Better AI in games over graphics

I kind of got to thinking tonight as I played on the PS4 that graphics nowadays are so good but are they really much better than say four or five years ago. Whether one plays in 1080 or 4K they both look incredible. And with all these HD / ultra HD games we just move to be bigger and more ridiculous installation sizes. But what seems to be neglected is in-game AI. some games do it better than others. But has AI really moved on over the years? Games certainly have some dodgy AI in them and seem no better than games of over a decade ago. Graphics keep moving on but I kind of think maybe the graphics should take a backseat so in game AI can really move on. I know AI is a non issue in multiplayer games when interacting with humans. but I still think a lot of people like me like single player games.

i like driving games myself most of all. But to be honest I find the computer AI in modern games no better than an old game like Grand Prix 2 which I used to play circa 1995. I just don’t think it is has moved on in great strides like graphics. I guess graphics will always push on so the hardware demands increase and the gpu makers like nvidia can keep squeezing us for cash. Though I do struggle to see how the graphics can get that much better.

I would tend to agree with you. In many cases, higher rating AI doesn't mean a smarter AI, just an AI that does more damage or has cheats. I think the current problem is that the programming that is needed for complex AI is too time consuming and pricey and no game developer wants to waste their time for little gain.

From my background in that industry , if a game has real AI you might never win , I mean the AI wont allow you to sneak from behind , would allocate itself in harder spots to exploit , respond faster and aims more accurate , there were even several known AI injections in the history of gaming that were frowned upon and users hinted they are making the game impossible to win where the developers had to patch remove the AI . The current more acceptable trend is applying strategy , making bot opponents have a window of idiocy/weakness you can exploit once noticed , or ammo count vs enemies , where harder level concern scarce ammo versus more enemies where every bullet counts , nitrus versus time , in-time drifts vs time , etc .

and on a side notice , every body has enough bs in rl nowadays to be out smarted by their own bloody 1k$ rig , they just want to vent some and that is noticed by many developers and many successful ones yealed so many of the games you see are more of an interactive impressive looking tour with the sense of open world just so to not pose much stress on older users suffering from world rush like us :)

I might have to check COD out at some stage. I guess I just think by now AI so should be so good. I play a lot of racing games and football games like fifa and pro Evo. I still see many dumb things done by the AI. I really think the AI in let’s say fifa should be able to play a really good/realistic game of football but as one ramps up the difficulty they play ping ping ultra unrealistic passing. Like tiki taka on fast forward! And even lower division sides play this beautiful football which is very different to reality (long ball or direct, aggression)

CountMike said:

I guess AI has to be to some appropriate level in PC and console games because of wide spread of HW it has to play on. Only recently computers were able to play championship chess and Go and beat humans but it took super computers to do that.
Game developers would go broke if only people with top end computers could play them.

I'm not sure hardware is the issue - the IBM deep blue beat kasparov in 1997. That is 20 years ago and In round 5 Deep Blue prototype had the white pieces and lost to the computer program Fritz 3 in 39 moves while Fritz was running on an Intel Pentium 90 MHz personal computer.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)

This is for world champions not average players as well.

The problem for most games isn't making the AI always win (which would probably be easy and really dull to play) but balancing in the right amount of RNG or incompetence into the AI so it feels like a challenge while still not making the NPC appear to be idiots.

I've been playing DOS 2 a lot recently and in the beta testing the AI would write log files detailing each option it considered and the damage it would inflict on your party. This has gone from the release version but the AI seems on the whole better. It still makes odd decisions but then so do I.