Annual Plz Improve Bots thread

[dannylew8299]

List of demands

• Force bots to prioritize host (currently prioritizes last client to join)

• Shorten the radius bots will travel away from host

• Dramatically shorten distance host can travel away from bot before they teleport to host’s position

• Reintroduce bots tagging enemies similar to the now dead Better Bots Combat mod

• Have bots treat beastmen archers like elites (or just make them shoot back)

• Make bots unable to walk off cliffs. Areas where they can fall off to hang from should be prejudiced from being approachable unless it’s to pick up a player or bot that’s been pushed off.

• In certain maps, books and grims that bots cannot path to will magically be picked up from a distance if bots are commanded to grab said book. This feature should apply to all tomes and grims items in all maps when commanded to.

[Adelion]

Friendly reminder:

A chance to get good bots? - Vermintide 2 / Vermintide 2 - Feedback - Fatshark Forums (fatsharkgames.com)

Second less reminding reminder:

Bot behaviour - The Gambit System - Vermintide 2 / Vermintide 2 - Feedback - Fatshark Forums (fatsharkgames.com)

[dannylew8299]

@Ghoth1ckov1tch

Making ‘great’ bots is easy, but making bots that are ‘kind of ok but you’d prefer to have a real player’ is a trickier balance, and is the balance we look to strike.

There’s something really irritating about that quote. Like, c’mon. If it’s that easy, put the good stuff in first. How many years has it been?

My post doesn’t cover how bots engage in combat or how they should use resources or behavior systems, it’s mostly just movement except for one point about beastmen archers. I can’t stress enough how just tweaking the ways bots move would be a massive improvement.

There’s an even larger list of things bots should be capable of doing like blocking and pushing during combat or being able to disengage from specials instead of, as you put it, hate-stalking them. As I understand it, there’s even a positioning system that’s determined, but not elaborated, in the options menu. Obviously, bot positioning and combat should be determined by character + career. It’s not like they don’t have class-specific combat behaviors already in game so bots know when to ult. Yet, Ranger Veteran, Handmaiden, and Shade bots are exceptionally bad when they reasonably should not be.

I’m willing to admit that during the day when I have no one to play this game with I straight up use an exploit to make bots stronger so they at least make an impact on hordes before dying on Legend.

[Anoth]

With how “specials” the bots are im worried if i’ll be able to join back a game after whatever kind of crash may occur, since they don’t last long enough, i’d be lucky if i join as wounded ( i mean on thp ).

On the case of a friend crash it’s hard to prevent them to jump over a cliff, they like feeling the wind between le legs quite too much.

To the point of i wonder if isnt just better to let people join at limited amount of HP loss ( and alive ) spawning close to the host instead of counting of the well behaving bots or believing our Mighty Fatshark the la…- busy to do something good about ? 3 years old game need to be said again.

[DezZzO]

@dannylew8299

Force bots to prioritize host (currently prioritizes last client to join)

Didn’t know the last client part, thanks. Also yes. In the best case scenario it would be cool to have a “follow” button in the players list, so you can choose which player bots will follow and teleport to.

Also my wishlist for bots:

• Improve their AI vs Gunners and Warpfires. Bots can survive a rat patrol on HFBS Cata, yet they literally can’t handle a single Gunner/Warpfire sometimes. I’ve seen bots going from full HP to literally dying from a single one so many times it’s just wow.

• Give us an option to tell the bots that they shouldn’t heal you/use healing at all. Mostly useful for Zealot players or cases where you need bots to keep on the healing and not use it to heal half of their HP.

Also just an idea: make bots “communicate” with the player. Basically let them show their intentions/priorities. They’re focusing monster? Let them type “fighting monster” in the chat. Following a Globadier? Let the player know that. Healing? Collecting something? Let us know. Some games I’ve played with bots have this stuff. It will give more transparency to their actions and will help to understand their behavior even if it’s an odd one. While knowing their priorities might help you, this still doesn’t prevent situation where you just walk forward and bots randomly decided to follow a random globadier that was REALLY far behind you, yet you didn’t even notice and in no time they’re literally a pixel on your screen and you’re all alone. You really shouldn’t be cautious of them 100% of the time. And sometimes their target priorities can break too.

[dannylew8299]

@DezZzO

Improve their AI vs Gunners and Warpfires .

Bots are pretty bad against specials, but utterly broken by rattling and warpfires (and crankgun, too! Don’t think I didn’t notice you programmed bots to treat Engineer like a rattling, FS!)

Again, they shouldn’t be allowed to run near cliffs and shouldn’t be able to move too far from player before snapping to host’s position. If it’s too much to ask for bots to shoot specials then it should be within reason for bots to disengage and fight horde enemies near the host so players can take care of it.