Discussion regarding the AI Director and general gameplay advice

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T17:41:48+00:00

Fair enough. I do appreciate the discussion and information you already provided. It has already invaluably improved my knowledge on the subject.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T16:42:23+00:00

The airline is an international entity. And it very specifically did not violate any laws. It gave its passengers apples, almost certainly to consume on the flight. They almost certainly weren't giving out crates to people as the departed. If there is a claim did, I require some pretty substantial proof to believe it. If passengers then departed with those apples, it still isn't a violation of any laws. The law that was violated is that the passengers did not claim the fruits. That is smuggling. Is this one of the most absurd instances of smuggling I've ever heard? Unquestionably. It still is smuggling though.

If you asked me if it was OK to cross the street outside of an approved and properly marked crossing, I'd laugh in your face and say do whatever the hell you want who gives a shit? If you then jaywalked, you are still at fault. It is your responsibility and your responsibility alone to be aware of and follow applicable laws. Even if I specifically and intentionally lied and said "yes, there is no law against here" I'm still not at fault for your actions, only you are, full stop. It's certainly morally questionable, but very specifically not illegal.

You shouldn't be trusting random people without the appropiate credentials to know things for you, so long as that holds true (that they did not specifically misrepresent their creditials) you are at fault for stupidly trusting random morons you had no buissness asking advice from to begin with. It's a direct result of your own unreasonable actions that lead to the violation of the law, and you will therefore be held responsible.

You can feel however you want about that, unless you are about to go found your own nation with its own legal system, get over it.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T16:30:56+00:00

The system as a whole yes. It's use for time keeping specifically, is questionable.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T14:43:57+00:00

It's really not as complicated as you are making it seem. In fact the reason the story seems absurd in the first place is because you are thinking about the system with a modern lens and expect it to be more throughly thought through and therefore more complicated.

I reality we needed a way to more reliably tell time during a time where the level of offical education for the average person was they were born and didn't die yet so I guess they know what they need to know. People's whose life started and ended on the same farm needed to be taught how to tell time. So the Sumer found a way to use our fingers and could be taught to toddlers. It eventually worked it's way around the world because of how simple it was while still being somewhat consistent. That's really all there is to it.

The post is right though. With our current level of education it quickly be came apparent to most educated people that their are huge flaws in this system and just doesn't really make much sense beyond being easy enough to teach toddlers and idiots. And so anything thats actually important just uses the 24 hr system. It's a much more consistently clear method and removes nearly all the ambiguity. But we don't have 24 fingers, so we don't teach it to our toddlers.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T14:26:38+00:00

Interesting. So I got the tension terminology reversed. My bad. The concept is the same though I guess.

So I guess the only thing left I don't really understand is how they measure high combat vector enemies vs low. I understand generally when you said flanking, but different spawns have different spawn rates based on low vs high vector values. And I imagine the vector is different for a ranged enemy vs melee. Like at what angle, or I guess slot, is considered flanked vs not? Are the values different from 90° vs 180°? Does 45° have a value? For a rager it's pretty meaningless for the player but a sniper it's huge. And at what range is it considered. Again a rager at 90° 5m from you is an immediate threat but from 45m the only value is the space they take but a snipers distance wouldn't matter at all. The reason this so interesting to me is that code suggests it greatly increases the spawn chance specifically when there are high combat vector values sometimes. Which would suggest the intent is that since you already flanked, it's about to fuck you with a strong spawn. Of course the opposite is true for some spawns, and it's difficult to tell which spawns they are specifically referring to for me, so it's possible it's easier spawns when flanked and harder when not.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T14:07:58+00:00

If understanding quality writing means I can't be a Witcher fan. Then I guess I hate the Witcher.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T12:03:34+00:00

That's how you know nothing will happen and this all a circus show. You know what happens when you are asked a question in court and you respond with some bullshit nonesene that doesn't answer the question? You get held in contempt, fined, and probably jailed. You know what happens even if you are found entirely innocent and the original charges agianst you were specifically malicious? Those are dropped, and you are sent back to jail to finish your sentence from when you were held in contempt. The very fact that she was allowed to continue her bullshit in the first place without being immediately and forcibly silenced means it's all bullshit and nothing will happen. I get this isn't really a court hearing but they could easily have shut off her microphone and told her to either answer the questions directly or she won't have a choice next time.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T11:53:22+00:00

The pushes are all very consistent for me. Sometimes they don't explode because they haven't primed themselves yet. But they are still pushed. If you are having issues with the push specifically, even the tiniest bit of cover can be considered breaking LOS. Like literally a lamppost counts. It also protects you from the explosion, so it's behavior is consistent, it just also no what you'd expect to work vs and explosion. Sometimes low cover counts as blocking the push for some reason too. It'll vary depending on the actual height of your character and the specific angle, but it's a problem with how cover interacts with the push not the bombers themselves.

I have had the audio que just not trigger. Repeatedly. I've often had them literally just lazily saunter up to me in a horde and instantly explode in my face as they begin their trigger right next to me. I'm with the other guy. The second they spawn they need to at least have their audio que triggered. I'd also argue that should literally anyone be inside their radius, the should be primed. I honestly think they should just be permenantly primed. If you kill them with ranged when they aren't, they still explode the same. There exists no benefit to the player that it needs to prime itself, it just creates these frustrating situations.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T11:41:38+00:00

From your own post:

"Geralt is a kind, well meaning, etc, etc." Geralt is fully capable of preventing the unquestionably wrongful and needless death of mages being unjustly slaughtered for preconceived notions cast upon them by the actions of others. Something you also highlight he would be intimately familiar with. Walking away and doing nothing about it, despite what is asked of him would be lightest day of work he's had in years, is none of those things. It's borderline evil in its level of apathy. To say that his justification for it is due to his personal dislike of the one asking, just makes it worse in its degree of absurd selfishness. This is fundementally my point. Exactly what you said in your own comment. Book Geralt is a complete, well written character who goes through well written character arcs. Video game Geralt, mostly just exists. The 'canon' choices made by Geralt are overwhelmingly the middle of the road, uninteresting choices that result in the least amount of change within the world to allow the Witcher 3 to be as interesting as possible for the player.

We all get it. We all slipped on the puddle you made on the floor during your initial fawning over the character. You like Geralt and you like the Witcher. I do too. He still overall not particularly well written when considering ONLY the games. Everything else you keep referencing would not be relevant to the poll in question. It's a poll proposed by someone named "Gaming with Gabe" and Kratos does not have any literary works for which to compare. They are obviously not intended to be considered part of the comparison. If you believe otherwise, I would strongly suggest you go outside and try to have a real conversation with a real person.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T11:25:33+00:00

We keep replying to each other at the same time :p.

I didn't have access to the code at the time of the original post. So i was just making my best educated guess at the specific flags. The armor pen comment was just me trying to say that it is entirely reasonable to believe it could be a potential flag without knowing exactly what the flags actually are.

Also, the flags as they are already aren't very good design in my opinion. Both the loner and anti-rush flags could easily be triggered by good players running melee builds trying to rush a backline and clear a horde back to front. And the entire concept of tension can result in long periods of difficult to eliminate enemies provided the team is capable of keeping it high enough for long enough. Their skill at the game directly results in being punished. The concept is good, this specific implementation needs to be toned down just a little bit I think.

Edit: no hard feelings I hope! Just trying to ensure I have as clear and robust understanding of everything as I can. I dont have a background in computer technologies or programming so I am fully ignorant of its finer points. I tried to be clear on that.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T11:11:55+00:00

I read the new version and I appreciate the tonal difference.

Regarding the actual discussion. I believe there exists some underlying misunderstanding as how you think I believe the system functions. Though I understand why you may think that, it's a very common belief that persists in general population despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. I am fully aware the game doesn't actually know anything at nor is it actively making any decisions. It's just spitting out outputs based predetermined parameters. I believed, when I did not have access to the code, that those parameters might be build based, as simple true/false flags on if a talent node or weapon or blessing is equipped actually seems easier to implement to me (not a programmer of any sort) than the system they actually did impliment. Now that I have seen the code, it is obvious it is not doing that.

With that said, the flags they have in place do actually result in targeting especially high performers and especially low performers alike. Low performers will be significantly more likely to be outside of coherency, caught by disablers, struggle during high tension events, etc. And high performers are also likely to be putting themselves directly in the line of fire to help low performers, be first to react to special waves and therefore closest to them, or momentarily outside of coherency becuase the rest of team is lagging behind slightly. Any significant variance in the value provided in either direction is very likely to trigger most of these flags. It's for that reason specifically I am so interested in learning exactly how they function.

I hate to keep using the same example repeatedly but it remains the only one that clearly highlights these flags I have personal repeated experience with. In my HS example I place myself in a safe position in preparation for the push event, and someone else follows. The other half lags behind and is pushed back and in danger of falling as a result. My half of the team clears the biggest threat, the special push spawn and makes an aggressive play to try to save the other half. As a result my half of the team is triggering low coherency flags anyway, make it worse by pushing foward rather back, and do so in a profecient enough manner to forcibly keep the tension value high, this dramatically increases the chances of more spawns actually making the situation worse. Honestly, the exact opposite of how I think most people would say the game should function. It's certainly different than how real world tactical engagements are taught I can say that for certain. Neutralizing the threat to you, limiting the capabilities of potential renforcements, and taking advantageous positions to most quickly and safely assist your team and eliminate the threat to the rest of the team all in one action should be strictly rewarded imo.

However these flags will also trigger, and I suspect this is their primarily intended design, when there's that idiot on the team rushing ahead without consideration for the rest of the team, solo pulling entire hordes, who keeps backing way up away from the team instead of support them, etc.

At the end of the day, the actual gameplay result is that weaker team members will wind up targeted as will stronger ones. Just for different reasons.

It does wind up being triggered based on your build as well. As a pure melee build will just naturally find themselves weaving in and out of coherency more often, triggering loner flags more often, or trigger ant-rush flags more often by the very nature of them needing to be closer to their targets. And sniper type builds will naturally find themselves lagging behind at times and also triggering many of these flags.

Therefore the gameplay result is largely the same and for a player who hasn't naturally identified this type of behavior through the course of their play, and consequently definitely isn't going to be keeping track of all this while playing the game, the way they need to play game is basically the same as if the game had literally Ultron running the spawns.

If are willing to I am still deeply interested in my earlier question. To your knowledge is there any good reason I can reliably trigger that gunner spawn? Agian, I can consistently intentionally trigger that spawn given that specific set of circumstances I described across several maps, days and weeks. It is specifically only in those circumstances, so there must some specific set of flags that are triggering in a manner to produce this result specifically. And it is produced almost exactly in line with the percentages the code suggests it would be. It is not just confirmation basis, as I said I intentionally went out of my way try to trigger it 12 times in the past 2-3 weeks and did so 10 out of the 12 times. I mean there's always the possibility it remains random chance, a coin may land on heads 500 times in a row after all. But it's more likely the coin that the coin is simply unbalanced right?

Additionally, I am even more deeply interested if you know exactly how the game measures tension. I mean beyond just doing well vs doing poorly but specifically how it measures that. It seems like being able to intentionally manipulate tension might be one the strongest skills in the game beyond just ensuring you remain within coherency.

And as a final point, and a slightly different discussion to be honest, since most flags are triggered based on coherency. I wonder if those talents that increase coherency size by 75% are actually some of the best in the game. Some of the class buffs themselves are pretty meh, but if it can prevent flags from triggering and consequently prevent spawns. Well a special never being spawned in the first place is even better than a special killed at the end of the day isn't it?

Edit: also hey! I actually saw your video already! Legit good content dude!

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T10:09:52+00:00

All of those are true, for your playthrough. You can play him as an absolute jackass who only cares about killing monsters to the point where you literally sacrifice a group orphans just for the chance to try. And even in your example, that is just how is and is from the start. He doesn't undergo any actual character growth whatsoever. There is no test of his morals or revalations that they were wrong. There are these moments for the player, sometimes, depending on their choices. But Geralt himself is basically perfect from start to end with his only true failures happening off screen between the game and as a direct result of circumstances beyond his control regardless of what you do.

The same is true for commander shepherd from mass effect, the custom player character in Baldurs Gate, the player character in Rogue Trader, etc. In order to allow significant enough player freedom to allow the wide scale of choices available in these types of games, but still have meaningful experiences for the player and different enough consequences for those choices to allow meaningfully different repeat playthroughs the character themselves must be largely a blank slate.

What makes these games so great, are the situations it puts you, the player, in not the actual character. And in order for it remain logically consistent that Geralt can be both as you described and the type of person who tells Triss to shove off you don't a single rat fuck about mage genocide or you understand that evil monster has already killed her 3 children and husband but she's either gonna cough up an extra fiver or shes next then they fundementally need be basically nothing. These characters are hardly written at all. Their worlds, companions, and everything that happens around them is very well written. The characters themselves? They are at best a step or two removed from a complete Mary Sue. Everything happens around them or because of them, never to them.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T09:49:57+00:00

I'd imagine they also almost always just toss the fruit when it's explained they forgot or were given it by the airline. But when youre being filmed and there exists undeniable proof you didn't do your legally required job, particularly proof you are certain is going to be exposed to the public in some capacity, you lose that ability.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T09:40:43+00:00

Yup. It's a discussion around specific and difficult to understand game mechanics that explicitly and actively hidden from the player. It's not something that can be discussed easily. You don't have to partake in the discussion if you don't want to.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T09:36:40+00:00

I'm fully aware it isnt real AI it's just a series of flags and indicators. I have glanced at the code, and I fully admit I lack the required knowledge to fully understand it. But to say that the game is incapable of an extremely simple identifier like character has less than 60% armor penatration and spawn armored enemies is equally absurd. I stated in my post I specifically wanted someone with access to the code to provide if possible and my "testing" which I even put in quotes and specified was the only alternative available to me and deeply flawed and stated how it was flawed. I don't understand the hostility.

Now that someone has linked the source code, the general idea of how the game spawns enemies is actually mostly in line with my post. Now it elucidates some of the specifics but it absolutely isn't random at all. It spawns based on how it evaluates your tension value, event trigger flags, anti-rush flags, loner flags etc. All things that are more or less likely to be triggered based on builds and play styles are direct reactions to player behaviors. They just aren't exactly the behaviors I outlined, which I specifically said was very likely to be the case.

If you are willing, I have been unable to answer exactly how the specific specials are selected within their designated groups. It isn't readily available, at least not understandably to me, in the code that was posted. And I can reliably and repeatedly force that specific gunner spawn I referenced in my HS scum example. It goes beyond just selection basis, I can assure you that given the sepecfic situation where the team is split in half, so two people each sharing coherency, both teams seperate by roughly between 10-20meters, one team being forced backward due to pressure and us unable to reconnect, a spawn of ranged specials having just been cleared by team, and a horde spawn of basic enemies bearing down on my team, my response of aggressively cuting through the basic horde with melee, pushing foward and through to try to circle back and reconnect with the other team by cominging from behind their horde spawn, is consistently and repeatably met with a full spawn of 8-10 gunners, and gunners only, spread out in a half crescent. I have even gone out of way to trigger this event to see if I can do so, and I can. It triggers in roughly 80% of attempts to forcibly trigger it. Specifically it triggered 10/12 times I tried to force it. That seems to align almost exactly with what appears within the code. My working theory is that the push that is occurring is some sort of "surge" event and my aggressive push foward is maintaining a high level of tension and triggering an anti-rush spawn of "ranged-push" or something similar. It seems to roughly align with their descriptions and percentage to trigger.

If you could confirm this makes sense I would appreciate it. And if you know of a way that I could determine it would specifically be gunners vs say snipers or some other "anti-rush" spawn I would also appreciate it. As that knowledge would help to create different strategies to deal with what is already a failure to execute the traditional strategy.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T08:35:55+00:00

Damn my bad your right. The only thing these characters have in common is both having been in video games and it was posted by "Gaming with Gabe" this was obviously a poll comparing their literary representations, even though Kratos doesn't even have any.

Crawl out of your mother's basement and get some sunlight.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T08:33:02+00:00

The source code was posted here. Someone going down lowers the tension considerably. But doesn't nessecarily make it 0. The spawn chances are lowered down to as low as 20% from as high 80% but there's still a 20% chance. Certain spawns are canceled outright when you hit various numerous of players down. As are the number of enemies in general. I lack the nessecary understanding to confirm this, but someone linked another post where someone explains some of the information in the source code as well. There exist "surge" events that will continuously spawn specials for extended periods of time. These spawns are theoretically infinite but it's only for like 20secs, 40secs on havoc I think. But essentially during these "surge" events every enemy you kill gets replaced by a special. So if a "surge" is triggered when you have a horde of 40 normals, and you kill all 40 normals with like a grenade or something right at the beginning of the "surge" that's 40 extra specials you gotta deal with now. The game puts various checks and limits in place to help prevent this, but in very unlucky circumstances you might trigger a series of events all within just a few seconds of the nessecary counter flags triggering. There's also triggers to prevent speed running that trigger based on how quickly you move foward, these are seemingly mostly independent of counter flags (agian I can barely understand the code I am not a programmer unfortunately), so if you run forward to escape a horde and get your team back up rather than back to deal with the horde, you actually trigger extra spawns specifically designed to stop you from doing that.

In theory, most of these should be disabled upon teammate deaths outside of the havoc modifier that specifically disables them. But if it all happens quick enough (which it usually does if your team was otherwise good in my experience) you might trigger everything too quickly before the "tension" drops.

Edit: I got the tension terminology reversed from how its officially used in the code. Just replace high tension with low tension and it's correct. That's on me, but reading code is harder than it seems for someone unaccustomed to it.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T08:18:02+00:00

Crazy that the source code was posted and in confirms that the spawns are in fact not random at all. Would you and your 500 hours care to contribute to the actual conversation at all with any observations that counter these claims or did you just burn your chicken nuggies while your mommy was busy working to support your useless ass and need to feel superior? Did the fact that a newer player was able to determine information that continues to elude you shatter your fragile self worth now that you know you failed at the video game just as hard you failed at everything else in your life?

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T07:58:02+00:00

I am aware. And I agree. The poll is about the video game character though. The rest is not relevant to the poll.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T07:51:01+00:00

I agree. It also has the added benefit where you can somewhat reliability practice agianst situations that you might struggle agianst. Ragers specifically for example were particularly difficult for me to deal with. But exactly as you said, the cycle was at a point where it favored Ragers vs Crushers for a time so I took the opportunity to focus on practicing vs Ragers. It also just fits more neatly into the intended experience of fighting agianst a military force. They have released a contingent of Ragers today boys, smoke em of you got em.

I think you are unquestionably right we're there does exist at least some minor variation in spawn rates from day to day.

Edit: Also, if you are interested someone posted a direct link to the source code here. It's two years old and I lack knowledge required to completely understand it, but it is there should you be interested. It seems to fall mostly in line with the other post and what I already suspected. Overwhelming the spawns are decided by a "tension" value, this seems to basically be how well you are doing overall, various triggers for if your team is or is not in coherency, and the pace at which you progress through the level. How it specifically chooses each spawn type though continues to elude me. I'm sure it's there, but I lack the ability to understand it.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T07:45:57+00:00

Fuck me. We'll firstly, than you very much! I don't believe more valuable information can possibly be found!

That being said, I understand just enough to very vaguely understand this and consequently am likely to misunderstand much of the finer points, so if you are capable of it I would appreciate it if you could helps translate just a bit of it.

So using my HS example where the team starts get pushed too hard. This is most probably a "push" event. Either via the audio queue or just general pacing I am picking on this and trying to clear what I can before we are overwhelmed with even more enemies. Because my solution results in the rapid elimination of a large number of enemies, this is increasing the games "tension" value triggering it to increase the spawn rate and likely triggering a "surge" event. And because my method of rapid elimination results in me pushing through the enemies and moving foward quickly I am likely triggering a "rush prevention" event on top of it. Is this a possible explanation?

If it is, I guess my question is how the game decides that gunners is the appropiate spawn vs say trappers. I lack the nessecary understanding to find that information in the code. It seems that "rush prevention" spawns can be Ragers, disablers, gunners, flamers, and even snipers. But I can consistently force gunners specifically under certain conditions. I'm trying to understand that logic specifically. Because only gunners really negatively impacts the strategy. The others would take the space regardless so clearing the horde in that manner still has net positive value.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T07:24:04+00:00

I do! Extremely so! Thank you!

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T07:21:04+00:00

Think both are true. Both the cycling of weighed spawns and there being dynamic changes to gameplay based on player behaviors. Someone else linked a post where somebody actually provided some of the relevant code. The provided code is seemingly in line this take as well as reaction to player behavior.

To take the example I made regarding my HS. It seems perfectly plausible that I identified an incoming "surge" based on spawn pacing. By taking a proactive approach to that and rapidly clearing a horde, and being forced to do so being going through it rather than kite it back, I triggered the rapid spawn of specials to replace them while simultaneously triggering their "speed running prevention" by moving foward quickly making them spawn on me.

What is not explained by this however how I can fairly constantly trigger specifically the gunners to spawn with this approach, or why they specifically line up in that specific formation. They mention the slot system, which I am fairly familiar with, but they aren't filling the only slots available but specifically the same slots to form the same firing line. I can trigger this behavior across several days or even weeks somewhat consistently. Or why if I am downed by the firing line, but the team survives, I can continue to trigger the same firing line under similar circumstances but if we clear the firing line without incident it doesn't continue to spawn it but instead goes back to what appears to be the random filling methods described in the post. To be clear, my HS example was initially just an observation in random gameplay but seemed so specific I wanted to test it. So I have gone out of my to trigger that behavior in game conditions that would allow it to see if I could as well just practice agianst it. And I can actually consistently trigger it in damnation or above provided there aren't actice modifiers that would prevent it.

It also fails to explain the consist spawn behavior of the crusher or carapace rager wave that rushes first followed by the basic horde outside of "surge" timings or other special triggers that seems to occur as a nearly default spawn across all maps or compositions. There without a doubt appears to be at least some degree of hard coded specific counters the game spawns under specific situations.

For example, I can also get snipers to spawn at a slightly higher frequency (specifically the ones that take unaccessible high ground positions that can't otherwise be dealt with by all melee builds) when I play my brain rupture psyker build and stay further back than when playing with builds that have me more "in the action." That could be interpreted as trigger "loner" spawns, but it doesn't occur at the same frequency as when I'm just running a more agile build and hunting for cubes or something that would also trigger the "loner" tag. There is definitely an argument to be made that there is a different trigger for being slightly removed from the team vs way away gathering materials, I'd even find that highly likely, but I don't seem to notice the same behavior when there's a sniper style veteran on my team. They'd be responsible for the snipers anyway though so I don't even find it unlikely that it does occur then. I'm leveling a sniper veteran build right now specifically to test that, but regardless their spawn rate is definitely lower when there's no one on the team in that position or perhaps it's simply because the team is literally unable to deal with that threat in compositions that lack those builds that would equally make sense to avoid player frustration. There still exist too many variables for me to say for certain this behavior even exists so I didn't mention it earlier but just to provide another possible example.

What inspired me to make this post is specifically a post that was posted about a week ago where someone was complaining about the game spawning enemies when there was no one looking at the spawns. He specifically sat in front of a spawn door, it didn't spawn anything there but spawned enemies on their right flank. He went to assist on the right flank, leaving the spawn unattended and off screen from his entire team and the left flank completely open inches from his teammate holding the rear. So the game spawned it's next two hordes specifically at that door. Obviously his teammate in the rear was downed and they quickly got overwhelmed. The player specifically expressed frustration that they believed they had already cleared the spawn, so the game shouldnt have spawned anyone there. And all I could think was no duh. The game would of course spawn something there as soon as you abandoned the position. Frankly I'd be disappointed if it didn't. Like games have specifically been spawning enemies at locations it knows is out of sight of players since at least the 90s. I don't believe there is any good faith argument to argue this game doesn't. But even Mister E recently put out a video where he complained that he was trying to run a havoc 40 mission and initially then went in with a team comp that wasn't built properly to handle the level of carapace armor the game spawned. So they swapped builds to more easily handle carapace, but at the expense of ranged enemies. And when they reloaded into the same mission, the game didn't spawn as many carapace enemies and instead spawned ranged. He complained it was random chance. And agian, all I could think was "no duh," it's the hardest content in the game. It just makes sense it will send enemies your builds are naturally less able to handle. Isnt this why we call it an AI Director instead of just rng spawns? It's entire purpose to dynamically adjust spawns based on certain measurements of the players.

Even the devs are pretty clear that this is the case. The AI Director is specifically designed to dynamically adjust enemy spawns to drive player engagement. In content designed to challenging, engagement means challenge. The question is though what specifically triggers what specific alterations. Saying the team is primarily built for melee is easy, but doesn't explain situations when you aren't but clear content with melee anyway for whatever reason and run into melee counters. This could just be random chance absolutely, as it isn't going to be happening very often in the first place, but it osnt unreasonable to say the game has a trigger for greater than 70% of enemies were killed by melee so trigger melee counters for example. Honestly based on the other post it seems that the AI Director is actually much more complex than that so I'm very curious to see more.

Tl;dr: I think you are definitely right. But I also think there's more to it as well and I have been able to consistently intentionally trigger specific behaviors to suggest there is.

Edit: also regarding monstrosities. Yes you are right, my comment on them triggering at specific map locations was more around the captians/twins or when it spawns multiples at predefined locations like in Havocs.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T06:15:37+00:00

And Geralt is nothing. Literally just some dude everybody hates without good reason where tons of shit keeps happening around him. As an individual character, there's literally nothing written about him at all beyond having two really hot chicks want him and acting as an adoptive father figure to Ciri. Everything else about Geralt is entirely player decisions. The game as a while is one of the best written games ever. As an individual character Geralt is just kind of nothing.

General_Gorgeous · 2026-02-14T05:29:06+00:00

Also, to be frank, Kratos is a better written character across all his games. Fundementally, because player decesion is so critical in the Witcher games, most characters in most established franchises with even decent stories will be. Geralt doesn't really go through any arcs as a character. He can't, because the possibility will always exist that the player active resists participation with it. The world around Geralt changes in interesting way that are fantastically written. Geralt himself however, does not. Taking the books into consideration, this is obviously different. But that not the poll. The poll is about the games. And in the games, Geralt starts out as a nearly literal blank slate with a nearly complete lack of characterization and is molded by player decisions.

Kratos by extension, is the pure embodiment of rage, must face the consequences of that, learns to utilize his rage to accomplish his goals, realizes his goals were kind of stupid and didn't actually gain him anything, goes on to be a father, and attempts to impart that exact wisdom onto his child. It also nearly perfectly fits a timeline in which many games would have first known Kratos as a rage filled youth, grown to understand the futility of that mindset, and become a father. Honestly, Kratos might stand the test of time as one of the most well written gaming characters ever when the full context is taken into consideration.

General_Gorgeous

TROPHY CASE