AI’s speed is nuking mcoc
MrWTF
Member Posts: 68 ★★
Record your gameplay. Then watch the playback as slow as you can. You’ll see the ai is easily moving 5x faster, maybe more, than we are. Imo this is causing the major issues with dex, blocking, parry, blocking, intercepts, launching spcls, med dash, dash backwards, heavy spam, and now combos. Yes combos. The ai is so fast now it’s getting through five hit combos. And if you are in an area with poor signal it’s even more of a nightmare. Kabam please stop making the ai faster. It’ll be good for everyone if you dialed the speed back too.
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Comments
Kabam doesn't care. They will passively disregard any complaaints about AI. But their AI is programmed to operate that way.
The way AI like this works is that they have a list of actions they can take at any given moment (dash back, throw special, light attack, etc.). The AI being able to reparry is completely normal, as that's something the player is able to do just as well. The problem being of course, it is still unfair to the player, as the ability to throw a combo into a block is something that shouldn't be interrupted so discretely. At least not for the player.
When issues like Special/light attack intercepts come up, it's a very complicated thing to break down, but I'll try my best with the information available to us.
The AI's decision making is mostly based off of positioning in the fight. If the AI is far away from the player, they're more likely to dash in. Closer to the player, they're more likely to throw a light attack. If the player holds their block AND the AI is close to the player, the AI is most likely to throw a heavy attack. These are all decisions the AI makes based off of the current positioning of the player and the AI. These being decisions means that the AI does not have to make them. They can and will still dash back when the player holds their block or hold onto a special attack when the player heavy spams them in the corner, strictly because RNG dictates it.
So when it comes to issues like Special Intercepts being done by the robot on the right side of the screen, a lot of people are going to assume that the AI just made that decision because Kabam added an extra 10% chance to "Throw Special" when the player dashes in. The more likely cause is that the AI just took longer than normal to choose "Throw Special" after being given the opportunity. For example: If the player attempts to bait out a special while the AI is at two bars of power by Dexing the enemy's dash attacks, the enemy might stand still after the second attempted bait, as you might often notice the majority of the time you get special intercepted. They could then pause, "Throw Special" and while they're standing still, the player thinks they have an opening and dashes directly into that special attack. The problem here is not that the player dashes in and then the AI is given the option to "Throw Special", the problem is that the AI paused before making the decision to throw their special, since this usually is not the case.
Those same timing issues are the cause of light attack intercepts, heavy attack intercepts, and more issues often deemed as "AI Issues". These can be solved in many ways, but the important part is going to be diagnosing the cause of why the AI takes a second to follow through with a task after the opportunity is given. Humans rarely have that issue, as we know exactly when to throw our specials and rarely hesitate to do so.
So why does the AI hesitate to throw a special attack when baited sometimes and immediately throws them other times? I have no idea, I don't work there. It could be issues with optimization of code, it could be server issues, it could be that inputs are recorded separately from when they actually take place, but only the devs have access to that kind of information.
What I do know, however, is that the AI does not move any faster than the player. In it's most basic form, the player and the AI are given the exact same abilities and limitations. Humans can skip animations, and AI can as well (though they are designed to play them all the way through, giving us time to punish special attacks). As for the issue with AI being able to miss attacks before throwing special attacks, I do know what you're referring to and you are sadly correct, because players can do that as well.
Due to the Dexterity and Parry mastery being the backbone of MCOC, there is a very brief delay for players and AI when being struck by attacks to actually take the damage and begin the "getting hit" animations. Without this brief delay, us players would have a shorter window of Dexterity, we would miss our Parries much more often, and special attack intercepting would be so much risker than it is for us. Just like the bombs in Fruit Ninja have a smaller hitbox than the fruit, and the platforms in most platformer games have a bigger hitbox than we can see, these are quality of life features that would absolutely ruin the game if they were taken out today.
There are a lot of legitimate issues reported as "AI Issues", but I'm fairly confident that none of them are issues with the AI itself. No way in hell should it be able to reparry, throw specials without even a bar of power, or even light attack intercept as often as it does. I assure you that the enemy breaking through your 5 hit combo is not something it is designed to do and the forum moderators would definitely benefit from hearing more information on that.
In this video I just knock him down. After he gets up I wait for him to dash so I can do an intercept. As I start my dash he stops his, to cancel out my intercept, then zips across the screen. I’m in a full dash moving at snail speed, because of how much I’ve slowed the video down. You can clearly see how many times faster the ai is moving. So you’re absolutely wrong about the ai doesn’t move faster.
Here are two videos. The first one shows Rogue with her walk animation, and the second with her dash animation. Notice with the dash animation how she steps off the ground? Now revisit your video and show me where she stepped off the ground. She was never in a full dash, and you're so deadset on your belief that you're flat out ignoring the possibility that you just didn't understand your interaction.
Look at it again then
AI’s speed has got out of hand
When rouge ‘walks’, her left leg is bent.
When she dashes, her right leg is.
Now let’s take a step back and see if she was dashing or not in the first video. She has her left leg bent, meaning that’s a walk.
To me it looks like the dash input was not recognized fast enough for intercept.
Ai short recovery time is already short enough, and couple this with input lag makes it the recovery time feel even shorter.
Somehow it feels like animation and actual speed don’t quite match… i was surprised how fast storm got up from knock down and smacked me in the face with her foot
As well, Kabam gives us the upper hand in that input lag register issue by allowing us to intercept in cases where the opponent uses a dash attack. When the AI dashes at you, you're intended to see that then dash at them, and their dash animation will always give enough time to account for input lag and for us to process the AI's movements. That's why medium intercepts just don't work at close range, and light attacks should instead be used in the OP's case, though that is more difficult.
Great Video! I hope Kabam sees these.