We're all very aware that AI are still terminator-like killing machines, but while we wait for things such as fatigue, etc to affect them, there is something we could do to partially remedy the problem.
Right now, AI have a bad habit of going prone all the time. Whatever the reason for this, it needs to stop. It causes all sorts of problems, including:
- Because the AI can see perfectly well through grass, going prone makes them all but invisible to the player, while they can see just fine, and proceed to kill player who know they're there but can't even see them.
- It makes them too hard to hit. Because the AI are so quick to kill, the only reproducible way to beat them in a 1 on 1 situation is to get the drop on them - start shooting before they can aim at you. Because they go prone, the player has a much harder time hitting the small target.
- It looks silly in general. In any scenario where an occupied town gets attacked, a run into the town reveals that upon hearing any sort of contact, their first instinct is to lie on the ground. When I run into a town, I want to see AI running around, not "playing dead," only to gun me down in a fraction of a second.
- It's straight up unrealistic. A player would almost never go prone in close quarters because it limits mobility too much, and the stability of prone is not required for shooting nearby targets.
So what can we do to fix this? Well, the main solution would be to make it so that the things that usually cause AI to prone would cause them to crouch instead. It's a much more natural reaction, allowing for mobility, stability, and being able to see through the grass properly (oh, wait). Obviously for shooting targets at range the AI should still use prone for what it's meant for. It's things like this that could allow for much more realism in contact with AI, and requires (I assume) much less tweaking than say, making AI's aim react realistically to fatigue.