One of the things that always has bothered me about playing against bots or AIs for gaming is not that game designers give the advantages to AIs as a way to “make” the game harder–I understand its tough to make an AI “smart” (although that does bother me a little)–but rather that the AI effectively “cheats.”

Bots/AIs basically know where you are whenever you play a game or know how weak/strong your army is and always finds the weak point without scouting it out.

Let’s go back to basic StarCraft:

You have four bots and yourself (with the bottom of the map clear), though technically only 3 bots as SC almost always had one bot that sat around and resource-camped for the other ones. Now, while you’re sending out scouts to find out where they are and building up your defense (or offense), the other 3 bots gear up on zerglings and just straight out take the orange path of least resistance to your base. No scouting, no guessing, no fog of darkness to hide in.

Why is it so difficult for game designers to essentially separate the game AI from the bot AI such that the bots have the same disadvantage you do? Essentially strip away its ability to see/know everything about your resources and let it at least “feel” a little more human rather than add in stupid messages from random bots saying “you suck, r0xlol”, “my dog could play better than you”, etc.

Even in FPS games such as Unreal, DoD, CS, you still get a very ‘bot’-ish feel as they have a good idea where you hide. Ever try to play as a sniper and take out “smart” bots all day? Ever make it past the first few shots? Didn’t think so.

I guess I could go ask my friend Sumir at Mediocre Minds who works at EA, but somehow I think he’ll just complain about gamers wanting more than what is possible… or bring out Oog to mock me.

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