More in sorrow than in anger: I'm done until pathfinding is sorted

[B00M$LANG]

Originally posted by Bahger:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Martin Krejcirik:

Bagher, I had no problem in this mission, CM has always required path micromanagement, SF is no worse then CMx1 games.

I would love improved pathfinding, formations and so on, but honestly I've never expected it.

I understand, Martin, but the showstopping aspect of this issue stems from the asymmetry of contemporary urban conflict and the tactical significance of speed and accurate navigation. It would be better if BFC put big green lines on paths through which we could navigate our vehicles with confidence and in formation rather than leave us to hunt and peck our way through the maps wondering if a vehicle is going to balk and break formation, causing chaos at exactly the point of initiating contact with the enemy. My argument is that this is a design issue as well as an execution issue, and much more destructive to gameplay than it was in a battlefield context that didn't rely on speed of maneuver.

Can you imagine anything at all being salvaged from the urban battle in Somalia portrayed in BLACKHAWK DOWN if, once the choppers had gone down, the Humvee convoys got lost in the city instead of being able to navigate accurately and at high speed? It's the only way you can fight RPGs on rooftops. For the gameplay dynamic in CMSF to be satisfying, we need to be able to move vehicles with precision and confidence because the U.S. forces have to leverage their mobility and superior training in order to overcome numerical inferiority and win. This pathfinding anarchy (sorry, it's not too strong a word) makes a mockery of the very concept of battle behind the game. </font>

[thewood]

One way to fight RPGs on rooftops is not send Hummers to do a man's job.

[Blackmuzzle]

I just lost two missions in a row, which I have to add happened solely due to the vehicles not staying in formation or haphazardly wandering off somewhere else. In one particularly disturbing instance, I caught one of my Strykers driving into an occupied city center despite my very clear order to advance slow just a few meters ahead. Other times I've seen Strykers "hanging" on the side of a moderately steep hillside, only barely rotating but not moving at all until they've been blown to smithereens.

As it is now, I'm certainly not abandoning the game, but I admit these frustrating issues have been detracting a lot from the experience of what is actually a full-priced game. Now before anyone gives me the support-small-business nonsense, I have 5 licenses for SteelBeasts Pro PE. That's quite a lot more than the 50-ish bucks that Battlefront takes for CMSF. Those of you who know SB will probably nod already, but I have to say that there's an immense difference of overall quality and finish between these two products.

I really, really hope that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe an upcoming patch will surprise us all and bring us the gameplay-relevant fixes we all crave for. CMSF is worth that effort.

As a long-time SB Pro PE player I'm indeed quite frustrated at this. Simple scenarios turn into a massacre because it is virtually impossible to move several units in an orderly fashion, or to make minute position adjustments properly.

Another annoying thing is the fact that my units don't seem to prioritize contacts. Quite often a Stryker would keep harassing an MG team on the 3-o-clock while an enemy BMP pummeled him from straight ahead. Unless I give the order to attack that MG team, I'd expect the unit to use a least amount of common sense and return fire where it counts.

[Blackmuzzle]

*Gah, double post*

[ July 30, 2007, 02:25 PM: Message edited by: Blackmuzzle ]

[Bahger]

Originally posted by cow_cookie:

I'm kind of having a love-hate relationship with the game. There are so many things I think are cool. I love that it's modern warfare, and I love the faster, more unforgiving pace that that type of warfare has. There are numerous cool features, too.

But I find myself cursing my units for stupid mistakes just as often. I'm not going to abandon the game, but I'm now playing the game like an FPS: Save after every turn in case a mass of units manage to get themselves killed in a spectacularly stupid fashion.

I agree with this and with everything else in your post. I'm a keen enough gamer that I will make allowances for inevitable glitches in otherwise good games, especially in AI and pathfinding. But in CMSF, lobotomised pathfinding utterly cripples an otherwise really well-conceived and executed game and because I have so many other claims on my time, I just cannot persevere. I am committed to CMSF, however, so instead of playing it I'm going to be here, lobbying for the one issue to be fixed that has sabotaged the experience for me.

Example: If you design a CQB sim that showcases the tactical advantage that NVGs give our guys in darkness against most militia-style enemies, then you have to be sure that your virtual spec-ops guys can navigate around the maps with realistic eficiency in the dark. It's the same with CMSF: If you want to model a form of combat (near-future, asymmetrical urban warfare) realistically, then you have to implement a Stryker force's speed of deployment effectively because it is a vital force-multiplier. I'm prepared to excuse the occasional glitch and regard others as unintended fog-of-war moments, but whatever you say about your experience of the game, Boom$lang, vehicle pathfinding in CMCF is a complete and systematic failure. Perhaps CM diehards will work around it, but tactical realism diehards will not.

[Bahger]

Originally posted by Blackmuzzle:

I just lost two missions in a row, which I have to add happened solely due to the vehicles not staying in formation or haphazardly wandering off somewhere else. In one particularly disturbing instance, I caught one of my Strykers driving into an occupied city center despite my very clear order to advance slow just a few meters ahead. Other times I've seen Strykers "hanging" on the side of a moderately steep hillside, only barely rotating but not moving at all until they've been blown to smithereens.

As it is now, I'm certainly not abandoning the game, but I admit these frustrating issues have been detracting a lot from the experience of what is actually a full-priced game. Now before anyone gives me the support-small-business nonsense, I have 5 licenses for SteelBeasts Pro PE. That's quite a lot more than the 50-ish bucks that Battlefront takes for CMSF. Those of you who know SB will probably nod already, but I have to say that there's an immense difference of overall quality and finish between these two products.

I really, really hope that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe an upcoming patch will surprise us all and bring us the gameplay-relevant fixes we all crave for. CMSF is worth that effort.

As a long-time SB Pro PE player I'm indeed quite frustrated at this. Simple scenarios turn into a massacre because it is virtually impossible to move several units in an orderly fashion, or to make minute position adjustments properly.

Another annoying thing is the fact that my units don't seem to prioritize contacts. Quite often a Stryker would keep harassing an MG team on the 3-o-clock while an enemy BMP pummeled him from straight ahead. Unless I give the order to attack that MG team, I'd expect the unit to use a least amount of common sense and return fire where it counts.

My experience entirely, right down to the Steel Beasts comparison. I keep on losing units that wander, sometimes miles, into enemy fire, uncommanded, and because I like to play WEGO, there is no way to correct it. You have to spend an entire minute watching your carefully-plotted movement to contact utterly ruined by this persistent AI behavior. I just don't have the time or the ability to suspend the disbelief that it would take to put up with this nonsense and, quite frankly, the game should not have been released in this condition.

[Battlefront.com]

I made a more detailed post yesterday in Bahger's other thread, but I'll rephrase it here.

First, Bahger... I have no gripes about what you are saying or how you are saying it. I disagree with it nearly completely, but you get points in my book for presenting your case in a mature and constructive way. Oh if only everybody could do this! So kudos to you.

As I said, I disagree. As BOOM$LANG said VERY well, and others have too, you are expecting too much from the game. The pathfinding AI can not read your mind. If you do not properly commuicate what you want done, you have to live with the fact that the pathing AI is going to have to guess. It's guess is based on the terrain and how best to get from A to B. This is not something that is guarranteed to be identical to the way you want it to be. There is no way for it to be. I will repeat this...

There is no possible way, none at all, that we can make the pathing AI do what you want it to do. Not even if we spent the next year doing nothing else but work on the pathing AI. Why not? Because the game can not read your mind. If it could, we'd probably be working in a secret lab somewhere with a propper "black ops" budget

Now, why is this? Becaues the terrain is complex, the threats are complex, the tactical reasons for a move are infinitely complex, the need to coordinate with other assets makes everything worse, etc. YOU, the player, have to take these things into consideration. Expecting the computer to figure out that you want the tank to go down the worst possible path because you suspect the better one is an ambush, is up to you and not the game to determine. Otherwise... what is there to do in the game? Turn 1... "troops, take the city in an enveloping move! Get back to me when you're done". That would be it. No game works that way.

I used this example in my previous email, but I will modify it here to show my point.

Let's say you need to go to the airport in downtown Boston, one of the most confusing and wacky places to drive in the US. You hop into a cab and say "take me to the airport". What you didn't say to the cabbie is you wanted to have him drive down Newbury Street because you wanted to grab something from an overpriced nicknack shop there (Bostonians, let's not quibble about how most of this is impossible due to 1 way restrictions ). You figure that as the cabbie gets near the shop you can tell him to pull over so you can hop out and buy whatever it is you had your eye on. But the cabbie instead goes down Beacon street, which is a parallel street to Newbury Street. So you say to the cabbie "hey, what the heck are you doing?? I wanted to go to "Sucker Born Every Minute", a great antique shop on Newbury Street?!? Why are you taking me down Beacon?!". The cabbie responds "you said you wanted to go to the airport, so we're going to the airport. This is the quickest way. If you wanted me to go to Newbury Street you should have asked or stopped me before I passed Arlington Street. Sorry bub... we're going to have a Hell of a time reversing directions now. I can do it if you want, but it's going to cost you".

That's the best way I can put it. You have to "micromanage" your movement to some extent because there is no way around it. If you want your tank to go down the Newbury Street of Tadmur's city center, you'd better not plop a single waypoint on the Airport. Again... there is NOTHING we can do about this.

Now, having said that there are things about the pathing AI that fit into the "bug" category. These are things we fix. It might take a few attempts to get it right since, as people have pointed out, it took us a few tries even with the vastly more simplistic CMBO system.

As for military formations... there is no way we can do this. First of all, it would require us to spend about a year writing the AI for it. Bzzzzzt on that. Second, it would require an entirely new UI because you would have to specify "Commander's Intent" or you get all your tanks going in perfect formation to the airport instead of blowing the crap out of something on Newbury Street. This would require another 4-6 months. And it still would fail to do what you wanted to do many times since we're talking about something that (as far as I know) no other sim in the world, civilian or military, does. In short, you're asking for an entirely different game that (I must hasten to add) most people would hate. We've had debates about that here from time to time, and the game you are envisioning is wanted by almost nobody. It's what we call a "Command Level" game and it isn't at all what Combat Mission was ever intended on being and therefore is not now, or never will be, that type of game.

Beyond that, I don't know what to say. If you refuse to use the waypoints the way they must be used, you will get suboptimal results. There is no work around for that on our end. Instead, if you listen to others you'll see that you will get the results you want if you do what they do.

Steve

[thewood]

You should have taken LoganExpress

[Cheeba]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

That's the best way I can put it. You have to "micromanage" your movement to some extent because there is no way around it. If you want your tank to go down the Newbury Street of Tadmur's city center, you'd better not plop a single waypoint on the Airport. Again... there is NOTHING we can do about this.

That's all well and good, but that's not what the majority of people are complaining about. The main issue is that even with the best-planned waypoints in the world, the AI is still capable of staggering stupidity, doing things that are not just impractical and inefficient, but quite often completely suicidal. And considering how widely reported it's been by quite a few experienced players, I'm not the only one getting this on a regular basis.

[Cpl Steiner]

I haven't played that many missions yet and have purposefully avoided the main campaign until I have a better idea about how to keep my men alive, but in the few missions I have played I have noticed some odd behaviour even in very open terrain. If I order a group of vehicles from point A to point B on a heading of say 015 degrees, they seem to go off on a bearing of 045 degrees until lined up with the end point and then 000 degrees to the end point. It's almost like they are restricted to horizontal, vertical and diagonal like pieces on a chess board. I do think this needs explaining. Is this an attempt to reproduce real life tactics or some sort of bug?

However, despite the problems, I don't think they are worth chucking the game over at this early stage. I will persevere and try to figure out ways of getting the game to behave as I would like until the inevitable patches sort it all out.

Edit: If the zig-zag like behaviour I have seen in open terrain really is by design then I think it is a mistake and should be changed. Let the player decide if a zig-zag move would be better than a straight line, using two waypoints instead of one. That way the player will see his vehicles doing what he asked them to do rather than some sort of AI interpretation.

[ July 30, 2007, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: Cpl Steiner ]

[Battlefront.com]

I will add that Bahger's comments apply equally to CMx1 for the same reasons. I don't think those games were shipped too earlier or in a defective state.

Steve

[scottie]

Originally posted by Bunyip:

Have to chuckle at strykers doing donuts around a waypoint, and finally stopping with their arse to the enemy.

i chuckle with you

pathfinding issues are an annoyance to me but i put up with it because the game is pretty damn good. Im sure more of these issue will be sorted with a patch or version 2.

CM title are a great tactical experience and the poor pathfinding does take away from that. Im sure BF see the problems too.

[Other Means]

It would help if you laid out a waypoint and the game showed the path it would take to get there. You can then change it to make it what you want. As the command delay works different ways, there's no overhead in doing so.

This in addition to the obvious bugs being squashed.

[Battlefront.com]

The Arse to Threat bug is something we are trying to pin down. Something Charles did at the last minute introduced that problem. We never, ever saw that until Thursday as far as I know. It should be pretty easy to fix once we pin down exactly why it happens.

And that's the difference here. There are bugs and there are expectations beyond our capabilities. We can deal with the bugs, we can not do anything with expectations that can't be met.

Steve

[istari]

Steve,

With respect, I have to agree with Cheeba. We're talking about different things here.

I agree with you that noone can expect to plop a waypoint 500m away and expect the AI to make intelligent decisions about cover and concealment, weaving from point to point all along the way to that distant objective. That IS an unrealistic expectation.

However, I think what we're talking about is where multiple waypoints are laid out and the AI chooses not to follow them, but take some totally different alternate path. This happened to me last night several times. I was trying to have my dismounts move from one building to another via a backyard. I set the waypoints specifically outside the first building and next to the backdoor of the 2nd building to guide them inside while staying protected. Instead, 1/2 the squad went AROUND the building and out onto the street to enter via the front door!

So, agree that the player has to be smart about laying multiple waypoints to get to an objective, but the AI then needs to +follow+ them, not expose itself to danger by choosing it's own path. If I'm understanding the discussion, that's the issue we're concerned about, and it's something that I saw rarely if ever in CMx1.

Chris

[Mace]

Originally posted by Bahger:

I know that there is a crippling problem with the game's playability here and I'm committed enough to what CMSG could be to attempt to start a polite, but firm effort -- hopefully aided by others -- to redeem the game before it's too late.

I'm sure Battlefront will look at the issue you're having if their past history of product support is any example.

But put it into perspective, it may be a very big issue for you, so much so that you refuse to play CMSF until it's addressed, but it may not be that big an issue for others.

It's certainly not that big an issue for me to stop playing CMSF.

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by Bunyip:

Have to chuckle at strykers doing donuts around a waypoint, and finally stopping with their arse to the enemy.

You know that only happens if you give it two waypoints and then delete one.

[NoxSpartana]

Completely agree. CMSF has enormous potential but until the pathfinding and AI (both tactical and strategic) are radically changed, I'm not playing.

And to the people saying that "no game has perfect pathfinding" I agree, but many, many games out there have better pathfinding than CMSF. Even the old CMx1 games did.

[ July 30, 2007, 04:45 PM: Message edited by: NoxSpartana ]

[cow_cookie]

And that's the difference here. There are bugs and there are expectations beyond our capabilities. We can deal with the bugs, we can not do anything with expectations that can't be met.

I just don't see how most of this stuff can be considered anything other than a bug. Like an earlier poster said, I'm not expecting to plop down a way point in the distance and have a unit navigate there unerringly. I'm not even expecting formation commands since I can manage those on my own, and I can understand the complexity in that.

I just want my units to go through a gap I can see quite clearly is there. I want them to go inside a building like they've been instructed, not run laps around it first. I want my Stryker to move 10 feet, not charge the enemy at full speed for several hundred meters.

We know there's a breaching bug that is causing pathfinding issues (units won't go through a hole that has been blown). That is a problem that the company has conceded and promised to look into. With that one pathfinding problem known, why should it be any more of a surprise that pathfinding is a problem in other situations?

I don't have near the problems with the game that the original poster did. But it's getting old hearing that it's the gamer's fault.

Put more waypoints? Check. Still getting erratic behavion. Micromanage? Check. Still having units run off on their own during the WEGO phase. There's not much else that we as gamers can do.

[Bahger]

Steve, well the feeling's mutual. Every time you respond quickly, thoughtfully and at length to my comments, the next thing I know I'm firing up CMSF again, hoping for the best...

In previous CM games there was very little need to get a vehicle to face in a particular direction at a particular street corner. The failure of the unit to do just that was less critical because there weren't that many street corners. In CMSF, however, entire battles are fought from street corner to street corner and if a vehicle cannot be relied upon to take every separate, driveable route from point A to point B that the commander can legitimately order it to, the player's reasonable tactical options become critically degraded. In Fallujah I imagine a company commander with intel of an ambush beyond visual range would have his vehicles flank by cutting through alleyways and improvising with the urban terrain. I don't want to be fighting the limitations of the pathfinding; I want to be fighting the enemy, but this is where CMSF falls down.

However, thanks to you, I'm going to give another mission a shot this evening.

I promise not to start a separate thread if I experience the same thing.

[Thomm]

This reminds me of the discussions prior to the release of CM:BO, when BFC described, in detail, their reasons for the abstractions they made, and why they were necessary!

It seems that now, with CM:SF, they prove that all the reasoning for the CMX1 approach was spot on! All the problems with one-to-one representation suddenly seem to spring up!

And, with respect to soldier pathfinding, CM:SF suddenly is in the same ballpark as Squad Assault, whether you like it or not!

I did not have any problems with vehicle pathfinding, by the way.

I must also remark that I played three battles now, ATGM Ambush, Allahs fist and the MOUT one with the hospital and got a total victory on each one of them (on veteran, in real time, without reading the manual). So I certainly did not have an awful lot of "unlearning" to do. Basic tactics work like ever.

There is still a lot to see and learn, I am sure. So far, the MOUT part disappoints me a bit, but maybe it is because I do not understand the internal setup of the buildings, and how troops move inside of them. I saw many strange things happening there!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Battlefront.com]

istari,

You are correct that people are reporting bugs. The one you described sounds like a bug. Cow_cookie's point is also centering around bugs. We will find them and squash them. Testers are already working on trying to reproduce them in a way that Charles can see what is going on. Pathfinding bugs are notoriously difficult to figure out because it is easy to see something going wrong, but it is very difficult (in the code) to see WHY it went wrong. Quick example:

I plotted a Stryker to move 10m. It is now driving 100m away. Charles sees it and says "yeah, that's no good!" and then pops it into his debug version and looks at what is going on. The Stryker shows a convoluted path. What it doesn't show is what situation cuased it to be plotted that way, only that it is plotted that way.

In short, pathfinding bugs SUCK as much for you guys as they do for us. They are there, but it sometimes takes a while to figure out why.

The issue that Bahger raise in his previous post, and to some extent in this one, is a bit different. SOME of it is the same, but there is still an element of expectation that we can never meet. Not that I disagree that it would be helpful to be closer to his ideal than the one we are capable of. It's just that we don't have much choice but to do what we can instead of what we would otherwise like to do.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Bahger,

Thanks! Yes, the urban enviroment is where the pathing has its highest degree of challenge, so if it is likely to fail it is likely to be in tight city streets. Hopefully we'll get some things cleaned up soon!

Rollstoy,

You're certainly correct that the game would have been a LOT easier to make and maintain if we had stuck to the abstraction level of CMx1. We probably would have been done with the game in 2005 too. The problem was, as with CMx1, that the abstractions needed to be balanced. We wanted more fine terrain, that meant less abstraction of terrain. Less abstraction of terrain compelled us to have less abstraction of units, LOS, LOF, pathing, and pretty much everything else. Definitely a tough thing to get right, but we do not shrink from challenges.

Steve

[istari]

Steve -

Thanks for the thoughtful and considered response. Agree with Bahger that kind of feedback wins a great deal of "cred" and makes me willing to go back and keep trying.

Istari

[laribe]

I think a lot of people brought the game to play Iraq,afghan and somali scenarios and campaigns and not a future event?.

So pathfinding needs to be good and the testers never took this into account for built up areas.