I've spot a few replies about the forums RE the CM team is working on fixing the AI straight line speed bug. Has anyone seen anywhere that it says how long they anticipate this will take?I do find it extremely concerning that bugs which the team themselves have acknowledged as "game breaking" are still only being "investigated" with no word on rectifying the issue. I know very little about game development but would assume this would've been picked up prior to release during in-house testing so I'm guessing it's been a few months whilst working on a fix already? I thought the cars were enjoyable to drive pre 1.06 so I could look past the OP AI straight line speed but now the cars are overheating tractors to drive I'm struggling to stay motivated to play despite still wanting too. After the horrific patch I really thought they'd put out a statement of some sort or revert straight back to driving characteristics of 1.05...Hope CM learn their lessons from this year, people don't care about sofa's, they care about a career mode and My Team that has largely remained stale and unchanged from last year. I also feel far too long was spent on supercars, personally (and I don't know if this is the general feeling) I got bored of driving them after about 2 Pirelli Hot Laps. I know EA sent out a survey a few days ago so I can only hope CM really take onboard their loyal fanbases thoughts for next year and don't leave us feeling like we've been mugged off for £80.

@Amioram Key difference is most of those games, particularly GT has far better online experiences and therefore doesn’t need to lean on their AI development as much.The F1 series online experience isn’t good enough and hasn’t been for many years. Imo without a strong online experience the AI need to be near perfect, and again I’m not disputing how hard that is.The F1 AI is great when it comes to attacking/defending, especially this year it’s actually a challenge when overtaking but to have game breaking advantages is a deal breaker with the AI no matter how many positives they have.

Nobody heard of Geoff Crammond's F1 games since we are talking about AI here? The guy was a legend in programming AI for his game and you are going to tell me that in 2022 no one can't do a top quality realistic AI for a racing game or it is too hard? I call that BS. My bet is that these Publishers/Developers don't want to hire experienced professional programmers that know their stuff in AI programming etc. A lot of these top programmers are very smart with PhD's in Physics in some cases. It's all about the $$$$, good quality experience programers cut into the companies profit margin. This is not new news, it's been like this for a couple of decades now and not just for racing games, sports game and other games that require decent human behavior AI is severely lacking in today's games. A lot of these AAA game companies hire much less experience programmers coming out of college for so little pay/money or they outsource from other places/countries. So, as the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out unfortunately.

How long is a piece of string? Handling model is great now. Plus it actually looks great and sounds awesome compared to last year. But as I only play my team. No point in starting a career that’s just going to annoy and frustrate me which will only end up with me ranting on here. Because my team as a mode is unbalanced and as my team car is a fat slow dog to start with just exaggerates how bonkers mental ai speed is. F1 2020 with F1 22 aggressive ai and I be happier than a pig in doodah😀👍

I don't believe the AI speed is as easy to balance as people think it is, and if CM releases a patch resolving the issue I guess they want to be sure that the speed scales properly with AI difficulty. The AI being so fast is usually misnamed here as a problem with straight line speed but in reality it is (much) more complicated than this. Even for example if you use the mod on Race Department that lowers the max bulk torque so that indeed the AI will become slower overall they still retain their unpredictable nature. Sure, they will be slower on corner exit (and hence also on straight line speed), however in fast corners they will be now two times as fast as they are in slow corners and depending on tire temperature and/or wear they become faster or slower. So you have circuits in which the speed is too slow and circuits in which the speed is still too fast, as you have parts of the circuit in which they are extremely slow and parts in which they are extremely fast, so that the speed decrease is not harmonic at all.It's not so easy to have an AI that carries similar pace in every corner of a circuit and it's still more difficult to do so for every circuit involved. Then you add changes of difficulty and how such changes impact the AI (and having that decrease be as linear as possible), you add in tire wear and temperature and it's not an easy task to balance the speed of AI properly. If they release a fix they must be sure that the speed decrease is as fluid as possible and work in the same way in the different modes. Doing so requires not only a lot of work in the programming side but especially in the QA department. For this I believe it is taking all this time, and, personally, I much prefer that they take all the time they need to actually tailor AI speed properly instead of releasing a quick fix that just patches a hole here and there but by doing so making the AI even more unpredictable to drive against. There's nothing worse than unpredictability in AI because pace you can fix by tailoring difficulty, but when you have AI that is all over the place as pace goes then it is really difficult to find a difficulty that suits your personal skill.

@Amioram Completely acknowledge what you say mate, I’m not trying to downplay it whatsoever as I couldn’t do it in a million years.One thing I would say though is this is they’re well over 10 years into having this franchise and I would’ve thought by now they’d of had AI speed nailed down. Plenty of other motor racing games have it. It gets a bit frustrating that the same bugs and issues carry over from game to game whilst they spend time adding sofas and supercars.

How long until AI is fixed? | EA Forums

34 Replies

ScarDuck14
Legend
4 years ago
How long is a piece of string? Handling model is great now. Plus it actually looks great and sounds awesome compared to last year. But as I only play my team. No point in starting a career that’s just going to annoy and frustrate me which will only end up with me ranting on here. Because my team as a mode is unbalanced and as my team car is a fat slow dog to start with just exaggerates how bonkers mental ai speed is.

F1 2020 with F1 22 aggressive ai and I be happier than a pig in doodah😀👍
Amioram
4 years ago
I don't believe the AI speed is as easy to balance as people think it is, and if CM releases a patch resolving the issue I guess they want to be sure that the speed scales properly with AI difficulty. The AI being so fast is usually misnamed here as a problem with straight line speed but in reality it is (much) more complicated than this. Even for example if you use the mod on Race Department that lowers the max bulk torque so that indeed the AI will become slower overall they still retain their unpredictable nature. Sure, they will be slower on corner exit (and hence also on straight line speed), however in fast corners they will be now two times as fast as they are in slow corners and depending on tire temperature and/or wear they become faster or slower. So you have circuits in which the speed is too slow and circuits in which the speed is still too fast, as you have parts of the circuit in which they are extremely slow and parts in which they are extremely fast, so that the speed decrease is not harmonic at all.

It's not so easy to have an AI that carries similar pace in every corner of a circuit and it's still more difficult to do so for every circuit involved. Then you add changes of difficulty and how such changes impact the AI (and having that decrease be as linear as possible), you add in tire wear and temperature and it's not an easy task to balance the speed of AI properly. If they release a fix they must be sure that the speed decrease is as fluid as possible and work in the same way in the different modes. Doing so requires not only a lot of work in the programming side but especially in the QA department.

For this I believe it is taking all this time, and, personally, I much prefer that they take all the time they need to actually tailor AI speed properly instead of releasing a quick fix that just patches a hole here and there but by doing so making the AI even more unpredictable to drive against. There's nothing worse than unpredictability in AI because pace you can fix by tailoring difficulty, but when you have AI that is all over the place as pace goes then it is really difficult to find a difficulty that suits your personal skill.
joshhhhmcgill
4 years ago
@Amioram Completely acknowledge what you say mate, I’m not trying to downplay it whatsoever as I couldn’t do it in a million years.

One thing I would say though is this is they’re well over 10 years into having this franchise and I would’ve thought by now they’d of had AI speed nailed down. Plenty of other motor racing games have it. It gets a bit frustrating that the same bugs and issues carry over from game to game whilst they spend time adding sofas and supercars.
Ultrasonic_77
Hero
4 years ago
There's no ETA, and as above this is not likely to be a quick fix. I'd be thinking many weeks yet based on the last game but I'd love to be proved wrong.
BadMayh3m
Seasoned Ace
4 years ago
IContrast has done a vid saying the only difference is the weight of the AI cars. There is NO other differences!
Duck ya want to post the vid?
Ultrasonic_77
Hero
4 years ago
@BadMayh3m wrote:
IContrast has done a vid saying the only difference is the weight of the AI cars. There is NO other differences!
Duck ya want to post the vid?
Errr, why don't you do it?
GamerDH1995
4 years ago
Sorry I do not see it at all like you, to one had the 1 year development time and it den not even noticed ? I find already very bad work. Sure every game has bugs but what Bugmasters has done now in 2 years is just bad. it's not just small bugs. But already many Krasse bugs, where the game is completely taken away. There are slowly no more excuses for the failure of bugmasters. Instead of programming Sims 2.0 (F1 Life) and then stupid supercars, they should have fully concentrated on the gameplay.
@Amioram wrote:
I don't believe the AI speed is as easy to balance as people think it is, and if CM releases a patch resolving the issue I guess they want to be sure that the speed scales properly with AI difficulty. The AI being so fast is usually misnamed here as a problem with straight line speed but in reality it is (much) more complicated than this. Even for example if you use the mod on Race Department that lowers the max bulk torque so that indeed the AI will become slower overall they still retain their unpredictable nature. Sure, they will be slower on corner exit (and hence also on straight line speed), however in fast corners they will be now two times as fast as they are in slow corners and depending on tire temperature and/or wear they become faster or slower. So you have circuits in which the speed is too slow and circuits in which the speed is still too fast, as you have parts of the circuit in which they are extremely slow and parts in which they are extremely fast, so that the speed decrease is not harmonic at all.

It's not so easy to have an AI that carries similar pace in every corner of a circuit and it's still more difficult to do so for every circuit involved. Then you add changes of difficulty and how such changes impact the AI (and having that decrease be as linear as possible), you add in tire wear and temperature and it's not an easy task to balance the speed of AI properly. If they release a fix they must be sure that the speed decrease is as fluid as possible and work in the same way in the different modes. Doing so requires not only a lot of work in the programming side but especially in the QA department.

For this I believe it is taking all this time, and, personally, I much prefer that they take all the time they need to actually tailor AI speed properly instead of releasing a quick fix that just patches a hole here and there but by doing so making the AI even more unpredictable to drive against. There's nothing worse than unpredictability in AI because pace you can fix by tailoring difficulty, but when you have AI that is all over the place as pace goes then it is really difficult to find a difficulty that suits your personal skill.
Amioram
4 years ago
@joshhhhmcgillActually there are very few racing titles that have very good AI, as AI is one of the most difficult things to implement. The F1 games have some the best AI overall in the sim racing genre, when there are no glaring issues as in this case. The only other sim racing titles that have very good AI are RF2 and RaceRoom, and that's it.

ACC for example has very passive AI, very slow overall, with drastic pace variability between circuits. AMS2 has become better with patches but it still has huge issues in slow corners, and the AI is often oblivious to what the player is doing. Assetto Corsa varies drastically from car to car and mod to mod, and it behaves too mechanically with cars mostly standing all on rails. Gran Turismo has very passive AI and as AC their pace varies drastically from car to car, they are also too robotic, with drivers not carrying different personalities. And so on and so forth.
Dan78loki
4 years ago
As I said I came from pc sim racing and ai was a personal look out for me. I be obsessed with the ai and how they performed in pc sims.
I found rf2 ai was good but they never overtook you if in your draft, it was never and still isn't fixed to this day and rf2 had been out for a long while. But rf2 was one of the first ai to have a defensive block move programmed in. Raceroom had a great ai to and seemed the most action packed when racing with lots of overtaking. Ac and acc as stated was a little boring In comparison. I was a beta tester on ams2 and that ai steadily improved over time i think. But most if not all ai in games have a slow track or corner or something or another, luckily f1 has one car model/ai to get right these other sims can have tons of car models to sort the ai out with.
Now these f1 games I think have the best ai out there especially on console. They block they can overtake u in a straight line they just need some tweaking.
So guys don't be hard on them, especially if you haven't tried the alternatives out there.
Amioram
4 years ago
@GamerDH1995The AI speed in the beginning wasn't as drastic as it is now, and it depends on the skill of the people involved in QA. It can be that, given that they don't have extremely skilled players, they thought that the disparity in straight line speed was just a matter of lack of technique, or viceversa by much testing many became too good at technique and didn't have the same problems that more average players could met. This can be an explanation, or maybe they altered some characteristics of the cars in the day one patch and things changed (as they are in fact continuing to change the more the implement the things they wanted to do). When you change physics things can get altered dramatically.