That second video, man…
What is the situation there?
Bot wants to use ranged, other bot is in the way so sienna won’t ff, but somehow gets stuck in venting animation and slowly crawls towards victor?
That looks so stupid. 
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The problem is - I can’t make them stick with the book if they’ve already piecked it up. And this leads to mild to extreme annoyance. I’d prefer if they just never picked it up on their own, unless the book has just dropped from a dead body of another bot/,player.
There is a way around that, too, but it needs a bit extra effort. The bots’ behavior in general is quite predictable. In the case of Tomes and healing, they’ll pick up the Tome if a) player(s) already have something in their healing slot, b) they have that slot free, c) there’s no healing items around to pick up and d) they have “noticed” the item (in practice, they’ve gone close enough to it and spent a moment there without distractions). If they’ve picked one up voluntarily, they’ll always still prioritise healing items - which means that if they’ve picked a Tome voluntarily, you’ll have to pay attention to that bot’s items and where the item locations in the map are. As soon as they pick up something else, command them to pick up the Tome, and they’ll again stick with it (and incidentally, won’t waste healing items either). Yes, it’s annoying, and easy to miss. It would indeed be easier if we could command bots to hold on to the Tomes too, or at least switch around their priorities in Settings, but for now, the workaround will have to do.
More generally, I have seen a couple of annoying and stupid behaviours in the bots, and certainly they’ve seemed to rush off more often after 2.0. For the most part, though, their behaviour is very predictable and can be played around, both in gameplay and with their equipment. I’d appreciate a couple of adjustments to them (Special chasing, clearer action priorities…), but I don’t think it should be a priority, or that they should ever reach a level of Legend- or even Champ-competent player.
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IMO bots should scale sa bit with difficulty. On legend they ar e often still smarter and more useful than most players. BOT Kruber is a valuable asset to most teams, while your typical Wutelgi… Ehhh, just a waste of breath 
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It might not be a terrible thing though, so long as they’re not walking terminators. People may see them and actually learn from the bots as to maybe why they don’t go instantly like some players might. See things like the bots sticking together, occasionally taking out specials(not sniping them down instantly all the time like turrets), healing a bit smarter, and so on. Maybe people wouldn’t learn, I don’t know. They may end up saying “Bots are better than all of you” and just learn nothing at all. In the end, it’s really just quality of life improvements that would be nice. We probably shouldn’t just hold back the design of reasonable A.I. because that player over there is bad.
I know what you mean though and some simple changes like chasing and stuff would make a night and day difference, while not making them these incredible players(although they’ll still always dance with a rat ogre better than quite a lot of people, which is still great, because it shows people that is a thing you can do rather than running around wildly).
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What @Yzneftamz said :)!
Throughout the maps there’re predetermined locations where to find loot (healing, potions, etc…). These aren’t completely random in terms of location, but in terms of loot and when/if/what will show up. Hope you know what I’m trying to say!
Soon, after enough playthroughs, you will automatically learn and know by heart where those locations with potential healing items are. Then you have to pay extra attention to your bots! When they swap a book with a healing item you can easily give them the order to pick it up again!
After a while, I’m sure, you will subconsciously know about your bot’s equipment!
Then your annoyance will focus on something else in this game 
…!
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Unless ypu are getting chased down by a boss and/or patrol and notice that bot switched to healing item when you weren’t looking.
I have wuite a lot of hours under my belt and still get sometimes robbed of a book by some idiot bot teleporting around 
Yeah, I might’ve added something about individual skill there, as that’s pretty much what I meant. As individual skill goes, the bots can’t (and shouldn’t be able to, imo) carry the game, just survive (if that) and be somewhat helpful. But as to what I’ve heard (I don’t do QP with strangers myself, but knowing people it’s quite believable), they stick together and play together better than a lot of public players (well, aside from trying to rush a Stormcaster on the other side of Yenlui’s big forest) - which is quite right.
To make them less frustrating and helpful enough, without making them overly effective, keep them individually very modestly skilled, but able to keep together with the player(s) and helpful when needed (like with healing or reviving). I think they’re close, but some priority clashes (bot starts reviving, interrupts it to go back to striking the horde a couple of times, starts reviving again etc.), rushing after very, very far-off Specials, some pathfinding issues and sometimes very stupid healing use make them annoying enough to deal with.
Once again, it boils down to difficulty of building a good bot AI. It’s easy to make a bad one; it’s still relatively easy to make one that plays perfectly; but it’s hard to make one that’s on a humanly level and even more so one that fails in human-like ways. I accept that they’ll always appear at least somewhat robotic and stupid, but the most obvious “roboticisms” (raised in the thread) are worth fixing at some point.
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My Bot AI wishlist:
- only prioritize specials with ranged fire
- for Sienna/bardin bot to be able to utilize flamethrower, conflag, drakefire pistols, and fireball against hordes.
- for bots to stay out of player’s line of sight while ranged weapon is equipped.
- for bots to be hard coded to never move more than 15 m from host.
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The bots have some strange quirks about them. For one, if thereʻs any boss spawn they instantly aggro it and stick to it despite being in the middle of a horde. However, their aim is actually insane like 50% of the time, and Iʻve seen the snipe assassin rats out of the air multiple times. Still though, they are pretty difficult to play with.
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