When will the zombie AI be fixed?

[rickyriot 1009]

Since the introduction of modding it's becoming clear to me that the things the dev team have failed to add into the game, despite us hitting 1.0, will be added by modders. "Missing" weapons, objects and maps already fill up the Steam Workshop and I can imagine it's only a matter of time that the true survival stuff (stuff that really _should_ have been part of 1.0) will be rolled in not by the devs but by modders.

What can't be fixed by modders though, is the enemy AI - or at least from my understanding it isn't an easy thing to "mod in" (and I am happy to be corrected on this). This requires the dev team to do this and in many ways I think this should be one of the highest priorities. Unless of course Bohemia are looking to just set this as a PvP game with zombies as a pointless annoyance rather than a threat - and for me this is where the game is at just now.

Apologies if there is an actual dedicated and valid roadmap that details when enemy AI is going to be completed (and it's fair to say it's miles from completion just now), I followed the status updates and most of the chatter in the forums and the most I've garnered is that "yeah, that's something we'll look into".

The question is, when....

[green_mtn_grandbob 594]

The long of it is two years, the short of it is one year.

I have a link if you want to hear it for yourself..

Edited February 6, 2019 by green_mtn_grandbob
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[rickyriot 1009]

55 minutes ago, green_mtn_grandbob said:

The long of it is two years, the short of it is one year.

I have a link if you want to hear it for yourself..

I'm going to give you a "thanks" but it's for the answer, not for the information itself! I heard someone discuss AI sometime around the 1.0 launch and I have a feeling that will be the audio you are referring to. Although I don't remember a time limit.

As for "years"? That is stunningly disappointing and quite surprising. Unless they are looking to create super sentient entities it should not take that length of time. I say this as a developer myself. The devs have already had many years to get this right and have failed to address it over that time. Sure the engine, animation, environment has changed over that time but AI routines are abstracted from that (or at least should be) meaning when you come to plug it in it's tweaking the edges not re-inventing the wheel.

I don't want to sound melodramatic, but the idea I'd need to wait one year, let alone two, has me reaching for the uninstall button. What's the point of playing a game where one of the key tenets of that game is broken, always been broken and in fact is in a worse state than when the first SA release happened.

😞

Edited February 6, 2019 by rickyriot

[eno 1049]

Some of the initial feedback I’ve been reading in the current experimental branch thread suggests that zobs are a more tangible threat though not necessarily because of ai improvements. 

 

[rickyriot 1009]

1 hour ago, eno said:

Some of the initial feedback I’ve been reading in the current experimental branch thread suggests that zobs are a more tangible threat though not necessarily because of ai improvements. 

 

IMO: The main threat from the zombies comes from the very poor melee and their clunky as hell movement The only time I've died from them is when they have glitched through the door or the game bugged my weapon selection.

The melee aspect is a real shame as it was showcased extensively when 0.63 was being rolled out, claiming the new animation system would provide more interactive close combat with unarmed enemies (whether that be zombie or player). It doesn't feel like the zombies are being hit when they are and they show limited reactions to your attacks throughout any exchange. I'm not saying there has been no work put into this, as you can see there has been, but the game feels like it's in early access (let's forget this 1.0 money grabbing nonsense) and the AI feels like pre-alpha.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand how difficult it is to write AI, but it shouldn't be tied to the engine so any claims that was what was holding up the AI just doesn't float. The core of any AI is the abstraction of the enemy logic, so essentially you could write AI in nothing but a form of pseudo code, not tied to any environmental elements. Bohemia have had 5 years to create that logic outwith any engine and have either failed to do that or if they had a limited success it's not been released to the public.

Ultimately Bohemia and the devs decide where they go with 1.0+ development. I have absolutely no say in that, and it's right I don't. I do have an opinion though and that opinion is that while the environment allows for expansive and complex gameplay there is very little in the way of threats while you are enjoying that gameplay - other than PvP of course but then not everyone likes camping the NW Airfield every single game.

Minor edit: Just to confirm, there is no mechanism for modding the AI in the game is there? I have made that assumption based on some of the content from modders, but it may not be true.

Edited February 6, 2019 by rickyriot

[DenverDeCoY1 23]

I am a recently returning player who used to play DayZMod. I can tell you, compared to that, the AI is WAY better. I actually find zombies to be quite good now, we'll balanced, just hard enough for me to avoid them without being annoyingly powerful. 

[rickyriot 1009]

18 minutes ago, DenverDeCoY1 said:

I am a recently returning player who used to play DayZMod. I can tell you, compared to that, the AI is WAY better. I actually find zombies to be quite good now, we'll balanced, just hard enough for me to avoid them without being annoyingly powerful. 

I'd struggle to agree with you on "enjoyable". For me it's also debatable whether the Arma2 mod and/or the intial SA release had worse AI than we have now, I'd say they didn't.

I'm not expecting miracles, lots of games have sketchy AI and it is a difficult thing to get right, but the surprising thing (from someone with no specific insight into the game's development) is that Bohemia have had years to create the core of the AI that had nothing to do with the engine changing - which most would accept was the major blocking issue in SA development.

Honestly though... if you are happy with them as they are now, then I'm happy for you. My post was asking when the AI will be looked at, not knocking those who are enjoying it as they are.

[amadieus 316]

Just wondering, but what are you exactly expecting from the infected regarding AI? Personally I think the AI is good. They could tweak some parameters as I found stealth to be sometimes a bit to easy to walk around them, but that is not an issue of the AI.

[BCBasher 2465]

35 minutes ago, amadieus said:

Just wondering, but what are you exactly expecting from the infected regarding AI? Personally I think the AI is good. They could tweak some parameters as I found stealth to be sometimes a bit to easy to walk around them, but that is not an issue of the AI.

I was wondering the same,  never played the mod but have 2000+ hours in the .60s version of SA and coming back after a year the new infected are a treat playing solo PVE on my home server, granted all my deaths in my recent 20ish hours are legit mistakes on my part and being mobbed, I haven't been in any of the glitch situations I've read about.

Their sensory range seems a little short at times but they feel more alive than ever giving cues of their awareness zig-zagging flanking attack instead of the oh so predictable straight line to your face. Back in the .60 playing with even my youngest kids we could clear a town from the outskirts without breaking a sweat by dropping the two closest ones with a "three two one" snipe and then shooting the oncoming conga line.

[Guy Smiley 534]

AI isn't broken.  Sounds like a learn to play issue.  Also, lol @ modders will add the missing stuff to the game. They're the reason we keep getting complaints of the game crashing with their broken shitty mods.

[pharoah 6]

yeah the Zombie AI is a real let down in this game. I absolutely love it however zeds are more an annoyance than a real threat. What happened to the old monkey zeds we had back in dayz mod? But yes, the hit mechanics are really off - try and hit a zed running at you with an axe, and chances are it'll actually port right through your body and end up the other side. I mean WTF is that?? I've had multiple times where I'm swinging at the zed which is right in front of me, and hitting me with its blows, yet my axe is constantly missing it. 

The Devs should REALLY make zeds a menace. Have they watched World War Z? ok thats a bit extreme however in that movie they fear zeds. So should it be with dayz. How?

1. more zeds. 

2. roving zed hordes. get zeds to walk around Chernarus following main roads. number them up to 100 if possible...just a slow walk. Imagine looting a town when suddenly you see the zed horde entering the other side. What do you do? I know what I'll do - RUN!!!

[Guy Smiley 534]

5 minutes ago, pharoah said:

yeah the Zombie AI is a real let down in this game. I absolutely love it however zeds are more an annoyance than a real threat. What happened to the old monkey zeds we had back in dayz mod? But yes, the hit mechanics are really off - try and hit a zed running at you with an axe, and chances are it'll actually port right through your body and end up the other side. I mean WTF is that?? I've had multiple times where I'm swinging at the zed which is right in front of me, and hitting me with its blows, yet my axe is constantly missing it. 

The Devs should REALLY make zeds a menace. Have they watched World War Z? ok thats a bit extreme however in that movie they fear zeds. So should it be with dayz. How?

1. more zeds. 

2. roving zed hordes. get zeds to walk around Chernarus following main roads. number them up to 100 if possible...just a slow walk. Imagine looting a town when suddenly you see the zed horde entering the other side. What do you do? I know what I'll do - RUN!!!

1. They are not zeds.  

2.  They can increase them easily as I have them at 5x on my dedicated server and it's quite hectic but we do not know the limitations of the servers and how much load they can take

[Parazight 1599]

There are a number of things that ordinary, mortal humans are not capable of comprehending.  Great examples include; quantum physics behind the singularity within a super-massive black hole, the colonel's secret recipe, layered levels of various string theory, and the reasoning behind balancing infected while melee combat is still bugged with full stamina.  It's a mind-blowing phenomenon, to be sure.

With stamina available, your projected toon will go full-on, psycho-killer, no pulled punches madman, stun-lock mode automatically.  Why balancing is being done while this is still 'a thing' is not something anyone, even god herself, will ever be able to answer.   The question of tweaking infected AI  seems rather pointless when dwarfed by the obvious ongoing issue of melee combat being totally borked.  Or, even somewhat borked, fixed, and then borked again.

I know that all I can do is pray to the gods of the undead that someday zeds will be able to lift a firearm and pull the trigger.  Disregard fully the ability to actually aim it.

[rickyriot 1009]

6 hours ago, Parazight said:

Why balancing is being done while this is still 'a thing' is not something anyone, even god herself, will ever be able to answer.   The question of tweaking infected AI  seems rather pointless when dwarfed by the obvious ongoing issue of melee combat being totally borked.  Or, even somewhat borked, fixed, and then borked again.

Nail, hit, head. The melee is very poor, although in my defence I use the term "AI" to represent all enemy actions including the melee and not just their movements outwith combat. As I said before the poor melee is somewhat of a surprise considering many status updates trumpeted the new animation system and how it would link seamlessly into combat.

16 hours ago, amadieus said:

Just wondering, but what are you exactly expecting from the infected regarding AI?

 

15 hours ago, BCBasher said:

I was wondering the same..

So both amadieus and BCBasher make the same point (what is wrong and what do you expect) so I'll answer you both at the same time.

What I am looking for is a non-player enemy to act in a manner that is both "realistic" and challenging. Realism, while we are clearly dealing with a non-realistic threat of a zombie apocalypse (or whatever lore you wish to offer up), should relate to how the enemies interact with their general surroundings and the player. In terms of positioning, I can't really complain. No random zombies in the middle of forests, while lots in the middle of cities. That's fine, although clearly it would be lovely to see more everywhere. However the movement is clunky, they are akin to an abstracted layer than inhabitants of the world you are. They will glitch through things, will teleport and/or suddenly react and run off through a wall then disappear. Other games such as Miscreated or 7 Days to Die are hardly leaders in developing AI but their protagonists act like they are part of the world. So movement is one. The second element would be interaction. I don't mind too much about the "area of influence", as that can be tweaked. Want more sensitive zombies, sure that can be done. The melee when you do interact is, as mentioned in my reply to Parazight, doesn't give you the feeling that you are actually in a fight. Take out a knife, right click to swipe, swipe three times and they are dead. All the time the zombie just stands there taking the punishment and not reacting. Now to be fair if you hit them when they are arriving into their "melee space" you will get a reaction but that's the only time I see it. Finally what most people would consider AI, which is their pathing and routes taken around the world seems utterly unrelated to that world.

Eseentially I am looking  for zombies that are an actual challenge, they are not that at the moment. I'd even put up with jerky and glitchy movement if the threat for them was genuine. They are annoying because they are glitchy and a pain in the ass to fight. This would be fine if the game was solely PvP with some extra environmental challenges but that isn't how DayZ has been pitched. If Bohemia removed the zombies and said it was now an out and out PvP then I'd have nothing to complain about, it's because it's always been pitched as a PvE (players, zombies and environment) that I expect the competence of those threats to be equal - at present it does not seem to be the case.

Some might say of all this, "but it's still early access" or "it's a beta release", but it's not, it's 1.0 and this sort of thing should have been resolved before a full 1.0 release.

And finally this...

14 hours ago, Guy Smiley said:

AI isn't broken.  Sounds like a learn to play issue.

Do you feel condescension is the way to go here, bud? I feel it's probably not.

[BCBasher 2465]

3 hours ago, rickyriot said:

*snip*

Some might say of all this, "but it's still early access" or "it's a beta release", but it's not, it's 1.0 and this sort of thing should have been resolved before a full 1.0 release.

*snip*

Wow, that was a super concise explanation.

I'm playing on a closed in home server with almost zero latency now and I'm not seeing any of the glitchy behaviour, I'm thinking that is discrepancies between server and client and being a multiplayer game the server wins those arguments after the fact and corrections look weird.  With so much more in the game (not finished) I doubt they're going to  make huge changes to make their behaviours more diverse or complicated at this point although BI game tend to mature for several years after they are "done". 

The quoted portion, I was very, very vocally "that guy" form 2015-2017,  I just came back expecting a finished game and got this so.... not so much anymore.

[amadieus 316]

9 hours ago, rickyriot said:

What I am looking for is a non-player enemy to act in a manner that is both "realistic" and challenging. Realism, while we are clearly dealing with a non-realistic threat of a zombie apocalypse (or whatever lore you wish to offer up), should relate to how the enemies interact with their general surroundings and the player. In terms of positioning, I can't really complain. No random zombies in the middle of forests, while lots in the middle of cities. That's fine, although clearly it would be lovely to see more everywhere. However the movement is clunky, they are akin to an abstracted layer than inhabitants of the world you are. They will glitch through things, will teleport and/or suddenly react and run off through a wall then disappear. Other games such as Miscreated or 7 Days to Die are hardly leaders in developing AI but their protagonists act like they are part of the world. So movement is one. The second element would be interaction. I don't mind too much about the "area of influence", as that can be tweaked. Want more sensitive zombies, sure that can be done. The melee when you do interact is, as mentioned in my reply to Parazight, doesn't give you the feeling that you are actually in a fight. Take out a knife, right click to swipe, swipe three times and they are dead. All the time the zombie just stands there taking the punishment and not reacting. Now to be fair if you hit them when they are arriving into their "melee space" you will get a reaction but that's the only time I see it. Finally what most people would consider AI, which is their pathing and routes taken around the world seems utterly unrelated to that world.

Eseentially I am looking  for zombies that are an actual challenge, they are not that at the moment. I'd even put up with jerky and glitchy movement if the threat for them was genuine. They are annoying because they are glitchy and a pain in the ass to fight. This would be fine if the game was solely PvP with some extra environmental challenges but that isn't how DayZ has been pitched. If Bohemia removed the zombies and said it was now an out and out PvP then I'd have nothing to complain about, it's because it's always been pitched as a PvE (players, zombies and environment) that I expect the competence of those threats to be equal - at present it does not seem to be the case.

Some might say of all this, "but it's still early access" or "it's a beta release", but it's not, it's 1.0 and this sort of thing should have been resolved before a full 1.0 release.

Aaaah now I understand what you mean! It was first unclear for me if you were talking about literally artificial Intelligence or the AI in the sense of NPC's/PVE hostiles. But now I know you were talking about the latter.

In general I agree with your points. The animations they have are fine in my opinion, what bothers me is when the infected turn when they stand still. They walk, stand still, then in a sort of floating movement turn 45 degrees and start to walk in that direction. Looks very odd and it surprises me that the dev-team did not add a proper animation for that. Their movement in interior environments is pretty clunky. Fighting them has some problems as well, like when they teleport right through you. But I am sure this will be fixed! Personally I also think that the future addition of ragdoll effects will help to increase the feel of fighting them. The reaction animations could be better when you fight them, now it feels odd when you hit them with a fast weapon and sometimes they do not even react to your hits.

I hope the devs improve the infected in the points you and I mentioned as there is enough room for such improvements. Of course this should be done with 1.0, but there are still so many things missing or not working properly that you cannot actually speak about a 1.0.. It is still mind boggling that they even called this 1.0.

 

Edited February 7, 2019 by amadieus

[Parazight 1599]

8 hours ago, rickyriot said:

Nail, hit, head. The melee is very poor, although in my defence I use the term "AI" to represent all enemy actions including the melee and not just their movements outwith combat.

Well, traditionally "AI" literally refers to how the artificial intelligence and decision making executed by the generated entity plays out.  The standard definition is/should be totally separate from the effects of bugs, player reaction and balancing of the combat system.  With the traditional definition of AI combined with the reality of how the game actually plays out, it's impossible (IMO) to really evaluate and make suggestions regarding the behavioral scripting assigned to these infecteds.  So with that, how can you tell that it would need fixing, seeing as how it's pretty difficult to tell if it's really broken.

The system as a whole needs attention.  Saying the AI needs adjustment is pointing fingers at only one facet.

Aside, I don't find the infected to be difficult at all, as-is.  Additionally, I've always felt that PVE has been, and currently is, just another trivial part of the true DayZ experience.  Le zombies are just part of the environment, IMO.  Further, if you're experiencing the title without the possibility of unknown players then you're missing out and not playing as the developers intend.  (they DID stop supporting offline mode, afterall)

Edited February 7, 2019 by Parazight