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Game News Divinity: Original Sin 2 Kickstarter Update #33: Patch #3 - Improved AI

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Divinity: Original Sin 2; Larian Studios; Swen Vincke

Larian have released the third major patch for the Divinity: Original Sin 2 Early Access build. The highlight of this new version is a greatly improved enemy AI, which they're calling "AI 2.0". With the new AI, enemies are now far more aware of their environment and how to use it to their advantage, and they also choose which buffs and debuffs to use more intelligently. This algorithm is apparently so clever that it's managed to independently discover several tactical exploits. As usual, Larian have published a new Kickstarter update with an accompanying Swen Vincke video to explain it all:



Yes, that's right, you now have more reason than ever to fear your new robot overlords! The AI of our NPCs has been turned up to 00110001 00110001, and they're not taking any prisoners. When you face off against an NPC in combat it won't just be a question of "beep boop, throw fireball and spend five turns phoenix diving across the map" anymore. Now the NPC will know to look at its surroundings and use height, surfaces, and every other trick in the USB flash drive to make sure it wins.

AI 2.0 won’t just blow up barrels: it will manipulate existing surfaces to make combat much more challenging, it will use your statuses against you, it will use spells and abilities in ways that even we never imagined, and- frankly if we’re not careful, it may be well on its way to world domination.

The way this AI has been using our combat system has already caused us to take a step back and have another look at how some of the unintended uses our skills and spells can have. Because it considers every possible outcome, we’ve seen AI 2.0 take advantage of things that we thought were relatively insignificant and using them deviously to fit the situation they happened to be in at the time (such as healing people on full health because the want the “Well Rested” status that the First Aid skill gives you, or passing up the opportunity to do a small amount of damage in order to create an oil surface to slow you down and remove your “Haste” status.)

AI 2.0 has proven so devious that we’ll probably have to disable it in the easier game modes, but those of you that want to take it on will have to step it up a notch to survive. However, if you do learn how to defeat our new, ruthless AI then you'll be equipped with an impressive set of combat skills. And of course if the campaign isn’t providing enough of a challenge, then you can always step into the arena for a pure combat experience. And speaking of the arena...

Maximus Badassimus

It's not just our NPCs’ brains that have been revamped: we’ve given them a general tune-up and you now have three brand-new arenas to explore! With this patch you'll be able to enjoy (by which we mean 'murder your friends in') the Forbidden Valley, Enemy at the Gates, and Ravenshaw maps. These new levels are the perfect place to check out all of our combat improvements and tweaks, which include:
  • Better animations for combat and skills
  • New durability system
  • Tell your companions what class you want them to be
  • A new defensive ability called Perseverance
  • And much more
If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of each and every change, then click here to get the patchnotes and a full rundown of what’s different.

As the video shows, Divinity: Original Sin 2 was at PAX South in San Antonio last week, but that visit doesn't seem to have produced much press. Perhaps PAX East will prove more fruitful. Swen says that Larian will soon be ready to announce a release date for the game. It sounds like the next few months are going to be more active than the last few were.
 

Jezal_k23

Guest
This actually looks really good. Impressed with the AI behaviors they showed in that vid. Didn't play EA, waiting for it to release, though I can say the stuff they're doing for DOS2 actually feels like a natural progression of the gameplay they established in the first game, and its essential elements are still there. I'm delighted that at least Larian is not making absurd changes and building a lot of stuff from the ground up again.
 

CRD

Cipher
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Divinity: Original Sin 2
If only inxile could learn from Swen. Who can't love this man.

D2 is going to be a blast.
 

Shin

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412397a166.jpg
 

DeepOcean

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Nov 8, 2012
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Larian is the most competent company of the three kickstarter RPG ones, hope D:OS 2 is an smashing success, can't wait for the Ai to kick my ass, on D:OS 1, it was capable of doing some nasty tricks already but on many fights it was an one sided affair as it couldn't pull off the same tricks as you. They are humble too, being aware that they fucked up on terms of dialog, story and writing in general, they put up a huge effort into fixing it and not only D:OS 1 having the best combat encounters of all kickstarter RPGs, they want to incline it even more.

They are implementing some reactivity too what was sort lacking on D:OS 1, it is the only company of the three kickstarter RPG companies that I feel are genuine on the care about the stuff they are making as both InXile and Obsidian always pass a vibe of "We prefered doing AAA games than this awful RPG stuff but we need money so we will stick with you idiots for now."
 

Pentagon

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From the description of how the AI was exploiting imbalanced game mechanics, it sounds like it's possible that they're employing machine learning for developing their AI. If that's the case, I'd posit that not a lot of people will be able to beat the higher difficulties, since such an AI will be playing better than 95% of the population.
 

Pentagon

Educated
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And this will make it awesome
To a certain portion of the player base, yes. But most games, the AI is pretty basic, which means that in order to make the game challenging the computer will either have a significantly larger force (horde of goblins), a much more powerful stat-wise creature (a dragon), or some mixture of the two (elite troops mixed with cannon fodder). This has the effect of making the player feel empowered, as they are either outnumbered or outpowered, and yet still emerge victorious. Part of the reason people play tactical games is to feel intellectually rewarded, and beating the computer when the on-paper odds are in favor of the computer creates a sense of intellectual reward. Having an AI that can beat players on even footing, or worse, when the AI has the weaker troop composition, removes that feeling of reward and victory for what I could imagine to be a sizable portion of the playerbase. Of course, for the hardcore fans who will scrutinize the combat systems and optimize their characters, the improved AI promises to be an incredible feature by requiring more thoughtful tactical decisions. So long as Larian limits this feature to higher difficulties, they should be able to avoid alienating a large portion of their playerbase.
 

Aenra

Guest
Yeah, if it's that hard, best we can pray for is that they leave it in as an optional mode for the very few. There are bound to be 'balancing(tm)' iterations on this. Have a lot of love for Larian, but they are the same studio that level-locked quests (DKS), reworked content to be more linear and straightforward (DOS EE), etc etc. It's a brand new old audience folks and they for one have embraced it.

It's just that for most people dumbfucks like me, hope dies last ^^
(i know it sounds like i'm bashing them, but that's what gets me so bitter. Unlike so many other "AAA" asswipes, these people CAN do it. Without the false promises and the airs of grandeur. And they DO do it, they show it to you.. and then what do they do? They nerf it.. i mean fuck me)

Either way, combat's not my primary concern. Larian's focused on the fun factor, not the hardship factor. And combat can be fun even if it's not extremely challenging; they've already proven that.
Which is why i'm sincerely looking forward to buying the game a second time, just because :)
 
Weasel
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Of course, for the hardcore fans who will scrutinize the combat systems and optimize their characters, the improved AI promises to be an incredible feature by requiring more thoughtful tactical decisions. So long as Larian limits this feature to higher difficulties, they should be able to avoid alienating a large portion of their playerbase.

Swen did once mention they may "have to nerf it", but this comment was more promising:

 

Kem0sabe

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Mar 7, 2011
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Played the alpha a bit and didn't notice any huge spike in difficulty.

Performance is still awesome, the engine is truly great considering the amount of stuff they have going on, that being said... Combat speed is still terrible.
 

Darkzone

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From the description of how the AI was exploiting imbalanced game mechanics, it sounds like it's possible that they're employing machine learning for developing their AI. If that's the case, I'd posit that not a lot of people will be able to beat the higher difficulties, since such an AI will be playing better than 95% of the population.
This is an optimisation problem so there could have been used certain forms of machine learning to achive such a script. Under the monitor of the A.I. guy was the "practical handbook of genetic algorithms: applications volume 1" from 1995 by Lance D. Chambers.
If they have used gentic algorithms then the fitness function would be the rounds that the A.I. script can survive against an experienced player or against the standard script OR (logical) how fast it can beat them and the difficulty level for the players would be measured then in generations and dependend on the generation and exploration of the tree this could be quite hairy for some players.
I have seen quite the impressive results of genetic algorithms, but also the evolving behavior can be quite unpredictable, if it is left unchecked.
 
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Roguey

Codex Staff
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May 29, 2010
Messages
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Someone please tell Larian to stop putting that god damn whistling music in all their development videos. It's like an audio representation of what is happening inside a down-syndrome kid's mind.

Other than that, can't wait.

:incline:

Behead those who insult Kirill.
 

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