Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Smart AI - @Larian_AI_Developer

Let me start by saying that I don't expect the following to be implemented however I thought this would be a really interesting post with an idea I had that could make the AI much harder by making the ai smarter instead of buffing their stats.

I was reading a paper, Paper , and started looking up examples of their presented 'NEAT' algorithm and stumbles across this video: NEAT in action.

What I found interesting was the graph presented in this video at 3:52, 3:52. Showing the plateaux in which the AI struggled with. The reason I find this interesting is because with the right 'secondary' logic, (for example the logic of the current AI could be used as a fall back), one could implement these generations as set difficulties

Now, obviously the complexity of DOS2 combat is going to make running a simulation for any amount of time just impractical BUT here's where another interesting idea comes in: What if you ask your players to submit anonymous combat logs? All this would require is a decent structure for a machine to understand the difference between good decisions and bad ones and a method of analyzing and evolving all that data into a single test machine.

If done right you could end up with a truly difficult mode done right. Not only that but once the infrastructure of a project like this has been build it can be used for other projects and games.



Food for thought

Well their AI could do MUCH more than it can now, but they nerfed their own AI down to the point it is now. Why?

"While Original Sin's NPCs follow scripts, its sequel's AI constantly makes calculations to determine the best way to murder the player. That also makes it a surprisingly good teacher. "In Original Sin 2, the AI will always know what will happen when it throws a fireball at an oil barrel. What was cool, and we saw it pretty early, was that the AI started teaching players new mechanics. Even if you didn't know anything about the surfaces or how any of this works, you'd see the AI electrifying and freezing water or exploding puddles of oil and poison. You could learn just by watching."

The AI could be too smart, though. "Our combat designers had to remove crowd control from the AI," Vincke explains, "because it focused on one character, made sure to destroy their physical and magical armour, and then would start to control it, then kill it. That wasn't fun because one guy was dealing with everything, but it was a dominant tactic. So we had to nerf it a lot.""

Source:
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-making-of-divinity-original-sin-2/

They don't need to 'nerf' it for higher difficulties lol

Could be a nice addition to the game if as it has been said to be already written if they could release it as a new challenging mode...