Did a Mazda MX-5 just overtake your lightning-fast Polyphony F1 car? Does the enemy have a literal army before you even get a Tesla coil up? Is the AI looking through walls at you? Is a chess game making OUTRIGHT ILLEGAL MOVES? Congratulations you are up against a cheating AI.
The trope name for this is The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard, and the length of the page on TVTropes is fairly long. There are limits to what an AI can do, such as having to adapt to a random environment, or a dynamic environment, or getting caught up in a loop where they have no means to escape. There are games with excellent AI such as Final Fantasy Tactics, but other than unique classes on the side of the enemy, they play (mostly) by the same rules as you.
I feel however that a cheating AI is simply poor game design. I can understand some minor things like having them see through fog of war since it would be a pain in the backside for the AI to have to track and predict your moves, but some things however are outright cheating.
Notable examples of a cheating AI are quite obvious. The most obvious ones can be seen in strategy games, where the AI completely disregards resource limits (extremely obvious in Red Alert: Retaliation), can command an entire army as though an entire team of players were handling one side, and laugh at build rules (Tiberian Sun does this). The player does have many advantages as a human (such as building walls and metagame knowledge) however.
That is poor game design, but foul game design is the ultimate cheatery, a rubberband AI. Named for rubberbands that resist harder the more you pull them. Adapting quickly to your skill level is how it would work in an ideal world (I believe Lego Star Wars does this), but sometimes they just pull craziness out of their backsides.
It’s most obvious in racing games when a car speeds past you when such a speed is mechanically impossible for that kind of car. Take your eyes off the AI for one second they’re right along your bumper, robbing you of any advantage you have in a skill-based game.
Some games are a bit more generous and will ease up with a dynamic difficulty that fluctuates so that you’re always challenged, but not to where it’s downright unfair. Whether this is good game design or hand-holding however is debatable.
The reason this is bad game design is because if you’re playing a game where you’re up against the same rules as the other side, then a good game would have you be evenly matched or at a slight disadvantage.
There have been some games where the cheating AI breaking the rules makes sense in-universe. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for example has certain people be exempt from the law, but once you get Cid in your party, you can turn the tables and give yourself a degree of exemption to the laws of Ivalice.
A cheating AI can also be justified because someone with even a inkling of metagame knowledge would be able to dominate the game effortlessly. An example, Final Fantasy X, though an easy game, has a handful of monsters who can only attack via magic, like Flans. If a Flan was too powerful to kill, what would you do? Osmose his MP down to zero. Unfortunately, because the AI in FFX is a cheating bastard, there is a limit to how much MP you can suck out of them but they actually don’t need MP to cast. This was thankfully corrected in FFX-2 but honestly not effective.
Do not get me started on Final Fantasy 8’s card game when the hands are concealed. I’m sure that’s being a royal cheater as well with pulling out the perfect card like they were in an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh.
It is possible to develop a good AI, but to make a cheating one? You’re just a hack.
Ian
You want to know the worst cheating AI? Need 4 Speed. That’s about as cheap as it gets. even time trials are impossible. Need 4 Speed in itself is basically Dark Souls with cars.
Rian Quenlin
Try Soul Calibur. The AI ranges from cheap to downright psychic.
Ian
Yeah. It’s horrible.
dakan45
crysis has the most cheating ai, i am struggling to survive with a suit that loses armor mode in 1-2 hits in the easiest mode, the enemies who also have that suit take about 5 clips and all the explosives i can carry.
I struggle to hit something from long range with the recoil and sway and gravity, the koreans seem to have auto aim from miles away. I shoot one of them with a sniper rifle, less than half a second later, i have already taken damage from his buddy from an assault rifle. When did he got time to aim and shoot or even hit me from that range is beyond me.
Or scarface, i got a car that is basicly a F1 racer and the crappy police car can still catch up to me, give me a tron bike instead, not that it would be faster.
Rian Quenlin
That include headshots? You might just be a crappy marksman but I know what you mean, with the AI being able to shoot you from clear across the map. It’s why I don’t like FPS games.
your_mum_since1987
Perhaps a strange answer but to me PES 2012 has AI which downright depresses.
Teamplayers which completely stop marking their opponents when the opponent attacks.
Keepers that leave their goal because the computer does a poor job of judging loose balls.
And also when you’re nearing the end of the first half or second half, chances of scoring a goal increase dramaticaly especially for your oponent. This is also goes for scoring a goal; If you score there’s a really good chance of your opponent scoring an equalizer just minutes afterwards.
These are not bad examples that occasionally occur, but consciously programmed choices.
I like that it occurs every now and then (the scoring issue in extra time) but it happens WAY to often in this game.
I wonder if I’m the only one who’s getting really frustrated by these issues. I know some friends of mine who also complain about the exact same issues…
300zx T
always seemed to have that problem in combat training in black ops. run around the corner of a building and the ai was already aiming at my head and shooting before i was actually exposed to the gun fire. and i never had a problem with the rubber band ai in any need 4 speed game tho i wont say watching a camaro go flying past my bugatti for a few seconds doesnt get a little frustrating sometimes
Rian Quenlin
I’d say the first point is more clever AI than outright cheating. Play enough FPS games, you learn how to headshot from miles away. Hell, I was a beast on XIII, able to land headshot after headshot without batting an eyelid about it.
Brian Remite
Angry Birds actually has a cheap AI. It’s designed where if you don’t get the perfect shot in the first couple tries, it makes your shots slightly weaker for like 10 or so tries before you can get stronger shots again. You can literally do the same exact shot and get different results, if that’s not cheating I dunno what is.
Rian Quenlin
Definitely cheating, isn’t Angry Birds a physics-based game?
Mem
For any strategy game that’s complicated enough, you can’t develop a good AI. Especially if it’s real time. You can either have a cheating AI or an easy AI. Or in the case of roleplaying strategy games, an AI with unique superpowered units.
Clattus
AI hasn’t developed with everything else in video-games. Upping health,damage and other cheating tactics. Game developers have gotten lazier and lazier…greedier and greedier.
Beebo
“I feel however that a cheating AI is simply poor game design.”
Good luck designing any strategy game then. They all “cheat” in the sense they get bonuses. Civ V is an extreme example – at Prince skill level, which is kind of claimed to be even and fair, the AI gets massive happiness boosts. Since happiness is what limits your own empire’s expansion, it’s a lie. There is a mod to remove this boost, and the AI is easy to beat even with 200% food and production bonuses.
It’s still a decent game now though, IMO.
gdfgdfg
civilization just sucks since civ 2, there are plenty of strat games where the AI doesnt cheat