Essentially, WoM turned bots into pack mules. Yet they can’t even do that effectively half the time. Somehow WoM made them worse. Not even mods help with them. Issues with bots:
Run off.
Chase specials.
Don’t stick with you.
Constantly get in your line of fire.
Stand around and then once you start shooting they will walk into your line of fire and sit in it. They constantly will reorient themselves into your line of fire.
Stand there and do nothing.
Heal when they don’t need healing.
Don’t heal when they need healing.
Healing for them is seemingly random.
Blow their ammo on random enemies until they have half ammo. Even lonely slave rats.
Get grabbed by chaos spawns all the time. They’re basically walking health potions for spawns.
Don’t shoot specials most of the time.
Let specials sit on a player until death a lot of the time.
Don’t ever use their actives for anything significant. It’s always random or meaningless.
Get stuck fighting bosses. They often won’t teleport to a player when they’re fighting a boss. This prevents players from relocating to better locations or just moving along in general.
Don’t prioritize players for healing. Specifically when a player is grey screen.
Some bots use their ranged weapons with almost no effectiveness. Sienna bots often won’t use their staves or charge them. Kerillian bots never charge the hagbane. Bardin bot is just as ineffective with flamethrower or drakefires.
Can’t hold torches.
Eat damage for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even with BCR and all that.
Pull patrols. Every single time. Why can bots even pull patrols? Why is this a thing?
They are currently so inept it makes you wonder why they even exist in the game at all sometimes. I don’t understand why their A.I. is so horrible but it seriously needs improvement so they have some kind of value outside of being barely functioning pack mules.
I agree with you on most your points completely! Those ^ are the worst bot “traits” for me currently.
Especially the part where they almost ALWAYS stand in your line of fire and chase off specials on foot, or simply let you die and watch you perish…
Pathing and/or getting stuck is also a great problem. This issue has indeed increased since Patch 2.0.
Don’t quite agree on the healing though. For the most time they heal me, when I have gray screen. When they spot healing and they’re already equipped they heal themselves, to grab the one spotted. That’s sometimes ok. But I had instances where they ignored my low health completely. But I have to say: I’ve seen worse player behaviour than this ;)!
Unable to pick up a torch is the main reason I won’t play Bögenhafen alone.
I doubt FS will soon fix them, because this argument always will stand first: this is a coop game and you have to play with others. This argument however gets busted, because there’re plenty of situations, where a player disconnects, or simply just leaves. OR like I/we want to play: solo, or duo with bots. Those broken bots tought me/us to play better though :)…
I would like to know how and what FS is prioritising. This game would really benefit from fixing it’s “core” first and then enhancing it with more dlc. If you don’t fully tidy up after a mess, it will get bigger…
Somehow I have a feeling, they don’t master their own technology or simply sometimes don’t care because of “strange” priorities. This I just assume because of my gut feeling…don’t know what’s really going on there…would like to know though ;)!
All in all I still enjoy this game a lot. If bots were better though, frustrations could be withheld.
I learned to play legend-bot runs. And sometimes I just want to play like this…and then my whole party runs off to catch a single rat while a leech feasts on me…;)!
I’ll stay optimistic though! For a while…
@Krator
Not true. They only will swap a book with healing if you didn’t give them the order to pick up a book. Otherwise they’d stick with it!
The argument also gets busted because the line of “play with others” is a scapegoat for not wanting to provide better bots. Better bots would result in just a big quality of life improvement. When all the bots run off to chase some random thing and let you die, or they’re standing literally right next to you and do nothing, that’s a problem.
I agree! This diminishes the gaming experience also for people who choose not to play with others. Playing solo/duo is a very nice challenge! It is an extra game mode for me and others as well! This is provided by just having bots.
And often I choose to because:
Legend with a nice team is easy and almost not a challenge anymore
Cata is behind a paywall and I don’t trust the new dlc/not very interested in
duo is fun but the accomplishment of going alone is even better
I write this to make a point: there are also niché players who seek the challenge of playing alone (don’t have the skill for true solo and don’t want to spend time for that). Why not stabilize this for us? And even, like I stated before: it happens when players leave and get replaced with a bot --> or as a host, the whole team vanishes. And this happens! We’ve all seen this! In a worst case scenario you have to restart because of bots…(Halescourge f.e. is horrible where the buildings collapse and the virtual team mates play cliffhanger…)
But like you said, it would increase the quality of life with “better” bots. For all! I don’t want them to be good. Just not that stupid and irrational would be very appreciated!
Don’t know what’s keeping them…! There are issues since release…!
On cataclysm, the bots struggle to stay alive in a lot of situations. But so do most pugs. The thing about bots is at least they won’t waste bombs on skaven hordes, or heals/pots just to go down/die 5s later anyways. The improved bots mod that is sanctioned for use on normal realm cures a lot of their problems with running off and not sticking with you, so I suggest using that. Otherwise, bots are still more than competent in most situations in Legend difficulty. I’ve had solo legend runs where my bardin IB bot has less than 100 damage taken and none of my bots even go down, let alone die.
Any buffs or changes to bot AI to improve them has to walk a fine line though. Atm in most situations I prefer my bots to most pugs, even on Cata. If they get significantly buffed, then that becomes a nerf to all difficulties for anyone that doesn’t play in a consistent 4 man group (which i assume is most people), and that really isnt needed at this point.
But other than that, there a core functions that don’t work properly:
Bots running off → not using their ranged weapon to f.e. kill a blyatstormer
Bot pathing when on challenging terrain
using their ults randomly (mostly when they engage a horde or single enemies)
getting ALWAYS in line of fire
sometimes pulling patrols
sometimes just standing and watching
Don’t think this is a significant buff! It’s them working properly. They don’t always have to hit with their ranged weapon. But to use it in some situations would be nice. The irrational cliffhanger/pathing is a huge problem.
What do you think about that?
The mod actually did used to be useful to an extent. WoM killed that though.
This. It isn’t buffing bots to make them work with some semblance of usefulness and consistency. It’s like saying fixing all the buggy beastmen spawns/behavior is nerfing beastmen.
The problem is they’re currently just completely inept. And that’s putting it nicely. I’ve had bots do good things, but there are many more times where they are just terrible.
The problem is, that those are all things that most pugs will do too. With the exception of not knowing how to cross certain terrain, though I have seen pugs fail the jump on the Mine route of Dark Omens.
Pugs will run off on their own during hordes and die. Maybe not to chase a special in melee, but it is still the same outcome. Pugs will use their ults in meaningless situations, and then die 10s later cause it is down. Ive seen Battle Wizards ult skaven hordes on cata and then die 5s later when plague monks/stormvermin show up. Pugs pull patrols just as often as my bots.
Like I said, it’s a fine line to walk with buffing/bug fixing them. For instance, BH bot with double shotted is currently very strong against bosses and chaos patrols because he almost always hits double headshots and gets his ult back instantly. Ive had boss fights where he ults 5 times in 30s and basically solos the boss. Even the best players in the game would struggle to do that consistently.
I get what you mean with this thin line! Player skill varies a lot!!
So scaled fixing/AI throughout the difficulties would be a good compromise here as I see it!
I’ve read that a lot of players feel unhappy because of the recent beastmen nerfs → too easy for them.
What if cata remains to be untouched? It will be the ultimate crazy mode for players with a high enough skill. The wild mode.
And we mortals get proper working bots that should work as intended ;)!
Edit:
Coming down to those points: never/rarely saw other players do that. They aren’t clumsy enough for that.
Yes, groups get separated. But pugs don’t run off with ammo remaining in their guns to kill a single special.
Sometimes people slip. and there are unfair/buggy points that draw you to a cliffhanger.
FF happens. Always. Don’t care though. But getting annoyingly into my sight when I take some shots is truly something that only masters a bot.
never saw other players just standing there and don’t react to a leech feasting on me. Or whatever special
I think this might be a good compromise.
But please people: would love to read more ideas about this! Something has to happen!!
I think the best fix is not to fix the bot AI, but to give the player more control over them. Then whether the bots are good or bad depends more on the player and less on the AI.
For example, make them respond to things from the social wheel. “Come Here” would be great to make them come back from a chase, or come in to res someone. That alone would be huge.
Amazing and simple idea! Love it!!
This maybe enhanced with a ping option --> to navigate them safely through certain points of maps (?)
But a simple “come here”: Yes, would be huge!!
Those are all very valid points. For me the biggest run ender for a solo legend run with bots is them insisting on fighting a boss wherever it was initially engaged and absolutely refusing to move. It can mean getting a boss in a bad spot, even without a horde or specials, will likely get them all wiped unless you’re playing a very high boss damage build.
It’s very noticeable how much smoother a bot run is when no monsters show up. Some simple commands to make them disengage and follow you would go a long way, but obviously if they made more sensible decisions without commands that’d be preferable. Mostly just making them prioritise sticking with the human player would be enough to make them at least somewhat reliable.
Even with all the “problems” bots have they are still better than almost every single player in public games and public discords that you will meet.
Its not bots that wipe a run. Usually its the persons laughable skill level.
I agree cata enemies are overtuned and OP though because bots are capable of doing any deed combination on legend hypertwitch 5/5 even dhdd/vanguard/sudden death but it will take you hours to complete which is why i dont bother with that one type of deed.
Fatshark at one point in time said “pvp is never coming to vermintide 2” and now it is. If we keep pushing the bot issues for cata it WILL get acknowledged and then fixed.
There are a few buggy behaviours that absolutely need a look at. A lot of times they just make decisions that aren’t great (like wasting healing supplies constantly and generally not being great at combat), wasting ammo, but the things that are absolutely terrible are how they will fail to help/even attempt to help the player when downed (they will prioritize other bots over the player in my experience), how they will stand in your way and not move when you are trying to shoot, the way they run off after distant specials, the fact that they will never disengage from a boss and will ignore other threats, the way they will just stand in gas . . . I’ve gone over these before.
The absolute worst from a design standpoint, IMO, is how they will just throw themselves off cliffs when there is a ratling gunner. This is absolutely the worst because they will throw an entire run by all jumping off when a common enemy appears. Unless you run a sniper build every time and are incredibly fast on the trigger, this threatens every single run potentially many times. Only maps without ledges are safe - when I reach an area with ledges, I am terrified a gunner will spawn at any distance, because the bots will go to such extreme lengths to kill themselves.
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