How is the AI so bad?

[SB (Ger)]

How can a game in 2024 have such a bad AI? At some points in my playthrough it was hard to belive it's not an intentional design choice to increase the difficulty. It feels like my bot mates try everything to kill themselves and be as useless as possible. They jump down instead of taking ladders, they always crawl away from me when they get downed, they just run straight into a group of enemies, never even attempt to take any cover and often just stand there without shooting or moving until they are killed.
It feels like half the difficulty comes from babysitting these guys. And then they take two bags, drop one somewhere on their weird detour to the van and then just when they reached it, often don't throw the remaining one in but return to get more loot or run around disoriented. They are literally just bullet sponges, that give their best to get downed as fast as possible and are addicted to carrying bags (but not to actually delivering them). And don't even get me started on stealth missions where they sometimes just run in a straight line to the loot while completely ignoring the countless guards that spot them.

A major selling point of this game is it's singleplayer which in my opinion is made completely dragged down by this atrocious AI. Payday's is bad as well but they acknowledge that by giving the bots a hefty health boost instead of forcing you to constantly protect and revive them. As far as I can tell in this game there are no such upgrades to make the bots more bearable. Why?

[Lardo]

Sounds like you didn't bother with the tutorial. And if the bots could just loot the place sneaking around/disarming guards, the game would just play itself. They're competent enough, once you get competent enough to give them right commands at the right time.

[Doktor Vic Tim]

Originally posted by Lardo:

Sounds like you didn't bother with the tutorial. And if the bots could just loot the place sneaking around/disarming guards, the game would just play itself. They're competent enough, once you get competent enough to give them right commands at the right time.

The funny thing is that I've caught my AI bots successfully and smartly subdue some guards. I think it was the mission Strengthen Army II or Blast Assurance (Same map) where if a bot gets spotted (due to poor initial positioning) by a guard in Private Areas caused it to calmly walk up tothe guard and subdue him successfully.

although, back on topic, at the very least some more bot commands would be nice, such as "Don't pick up bags" because sometimes they do stupid things trying to pick up bags-

[Flavio93Zena]

To these kind of threads I just reply with a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fY98aI36s4
I just can't relate. They do goofy stuff but it's only an occasional thing at best, definitely not as consistent as you put it, unless you're using very poorly equipped low level bots :)

[SB (Ger)]

Originally posted by Lardo:

Sounds like you didn't bother with the tutorial. And if the bots could just loot the place sneaking around/disarming guards, the game would just play itself. They're competent enough, once you get competent enough to give them right commands at the right time.

How can I make them take cover? How can I stop them from grabbing bags? How can I force them to carry two even if they get shot at? How can I tell them to wait until the enemies are dead before reviving someone in the open? The commands are very rudimentary and still regularly don't even work correctly (telling them to wait still makes them run away sometimes, telling them to deliver the bags often seems make them confused whether they should continue running to the van or shoot when there are enemies nearby, causing them to do neither very well). And the main problems remain: bad pathfinding (like dropping down from so high that they take significant damage) and also their tendency to run out of cover and closer to the enemy. They seemingly got no drive to avoid damage which means you have to constantly protect them. That they aren't helpful in stealth is to be expected, though I would still prefer if they wouldn't just sabotage me by sometimes running for bags without any command.

[Lardo]

Originally posted by Doktor Vic Tim:

Originally posted by Lardo:

Sounds like you didn't bother with the tutorial. And if the bots could just loot the place sneaking around/disarming guards, the game would just play itself. They're competent enough, once you get competent enough to give them right commands at the right time.

The funny thing is that I've caught my AI bots successfully and smartly subdue some guards. I think it was the mission Strengthen Army II or Blast Assurance (Same map) where if a bot gets spotted (due to poor initial positioning) by a guard in Private Areas caused it to calmly walk up tothe guard and subdue him successfully.

although, back on topic, at the very least some more bot commands would be nice, such as "Don't pick up bags" because sometimes they do stupid things trying to pick up bags-

When you tell them to stay, they will take cover and if the guards spot them, they get subdued automatically.

[Lardo]

Originally posted by SB (Ger):

Originally posted by Lardo:

Sounds like you didn't bother with the tutorial. And if the bots could just loot the place sneaking around/disarming guards, the game would just play itself. They're competent enough, once you get competent enough to give them right commands at the right time.

How can I make them take cover? How can I stop them from grabbing bags? How can I force them to carry two even if they get shot at? How can I tell them to wait until the enemies are dead before reviving someone in the open? The commands are very rudimentary and still regularly don't even work correctly (telling them to wait still makes them run away sometimes, telling them to deliver the bags often seems make them confused whether they should continue running to the van or shoot when there are enemies nearby, causing them to do neither very well). And the main problems remain: bad pathfinding (like dropping down from so high that they take significant damage) and also their tendency to run out of cover and closer to the enemy. They seemingly got no drive to avoid damage which means you have to constantly protect them. That they aren't helpful in stealth is to be expected, though I would still prefer if they wouldn't just sabotage me by sometimes running for bags without any command.

You tell them to stay, they'll take cover. You can't stop them from grabbing bags, since this the objective. You can't tell them to drop the bag when they're being shot at, because that's stupid. Implementing more commands will be more cumbersome and harder to make AI behave predictably. Point is, you have to get better at the game, which includes keeping the bots out of trouble. They don't need much micromanagement at all, if you know what you're doing.

[kth]

Originally posted by Lardo:

Point is, you have to get better at the game, which includes keeping the bots out of trouble

come on you cant be serious

[Flavio93Zena]

Originally posted by k33th:

Originally posted by Lardo:

Point is, you have to get better at the game, which includes keeping the bots out of trouble

come on you cant be serious

He's right though, do you let your friends to get surrounded and die when you play with them or you try to help them?
If you watch the video I posted multiple times I try to cover them and they do the same.

[Lardo]

Originally posted by k33th:

Originally posted by Lardo:

Point is, you have to get better at the game, which includes keeping the bots out of trouble

come on you cant be serious

Yeah, I'm serious. You're the one who's confusing this game with a RTS, where you control everything and expect the units to do the job.

[Kiloton]

The next update includes more bot commands, fixes for bots getting stuck, and better use of cover. Improvements to bag handling isn't in the update but they said they'll look into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wndRUo1Qdnc

[kth]

Originally posted by Lardo:

Originally posted by k33th:

come on you cant be serious

Yeah, I'm serious. You're the one who's confusing this game with a RTS, where you control everything and expect the units to do the job.

im not

[Doktor Vic Tim]

Just treat the AI Bots like you did with the PAyday 2 bots. Yell at them, don't let them go to far on their own, keep them away from SwAT Heavy strangers. Expect the lest from them as much as possible and you'll be fine.

Trust me, I've dealt with pre-buff AI from Payday 2. Good lord now THAT is what I'd call useless whenever a turret showed up. Hoo-whee!

[Flavio93Zena]

Originally posted by dubstepdeejay:

There's the bank heist where sometimes the secret door is up on the balcony. You cannot even throw bags to the lower floor that will eventually go into the elevator because the AI bots run down the stairs to grab bags. They run through gun fire to collect those bags on the "hold position" command. It's unbelievable.

Same ♥♥♥♥ on the Dragon Dogs one. You have to manually take 2 bags at a time to the wall where the C4 fails while telling them to hold back by the bank vaults.

I have to ALT TAB, End Process 40+ times on a run on Extreme difficulty, always because of teammate AI screw up. I don't even bother opening the game anymore without Task Manager running. Since they don't have the talent to code AI properly, there are two things they can do:

1. Release mod tools so the community can fix their shortcomings
2. Dump the "Roguelite" appendage on this title and add a "Quick Restart" to missions.

That's all.

Or you learn to play and drop the toxic remarks, play a lower difficulty, you're clearly not good enough to play on Extreme.

[Kiloton]

Originally posted by Flavio93Zena:

Or you learn to play and drop the toxic remarks, play a lower difficulty, you're clearly not good enough to play on Extreme.

Kindly consult a mirror. You label his remarks "toxic" yet you and the other demean and blame the user for raising issue with flaws/bugs that the developers have shown an interest in correcting.

[Flavio93Zena]

Originally posted by Kiloton:

Originally posted by Flavio93Zena:

Or you learn to play and drop the toxic remarks, play a lower difficulty, you're clearly not good enough to play on Extreme.

Kindly consult a mirror. You label his remarks "toxic" yet you and the other demean and blame the user for raising issue with flaws/bugs that the developers have shown an interest in correcting.

After literally posting a video showing the opposite? Yeah, I can blame the user, I heard this so many times and when I watch them play 90+% of the times it's player error.