If these were true, then Darktide might lose one of the most welcome features of Fatshark games.
It has so much fun to build your own bot team and fight with them side by side,a different and more RPG like experience compared to playing with human players.
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It would be a real shame to lose bots but if they balance for a truly single player experience I would be ok with that but I would prefer bots I don’t always like playing with other people some times I just want to chill out
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bots have an inherent problem that is unsolveable,
they are worse than players, yet have to keep up with difficulty made for players, resulting in people complaining that bots are too bad buggy and frustrating to play with.
but on the other hand if you make bots way better, people loose the insentive to play with other players because bots would be prefereable, big nono in a coop game
so removing bots alltogether and adjust difficulty to player numbers is infact the most sensable thing to do
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I mean, Fatshark never really planned for bots being a significant feature in any of the Vermintide games either. They stated several times, that they want people to play with each other and bots should only act as a dummy replacement until other people join. They were never intended to replace other players.
Of course, many people played solo and thus Fatshark eventually caved in for Vermintide 2 and updated them, but they still shouldnt act like a replacement. It was also not a good idea for the game to have the Single-player tag on Steam. Vermintide is by design not a single-player game and it looks like they learned from the mistake and dont use the tag on Darktide.
Of course its bad news for the people who want to play solo, but its also bad news for me that so many single-player games cant be played in co-op. Tough luck. Though i am pretty sure that there is a high possibility that Fatshark will cave in eventually and have terrible bots in the game again, because many people, who havent followed the news, will be complaining about missing bots on release date and after.
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people will complain about bad bots and people will complain about no bots, same thing in my book
for the solo steam tag, if you can’t figure out that a game that is marketed as a left for dead successor isn’t meant to be played solo i don’t know how to help you.
many steam games have tags that arent reflecting accurately, just look at crusader kings 3 it has an RPG tag, even tho its a dynasty/country managing simulator, can you run aroung take quest and beat up rats in a basement obviously not…
im just saying if you take every tag litteral you gonna be disapointed alot of the time on steam, and i suggest you take a more nuanced appoach
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Yeah, you would think people would figure out what the game is supposed to be before buying it, but i have heard the “single-player tag” reason more than enough from people who always complained about the terrible state of the bots in Vermintide 2.
So apparently many people do not understand it and i am glad Fatshark doesnt use the tag for Darktide. At least that reasoning will be gone, but i know for sure that it will just be replaced by the “But Vermintide had bots for single-player” reason.
Cant win with thoe guys. Lucky for me that i dont care about bots at all and always played and will play with random people. More fun and often times more challenging for sure.
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Bots can never be as good as humans, there’s no need to worry about “way better” thing.
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Solo players and co-op players can be mostly two irrelevent playerbases. Without bots，many solo players would just abandon game，they will not be turned into co-op game players.
However, just a part of solo playerbase finally want to have a taste of coop, it would be a net contribution to coop playerbase.
There is no cannibalization if you add bots.
For me I usually play with human players in CATA , but sometimes I just want a more private and RPG like gaming experience. Solo and Coop are not just human player numbers, they are two different feels and playstyles.
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1st. yes, yes they can be if they have way more ressouces at hand than a player, just look at realtime strategy of old they often had AI that was cheating resources and they sometimes outpeform the average player by leagues…
2nd. you dont know if the game will be unplayable solo just because there are no bots. it might very well be much better to play solo because they no longer have to balance difficulty for a 4 entity party (wich didnt work well due to three of them not being capable enough)
3rd. the soloplayerbase of a multiplayer coop game is most likely not that large, and sorry,
fatshark shouldnt consider them in any decision making.
i love coop games, i wholeheartedly think many singleplayer games could be massively be improved by giving it a 2 player coop option. that doesnt mean i go to those forums demanding the developers to implement it, that would be madness.
as far as i see it, you deceived yourself of what the -tide ip is and are starting to make unreasonable demands based on it.
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1st. Vermintide-like game is not RTS ,you cant just simply cheating resources to gain advantages. Its complicated to write AI code in 3D and Action working environment to make them feel like human. If bots are really that good, why there are people complaing about Vermintide Bot and use bot improvement mod(which is not that good in cata). Also dont forget, death for just once will lead to the game failure while in coop games you can wait for others to save you. Even if bot in some ways is better, it’s acceptable.
2nd.Considering Cata in Vermintide.
3rd. Neither you or me dont have the accurate number of different kinds of playerbase. Only Fatshark knows. And since they already make bots in Darktide just lack of solo function on launch, I believe Fatshark already see the demand,at least not that small. Its not that “unreasonable” right？ Fatshark already is doing it.
To Fatshark, both players are the same in financial contribution, the more, the better. Plus like I said in other comment, there is no cannibalization if you add bots. It will just benefit both sides, or, even sometimes when facing players quit or vacancy, coop players can also use the help from bots. A reliable bot AI is needed.
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its an example, how ai can be better than humans, even when they lack the ability, but since you don’t seem able to grasp the corelation, ill explain how this could look like in one of fatsharks tide games: they could for example give them twice as much HP or ten times as much HP and while we are at it give them immunity to disablers, therefore resulting in bots that can outperform players and therefore would be preferable allies to some players…
i never said they were. your atacking a standpoint i never given, thats called a strawman try again.
this is true FOR vermintide 2, NOT neccessarily for darktide, i get the feeling you didnt read what i wrote, they can easily change the balance for solo players if there are no bots in the lobby, less disablers? you got it, more time between hordes? sure why not, extra lives? hell yea
the bots they’re making are a replacement mechanic for players dropping out of an ongoing game, its not a “missing” feature on launch.
yes but actually no, in development you have to make choices, and be precise about what you want to realise, and it might be more financially viable to double down on pure coop.
theres a game that didnt want to make choices and just promised more and more and more features to please everyone, and guess what it became famous as one of the biggest flops to be ever produced, can you guess the name? its No mans sky
and like i said (multiple times by now) you don’t know the difficulty of darktide, it might be way differently balanced than vermintide1&2 and therefore would actually work way better without the presense of bots, as the game could adjust difficulty based on entities present in a match, and because all enteties are always players the AI director could create a more linear difficulty between 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 players…
But they didnt, did they? Both bots in V1 and V2 have the exact same status like human players. When we talk about Darktide, of cause we are expecting sth similar. I can understand your concern of Bot overpowed ability but why you make a strange example while there are no signs or reasons for Fatshark to do so? Fatshark has never give Bot more attributes or more abilities. You dont have to fear "bots that can outperform players ".
True solo setting, or a special game mode just for sole player? Of cause you can get them, I myself have done some true solo runs. But this depends on whether Fatshark wants to. I dont see any conflict between Bot mode and Solo mode. Bot could easily count as one person when tweaking difficulty, 1 man + 3bot can use 4man difficulty, thats V2 is doing. If you want 1 man fight, go ahead. The option is there.
No mans sky lives well, it has more in-game player numbers than Vermintide 2. Its 24hour peak is above 10K to 14K, while V2 is around 4K+.
Since you mentioned other games, Lets compare same game genre, which is team-based coop PVE FPS. We could easily found the leading games, like L4D, Payday2, and vermintide 2 ,ALL have relatively smart bot or bot mod, that can at least help escorting human players to the highest difficulty. Also, those games without bot or with terrible bot, there are so many ,we can see their playerbase shrinking and remain under a small scale.
Yes, they are not direct provement, however, we can make a reliable assumption based on these, that its not a coincidance for leading coop FPS to have relatively smart bot. Bots do help keeping players in game. Like I said before, its good for both Solo and Coop players, and for financial contribution.
Yes I feel you, you think Darktide would perform differently without bot , and are worrying about bot may affect game mechenics and fundamental designs. Bot could count as human, Bot could be shut off and you can select total team player numbers, problem solved. 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 players, with or without bot, done. Acually bot is just a pure net addon, it wont affect game its self.
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You are quite wrong here, Fatshark isnt implementing the bots in Darktide for soloplayer demand, they are actually now doing what they always said the bots should be in Vermintide. Dummies until another player joins. Bots only show up when someone leaves during a run. If they would add these bots because of singleplayer demand, then they would release the game with the feature that both Vermintide games already have.
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If this is actually true, it’s a massive step in the wrong direction. V2 bots have their fair share of issues, but with the right setup + bot improvement mod, they’re not significantly better or worse overall than the average legend+ player. Best part of playing “solo” was being able to practice new careers without the pressure of being expected to perform well or having to worry about being a hindrance to the team. Removing that ability seems like a slap in the face to players who don’t have a consistent friend group around their skill level to play with.
Almost seems like FS doesn’t like the fact that modders like Grimalackt are showing them up and proving themselves more skilled than FS’ own programmers, but at the same time they’re either too incompetent or lazy to fix the bot issues on their own so they just said “f*ck it” and ditched bots altogether.
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Ok, what do you guys not understand when they said that bots should be dummies that only exist to be replaced by other players?
Fatshark never wanted to update bots in Vermintide to a point where they are reliable, they only gave them an update because of bugs and maybe because people cried and they felt responsible since they had the feature of bots in the game. Now they do not have that responsibility anymore, because they now do with them what they always said the bots in Vermintide should be.
If you need to try out other careers without having to play skillfully, then you either try them out in a decreased difficulty or stay on your preferred difficulty and just play. Its not like the careers in V2 were so mechanically different that you had train to understand them. Nor will that be the case in Darktide.
You also dont need a friend group, i played 90% of my time with randoms and the rest i played with randoms that became friends through playing.
I am rather relieved if solo-players wont be in the game though, because when they start playing in a group they are extremely bad because they are adapted to bots supporting them on every step, which causes the solo-players to lack the experience with teamplay.
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So how can you tell someone is a solo player when there is no tag on his head, or did you just put every player who was knocked down from behind into “solo player” group based on your imagination and thoery?
For me, I can do legend true solo and complete cata runs with friends easily, I still want a solo experience with bots because thats more RPG feel. Those world champions from Onslaught Tournament, some of them I am familiar with, play with bots too. Many people playing with bots is not because they are less skillful or too shy, is because thats more free and easy.
Solo or Coop is not the standard to a player’s skill level.
Such a Stigmatization to solo playerbase and what you said “I am rather relieved if solo-players wont be in the game” are subjective and disrespectful.
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Being a PUG player teaches you two things:
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Your loadout needs to be able to deal with every threat, because you dont know how efficient your mates are, so you need to react to everything that is happening.
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You have to protect your mates. Know where they are at all times and deal with stuff they dont react too.
I my experience, many people just want to slash the rats and specials are a huge problem in PUGs, thus i play defensively, let them clear trash, watch what they are doing and react immediately to specials. Since i am watching them play, i can also determine how much experience they have in the game and if they are teamplayers or solo-players, because both have usually a distinct playstile. Solo-players usually do not watch out for their teammates and just run around wherever they want, since they are adapted to bots following them everytime.
Its nice that you have so much experience in the game that you can do both efficiently, but that is not the norm. The norm is to expect that your teammates are incompetent in regard to teamplay and solo-players are often times top tier.
Its not disrespectful for me to say that i am relieved that solo-players wont be in the game, because the game is not based around single-player. Its actually disrespectful from you to think you deserve a single-player experience in a co-op game. I dont even understand how single-player has more of an RPG feeling to you when the bots literally just follow you, whereas player gamestyle has personality.
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Makes sense, I agree. What you describe is acually another prove that playing with people takes more energy----but sometimes what we need is just a little easy and relaxing run with bots that wont trash talking you or running everywhere or die quickly to make you suffer.
That’s exactly the point, Personality. When you are enjoying Darktide’s 75000 voice lines and back stories of 40K universe, suddenly some human player would radio you and say sth that totally irrelevant to the 40k universe, that would immediately pull you out of the fantasy and destroy your immersion. Not to mention human would do strange behaviours in the game…
Most of human players dont do role play, while Bots do, they are what they are in the background, they are your loyal teammates, their voices and acts are exact 40K locals.
Also, while playing with human, everybody is rushing ahead to get a green circle on his final data. But with bots, you can just hang around slowly to enjoy the view of hive world Fatshark has built for you, all in your own pace.
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Not seeing any bunny hopping is one of the great pleasures of playing with bots.
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Ironically, it takes less energy to play as a babysitter, since i dont do much else than killing specials and since they are dealt with, my mates can happily slash some rats. Sure, i kill elites too when they mix with trash, but none of them are really a threat. I usually have a good amount of downtime when playing like this. Since the biggest threats are also dealt with, there is rarely any toxicity going on during my runs either. On average my runs are silent and efficient and my team can relax and have fun without coming into stressfull situations. I cant even remember how much toxicity i have experienced in all my gametime. The glorious part comes when another experienced player joins and efficiency goes through the roof. Thats when i have the most fun.
Ok, i can see that the chat can easily break immersion, but it was never really a problem for me and the banter had more impact. Voice chat is a huge problem though and i immediately turn it off in those games. I can also see that constantly jumping characters are immersion breaking, though Fatshark did include some voicelines specificly for that. I guess that will happen in Darktide too, especially since we will be able to slide.
I know the rushing ahead part and green circle discussion, but in my experience the average runs didnt have that problem. If a player rushed ahead, i would usually ask what the idea is and often times it was just a standard solo-player who was adapted to that tempo because bots. But thats not the norm and wont be the norm in Darktide. The average PUG game is fine and fun.
But i do now realize and understand what you mean with RPG feeling when playing with bots.
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