Having played my first Auric Level mission, I quickly noticed a disadvantage of splitting the Tier 4 (Heresy) missions between Standard and Auric Level. To be clear: I like this division! Sometimes I want a bit of a challenge, sometimes I want a fair bit of a challenge. However, splitting the missions does lead to a splitting of the players. Which means, for the first time in a long time, I played a Public Game entirely to the end while still having at least one bot in the party. For over half the mission, we had two bots.
Now, to be fair, this was during a period of the day when there tends not to be a lot of players. However, if this was the experience when Auric Level missions are new and shiny, I’m concerned about later down the line.
This means a focus on bot behavior needs to be a priority. If working on bots so they can handle solo play is in the pipeline at all, I implore you to bump it up the cue to become the next big focus, because players will be playing missions while accompanied only by bots for at least a chunk of the play time - even if they’re choosing a Public Game.