Background
For a while now, PvP enjoys bots who sometimes range from completely idiotic to magic aim guys, who seem to come at some players in the wrong situation, sometimes frustrating, sometimes even worthy foes. For T3 e.g. the metagame includes the bot already, keeping the farm ahead of the enemy team, by being the first who shoots the bots meeting in the middle, e.g.
However, the bots sometimes are even unfair, especially if your bot keeps moving idiotic, while the enemy bot suddenly decides to camp as a sniper.
Close matches, where only the bot falls victim to attacks, become exhausting and disappointing.
Also, the bots’ behaviour sometimes just does not show good gameplay and make players follow the same routine as they do.
So I thought about which simple stuff could increase the bots to be fair, and started making notes, these are some of them.
A sidenote: for me it is clear, that bot movement is hard to implement, while actually, bot aim has to be “made sluggish” because otherwise they could become aimbots. So I do not suggest improvements in stuff like pathfinding, instead, more of how a pvp bot in games might be more fun, by increasing their playstyle tactics.
The Bot Setup
- both teams should get equally skilled AI, with the same ships. Of course, if the MM balances the team by giving a weak team a somewhat stronger bot, I do not know if this is done, they should still not be completely unbalanced and fairly close to each other. I think this part is already established.
- ideally, both bots should open with the same ship, and engage. Not one of them camping and the other feeding. This sometimes sadly happens.
- all bots should carry one engi for good example.
- bots should decide their respawn ship by what the team lacks, so a team without sufficient engis can get an engi bot. Only then, they should take random action, if such checks fail. The random actions could be randomized for both bots in the same array, so if the bot does not react, both bots will follow the same “strategy” of respawns in a completely hypothetically even match.
The Bot behaviour
- Engineer Bots should not suicide frontal into the enemy team. Instead, they should try to stay in range from the usual “middle point”, searching for groups of players to heal.
- If a bot follows a player, which they sometimes seem to do, it should break from this player, if he is camping, and move on to a new objective, worst possibly going for a suicide feed run.
- If a bot follows a player, and that player gives pings, it should lock on targets if its idle which are in its weapon range, and engage, stopping to follow.
- If a player is pinged by team, and the bot is idle (so still on the way on a minor objective), and secure (not being engaged), and in sight range, it should aim to protect that player for a while.
- If a bot dies repeatedly, more often than players do, it should try to change its tactics to a more passive and supporting role, if the team is losing (or losing hard)
- If a team is overly winning however, it should become more aggressive and suicidal.
- for all other roles than engi, there should be different tactics which however only come into play, if the bot “rethinks” his approach to this particular game, while the engi bot should always be a smart engi bot. E.g. they try to stay with command ships or engineers as guards or commands, etc.
- Generally however the bot behaviour can stay as it is, for games which are rather balanced.
Now I know, the first thing some people would say is “Stop Bots all together in pvp”. I kinda hope one day, that could be possible. Still, since the bots are there, they should keep the game running, instead of being another obstacle. They should adapt to making the game fair, instead of adding to pressure. However they should also not be completely a pain in the butt, which cost you a deserved victory.
What do you guys think about these suggestions, and which other behaviours would you like to see, which keeps the gameplay still fair?
Or do you actually find bots are fine as they are?
