Odyssey trailer - thoughts?

fair and pretty good attempt at damage control. but you really lost it with this:



sorry what? ai behavior is actually still an unsolved problem at large, a hugely complex and fundamental part of any combat scenario. the whole list you are juxtaposing it to, all of it together amounts to nothing but a triviality in comparison to solving this single challenge.

the whole argument is misguiding anyway. of course ai can be tuned or even rewritten later. like everything else. of course new frontier releases have always been barebone placeholders to expand in the future (unless somehow forgotten, cough). i wouldn't have expected anything else. the point is that i would never have expected such a bad barebone placeholder either ....

it's going to take a very long way to "polish" that. i seriously doubt it will ever happen.
We have only seen the easiest guys yet.bwe have no idea how the elite ranked NPCs will be like, they could have much better equipment, and much better tactics, in fact I would say it's very likely that they will.
 
To be honest, they completely ignore what I need from space legs - I.e. reasonable exploration, not like +10 extra flowers. It is not shown. Because I understand most profit will come from FPS which I don't care any way.

Wait for the alpha. Plenty of us jaded LEPers will be reporting back on what's there, and how it evolves from patch to patch (assuming it lasts more than a week), well before it's released.

We have only seen the easiest guys yet.bwe have no idea how the elite ranked NPCs will be like, they could have much better equipment, and much better tactics, in fact I would say it's very likely that they will.

I hope this is how they scale. However, I'm tempering my expectations because this is not how they currently scale. NPCs in the game we have follow the same basic patterns regardless of rank; they just perform them quicker, with better tools, as their rank gets higher.
 
We have only seen the easiest guys yet.bwe have no idea how the elite ranked NPCs will be like, they could have much better equipment, and much better tactics, in fact I would say it's very likely that they will.

Given the main focus of the reaction to the demo - which is all fair enough - I imagine the AI pixies at Frontier Towers will be all hands on deck scripting "busting moves" .. probably as we speak .. but for the next twenty four days.

Then, when the game goes live, people find there are 50 sharp shooters on their six and survivability is next to nil, it should all get nerfed back in and we'll be good again.

:ROFLMAO:
 
Given the main focus of the reaction to the demo - which is all fair enough - I imagine the AI pixies at Frontier Towers will be all hands on deck scripting "busting moves" .. probably as we speak .. but for the next twenty four days.

Then, when the game goes live, people find there are 50 sharp shooters on their six and survivability is next to nil, it should all get nerfed back in and we'll be good again.

:ROFLMAO:
Ye... + on movie they used medpacks, but that was not shown. Notice 18+ goes to full prior boarding.
So maybe, NPC were doing good - they were over geared/healed just.
 
When watching the playthrough i was looking at the base layout to see if it gave good combat opportunities in the horizontal and vertical planes.
It seemed mainly on a ground level with only limited opportunity to fight at a higher level. I hope its just the nature of the mission they did, because i would expect that with the game having jetpacks and srvs that can bunny hop around, that there are natural gameplay mechanics to exploit for combat purposes and it would be a shame if frontier did not exploit this.

The AI i saw intrigued me. The NPCs were sometimes seen dodging fire by side stepping and also running away from were the fire was directed at. What then let it down somewhat was that instead of then trying to get to cover they just stood in the open to act as bullet magnets

I found it odd to see what looked like "smurfs" running around all the time during combat. I think the shields should mirror the ship mechanic for consistency in that shields are only visible on activation and when hit by incoming fire.

At times i got the impression NPCs were attempting rudimentary flanking tactics. The nature of the base layouts would appear to make this something that the ai should aim to do.

A top class AI would lay down covering fire while one of the Ai tried to close distance and jump behind cover.
I also never saw AI crouching which is something else i would expect both players and ai to do if caught in the open as this reduces the hitbox of the target.
We also never saw any of the players able to use mechanics like leaning over or around objects to shoot. Something that i would like to see.

I wonder if long range sniper combat with scopes is possible in the game. The earlier trailers seemed to indicate weapons with scopes but we never saw them in action.

I thought it was also interesting how the NPCs basically ignored the players until they started misbehaving, it will be interesting to see what the actual field of view of npcs is in the game, as one of the many failings of numerous so called AAA shooters is AI with infinite detection capabilities regardless of how well you are hidden.

I was surprised we never saw any of the skimmers scanning players. They scan srvs in bases so i wonder if it was just something that just didnt happen because this was a low security base.

The Goliath skimmer seemed useless. I would expect it and the other skimmers to be very nasty opponents to on foot soldiers as well as srvs. Though i must admit in horizons skimmers are just target practise for srvs
 
I also never saw AI crouching
Snipper Ghost Warrior 3 - they crouch and take covers. However, still AI. You can attack them from behind while they keep covers for 4-5 mins timer :D

I thought it was also interesting how the NPCs basically ignored the players until they started misbehaving

Because they properly docked to star port / landing pad, now you can drive SRV on ground bases not being attacked.

The Goliath skimmer seemed useless. I would expect it and the other skimmers to be very nasty opponents to on foot soldiers as well as srvs

Player had "18+" then next frame it is full 100 -> medpack used to counter drone.
 
The Goliath skimmer seemed useless. I would expect it and the other skimmers to be very nasty opponents to on foot soldiers as well as srvs. Though i must admit in horizons skimmers are just target practise for srvs

Nice post.

I think skimmers are basically anti-SRV munitions rather than anti personnel, programmed to miss the foot soldier most of the time (like ships with SRV's now) otherwise you'd be instantly toast, every time you met one. That Goliath might have looked a bit rubbish from the outside but I suspect once you've got a mission on, with a fine for failure and a stake in the BGS effect, one hit on you - per hundred rounds spent by the skimmer - will be scary enough on your shield strength.
 
Hows about you watch the entire stream, listen to all the words, maybe watch some of the other video takes (with extra influencer info), maybe read some of the official feedback on different platforms... But it's entirely possibly that the low level mission showcased the entirety of NPC AI, I mean my SLF pilots aim didn't change from Harmless to Elite, Harmless pirates in High Res sites fly just like Spec Ops, ATR and Thargoids... so you're probably right.
The two workmen that dropped like a sack of potatoes both had the number "3" next to their names; I don't think there's a lot going on, here. Your comparisons to the already existing ship AI doesn't inspire confidence: higher ranked NPC ships mostly fly the same as lower ranked ones, they're just bigger bullet sponges with more damaging weapons and more health refills. If the same holds true for the high ranked foot soldiers in Odyssey well it's not gonna look good to have high ranked soldiers more or less stand there bumbling around soaking up damage. A game with good AI can have characters who have the same amount of health and all deal the same amount of damage, but the harder enemies are able to evade your attacks and flank/outmaneuver you to land more hits of their own.

If you think that's coming, I hope you're right. If you think that it's in any way connected to the little numbers next to the NPC's names; well I sure hope that ranking system goes up to 100 at least because the 1s and 3s ain't cutting it.
 
The two workmen that dropped like a sack of potatoes both had the number "3" next to their names; I don't think there's a lot going on, here. Your comparisons to the already existing ship AI doesn't inspire confidence: higher ranked NPC ships mostly fly the same as lower ranked ones, they're just bigger bullet sponges with more damaging weapons and more health refills. If the same holds true for the high ranked foot soldiers in Odyssey well it's not gonna look good to have high ranked soldiers more or less stand there bumbling around soaking up damage. A game with good AI can have characters who have the same amount of health and all deal the same amount of damage, but the harder enemies are able to evade your attacks and flank/outmaneuver you to land more hits of their own.

If you think that's coming, I hope you're right. If you think that it's in any way connected to the little numbers next to the NPC's names; well I sure hope that ranking system goes up to 100 at least because the 1s and 3s ain't cutting it.

Any Bally change of PG rating or British Standards sign to forewatn of incoming walls of text, what what?

Bally marvellous otherwise, what what

Tatty bye
 
The issue with all the cover was it was 90s cover, not 2020 cover.

In the 90s, cover was evenly spaced crate boxes at full height. In stacks and with surrounding explosive barrels.

These days, cover is half height so you can still see what you're shooting at, and people make some effort to disguise the cover in the scenery, not just a crate object.

Look, you can still play games as a bonding activity with your children. Time to catch up if the last game you played was in 2003.
 
2 things really bothered me.

1. The puff of dust when walking. Seriously, this needs to improve.
2. Picking up AND interacting with items. Put some effort into that please.
 
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