NPC Traffic Behavior - ENOUGH ALREADY

[CarnageRacing00]

 

 

Regarding the video on a bit-by-bit basis:

 

1. Personal vehicles vanishing

Yes, frustrating, and I completely agree. Single player NEEDS the GTA:O car tracking and insurance system. Hell, it needs 10 car garages, too. It just does, no question, it absolutely does.

 

2. Trucks spawning out of nowhere

Nothing new to the GTA series, sometimes the traffic spawning system lags behind the player location. Frustrating, but there is so much the game has to spawn and despawn constantly that it's bound to slow down sometimes.

 

3. Unnatural turning

Yeah, this happens with NPC cars before their physics have loaded. See, when you see cars off in the distance, their physics aren't enabled. This allows more cars to be on screen at once, and to be seen at greater distances. You can see evidence of this when sometimes cars will be "hovering" and suddenly snap to the ground when you get near them. This is also why NPC cars are sometimes unaffected by you in any way, as in you crash into them and they just plow you right out of the way like you don't even exist. The physics haven't enabled on that vehicle yet. An annoying issue, but again, there's only so much the game can load at a given time.

 

4. Cars turning in front of you

If you watch closely, you can see exactly why the cars do what they do. The first car was already planning on making that turn, and stopped when it "detected" the player vehicle incoming. Player's fault. The second car was planning on parking and had to follow the strict grid of the painted road lines. Watch, it follows those lines exactly, then turns into the parking space. The player was not driving in a lane, had he went around the other side there wouldn't have been an issue. The AI follows set paths on the roads, it doesn't just sense where the road is or is not. The Granger was already planning on turning. Does this guy expect every car to just stop and let him pass? I mean, seriously, he's speeding down the road and just expects AI to stop what they're doing and let him go by? Then the semi truck - you can see that it "tried" to get out of his way, but the player swerved WITH the truck, so the truck again tried to get out of his way, and the player swerved back with the truck AGAIN. Once again, this exhibits the player's terrible driving, not a problem with the AI. Finally he shows AI acting strangely during a police chase - once again, this is NPC AI reacting to police sirens. Yeah, this can definitely be annoying, but still in several cases it was recklessness on the player's behalf. A little forward thinking would have prevented these crashes... but the guy drives a yellow buffalo with green wheels, so I don't really think he has much sense when it comes to cars and driving.

 

EDIT: Yep, he even agrees with me at the end of his video about why NPC's often turn into you.

 

5. NPC character models changing

Yeah, so? You expect the game to really hold an irrelevant stock NPC character model in place for every vehicle just IN CASE you plan on chasing them down after losing sight of them? Give me a break. That's really nit-picky.

 

6. Car won't start

Never had this happen unless I had just finished abusing the sh*t out of the car. It NEVER happens online, only in Single Player, and I'd imagine that Rockstar did this to make it seem as if your car is hurting from the abuse you just put it through. Yes, even driving hard and fast for a long time can cause this to happen.

 

7. Can't leave engine running

The player has two states - normal and combat. When in normal mode, you walk as default, your entire animation set is relaxed, and you shut the car off and take the time to shut the car door when getting out. In combat mode, your character jogs by default, the animations are all aggressive, and you can leave the car without shutting it off or closing the doors. I agree with reverting it to how it was in GTA IV.

 

8. Top speed

There are multiple reasons why cars can't really go as fast as you'd think they should. 1, like the video says, is that the game would have to load cars and the environment at ridiculous speeds which might not be possible to do. 2 is that those speeds may very well be unwieldy. If you consider the many things that can go wrong when traveling at the current top speed, try increasing that even more an imagine how frustrating it could be to make a minor mistake. Realistic? Yeah, but again, the game needs to be PLAYABLE first and foremost before realism is even considered. There is room for improvement here. We will see if Rockstar makes adjustments over time. If there IS an upper limit due to the limit at which the game can load, then in order to make it feel right, ALL cars would have to be scaled back and they would have to employ the tricks used by other games to give the illusion of speed, such as smearing the textures to make it appear as if they're moving by faster than they are (like Need For Speed has done in the past).

 

9. Police

Here's where his argument really falls on its face.

 

A) Bad shoot outs

Sometimes they're good, sometimes they aren't. I've watched some really awesome police vs. npc gun fights, and I've watched some really goofy ones. You just can't expect the AI to hold up to scrutiny 100% of the time, ESPECIALLY in an open world game where certain things are dynamic. I mean, yeah NPC police chases are scripted to occur, but once they've spawned into the game world, from there on it's all dynamic. I can't think of a single game whose AI doesn't do weird things sometimes when unleashed from a specific script. GTA IV's police AI would do stupid stuff a lot, too. As with all GTA games, and all OTHER games. It just happens.

 

B) No patrolling police

What? This isn't true at all. I've crashed into police cars waiting at traffic lights before. They monitor traffic speeds on the side of the freeways. They walk the sidewalks in some areas. He's just flat out wrong on this one.

 

C) Police always know where you are

Yeah, unless they lose sight of you. This is because the police communicate your location. Let's say you're running from the police in real life down Wilshire Blvd. The cop behind you may radio to the police 2 miles up the road that you're coming, and those police may start heading toward your location. That's how it works.

 

But in GTA V, if you ditch the police, you CAN HIDE from them quite easily. People say it doesn't work, but it absolutely does. Go try it. Get a wanted level, get off the police radar, ditch your car and either hide in another car or hide behind a wall. They will search your last known location, and yeah sometimes they might spot you, but if you're concealed enough, they won't.

 

I've robbed stores and escaped before the police arrived. The cars and helicopter will search around the store and never track me down as long as nobody saw me leave.

 

He claims that helicopters will "coincidentally" happen to go in the direction you had gone in even after the police lost sight of you. Uh, yeah? Don't you think that if the police saw you heading north and then lost visual contact, they might continue heading north to find you again? Or are they supposed to go "HMM, he WAS heading North at a high rate of speed but we broke visual contact... let's stay here and do circles, maybe he teleported back to us."

 

Now, that said, there IS a problem with police helicopters spawning in thin air. This seems to be mostly fixed for PS4, but yeah, that WAS a problem and I did hate it.

 

D) Pit maneuver

Yes, cop cars are too fast. That needs to be fixed. Agreed there. But the other stuff...

 

First of all, when a car rams your car from behind, it CAN cause you to lose control in real life. Sure, in the game this is handled by the game forcing your car to steer to the left or to the right, but regardless it IS possible in real life.

 

Second, the pit maneuver. This guy is clearly very MAD about this, but I wonder just how much more angry he would be if the police COULD pit you? I mean, driving along and suddenly you're being spun out with no chance for recovering? No thanks, that would make this game unbearably frustrating.

 

Third, burst tires. Yeah, I can agree here. The initial bursting of a tire has a very unlikely affect on the car. This needs to be changed.

 

Fourth... Wait, they DO pit maneuver? That's right, they do, but only in certain circumstances, just like REAL LIFE. Because at high speeds, REAL POLICE will NOT pit a car due to the danger it presents to A) themselves, and B) other traffic. Real police WILL BUMP THE BACK OF A CAR at high speed as an intimidation exercise, which is why they have the push bar in the first place. No, it is NOT represented in GTA V correctly.

 

E) Police don't arrest NPC's

So? So f*cking what? The AI on display in that GTA IV clip he shared was terrible as well. Just because they shoot instead of arrest now, so? Does that REALLY bother anybody? You could even consider it satire of the trigger happy LAPD.

 

G) NPC's get scared when you rev your engine

Yeah, I suppose I'd probably run too if someone parked a supercar on a sidewalk and started spinning the tires after almost running over the guy standing next to me.

 

 

This guy is looking for things to hate about GTA V, so he singles out the times things go wrong. He could easily make another video depicting the times NPC cars DIDN'T cut him off, trucks DIDN'T spawn out of thin air, police AI acted properly, etc... but he doesn't, because he's a cynical prick who only focuses on the bad.

 

 

Thank-you for your elaborate post and analysis of everything.

 

I agree with a lot of what you discussed, although I'm just curious (and slightly confused) as to your overall stance on the AI, as a whole.

 

 

My overall stance is that the AI is flawed, but not in the game-crippling ways this video claims it to be. The AI in every GTA game has been silly. As I said, you'll find silly AI in most games if you look at them objectively. You're either going to have complex, dynamic AI so that NPC's appear to actually have some sort of life force behind them, as in the GTA series, and experience moments that break the illusion when the AI breaks down and does something stupid, or you're going to have boring, lifeless AI that literally just wanders the map aimlessly, maybe carrying a basket or reciting a piece of dialog, and not experience as many weird glitches with their AI. I've yet to see a game do AI perfectly.

 

 

C) Police always know where you are

Yeah, unless they lose sight of you. This is because the police communicate your location. Let's say you're running from the police in real life down Wilshire Blvd. The cop behind you may radio to the police 2 miles up the road that you're coming, and those police may start heading toward your location. That's how it works.

 

But in GTA V, if you ditch the police, you CAN HIDE from them quite easily. People say it doesn't work, but it absolutely does. Go try it. Get a wanted level, get off the police radar, ditch your car and either hide in another car or hide behind a wall. They will search your last known location, and yeah sometimes they might spot you, but if you're concealed enough, they won't.

 

I've robbed stores and escaped before the police arrived. The cars and helicopter will search around the store and never track me down as long as nobody saw me leave.

 

He claims that helicopters will "coincidentally" happen to go in the direction you had gone in even after the police lost sight of you. Uh, yeah? Don't you think that if the police saw you heading north and then lost visual contact, they might continue heading north to find you again? Or are they supposed to go "HMM, he WAS heading North at a high rate of speed but we broke visual contact... let's stay here and do circles, maybe he teleported back to us."

 

Sorry, but you're just wrong. You can lose line of sight, take a few turns, and drive down into the subway and the police will STILL manage to find you. Cops shouldn't be able to "communicate" the directions you take after you lose their line of sight. No matter how evasive you try to be, the cops will ALWAYS show up near you, no matter where you hide. The only way to really avoid them is to keep moving and taking turns to avoid the cops who constantly spawn 20 meters in-front of you.

 

Nope, not wrong. Try the mission Blow Up II. Get the Banshee, drive directly South from the parking lot, go behind the buildings and tuck the car in as far behind the buildings as you can - there's a little nook directly behind one of the buildings, you can park back there, there's a ladder that leads to the roof. I do this every time. Park in there, the cops will drive around the area, the helicopter will hover, but they never spot me.

 

I robbed a 24/7 near Sandy Shores, drove away through the desert before the police arrived, and just sat in my car and waited a good distance away (could still see the police cars and chopper so they were within draw distance), and they just drove around the store looking for me. The chopper ALMOST accidentally spotted me, but it turned around before it got close enough.

 

You CAN HIDE FROM THE POLICE in this game, you just need to know how to do it - and it's really not that hard. Use your head. Driving 100ft down the road and parking up next to the curb isn't going to cut it, cops might, you know, use that same road to travel to the scene of the crime.

 

Instead of doing that, park inside parking garages, behind buildings, far off of the road, etc. Hell, try just simply jumping out of your car and getting into another one. That new duck feature works awesomely - I literally sat there hidden in my car as police drove RIGHT BY a few times.

 

 

 

 

Regarding the video on a bit-by-bit basis:

 

1. Personal vehicles vanishing

Yes, frustrating, and I completely agree. Single player NEEDS the GTA:O car tracking and insurance system. Hell, it needs 10 car garages, too. It just does, no question, it absolutely does.

 

2. Trucks spawning out of nowhere

Nothing new to the GTA series, sometimes the traffic spawning system lags behind the player location. Frustrating, but there is so much the game has to spawn and despawn constantly that it's bound to slow down sometimes.

 

3. Unnatural turning

Yeah, this happens with NPC cars before their physics have loaded. See, when you see cars off in the distance, their physics aren't enabled. This allows more cars to be on screen at once, and to be seen at greater distances. You can see evidence of this when sometimes cars will be "hovering" and suddenly snap to the ground when you get near them. This is also why NPC cars are sometimes unaffected by you in any way, as in you crash into them and they just plow you right out of the way like you don't even exist. The physics haven't enabled on that vehicle yet. An annoying issue, but again, there's only so much the game can load at a given time.

 

4. Cars turning in front of you

If you watch closely, you can see exactly why the cars do what they do. The first car was already planning on making that turn, and stopped when it "detected" the player vehicle incoming. Player's fault. The second car was planning on parking and had to follow the strict grid of the painted road lines. Watch, it follows those lines exactly, then turns into the parking space. The player was not driving in a lane, had he went around the other side there wouldn't have been an issue. The AI follows set paths on the roads, it doesn't just sense where the road is or is not. The Granger was already planning on turning. Does this guy expect every car to just stop and let him pass? I mean, seriously, he's speeding down the road and just expects AI to stop what they're doing and let him go by? Then the semi truck - you can see that it "tried" to get out of his way, but the player swerved WITH the truck, so the truck again tried to get out of his way, and the player swerved back with the truck AGAIN. Once again, this exhibits the player's terrible driving, not a problem with the AI. Finally he shows AI acting strangely during a police chase - once again, this is NPC AI reacting to police sirens. Yeah, this can definitely be annoying, but still in several cases it was recklessness on the player's behalf. A little forward thinking would have prevented these crashes... but the guy drives a yellow buffalo with green wheels, so I don't really think he has much sense when it comes to cars and driving.

 

EDIT: Yep, he even agrees with me at the end of his video about why NPC's often turn into you.

 

5. NPC character models changing

Yeah, so? You expect the game to really hold an irrelevant stock NPC character model in place for every vehicle just IN CASE you plan on chasing them down after losing sight of them? Give me a break. That's really nit-picky.

 

6. Car won't start

Never had this happen unless I had just finished abusing the sh*t out of the car. It NEVER happens online, only in Single Player, and I'd imagine that Rockstar did this to make it seem as if your car is hurting from the abuse you just put it through. Yes, even driving hard and fast for a long time can cause this to happen.

 

7. Can't leave engine running

The player has two states - normal and combat. When in normal mode, you walk as default, your entire animation set is relaxed, and you shut the car off and take the time to shut the car door when getting out. In combat mode, your character jogs by default, the animations are all aggressive, and you can leave the car without shutting it off or closing the doors. I agree with reverting it to how it was in GTA IV.

 

8. Top speed

There are multiple reasons why cars can't really go as fast as you'd think they should. 1, like the video says, is that the game would have to load cars and the environment at ridiculous speeds which might not be possible to do. 2 is that those speeds may very well be unwieldy. If you consider the many things that can go wrong when traveling at the current top speed, try increasing that even more an imagine how frustrating it could be to make a minor mistake. Realistic? Yeah, but again, the game needs to be PLAYABLE first and foremost before realism is even considered. There is room for improvement here. We will see if Rockstar makes adjustments over time. If there IS an upper limit due to the limit at which the game can load, then in order to make it feel right, ALL cars would have to be scaled back and they would have to employ the tricks used by other games to give the illusion of speed, such as smearing the textures to make it appear as if they're moving by faster than they are (like Need For Speed has done in the past).

 

9. Police

Here's where his argument really falls on its face.

 

A) Bad shoot outs

Sometimes they're good, sometimes they aren't. I've watched some really awesome police vs. npc gun fights, and I've watched some really goofy ones. You just can't expect the AI to hold up to scrutiny 100% of the time, ESPECIALLY in an open world game where certain things are dynamic. I mean, yeah NPC police chases are scripted to occur, but once they've spawned into the game world, from there on it's all dynamic. I can't think of a single game whose AI doesn't do weird things sometimes when unleashed from a specific script. GTA IV's police AI would do stupid stuff a lot, too. As with all GTA games, and all OTHER games. It just happens.

 

B) No patrolling police

What? This isn't true at all. I've crashed into police cars waiting at traffic lights before. They monitor traffic speeds on the side of the freeways. They walk the sidewalks in some areas. He's just flat out wrong on this one.

 

C) Police always know where you are

Yeah, unless they lose sight of you. This is because the police communicate your location. Let's say you're running from the police in real life down Wilshire Blvd. The cop behind you may radio to the police 2 miles up the road that you're coming, and those police may start heading toward your location. That's how it works.

 

But in GTA V, if you ditch the police, you CAN HIDE from them quite easily. People say it doesn't work, but it absolutely does. Go try it. Get a wanted level, get off the police radar, ditch your car and either hide in another car or hide behind a wall. They will search your last known location, and yeah sometimes they might spot you, but if you're concealed enough, they won't.

 

I've robbed stores and escaped before the police arrived. The cars and helicopter will search around the store and never track me down as long as nobody saw me leave.

 

He claims that helicopters will "coincidentally" happen to go in the direction you had gone in even after the police lost sight of you. Uh, yeah? Don't you think that if the police saw you heading north and then lost visual contact, they might continue heading north to find you again? Or are they supposed to go "HMM, he WAS heading North at a high rate of speed but we broke visual contact... let's stay here and do circles, maybe he teleported back to us."

 

Now, that said, there IS a problem with police helicopters spawning in thin air. This seems to be mostly fixed for PS4, but yeah, that WAS a problem and I did hate it.

 

D) Pit maneuver

Yes, cop cars are too fast. That needs to be fixed. Agreed there. But the other stuff...

 

First of all, when a car rams your car from behind, it CAN cause you to lose control in real life. Sure, in the game this is handled by the game forcing your car to steer to the left or to the right, but regardless it IS possible in real life.

 

Second, the pit maneuver. This guy is clearly very MAD about this, but I wonder just how much more angry he would be if the police COULD pit you? I mean, driving along and suddenly you're being spun out with no chance for recovering? No thanks, that would make this game unbearably frustrating.

 

Third, burst tires. Yeah, I can agree here. The initial bursting of a tire has a very unlikely affect on the car. This needs to be changed.

 

Fourth... Wait, they DO pit maneuver? That's right, they do, but only in certain circumstances, just like REAL LIFE. Because at high speeds, REAL POLICE will NOT pit a car due to the danger it presents to A) themselves, and B) other traffic. Real police WILL BUMP THE BACK OF A CAR at high speed as an intimidation exercise, which is why they have the push bar in the first place. No, it is NOT represented in GTA V correctly.

 

E) Police don't arrest NPC's

So? So f*cking what? The AI on display in that GTA IV clip he shared was terrible as well. Just because they shoot instead of arrest now, so? Does that REALLY bother anybody? You could even consider it satire of the trigger happy LAPD.

 

G) NPC's get scared when you rev your engine

Yeah, I suppose I'd probably run too if someone parked a supercar on a sidewalk and started spinning the tires after almost running over the guy standing next to me.

 

 

This guy is looking for things to hate about GTA V, so he singles out the times things go wrong. He could easily make another video depicting the times NPC cars DIDN'T cut him off, trucks DIDN'T spawn out of thin air, police AI acted properly, etc... but he doesn't, because he's a cynical prick who only focuses on the bad.

 

 

Please, don't get us started with the police. Just kill couple of hikers on the top of mount Gordo and enjoy your wanted level. Enjoy <20 seconds response time really often and enjoy police being dispatched to your goddamn waypoint on your map. Enjoy mount Chiliad secret PD, when they're going for you with 4 cars from the TOP of the mountain. Enjoy unlimited helicopters spawning right in front of you, enjoy their post-mortem telepathic communication rewarding you with 3 stars after killing one of them from the back. Enjoy their TELEPATHIC connections with shop owners all around the County. Mafia 2 style of changing clothes in shop? Forget about it. Clothes shop clerks in Paleto Bay is in the contact with PD. He knows exactly how you look and will not stand you. Want some soda or snacks? Forget about it. Your photo is right there.

Enjoy their cars, rubber banding you on your Enity/Adder. Enjoy being unable to use vehicle change tactics and bushes to hide from them in Online.

 

And no, they DO NOT PATROL streets. There are places, when they are located on regular basis like Airport or PD or subway entrance or that traffic monitoring points in SP, but they are not patrolling streets. Cars, that you've seen are the cars, spawned for some other player or NPC.Try playing invite only and you will encounter 0 cruisers. Park rangers? Yes. Police? No.

 

Enjoy your police, mate. Call them if you're not doing something illegal just to hang with them.

 

 

1. Yeah, police spawning on Mt. Chilliad is silly. No argument there. The spawning makes far more sense in the city. It doesn't quite work when you're in the middle of nowhere. As far as the magic wanted level goes, NPC's often call the police on you when they witness you committing a crime.

 

2. I already agreed on the helicopters spawning out of thin air. That is VERY frustrating and i've complained about it since the game was released. It doesn't seem as bad on PS4.

 

3. Not sure what you're getting at about shop owners. Are you saying that you should be able to change clothes in a store, and the shop owner shouldn't automatically know that you're a wanted man? Well, if you want a logical excuse... I happen to have this neat little free app on my iPhone that lets me hear police radio chatter. It's free, it's legal. Anyone can have it. Now, is it likely that every shop owner in San Andreas would have an app like that, let alone be listening to it 24/7, AND immediately deduce that YOU'RE the person the police were describing? No, not at all, but it's still in the realm of possibility. Regardless, not being able to use stores while wanted is a means of preventing RP farming or other similar exploits.

 

4. Yeah, they DO patrol the streets. Of course, in the video he was talking about Single Player, NOT Online - so that's why he was wrong. Police patrol the streets in single player, but they don't online. I'm fine with this, and you should be too. Police use more advanced AI (which requires more resources) than basic civilians, so to have police cars roaming the ENTIRE MAP during online play at all times would use A LOT of resources. Ever notice how the game tanks when another player has police chasing them? NPC traffic thins out or flat out vanishes completely? Yeah, there's a reason for that. But anyway, my point stands - police DO patrol the streets, in SINGLE PLAYER, which is what his video was about.

 

Online and SP are two different things. In SP, you can stand in the middle of the desert with a silenced pistol and shoot, even kill, and as long as there are no witnesses, you can walk away free. This is new for PS4, as I do remember ghost police on PS3.

 

Because GTAO uses different methods to determine when and why police are dispatched (instead of relying on AI, the game just simply monitors your actions and assigns a wanted level when it decides it needs to). I'll say it again: In SP, the wanted level system is more complex and uses more resources. It's stripped down in GTAO to keep the game working.

Edited December 25, 2014 by MichiganMuscle77

[gtafan26]

To be honest, the NPC drivers dont seem as bad to me with the snow , I have only been cut off, swerved in front of, ran over about 90% of the time, opposed to 99% of the time

[MetalThrasherXtreme]

Honestly, it's pretty sad how f*cking dumb the drivers are. Like, I wouldn't mind it if you had an occasional NPC designed to be stupid compared to the rest but literally every single one is a complete and utter retard.

The AI in GTA IV was better, and that's saying something.

I don't understand R*'s logic.

I mean hell, this is the same developer that thought it made sense to have scared peds back up in the cars away from someone with a gun and run away on foot. Why the f*ck wouldn't you just speed off in your car?

[hugh750]

since the snow started i've noticed that the npc's can't drive in at all.

i've seen them spin out more then once.

[tenpennyisplainevil]

Crossing the street with a truck + container at really low speed (snow). I'm almost across the street now and an NPC still hits me... He saw a truck right in front of him, slowly crossing the street and when he arrives at the truck (at that point I've been on the road for quite some time), he just doesn't stop.

What could possibly possess you to step on the gas when you see a truck standing perpendicular to the road, up ahead?

[0C3LOT]

I was driving on the bridge that spans the gap between the LS airport and the Port of South LS and I observed an AI driving a Gallivanter. As I approached the vehicle, they proceeded to slam on their brakes and make a u-turn in the middle of bridge. I've seen some interesting AI behavior in the past but this was something special.

[JSN]

I have a love/hate thing for them. They can REALLY piss me off, when they do stupid sh*t and slow me down in the middle of a car chase etc. On the other hand they do offer me lots of random laughs.

 

The truth is, every single one of them is a [email protected]

 

Edited December 25, 2014 by JSN

[Synophrys]

<--- That's basically what happens to me. Infuriate.

[RedlineDrifts]

So many improvements that need to be made, yet sadly I doubt fixing the AI will ever fall onto Rockstar's to-do list, as it's been broken for over a year now since the game came out..

[Geisterfaust]

MichiganMuscle77, you look like a stand up guy. Prove your point and record police patrolling the streets in Online, but use closed session and do not cause mayhem. Then we'll talk. Your "patrols" are ghost cars that are not de-spawned after trigger-based spawn caused by some crime in the area.

 

You can ask FUNMW2 on the forums, he is able to provide a script-based evidence.

[BasixSD]

I hate it when I'm driving along in a private crew session, no worries so I'm obeying the traffic laws and the damn assholes don't use their blinker, meanwhile I could've turned a while ago... I get this enough in real life driving, I don't need the computer to be an asshole as well...

[hoopz71]

I just carjacked an npc but got out of car a few seconds later & within 30 secs the npc rammed me from behind grrr

[Robaldinio]

It's poor AI programming. Watch this. This video describes the 360/PS3 version, but it's relevant.

...

I didn't watch all 35 minutes of that but some of the guy's examples are pretty weak. I'm not saying he hasn't got a point, I'm just saying I would have used some far better evidence and maybe shifted the emphasis a little.

 

For instance, there's a clip where he's driving a Picador through an intersection past a Granger that is waiting to turn left. The Granger has stopped due to another oncoming vehicle and the narrator highlights the fact that the Granger wouldn't have stopped if there had been no oncoming traffic... So? He's the one driving like an idiot - barrelling through an intersection between two vehicles on the wrong side of the road.

 

The problem isn't with "fake physics"; the biggest issue is the weight of NPC vehicles versus that of player vehicles. Regardless of what the player is driving or how much armour is installed, an NPC's vehicle will almost always fare better in a collision, even if the NPC is stationary, or the player is travelling at a much higher rate of speed. The exception to this (which is also a very good demonstration of it working the other way) would be the Duke O' Death in GTA V. Driving this car down the freeway gives the player a taste of what it is actually like to be an indestructible NPC as it clears wagons out of the way with ease!

 

As for the driving habits of NPCs, there are two key points that should be addressed here;

 

NPCs are incapable of calculating your direction of travel through a bend and will always assume you intend to drive head-on into them. This results in them swerving across the road into your path. There is no better location to experience this than the narrow routes of Vinewood Hills surrounding Franklin's house in GTA V. Just take an average sized car for a sensible drive around the Hills and see what happens when you meet an oncoming NPC vehicle at a right-hand bend. They seem to regard it like any other straight road and insist on taking misguided evasive action.

 

This is a feature of NPC diving behaviour that I'm 90% sure has been introduced on the current gen version of the game. I really don't remember ever experiencing it on PS3.

 

My second point is that when you do find yourself in a collision with an NPC, they will very rarely ever back up to make some space and try and get around you, they often won't even remain stationary while you attempt to do the same. Instead, they continue accelerating into your vehicle as if they might somehow miraculously force their way through your mass. I mean, what the f*ck? Just wait and let me reverse away, for crying out loud.

 

NPCs parking or turning off when you're flying up behind them at over 50mph is not the problem.

[Geisterfaust]

Yes, and yes, Robaldinio! Totally agree with you!

[OurJud]

I find that the NPC traffic reflects your own driving. Drive everywhere like an idiot at 90mph and the NPC drive in a similar stupid way.

 

What makes me laugh, are that the vast majority of players moaning about NPC driving do so because they get side swiped or crash into the side of an NPC when they go flying through a red light at junctions.

 

I don't want to get all high and mighty about this, and I'm not suggesting you all drive at 40mph stopping at red lights, but when you choose to ignore the traffic laws, don't be surprised when you have a collision.

[Nacho Z]

I think that the way that NPC drivers behave with your car when it's parked is worse on current gen. On PS3 I could park in the middle of a junction and cars would pass around me slowly or queue up honking their horns. Every now and again someone would pile into you.

 

But on PS4 if I'm parked up the NPC traffic aggressively shunts and scrapes me to get past. For example I was standing on an ambulance I'd commandeered so I could get a good angle for a photo, and a queue built up. Rather than go around, the driver at the head of the queue was repeatedly reversing and driving into the back of the ambulance, for about a minute.

 

I couldn't wait to get the photo I wanted so I could drag him out of his car and bury a hatchet in his head.

 

It's hard to tell if it's just my imagination as it's a subtle shift. I've just noticed that unless I park off the road, while I've got the pause menu up there's a constant metal on metal grinding noise as NPCs barge me out of the way and I don't remember it being like that on PS3.

[Soran Is On]

Here's a little slice of go f*ck yourself from the ai programming.

 

 

Edited January 18, 2015 by stonedpimpso

[RedlineDrifts]

I find that the NPC traffic reflects your own driving. Drive everywhere like an idiot at 90mph and the NPC drive in a similar stupid way.

 

What makes me laugh, are that the vast majority of players moaning about NPC driving do so because they get side swiped or crash into the side of an NPC when they go flying through a red light at junctions.

 

I don't want to get all high and mighty about this, and I'm not suggesting you all drive at 40mph stopping at red lights, but when you choose to ignore the traffic laws, don't be surprised when you have a collision.

 

I guess you didn't read much of the thread, because were not discussing being hit when were the ones "breaking the law", running red lights and stuff..

[ronjk28563]

The NPC AI seriously pisses me off. Makes me want to just blow them all up in a fit of rage.

[Balloons]

Huge bugbear of mine the npc driving is completely flawed, its as though you have a magnet for tossers on your front bumper.

[dorcy]

the other day i saw one indicate before turning. for a second i thought, cool i've not noticed that before. then it hit me, the NPCs who run reds, switch lanes so as to head on collide with me etc ARE doing it on purpose.....

 

Edited January 18, 2015 by dorcy

[ronjk28563]

^That's happened to me a lot as well. Ugh, so infuriating...

Edited January 18, 2015 by ronjk28563

[RedlineDrifts]

the other day i saw one indicate before turning. for a second i thought, cool i've not noticed that before. then it hit me, the NPCs who run reds, switch lanes so as to head on collide with me etc ARE doing it on purpose.....

 

Oh yes my friend, these NPCs almost never have accidents. If they hit you, it's on purpose...

[KiTTYReCkless]

An all to familiar event. What should be a simple vehicle photo-shoot gets crashed by NPC's. -__-

[SmellyNeko]

LOL why are people crying when NPCs hit you when you're screaming through traffic at quadruple the speed limit, running red lights and passing on the left through double yellow lines?

 

I was a dork for the first week of playing this game and obeyed the traffic laws. I almost never got in accidents, and NPCs only seem to hit you if you stay still for too long or if you pass too quickly or between lanes.

 

Do you think someone IRL would easily notice a car coming from behind at 120 mph on the left side when they make a left turn at an intersection? Who checks BEHIND them to make a left turn when that's not the way traffic flows?

[ten-a-penny]

LOL why are people crying when NPCs hit you when you're screaming through traffic at quadruple the speed limit, running red lights and passing on the left through double yellow lines?

 

I was a dork for the first week of playing this game and obeyed the traffic laws. I almost never got in accidents, and NPCs only seem to hit you if you stay still for too long or if you pass too quickly or between lanes.

 

Do you think someone IRL would easily notice a car coming from behind at 120 mph on the left side when they make a left turn at an intersection? Who checks BEHIND them to make a left turn when that's not the way traffic flows?

Tell me then why they STILL do this when I'm following the rules.

[SmellyNeko]

 

LOL why are people crying when NPCs hit you when you're screaming through traffic at quadruple the speed limit, running red lights and passing on the left through double yellow lines?

 

I was a dork for the first week of playing this game and obeyed the traffic laws. I almost never got in accidents, and NPCs only seem to hit you if you stay still for too long or if you pass too quickly or between lanes.

 

Do you think someone IRL would easily notice a car coming from behind at 120 mph on the left side when they make a left turn at an intersection? Who checks BEHIND them to make a left turn when that's not the way traffic flows?

Tell me then why they STILL do this when I'm following the rules.

 

why do people rear end people IRL? called an accident for a reason

[ten-a-penny]

But this isn't real life. This is a game where everything is programmed. Ever played past GTA's?

By the look at it, its programmed to RAM us off.

[RedlineDrifts]

 

 

LOL why are people crying when NPCs hit you when you're screaming through traffic at quadruple the speed limit, running red lights and passing on the left through double yellow lines?

 

I was a dork for the first week of playing this game and obeyed the traffic laws. I almost never got in accidents, and NPCs only seem to hit you if you stay still for too long or if you pass too quickly or between lanes.

 

Do you think someone IRL would easily notice a car coming from behind at 120 mph on the left side when they make a left turn at an intersection? Who checks BEHIND them to make a left turn when that's not the way traffic flows?

Tell me then why they STILL do this when I'm following the rules.

 

why do people rear end people IRL? called an accident for a reason

 

Please don't comment anymore until you've read the majority of the thread, because you have no idea what you're talking about..

[SmellyNeko]

 

 

 

LOL why are people crying when NPCs hit you when you're screaming through traffic at quadruple the speed limit, running red lights and passing on the left through double yellow lines?

 

I was a dork for the first week of playing this game and obeyed the traffic laws. I almost never got in accidents, and NPCs only seem to hit you if you stay still for too long or if you pass too quickly or between lanes.

 

Do you think someone IRL would easily notice a car coming from behind at 120 mph on the left side when they make a left turn at an intersection? Who checks BEHIND them to make a left turn when that's not the way traffic flows?

Tell me then why they STILL do this when I'm following the rules.

 

why do people rear end people IRL? called an accident for a reason

 

Please don't comment anymore until you've read the majority of the thread, because you have no idea what you're talking about..

 

I've read the first 3 pages, and I'm replying to the first page.