I simply ask that we get the option to play without the bots in the game, alternatively that the bots are removed from the game completely.
As far as I understand the bots are “needed” to have something for players to spawn into for join-in-progress, but I’m sure there is some other way to solve that.
The bots literally are dumber than Lego, and it’d be more helpful for me as a player to just throw Lego around for the enemy to step on than it is to have AI on my team, because the AI has horrible priorities, horrible reactions to environmental dangers/AoE damage, and teleport back and forth between players so you never ever know where they are. They also ALWAYS step right in front of you when you try to shoot, and the list goes on.
I understand it isn’t easy to code good bots in a game like Vermintide, but please at least give us the option to play without them in that case.
I also sincerely hope that you build this option into Darktide from the start, because the bots in Vermintide (and I assume the exact same code will be used in Darktide) is a reason for me to NOT buy that game, afraid to say it partially would be because it simply is a sign of not caring very much about the end user.
Not particularly against the idea. However, I would ask your opinion concerning balance on the matter:
Should playing without bots decrease enemy spawns?
Should playing without bots remove disablers?
Because it is probably easy to program a no-bot mode. But I don’t think many people would be happy with it because one mistake and your run is ended. Even more than in co-op play.
As for the “good bots”: Actually it is VERY easy to programm good bots and I think FS even outright stated this once before. I mean the easiest way you could go is make bots cheating like the bot mod in Vermintide 1 did (which for example circumvented the anti-aimbot restriction). The issue is programming bots which are helpful but not so good that they carry the game for you. Community mods usually tend to make bots overcompetent.
Surely you mean that it is very easy to STATE that the bots are easy to program. If game AI was easy, all games would have good AI, however in reality there are enough fingers on one’s hands to count games that nailed it.
As for the OP’s suggestion, it would be nice to have the True Solo QOL mod partly included - I’ve been missing its features since Halloween.
But I cannot really imagine how a co-op game built for four can be forced to play alone (removing bots altogether).
Well, without having ever touched any code, I surely can not judge the difficulty. But as I said, you can make bots simply cheat. Either outright and obvious by giving them for example 90 % damage reduction, aimbot abilities and unlimited ammunition. Or by giving them more invisible advantages like increased stamina and stamina recovery, slightly faster move and attack speed and such. I really don’t think it is hard to programm extremely good bots.
However, the current bots already can carry you through Champion difficulty.
As for the last part. As far as I know DRG has not any bots for the dwarves at all and just scales enemies down for less players. However, it has an ai for solo play, so you are never truly alone. Not sure if that game has disablers though.
Talking about legend.
This guide helped me a lot with bots. If I want to play it save I play a boss killer and have bardin, kerillian and sienna to carry books. That combo is honestly better than a lot of pugs I have played with.
Playing kerillian also works but merc bit is a bit squishy.
Sure, they have a lot of problems and can be infuriating at times. But at least on legend in campaign mode they are more than capable if you know how to work with them.
Would not trust them in cw (mechanics and too many ledges) or Weaves and I don’t know how they perform in cata.
Well in case ‘good’ means ‘cheating’ I agree completely. I meant good AI with my statement though not just puffing stats up.
I also don’t think FS has balancing mana to pull this scaling off.
I do, and it’s honestly weird: one run the rock stonewalling hordes, kiting monsters like pros etc. , the next run they all die to a pack of plaguemonks or a single gas globe. Frankly this inconsistency is arguably more infuriating that them being flat out bad.
If they could have them not perform revives directly on top of you, never step in line of sight (that crossing your path switching sides thing is intentionally programmed I swear), stay out of flame storms path, jump higher or just walk through obstacles if no enemies are agro’d (boxes) and not stack up and die every single boss fight on cata, literally a Minotaur and 1 other enemy or a wall is a wipe every single time for the bots.
Also on the Xbox kruber stops and while large special/horde groups are being loaded, sometimes for over 10 seconds. Just stands there.
I do like the option of turning them off tho, even an option to limit party size from 1-4 would be cool.
Funny you should mention that. I’ve been doing benchmarks and noticed that in every scene where the U4 is supposed to fight hordes (in the arena and on the wall) Kruber just stands there doing absolutely nothing. I think he has fallen to chaos and is masterminding the hordes so he has no brainpower left to fight.
Yeah, I suggested this before, too.
Skipping bots doesn’t necessarily mean you want to play alone. What if you want to play as a duo or a trio?
Such games should always be private thus quick players wouldn’t be able to join.
If you are playing on PC the Bot Improvement - Combat mod really helps the AI and allows you to control some of the bots’ behaviour, like how they use healing and whether they avoid ratling fire.
With this mod, a bit of baby sitting, and the right builds, the bots are good enough for Cata if you adjust your gameplay to their quirks.
If you want the bot-less, true solo feel you can always try ranked weaves. If they scaled the spawns and time limit to a single player, I would definitely revisit this mode.
Can anyone remind me which mod has the /killbots command? Seems like it might be helpful to OP.
I know “JuSt UsE mOdS” isn’t a good answer to most issues, but in this case I think it’s the best work around OP can hope for. Updates are slow enough and this would be a lot of work to implement + questionably desirable for most of the player base.
Regarding bot AI, at very least not seemingly trying to body block your every ranged attack seems like a reasonable improvement to hope for. They already acknowledged/attempted to fix this with OE, so it’s not too much of a stretch.
I wouldn’t mind if the number of spawns and disablers ain’t decreased, but I wouldn’t be against some decrease to make it more manageable. Depends on if one wants to have it as a challenge-mode or as a pure alternative to playing with bots. The number of spawns would then have to be adjusted as new players join in that case though, of course.
As for “good bots” it’s a serious difference between good bots and powerful bots. It’s really, really easy to make “powerful” bots, but making “good” ones is really difficult, because the latter means that they need to be smart/behave well and not just have boosted stats.
Yeah, the mod helps in some regards. Kind’a messes things up in others on the other hand, but the increased control over bot loadout is also a nice addition. Since vanilla doesn’t include Loadout Manager it’s unfortunately nothing we’ll ever get built into the game though.
Using a “proper” bot comp is quite limiting though, and that’s annoying. I have to play quite specific characters, and it’s not like I want to play with bots, but sometimes it’s just few players online within reasonable distance. And no matter the bot selection you still get them doing heaps of dumb stuff even though their survival is good, so they still basically do their best to mess up the run.
Playing on modded realm is unfortunately of zero interest.
I’d just advise to use any tank careers as bots. Never use dd careers.
Bots have one advantage vs dumb puggies - they stay near you and actually have your back.
I’m on the fence regarding no bot games: on the one hand I really love how it is implemented Deep Rock Galaxy (they give u a flying NPC-helper, also enemies’ health scales with player’s number), but I’m not sure if it’d work here. V2 is built around constant tension - you dodge specials all the time. Remove specials and you lose a part of adrenaline and that would make a game a bit worse.
