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The All-Seeing AI: Difference between revisions
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** Also played straight in that once one bad guy has spotted the player, every goon in the area ''instantly'' knows exactly where he is and can fire with pinpoint accuracy even when the player is crouched in head-high grass he himself is unable to see through. Darkness also seems little hindrance.
*** Played straight in the original as well where enemies would come from miles away and zero in on your position.
* Notable in ''[[Hitman]] 2'', which being a [[Stealth Based Game]] is generally pretty good in this respect, is the snow pass level: the developers apparently forgot that a blizzard, ''at night'' ought to have some effect on the ninjas' ability to spot you; they're also preset to realize that your papers are fake and open fire after a five-second animation - even if you walk away and are well out of sight by the time they're done reading them. It gets worse with the snipers in watchtowers. Even if you are wearing a ninja uniform that completely covers your face, from hundreds of feet away they will instantly recognize you as an impostor and ''shoot you on sight''.
* In ''[[Warhammer 40000]]: [[Dawn of War]]'', the Imperial Guard AIs not only have the uncanny ability to not only know ''exactly'' where your stealthed units are, but also the ability to place long range auspex (radar) scans ''right on top of them''. To make matters worse, this ability has an unfairly short cooldown (for its effects, at least), the Imperial Guard can have ''five'' HQ buildings (which use the radar), and each HQ building's radar ''is on a separate cooldown from the others''. This ''can'' be exploited by having some dummy stealthers around to attract auspex scans whilst the ''real'' stealth units do their work, but that's a waste for the most part. (It's a little less wasteful with the Tau or Space Marines, who have access to cheap stealth units.)
** It's similar in ''[[Starcraft]]'', with the Terran AI always placing their Comsat Scans at the ''exact'' location of your invisible units. To be fair, though, it doesn't exploit its knowledge until you give it a reason to "notice" the unit, so it's not ''that'' unfair. In a subversion, the AI is actually doing less than a human could. Stealthed units are visible to players, they blur the area they move through. Many Observers, Ghosts and Wraiths got revealed by a scan of an observant player. In Starcraft 2 burrowed Roaches and Infestors can also be seen when moving underground. Stationary stealthed units are harder to spot, and burrowed ones are truly invisible unless in the presence of a detector.
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** [[Artificial Stupidity|And many others.]]
** Although in both games in Versus Mode an AI controlled player will be able to spot any infected looming in the dark behind trees or crops and pick them off much to the Infected player's frustration.
* In ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', it comes from pathing.
**
** Also, the dwarfs always know the shortest route, even if they've never been where you tell them to go. They can't see an ambushing enemy that hasn't been spotted, but once it's spotted every dwarf will know where it is from then on.
** Interestingly averted by humans. Goblin soldiers will gladly blunder into your traps time and time again. Piss off the humans, though, and their soldiers will remember and avoid every trap their merchants or diplomats saw.
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** This is subverted now. Instead of knowing where you or your traps are, the A.I. makes an educated guess on where you are when invisible. Turning invisible, and then using 1 movement point, it will know you are on one of the squares right next to your former location, and have to make a guess based on that, just like any human player would. The same applies to Traps, as they too are invisible, only here they generally fail at guessing, and always assume you placed the trap in a perfectly linear path in the direction you are facing (Which you don't nessesarily have to). Oddly enough, even in high-tier [[PvP]], the players are generally less intelligent than the A.I.'s anyway, as most Self-proclaimed "[["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|Pros]]" Generally assume [[Lowest Common Denominator|everyone are predictable idiots]].
* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' developers recently released a [http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=3279 beta for bots] which attempt to avert this, by having them simulate what a human would realistically see and hear in a match, instead of relying of server side data. And it kinda works. The bots won't open fire until they see you, but they will always hit you, and while they can see through a Spy's disguise they won't attack one until the disguise is dropped.
* In ''[[Battle for Wesnoth]]'', subjecting the AI to [[Fog of War]] is not yet implemented. This is probably why the single-player campaigns don't use [[Fog of War]] most of the time.
* A lot of the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' games before the DS's release have done this. While this was perfectly justified for Pegasus, who actually had this ability in the series, it doesn't excuse the other opponents. Of course, the reason for this before the DS could have been programming restraints.
** Ironically, Pegasus easily has the worst AI in the first GBA game, more than making up for his cheating by wasting cards, replacing his cards in play with inferior cards, and pretty much anything he can possibly do to give himself a disadvantage.
*** Pegasus is always extra blatant about this in any game he's in. This is most obvious in Duelist of the Roses. In this game terrain bonuses and penalties come into effect. Most of the
** In particular, this made the card Magical Hats, which gives an opponent to 1 in 3 chance of hatting your monster, largely useless <ref>It can still thin decks and use the, then few, effects that take spells/traps from the graveyard, but its main use is gone</ref>; the AI would always attack the monster you were trying to protect!
* The ''[[Supreme Commander]]'' AI doesn't need radars or radar-equipped units to spot a cloaked ACU and blow it to hell with two tactical missiles (which aren't even homing, yet the AI always hits dead-on).
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** And in ''[[Soldier of Fortune]] II'' and the later ''[[Call of Duty]]'' games, they can see you through smokescreens too!
** In most shooters, darkness doesn't inhibit the AI's vision either.
* In the ''[[Call of Duty]]'' series, stealth missions suffer from this. In [[Modern Warfare]], the enemies will instantly where you are if you are revealed, even by guy you killed immediately after while he was alone. For a particuarly egregious example of this trope, see Roach's first mission in Modern Warfare 2.
* Go ahead and use Reptile's invisibility on any difficulty setting for ''[[Mortal Kombat]] II'', and see if the AI is at all inhibited by it.
* In ''[[Starcraft]]'', the same is true. The AI is aware of everything on the map, even if it can't actually target it (cloaked units, units or buildings out of sight, etc). Even then though, they can still sometimes target them. In Brood War, for example, if you're up against a Protoss AI and they have Dark Archons or High Templar, don't be surprised if one of them suddenly wanders out of their base... they have a specific target in mind and they're going for it, or die trying.
** Also, playing against a human in [[Starcraft]], you can hide tech buildings in a random corner of the map where no sane player would look until he/she noticed the buildings not in your base (Which in of itself, is easily preventable); on the other hand, there's no point in hiding tech buildings from the computer. You're better off putting your entire tech tree in the back of your main base, behind your army and possible stationary defenses; ironically enough, a tactic that doesn't work against humans. (Humans just simply fly over your army and defenses and go straight for important buildings, the computer attacks the first thing it comes across.)
*** Like the Warcraft example above, the computer will always go for your least defended base without seeming to even know where it is before the attack.
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* In [[STALKER]]: Shadow of Chernobyl, once you blow your stealth, all nearby enemies will know where you are. Fortunately, this is fixed in just about every [[Game Mod|mod]] out there, except for Oblivion Lost, when the AI get [[Improbable Aiming Skills|incredible aim]], and can see you from a hundred meters away in pitch darkness.
** Though it is somewhat averted, seeing how if you open fire on a group of enemies, but flank around, for example, the building that the they are in and enter through the back, they'll still be scrambling around near the front, trying to find you. In fact, when facing multiple enemies in close quarters, using this tactic is practically a requirement.
* In ''[[Unreal Tournament]]'',
* If you blow your cover in ''[[Splinter Cell]]'', the enemies in the level will all know your position.
** ''Conviction'' refined this; enemies now fire and search Sam's last known position, allowing him to sneak around and flank them. Sam himself gains "Sonic Goggles" that let ''him'' see enemies through walls. {{spoiler|In the very level he gets them, he faces foes armed with similar devices. Uh-oh.}}
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* In ''[[Eternal Champions]]'', Xavier's [[Interface Screw]] spell is absolutely useless against AI opponents.
* Some old ''Battleship'' games fit this trope - you didn't know where the AI's ships were placed, yet for some reason, they knew where you placed yours. So imagine, to many players horror, that the AI absolutely ''never'' missed because it knew ''exactly'' where you placed your ships while you were left guessing as it hit every single one of your ships.
* ''Mostly'' averted in the ''[[Thief]]'' series, where stealth is the entire object of the game. However, one notable exception occurs in games 1 and 2 of the series, where if you alert an NPC and then hide in a dark area, the NPC will always end up walking ''directly'' towards your precise location while "searching".
** However, this can work out well. If you make some noise, you can move enemies out of areas that are dangerously lit up into the dark, where you're waiting with your trusty blackjack.
* ''[[Medal of Honor]]''. This rears its ugly head in the Command Post, where the guards will clairvoyantly detect you sneaking in and sound the alarm (especially on Hard difficulty), and in Sniper Town, where the snipers have greater visual range than you and will instantly hit you the moment you step into their line of sight, and enemies in general will accurately chuck grenades from places where they shouldn't be able to see you. And once you tip off a guard in a [[Stealth Based Mission]], all the enemies in the level know it.
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* In ''Seven Kingdoms'', the AI ignores [[Fog of War]] and unexplored areas, and always knows where everything is. This becomes especially noticeable when playing as Japan, as their Seat of Power lets them see when other players target their buildings—from the other end of the map, without ever having seen that civilization before.
* Played straight in the first two [[Splinter Cell]] games due to the limitations of the creators/software; due to said problems, every time the enemy is alerted, [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|they all instantly know where you are]] and [[Bottomless Magazines|don't go away unless dealt with]], either resulting in [[Berserk Button|sheer frustration]] or [[Macho Masochism|persistence to win]] when combined with the extreme difficulty.
* The hostiles in ''[[Minecraft]]'' are like this, but only after they've already spotted you the normal way. Then they can track your movement through any kind of wall and even [[Action Bomb|explode]] from behind a thin wall. Results in [[Artificial Stupidity]] in that transparent blocks like glass count as walls, so mobs cannot see you through glass unless you've already been spotted through just air.
** Played straight with Spiders and their poisonous relatives Cave Spiders. They can sense you through walls.
* As soon as you reveal that there's an intruder in [[Deus Ex]], even if you don't telegraph your position (say, by shooting somone in the heard with a silenced pistol from behind cover), everyone comes running straight for you.
** In the sequel, since the Omar are a [[Hive Mind]], if you kill one, the entire race turns against you.
* A particularly egregious example involves information ''only the player'' is supposed to have. It's bad enough the cops in ''[[Grand Theft Auto IV]]'' already manage to appear within their own line-of-sight of you just as you're getting out of their "arrest zone", but it becomes even more blatant when they appear ''specifically'' on a GPS route you've laid out for yourself.
* In ''[[Medal of Honor (series)|Medal of Honor: Airborne]]'', enemies know when you are scoped in while using a sniper rifle and move just out of the way. Paranoid Nazis.
** Apparently, [[Properly Paranoid|it works out pretty good for them.]]
** Same for the railgun snipers in ''[[Red Faction]]'', whose guns can also shoot through walls.
* In ''[[Pocket Tanks]]'', there are a number of weapons that will randomize a tank's gun angle and power. These are of course completely useless against AI tanks, which always know the angle and power for a perfect trajectory even in gale-force winds that switch direction every turn.
* ''[[Globulation]] 2'' gives every newly-hatched worker on the map instinctive knowledge of where exactly to find every resource, whether your scouts have seen it or not. Request to build a wall section, and one will immediately beeline to the only accessible pile of rocks half of the map away. It's something you must curb: you have to set up Forbidden zones preventing the workers from throwing themselves in harm's way - if the path is closer, they'll try to walk right by the enemy turrets in droves, no matter how many already got splattered there.
{{reflist}}
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