Needs work (new crowner Oct 21): MK Walker

Took another whack at attempting to tighten up the description, including a link to Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors for good measure.

...But it sometimes feels like trying to produce a desk-sized replica of Michaelangelo's David with a sledgehammer.

edited 19th Jul '11 5:07:45 PM by Stratadrake

Now that is more like it.

I added a line about MK Walkers being commonly found in Fighting Games.

edited 19th Jul '11 5:51:00 PM by OmegaKross

With the new description, it looks like there may not be much that can moved to the analysis tab, unless you want to cut out everything between the second and second-to-last paragraphs. Here's what the main page would look like.

Its good as it is. Shorter than both previous descriptions and exclusively a videogame trope. I call it fixed.

Well, it is important to explain that the MK Walker is not actually cheating (unlike the SNK Boss, which is), but just playing perfectly.

Reading controller inputs technically is cheating though. Some walkers do actually cheat pretty blatantly (MK Trilogy Jade is a great example of this).

Reading controller input is not exactly cheating, not in the videogame sense; it is merely using more information from the input source (it only makes sense for most AI types to do read controller input or state at some point, for example to decide if to block or jump over an incoming projectile). Cheating is things like not having to charge charge moves, having infinity juggling, infinite-priority grabs, or having insta-fill power bars for full-screen one-hit-KO supermoves.

But you are right in what the base difference is — an MK Walker follows (near-)perfect gameplay, within the technical constraints of the engine. The SNK Boss does not need to follow a "perfect game" plan, and is free to skip the technical constraints of the engine.

edited 20th Jul '11 10:25:33 AM by SilentReverence

...Except when they actually do cheat.

But there is a sentence that mentions sometimes the MK Walker might actually be cheating, so the description is still good. Could probably do with more elaboration though. Cheating MK Walkers have more tricks than simply not having to charge their moves. Magic priority throws are a staple of 'classic' MK Walkers.

edited 20th Jul '11 11:03:31 AM by OmegaKross

Whether certain things like "magic priority" fall under "cheating opponent" or "Game-Breaker opponent" is very tough to call.

For example, if you can play as the boss character yourself, only to find him still at a disadvantage to the AI-controlled version of that character, then he's a cheating bastard. Otherwise, he's probably not cheating but just Purposefully Overpowered. But how do you know for sure?

edited 20th Jul '11 7:58:29 PM by Stratadrake

True, but the AI in MK II would automatically throw you first if you attempted to throw it after a certain level. That is ridiculous cheating bastardry. As is activating an anti projectile sheild while running straight at the player, all in one motion.

Got rid of the Mass Effect 2 examples. 3rd Person shooters cant really have MK Walkers, and anyway, neither example actually fit the trope.

In fact, reading the trope description again, and seeing how specifically it applies to Fighting Game AI, I'm going to again suggest that MK Walker only applies to games with a combat system similar to a fighting game. So that would be Fighting Games, Beat Em Ups, certain Action Adventure games, and nothing else.

(Thinks for a bit wheter or not Armored Core has MK Walkers...)

Hmmm... it probably does apply to chess AI's as well...

edited 20th Jul '11 8:16:12 PM by OmegaKross

...how exactly is chess comparable to a 2D fighter?

I am pretty sure alot of the non-action game examples are the examples of things requiring Perfect Play required to beat. Not gamebreaking but near impossible to beat unless your a perfect player.

Now that itself might be a separate trope Nintendo Hard taken to the extreme like in Dissidia 012 if you respond that "you have mastered the game" when asked you get thrust into a battle with a level 125 Chaos (Final boss) with hardest level AI with a level 1 base Lightning.

edited 20th Jul '11 8:43:40 PM by Raso

^^ It isnt. That's not what I meant. I mean that the defining traits of an MK Walker (flawless play, immediately countering every move made by the player, driving the player into a corner) also could apply to a chess AI. I dunno. Chess games arent exactly a genre. Maybe it should just apply to 'combative' games (for lack of a better word). You cant have an MK Walker in a racing game or JRPG for instance. The mechanics are all wrong.

^ Thats what happens? Really glad I said I was crap at it.

edited 20th Jul '11 8:45:28 PM by OmegaKross

I did the big rewrite, because I knew the original article had problems but nobody was making any of the needed changes unless something happened to the article. So I just stuck in as much as I could get because I was sure someone was going to prune it out with Wiki Magic. I like the new form now.

But I do want to clarify that it's not "strictly" an AI trope. It's a playing pattern. It just happens to be used most often in AI because it's often the only thing programmers know how to put in for a "not dumb". That's why a lot of tropers gave non-video game examples.

edited 22nd Jul '11 12:12:49 AM by the_it

No, it really is. It's a type of Nintendo Hard AI, not a player strategy. And if it wasn't before, it is now.

It seems to me that reading the player input is an example of cheating; after all, the player has no way of reading the computer input.

Well, how do you predict your opponent's moves? Watch their movements for specific tells. That's how humans anticipate their opponents, but visual recognition is pretty tough computationally, so if an AI needs to anticipate what a human player is about to do then it can just ask the programming what animation your character is currently performing. (It could theoretically ask for controller inputs too, but querying your character's current animation is faster because it's already translated from obtuse input data into meaningful, in-universe context).

So if the AI "sees" that you're executing a leg sweep against it (and unlike a human, it can identify such instantaneously), it executes a low-guard to block it. If you have moves A and B with the same tells, the AI can tell the difference between the two as if it were night and day.

edited 22nd Jul '11 11:44:31 PM by Stratadrake

No, it's not strictly an AI trope. It's something a computer can do very easily, but it isn't precluded from human players. In fact, a player just starting out, for example, at a 3d fighting game like Tekken (which uses entirely different economics from 2d fighters like Street Fighter) would tend to think that all skilled players they fight are MK Walkers, because as far as they're concerned, they can't see why their moves are being countered perfectly. It's not really easy to tell the difference between someone who just happens to be significantly more skilled than you and someone who is "cheating" in terms of automatic input reading. It's kind of the point of practicing.

The main difference is that computers can do this at a higher level than humans, and that it can be assisted by the programming, whereas humans can only MK Walk so far. But that doesn't mean it can't be done to frightening levels. Both Justin Wong and Daigo Umehara recognizably did it for some segments of their infamous SF 3 Evo 4 Semifinal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_AnZ0k8zOs

And to drive another point home, when a player faces a particularly predictable AI, he can march forward and always perform the appropriate defense/counter as needed.

edited 27th Jul '11 1:51:52 PM by the_it

Can we get a better name? MK is known mainly for being a gory fighting game than this trope.

Good point, and a quick google search shows us that the term "MK Walker" is not in common use on the internet in general (it gets only 17000 hits, most of which appear to be for people with the last name "Walker").

A decent rename would probably make us decide whether we wanted to make it AI-only or not. If yes, then "Perfect Play A.I." sounds doable.

Or AI Always Reads Your Moves.

I don't think it's a perfect name, but I would disagree that it doesn't get much casual usage. Fighting games aren't nearly as google popular as they could be, but it seems more to me that the relevant communities gives MK Walker better currency than, say, "The Worf Effect".

Use the search terms `"MK Walker" AI -domain:tvtropes.org` and focus on what forum posters are telling each other:

• http://mugenguild.com/forumx/index.php?topic=128285.60
• http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?438192-Fighting-games-Most-frustrating-characters-to-play-against/page2
• http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?359308-The-worst-enemies/page16
• http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/16061273#Comment_16061273
• http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=55579
• http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=252540&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1
• http://thegimpygamer.blogspot.com/
• http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/997663-/58038796
• http://asia.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/mortalkombat9/show_msgs.php?pid=961032&topic_id=m-1-58415576

That's mentions from the penny-arcade, escapistmagazine, xkcd, mameworld, gamefaqs, gamespot communities. Games involved, besides MK, are Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom, Blaz Blue, Mugen, Castlevania, and some bunch of obscure titles I'd never heard of.

I'd call some of those places mainstream.

edited 30th Jul '11 5:58:28 AM by the_it

So all this is is the computer being better than you? That's not cheating, and it's certainly not deserving of a trope. We already have a trope for A.I.s which are able to block anything you throw at them because their CP Us give them inhumanly fast reflexes-Computers Are Fast.