Advanced AI in Future VF games?

For some players the idea of advanced AI is the ability to go into training or dojo mode and setup the AI for whatever offensive and defensive situation you want to train on.

For some players the idea of advanced AI is the ability to set difficulty levels, easy, normal, hard, very hard, legendary etc.

For some players the idea of advanced AI is AI opponents that have been programmed to throw tricky strings, distances, and weird timings.

These are all old school staples of AI in fighting games and have been around for 20+ years. And as these approaches go Virtua Fighter on balance has the best and most diverse AI in any fighting games. But this is not advanced AI. This is not even the current state of the art.

AI in 2022 and beyond is changing and becoming far more advanced. There are currently patents pending, research papers, boardroom presentations, etc describing more advanced AI coming down the pipeline for gaming in general and fighting games in particular. There are more games than there are players. More titles are adding bots as a normal response to filling up rooms, balancing match ups, training new players, etc. Because of the original push back against bots; game designers and developers are investing big dollars into producing believable, plausible, and fun AI.

Some of these early new bot(AI) designs are already present in FGs. Soon it will be difficult to tell whether you are fighting against an advanced AI or human player. The advanced AI's are being designed to simulate noobs, intermediate players, spammers, pullers, and advanced players. The most advanced AI's will rival the best players and will be difficult to beat by all but the most advanced players.

https://www.gamedesigning.org/gaming/game-bots/
https://news.mit.edu/2019/deeprole-ai-beat-humans-role-games-1120
https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.03821
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12530-020-09351-4
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._online_games_with_human_observational_proofs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_bot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_video_games

Soon, AI in fighting games will be adaptable and scale relative to the human playing them. The AI will adapt and grow with the player. Not only will the human player be able to select difficulty levels of the AI, but profile styles of the AI as well. e.g. The player will be able select AI profiles such as: bull dog, rush down, turtle, hit-n-run, bait-n-switch, (even frame-master). AI is being programmed to trash talk, apologize and even be deceptive. There are advanced AI algorithms that will allow AI's to have plausible losing streaks, winning streaks, near losses, comeback wins, etc.

Virtua Fighter 4 was the first fighting game that I'm aware of that has a level 1 trainable AI. VF's Quest Mode, Kumite Mode, and Sparring Mode AI's are some of the best AI ever created for an arcade fighting game. I emphasize arcade fighting game here, because combat sport fighting games such as THQ's UFC and EA's UFC games have much more advanced AI than VF. But VF has the most advanced AI of any arcade fighting game.

VF's superior AI gives it an advantage against games like Tekken, SF, MK, etc.. But what will VF6 do Will VF build on its strong AI tradition and add the new Advanced AI techniques to VF6, or will VF6 take a big step backward and add dumbed down AI to match Tekken's AI VF added dumbed down Hit Sparks to match Tekken's hit sparks

The future online scene for fighting games will contain a lot of bots (advanced bots) that will be difficult to distinguish from human players. Unless you're in a room with people you know, or in a match with people you know, it will be very hard to determine if the stranger you are playing is a human or a bot. In the future there will always be players in online room matches or rank matches, because bots will be used to make matchups when there is not enough people or when there are skill mismatches, or when connections are poor.

But what will VF6 and future VF games do? Will they seize the opportunity for VF to solidify its dominant status as the premier 3D arcade fighting game by delivering state of the art advanced adaptable AI

I've always enjoyed playing against the AI more than playing against humans. But soon it won't be optional for anyone. The future of online fighting games includes a lot of human vs AI matches. And in many cases the human won't be aware they are playing against an AI. So does it really matter?

The question is where is RGG/SEGA on all of this? Will they be leaders (like they once were), or will they be followers and focus on old online concepts as everybody else implements advanced online AI bots

 

The AI will be so advanced in VF6, that Skynet will make a deal with J6, and use that AI for their next generation of Dural plus Terminators, to rule and conquer planet Earth.

Then we will have to call Arnold Schwarzenegger to help us defeat them, and then quickly "run to the chopper", before the entire place explodes, in fiery boombastic heroic glory.