Does having enemies run away make the game more fun for the player, or does the need to chase them become an annoyance?
If an enemy sneaks around the player, gets in cover and concealment, and shoots them while the player does not understand where the fire is coming from, is it an enjoyable experience?
Smarter and more realistic does not necessarily mean better. We don't write enemy AI for the purpose of it being effective in fighting, it's there to provide entertainment for the player.
It's also about creating the intended emotions. Games are intentionally designed to create a particular set of experiences. There's a niche of games that relies on gratification of overcoming some frustration (e.g. Dark Souls series) but the majority of gamer market prefers a 'power fantasy' emotional experience, so many games are intentionally targeting that. If we want the player to feel powerful, then we design so that their character can defeat many enemies; if we want the player to feel smart, then we design enemies so that their behavior has exploitable weaknesses that they player can discover and feel satisfied while 'outsmarting' or 'tricking' the opponents. In most game genres we don't want the player to feel outsmarted by the computer unless they have made a substantial mistake that the average player is able to notice and correct.
"Does having enemies run away make the game more fun for the player, or does the need to chase them become an annoyance?"
A good game mode does not require finding and hunting down all enemies. It has targets, like "go there"(story continues), "blow up X", "clear area Y"
"if an enemy sneaks around the player, gets in cover and concealment, and shoots them while the player does not understand where the fire is coming from, is it an enjoyable experience?"
If the game gets the graphics and gameplay right, for sure! (I still have memories from Vietcong, where you get ambushed in the jungle and don't see anything and just die, until you learn to move in cover and watch the terrain)
And you have the muzzle flash for example. And if you do not see it ... the fun is in getting scared and rushing to cover. Where the enemy cannot see you anymore (if the KI is not cheating) and then move to a different position to find him.
Or you can have the kill cam, where you see upon death, where the enemy was, that killed you.
"If we want the player to feel powerful, then we design so that their character can defeat many enemies"
True, but there are various ways to implement this, without ZombieKI.
Like in crysis for example, where you have superior tech. Or more hitpoints, because you play a badass.
Or in general, you as a player have quicksave and load. The computer does not.
So yeah, I know that the target audience is dumb and wants fast food, so to say, but they also consume what is avaiable. And the standard is mostly ZombieKI, or ultra hardcore realism like in Arma, which is clearly not for everyone, but I really don't see, why the "AAA" games could not invest a tiny bit more in KI that does not break immersion.
If it's just that essentially, but dressed up more nicely, I neither want to play it or make it. Personally I even got bored of collecting items for the sake of collecting them, or getting high scores for the sake of getting them, and exactly because every day 1000 games are made that follow all those patterns I feel perfectly free to ignore every one of them.
I still probably will never make a good game, but I learned a lot through trying, and I can feel good about what I tried, too. For me it's just something I do when I feel like coding, but have nothing "useful" to work on, after all.
If an enemy sneaks around the player, gets in cover and concealment, and shoots them while the player does not understand where the fire is coming from, is it an enjoyable experience?
Smarter and more realistic does not necessarily mean better. We don't write enemy AI for the purpose of it being effective in fighting, it's there to provide entertainment for the player.
It's also about creating the intended emotions. Games are intentionally designed to create a particular set of experiences. There's a niche of games that relies on gratification of overcoming some frustration (e.g. Dark Souls series) but the majority of gamer market prefers a 'power fantasy' emotional experience, so many games are intentionally targeting that. If we want the player to feel powerful, then we design so that their character can defeat many enemies; if we want the player to feel smart, then we design enemies so that their behavior has exploitable weaknesses that they player can discover and feel satisfied while 'outsmarting' or 'tricking' the opponents. In most game genres we don't want the player to feel outsmarted by the computer unless they have made a substantial mistake that the average player is able to notice and correct.