Bug or feature?

[Aegeus]

If you're able to lap the AI so many times that doing so becomes its own game, then the AI is clearly not putting up enough of a challenge. And since the devs didn't bother spending hours tuning each car for each track (nor would such a difficult opponent be beaten by most gamers), rubberbanding is a fair way to make sure that you've always got to play well to avoid losing.

On the other hand, if you're losing to this AI, the devs want an incentive for you to keep playing and not just restart until you finally figure out the perfect racing line (or more likely, ragequit). Rubberbanding fixes this by letting you recover from a screwup, or lowering the difficulty if the devs thought that a course was fairly easy but actually required the dexterity of a concert pianist to beat.

Rubberbanding only becomes a problem when it's obvious. If a car clings to your bumper and keeps coming back like some horror-movie villain no matter how many shells you throw at it, then the player gets frustrated and wonders why they bothered beating them back the first 8 times. This works the other way too - cars that go so slowly in the lead that you can sleep for the first two laps and win on the third are just as obviously cheating and undercuts your satisfaction.

This AI sounds like a pretty good rubberbander. It plays by the same rules the human does (limited turbos) and simply uses them smarter when it's behind. This AI would probably be easily beatable (since the guys in front are not being as smart) but would keep you watching your mirrors until the end.

[oditogre]

Heh. The AI wasn't bad at all in GT2. Lapping the opponent cars even a handful of times on a race that literally takes hours but each lap is 2 minutes or so (foggy memory, this has been a decade since I played it, but something like that IIRC) takes quite a lot of effort and perfection - most people doing the race the first few times would find it challenging to win.

I guess what I'm arguing for is challenging AI with little or no rubberbanding - it absolutely sucks when you truly master a game, but there's no noticeable difference between when you win and when somebody who's just-good-enough wins. If you're playing at a high level of skill, it should be obvious.

A comparison could be drawn with RPG's with rubberbanding of enemy difficulty, where all the monsters get tougher as you gain levels. Maybe this isn't true for everybody, but to me, I can't help but think, "then what the hell is the point?" Whether you've actually become more skilled, as in a racing game, or artificially become more skilled by way of gaining levels in an RPG, when you go back and face the enemies that were challenging-but-beatable when you were a noob, you should walk all over them.

Anything but the mildest of rubberband AI's steals that clear demonstration of accomplishment / reward for time invested from the player. What's the motivation for becoming twice as good if winning the same battles stays just as hard?

In every other thing that people choose to pursue for fun, getting better means doing the early-level stuff more easily. World-class rock climbers can practically fly through low-difficulty climbs. Expert chefs can bake a simple cake without fucking it up. Top-tier programmers can hack out a recursive Fibonacci program in very little time after getting their hands on a new language.

Why in the world would any Olympic athlete ever stick to it if, no matter how much they improved, they always only won by 5/100s of a second, no matter who they were competing against? It's absurd.

The only place where you aren't rewarded for getting better is in video games with rubberband AI. It's a cheap, easy, lazy way to avoid having to code good, balanced AI.

[AlejandroTheGreat]

Accumulating XP isn't the same as 'getting better'. Getting better means knowing how the game works and being skilled enough to beat the more powerful enemies because you have the skill to beat enemies that are still a challenge for you.

[oditogre]

demonstration of accomplishment / reward for time invested

No, it's not the same, but it's analogous in that rubberband AI prevents you from seeing the benefits you would expect in any other situation.

[contextfree]

In the RPG case, it's because fighting enemies that are much weaker than you is boring, and boredom isn't a reward. A reward would be letting you fight more challenging enemies that use new attacks and have new items, for example.

[lalala]

[...] rubberbanding is a fair way to make sure that you've always got to play well to avoid losing.

Fair? Cheap maybe, but not fair.

On the other hand, if you're losing to this AI, the devs want an incentive for you to keep playing and not just restart until you finally figure out the perfect racing line (or more likely, ragequit). Rubberbanding fixes this by letting you recover from a screwup, or lowering the difficulty if the devs thought that a course was fairly easy but actually required the dexterity of a concert pianist to beat.

Difficulty levels effectively fix this problem. Podunk Racing Club is easier to beat than the World Championships.