RE AI interception

How is it at all a thing that the game AI has “Intercept” capabilities?
Intercept for the player is a combination of anticipation & reaction time. It’s a human skill. The player doesn’t know what move the defender will make for sure, but our experience guides us.

But for the AI, it’s not anticipating a move. it effing knows what we are doing because it knows the input has been delivered for a move or dash the exact moment it occurs. The 1s & 0s are immediately available for the AI to respond to.

Interception, IMO, is a really dodgy part of the AI kit. And it seems to have been cranked up in the last few weeks. Which is frustrating a lot of people.

I have a lot of examples to describe but I think enough people have experienced the same issue that it’s not necessary at this point.

It’s almost like playing Paper, Rock, Scissors against a computer using a controller or keyboard - the computer couldn’t be beat, depending on the programmer’s code.

Comments

Tx_Quack_Attack6589

You don’t enjoy dashing in to intercept only for them to special intercept you?

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Deacon

100000% AGREE.

CyborgNinja135

Ideally you don't want to go for an intercept when the enemy has at least 1 bar of power. I just keep that in mind and most of the time, if I get special intercepted it's my fault

Ace2319

Ideally you don't want to go for an intercept when the enemy has at least 1 bar of power. I just keep that in mind and most of the time, if I get special intercepted it's my fault

Special intercepts I get but what about light intercepts? Am I just never supposed to dash in?

Daddrieda

I mean come on.. we all have been at that state where the AI is making something impossible and taking advantage of it for being a computer. We all know exactly the point of this thread is about. You can play extremely good, but the AI will always kick your butt sooner or later because our human tap tap tap movement skill data is what feeding those AI to be better than us.

Today in incursion I barely even started to do my moves and the AI knew exactly what I was gonna do so I don’t know how to really explain this further. Kabam have cranked up their AI system and we obviously need to be “get good” than the AI now, but the question is how much “get good” can we actually be before kabam can take that data and improved their AI further more?

I do love me some good challenge, but not to the point where the AI read my moves and making it impossible to read their moves and it should have some kind of balance.

LordSmasher

My rule of thumb was it was safe to charge in as long as the AI is blocking. Is that no longer the case?

Hoitado

I was fighting a VenomPool

Long Story Short he was holding block (not the block spamming thing) and once I dashed in he immediately did SP2 and the bleed killed me

RickyG_Chicago

Even though they're annoying, I don't mind AI intercepts too much. I figure I'm the dummy for not paying attention to the defender's power bar (and I like that the AI is getting smarter). What I DO mind is the AI having the Dexterity mastery. It means every champ is an evader regardless of it being in their base kit. Also, will Kabam give the AI access to other masteries in the future? Will the AI be able to heal with Willpower, or reverse our healing with Despair?

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Ace2319

Ideally you don't want to go for an intercept when the enemy has at least 1 bar of power. I just keep that in mind and most of the time, if I get special intercepted it's my fault
Special intercepts I get but what about light intercepts? Am I just never supposed to dash in?
@Ace2319 when the ai does the weird slow walk don't dash in. It pretty much guarantees u getting light intercepted if you dash in.

@JoshKosh557 thanks, I’ll pay more attention to that. I still would rather fight a simpler ai and instead focus on overcoming nodes

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LordEmperorSloth

I mean come on.. we all have been at that state where the AI is making something impossible and taking advantage of it for being a computer. We all know exactly the point of this thread is about. You can play extremely good, but the AI will always kick your butt sooner or later because our human tap tap tap movement skill data is what feeding those AI to be better than us.

Today in incursion I barely even started to do my moves and the AI knew exactly what I was gonna do so I don’t know how to really explain this further. Kabam have cranked up their AI system and we obviously need to be “get good” than the AI now, but the question is how much “get good” can we actually be before kabam can take that data and improved their AI further more?

I do love me some good challenge, but not to the point where the AI read my moves and making it impossible to read their moves and it should have some kind of balance.

Someone of them can even re-parry or break your combo.

I notice as well,that now they can even parry your heavy. Is it possibile?

RexnSpike

I mean come on.. we all have been at that state where the AI is making something impossible and taking advantage of it for being a computer. We all know exactly the point of this thread is about. You can play extremely good, but the AI will always kick your butt sooner or later because our human tap tap tap movement skill data is what feeding those AI to be better than us.

Today in incursion I barely even started to do my moves and the AI knew exactly what I was gonna do so I don’t know how to really explain this further. Kabam have cranked up their AI system and we obviously need to be “get good” than the AI now, but the question is how much “get good” can we actually be before kabam can take that data and improved their AI further more?

I do love me some good challenge, but not to the point where the AI read my moves and making it impossible to read their moves and it should have some kind of balance.

This is honestly all that I’m saying. There comes a point of diminishing returns. I play the game because I like the challenge. I like learning the champs. I like learning as I move along.

What is frustrating is that my moves aren’t always caught by the device, and if they are, they’re now examined by the AI in seeming nanoseconds and countered. Or worse, the way I’ve learned the game is now being exploited by the AI.

Can I adapt? Probably. With what we are seeing, it would appear that the AI knows the exact moment that I’ve swiped forward to dash attack. It therefore isn’t “anticipating” anything, it “knows” I’ve dash attacked and can intercept me because it doesn’t have a human brain to anticipate anything; it is actually recording that input and can have an immediate response.

If they shield the AI from the input and it must “guess” what we are doing, fine. I’m not certain Kabam acknowledges that necessity. If they don’t, the attrition they’ll see will be inexorable because the trust of the players to have a fair shake at winning matches through building their skills will be lost.

When a company loses the trust of its customers, it’s going to lose a lot of those customers.

mattress

Enemy ai is crazy lately. The stand out to me was getting knocked down by a special and the opponent being 2-3 hits back into their combo before I even got up

Diablord

All games with the PVE format have AI that slowly performs tough moves such as knowing when to strike, intercept, etc.
This should only start occuring from act 7 or abbys, variant 7 or other tough content released.
However, I have faced issues with act 5 on my mini account. The AI blocks while bane is on me and when i try to use heavy attack, I get destroyed.

RexnSpike

I mean come on.. we all have been at that state where the AI is making something impossible and taking advantage of it for being a computer. We all know exactly the point of this thread is about. You can play extremely good, but the AI will always kick your butt sooner or later because our human tap tap tap movement skill data is what feeding those AI to be better than us.

Today in incursion I barely even started to do my moves and the AI knew exactly what I was gonna do so I don’t know how to really explain this further. Kabam have cranked up their AI system and we obviously need to be “get good” than the AI now, but the question is how much “get good” can we actually be before kabam can take that data and improved their AI further more?

I do love me some good challenge, but not to the point where the AI read my moves and making it impossible to read their moves and it should have some kind of balance.
Someone of them can even re-parry or break your combo.

I notice as well,that now they can even parry your heavy. Is it possibile?

I’ve not had my heavies parried. In addition to the intercepts, which chafe, I’ve had the AI heavy then attack before a response, which I can’t do because of timing mechanics & distance to oppenent, break my combos midway, block my specials after combo, even intercept after they launched a special 2 which I’ve blocked.

Moves which aren’t available to me, so I can’t exploit AI, seem to have been granted to the AI- this is the source of my frustration.

I’m not giving up by any stretch. But Kabam also needs to hear some feedback on moves they’re making. Otherwise they will believe everything’s alright. And eventually it won’t be.

I_tell_no_tales_1

Ideally you don't want to go for an intercept when the enemy has at least 1 bar of power. I just keep that in mind and most of the time, if I get special intercepted it's my fault
Special intercepts I get but what about light intercepts? Am I just never supposed to dash in?

Yes

I_tell_no_tales_1

Also the recovery time mechanic is broken in my opinion
As the AI takes 0.1 seconds to do heavy while for me it takes the amount of time which is enough to make the AI intercept me
I was blocking to bait special then the AI suddenly threw a heavy (I swear by the time I saw it coming it already came) and before I even recovered from the heavy I got a special on my face
Passive AI is something now we all know about
But Kung Fu AI is far better than me

TheBoogyMan

Threads like this will never be not answered.

Lpoo

In sci-fi dystopian stories, AI evolves beyond humans and becomes this unstoppable force.

I am convinced mcoc AI is just in the beginning chapter of this evolution.

unoobmepro

True, the bishop in the boss rush intercepted me like 5 Times, AI should never be able to intercept while the player dashes because if it decides to it just can't miss, it has perfect timing

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Berjibs

I had one yesterday where the AI was consistently intercepting the first hit of my heavy attacks (I’m playing as tigra).

I was clearly flying across the screen before the opponent began its animation. This would happen when punishing specials or heavy spamming in the corner.

Tbh I’ve struggled with opponent recovery times for months. As a good and frequent shulk/tigra player have been really noticing the difference.

It’s difficult to consistently punish heavies and specials now without getting intercepted. Similarly stand up intercepts are incredibly hard to time without getting sidestepped or intercepted. It feels like there just isn’t a window anymore.

Previously these were all techniques I could time impeccably and formed the basis of my play with those two characters.

I appears connected to the dex/parry bugs both in timing of the first occurrence and the feel of it happening (like initial frames of opponent animations are being skipped) but doesn’t make much sense from their explanation of dex/parry. Similarly to dex/parry bugs it can come and go. Sometimes I feel like I’m playing normalish game, most of the time feels buggy.

Be good to get some mod comments on this.

I’m on iPhone 12 FWIW

Tbh between this, the established bugs, the super cranked up twitchy Ai and the current passiveness wrt withholding specials, the game is at its lowest point for me in terms of enjoyment.

If I think back the last fight that really felt fun and normal to me was SOP rogue. That was an example where your intercepts and timing had to be spot on. I demolished it with she hulk. To get back to that feels like a distant dream now..

TheBoogyMan

It would be very interesting having someone from Kabam interact in this thread, so they could explain and try to understand our points.

Ain't gonna happen.

Killswitch01

I mean come on.. we all have been at that state where the AI is making something impossible and taking advantage of it for being a computer. We all know exactly the point of this thread is about. You can play extremely good, but the AI will always kick your butt sooner or later because our human tap tap tap movement skill data is what feeding those AI to be better than us.

Today in incursion I barely even started to do my moves and the AI knew exactly what I was gonna do so I don’t know how to really explain this further. Kabam have cranked up their AI system and we obviously need to be “get good” than the AI now, but the question is how much “get good” can we actually be before kabam can take that data and improved their AI further more?

I do love me some good challenge, but not to the point where the AI read my moves and making it impossible to read their moves and it should have some kind of balance.
Someone of them can even re-parry or break your combo.

I notice as well,that now they can even parry your heavy. Is it possibile?

It's called the 'stand your ground mastery'. It's been around for years now. The AI tends to heavy parry when block is triggered during an heavy. Though this is not guaranteed

Tru100

I would have sworn this went hand in hand w the dex/parry bug. In that sense it feels like AI knows we have to intercept more, or generally trend in that direction more.

More anecdotally, the AI seems a little more finely tuned to each champ’s mechanics. If you have a champ who phases, the AI will wait that out, then get aggressive when the phase is over. Like it knows the windows of opportunity better.

It’s kinda like the AI destroyed P.A.R.R.Y., the mcoc version of JARVIS, and now there’s an evil evolved version with the sole mission of destroying our resources. It had strings, but now it’s free…

I’ve never figured these types of complaints can be addressed, but it’s cool to know others notice it as well. It’d also be interesting to hear some general broad strokes on how these AI’s are calibrated in first place, and how often they’re tweaked or tuned up. ( @DNA3000 )

bumble-bee

All of these issues started from September 2021 update.
1. Defender animation is super fast: Finishes 5 hit combo in about the same time as our 3 hit combo
2. Defender recover much quicker after finishing combo / knocked down: Resulting in we consistently missing parries
3. Defender dashing-in real fast: Resulting in getting hit before we can even think about taping block
4. Defender intercept with special / re-parry / keep block until reach sp3 / won't attack against ghost while phasing

However, Kabam will never admit that AI was improved to be super human and lot of calculations in back-end is causing lags & crashes.
Hey, btw what happened to their Tap-salot model?

AMS94

It would be very interesting having someone from Kabam interact in this thread, so they could explain and try to understand our points.

They never reply on AI related complaints
And if they do (which I remember they did once after a lot of outrage) they say that nothing has been changed & everything is working as intended
They flat out lie about AI & timing related things like they did with the She Hulk heavy nerf situation
Recently Warlock heavy ws also changed, but I knew I won't get any meaningful replies so I didn't even bother opening a thread about it
These changes are something that we're just supposed to accept & move on or just quit the game & move on
There's no in between w.r.t. these type of changes

Daddrieda

At this point We should just only play champions that can power drain or lock for the rest of the fight to even be somewhat safe.