People insist that “bots are better than most randoms” (that hasn’t been true for 2-3 months, now - recent patches seem to have completely broken the bot improvement mod), but the margin for error playing solo cata is pretty much non-existent. 99 times out of 100 if I go down or get disabled, at least 1 of the bots will also get grabbed at the same time, while the others waddle ineptly through a cluster of ambient enemies to try to melee the special and leave me to die. Or they’ll run off to try to melee a gasrat or blightstormer. At least with randoms, they’ll sometimes make an effort to save an incapacitated player, and even if you die, the game doesn’t immediately end.
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It’s even better when they can’t make up their mind and endlessly switch between trying to kill and revive, in the end doing neither and you just lay there bleeding out as the darkness comes.
Would be nice if someone at FS could look at the Bot Improvements mod then add it to the game, would extend VT2’s life.
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This is absolutely true. As hit or miss as the pub experience is, bots behaviour (re: specials and downed players specifically) is inane.
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This has been an issue forever now and they’re not gonna address it/fix it. There’s a whitelisted mod called Bot Combat Improvements(?) that has addressed this kinda, but your mileage may vary as their AI is so bad that even a mod can’t fix it. It needs a complete rework at this point as i’m guessing the code is completely borked. The reason why i think their bots need a ground up rework is they can’t even program a BINARY choice into their AI. Watch this, “is the player down? Yes or no?” If that answer is Yes, then REVIVE THE PLAYER AT ALL COSTS!, if No, then just continue following the player/seeking specials. It’s that simple, it’s not like they have to tell the bots “throw your bomb, use an ult and then smoke a joint before reviving the player” (although it feels like that’s what the bot’s process is), it’s literally just “check hp, revive if down”. It’s more down to laziness than anything as bad as that sounds. They’re completely willing to push out more and more updates, but when it comes to cleaning house? Well, we’ve all seen the blightstormer bugs, hook rat bugs, assassin rat bugs, boss bugs, wall bugs, sounds bugs, and now we’re talking about bot bugs. But hey Sienna’s new class is coming out right?
Edit: also, i could do well without the bots using healing, allow ME to use it on them only. The bots have no concept of saving items and especially during cata runs where health pickups can only be found like once or twice on the map, using one when it’s not needed can sometimes end a run then and there without you even knowing it.
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Yes, the recent patches broke that mod.
recent patches have just broken bots, full stop. It has gotten so bad bots can’t even figure out what to do in legend anymore let alone cata. the bot AI has single-handedly killed the solo-play scene of this game as it’s more like you’re having to drag 3 brand new people through the game
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Yes agreed. I have stopped playing solo with bots on Legend because it is simply not fun having the bots actively make it harder for you. I want to fight ratz, not my own companions.
Recently broken, in what way? The “bots’ refusal to prioritize downed/disabled players” bug has been around since the game’s release. Here’s part of my post from 2020 in reply to a post that is also complaining about the same bot behavior (AI bots are still Quite thickheaded):
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i think the worst part is that they’re most likely doing “patch jobs” on their ai, which is fine if it works; problem is it doesn’t work (or if it does work it doesn’t stay like that). I remember before bots would struggle to even find specials, now they’ll run through an entire wave to get to a gasrat only to die to the chip damage of the gas. No one really wants to touch their ai because it’s a hot mess. Though I imagine if they sourced it to the modders it could’ve been done (and has actually been attempted and been somewhat successful) but that would make them look bad.