Oblivion's (lack of) AI

T

Tycell

Still Mildly Glowing
I just watched several Oblivion in game videos, and I tell you they nearly made me cry.

This has GOT to be a reason to make Fallout 3 turn based. If F3 has AI like what I just saw, the player could well NEVER have to enter combat other than taking one shot and then watching the crowd of people (who supposidly are on the same side) tear into each other.

One of the best things about F1 and 2 was the AI was brilliant, it was brilliant because it was simple, everything was hex based and because of this AI had a pretty simple job. Get to an optimum range, attack. Of course it had its down sides (if one guy was blocking a doorway everyone else would just stand there until he was dead, whereby another brave idiot would take his / her place.

And yes, if a fight broke out and one unit in one team was accidently hit by a unit in another, hell would break loose between them, however this is a very old game and these things wern't really an issue as they happened very rarley (other than the doorway one).

If F3 has oblivions AI the game is going to be seriously shit, after watching those videos my heart sank. Sure the place looked amazing (even if I was watching low res videos) but the whole feel of it was completly bollocks. Graphics should be LAST on the list of game designers, not the only bloody thing on it.

Another thing, in one video the player attacked (and killed) a man. Waited for a moment and low! The man magically came back to life and acted as if NOTHING had happened. WTF?! So the player kills him again, once again he just gets up and acts as if that large sword hadn't just been thrust through his chest. My god.. things arn't looking good.
 
"Psycopath!Psycopath!" :D :D :D

I went to a mall one of these days with my kid, and it was packed with 10000 people or so. So anytime we would see a large group of people or the security guards we would start with the "Psycopath!" scream from those videos, just for laughs. It was refreshingly juvenile, and we had lots of laughs. We still can't see the videos without rolling in the ground laughing :)
 
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1216213971004625060
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6KN7cKO8-P0&search=oblivion
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fRWY6TOeR1Q
http://youtube.com/watch?v=F8hetpJxXSw

Roshambo has them in his signature.

The AI is really dissapointing, in one instance the player takes ONE shot at a peasant with a bow and arrow and it ends up with the city gaurds killer her and then turning on each other! Also, the player gets a quest from some elf in armour. "Follow me" he says, and then immediatly runs into a trap which crushes him, repeatedly. The player gets the message "Mission failed" because the guy died before he lead you to wherever he was going.

I had to watch it twice, I missed half of it last time because I was laughing so much, but thinking about it its REALLY pitiful game design. Looks like BethSoft spent a lot of time making the game look nice and none on making it run well.
 
I know *those* vids, I'm the one that pointed pointed them out in this thread. I'm talking about Briosa's "psychopath!"

Also, Oblivion isn't Fallout 3. Moved.
 
Tycell said:
"Follow me" he says, and then immediatly runs into a trap which crushes him, repeatedly. The player gets the message "Mission failed" because the guy died before he lead you to wherever he was going.
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I'm fairly sure that was meant to happen (in order to avoid that trap you have to leap over to the side). Even if it wasn't, you're just supposed to kill the dungeon boss in that quest or something like that, you don't need that guy. What's really worrying is how much they rely on that type of quest - go fetch this item and/or kill this guy in that generic looking dungeon. Not all of them are like that, but a lot of them are. To be fair, though, even those quests usually have some interesting narrative (IMHO, YMMV, it's part of a linear Guild quest chain, etc).

As for that guy that rose up from the dead - he's a quest NPC, and thus - unkillable. They can only go unconscious (except in certain cases, like escort missions, NPCs you have to kill, etc.)
 
Tycell said:
The AI is really dissapointing, in one instance the player takes ONE shot at a peasant with a bow and arrow and it ends up with the city gaurds killer her and then turning on each other!
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While playing the game I was doing the missions for the Dark Brotherhood, the assassins guild. I had to be very careful not to let my target cry out or get a gaurd, not because it was a mission requirement or because I cared about the bounty incured, I simply hated the gaurds killing half the town because one of those might be for something later.

Also, the player gets a quest from some elf in armour. "Follow me" he says, and then immediatly runs into a trap which crushes him, repeatedly. The player gets the message "Mission failed" because the guy died before he lead you to wherever he was going.
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Actually, I've done the quest for this one too. The mission was from the mages guild to meet up with him and investigate the dungeon for necromancer activity. You meet up with him, he dies on said trap always, and the window pops up saying not "mission failed" but "Fathragr..whatshisname died, I'm going to have to go alone".


Though yes, the AI is awful, which is why very few people actually like using the henchmen you can get. They always move into your attacks, then move out from between you and the enemy when the enemy retaliates. Best part is, once you hit them enough (in other words, once they prance into enough of your swings, arrows, and spells) they attack you.
 
Tycell said:
Another thing, in one video the player attacked (and killed) a man. Waited for a moment and low! The man magically came back to life and acted as if NOTHING had happened. WTF?! So the player kills him again, once again he just gets up and acts as if that large sword hadn't just been thrust through his chest. My god.. things arn't looking good.
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This was done to prevent the player from screwing up the main quest. In Morrowind for example, you could kill a key quest character 2 hours in and 80 hours later you realize the main quest is impossible to complete.

Many of you guys should play the game before passing judgement on the AI. It didn't live up to the 'revolutionary radiant' hooplya, but it was still decent. Yes there are some awkward moments, but there are also some great moments as well.

Fallout fans should be more worried about the shitty dialouge trees Oblivion/Morrowind uses. If that kind of crappy writing goes into Fallout 3, God help us.
 
21_Blessings said:
This was done to prevent the player from screwing up the main quest. In Morrowind for example, you could kill a key quest character 2 hours in and 80 hours later you realize the main quest is impossible to complete.
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Obviously, yes, but this shows that they suck at making consequential roleplaying games. If they had done this properly no character that you could dispose of would be essential to the storyline and fuck it up. Like they did in Fallout, there was really no way of making the game uncompletable (apart from, say, throwing away the water chip in an encounter).

21_Blessings said:
Many of you guys should play the game before passing judgement on the AI. It didn't live up to the 'revolutionary radiant' hooplya, but it was still decent. Yes there are some awkward moments, but there are also some great moments as well.

Fallout fans should be more worried about the shitty dialouge trees Oblivion/Morrowind uses. If that kind of crappy writing goes into Fallout 3, God help us.
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The main reason why we're bashing the Radiant AI is that it was said to be absolutely brilliant and revolutionary, which it obviously isn't (and never could be, giving goals and means to an NPC is and always has been the basis of A.I.) and apparently they implemented factions and hostility poorly judging by the reactions the guards have in those weird movies.
 
And yes, if a fight broke out and one unit in one team was accidently hit by a unit in another, hell would break loose between them, however this is a very old game and these things wern't really an issue as they happened very rarley (other than the doorway one).
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The Bishop casino in Reno was wasted: if I attacked the guards about 7 times out of ten the hookers on the street would charge into the casino and beat the shit out of the customers and the chicks who managed the tables and the pimps would attack Bishop's men. But then again I'm talking New Reno...
And in the Den there was this really sweet one: you kill Metzger and free the slaves and then you go get Vic (ok so I wasn't going to pay 1000 caps for Vic especially because he's kind of weak at first; Cassidy is waaay better) and one or more of the slaves runs into Vic's room and stands in the doorway, either locking you out or locking you in... I think they fixed that with a patch though.
Oh and the little thing in the Gecko reactor where you can talk to the Enclave guy, get him pissed and the the ghouls attack... priceless
Also in Klammath if you start a fight before you got Sulik to come with you he'll attack; if you mange to hit him with two or three criticals he turns green and starts to kill the locals, including the kids... siding with the strongest guy always makes sense :roll:
Of course this was what, 9 or 10 years ago and they didn't claim their AI was *radiant*.
 
c0ldst33ltrs4u said:
the Enclave guy, get him pissed and the the ghouls attack... priceless
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Wait, what? That doesn't happen, or at least the Enclave head does not trigger the ghouls attacking you. You probably (perhaps accidentally) just set the power plant to meltdown...

Also, most of that is rather easy to explain in that if you shoot someone, they're probably not going to be able to tell if it was accidental or not.
 
It happened to me quite some times, looked up the network , found the Enclave, talked to the guy, he scans for my location... surprise! I'm on the mainland.... he sends he'll send a crew in a vertibird and then I log off, that simple. I then exit and the ghouls start shooting at me. But this doesn't happen always, it has a 50/50 chance, from my experience... What really disappointed me was the fact that the hit team was a no-show. So there I am all ready to woop ass and no targets around... just sad...
I wonder how it would have went down, had the hit squad worked....
 
thats never happended to me... and i always do that everytime i beat the game (which iis alot) because i get a good laugh out of the enclave guys remarks.
 
c0ldst33ltrs4u said:
It happened to me quite some times, looked up the network , found the Enclave, talked to the guy, he scans for my location... surprise! I'm on the mainland....
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Sounds like unpatched Fallout 2 to me. It happened once to me too when finished the conversation suddenly the ghoul starts to whack me.
 
I remember that happening, when you do that, the ghouls know what you mucked with on that comp and know the enclave is coming to kill them, it's not an error. I mean, you have that one ghoul right behind you at the comp right and it's showing a picture and speakers? Doesn't it make sense that he'd know what you just did and get all the ghouls to try to kill you since you've brought an imminent death upon them?
 
Darkscythe said:
I remember that happening, when you do that, the ghouls know what you mucked with on that comp and know the enclave is coming to kill them, it's not an error. I mean, you have that one ghoul right behind you at the comp right and it's showing a picture and speakers? Doesn't it make sense that he'd know what you just did and get all the ghouls to try to kill you since you've brought an imminent death upon them?
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No, it's still a bug because it's unintended behaviour.
Especially because there's not going to be an enclave attack.
 
Spotted this at the 'Codex:

http://www.rpgcodex.com/index.php#4250

It seems that Ken Rolston, the brilliant mind behind Oblivion's design, is retiring from Bethesda and (hopefully) the gaming industry. This is potentially good news for us, because I have a feeling Fallout 3 can only benefit from the absence of his input.
 
Read the interview Ratty, and you'll see he wasn't very happy with the complete voiceovers (that caused the dialogue to be poor) , or the way everyone leveled up with the PC. maybe he was the last hope... his interview shows how much of Oblivion was PR induced, wich is what i've been defending all along, Oblivion is a marketing tool disguised as a game, and someone that cries his love for hardcore RPGs just had to leave.
 
You give Rolston way too much credit, Brios.

1. Based on the dullness and linearity of Oblivion's story, poor dialogues and bland characters, we already know he is a shitty writer. Even his former colleagues have attested to that.

2. Then I find it funny how he tries to minimize his own role in Oblivion's laughable design and even weasel out of the fact that his implementation of level scaling was possibly the most idiotic concept in any game, ever. Sorry, but I don't buy his inept excuses, seeing as he was, you know, the *lead designer* of the game.
 
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