Vitruviansquid
2015-10-25, 02:08 AM
Well, we have a thread for complaining about a minor thing in a game we love. How about a thread where we talk about a major problem in games that can mar your ability to enjoy what would otherwise be a superb experience? I'll start with one of my major gripes:
It is infuriating to me when a game is designed for single player, and the AI is not smart enough to play its own game. This occurs in a lot of strategy games, but in particular, the Total War games. The battle AI in those games isn't bad - it can be reasonably challenging to an average player if it has some kind of army to work with. But the campaign AI doesn't know how to provide the battle AI with a good army. Even in the most recent game, Attila, the AI constantly shows up to battles with stacks of support units like slingers, or constantly shows up to battles without a counter to something so simple as sword infantry. In a lot of Total War games, the AI was never able to get highly desirable, special units that might have required it to jump through some hoops to recruit - in Shogun 2, I rarely if ever saw the AI use warrior monks and gunpowder units, even though they are a valuable part of a player's arsenal. I don't expect the AI in any strategy game to feel as clever as a human, but I would expect it to demonstrate an ability to make basic judgments that human players need to make. It is so frustrating to see an exciting strategy game that should, based on any analysis of the systems, be extremely fun and interesting, only for the AI to be unable to work with even half of the game's mechanics.
It is infuriating to me when a game is designed for single player, and the AI is not smart enough to play its own game. This occurs in a lot of strategy games, but in particular, the Total War games. The battle AI in those games isn't bad - it can be reasonably challenging to an average player if it has some kind of army to work with. But the campaign AI doesn't know how to provide the battle AI with a good army. Even in the most recent game, Attila, the AI constantly shows up to battles with stacks of support units like slingers, or constantly shows up to battles without a counter to something so simple as sword infantry. In a lot of Total War games, the AI was never able to get highly desirable, special units that might have required it to jump through some hoops to recruit - in Shogun 2, I rarely if ever saw the AI use warrior monks and gunpowder units, even though they are a valuable part of a player's arsenal. I don't expect the AI in any strategy game to feel as clever as a human, but I would expect it to demonstrate an ability to make basic judgments that human players need to make. It is so frustrating to see an exciting strategy game that should, based on any analysis of the systems, be extremely fun and interesting, only for the AI to be unable to work with even half of the game's mechanics.