I don’t always have the patience to handle a full group, so please lay off telling me to play with friends. It’s counter intuitive and un-fun that the host has to grind gear and levels on each bot to make them at all capable of being anything more than a .2 second distraction on any diff level past recruit.
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The bots are better than many players… 
- they are able to snipe specialists quickly.
Look at the brightside - as the host you can give them all the gear and talents you want, so you can create a team that works well together.
The fact that you have to level them up means that you get additional gameplay and a great opportunity to learn additional characters and classes. 
Also because the leveling of character is much faster than leveling of gear, it is efficient to level up more characters than just one.
5 Likes
I think perhaps you should put your money where your mouth is, and play a few games on vet+ with only bots. And come share your experiences. It’s not at all helpful to simply suggest that I just put on a happy face, grin and bear it. 
I also like to play with the bots just because I prefer solo, but it does limit me to the lower difficulty levels. I’ve managed to get one successful run of champion so far, but as you stated it has taken extra time to level up all my minions so they can get useful talents.
I think I would like to have some controls for the bots, and that might make them more specialized so they can contribute more for solo players. For example, if I could tell waywatcher Kerillian to shoot more and pick up ammo bags that would help, and maybe tell Bardin to favor shoving or something. Then those who liked to play bots could put in the effort to make a team they work well with, and other players could keep the default behavior.
Bots are fine. What you need to do is level them and gear them properly.
The only thing wrong with bots in their current state is how they love to be bullet magnets and run into your line of fire.
2 Likes
i farmed champion with bots to get my power level from 200-300 because it was way faster than having to wade through quickplay and endure the numerous host disconnects and whatever problems.
i only levelled my other chars (i just wanted to play elf) AFTER i got to gear level 300. levelling my other characters to be tanky (unchained/ironbreaker/footsoldier) really helped in their survivability and effectiveness because i was the one doing most of the dmg. i used them as special bait most of the time (i do that with players too)
- bots have autoaim, they snipe specials in some scenarios way faster than humans can
- bots teleport to your position if they’re too far away, you can speedrun some maps
- they stick with you and don’t mind if you do stupid things and won’t abuse you
- they are great as tanks and you can use them as a safety line for retreating/attacking a line of enemies
bots are not as weak as you make them out to be. cover their weaknesses and capitalise on their strengths.
i used to farm cata on vt1 with bots alone (of course they can’t carry grims or reliably tomes) and the programming hasn’t changed.
4 Likes
fkn elf… 
Bardin 
That’s what i’m saying. It’s not at all intuitive or new player friendly in any way. I shouldn’t have to spend 30 hours grinding characters I have no intention of playing, to enable solo play.
er, as i posted, you don’t need to?
i levelled to 30 with the rest of them still at level 1. they are still pretty effective.
You did higher than recruit without leveling them, or gearing them?
Totally agree, bots are fine for champion, too weak for legend though.
There are a few things to consider when playing with bots:
Your bots scale off your played character in terms of heropower (was said by FS) but they keep their trinkets, +stats and traits.
Dont give your elf waystalker bot a glaive or she dies more often, simply because of the way bots block.
Dont pick a slayer, huntsman etc. as a bot (unchained is insanely tanky and having some tank bots is probably the best way to go)
Play defensive, you dont have hypercarries in your team, but extremely good cover from specials and sneaky rats from behind, meaning you get a lot better at holding positions.
Biiiig +++ bots dont deal friendly fire, that is a huuuge advantage on holding choke points.
Bosses are a trouble, since the bots dont use any other items as healings, its your job to use potions and bombs, but it is indeed harder if you play a character with low boss-dps.
Dont bother trying legend with bots, won 1 game out of 10 with all characters maxed out on lvl 30 / 600 heropower, bots simply were not made for soloruns on legend.
I don’t think this is working then.
It worked for me, perhaps try to elaborate
I would not be surprised if the scalings bug from time to time.
TLDR at bottom
I’m starting this off with a little exposition, which I feel is necessary since Fatshark wants to focus on a COOP game. This is totally ok, it’s their game and they can do what they want with it. Plus mods will probably be able to fix this kind of thing. But in the event that mods aren’t set up to adjust bots, I would like to at least point out why I play with bots, and why I think it’s reasonable to focus on creating better performance with bots. I don’t enjoy playing this game with other people, for two main reasons:
- I like to play levels at an exremely slow pace (40-50 minutes or so per level), and people online generally like to keep things moving. I don’t want to be a burden to my teammates, get left in the dust, or put up with hateful comments, so when I am playing online (which is most of the time, sicne I prefer harder difficulties) I just rush through the level like everyone else, which is detrimental to my enjoyment of the game.
- Loot isn’t a priority for me, and people online generally do things like take tomes and grims, and do quick play over custom matches. This is entirely fine, but it’s not how I wish to spend my time, and that’s why solo is a good fir for me.
I would like play with bots, and at least on Veteran and sometimes Champion (haven’t unlocked Legendary yet) they are ok for the most part, with a little (a lot) of micromanaging. I Still have yet to win a Champion game with bots, but I feel like I could make it work. And before anyone says “just play a lower difficulty” I don’t enjoy 1-shotting everything with little effort. My hero power is too strong at this point, and I also like having to avoid damage. There are a few issues with bots that make playing with them feel like a chore, or almost impossible at times.
- They face-tank bosses. It seems like they do this against everything else, but that’s no tan issue because I prioritize their survival over anything else - healing them, losing health to save them, things like that. But against bosses that just doesn’t work, since they have lots of health and do lots of damage, so they kill the bots before I can really do anything about it. Most bosses I fight offline, especially as the difficulty goes up, just kill the bots near instantaneously. I am by no means clutch material. The Skaven bosses are doable sometimes, but with the way the bots fight bosses the Chaos spawn is literally game over, and the Troll is almost certainly so as well. Honestly I think the bots just need to be able to dodge a little better, this would improve their performance against both bosses without making them too OP. Or maybe give them a damage boost against bosses, but that may or may not be a bad idea.
- Bots just seem to “break” in some situations. I am far from a perfect player, and I do go down or get grabbed or stuff like that. Sometimes the bots will just stand around and do nothing, and I know this has been reported many times, but it’s quite frustrating and I feel it’s worth mentioning again. I remember the bots used to do this in the first game, and they got better over time, so I hope the same will happen with the first game.
TLDR: Make the bots more effective against bosses, and make them generally more responsive (i.e. Revivng people instead of standing around doing nothing)
Bots have several limitations, but that’s to be expected.
A command wheel should be implemented. It’s aggravating when bots don’t do something because they just don’t feel like e.g. taking tomes or just getting out of the way.
Properly geared they can hold themselves fine against regular/elite enemies. You will still probably have to kill everything though.
As it has been said bots are bad against bosses, they usually help a little if you take aggro. However, against Chaos Spawn they make everything much worse. He’s so fast that often there’s no time to switch aggro and bots can’t avoid taking the first grab. Against him having 3 bots is having 3 extra life bars for the boss.
They could allow bots to dodge things.
I don’t like playing as other characters. And I don’t have time for it. This essentially means that my bots are pretty much only good only on vet difficulty, and VERY rarely on champion.
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You don’t HAVE to level the bots up to 25 or 30. Level 12 or 15 is generally good enough for most bots in Champion. Your main concern should be to make them as tanky as possible while also giving them the best “sniping” capabilities.
That said, the most effective bot by far, is Ironbreaker Bardin. Pick the +50% block/push angle talent, give him another +30% from gear, equip an axe/mace and shield… he’ll never get hit or run out of stamina. I farm Champion with 2 grims and IB Bardinbot is always sitting at the least damage taken by the end of the run, usually <200 (and most of it is from AoE damage).
Unchained Sienna is also pretty tanky, as another post already noted. Equip her with a Flame Sword and she’s great against hordes.
yes, as i said multiple times.
the player is the one that drives the party in solo play, if you are expecting the bots to do everything for you, it should be the other way around.
i’m going to say flat out, if you are having problems clearing champion with bots, it’s a skill problem. you need to adapt your playstyle playing with bots vs playing with players.
try playing fort brackenbruker first, it’s a breeze at the end with no specials to worry about, only slave rats.
L2p is not productive. Seriously, this is my feedback. It’s not a place for you to browbeat me into thinking there isn’t one. Check your ego.
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- you don’t want to play with players because you don’t have the patience to
- you don’t want to work with what the bots can provide because you believe they suck at level 1 despite evidence that they don’t
- you find it hard to believe it is easy to complete levels past recruit solo with bots
- i am not the only one who agrees that bots can work with you through champion levels (legend is too difficult for bot AI)
- you refuse to acknowledge that player skill is a factor in determining how effective bots are in a game that is heavily twitchy-skill-dependant
when you give feedback, you need to ensure that you present it from a well-rounded viewpoint. not being able to handle veteran means you have a lot more to learn about the game. it would be more helpful to pinpoint the specific limitations of what bots cannot do well, rather than make this a rant thread about solo difficulty, which is extremely subjective based on player skill.