Talk:Artificial Intelligence

This article is almost unreadable. The flow is completely messed up, it interrupts itself twice, it says almost nothing about actually PLAYING the AI, and the tertiary pages are sort of slapped in there with no context or introduction beyond their link titles.

What SPECIFICALLY were the complaints with the old AI page, so we can improve it? While the old page was far from perfect, this new version is a huge step down. --Coolguye (talk) 22:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not Dunnoman, but the old one was 1) long as fuck, and then half the information was repeated in the "Guide to AI" article. 2) It had some advice that made for boring AI, such as explicitly telling them to hunt antagonists.
I'll withhold judgement on this new one since I don't have any good ideas for fixing it. Darth various (talk) 22:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I left a note on his page to come and explain himself on this. I was not very polite, but holy fuck this page is terrible right now. Regarding length, a lot of that is ameliorated by having the laws on a separate page, which is a good thing all around, since laws aren't specifically an AI thing per se. I definitely see some repetition, but not a ton, most of it just touches on similar concepts and goes into greater detail, which is what guides are for. Could you give an example of something you'd get rid of?

"Right, now, I pray you're not actually reading this while you play AI for the first time" You know, if anyone used that, they probably did exactly that. The part about how AIing works should probably go back in somewhere, but it's a full screen of dense text. The guide should probably start with "Do all this shit on Gibbed #4 when it's mostly empty" and go from there. And it probably doesn't need to tell the AI how to set up the solars right in the newb guide. (Fourth section under "New player picked as AI?") Darth various (talk) 00:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Also, I do not see where on the old page it was telling you to hunt antagonists, just how to handle them when they inevitably show up. This is a serious problem for newer players, who will occasionally come onto the station and try to murder the first traitor they see. I could definitely see adding a note that any antagonists you catch in the first 15 minutes of the game or so should be ignored as really helpful. But I'm just not seeing where it says to hunt people. Could you point that out? I'd be delighted to change that in another draft. --Coolguye (talk) 23:10, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

On a fresh read, it doesn't do that as much as I recall. Sorry about that. Darth various (talk) 00:43, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

No Coolguye, just no. That old guide was so shitty that every other round new people reading it were convinced the AI's purpose was traitor hunting and dealing with that is not good. You're the only one talking on this page about it and it's a week after the edit. If you really, REALLY are so misguided that you think the old guide was good or that telling new AIs to not be meta-gamey shit heads is bad then please get out. P.S. Use the signature command so I don't have to check history to see who's writing. --Dunnoman (talk) 05:02, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

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hi dunno, those giant text boxes are pretty jarring, they really only make sense on the security page which historically had a disclaimer for a long time

• I guess the blue one doesn't need to be there, but AI is different enough that the red one doesn't hurt. Darth various (talk)

• • Why is there a picture of me in the AI blue box? I demand royalties for being the example of a dummy Frontlineacrobat4 (talk)

• • • The blue text box is supposed to ensure the reader sees the red box, there's more to writing articles than words. Drawing the eyes of your reader to where you desire is also important. --Dunnoman (talk) 14:07, 5 February 2013 (UTC)