Fatshark Plz add bots for solo! I heard bad news about bots

I’m against bots. They are a silly unnecessary crutch in Vermintide and I’d rather have no bots there either.

A crutch…your serious? For games that follow the Left 4 dead system like this one the number of players that play purposely with a bot team is larger then people seem to realize. Most “bot players” in my experiance play purposely with bots about 50 to damn near 95% of the time for various reasons.

Besides that the chances that a multiplayer focused player is forced to play with a full team of bots is incresibly rare while the game is still being actively supported and has a resonable playerbase. You lose basically nothing by them being included. To my knowledge most bot heavy players are not gonna just magically switch to being heavily into multiplayer, even co-op only multiplayer (if that is the case in darktide). They are just going to not play at all or very rarely. The only end result is less people playing and supporting the game as a whole

Bots help a LOT of people in a lot of ways at very little cost to the multiplayer focus.

-some people find interaction with other real people utterly exshausting or terrifying for various mental or social reasons

-some people dont play the game “the right way” according to the community meta Ie: going through levels very slowly, exploring every corner or other ways that get them generally ostracized or talked down to in multiplayer

-some people want to play only with specific people and round out the team with bots such as a husband and wife team or a couple of female friends who don’t want to play with males because the internet is terrible.

Bots are not a crutch they allow alot more people to play a game the way they want to play it and deepens their connection to the game as a whole. They barely detract from your game experiance AT ALL as a multiplayer…but not having them detracts it for some people by half and for others almost all of the game experiance for others. Sure you dont want to be forced into playing with bots…well alot of players dont wana be forced into playing with humans either.

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I am still not convinced they are completely getting rid of bots until Fatshark actually comments on it

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“just because the press version of the game didn’t have bot support, doesn’t mean the live version won’t.”

https://discord.com/channels/727074276724965407/735588196410196071/994340078010781767

Didn’t join the Discord to verify the quote but have no doubt of it being said. Take it how you want. Technically, it is not a confirmation.

7 weeks before release should certainly be the time to make official statements about these kind of things.

To be honest, i have played Deep Rock Galactic recently and they have mechanics in the game that should have been copied by Fatshark. The powerlevel of Characters is a better mechanic than in Vermintide, the difficulty mechanic is better and the party mechanic is better.

Its possible to play solo, as two guys, as three and as four. No bots, except for an actual ingame robot that helps out when playing solo (attacks enemies and can revive you a specific amount of times). The party difficulty adjusts with more enemies and harder hitting enemies, but not with more hp, which negates potential bulletsponges alltogether.

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Have a servoskull keeping tabs on you replace bosco for solo? I could get behind that -nod nod- best of both worlds.

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Indeed, had exactly the same in mind and it would fit perfectly. It could even help with the parts ingame where one player has to carry something, like when Bosco carries heavy items but cant shoot anymore.

Aqshy’s Discord comment says

I’d prefer if you not scream at us for answers. :sweat_smile: It’s true the press build likely didn’t have bot support; that does not mean live game won’t have bots.

She later said there would be more info soon, but I don’t see anything else on discord. Both of those were on 6th July.

I hope we get bots as an option, even if they are terrible. I’ve managed to drag bots through 12/13 Cataclysm in V2 Helmgart despite their flaws. Sure you need to work around them, and they are as dumb as 3 bricks in a washing machine, but you learn to adapt.

  1. That kinda just limits specialisation and leaves people feeling stuck in generic loadouts. While the same is true for bots in V2, you still have the option of herding your defective sheep around maps to work around the loadout you want to take, that’s not really true for PUG players.

  2. even more so with bots, they will 100% ignore certain threats if engaged with a different threat classification, often not even dodging or blocking, or just running face first into a flamethrower over and over unless you kill it fast enough

Honestly, I’ve had a lot of positive PUG experiences over the years in V2, but that’s also as someone who picked up V2 a few months after release with a somewhat smaller and more cultivated community that actively played. Negative experiences still happened but are infrequent enough - although when missions can take close to 1 hour, 1 negative experience is significant. I’d certainly be concerned that the average PUG experience has a much higher chance of being negative in Darktide with it having a wider player base and attracting a much larger audience.

I’m pretty sure if there were no bots in V2 I’d probably have quit the game and never gone back about 1000 hours ago. Most of the time when I play V2 it’s with 1-2 friends, we can’t always get a 4th that’s free and a bot is a fine filler to ensure that every time we snipe a special, the bots head is under our crosshair.

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Could really use an official stance on this if possible. People on Reddit, Steam, here, etc are having concerns about it. Lots of people are taking the gamestar review as gospel.

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Indeed Fatshark are notoriously silent aside from blogposts sadly

I agree with all your points!
Yet I still believe that DRG-like style of bots is much better.
Also the ~tide series is always online. I don’t get why you need bots in an always online game.

Why even bother with bots?

Plenty of games scale up to four players and can be played with one. You get the best of both worlds. A good and balanced single player experience without bots that are always just about to die of a stroke and take you with them, plus the option to play with friends.

Ever played Borderlands, or Warframe, or Monster Hunter, or Gunfire Reborn?
No bots, no problem.

This game has disablers. Bots are needed so getting hit with one doesn’t immediately end the game.

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I will wait for the official dev response on this matter before jumping to conclusions.

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Have you just forgotten disablers exist then made comparisons to those other games as if that isn’t a massive differentiator? Truly bizarre take.

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In response to this thread in general. As long as there is a viable option to play solo, bots or no, I’ll be happy. Assuming there are disablers in Darktide I struggle to see a solution that doesn’t involve bots, or at least a bot DRG style as others have suggested.

I take strong issue to anyone suggesting solo players have no place in these games. You’re telling people who often also have 1000s of hours in the game that their preferred way of playing V1 and V2 is invalid to the point that they shouldn’t even have that option in the sequel. I don’t need to explain why that’s an extremely silly take do I? Why be exclusive and push away a significant group of potential customers? Why remove options, and put all your eggs in the multilayer only basket when that has proven to be an extremely volatile market in the past. Why not allow people invested in the enormous hours put into the environments and lore explore and enjoy those things at their own pace without having to worry about hurting others’ experience or having their own experience harmed? Or those who just want to practice with a build/character, or level, without the RNG elements other humans necessarily bring with them.

It makes no sense to want to deprive people of an experience they enjoy from a series that has facilitated that thus far at what is negligible, if any, real cost to PUB only players. Complaining about people wanting a solo experience available reaks to me of a bizarre elitism insisting the game should be played in one specific manner that suits them.

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If some calculation came to the conclusion that the cost of providing bots (or any other viable way of playing solo) is higher than the revenue lost by people not buying the game if it is missing this feature.

Just a possible explanation. That being said, I’d like to have bots. But I’d also buy the game if it is coop only.

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well there are plenty solutions, you brought up DRG so lets start with that game,
it also features disablers in form of the ceiling tentacle
thing and the mactera grabber,
the mobile mactera is a nonlethal non game ending disabler, it will catch you and take you somewhere and release you, worst case near a ton of deadly enemies or over a huge canyon, however with the right talents its almost always possible to survive, and the tentacle thing is static and therefore avoidable when cautious.

it wouldnt be impossible to have similar limits/mechanics for a tide game, to ensure that getting disabled does not end in defeat for a solo player, tho i have to admit that having an enemy behave different when there are fewer or only one player is around could feel dishonest and teach false lessons for people who do eventually play in group.

what do you mean by that? from my experience a game being single or multiplayer never had an impact over the ability to succeed, whenever a game flopped it always was accompanied by horrible choices such as exploitative monetization or straight up false advertisement and companies that lack any authenticity

has anyone suggested that anyone wouldnt be allowed to play solo?

i for my part was only pointing out that:

  1. bots have many problems, including problems that are unsolveable
  2. there are options and avenues fatshark could take/implement that are not bots as we know them from the previous entries, that potentially solve some of the problems player caracter bots have

yes there is, if you create a new formula that is better than the old one, and vastly more enjoyable

as i said player character bots have many problems and creating an entirely new formula for solo players might potentially way better than anything solo players were allowed to experience previously.
for example the solo player could be put in charge of an unique retinue that can be ordered around to hold angles setup deathtraps, at the cost that they are quite a lot weaker in direct combat, as an player character, turning a solo experience more into an immersive strategy (almost tower defence’y) gamemode.

so as in my example you could make the solo gameplay into an distinct gamemode that can be enjoyed just as much by everyone including those who play predominantly PUB in vtide, you’d add a bunch of immersion and create even more content for everyone to enjoy

is anything like this realistic to see in darktide? perhaps not. but seriously people need to stop to be so utterly headstrong about a topic theres plenty that can be done for solo content even without bots as we know em

Actually, Warframe has Specters which are AI controlled bots you create yourself.

I spent most of my time in WF playing solo because the pace of other players is often annoying for me; not always, but in general.

The AI bot in this case has proven useful for difficult solo stints, where it gives me enough support without having to run the risk of a dodgy host connection, or someone rushing through for the grind.

If someone at fatshark confirms in the future that darktide has no bots in the game then im going to instantly refund my £50 pre-order because in my experience the majority of players that someone plays with will quit the game and not come back. All my old and new friends stopped playing vermintide 2 years ago so if it was not for bots i would have quit and not come back too.

True solo without bots is not the correct decision for a game like darktide.

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