Kabam, help us understand

This last week has sparked alot of conversation about "AI issues" and "input controls" vs "latency and lag". This piece of information, that lag could be causing things that appear to us as input issues, was incredibly insightful. However, while this seems a valid explanation for some of the things we've been seeing, it doesn't explain them all.

Specifically, how would lag cause the AI to intercept me with a special? Before a month or 2 ago, I had NEVER had the AI intercept me with a special. That is simply something that did not happen. This is something that now occurs in almost 1 out of 4 fights.

Perhaps it was an unintentional result of some other update or patch, but there have absolutely been changes to the behavior of the AI, and its something the team needs to spend significant time looking into. And I think this is the most important point you guys can take back to the team.

Just because you guys haven't intentionally changed the AI behavior, does not mean the AI behavior hasn't changed. These things are not mutually exclusive, and we, the community, are begging you to stop dismissing this point.

Comments

Kaizen_King

Here’s my response in the AI GOD Mode thread:

The mechanic being exploited now is referred to as “input sniffing”. In simple terms, the AI doesn’t have eyes obviously so it only know what you’re champ is doing because it gets to read your inputs as they happen. Now obviously if the game is to be fair, they wont allow the AI to respond instantly to your inputs and have a timer to when it reads the input and responds, you know, so it’s more like we humans who have a slight lag between when we see something happen, get this signal from our brains to our thumbs and react to what we see. Make sense? This is how we’ve played the game for years now. Well guess what? It appears game devs have just chucked the input sniffing timer out the window and the AI is now just randomly able to sniff the input and insta-respond with the speed of… ya, a computer.
Anyone else feel cheated?? Get used to it I guess because they’ll do whatever they can get away with and have proven that over and over again.

Bosley

This new AI appears to be working as intended from KABAMs perspective. They don't even seem to understand the impact of their own decisions. How are they going to be able to adequately explain it to us?......

Kaizen_King

This new AI appears to be working as intended from KABAMs perspective. They don't even seem to understand the impact of their own decisions. How are they going to be able to adequately explain it to us?......

Exactly. I just posted this in another thread regarding the AI doing tricks to counter Ghost's phase mechanic:

... it is working as intended as the AI has been "freed" to learn and adapt it's play same as us humans. We can do this too (who do you think the AI learned this trick from?) so again, working as intended. I know this isn't what folks want to hear but it's now the reality of playing this game.

Our main focus needs to be on the growing list of things the AI is able to exploit with loosely governed fight mechanics that only it can exploit because of its computer precision, you know, like insta-launching specials in the middle our combos, launching specials whilst still in the animation recovery window after being knocked down, perfectly spacing heavies, specials and even light or medium attacks so they get the "lock on" effect and slide clear across the screen and smack you. THOSE (and many others) are the real issues we're facing right now to which Kabam have been silent despite the dozens of complaints from us.

Boogaloogler

Here’s my response in the AI GOD Mode thread:

The mechanic being exploited now is referred to as “input sniffing”. In simple terms, the AI doesn’t have eyes obviously so it only know what you’re champ is doing because it gets to read your inputs as they happen. Now obviously if the game is to be fair, they wont allow the AI to respond instantly to your inputs and have a timer to when it reads the input and responds, you know, so it’s more like we humans who have a slight lag between when we see something happen, get this signal from our brains to our thumbs and react to what we see. Make sense? This is how we’ve played the game for years now. Well guess what? It appears game devs have just chucked the input sniffing timer out the window and the AI is now just randomly able to sniff the input and insta-respond with the speed of… ya, a computer.
Anyone else feel cheated?? Get used to it I guess because they’ll do whatever they can get away with and have proven that over and over again.

This is a great insight. And I fully accept that these changes could be unintentional. Between things getting lost in employment turnover, and the sheer complexity of the code in a game this size, mistakes are bound to happen.

Boogaloogler

But we've reached a point where there is enough evidence that Kabam needs to start considering that they may be wrong, maybe the AI has changed

unknown

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Boogaloogler

@Kabam Miike what "bug" is causing the AI to intercept me with specials?

Demonzfyre

@Kabam Miike what "bug" is causing the AI to intercept me with specials?

Why couldn't the A.I activate a special when you're dashing in?

Shiroihara

@Kabam Miike what "bug" is causing the AI to intercept me with specials?
Why couldn't the A.I activate a special when you're dashing in?

How do you, as a human, play around it? Do you never attack if they’re over a bar of power?
Makes for very dull gameplay if you ask me. There’s no way to predict it and I’m positive this was not the case years ago.
We’ve all learnt to bait specials by hitting the opponent’s block.