Does the AI read player input?

I was teaching my sister how to play and had given her some clear rules to follow

1 The basics, block hit and dash
2 I tried her to teach evade , didn't tell her about parry at all
3 Basically, she was just swiping left and right like a child she is

Here comes the fun part, the AI was doing exactly the same. Plus it was a goddamn weapon x ( ik i was trolling her). Dashing and backing up, no specials, no full combos.

Just to see if it was some random incident or SOMETHING

I played in the cav month eq against green Goblin.

Now, the dude was either reading my mind or inputs.

I dash, he dashes
I try to medium, dash back and light combo to the face for me

I try to bait out specials, the idiot does exactly what i am doing --blocking , dexing and basically being passive

I would suggest other summoners to try and replicate it. Might be false alarm , might be something

But one thing was certain, even if we take away the AI acting like MSD. It is too damn fast, i assume Kabam knows this, plus creators like vega also covered this.

The game should be challenging but balanced. For example scream is a nightmare for champs not immune to bleed but sinister makes the fight playable with one hand (😏)
So in short

Nodes + AI( normal) = fun and challenging

Nodes + AI( has access to speedforce and therefore can blitz u and ur 7*Hercules) = DUMPSTER FIRE

Comments

Fit_Fun9329

Summary of our AI friend:

Here’s a summary of your experience and thoughts:

You were teaching your sister to play a game with basic controls (block, hit, dash) but avoided advanced techniques like parrying, making her only swipe left and right. To your surprise, the in-game AI started behaving similarly: just dashing and backing up, avoiding specials and combos, and mimicking her simple moves.

To investigate, you played a tougher monthly quest against Green Goblin. This time, the AI seemed eerily intuitive, reacting to your moves as if reading your mind or inputs—mirroring your dashes, punishing your moves, and blocking attempts to bait specials.

Your takeaways: while AI in the game should be challenging, this level of speed and unpredictability feels unfair, especially when paired with difficult nodes. You suggest other players test it out to confirm, but it seems like this behavior turns gameplay from “fun and challenging” to “frustratingly imbalanced.”

Eb0ny-O-M4w

The answer is yes, the AI does read/act on player's input. Hence why all the sort of AI bugs going on around.

LONERANGER_141

@Fit_Fun9329 Do you have the comprehension skills of a chair?

I literally said AI + Speed = bad
NOT it reading inputs is bad , that was merely an amusing thing i found which AS I SAID EARLIER could be wrong .
Seriously my guy if only u had read it twice before typing all that.

LONERANGER_141

@Eb0ny-O-M4w speculation or is it written somewhere?, i am genuinely curious.

Eb0ny-O-M4w

@Eb0ny-O-M4w speculation or is it written somewhere?, i am genuinely curious.

You would know with a few months of experience, even better with years of it. Is an undeniable fact.

unknown

This content has been removed.

Fit_Fun9329

@Fit_Fun9329 Do you have the comprehension skills of a chair?

I literally said AI + Speed = bad
NOT it reading inputs is bad , that was merely an amusing thing i found which AS I SAID EARLIER could be wrong .
Seriously my guy if only u had read it twice before typing all that.

Yes, I have the comprehension skills of a chair, thanks for your kindness

PT_99

Forget about input, mangog in that powergain node in war somehow senses that I'm using sp3 protection boost so he only likes to throw unblockable sp2 on repeat, even when I'm holding block,
Guess why?

Because the AI KNOWS that even if I'm holding block, it have unblockable sp2 so just throw it.

SirGamesBond

I don't even have to read the post, the heading is enough to answer this and this is not new.
Ai reading inputs is considered cheating.
If a player cheats, they get banned;
Who are we going to ban when devs cheats?

@DNA3000 I think you may disagree that ai is cheating. But speaking from mcoc experience ai can read inputs time to time.

The thing is the ai changes mid fight and I can tell on the spot when its trying to come at me with unfair cheating. It tries to get in a combo before getting KOed. Have observed this when the Defender is losing the health bar battle.

Another example is very low difficulty AI reads inputs all the time.
I dare you to play act 1 or act 2 with lower champs and come out without getting hit in a quest.
This is also true for the low old arenas. The fights vs a 2* during rounds 3-10. It read inputs like a ninja. Though it didn't hurt us but that was annoying af.

LONERANGER_141

@SirGamesBond i don't think i am knowledgeable enough to know if ai reading inputs is cheating or not BUT this really feels bad man. Like if you go on YouTube, small channels have proof of ai acting act of place, recovering faster.
But i am pretty sure we will get another song in response

Emomike

Yes the AI definitely reads your inputs. Especially if you've got a sp3 and they do too 99% of the time you can press the sp and they going straight to their sp3 you'll never get you're off.

BlackTuran

I think it’s more that it makes decision based on your distance/behavior. For example, if the defender has a short range special that doesn’t have close out properties, it won’t throw that special if you’re far away from it. However, if you perform a dash attack while the defender has a special ready and is not clearly holding block, there’s a good chance it’ll throw that special during that dash attack. It’s a slight distinction between that and input reading. I’m sure @DNA3000 has a much better articulated explanation of this but yeah

LONERANGER_141

@BlackTuran Seems about right.
But some champs like hyperion who used to throw specials left and right are just now being passive. I ate like 3 sp3s from Hyperion. I think they fiddled with ai reaction times which opened a whole new can of worms. They won't admit it ofc and sadly we can't verify it either

SirGamesBond

I think it’s more that it makes decision based on your distance/behavior. For example, if the defender has a short range special that doesn’t have close out properties, it won’t throw that special if you’re far away from it. However, if you perform a dash attack while the defender has a special ready and is not clearly holding block, there’s a good chance it’ll throw that special during that dash attack. It’s a slight distinction between that and input reading. I’m sure @DNA3000 has a much better articulated explanation of this but yeah

100% those are just smart AI things.
I know the difference between reading inputs vs smart AI.
Smart ai is annoying but its not unfair.
Input reading ai is unfair and it in the game.

Here's a common example of input reading.
When a defender does the weird walk towards you, if you tap light or medium you will 110% get parried. And if that is in the game code then other sneaky things are too.

BlackTuran

I think it’s more that it makes decision based on your distance/behavior. For example, if the defender has a short range special that doesn’t have close out properties, it won’t throw that special if you’re far away from it. However, if you perform a dash attack while the defender has a special ready and is not clearly holding block, there’s a good chance it’ll throw that special during that dash attack. It’s a slight distinction between that and input reading. I’m sure @DNA3000 has a much better articulated explanation of this but yeah
100% those are just smart AI things.
I know the difference between reading inputs vs smart AI.
Smart ai is annoying but its not unfair.
Input reading ai is unfair and it in the game.

Here's a common example of input reading.
When a defender does the weird walk towards you, if you tap light or medium you will 110% get parried. And if that is in the game code then other sneaky things are too.

That’s not necessarily input reading, but rather the AI making a decision based on multiple factors. If it was input reading, that would be repeated every single time. An example of input reading I like to use is, if you’ve played Elden Ring, the godskin bosses will always without fail throw their black flame at you if you heal while they’re idling. In MCOC, there is no defender action that is 100% repeatable. Like if you try to dash intercept the defender while they have a special, they’re likely to use their special but it’s not 100%, if it was input reading they would always, without fail, perform that action when you perform your action which just isn’t the case here

BlackTuran

The issue we are facing is that the AI is making the “smart” choice too often (hovering idle and light intercepting you when you dash, holding special when power gaining etc), and I’m guessing that when they try to tune the ai to make those choices less often, this is having negative domino effects (similar to how the reparry fix went).

DNA3000

I don't even have to read the post, the heading is enough to answer this and this is not new.
Ai reading inputs is considered cheating.
If a player cheats, they get banned;
Who are we going to ban when devs cheats?

@DNA3000 I think you may disagree that ai is cheating. But speaking from mcoc experience ai can read inputs time to time.

As far as I am aware the AI does not read player inputs, it reacts to game state. However, from the perspective of the player, it would be difficult to distinguish between the two because the game can react to what the player does in a single animation frame in theory, and no human can tell the difference between the game reacting one frame later and reacting instantly. Keep in mind it takes multiple animation frames for humans just to register seeing anything much less even more frames for their fingers to respond. The computer could theoretically respond in one frame - one to “see” the results of your inputs, and zero to send a response to it.

The AI does use both current game state and prior game state as inputs to its action generator, creating what players would call tendencies. For example, the AI is more likely to throw specials after being attacked or knocked down, it is less likely to do so when the player isn’t doing anything. This can cause the AI to look like it is deliberately holding specials, because when the AI has a lot of power the player tends to back off attacking to not push them to SP3, but then that cues the AI to in return throw fewer specials in response.

The idea that the AI would be programmed to “mimic” the player, on the other hand, is illogical for two reasons. First, there’s no benefit to this. If you *knew* the AI was doing this there would be ways to counter it. In fact sometimes I *want* the AI to do this and just waiting to striker counter into it. Unfortunately, this only seems to happen coincidentally or when the AI is especially aggressive.

Whether the AI is “cheating” is a very complex question, because it depends on your definition of cheating. Even if the game was reading and reacting to player inputs, that would not necessarily be cheating because as mentioned, whether the game reacts to your inputs or the result of your inputs is a strictly technical implementation question. The game doesn’t need to see things with eyes and doesn’t need to tap the screen with fingers: the difference between reacting to inputs and reacting to the result of the inputs is technologically inconsequential.

In real time multiplayer internet lag-incorporating shooters, the question of what is fair response time is a state of the art discussion, and I think those discussions would inform my own opinion on what is “fair AI” in MCOC, not whether the AI is “reading” player inputs, or seeming to. But that’s a very advanced discussion, and probably goes nowhere until Kabam actually implements deterministic AI that can incorporate fairness doctrines.

Incidentally, there is a way for the AI to appear to read the mind of the player, when in fact all it is doing is watching the game state itself. When players make controlling motions - taps, swipes, etc - they do not always do so crisply. And when they are using two hands, say going from blocking to dashing forward - they do not execute the motions with both hands simultaneously. This means the player character reacts to inputs other than the intended ones. It will cease blocking an instant before dashing forward, say, due to the slight difference in when the inputs from both hands occur. This is extremely difficult to see by the player on screen, but the game AI will see it, because it will know the player character “stopped blocking” before the character model moves enough for the player to notice, especially since it is transitioning into another movement. This can be enough for the AI to react to something the player thinks they didn’t “do” yet. This is something I specifically experimented with years ago, although not with what I would call scientific rigor.

LONERANGER_141

@DNA3000
Thanks for taking the time and typing all that. As far as AI fairness is concerned, I am not going to comment on it. My gripe is with its recovery speed.

Taking whatever you said factually, it doesn't matter if the AI reads inputs or game state, if it can react instantaneously to it. The widespread "AI dashes out of medium attack and counters it" happens because it is able to react to it the moment a player stops blocking and initiates a medium dash.

The fact that kabam doesn't even properly respond to it is what makes everyone mad. The whole "AI recovers faster" was confirmed by crashed in a response to someone in a thread. That's all. I am not asking for compensation nor a fix overnight. But doing the bare minimum of acknowledging it and some reassurance that they will fix it ASAP (not months) will go a long way in controlling this wildfire.

Maybe along the lines of "Hey we screwed up, sorry. Will get a fix out asap" , rather than " we will look into it in coming months blah blah" bs. I understand these issues are complex but i don't understand why they are treated with such low priority apparently.

If in a fighting game, the fighting is bugged then it is a huge flaw. Regardless of whether the bug is big or small it should be prioritised.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled the game like 6-7 times in a week. To some degree it is my fault that i keep playing even after it ruins my mood. I will eventually stop and i am sure there will be atleast one more player like me who leaves in frustration.

Kabam wake up before you kill your gold laying goose. Mcoc is a phenomenal game and I don't want to see it go to ruin.

SirGamesBond

I think it’s more that it makes decision based on your distance/behavior. For example, if the defender has a short range special that doesn’t have close out properties, it won’t throw that special if you’re far away from it. However, if you perform a dash attack while the defender has a special ready and is not clearly holding block, there’s a good chance it’ll throw that special during that dash attack. It’s a slight distinction between that and input reading. I’m sure @DNA3000 has a much better articulated explanation of this but yeah
100% those are just smart AI things.
I know the difference between reading inputs vs smart AI.
Smart ai is annoying but its not unfair.
Input reading ai is unfair and it in the game.

Here's a common example of input reading.
When a defender does the weird walk towards you, if you tap light or medium you will 110% get parried. And if that is in the game code then other sneaky things are too.
That’s not necessarily input reading, but rather the AI making a decision based on multiple factors. If it was input reading, that would be repeated every single time. An example of input reading I like to use is, if you’ve played Elden Ring, the godskin bosses will always without fail throw their black flame at you if you heal while they’re idling. In MCOC, there is no defender action that is 100% repeatable. Like if you try to dash intercept the defender while they have a special, they’re likely to use their special but it’s not 100%, if it was input reading they would always, without fail, perform that action when you perform your action which just isn’t the case here

Mate, you didn't read. The walking parry is 200% input reading. Not talking about other smart actions.
....

Well DNA clarified that game can read inputs pretty much and fairness lies on how fast they should react.

Walking parry in unfair.
Special intercept is fair.
Getting parried while punishing shocker sp1 is fair.
Mr sinister launching sp1 when you punish his heavy is unfair.
Terminatrix made a post of cgr skipping frame and launching his specials while he got heavied by cmm. That's unfair.
The last two are examples of the ai reacting inhumanly fast.

LONERANGER_141

@SirGamesBond Also can't punish projectile sp1s now. My white tiger is more or less useless. I used to come out with " no damage taken" , now i am glad if i can reach the boss at 30%

Syndicated

Honestly, AI Needs a bit of Defense delay.

It's really insane to see how AI Recovers from SA and it throws SA instantly.

It's really insane how AI now hate intercept and just corner back.

It's really insane how AI can make perfect Heavy parry.

It's really insane how You can't intercept, AI back and Parry You instantly.

BigBlueOx

Gotta love that players get locked out of registering inputs but the AI doesn’t in any way that matters as it’s allowed to move faster than sight

Theshadow

i just saw AI gain power instantly. i was using silk against doctor doom in vt meta. i rushed to my sp2 without baiting any specials which got him almost to sp3 but it was still orange when my sp2 finished and he stood but in half a second without hitting me, without nullifying any buffs, without any buffs expiring, without me hitting his block or anything cause i was waiting for him to throw that sp2 but he gained that 1 percent power instantly and threw sp3.

guess what expired the moment before he threw that sp it was the guaranteed crit PASSIVE for god sake. so mystic can gain power from passive too ??? what a joke. ofcourse i am not a youtuber and i dont record every single match but i still remember this cause what should have been a perfect fight with silk just turned to be a disaster.

LONERANGER_141

My silver sable got HIT through the second hit of her heavy by winter soldier. Though rare , such bugs are happening more often than before. I was actually surprised because instead of being knocked down he straight up punched through the smoke bomb or whatever she throws.
FYI :yes, the First hit connected

BigBlueOx

My silver sable got HIT through the second hit of her heavy by winter soldier. Though rare , such bugs are happening more often than before. I was actually surprised because instead of being knocked down he straight up punched through the smoke bomb or whatever she throws.
FYI :yes, the First hit connected

Ah you see what happened is he did get knocked down, stood up and punched you in the face all in a single frame. Sadly your human eyes couldn’t keep up. MCOC FairPlay in 2024

LONERANGER_141

@BigBlueOx 🥲🥲

Ross979

It's getting worse, the ai can attack when their stun nearly expire, they can dex without getting precision buff, they can intercept, even special intercept, they will throw sp as soon as you do dash attack, aren't your crazy nodes already bad enough kabam?
i challenge kabam staff or whoever design the ai to play the game in live streaming, i mean like play summer of suffering or do the challenge they make, i bet they will getting frustated just to beat 1 opponent, and i really really love to see it

XenoMorf

Just popping in to say that AI is absolutely 100% reading player inputs since it doesn't have eyes to see your actual moves. And that's fine but the problem is, like many spotted here the reaction speed which is instant, well beyond humanly possible. Also agree @Ross979 many times it comes out of stun early and out of falter same. This all translates into unfair gameplay. The AI needs to have similar reaction time as your average human and last few months that's gone out the window. To the point where today's mcoc AI recovers and reacts instantly or even beforehand! I'd reckon kabam gave the AI ability to learn in real time at some point and paired that with superhuman powers. To the players frustration.

J0eySn0w

Forget about input, mangog in that powergain node in war somehow senses that I'm using sp3 protection boost so he only likes to throw unblockable sp2 on repeat, even when I'm holding block,
Guess why?

Because the AI KNOWS that even if I'm holding block, it have unblockable sp2 so just throw it.

Same way Mr Sinister even when I’m holding block knows he has a lot of debuffs he can transfer to me and throws his sp1 when I’m almost about to crack my screen from holding block.

J0eySn0w

Just popping in to say that AI is absolutely 100% reading player inputs since it doesn't have eyes to see your actual moves. And that's fine but the problem is, like many spotted here the reaction speed which is instant, well beyond humanly possible. Also agree @Ross979 many times it comes out of stun early and out of falter same. This all translates into unfair gameplay. The AI needs to have similar reaction time as your average human and last few months that's gone out the window. To the point where today's mcoc AI recovers and reacts instantly or even beforehand! I'd reckon kabam gave the AI ability to learn in real time at some point and paired that with superhuman powers. To the players frustration.

I don’t have all the technical terms nor knowledge but I’m seeing this as input, reaction time and display as well. Maybe in the system it’s out of stun but a slight delay as we see it on our screen. Regardless the AI input and reaction is lightening quick whereas ours is human quick, which is unfair. They should be playing at out level, by our level not the topmost human, Batman level but Bob’s level