Gotcha, I like a lot of your potential solutions. It is very difficult to strike a good-but-not-overpowered balance with bots.
1 Like
And my experience of playing with ālive playersā is 99.9% extremely negative. I really regret about every minute wasted (or rather many hours and days) on this damn co-op. I have no idea how Iāll do Weaves for Season 4 if bots are not added to Ranked Weavesā¦
So playing solo with bots is the only option.
The fact that it turns out to be quite passable to play on Legend with bots does not justify the lack of changes / improvements.
On the contrary, improvements are badly needed, itās so stupid to lose from scratch for no apparent reason, just because of the incomprehensible (suddenly) action of bots.
What I was saying is I prefer real players over bots because of the issues bots currently have. When I am with bots I tend to just get mad or laugh at the bots.
I agree with you, I want fixes for bot problems.
2 Likes
Iām honestly okay with the bots not being great at combat. I donāt want them doing too much, because I want to kill all the things. But they really just need to be able to do some of the basic stuff and not be a huge liability like running off, falling off ledges, standing in the bad, getting stuck, et cetera . . . These things go beyond simply being bad, and actively reduce the enjoyment I have with this game (which, I have to add, is in so many ways amazing).
4 Likes
is it just me or does the strawman argument about bots replacing players get used almost every time there pops up a bot improvement thread? despite op not mentioning it an any way.
1 Like
suggestions like you brought up could be applied to bots on certain difficulties. the higher the difficulty, the more of these āperksā the bots get that remove annoyances and generally just makes them less frustrating to play with on cataclysm.
the bots can then be kind of scaled for each difficulty with these āperksā so that they dont become ābetetr than most playersā on that difficulty.
i think people who want to play with bots because they think its fun to see how good they can build the bots and like to see how well the bots can do should be able to do that without it being frustrating to play with them. many players who have played with bots for a while and treat them as allies perform better with them than players who rarely play with bots and treat them as meatshields.
2 Likes
there is a mod for vermintide 1 that does something like this. it moves the start of the shot 50cm or 1m forward so that if a player stand inside you then he wont take friendly fire.
no. the damage isnt the problem, its that they walk through gas and get stuck in the fire while trying to melee the specials. if fatshark makes bots not chase specials and that bots will try to shoot a special if it is within a certain distance and in sight then that will mostly fix the problem. priorities is another problem.
While I agree one your points I donāt think resources should be placed on improving bots. It is a team game after all. The bots are perfectly serviceable as is. It is not much problem completing cata with bots and sometimes itās even easier than with players.
Thereās no way thatās true. I just had a game on Righteous Stand where one bot walked into gas towards 2 globadiers, with 4 poisons quickly stacked in the same location. All bots downed and permanently died because even IB dies to 4 poisons faster than he can get a single revive off. So Iām left waiting outside the gas and IB has maybe 30 HP left by the time it wears off. Of course I couldnāt get to him in time, so there goes all the grims. 90% damage immunity to gas/fire/warpfire or full immunity is completely warranted if their AI is going to stay so terrible.
4 Likes
I donāt think resources should be placed on improving bots
In my experience cata is doable with bots, that much is true. However, this should not be a counterargument for future improvements. In many commonly occuring gameplay situations their ability to make decisions is subpar, such as the aforementioned running towards flamers with melee out. I still hold enough trust in humanity that no player would ever do that, at least not repeatedly.
And even if straight out improvements are out of the question, chugging healing and ammo when the meter is at 60% should not be a thing.
It is a team game after all.
This is also correct. But do humans and bots have to be mutually exclusive? Take the L4D series for example. Many choose to play with bots, and their AI is good enough to tackle most scenarios. When you go down, the bots help. When a special infected appears and the player is occupied, the bots take it out from a distance. Yet one can always find a game with humans as well.
Granted, the comparison might be a bit unfair as the series have evolved a tad differently. But my point is, why not allow the players an alternative involving satisfactory AI? And while the bots still are a part of the game, why should their maintenance be neglected?
4 Likes
Quiet simply, because of money. I would rather they put resources into new careers, maps or weapons than bot improvement.
The amount of solo players are really low and for those few that do play it is very much possible to clear the game in cata with bots.
In the end itās a matter of putting money where the fans will be most pleased, and I doubt many of us care significantly about bots. At least not at the expense of other things.
Also, comparing l4d with vt2 is not really relevant. Iām guessing itās a lot harder to program bots in vt2 because of all the different enemies and specials.
That is a fair point. A median low programmer salary in Sweden at a quick glance seems to be around 20,000 SEK / mo (1946ā¬, 2355$), so putting extra work hours to improving bots might not sound appealing. Then again considering a whole separate team making the versus mode, something they at first stated would not even happen, it seems like the funds exist somewhere. Personally iām not really a fan of make new stuff now, fix old stuff later -policy but iām not the one calling the shots am i?
Ultimately whether or not FS takes up on any of the things brought up in this thread is up to them. To me and maybe a handful of others the bots just so happen to be a very big factor in the VT experience, and play a part in my resolutions on wheter to invest in DLCās and otherwise keep supporting the developer.
Wrong position. I think differently: if the bots problems are not resolved until the game is abandoned (soon), then this will affect my decision to buy Darktide. Itās all.
For if Darktide has the same awful botās AI that I have been enduring for five damn years, as well as even more āforced socializationā like in WofM ā¦ then Iād better get Darktide someday later at a sale with a big discount.
Bugs should be fixed. Botās AI are one big bug. I want to see them work well and not invent excuses.
It is very possible that ālaterā will become āneverā.
Because itās hard to believe that with the release of Darktide, V2 will not repeat the fate of V1.
This is especially important, you can say the mantra āco-op, co-op, holy multiplayerā at least a million times. But when the game is abandoned in favor of a new one, you simply wonāt find players for your precious āco-opā. Only the solo will remain - which is damn it, still not fixed.
2 Likes
bots are part of the core game experience, and when they cause major problems (that is completely out of the players control) that are ruining matches like aggroing a patrol or completely ignoring a horde in a monster+horde fight then that is a problem. i have played quite a few matches where no players joined and the bots caused a wipe 10-15 min into the mission.
3 Likes
Wrong position? Dude itās my opinion just as much as this is yours.
I donāt enjoy playing solo and I _think _most player are the same. Darktide will not stand or fall on your decision to buy it. You are just one man with an opinion, which your are entitled to have.
I would also assume that darktide will have better bots, but remaking them to vermintide I would imagine takes a lot of resources, or else why wouldnāt they have done it already? I mean they are a company and companies generally likes to make money.
This is not just an āopinionā but a life experience. This question is also more important than just the enjoying of one or many people. This is about Warhammer.
Most importantly to me, a Warhammer-based game doesnāt have to be one-day. This should correspond to the high name. It should always be possible to return to it after 10 or 20 years and still have fun.
Like Shadow of the Horned Rat/ Dark Omen - the true immortal classics.
This is literally what an opinion is. Anyways seems pointless to discuss so why not agree to disagree?
Fun note: I have played a lot of war over on return of reckoning, you should check it out if you like the game.
I wouldnāt call it major. Sure occasionally they f*ck up, but if you babysit them solo cata isnāt too hard. It is harder if you are not playing a class that can deal with specials and has decent monster dps.
Anyways this is just my opinion and I honestly donāt see why people get so hung up on bots, Iād rather have them on the weak side than on the strong side. There has to be incentive to play with other people, it is a coop game after all.
You just be a massive amount better than me then because I find babysitting them through Cata extremely hard. If I go BH to control the specials then the bots utterly fail to front line in any sense and Iām left with no room to snipe. If I go a melee heavy class the specials donāt die fast enough and weāre overwhelmed. To me it feels like you either play a very meta jack of all trades class or have an absolutely awful time of it.
Regardless what class I go with though the bots are nearly guaranteed to:
- Run off on their own into thick groups of elites, get surrounded, then immediately die.
- Utterly fail to snipe specials
- Jump off cliffs for no reason
- Leave me for dead if I get disabled even a single time in the run
- Stand still wherever they first engage a boss no matter how bad that position is
- Generally fail to hold anything close to a tight formation, which is the main advantage youād expect them to have. Instead they run significant distances from you with little reason or provocation.
I donāt need them to do good damage or even snipe well. I literally just need them to stay near me, form a halfway passable frontline, and not get wrecked so crazy fast despite me stacking all defensive properties and weapon choices for them.
Man I feel bad for all the people who come to this game further down the track when it will inevitably be hard to find games. Thatās what happened to me with V1 and if the bots there were as bad as V2 I probably would have spent little time in it, never have gotten hooked, and quite probably never have bought V2 either. Itās extremely unwise to pin all of a gameās playability on there being an active community indefinitely. Bots are what will make this still a good game if picked up a few years down the line. Personally I donāt want this game to lose most of its entertainment value as soon as the community drops off. V1 managed to still be an excellent game solo. I really donāt see why we shouldnāt expect the same for V2.
5 Likes
I donāt think so. Iām guessing itās my perception of what is passable. I also have problems with bots but i find the challenge fun (itās what i play the game for anyways, not for wins).
What I have noticed is that you have to be quick on special sniping and go slow. That will maximize the success.
Man I feel bad for all the people who come to this game further down the track when it will inevitably be hard to find games. Thatās what happened to me with V1 and if the bots there were as bad as V2 I probably would have spent little time in it, never have gotten hooked, and quite probably never have bought V2 either. Itās extremely unwise to pin all of a gameās playability on there being an active community indefinitely. Bots are what will make this still a good game if picked up a few years down the line. Personally I donāt want this game to lose most of its entertainment value as soon as the community drops off. V1 managed to still be an excellent game solo. I really donāt see why we shouldnāt expect the same for V2.
I feel that this is romancing it a bit. Everything comes to and end. Putting in resources to make a very small miniority happy isnāt very smart to do from a business standpoint.
Also itās not like people stopped playing vt1 for no reason, the core fanbase stopped because vt2 released which is an improved version.
I can see that you are very passionate about this topic, which I am not. But were we talking mouse smoothing or chromatic aberration I too would be all flames.
1 Like