IB bot completely worthless

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
1

So I have posted countless times already about how bots suck at everything, and it doesn´t seem like FS gives a crap at all, but every once in a while I still get amazed by just how god-awful the bot AI is. It has happened to me several times over the past few days that the IB bot when I got downed fighting a boss, walked all the way up to me with his shield up all the time, even though the boss wasn´t aggroed on him at all and was in very safe distance from him, which took way unnecessarily long, and then instead of picking me up, he literally stood inside me for up to 7 seconds and did nothing at all.

Seriously, fix the bots already ffs. They are absolutely horrible and infuriating. They die easily to all types of enemies, don´t use their ranged when they should, do use their ranged when they absolutely shouldn´t, resulting in wasting ammo and pulling patrols, they pull patrols out of sheer stupidity, they walk through gas and fire, they literally stand in gas and fire for no reason, they have absolutely terrible priorities, for example, they prioritize venting their overcharge while standing in f#cking gas, resulting in extra overcharge and death, they suck at reviving players, heal ineffectively, jump off of every other ledge they possibly can for no reason, get stuck on everything, walk into players and then complain about getting inevitably shot at by the players, and probably quite a few other issues I can´t recall off the bat.

Every time I almost stop considering dropping the game because of the game-breaking bot AI, the bot AI proves itself to be even worse then I ever imagined, as is the case with the awful IB AI which makes the bot do nothing at all most of the time. He just stands with his shield up when facing hordes, which isn´t that awful when he has off balance on the shield, but he doesn´t even try to fight anything for the most part. He doesn´t even seem to push hordes, dodge them or anything of the sort.

If you think this is ok to have in your game, you are most welcome to f*ck right off, FS.

6 Likes
2

i feel your pain. i check the forum every few days, waiting for the bot fix so i can play again :frowning:

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As someone who utilises bots often, I can attest to their occasional stupidity - I don’t consider it a huge problem however, and I think solving the problems related to their “indecision” is harder than we may think. These situations where the bots seem confused happens very often when high threat enemies are around, specials, elites and monsters. The more of them around you the more confused the bots become. Perhaps there is room for some slight tweaking in the AI with regards to threat assessment, and player revive prioritisation.

Using bots, I significantly increase my odds of doing full book runs compared to doing quickplay with human beings. My success has in fact been so great that I can run most deeds with them, the exception being Vanguard and HBFS, where they buckle every time leaving me to complete the run alone.

So I think calling out for “fix the bots ffs” is a bit excessive.

2 Likes
4

I think it is not excessive at all, since I have lost countless times solely because of the bots´ stupidity or them being straight out bugged. Do you not experience each and every one of the issues I mentioned above? If not, something is odd here, and if so, how the hell do you not consider all that to call for “fixing the bots ffs”?

5

I want to be playing agaist the skaven and the norscans, not against my dysfuncional bots and their constant bullsh*t.

2 Likes
6

on legend? which class are you and the bots using? i’ve been runing solo bots on legend for probably 100 hours and never had much trouble, but after a coulpe of updates ago i simply can’t keep them alive

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Yeah, they used to only be ret@rded, but now they are pretty bad at fighting hordes in addition to being ret@rded. No idea how or why, but I also noticed it maybe a couple updates before the beta.

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My most succesful setup so far has been IB with axe and shield + handgun, FK with 2h sword or executioner in beta + handgun, Zealot with 2h sword+any of the crossbows. Elf and Sienna bot is useless basically, and I’ve yet to find a good kit for them as bots.
I therefore play as a shade/ws (handmaiden lacks aoe clear through hagbane, as she has no means to replenish ammo) or BW/pyro/unchained.
Hagbane on the elf and fireball on sienna. Melee weapon can be whatever you fancy - the important thing is you need to be efficient in both AOE DPS and able to take out elites effectively - the bots will hold long enough for you to do that with these 5 careers.

IB doesn’t do a lot of killing, but he’s specced so he increases damage taken by stuff that hits his shield and heavily invested in BCR stam regan and stuff like that - he’s an absolute boss at tanking.
In general focusing the bots on survivability and speed is the best way to go, don’t bother theorizing breakpoints or stuff like that.
The 2handed sword wielding guys actually rack up quite a lot of kills if you help them with the most troublesome foes.

The major “flaw” with bots is that they get indecisive if they can’t find a window to attack, resorting to playing purely defense. This is where it’s important that you hold their hand a bit and help the poor children start killing again. Always be aware of their situation.

Second part is just knowing the maps, and making sure to position yourself so the bots don’t do stupid stuff. Like walk to a undesirable location when a boss spawns. Keep them on a tight leash and learn how to make them move to where you are.

EDIT: Ran 2 fullbook games with them today as I needed to do 2 maps with Sienna (daily thingy).

EDIT2: Another thing to note is that they suck arse at certain maps. That’s just the way it is. They are great on Halescourge and Righteous stand (corner strats), but maps with too many areas that you can get surrounded in can make them very hard to manage.

EDIT3: My central point being that with a little practice and a little bit of customising their kit (thank you loadout manager), they are easily more reliable and capable than most QP pubs on legend. That’s quite good bots in my book.

1 Like
9

I find FK pretty terrible as a tank, he goes down about as often as mercenary as a bot, with mercenary being a better dps, CC, and also having a fairly useful ability (FK also does, but he uses it in ways that are even less effective than most bots do theirs), so I run with him (although I have tried FK many times also).

Bardin is absolutely terrible as IB as I mentioned, not getting killed too quickly is literally the only thing he does fairly well, although he still does a pretty crappy job of it considering he is an IB and has a shield. Tried giving him 2H axe to buff his dmg, which works great for me as IB, but he just keeps using it exactly like an axe+shield -_- So he doesn´t use it offensively at all and instead uses it like a shitty shield, GG. As a slayer, he has great boss dmg (unless he gets downed immediately, which is fairly likely due to his stupidity), but also gets downed a lot easier and quicker. On the other hand, at least he actually does something when there are enemies around instead of just standing still.

Sienna is pretty good as UC, with 1H sword or fire sword, she has great CC and pretty decent dps also, and survives well, unless she gets overrun/stuck, then she explodes due to overcharge pretty damn quickly. I often find her to be the best bot (and then she explodes and dies and I hate her again like I do all the bots).

3 Likes
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They should add the ability to play without the bots and scale the enemy numbers to the number of players.

2 Likes
11

My suspicion is the game has had a lot of changes since launch, changes to weapons and combat mechanics and enemy behaviors and so on. Bot code doesn’t really get updated yet so they’re way behind the times. I don’t play with bots very often but I have noticed they seem to be more braindead than ever these days.

This would be awesome.

12

I generally find the bots to be good in that they’re . . . acceptable at most things and predictable, which is more than you can say for many randoms. My biggest failings of the bots are (to me):

  1. They cannot handle boss + horde well at all. I get it, though. They have target priorities, and the boss is higher than the horde. Given that handling a boss and horde requires multiple split-second decisions, I can totally understand why they have trouble. It’s just annoying to see a single slave rat down all three bots because you can’t get around the boss to kill it and they’re completely focused on Roger.

  2. They continually feed the Chaos Spawn. I’ve had the CS go from 25% to fully healed because the bots fed it so much. Considering there’s no skill-based way of preventing this, I feel like they really should be better about dodging that grab attack.

  3. They don’t stay close during hordes. This is one of those tweaks from the better bot mod from VT1 that I wish would have made it into the vanilla game. Bots love to push out into hordes, get completely surrounded, and go down. The way to reign this in is to hang back yourself, and basically let them handle hordes. Unfortunately that just kind of leaves you twiddling your thumbs - you absolutely CAN do it. It’s just not very fun.

  4. This is an odd one, but the bots will also focus whatever direction you are facing, even if you are not particularly distant from them. If you have waves of a horde coming from opposite angles, you have to cover the back, and when the bots come over there and ignore the front, you have to turn to cover the front, and so on. I feel like the bots are meant to follow your lead and so face the way you do if they can so they keep up. It’s very reasonable, and I can play around that.

  5. Bots love to fall off ledges when a gunner is around. They will just throw themselves off very regularly. In general, being around ledges is the most difficult part of maps. I can get being thrown off by the force of a Warpfire Thrower or boss, but they just beeline straight for their own demise at times. This is one that I really think needs to be fixed. It is DEFINITELY better to eat some long-distance gunner fire than to LITERALLY KILL YOURSELF. It also makes some tomes/grims very difficult to get with bots in your party, even if you’re NOT using them to pick them up. The second tome on Halescourge is infamous, but also on Skittergate.

2 Likes
13

I play mostly with bots and sometimes they do things that will completely ruin a run. Especially on Legend. The majority of the time, they tend to play better than most random PUGs because they don’t run off randomly and die a horrible death. The biggest problem I have is when the bots will cross the entire length of a map just to aggro a patrol. It does require some advance skill to babysit the bots because they do not always dodge and block appropriately.

Some screenshots of my completed Legend runs with bots.

Against the Grain

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Hunger in the Dark:

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The Screaming Bell:

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I do not know if you watched Fatshark’s stream from yesterday but they are planning on working on the bots.

1 Like
14

They were also planning on dedicated servers, keep cosmetics and red dupe protection. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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15

Forgot to switch merc to FK, but it worked alright (handgun with exe sword on him)

24ish minute game endscreen. They did admirably as long as I did my job of protecting them from their weaknesse:

End Game stat screen

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IB went down during the monster fight (roger), as there was horde simultaneously and he got grabbed by a hook rat, and then pulled through the horde instabursted to downed state. Got him up before i would have lost the grim and the tome he was carrying and medded his ass up. No other problems throughout the entire run.

If you’re interested I can post exact builds and equipment for all.

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You seem to be quite specialized for horde clearing based on the stats, and not so much on boss dmg. What do you run on WS? I always try to get at least decent anti-boss weapons, reasoning that both bots and my friends tend to f*ck up on boss fights so I have to compensate, while pretty much anyone half-competent can at least somewhat deal with a horde.

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dies less than pubs :+1:

1 Like
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In this particular game I believe I was running my Healshare build on WS.
And what my end stats end up like is heavily dependent on what I need to do during the level (situational).
In this case I had low boss damage, because I had to focus down hordes, elites and specials during the Boss fight, in order to prevent the bots being overwhelmed, giving them room to handle the boss and keep them alive - I don’t want to lose the books they carry.
This took some time before I could efficiently DPS the boss - my focus was elsewhere.
With regards to boss damage, most melee weapons do excellent boss damage now, but Hagbane is def. a good way of smacking away at it, which is also why I have chosen the talent to get all ammo back on boss death instead of the 2 other choices. When needed I can dump all my ammo in to them and get back to full afterwards - leaving me less vulnerable afterwards.
Some times the best thing you can do is even sit back and let the bots do the work, while you act as a watchtower, allowing you to engage whatever can cause them trouble.

An important thing to not on the IB (and his comparatively “lower” stats), is that he was doing a remarkable job. Even as a bot, I make him the anchor for the team - enabling me and the other bots a lot more freedom and ability to DPS. He “tanks” better than most players do.

Build

2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |

Melee weapon:
Don’t remember, but usually Spear, S&D, elf 1h Sword, DD or elf 2h sword.
Built for “feel” over breakpoints (so atk speed increases and crit chance mainly, but some nice to have breakpoints on occasion),
Trait: swift slaying or resourceful combatant, SS being the overall best choice, but I like to mix it up)

Ranged:
Hagbane | Chaos+Monster, Barrage

Necklace:
2 Stamina+20% health, Hand of Shallya

Charm:
5% atk speed+Power vs (whatever you want), Proxy

Trinket:
33% Curse resistance+ (Whatever you prefer, I tend to use CHC, Movement or stam regen), (whatever trait)

19

What does constitute “tanking” in this case exactly? In my experience, he mostly just stands still and gets hit (mostly to the shield or other weapon to be fair), and when he has no CD, he fairly randomly uses ult. And you can´t really stand back when you have 2 tanks on your team, right?

20

I am from a region that does not have many V2 players and I hate it when there are quests that require me to complete quick plays because most of the time I got matched to hosts with 300 ping. I have to stick with the bots unfortunately and playing with them is testing my anger management for the past few weeks.

I have been playing mainly with the bots for more than two months and I have a really hard time with them after the update. The IB bot used to be great in tanking before the update and will occasional beat me in taking the least damage. However, after the update the IB is just worthless in my opinions, he falls to hordes easily which is unacceptable so I replaced him with Slayer as he is by far the best bot in dealing damage to the monsters. IB or FK does not matter much to me as bots go down easily and at least Slayer can deal some damage. I think the most tanky bot now is UC Sienna and she does overall good damage as well. I also have Mercenary in my team for his shared paced strikes, temporary HP and handgun for snipping specials. The Elf bot with a glaive is a beast in melee combat and always have more melee kills than a Slayer. I used to have WS in my crew to help me with specials but kicked her out since her ability will trigger patrols. I have never tried Salty bots since I run most games using BH.

Before the update, I had almost 100% successful rate with 1 Grim 3 Tomes Runs. The major changes for the bots after the update I have found out is firstly, they take significantly more damage than usual and the bots can all fall at the same time out of a sudden. I had an extreme case where Slayer + Mercenary + Unchain VS 1 Shield-vermin + 1 Mauler + 2 shielded Raiders and guess who won that battle? For a moment I wish my allies was a Shield-vermin, a CW or a Mauler. At least they can tank and I won’t expect anything from them.

Secondly, they are extremely aggressive against specials now and will leave all tasks on hand and rush at them without blocking/using their ranged weapons, that often result in drawing more aggros and triggering patrols. I have experienced many times a single gas rat + 1 gunner wiped out the 3 bots.

Thirdly, they are absolutely a disaster in prioritizing. As a human player you cannot go down even once or the game will very likely come to an end. When the bots revive you, they could drop you at the very last second before you can go up and they never prioritize reviving a player. They are also never good at following you. When you hear an incoming horde, a monster spawn or even a patrol and you want to move to a better location to fight them, that will take the bots quite a while before they can move to you. They will just get slowed down by any kind of enemies on their path.

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So I had a full book run on Against The Grain and got 2 dices from two monsters, not bad…
Opened the barn door, the bots got wiped and all died in no time.

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Hunger In The Dark: Was about the grab first tome, a gas rat threw a gas globe at us and the 3 bots lost their minds completely and charged at the gas rat, ignoring and triggered the Chaos patrols, 6+ Roaming SVs and horde.

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