptive AI, fix the geography and security of the bubble.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Leveled enemies (harmless to elite) are already in the game, and they make sense in the universe - if players have ranks, npcs should too.

I've never actually understood why NPCs have ranks...they don't belong to the Pilot's Federation. I mean, I understand why (it's gamey), but it makes no in-game sense.

 

[RandomGun]

Adaptive AI is just as gamey and immersion breaking as level scaling, I certainly don't want it.
There are ways of providing challenge for everyone that don't involve bending reality around the player, use them please.

Definetely this.

I would prefer FD to extend gameplay towards clear risk & reward choice for all careers and missions. Then player could select both their career/activity and their risk & reward combination.

For example:

Trading in high security systems would be "Space truck simulation" with little risk but low profits. High value/profit cargo would increase risks (piracy). Trading between low and high security systems would have increased risk (pirates) but would provide more profit. High sec would sell and buy at medium price. Low sec would sell at low price but buy at high price.

Smuggling would be the opposite: high security systems would have high risk (police) but Black Market would pay more than in low security systems.

Pirates could find expensive cargo shipments in high security systems but there would be a high risk of quick police response. Though, piracy needs some gameplay enhancements like communication of piracy intent ("drop 10 stuff or suffer") and responding to that as a trader ("I yield" or "drop 10 stuff" quick key or something simpler than cargo menu and better than "drop all cargo" quick key).

Miners and Bounty hunters have already some of this in High/Normal/Low RES. I have no idea about the balance. I haven't done either lately.

All missions would have similar risk & reward (& working time) evaluation. They seem to have some of it already.

Explorers ... well, thargoid systems or some new gameplay. But generally low risk & low profit is very much ok -- and we already have that.

 

[Riverside]

Adaptive AI is just as gamey and immersion breaking as level scaling, I certainly don't want it.
There are ways of providing challenge for everyone that don't involve bending reality around the player, use them please.

Very much this I think. I'd like to set my own risk by knowing what I'm likely to come up against. One day I might like a challenge, another I want to be left alone.

I'd go for interdictions of traders/explorers only being done by poor, desparate pirates in eagles & sidewinders. If you want a challenging fight you can get yourself a bounty (or bounty hunt & search out your prey), if you want to be chased down, smuggle.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Good ideas, but ultimately often simple solutions work best: security based on BGS (and not taking player rank, or player period, into account at all) seems a much better solution.

Finally, I think adaptive, or self-learning AI is tricky and unpredictable. Remember the magical stacking of mods by AI earlier? Adaptive/learning AI in production is fraught with dangers.