| rdfs:comment
| - Making a computer opponent for a multi-player game is hard, as our Artificial Stupidity and AI Breaker pages can attest. However, in almost any game, on max difficulty at least, they are skilled at Button Mashing, Combo Breakers, and any manner of task that requires good reflexes. Likewise, Smashing Survival is a piece of cake for computers. The computer can literally decide how much it wants to send a button pressing signal to the game, so it's all too tempting to make it inhumanly good in this regard to make up for things it's not so good at. Examples:
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| abstract
| - Making a computer opponent for a multi-player game is hard, as our Artificial Stupidity and AI Breaker pages can attest. However, in almost any game, on max difficulty at least, they are skilled at Button Mashing, Combo Breakers, and any manner of task that requires good reflexes. This is because they are the easiest things to program a computer to be good at. Tasks like finding a good position in a fighting game requires considering dozens of intertwining factors, but timing the button presses for a Combo Breaker are no problem; just tell the game to run the combo breaker routine at the appropriate time. As far as the player is concerned, the computer must have timed the breaker move correctly. In fact, it is easier to program a computer to break the combo every time, but less lazy programmers will simply give the game a percentage chance of defending it depending on the difficulty. If you've got a really ambitious dev team, this percentage chance might even change depending on the situation, with a set of factors deciding if the computer was "caught off guard". Likewise, Smashing Survival is a piece of cake for computers. The computer can literally decide how much it wants to send a button pressing signal to the game, so it's all too tempting to make it inhumanly good in this regard to make up for things it's not so good at. Usually not quite part of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, as the concept of "cheating" gets abstract; the computer by necessity has to be the one drawing the action, and it's never really using a controller. The idea is that someone with Super Reflexes could theoretically pull off the same with a TV and controller. Normal players, on the other hand, need to drive the focus away to something else that they can beat the computer at. The Perfect Play AI relies heavily on this, which is why they can time jabs at the exact moment that you are in their range, every time, and block anything the instant you attack. Sometimes they decide to outright cheat as well by blocking before your attack appears on-screen and "jabbing first" if you both time your attacks perfectly. This trope applies to anything an AI can perform well in without cheating. Computer opponents can also be programmed with an impeccable memory, and a team of AIs can communicate with each other more quickly and accurately than any human team could. This affects other computer fields besides video games. Computers are "fast but stupid"; they can crunch an awful lot of data, but will do it exactly as coded, and you can thank your lucky stars for that, or maybe not, frankly we're not sure yet. Humans can do this too, in Tool Assisted Speed Runs. Examples:
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