I am not sure how many of the community will actually be playing solo or in small groups against and along side the AI.
I have some friends who hate going against actual players because some of my friends are not very good and they hate having to listen to the chat so they are really looking forward to the offline and online progression being the same.

My question is that if I play by myself in a match where I have 7 AI on my team and we are against 8 AI, how good will the AI fill the roles or go after/defend the objectives?

If I use the Combat Training mode in Black Ops as an example, a game mode like TDM or FFA, the AI is pretty simple to code. These are the only game modes because I imagine that doing something like Domination, HQ or CTF would be too hard to code the AI?
Even if you take BC2 and the Onslaught mode, it's kind of like Rush and Conquest mixed but the AI are only defending. They don't have pure Rush or Conquest against AI because I can't see the AI being smart enough to go and properly offend or defend objectives in either game modes.
Will Brink have the same "limitations" because the way I see it, Brink isn't sold as just a Co-op mode where you can run through the solo campaign with some friends.

I also have two main concerns about the AI fillng their roles:

The first one is the difficulty level of the AI, does it scale at all or can you adjust it? If its the same for everyone then I can see it being too tough for some and too easy for others.
The second concerns is how good will they fill their class roles or will it be where I am going to constantly be switching classes so I can move the match along? Also will the AI know I need healing or need amo or do I have to tell them?

Previews have said the AI is hard to distinguish from real players.

I'm expecting it'll do a good job of working on the objectives and being useful in general.

The AI will scale with you as they level up. Bots can do anything you can: shoot, buff, flank, do objectives.

The AI will switch classes to help the team.

I remember one of the devs saying you won't have to babysit them in fact if you are doing bad they might babysit you.

Agreed. I've read reviews of people who sat down with other journalists and developers and played along side AI's. They said that they have a hard time telling the difference. I can find the link if you want.

Assuming the AI is built off of Splash Damage's eariler work, Enemy Territory:Quake Wars, the AI is outragesously strong. You can watch 8 v 8 AI and they'll play just like actual people. No single-file lines down a predetermined path. No relying on humans to know who to shoot. They make full use of SMART, flanking, objectives, and every weapon/tool in thier arsenal.

I'm not sure. I would hope they are at least competent.

We haven't been told much details (from what I remember) about the AI.
However, there were a couple of people who've played at PAX and said they couldn't tell the AI bots from the players.
The devs said the AI's will have access to the same actions that you have, such as SMART, etc.
I think the devs mentioned something about difficulty levels, but I can't remember the details right now.

AI is just... unpredictable, in my opinion. I don't think there are any games that have ultra-perfect AI, ya know?
They have to make AI /computer smart, but not too smart or else you would end up losing against them a lot and get frustrated. At the same time, they
must make them allow errors, so you (the player) can have a chance, lol.

I hope we can tweak the AI as well, and if not, at least make them somewhat competent.

I know they won't be super-ninja competent (I have not seen any AI that is), but just average competent---or at least, not ultra-stupid/useless, lol.

The AI is completley fine, don't worry about it, they might even do better then you! :wink_smile:

Even if the AI are running in circles shooting in random directions, It would still be better than host migration, being outnumbered, connection errors, and getting kicked out of the game.. *cough* BLACK OPS *cough*

That would be horrible... hopefully everyone will be good enough to not need a bot babysitter.

How bad of a gamer would you have to be to need bot babysitting I wonder?

If the AI end up babysiting ME, then I will definitely appreciate their competent-ness...... But, wait, I'm kind of bad at FPS'ses anyway, so what would that make my AI buddies, lol?.... :biggrin:

@xGruvdogx:
"How bad of a gamer would you have to be to need bot babysitting I wonder?"
*raises hand meekly* Probably me (newbie to FPS world, hee).

EDIT: Oops, misspelled xGruvDogx's name, sorry. :bunny:

You appear to have spelt "AC:B" wrong.

Although, in that game, having AI running around shooting would probably be pretty fun to watch.

Hard to say, I have high standards of what a good FPS players is. I can't understand how people who are bad at games find them fun?



In honestly who wouldn't want a AI medic following them around?

Hopefully the learning curve for SMART is small. It might be me too otherwise lol.

I hope the AI is good but not too good....

I wouldn't want to encourage people to put it on cruise-control the whole match and basically leeching XP from the AI

I have friends who are great at support roles but they are not very good at actually shooting and killing people. Hopefully they can play a Medic or Eng class and still get the same level of satisfaction and reward as a Soldier would.

I have high hopes for Brink, it has many elements to it that almost 90% of the mature gaming community would put in if they developed an FPS game themselves.

I would love to see how SMART works. I'll probably have to end up using the automatic button with my horrible timing, lol.

I would love to watch the AI do SMART, so I can learn to copy their moves if they do some cool wall-hopping or something, lol.

(Oh, sorry for misspelling your username, xGruvdogx. Please accept this :bunny: as an apology, lol.)

SMART is a button I think you can manage holding it down. Now doing it manually will require a bit more work.



If you want to be a medic and not fire a shot the entire match you can. People always need heals, buffs, and revives.



One of thing thing I enjoy about playing online is learning tricks from other players then using them. I would be amazed to see a level 20 AI do something I hadn't thought of doing and then I can use it in the future.

Yes, it would be a shame to do wall humping instead of wall hopping is what I was getting at.

Haha; I haven't played that game online so I wouldn't know.

Hopefully a good job, I hate it when AI's really are stupid.

I don't think it's the coding for bots that takes too much time for the developer or it being to hard to program, I believe it's the priority of AI for the developer. In recent years more focus has been put into making online play into games hence less people playing mulitplayer against bots. So although developers like treyarch could have put time into coding bots to play domination, ctf, sabotage they didn't see it as a high priority. A good example of bots doing objective based game play would be Counter Strike Source, although it's over 8 years old the bots are very well made and able to achieve those objectives efficiently. Now using today's technology and budget the AI in games should be able to do almost anything a human player can do. Brink should be able to adapt to the objectives and support the player effectively. Of course this is all speculation and we won't know until the game comes out.

I believe the only super ninja bots ive seen were the combat training bots in black ops. on veteran it was like playing aginst people with auto aim, no-recoil hax, modded controllers, 10 sensitivity, and wall hacks.

Anyone remember Perfect Dark's bots?

excellent :clap:

They aren't ninjas, but fire up Halo: Reach and play some Firefight against Heretic Elites and Heretic Snipers. It's seriously insane. I swear I've gotten no-scoped more times by them sons o' guns than I pull off no-scopes in all gametypes.

If you guys want some concrete evidence of Splash Damage's bot-programming skills, you could try playing ET:QW. There's a free demo available, and that's all you'll need to see that the bots are able to understand their environment and accomplish objectives. They do the primary objective, they heal you and give you ammo when you need it, they place turrets and mines in useful places. In the four years since ET:QW came out, these devs can't have gotten worse at this.