Interesting game AI still doesn't look good. The "cinematic" approach is to replace all systematic stuff (with potentially stiff/unsolved in-between animations) with motion-captured, "realistic" looking sequences.

The same stuff that made critics laugh at enemies not seeing you when standing on a 0.5 square meter shadow in the middle of a well-lit room because you're technically "hidden in darkness" is what is now "solved" by removing the mechanics altogether in favor of safe and cool looking scripted sequences.

Basically, this: https://twitter.com/robotduck/status/759529875992698880

Yea, not to defend that type of gameplay, but this is basically the point. Uncharted and Tomb Raider and the like are out to make interactive movies. Its a great way to avoid the sort of awkward sequences you get in many games where an enemy winds up in a corner spinning around at the end of the map by accident and you can't proceed until you find him. The cinematic approach is exciting in the moment, if maybe a little boring when replayed or if you enjoy any sort of real difficulty.

There's about 3 sections like this in TR (2013). In the rest of the game, any hazards seen on screen are mostly dangerous. I always thought that the extra 'hazard' visuals and noisy audio were there to disorientate the player (along with a bit of shaky-cam) in the hope they'd mis-step the climbing/running/jumping, and thus increase the difficulty.

For skilled gamers (which I am most definitely not) I can see how this 'cheat' is annoying, but for me, who isn't the best at precision movement in 3D games, I found it helped me immensely during these types of sections to simply turn off the sound.

I'll be the devil's advocate: Maybe it's because players don't want more advanced AI? It's (IMO) gotten to the point where AI is good enough. There's certainly room for improvement but by and large it's serviceable to the point that at least in a mass-market FPS it doesn't actually need to be any better.

We might wish that the folks at EA or Activision make shiny cool AI (and I'm sure many of them there want to!) but in reality that doesn't really do a whole lot to benefit their paying customers.

Besides - "AI" in games is really about how to create stage pieces that simulate more complex behavior. Like all software development, it's mostly smoke and mirrors, and it's all about how smart you can set that up to give the user the impression of something magical.

What people really want is "artificial stupidity" (and FEAR is a good example). If the enemy had true AI you'd just die, and in fact most unconstrained AI bots are pretty lethal (and boring). What makes for a good game is entertaining and plausible behavior that nevertheless lets you win against ridiculous odds, etc.

E.g. an enemy coming out of cover at a different position than when they last popped out is cool, but working out that coming out of cover is just a bad idea and waiting in ambush would be more realistic and smarter, but lead to stalemates.

Heck, you hardly ever see even vaguely decent morale implementations ("hey you just effortlessly killed 80% of my unit, so I'll, um, charge you!!!").

Again, in EverQuest some enemies would run away and get help. In World of Warcraft they just mindlessly attack until dead. EverQuest's AIs (lame as they were) were simply too deadly for a truly mainstream MMO.

About retreating behaviour, this was slightly the case with Mount&Blade Warband, where units would now and then flee when their moral was low, which could happen due several factors. Still I am unsure if historically anyone would be willing to charge alone against 100s of heavy cavalry units for a guy that pays ok.

Depending on the era, typically it was a full retreat and slaughter as soon as the shield wall broke. Not all the time, but that was just typically how it went.

Charging cavalry would be stupid. Soldiers knew no horse would challenge a bristling shield wall.

Many mobs in WoW absolutely DO run away, especially humans and murlocks.

You missed the important factor... "to get help".

The monster would run then find bigger monsters and all of them would come back to kill you. Often killing every low-level player in the area.

The parent didn't miss a thing. WoW does all of those things, and plenty more.

For a very incomplete example, you have sentry style mobs which run to activate an alarm and "bring help". You have mobs which run in fear and aggro any additional ones they path too near to.

Exactly, those are set mobs designed to fulfil that purpose, not how EQ did it.

Not all monsters in EQ fled - undead, for example, fought to the death. In EQ 'train' behavior was common when a fleeing monster or a pathing bug caused everything in the dungeon to chase after a player. That player would then run for a zone line to escape behind the safety of a loading screen.

In general most developers have noted that players hated this type of gameplay because it meant that one idiot could ruin an evening for 40+ other players in the dungeon because the 'train' would then clobber all the other players on the way back to their individual spawn points.

WoW also generally doesn't have zone lines that you can escape out of. The fleeing mechanic isn't something that's all that challenging to advanced players who know how to stun and slow. It actually makes encounters easier because the monsters stop doing damage at 20% health or whatever. Contemporary games have other ways of adding challenge.

You're right, I forgot. But it's much less organic and dangerous in general. In EQ for example enemy healers would help allies without actually joining the fight.

It currently depends on the player or game source: - Deathwing, a multiplayer cooperative game based in the WH40K universe have an AI problem, which makes the game utterly boring as enemies will do exactly the same each time. - AI bots have the additional value to fill less played games, expanding their lifetime value. - Finally, I can't dedicate 100+ hours to become good in a multiplayer game, so I'll rather smooth the experience combining human players and AI bots.

For a AAA multiplayer-focused shooter, the incentives aren't there, because multiplayer. Single-player campaigns in that game are merely pretty tutorials for the "main event", as it were, so if they're going to invest money, its not going to be in AI. Single-player games are a different story though, I'd love to see less predictable AI in games like Mass Effect.

To me, AI is more than just the behavior of the agent NPCs. Its also about the overall world environment and how the world and gameplay mechanics work. There is a lot of untapped potential in simulating world behavior. For example, the "director" in Left for Dead games increased or decreased the difficulty depending on how the players navigate and play through the map.

Call of Duty's (and Battlefield's) single player campaigns are more akin to a Michael Bay movie than a video game.

That's not to say I don't enjoy playing them, but I do sort of miss the days when games actually had deep single player gameplay.

First person shooters never had deep single player gameplay. The one exception being maybe Half-Life.

I guess you missed out on the original Deus Ex. It's still one of the deepest story-driven games ever made, let alone first person shooters. Every situation in that game had multiple, radically different approaches. The story had some significant branches based on your decisions, too.

The AI was a joke, though, but that now seems to add to the charm. It goes really well with the campy voice acting and over-the-top characters.

It's a game I'll keep recommending over and over again. The sheer amount of player choice, customization, and environmental openness and interactivity is tough to beat, even today.

Why are you saying this? We're talking about good AI and you say yourself

>The AI was a joke

I don't understand how I should take your comment here? Are you agreeing that other than half life, there are no good single player AIs?

Go back and read the GP. That comment was about FPSes not having "deep single player gameplay". Deus Ex most definitely had deep single player gameplay. Its AI was easy to game in hilarious ways (i.e. a joke) but that didn't take away from the gameplay depth. On Realistic difficulty level JC often died in one headshot so you still had to be careful not to draw too much attention.

Right, I see.

Did you ever play CoD (the original) singleplayer campaign? It was magnificent for its time, gritty like Saving Private Ryan, epic scores composed by Michael Giaccino, and full of historic flavor (ex: WW2 quotes upon death). You didn't play the CoD campaign and simply forget about Pegasus Bridge, or everyone getting mowed down in Stalingrad.

Once CoD:UO (and 2, and so on) came out, they began killing off the great historical single player experience they had.

Deus ex was spectacular for this. There were so many ways to do each thing. Imo it is the best game ever made (for its time period).

Bioshock comes to mind

Yeah, maybe S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as well. I don't really think Fallout counts, but it could if you really stretch what you consider an FPS.

No idea why I'm getting downvoted. There are literally only a handful of first person shooters that are story-driven given the great majority that aren't: Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, Sin, Wolfenstein, etc.

Saying that you miss the "old days" when first person shooters had stories makes no sense other than stirring some misguided Southpark-esque "'member when..." nostalgia.

It sounds like you simply don't consider non-shallow games to be FPSes.

I mean, if "FPS" means "a first-person game where you often shoot things", then Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Thief, Fallout 3/4, Skyrim, etc., can all qualify. Hell, throw in Dungeon Master, and maybe even Portal and Minecraft. Of course one can argue where to draw the line based on how much "shooting" takes place.

But people often say "FPS" to mean specifically "games like Quake and whatnot". Under that definition, shallow gameplay is part of what makes a game an FPS.

> But people often say "FPS" to mean specifically "games like Quake and whatnot". Under that definition, shallow gameplay is part of what makes a game an FPS.

That seems to be unfair to Quake - there's a fair amount of depth and strategy involved, mostly with the hogging of powerups. I thought Quake 3 was just a game about two guys bumblebee dancing while trying to shoot the other, until my mind was expanded by a top Quake 3 player explaining his thought processes in the below video - the vast bulk of the talk is about map control, not reflexes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58

In context, I just meant shallow in the sense of not having the things that the person I was replying to suggested FPSes lack - compelling stories, etc.

Well game genres are rarely defined by the strict definition of their name. Role-playing games rarely have you actually play a role, they're defined as levels and stats and items you can pick up from loot crates. You can play an arcade game on a home console or PC, no quarters required. I play card games on my phone without actually owning a deck of cards.

An FPS has to be a shooter that's in first-person view, but does that make every game where you shoot something with a first-person camera view an FPS? What if the game has other elements? Which definition wins out? Is Fallout more RPG, or is it more FPS? Or is it a turn-based strategy game? Most people would say it's an RPG that happens to have guns and is played in first-person mode and part of the game mechanics is reminiscent of turn-based games.

When you say "FPS", it's a pretty strict definition, because if it's an RPG that happens to be played in first-person with a gun, it's going to be called an RPG first. Maybe RPG-FPS. But FPS really means "run around with a gun and your main interaction with the world is shooting it". There is an entire world of games that do exactly that, and we call them FPS games. Borderlands is an FPS with hints of MMO, dungeon crawler, and RPG, but since the main interaction with the world is running around with a gun and shooting things, it's an FPS. I don't think that's a bad thing.

Sure. Isn't that what I just said? That people tend to use "FPS" to mean a genre rather than just a description of mechanics.

(The point being, it doesn't mean much to say that few FPSes have deep stories, because if a game has a deep story then people tend not to consider it an FPS.)

FPS-RPG is generally used to describe some of the games you mentioned.

> But people often say "FPS" to mean specifically "games like Quake and whatnot". Under that definition, shallow gameplay is part of what makes a game an FPS.

You can still have deep games that are Quake-like, Half-Life being the canonical example. Deus Ex can be played, like Fallout, in third-person so I'd say it's disqualified.

Why is HN turning into reddit with random downvotes and no discussion? Must be the weird gaming crowd.

> You can still have deep games that are Quake-like, Half-Life being the canonical example.

Again, you're talking about the definition, not the thing. Half-life is very Quake-like in its mechanics (camera and controls), and not very Quake-like in its gameplay (exploration, puzzles, etc).

As such, saying something like "FPSes aren't deep" is more about terms than games. Whether you agree with it depends on whether you take "FPS" to mean Quake-like mechanics or Quake-like gameplay.

(Incidentally Deus Ex is first person. The newest ones have a hide-behind-cover feature that temporarily shows you in 3rd-person.)

> Deus Ex can be played, like Fallout, in third-person so I'd say it's disqualified

We're talking about the original Deus Ex which is first-person only.

The element people are missing is deep gameplay, not stories. After all, CoD does have a story.

Bioshock was such a step down in many respects compared to System Shock though. I wouldn't say it was deep at all.

The most interesting part of that game is Rapture itself, the mnechanics and general gunplay just sucked honestly.

I don't mean in terms of story and plot, but in terms of actual game mechanics.

Look at the old Rainbow Six games against the new ones, same for Ghost Recon. Hidden and Dangerous was a great game too.

Those games are actually hard, and have gameplay that isn't just "watch explosions, shoot some enemies, get shot, sit behind wall to recover HP".

Just look at Rainbow Six 3 against Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, the second one was about as linear as you could make a game, the first one gave you a lot of options in how you would achieve a mission.

Clive Barker´s Undying had a pretty good background story. But sure, gameplay was mostly same old kill monsters and solve some puzzles.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. Resident Evil 7 in VR. Bioshock. The Wheel of Time (yes, really). Thief: The Dark Project.

If you're saying that these games are shallow, I will fight you irl.

BL2 was fun and I sunk 100+ hours into it and enjoyed it a lot, the writing was good other than Tiny Tina who was just annoying. There was nothing complex it about it though, the weapon tiers were well defined and the gameplay boiled down to "farm for better guns" after awhile.

I'm talking about the DLC. And you're conflating complexity with creativity and narrative depth.

No one plays CoD for the single player. Spectacle isn't the focus, multiplayer is.

The whole genre of linear single player FPSes is sort of dead. Lots of mixed genre games that tie in RPG elements with big open worlds and character customization though that are doing quite well and could benefit from better AI.

Even with a friend though we can't reliably beat the top level AI in Ghost Recon Wildlands so it can't be that bad.

I play CoD exclusively for single player :)

I personally like the interactive movie feeling, the scripted events and the scenes. I did never enjoy CoD in multiplayer which I find too hectic. The battlefield series with a more slow-paced and strategic gameplay suited me better in multiplayer. However I generally don't enjoy competing in MP that much anymore - too little time and interest to train enough to be competitive with the younger players.

I play CoD mostly for single player, but not really by choice. The multiplayer population on PC dies so quickly there's not much point to it. I'm also pretty terrible at it.

Linear single player FPS is definitely not dead, although multiplayer is the current focus. As a quick example, DOOM (2016) has both linear single player and multiplayer sides, but the single player side was much better received.

I, like others here, also play these games exclusively in single player mode.

I suspect that there's an element of self-selection going on here; there are lots of people who play the single player, but an onliner can't see them because when that onliner goes online it's 100% people who go online that one sees there.

There could be ten times that many playing it for the single player and they'd remain completely invisible.

> No one plays CoD for the single player.

I did, when I actually bothered to play CoD (the first Modern Warfare was probably the last one I enjoyed) and couldn't stand the multiplayer.

When I had been used to games like Quake, Unreal and Battlefield the multiplayer in CoD always seemed so half-baked.

I play all FPSes, CoD including, exclusively for single-player. In fact, if they were MP-only (or had weak SP) I wouldn't buy them at all. What attracts me to CoD is definitely the spectacle; the feeling of being in a Hollywood war movie.

The genre seems well and thriving.

I love FPS but hate multiplayer. Firstly, my ping sucks so I get killed very easily. Second, I dont play that much so get killed by the kids who are playing all day. Hence I rarely play multiplayer if I can avoid it.

yes blame the ping

Another reason could be the push to competitive gameplay. Plenty of people would buy similar titles and never touch the campaign, making spending a lot of time on AI not worth the time.

Yes, chase the shiny took over on consoles. Poor console gamers. Poor everyone else...

I mean, you're not wrong - but couldn't you have found a way to make your point a little less antagonistic?

To be honest, I'm a little bitter how many sad console ports are released on PC. Many games would be very good if they even pretended to adapt themselves to mouse/keyboard input, but the body shop responsible for the PC ports apparently don't care.