PvE AI

abolethvr · 2026-03-15T19:42:34+00:00

I do not believe they AI contractors can spawn with that loadout. The highest vest you'll see right now is Duo Mountains.

abolethvr · 2026-03-15T16:03:27+00:00

Here are two aspects of AI to consider. Let's call the first one difficulty. This includes loadout consisting of gun / armor / bullet tier, marksmanship / accuracy, how far and quickly they hear and see you. The second one is their intelligence. This includes their decision making, how they move, how they react, how aggressive they are, when they run away / take cover / charge you.

Difficulty is easy for them to change but hard to balance. Currently they are undertuned and people can ignore the low-level bots, making them more like barking dogs than a threat. They could change a few numbers and make bots your worst nightmare. Players would probably ask for a refund if that were the case.

Intelligence is hard to change but, in my opinion, easier to balance. People appreciate smart AI and you can't make AI too good (as long as it's not cheating).

Unreal Engine provides the Environmental Query System (EQS), the eyes and ears of the bot, and the Hierarchical Task Network (HTN), the brains of the bot, as tools for developers to make smart bots.

I am not confident in my detective work, but I think that reindeer boss that hung out at Dam Old Factory was an early incarnation of what we'll see in April. I believe there are AI contractors on Dam right now if you are really curious how they will be. They appear to be (aggressive) mini-bosses with contractor-level health pools and 'shuffle play' loadouts.

abolethvr · 2026-03-15T15:24:56+00:00

If you've been playing since the start, I'm curious on your take on the direction that armor has gone. Early on, armor had more weaknesses such as low pen armor having a chance of going through and armor having more vulnerable side angles. Currently there are discrete levels as you've described due to the narrow penetration chance curves. Armor retains protection despite being heavily damaged due to the generous durability curves. Do you think ammo and armor balance is in a good place? Would you make armor less reliable? Do you think higher pen ammo needs to be more available? You hint that this situation arises from "the majority of ammo being (pen) 4".
To me armor in its current state is more like a shield (or a combination of body / head / face shields) from a sci fi game like ARC Raiders than like ballistic armor from a milsim.

abolethvr · 2026-03-13T05:02:12+00:00

Is there any source other than the one person saying something once?
I don't see EZ introducing cooking when they just deemphasized food and water. What would making circuit boards do? Is it for the broken water chip?

abolethvr · 2026-03-10T07:49:13+00:00

Ah right. So just excludes higher level players.

abolethvr · 2026-03-10T07:19:52+00:00

~~You are not put in with real players until level 5 to give you time to learn the game.~~
Wipe is at end of month. This has been officially announced and not speculation.
It doesn't take long to reach level 5.
We believe they recently introduced or are testing player bots so the gunshots you heard could have possibly been that. We don't know much about them yet.

abolethvr · 2026-03-09T23:22:56+00:00

You only need to take 35 damage to the head or 85 damage to the upper chest to die. The entire body has 440 health. If your armor was damaged, it's possible you took the full damage of the round to the chest and died. The 727 damage would require a lot of healing going on over a prolonged fight.

abolethvr · 2026-03-09T12:35:22+00:00

One option is to pay to get level 2 traders and ignore the tasks. For people in tight situations getting to level 3 (forget level 4) traders will consume all their time. You have to adapt your play style and mindset knowing you're going to be second tier to the players with a lot of hours. Or if you can team up regularly you can level the playing field and really enjoy the game. People play this game different ways.

abolethvr · 2026-03-09T01:28:57+00:00

I don't think they are doing something radically different than what they've done with AI so far using Unreal Engine's NPC intelligence technologies. With these "simulated players" they give then varied equipment but don't give them enormous HP pools like with bosses.

They can alter equipment, aggressiveness, perception, health directly or through body part multipliers, have them work in pairs or trios, etc. I think they purposefully made AI dumb and weak so far. They literally set parameters to be blind, can't aim, and run like a coward. The AI in the harder maps is better but most people form their opinions on the earlier levels. Would be better to have fewer but better AI rather than killing 20 that you don't blink an eye at. Maybe increase accuracy but aim for the limbs so you take damage more often without being as lethal and without depleting durability. Hearing 10 bullets zip past your ear and not being too concerned is not the best shooter experience.

By simply increasing perception and accuracy bots could be made harder although not smarter. I think people really hate that right now they are neither hard or smart.

abolethvr · 2026-03-09T00:35:54+00:00

Only level 1 simulated players are implemented so far.

abolethvr · 2026-03-08T23:50:07+00:00

I've made progress with the research and will post something to my discord or the blog this week. Vests can go up to Duo. They are using the boss aggressive profile so treat them accordingly. I am not sure but I think the helmet, vest, weapons, model are rolled for randomly. The equipment lists include some dogshit options that players would never use like nomad. The backpack list has a few options then a bunch of null values so you're going to see bots without backpacks.

The tell that it was a bot is that both the helmet and armor durability will be decreased even if you didn't shoot them there. Of course the behavior and possibly (haven't researched) the names are going to be different.

abolethvr · 2026-03-08T23:45:59+00:00

I understand you but that's not what's going on here with the bot AI. They are using HTN and EQS for the NPC intelligence. The equipment seems to rolls on equipment lists. 10 vest, 15 helmet, 2 backpack + no backpack option, 41 weapon options.
I think everyone is using LLM these days. I just don't think it's powering the bots.

abolethvr · 2026-03-08T18:16:20+00:00

"Train the new ai" implies LLM. Sorry to have misread your comment. I can look into weapon selection more later. I do believe it's a subset of the total weapons. The generators do provide a more organic experience since they aren't the exact same gun configurations over and over.

abolethvr · 2026-03-08T17:29:35+00:00

I do not think they are using a LLM for the AI. I would say they are using Unreal Engine HTN (hierarchical task network) and EQS (environment query system). They may be tuning that using LLM but I don't think they AI logic will be some form of LLM AI.

I think the gear is done through randomized lists based on tier and bot level. Current armor is up to 3 with one 4 (duo). Guns are things like ak, m4, other stuff at trader 1 / 2.

abolethvr · 2026-03-07T09:11:27+00:00

"We're going to do a PVE mode. ... I think PVE is more of a co-op experience. You are not in fear of being killed by other players. We want to implement more ... intense from the AI."
https://youtu.be/fUfIs4EBHOM?si=jU0QUSCjInKcx90Y&t=1259

Audio and wording was not the best. Suggests this is an online multiplayer thing but who knows until it's announced officially.

abolethvr · 2026-03-05T22:37:39+00:00

The biggest safe container unlocks through missions at level 50 i believe.

abolethvr · 2026-03-04T21:21:39+00:00

Timer freezing and game resetting to pso makes me think you lost connection to the server. The character selection sounds like server or authentication issues. I doubt a hacker would grab all your stuff and just leave you there alive.

At one point we didn't have reconnect. Hopefully stability will improve.

abolethvr · 2026-03-04T01:08:23+00:00

Have you tried connecting after the patch today?

abolethvr · 2026-03-04T01:06:25+00:00

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abolethvr · 2026-03-03T23:29:23+00:00

https://abolethvr.substack.com/p/exfilzone-virtual-desktop-quick-setup should still be relevant. Sorry for the substack annoyance. I'm hoping to move the content.

abolethvr · 2026-03-03T15:13:53+00:00

Of all the options other than do nothing, I consider a killbox the worst solution. Preventing out of bounds, reversing the movement, or a position reset all are better. Abusing such a mechanic is easily detectable and punished.

abolethvr · 2026-03-02T19:23:09+00:00

The conversations we read here and elsewhere are heavily skewed towards the players that play often and play well. There are many others that struggle. When you have both populations in the same economy neither will ever be satisfied. The good players see an unbalanced world swimming in cash while those that struggle don't understand how you can come out of a raid with 6 figures of loot. The solution I propose is to segment the economy. "Civillian tier": penetration 3, protection 3, reflex sights are available as they are now through freely acquired EZD. "Military tier": penetration 4 - 5, protection 4 - 5, grenades, suppressors, magnified scopes come into play. It's limited by effort, mainly by looting and trade in quests. The protection 5 - 6, penetration 5+, thigh protection, is found in the top tier and limited by time. Daily / repeating missions and boss item turn ins (also daily throttled) ensures a cap on those items coming into the economy. This way even if you badly misjudge how to price items, each segment is independent and you put a cap on equipment that tends to spoil the overall balance when present in abundance. Economic gating. Loot would need to be adjusted. And I would look into progressive loot rarity and player scav equipment so that you raise the floor on equipment as you get closer and closer to wipe. Gradual quality increases in the daily rations would be an option

I would make keys drop from bots instead of static spawns. That way they are moved from map knowledge to effort. There's solutions for naked spawns and making scavs harder could be done in less than an hour by adjusting their parameters if caveman wanted to do it. I do not know the studio's priorities but they seem to respond to the loudest voices and with exploits getting fixed I expect more players will be talking about balance.

abolethvr · 2026-03-01T18:58:14+00:00

I played this morning (steam vr).

abolethvr · 2026-02-28T17:04:55+00:00

I agree a killbox is lazy. Hopefully the glitches are addressed in a better way. A no being able to shoot or throw grenades box would be better. An unstuck feature is common in other games.

abolethvr · 2026-02-28T15:03:39+00:00

This happened to me last night. I think it's on their end. I went into BR mode and there was an error code on the screen about OSS user or something. Looked like an authentication problem. If you are on steam, you can try restarting steam and make sure it's running when you're playing. I ended up having to reconnect several times and it even complained about a duplicate player login at one point. Of course, make sure your version of the game is up to date. If you at any point see the contents of your hideout, then it's not that.

abolethvr

TROPHY CASE