AI interrupters on crack - Could anyone from ANet please respond?

I think that lag plays a part in how frequently you're going to get an unlikely interrupt - like a savage slash on a prot spirit. I found during the Nightfall PvP preview event and the PvE preview event travelling into the UW to farm was a fairly dangerous business as the Attaxes became quite uncanny with their interrupts. However, when the server load is less they're less likely (or will never) land the interrupts and they do try.

It is strange that this happens, but it does.

Just a couple points to clear up some misinformation.

Fast Casting has no effect on a 1/4 second interrupt. 1/4 second is the hard floor for cast times, thus the Fast Casting attribute cannot lower the cast time of any spell below 1/4 second. Monsters have 12 in every attribute, so they can drop a 1/5 second spell to 1/4 second cast, but they cannot drop a 1/4 second cast spell below 1/4 second. Thus the people saying that Fast Casting is responsible for the AI's godly reflexes are wrong. The AI interrupters cheat, plain and simple. Since the game must by its very nature constantly monitor the packets your machine is sending to the servers, my guess is that the AI is interrupting the request to activate the skill rather than the actual skill activation itself.

For the people who say that the AI needs a handicap because it's dumb, you're forgetting that the AI already has a huge advantage. It's called superior numbers. That one advantage and that one advantage only is all it needs to wipe the floor with you, as anyone who's ever run into two patrols of Tengu at once in Nebo Terrace can attest to. In addition to this, they have a second advantage: higher levels. The very fact that the NPCs can reach levels up to 29 means they have a significant advantage the players can never hope to match. These advantages are by design. The AI does not need to cheat to gain yet another advantage; letting the AI cheat so blatantly simply frustrates the players.

AI interrupts are ridiculous and need to be toned back to compare favorably with human reflexes. Under no circumstances should it interrupt a 1/4 second skill unless it happens to catch that skill after attempting to interrupt a previous one. A half-second delay (and that's being generous, I don't know of any human with half-second reflexes) before attempting to interrupt a player, to simulate the human process of seeing the skill activate and then activating your own interrupt in counter, would be an adequate change.

It is a little-known fact that AI cheats...I'm not kidding:

The AI can see through walls, teleport in front of you and yank you back through a doorway or block you...AI can cast spells quicker, use more energy than it has and shoot through walls. AI is set to use algorythms that challenge the player through cheating, but it usually isn't so obvious that the average gamer notices it...just gives you the occasional WTF moment. Most decent games use AI cheats to make it appear as if the AI is keeping up with your twitch-response time, when it actually jumps ahead of it for a desired effect. There are several instances in GW where the AI calculates the best means to defeat you and sometimes this means taking advantage of ping times....you hit command....command is sent to server...command arrives at server/AI casts same cast time interrupt...server sends response to your machine...you've been interrupted between server response and ping back to your machine....The AI cheated.

There is an article in Computer Gaming World's October edition that lends some insight into the how and why of it. pages 56-60 called Matchstick Men...a decent read.

since when have they ever tried to make AI's consistant with human... I mean, look at the crazy damage of the bosses in factions...

I do understand how the mesmers can interupt a spell of equal casting time, it's their fast casting... I HATE those Jade Brotherhood Mesmers with their two interupt spells and one with a recharge of 6 sec.

Simple, all npc's, especially bosses are issued the "I win" button when created. Triple damage etc is the norm, so it follows casting, interupting etc is increased.

Assuming the animations for people apply to monsters theres no way they could have that much into fast casting since all the ones i see make an action with there weapon when they interupt and once you reach 14 fast casting all you do is turn to your opponent but dont move your weapon

so ya ai mesmers are on friekin interupt steroids or some shit like that

Cite your source. I've never heard this at all, and GWiki has no info on it either.

Well, the AI is fairly descent sometimes, at least at hitting things with interrupts, however, the AI blows. You see, they don't think, therefore they don't know if what they're interrupting is even imporant. Plus, they have very poor targeting...

However, I would say that most people complaining about this are spamming skills like scrubs, because in the Heroes' Ascent section here awhile back people were complaining about the Ghostly Hero hitting 1/4s spells...

See my earlier post... And yet today i got my infuse dist shotted 2 times in 1 game.... Then they finished the ghost for me........... Im so focused on infusing i forget to make screens...

well..... just grab a 20% reduce casting time and start spamming 1/4 cast time spells soon you'll see that there can be a faster cast than 1/4th second.

btw fast casting won't make a lot of differnece to a 1/4 cast but it will make it cast a bit faster.

Where do you get this from? I've never heard of it. I see the AI miss with interrupts all the time. When I use a 1/2s or 1/4s skill, the AI does try to interrupt it, and fails. For example, I often see "-30 (Savage Shot)" immediately after using my enchantment, but my enchantment is still on me. I also see them using an interrupt, and nobody being interrupted because they are too late.

The crouching of Avicara is just a standard battle animation. All characters, all creatures, all players do it, when they use a skill, when they are attacked, etc. Nothing to do with interrupts or prediction.

Again, where do you get this information? Have you ever played a mesmer? With no fast casting, I can fairly easily interrupt a 1 second cast skill, but anything faster than that, and even though I hit my interrupt before their skill finishes, it doesn't interrupt. The reason is I activated my interrupt when there was less then 1/4s left.

However, put my fast casting at 12 and suddenly I can easily interrupt skills like Star Burst and Vampiric Touch, even if I'm late. I can hit my interrupt after the skill is more than half done, and it gets interrupted. It FEELS faster too, like there is much more leeway for when you can interrupt.

I don't have any proof other than this personal experience though, but I haven't seen anything official on minimum cast times either.

It's great how reliable their interrupts are, but I still prefer a human, simply because a human has a brain. I don't care about Erys interrupting someone's Axe skill, or 1/4 second cast spell. What I care about is Troll Unguents and Healing Signets, and they hardly ever get these. 90% of the time they will interrupt a ranger spirit, or some random attack skill, and then when the enemy uses a healing skill, they don't have an interrupt left.

My gift to you all !

The AI doesn't cheat when interrupting.

1 Second Casts are so easy to interrupt that human players can keep up with no problem. I've utterly annoyed monks by perma interrupting their 1s spells. It's easy. The AI is just as good.

3/4 Second Casts are harder but still doable. Most of the time you will miss though. Well, good news, so does the AI. Try it out atleast before you claim the AI is cheating. The AI isn't interrupting every 3/4 cast. It's sometimes too late to do anything.

1/4 Second Casts. The AI doesn't interrupt those and a human doesn't either. Atleast not with a reactive interrupt, but instead this is interrupted with a proactive interrupt. A human player keeps the recharge times of most usual spells in mind when playing and can thus interrupt 1/4 casts simply because he will know when the enemy uses it. People have called me a cheater before because i interrupted their reversal of fortune. Well then Douchebag, don't cast it every 2 seconds.
The AI doesn't do that though. It resorts to two mechanics, one is spamming interrupts (like the grasping darknesses - which also allways fire of an interrupt as their first attack. It's funny to allways see the 55 monk go wtf about this o_o) and the second one is, it gets the chained spells. If the first interrupt would miss but there is another spell in the queue they will instead interrupt that one. And they will do it fast enough to make it seem they interrupted a 1/4 cast.
No, they just missed but hit something else instead.

So no, if you can't compete with the AI in terms of interrupting, you might want to get better at doing it. The AI has only one advantage when interrupting and that is simply Multi Target.

all spells have pre-cast and after-cast durations, so basically none of your spells are really 1/4, the AI seems to know ur casting at the pre-cast time, so plenty of time for a savage slash ^^

The crouching avicara being an animation is beside the point. The point is: replace "shot" with "skill" and "crouch/animation" with "triggered interrupt". In other words the AI is capable of virtually instant response/awareness of your using skills. It clearly has triggers which fire instantaneously, and the same can apply to interrupts too (I think the tables and server response posts probably explain how it works)

If it's a bad thing or not, well I don't think it's that bad after all the computer does need some kind of advantage. We don't have neural net terminators to play against just yet...

PvE is easy enough, let the AI be uber, they're still inferior to most () human players.

Indeed, AI cheats...


But for me it's fine: the game is still easy, even with cheating AI

This one is easy, Distracting Chop also applies damage, therefor the AI uses it as it would use Eviscerate or any other attack.

For the people who think it's unfair that the AI can cheat. Think over it, it would be too easy without them cheating

Also take note that a lot of NPCs are over L20.

He doesn't need a cite. He's decided that something is impossible and is giving an explanation of why it is impossible and why the computer can do it anyway. Even though it is impossible.

If you press Alt-F4 100 times rapidly, it activates God-mode, in which you are invincible and can interrupt any monster in the game by looking at it. I know this through extensive personal testing and private chats with Gaile Grey. And I've used it to farm 150 million gold across my 200 accounts.

I'm not suggesting that you do this, at all, because it's cheating, and I can't confirm that it works on this forum, but, trust me, it works. If this doesn't work for you, it may be because you're not mashing F4 quickly enough.

PS. Seriously, it works. Has anyone else found any secret codes they'd like to share with the community?

Quite simple - AI is so stupid in many aspects of the game, that A-Net decided to give AI an upper hand on a couple of aspects - interrupting and energy. I absolutely don't mind the AI having either of these advantages, since I take advantage of their other stupidities to make up for this.