Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Variance of enemy AI

I think this is something that could be relatively easy to achieve. Or if not exactly easy then at least doable at this stage of the game development, with mechanics that are already there.

Enemies should have variant AI, or "smarts". Especially with the introduction of new and improved Ai.
Its not only because of greater internal coherence of creatures in the setting and the game, but because it would also make combat gameplay more diverse and so more interesting.

Not every single enemy should have the same Ai capabilities. Because when they do it reduces the differences between them. And some of the enemies definitely should not behave as if they have human brains and tactical thinking ability.

The reason why im writing this and the main gist is in how enemies react to various elemental surfaces - which are the biggest feature in the game - and now they have been enhanced even more. Majority of combat is creating and otherwise dealing with elemental surfaces.

But if every single enemy can recognize them and avoid them - that either nullifies their usefulness or reduces it.

So... some types of enemies should be a bit dumber about it. Which would enable the player to use surfaces in better and more varied ways and so have greater use of them.
Obvious quick examples are headless zombies, skeletons and various animals. Others can be added to this group as its fitting depending on what type of creature they are.

This automatically makes some enemies tougher to deal with, actually, while it would seem very natural and easily understandable for any player if its applied depending on the type of creature as it would be logically expected.

This also does not mean that creatures i mentioned and others would need to be completely stupid and therefore easy to deal with. Nobody wants that.

No need to apply this kind of a thing in a hamfisted manner.

Diversity of the dumber enemies themselves can be achieved through adjusting basic stats and resistances and by making some a bit more smarter, depending on specific story reasons.

So, for example, if you run into a group of zombies of skeletons under the control of some crazy wizard they would be smarter, since it is the wizard controlling them.
But if you run into some random ones they could be dumber, although possibly tougher to spice things up.

Likewise, some void creatures would need to be dumber, while some stronger ones or special ones would be smarter.

This would provide a very distinct difference not just in color or simply stat (and hp) bloat of these creatures, but in the very way they behave. So more dangerous enemies would be more dangerous because they are smarter too and because they can avoid elemental surfaces better.
Instead of just having more armor and a few more spells or higher damage.


Of course, i doubt devs will read this and automatically jump to do it. I just felt like i need to say it.


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Maybe enraged status should make enemies dumber?

Lower intelligence enemies should not be as smart as others?

Im sure other details like these can be found and used in this way.

/
not an april fools joke.

I totally support different intelligence for different enemies.

A standard soldier should also act differently than an experienced elite soldier.

Sure. That would be nice to have too.

Bandits. Ordinary soldiers. Elite troops.

I have no idea how the Ai mechanics are actually done and to what extent this can be done, but if it can be done it would be a good thing for the setting coherence and the gameplay.

Since there are mechanics like that even in older games, like Baldurs Gate 2 where you could choose Ai behavior for your companions... (as well as PoE recently) im guessing its in the realm of possible.

Of course this would require further balancing but that is done anyway and they are making much deeper and substantial changes than that right now.

well

a good way to do this would be to create behaviour resources with intellgience thresholds.

the mobs can then receive these intelligence levels for various situtaions and thus access the behavioural resources.

e.g.
area awareness: ability to spot and use ground effects.
lvl0 -> ignore ground effects
lvl1 -> only avoid if health is low. throw at enemy whenever possible
lvl2 -> avoid at all cost to prevent DoT. Don't overwrite unfavourable ground effects on enemies.
lvl3 -> actually calculate true net gain. In some situations it might be favourable to stay in ground effect if it forces enemies to enter it as well. example single enemy vs 3 enemy melee. thus the overall gain for the own team would be tripple if you remain in ground effect.( this does not need to be too sophisticated. Most people wo't be able to beat a simple suboptimal greedy algorithm with an approx factor of 2.)
lvl4 -> apply zoning techniques and use choke points to force enemies into aoe if they seek to be aggressive.

well we'd also want target priorities applied to the AI
E.g.
Enemy A attacks the first character within range
Enemy B attacks the tankiest character
Enemy C attacks 1 character each
Enemy D attacks 2 characters at the same time
Enemy E attacks the squishiest character ganging up on them
Enemy F tries to disable characters' lower armor (deal magic to low magic armor characters and vice versa)

I was primarily thinking about this as having some variable reactions to the elemental surfaces.

Since they are the biggest thing in the OS games, if all enemies avoid them equally - the surfaces as well may not be there.

Its true we can use choke points in some places, but most of the areas are spacious enough for enemies to find some path around them and the path finding in Larian games is, funnily enough, too good.
And its also true we can basically bomb an enemy with some surface effect, but thats not really the solution either.

My suggestion doesnt require anything more complicated then some obviously brainless or non human enemies like animals and similar being less cautious about them.
I think ive noticed some cases of such behavior in previous game although i dont know if that was intentional or just a consequence of Ai not being good. It felt more like a random thing than an actual behavior.

The version of OS2 i tried had voidvoken at that church ruin walk into fire and that felt satisfying.

As for the other Ai behavior related things, if they can find other ways to make some enemy types behave a little bit different all the better. But i dont think thats very necessary or that it should be something very complicated. As long as animals and other creatures of that "kind" dont behave like elite commandos im good.

Agreed, I'd also sign every single enemy has something slightly different about their AI. Perhaps would be a first in gaming.

All I can say is I completely agree with this, this could really make the challenging fights stand out as more sort of "boss fights" against important enemies so you have to properly prepare. However the early soldiers you fight in-game and all that can only figure out the basic stuff like lighting fire where there's oil and putting out fire with water.

I also noticed that the enemies don't use grenades very much (especially compared to DOS 1 so that could be added to make them less rare and allows for the character to use them more as well). Smarter enemies can use more grenades as well.

At the moment every fight is challenging which makes it extremely fun but also kinda tiring, I want to be able to relax a little while fighting some of these groups of enemies but also be even more careful and tense when fighting hard enemies. At the moment the feeling is all the same no matter which enemy it is. I really want to add the idea of a boss fight to the game instead of the usual "This is a hard fight just cause there a lot of enemies". The only things that come close to a boss fight (Still haven't finished it) but still doesn't quite satisfy the term is the queen fire slug and Migo. I mean the main magister building was all a bit boring as all enemies had the same health and dealt the same damage. As they all say "Quality is over quantity (but if we can have both that's even better)".

They've done the hard work of making decent AI (always ways to make it better though), so dumbing down some enemies shouldn't be too difficult. I expect AI to be diversified as the game is polished. There were lots of subtle different behaviors in the first game.

I also want to see more true bosses. I think they've done a fairly good job so far, and there's plenty room for more epic boss fights in the rest of the game. The Voidwoken Dragon swamp fight, Alexander, Radeka, Trompdoy, Migo, Orovid, Kniles are all good or have potential, so I expect things will get amped up in the latter acts.

I was one of many who argued for better Ai in the first game, and i appreciate all they`ve done in that regard.
But, if there is no variance in it, then the value of a better Ai is more or less lost.

None of this means that i think Larian devs dont know this or that they wont do it, but i figured it cannot hurt to put it out there.

Better bosses Ai is similarly naturally expected and they will too look more impressive if there is a difference that the players can notice.

A lot of player experience in this regard is dependent on and can be hidden behind other enemy stats, since higher level enemies with better gear, stats and more spells to dish seem harder even if they dont have some large difference in Ai behavior.

Thats why i think any larger difference in Ai should be kept as a difference between specific enemy types.
- this will also reduce the work needed.
And then slightly adjusted and tweaked between specific encounters as it will be done naturally during development, in addition to the levels, equipment and other stats.

Again, one of the more obvious Ai abilities every player would be able to easily notice is how different enemies deal with elemental surfaces, which are the biggest feature of the OS combat.

Focusing more on this specific part of Ai would also allow the some enemies remain relatively "not dumb" about other things in combat. As necessary depending on the narrative and specific encounters.

Sounds good but you will be fighting a lot of the same enemy when you first start (magisters) and they continue to appear later on so they should probably either tweak and change each fight individually otherwise it gets too boring.

Obviously they should still change the AI for each enemy type as well but there are just too many magisters that something should be done about them individually.

Other differences can be achieved through stats of the enemies.

I guess there could be ordinary, veterans and elite magisters.
Tweaking Ai for each individual is too much work and i doubt you can make visible differences in Ai behavior that way. Such differences would be small variances in details and so hard to notice.

But if you focus on a difference between prisoners and magisters for example, then that would be noticeable and appropriate for the narrative. Since other prisoners are just random people, not trained soldiers.

The whole game and all of the features they added to this sequel on top of what was in the first one require a lot of work so better to keep desires and expectations for something extra to a reasonable level.

Also I just realised, having gotten further in the game, the first half is full of magisters while the second half is full of skeletons. Those are really the only enemies you will be fighting. I noticed that in the end, the behaviour of each enemy changes a lot depending the environment they're in, if there are a lot of high places, that sort of stuff.
Something they could add to make different enemies behave differently is simply how they behave to their environment, so a stupid enemy (ranged) wouldn't climb on the top of the tower where he can get bonus damage from OR
A stupid enemy won't get out of the way of a soldier when they have no more physical armour.

Something along these lines could work and maybe to balance it all, there are more stupid enemies in Explorer mode and slightly less of them in Classical and so on.

I wouldnt make them that stupid.

It would make the game too easy. I think its enough to make some of them less careful about elemental surfaces and then maybe add a few details to specific encounters where it would make sense form the narrative or story angle.

I think its kind of appropriate that skellies who were soldiers before still remember a few basic things like climbing into better positions, especially if they are resurrected by some magic or source.

I think explorer mode already reduces all enemies stats and will probably have lesser Ai too anyway.
So that should be more then enough for those who dont want to fight seriously.