Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

[Reinfarcements]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

For the sake of clarity, I'm afraid I must note that the AI cannot in fact throw more than 2 strikes combos on hard. It can throw strikes in quick succession, sure, but they are never a proper 3-strike combo.

Easy & Normal: 1-strike limit
Hard: 2-strike limit
Pro: 3-strike limit
Legendary: no limit (though technically 4 is the max for all but 1 fighter)

Well I guess I can't argue with the man who made the AI, but would it be possible that a "bug" causes them to do it sometimes on hard? I'm like 90% sure I've seen them do it once in a while (like maybe once every 10 fights, its rare). If it is just "strikes in quick succession" it seemed like it was in much quicker succession than possible for the player.

Trust me I wouldn't be asking this if I wasn't pretty damn confident I've seen it before because I know how stupid it looks for someone to be questioning the guy who made the AI on a subject of AI behavior lol.

[Skynet]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

Well I guess I can't argue with the man who made the AI, but would it be possible that a "bug" causes them to do it sometimes on hard? I'm like 90% sure I've seen them do it once in a while (like maybe once every 10 fights, its rare). If it is just "strikes in quick succession" it seemed like it was in much quicker succession than possible for the player.

Trust me I wouldn't be asking this if I wasn't pretty damn confident I've seen it before because I know how stupid it looks for someone to be questioning the guy who made the AI on a subject of AI behavior lol.

While bugs and glitches are certainly a part of the industry, this is not such a case. Those kinds of things manifest in systems that are overly complex or obtuse, and integrate with so many other things that they become non-intuitive even to the developers, thereby letting problems slip through the cracks.

Computers, contrary to popular belief, are stupid. 100% unintelligent. They do exactly what they're told, except in absolute freak moments when photons from the sun decide to hit them and muck em up. Which has likely never happened to you and never will. Sooo, my point being, the system controlling this aspect of the AI is incredibly simple and there's no real room for such a bug.

This indeed just strikes thrown in quick succession.

[Reinfarcements]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

While bugs and glitches are certainly a part of the industry, this is not such a case. Those kinds of things manifest in systems that are overly complex or obtuse, and integrate with so many other things that they become non-intuitive even to the developers, thereby letting problems slip through the cracks.

Computers, contrary to popular belief, are stupid. 100% unintelligent. They do exactly what they're told, except in absolute freak moments when photons from the sun decide to hit them and muck em up. Which has likely never happened to you and never will. Sooo, my point being, the system controlling this aspect of the AI is incredibly simple and there's no real room for such a bug.

This indeed just strikes thrown in quick succession.

Fair enough.

Don't mind me lads, I must have forgotten to take my crazy pills again.

[Reinfarcements]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

Okay so I think I figured out the confusion.

I play a lot of Tournament Mode against the AI. And I always set the Tournament difficulty at Hard. But I'm pretty sure in the last few fights of the tournament difficulty jumps up to Pro or higher, I don't know if that is officially stated anywhere, but it definitely feels like the AI is much harder.

If the difficulty is jumping up, that must be why I have in-fact seen fighters throw 3-strike combos even after setting the difficulty to Hard.

All I need is confirmation that Tournament Mode changes difficulty in the last few fights and I'll feel better about my sanity.

[MeowingForVengeance]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

Jessica Penne's AI still ain't doing any grappling. Should be a submission specialist, but definitely seems to be set to brawler or striker.

[Martyzz]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

One issue with the AI in my opinion is that alot of the times they tend to stand completely still if you stand still, like they dont circle/move, throw punches/feints or anything. If you stand still they stand COMPLETELY still, almost like they dont know what to do and just freeze. I find it really annoying. Anyone else experienced this and what do are your thoughts?

Anything you can say about this skynet?

[AeroZeppelin27]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

Okay so I think I figured out the confusion.

I play a lot of Tournament Mode against the AI. And I always set the Tournament difficulty at Hard. But I'm pretty sure in the last few fights of the tournament difficulty jumps up to Pro or higher, I don't know if that is officially stated anywhere, but it definitely feels like the AI is much harder.

If the difficulty is jumping up, that must be why I have in-fact seen fighters throw 3-strike combos even after setting the difficulty to Hard.

All I need is confirmation that Tournament Mode changes difficulty in the last few fights and I'll feel better about my sanity.

I'm pretty sure tournament mode doesn't do that.
I've never experienced a difficulty spike in the mode personally.

Well, that I've noticed anyway lol.

But on the AI and combos.
Back before I started playing on Pro I mainly played hard and I've seen what your talking about I think.

It's not the AI throwing a 3 strike combo, it's generally a combo of the AIs amazing frame timing and it choosing to immediately throw a single strike after a combo.

For example. I'd often see the AI throw a 1-2 then a leg kick in very quick succession, the low kick isn't comboed off the Two but rather thrown as soon as the AI is allowed to strike again off the combo.

Because it knows the EXACT frame timings of every strike and combo, it's timing is perfect, IMO this cab result in the lower difficulty AIs appearing to be using combos when they aren't.

Basically it's the same as what the AI does when it throws a strike off a front kick. And you sit there going "How in the name of hell did it time them together so quickly"

It's something the player can do, but rarely to the level Of The AI's timing.

Another thing to note is while the Hard AI is limited to 2 strike combos. It's not limited in how often it throws them, so occasionally it'll throw two 2 strike combo in extremely quick succession and it can easily be mistaken for a single 4 strike combo.

[Reinfarcements]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

So not to resurrect dead conversations but something else just sparked my curiosity about Tournament Mode.

Again I start the Tournament on Hard, which still has the grapple assist arrows to show you which direction to deny. Yesterday while playing, I noticed by the last few fights, those assist arrows didn't show up anymore...So now I'm even more confused.

Can we get any insight on how exactly Tournament Mode handles AI? Does the difficulty scale up in the last few fights? Is it just one difficulty the entire time? If so, what other factors would cause the grapple assist arrows to disappear?

Thanks for anyone who has information on this.

[AeroZeppelin27]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

So I think we all agree that the AI is in a pretty damn good place nowadays.

I don't think it needs much more work. But there are a few bugs that if they were ironed out, we'd be in heaven.

No.1 Wrestlers standing up from guard.
This bug has been around for a few patches now and basically consists of the AI attempting I assume to go to stacked guard.

It used to do this. Then it bugged out and every time the AI goes to do the quick stack transition it just stands up instead.

This is a huge issue for difficulty as it doesn't matter how good the AI is on the ground if itll let you up for free.
I've been MAULED by DC. Had him stop mauling me. Stand up. And let me KO him on several occasions, it's extremely jarring.

No.2: Submission reversals. The AI used to do this one as well, but stopped after a patch
I'd love to see this return. It made you have to think about shooting open TDs or swinging wildly from stack guard.

No.3 Legendary TD output. They'll shoot 10 a round and never change it up if you stuff all 10. It drives me nuts.


Overall. The AI is in a good spot. If these few things got ironed out it'd be damn near perfect.

[WarMMA]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

I got another one / possible bug:
- Posture up in full guard postured.
- Begin a transition to stacked guard but stop half way.
- AI will reverse into full mount.

It usually happens when I'm either trying to get my head free or stay postured up, accidentally try to go for stacked then stop and get reversed into full mount. Happens consistently vs Anderson Silva.

One thing I wouldn't mind seeing is feints for ground punches. The AI at times is too good at catching strikes but other times is no good at stopping strikes like side control.

By too good I mean they will only let through one or two strikes every 10 strikes catching and blocking the rest. By no good I mean you can land 4 or 5 strikes uncontested and quickly end the fight.

What I find the AI really is too good at is countering. It's like to make the game more difficult, they have to make every AI counter monsters. On pro and up, everyone seems to be Conor or Prime Anderson on the feet with how great they are at countering. It causes certain guys to not feel like themselves. I was facing Wanderlei AI the other day on pro and man he was something else. I mean the dude was so counter savvy, its like he knew what I was going to do before I did it. Anyone who's watched Wand knows he was never a skilled counter striker...more a technical brawler. I threw a jab from waay accross the octagon that was no where near him and his AI still perfectly timed a back dash lol.

[Skynet]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

Great feedback folks, I'll see what I can do.

[Skynet]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

I'm pretty sure tournament mode doesn't do that.
I've never experienced a difficulty spike in the mode personally.

Well, that I've noticed anyway lol.

But on the AI and combos.
Back before I started playing on Pro I mainly played hard and I've seen what your talking about I think.

It's not the AI throwing a 3 strike combo, it's generally a combo of the AIs amazing frame timing and it choosing to immediately throw a single strike after a combo.

For example. I'd often see the AI throw a 1-2 then a leg kick in very quick succession, the low kick isn't comboed off the Two but rather thrown as soon as the AI is allowed to strike again off the combo.

Because it knows the EXACT frame timings of every strike and combo, it's timing is perfect, IMO this cab result in the lower difficulty AIs appearing to be using combos when they aren't.

Basically it's the same as what the AI does when it throws a strike off a front kick. And you sit there going "How in the name of hell did it time them together so quickly"

It's something the player can do, but rarely to the level Of The AI's timing.

Another thing to note is while the Hard AI is limited to 2 strike combos. It's not limited in how often it throws them, so occasionally it'll throw two 2 strike combo in extremely quick succession and it can easily be mistaken for a single 4 strike combo.

This is quite an accurate depiction of the AI's striking, which is great. I'd like to point out two important points on top of this, however.

Firstly, combo'd strikes use the stamina from when the combo started to calculate damage, speed, interrupt chance, etc. This means that the fourth strike in a single combo is far more effective than in two two-strike combos back to back.

Secondly, while the AI does know the timing, it is actually no faster than players. Since input can be queued, a user can queue up their post-combo strike quite easily and the game will consume that input on the first possible frame. If, however, you put it in too soon, the input will time out and be removed from the queue. That threshold is pretty large though, so getting your timing shouldn't be too hard.

[WarMMA]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

This is quite an accurate depiction of the AI's striking, which is great. I'd like to point out two important points on top of this, however.

Firstly, combo'd strikes use the stamina from when the combo started to calculate damage, speed, interrupt chance, etc. This means that the fourth strike in a single combo is far more effective than in two two-strike combos back to back.

Secondly, while the AI does know the timing, it is actually no faster than players. Since input can be queued, a user can queue up their post-combo strike quite easily and the game will consume that input on the first possible frame. If, however, you put it in too soon, the input will time out and be removed from the queue. That threshold is pretty large though, so getting your timing shouldn't be too hard.

Hmm that's interesting considering the AI has god like timing. Do you mean just with queing up combos, that the player can be just as fast?

[Skynet]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

Hmm that's interesting considering the AI has god like timing. Do you mean just with queing up combos, that the player can be just as fast?

Yes they can, and in some cases even faster. Here's a (wordy) example with some made-up frames, but showing how the system itself handles things for AI/users:

Jab: windup - 10, recovery - 16
Cross: windup - 12, recovery 20
Headkick: windup 20, recovery 40

In the most common and simple case, a combo simply removes the recovery frames of the first strike and goes right into the windup of the second strike. A jab-cross combo would therefore have a total time of only 44 frames (windup + contact + windup + contact + recovery).

|--windup 10--|--contact--|--windup 12--|--contact--|--recovery 20--|

In more complex cases with stun frames or low stamina, or in the case of soft combos, a certain amount of the recovery has to play out before the second strike is allowed to start the windup, making the total time increase. If it was say 50%, then the total time here would be 52 frames because half of the jab's recovery would have to play.

|--windup 10--|--contact--|--recovery 8--|--windup 12--|--contact--|--recovery 20--|

For successive strikes that do not combo at all the entire recovery must play out before windup. This can be seen if we do a headkick into a cross, where the total time would be 94, consisting of the entire windup, contact, and recovery of both strikes.

|--windup 20--|--contact--|--recovery 40--| |--windup 12--|--contact--|--recovery 20--|

There's two key things here that we haven't touched on yet, however, which is when the input itself was given, and how the queue handles that input. There's technically two queues at work here. One is the obvious queue which holds your inputs, and can hold up to 4 things at once, known as the input queue. The second is actually the currently playing, and next animation if in a combo, and looks like the above diagrams. This isn't necessarily built as a queue, but has the same effect as a queue of length 2. We'll call this the animation queue.

The animation queue is only populated when the current leading input is actually consumed and turned into a pending action. Once an input is consumed it can never time out or go away, unless forced to from hit reactions, takedowns, feints, etc. However, only combo'd actions can go into the animation queue, and only when they are the next action. In the above examples, both the hard and soft combos get consumed from the input queue immediately and go into the animation queue. This is why you can enter a jab-cross very quickly and not drop the cross input. The only way your input timing effects this is if you do it too slow, and the strike could have started earlier but you hadn't hit the input yet, such as if you pressed the cross input after 12 frames.

In the case of non-combo'd actions, the input for the second strike sits in the input queue until it's allowed to become an action, which is after the recovery of the kick, so the input queue would only show one at a time. This means it sits in the input queue for as many frames are left in the kick's animation after you hit the button for the cross. If an input stays in the input queue for too long without being consumed, it times out and is dropped. However, if an input is in the queue when it comes time to play it, it doesn't matter how long it has been there, it will start right away. This means there's a sizable window in which you can enter the cross without being punished in any way, and will make your strike come out as fast as is possible.

The AI has the exact same restrictions on the queues, because it actually utilizes the input queue the same as users do. In fact, it has even more restrictions, because it looks to see if its input is immediately consumable before entering it, so it never enters it early. This can cause a 1-frame delay in non-combo actions, because it has to wait for the previous one to finish!


SO! Long story short, you can actually use non-combo'd actions faster than the AI can in most cases, and without any kind of godly reaction times. You simply need to not spam the inputs such that they time out. Have a little patience, and you'll get perfectly timed strikes every time.

Edit: for combos longer than two, the third strike is sitting in the input queue until the second begins the windup, signalling the end of the first strike. Entering this third (or fourth) strike too fast can in fact cause it to time out before it gets consumed. Again, a modicum of patience will do wonders here. You don't need to enter 4 strikes in 10 frames and then watch them play out for the next 100....

[WarMMA]

Re: Fighter AI Realism vs Difficulty

Thanks for the explanation. Definitely gonna go into practice and try this stuff out, cuz I do usually try to input strikes as quick as possible.