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Spiteful AI: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
Often, AI characters don't seem to care if they win so long as you lose. AI racers will ruin their standing just to screw with you, [[Mascot Fighter]] combatants will [[Gang Up
While Spiteful [[AI|AIs]] are more obvious in free-for-all situations, you'll see them in other places, too. It could be as simple as that [[Goddamn Bats|annoying enemy]] in a [[Platform Game]] who leaps to its doom to interrupt your crucial leap over a [[Bottomless Pit]]. Perhaps, in an FPS, those [[Mooks|terrified guards]] become [[Attack! Attack! Attack!|reckless, suicidal berserkers]] as soon as [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|the cutscene ends.]] In a [[Tactical RPG]], enemy units might [[Too Dumb to Live|insist on certain death]] meandering around in the [[Damaging Terrain|poison swamp]] instead of giving themselves a chance against your men, just to [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|deny you the experience]].
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* [[City Guards]] – Guards turn a blind eye to monsters terrorizing the populace and bandits openly assaulting citizens, though ''sometimes'' they'll protect everyone ''but'' you. If you step a toe out of line? Instant death penalty.
* [[Collapsing Lair]] – Specifically, the idiots who often stay behind to impede you as you flee.
* [[Gang Up
* [[Shoot the Medic First]] - They may not care so much about dying...as long as they can take the medic down.
* [[Suicidal Overconfidence]] – Even when they're doing [[Scratch Damage]] and you're killing a dozen with each shot, the enemies still charge at you in a suicidal effort to chip off a few [[Hit Points]].
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*** Or for a real world example, look at poisonous creatures, such as monarch butterflies. Their toxins only kick in after the monarch has been eaten, meaning it doesn't do that particular butterfly any good - but the predator learns to not eat the monarch's siblings.
** All too often, that [[Olympus Mons]] that you're trying to catch would rather [[Cyanide Pill|commit suicide]] by self-damaging moves like Double Edge, or just faint from Poison/Burn damage, than allow itself to be captured by you.
** Up until the 5th gen, the battle facilities were particularly cruel about this: if you tie (such as if you KO their last Pokemon with a recoil move, but faint to the recoil) ''the AI wins.'' Yes, you read that right. And this will often happen through no fault of your own via the AI [[Action Bomb|exploding their]] [[Taking You
* Darth Bob, from ''[[Star Wars]]: [[Rogue Squadron]] 2'', a Tie Fighter that kills you by crashing his ship into you. It is generally accepted that this wasn't what the programmers intended, and that it's a <s>flaw in the programming</s> the AI taking things into its own hands to kill you.
** Similarly, in the sequel of ''[[Battalion Wars]]'', just to make enemy Fighters' [[Demonic Spider]] status even worse, they will ''crash into your AI Fighters to make them die instantly sometimes''. As if your AI Fighters not picking up Jerry Cans and being [[Too Dumb to Live]] as a result wasn't enough.
* Enemies in ''[[Disgaea]]'' will sometimes [[We Have Reserves|kill their allies]] with area attacks, depriving you of experience and items. They also prioritize destroying any treasure chests, level spheres, or innocents/specialists present on the map over attacking you, just so you can't claim them (No longer the case for the former two in ''[[Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice]]'' and ''[[
** The Druid class introduced in ''[[Disgaea 2 Cursed Memories]]'' has an ability called Bonus Blast, which removes one of the bonuses you can potentially receive at the end of the fight from the list. It serves absolutely no purpose for the player, but the AI will use it very frequently, often enough that killing off any Druids on the map should be a top priority if there's a good reward.
* Enemies in ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' will sometimes waste attacks on the corpses of your party members, even before you get the ability to revive. This does absolutely nothing to help them win the match, but makes it ''much'' more expensive to revive your guys afterwards.
** ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' players who spend long enough in the random dungeons might eventually come across a map filled with awesomely powerful items and objects strewn about all over the place, and a bunch of enemy Prinnies. The Prinnies ''will'' focus exclusively on systematically wandering from item to item, picking them all up and throwing them all out of bounds, one by one. They pretty much won't stop until all the stuff you might have wanted has been destroyed.
*** Not to mention the enemies who constantly try to steal your weapons. ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' has some of the most [[Spiteful AI]] of any [[Strategy RPG]] I've ever played.
*** Also, the chances of stealing an item only depend on the unit's level and species (Merchants are better than average, Bottlemails have an almost 100% chance even if they're half the enemy's level.) Enjoying beating up on weakened level 150 enemies with your level 60 Marona armed with a super-duper weapon?Just wait until one of them finally gets one single turn, and uses that turn to nab your weapon and use it to [[Hoist
* This rarely happens in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', but given that you don't get EXP for killing blows, it's less of an inconvenience. Now, when your ''allies'' do it...
** In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics a 2]]'', there are quite a few escort missions, and while in some the allies will actively flee your foes, some insist on diving right into the action, exposing themselves to certain doom as the enemies will usually target them when able. The Paladin's Cover ability can solve this problem, though.
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* The entirety of ''Fire Emblem 6'' hard mode consists of this. The enemies are too generally too weak to kill you normally, but have at least a 1% chance of scoring a critical hit, which will probably kill their target. There are often 50 or more of them per level, and they will gladly suicide themselves into a situation that WILL kill them the next turn, just in the hope they get to kill 1 of your dudes, forcing you to restart the level [[Final Death|if you ever want to see that character again]], essentially making the entire ''Fire Emblem 6'' hard campaign a [[Luck-Based Mission]]. Fortunately starting from ''Fire Emblem 7'' (the first American one), enemies rely less on lucky critical hits to kill you, but are still willing to sacrifice their lives when they have no hope of winning.
** In ''[[Fire Emblem]] 7'', if you leave Lyn or any one of your three lords exposed, it's actually best to hope that they ''don't'' kill the enemies attacking them so the rest of the enemies get body-blocked while you use the next turn to retreat and put someone stronger in the way. Numerous times the AI will sacrifice their nameless mooks to chip your health down so that one of them runs in and gets a kill, causing a game over. This most commonly happens on [[Fragile Speedster|Lyn]] and [[Jack of All Stats|Eliwood]], especially later in the game where they throw a lot of lance-wielding enemies at you and the two sword-users are disadvantaged against lances. (And Lyn can't even counterattack if she has a bow like she gets later on!)
* The military in ''[[Prototype (
** The Infected are quite similar, with the added bonus that they can spot you in disguise or not. However, the game subtly justifies this later on, when a cutscene shows an Infected's point of view: to the Infected, you're glowing like the freaking sun, so naturally they'll focus on you above the dim bulbs that are regular humans.
* In the ''[[Lego Star Wars]]'' games enemies will only attack the character you control (unless you're a droid). This becomes extremely frustrating when Obi-Wan is swinging a lightsaber in the face of some stormtroopers, and all Han Solo wants to do is build a switch to open a door. Needless to say, the enemies don't give a damn about anyone but the guy who isn't attacking them.
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** The allied AI is just as bad. They literally ''give away'' control posts to the enemy, moreso if you originally spawned from that post or had a hand in capturing it at all (which means [[This Is Gonna Suck|pretty much all of them]]).
* Just one of the many factors that confirm that [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|the computer is indeed a cheating bastard]] in ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]''. When playing through any of the protagonists' campaign mode, encounters against certain [[Mook|mooks]] have in-battle conditions to be fulfilled (for instance, winning with a [[Flawless Victory]], scoring a [[Critical Hit]] within a time limit, etc.) in order for a chance to win back Destiny Points (which deplete with every turn you take; the more you have by the end of the campaign, the better the rewards you receive). It seems that the computer wants to deny you ALL of this, and, from the start of the battle, will immediately take measures to prevent you from fulfilling these conditions.
* In ''[[
** If an enemy targets one of your characters, they will almost never change target unless you put a lot of distance between the character and enemy, go invisible, or get away in some other way. Maybe you get hurt and want to back off and let healthier characters take over the fight? Too bad, that monster will push its way past your fighters and archers even as they fill it with arrows and swords, just to finish what it started. This ''can'' be used to kite the enemy while the rest of the party wails on them with impunity, or to lead them into a series of traps, but it's still annoying.
* The ''[[
* In ''[[
** For once, the trope is justified. If you were repeatedly knocked over by someone while trying to race you'd be pretty spiteful too, and want to return the favor.
* ''[[
** In multiplayer LAN games with one or more human players, AI will always attack the host, even above the other humans. The AI could be in the middle of attacking you, but turn around and attack a gold mine your buddy just built on the other side of the map ''without any way of knowing this had even happened'' -- all because ''you'' aren't the host.
* On [[Toontown Online]], of all places, in the Cog Thief minigame, the cogs try to steal money, and you try to throw pies at them to make them explode. If they hit you, they explode and you fly into the air. When this happens, the cogs currently on screen will turn away from the money and try to run into you, even though they will instantly explode upon running into you.
* ''[[
** ''Mario Kart DS'' makes this worse with team races or battles. Because friendly fire applies, the AI on your team doesn't care WHO they hit as long as they hit someone with an item, even if it costs your team the whole game.
** ''Mario Kart 7'' takes the spiting AI to a whole new level. The AI will aggressively swerve into your path just so you don't get the item boxes or coins you were trying to get. It's possible to go an entire lap without getting a single item because the AI wants to make sure you don't get any.
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** Computers have been known to waste certain Final Smashes, like Snake's which has an ammo limit or a time limit, just waiting for a human to respawn, completely ignoring any other computers that are present.
* In ''[[Vanquish]]'' even if you are surrounded by bulky marines carrying rocket launchers while you are completely out of ammo, every single enemy will try to gun you down specifically provided you aren't hiding behind cover, in which case many enemies will suicidally charge forward just to get behind your barricade and stab you in the face. It is somewhat justified in that the enemies for 99% of the game are robots and the fact that you have the ''super prototype'' ARS, you are probably considered to be a bigger threat. Not so justified when your allies seem to enjoy running in front of you while you're firing or rushing into an enemy warp point which pretty much automatically kills them as well as 'sitting' on grenades. Even worse, the more allied kills you get, the lower your overall score.
* Obscure racing game ''[[Fatal Racing]]'' has eight teams of two cars on the track, and on higher difficulty levels most races take about 10 minutes. It is not uncommon to see opponents turn around and head the wrong way if they are lagging behind, apparently to try and eliminate someone else [[Taking You
** And sometimes a driver on low health heads into the pitlane and ''doesn't stop'', plowing into anyone standing there waiting for repairs and catapulting them back onto the track. This typically results in a [[Suicide Attack|quick death]] for both cars involved.
** Somewhat averted in that the enemies don't specifically target you, they just decide they're done racing and attempt to [[Chaotic Evil|ruin someone else's day]] for no reason.
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** Not only that, but they will often try to smash "each other" out of the way to get to you. Do any replay with the camera facing behind you, and you can watch them destroy dozens of their own cars this way.
* Sohees from [[Ragnarok Online]] often kill themselves when their HP is too low, so you don't get any items or exp.
* In some of the [[Yu-Gi-Oh!]] video games, the AI will occasionally do bizarre things like activate Magic Jammer (which disappears upon use and requires one additional card as a sacrifice) to block out a spell card of yours that was only targetting Magic Jammer. Or waste 1000 lifepoints and their Seven Tools of the Bandit card just to deny you using a perfectly harmless card like "Jar of Greed". They'll also often end up destroying their own high-level monsters and nets of traps with cards that hit both sides, like Torrential Tribute and Heavy Storm just to harm you, even though they are the ones that suffer far more damage in the process.
** It's even funnier in some cases with Seven Tools Of The Bandit, as the AI will use it to negate a trap like Just Deserts (your opponent takes 500 damage for each monster they have), when they only have one or two monsters out. They'll give 1000 life points to stop themselves from taking 1000 or even 500 life points, and also end up losing a way to block one of your later, and presumably more important traps.
* The [[City Guards]] in ''[[The Elder Scrolls|Morrowind]]'' have it in for you. They will always tell you to move along and ask you what you need, even when there's an annoyed Dark Elf trying to punch your lights out. You punch back, they'll immediately shout "YOU N'WAH!" and arrest you.
* The first [[F
* [[Elite]], at least the [[Commodore 64]] version, featured shuttles that would launch from a space station directly into the lane of oncoming traffic (i.e., you)--even when you were literally less than a second from successfully docking. If the collision didn't kill you outright, the instant plunge into wanted criminal status (for destroying an unarmed passenger shuttle) would mean getting ganked by the space police the moment you launched. Not so much the AI being spiteful as [[Artificial Stupidity|just dumb]], but it wasn't hard to feel like the game was out to get you all the same.
* Inverted at times in [[Galactic Civilizations]], as demonstrated in [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/161570/blog/galciv-2-war-report-final-entry/?site=pcg this] playthrough. The Drengin refused to wipe out the player's race because if they did, the Terrans would win an alliance victory.
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