Does the AI read player input?
LONERANGER_141
Member Posts: 76 ★
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
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
10
Comments
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.”
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.
Guess why?
Because the AI KNOWS that even if I'm holding block, it have unblockable sp2 so just throw it.
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.
But i am pretty sure we will get another song in response
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
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.
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.
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.
....
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.
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.
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.
FYI :yes, the First hit connected
@BigBlueOx 🥲🥲
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