What is wrong with the bots

[𝕹𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉]

Me and my Sister are playing the game coop and the bots will only follow her and not me, despite me running ahead and making space, so i need help for lurkers and stuff, The bots constantly are getting lost and being super far behind even when i spam bot commands. Are they genuinely that stupid?

[Valcali]

They are just goofy and dumb, shame you can't command them to stay put.

[𝕹𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉]

Originally posted by Valcali:

They are just goofy and dumb, shame you can't command them to stay put.

It would not be so bad if 1 bot followed each of us around, because she tends to explore and look at scenery and I like to steam roll my way through stuff, but usually it ends up with me getting pinned and going down to a enemy that you can't even hear because they all sound exactly the same. I never have this issue in L4d2 or Vermintide 2 because each special makes a noticeable noise but here they all just sound like the generic zombies besides the bull, But without a dodge button the bull will always grab you unless you have a piece of terrain to duck behind. Its just very frustrating to lose control of your character for 10 minutes out of a match with zero counter play. Ive legitimately seen the game spawn a lurker
right in front of me as well. Seems like they only spawn the enemies when you are far away from a group, which is also really dumb. When we are all together almost zero lurkers are in the entire level. Seems like a dumb way to punish someone and not an actual fun thing to add to the game. Turning off specials and doubling the wave size in the modifier was the most fun we had in the game. The specials are very poorly designed. But now i am rambling.
Anyways better bots would at least make it less annoying but its just bad design is the problem.

[BORG]

Yes, the bots are genuinely that stupid. Also yes, some of the specials are definitely poorly designed. A big part of the community has been talking about and expressing their disdain of this stuff for a long while, Saber just doesn't seem to care. Toxic Commando is the next big sale for them. That's all they seem to care about - money and sales first; quality last. Apparently Saber intends to shift their business to produce more quality than sales quantity according to the CEO. His words should be taken with a grain of salt. I'll believe it when I see it.

[GimmeAnEgg]

Yes the bots are beyond useless so do not rely on them or expect to be saved by them.
Some classes have perks that let you immediately break free when you are pinned down, albeit with a cooldown.

[Sasha Pines (no brain)]

because again their coding never been change since day 1 they only add extra feature that is

[MLCEV]

The bots are stupid, painfully so at times. Though I'm not sure this particular issue is a case of Saber's incompetence (there's plenty of other examples for that). It seems to be a semi intentional design choice in these kinds of games.

I believe Fat Shark (VT2 Devs) has even been quoted saying they intentionally keep the bots within a certain range of ineptitude because they feel if they are too competent, it will somehow discourage multiplayer as more gamers will just choose to play solo with capable bots.

There's more holes in that theory than there are in a net, but they don't care anymore than Saber does or seemingly any other studio that makes these kinds of games. It's clearly not difficult to do, there are mods designed by individual amateurs within some of these games communities that overhaul the bots to be immensely superior to the vanilla bots. So it's possible, devs simply choose not to, for any number of (bad) reasons.

[𝕹𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉]

Originally posted by MLCEV:

The bots are stupid, painfully so at times. Though I'm not sure this particular issue is a case of Saber's incompetence (there's plenty of other examples for that). It seems to be a semi intentional design choice in these kinds of games.

I believe Fat Shark (VT2 Devs) has even been quoted saying they intentionally keep the bots within a certain range of ineptitude because they feel if they are too competent, it will somehow discourage multiplayer as more gamers will just choose to play solo with capable bots.

There's more holes in that theory than there are in a net, but they don't care anymore than Saber does or seemingly any other studio that makes these kinds of games. It's clearly not difficult to do, there are mods designed by individual amateurs within some of these games communities that overhaul the bots to be immensely superior to the vanilla bots. So it's possible, devs simply choose not to, for any number of (bad) reasons.

I can understand that, but if the bots just sit and watched while you are pinned then why even have them? lol. Kinda silly.

[borsdy]

The bots not splitting up evenly among human players is very annoying! Another is when a lurker downs you and the bot will ignore killing them because they are so determined to rescue you above all else

[KenTWOu]

The main problem with bots is when you are lying on the ground the game assigns one of them to revive you. But if something else happens with this assigned bot on the way to you, you may find yourself in a situation when you're lying on the ground and 2 other bots are just standing near you waiting when the assigned bot will come to rescue you.

That's the most annoying part about bots behavior IMO.

Originally posted by Sasha Pines (no brain):

because again their coding never been change since day 1

Not true at all. Bots were significantly improved in this Holy Terror update, so they have classes now and can use classes' abilities. There were other improvements in other updates as well.

[BORG]

Originally posted by borsdy:

The bots not splitting up evenly among human players is very annoying! Another is when a lurker downs you and the bot will ignore killing them because they are so determined to rescue you above all else :taloslol:

Definitely agree with this. So, so annoying.

Originally posted by KenTWOu:

The main problem with bots is when you are lying on the ground the game assigns one of them to revive you. But if something else happens with this assigned bot on the way to you, you may find yourself in a situation when you're lying on the ground and 2 other bots are just standing near you waiting when the assigned bot will come to rescue you.

That's the most annoying part about bots behavior IMO.

Originally posted by Sasha Pines (no brain):

because again their coding never been change since day 1

Not true at all. Bots were significantly improved in this Holy Terror update, so they have classes now and can use classes' abilities. There were other improvements in other updates as well.

I would say that's a very slight improvement when contrasted to how bad they are overall in other areas. They are even stupid with their classes. I've seen bots with Fixer class put ammo in the most idiotic spots where it's unreachable during horde waves. Would be nice to be able to tell the bot where to put it, but no, it thinks it makes more sense to put it where a horde will path and the ammo can't be reached. That's just one example of the bot idiocy among many examples that could be used, to show how bad they are by design.

[GimmeAnEgg]

Originally posted by borsdy:

The bots not splitting up evenly among human players is very annoying! Another is when a lurker downs you and the bot will ignore killing them because they are so determined to rescue you above all else :taloslol:

This is painful if you play on Insane or Extreme. You will be stuck in a situation where they will go down one by one trying to revive you without dealing with the Lurker first until all 4 players are dead.

[Saberyoko]

You're lucky because there was a time when bots couldn't kill a single zombie with melees and one was enought to take 30~45% of their whole life.

[KenTWOu]

Originally posted by BORG:

I would say that's a very slight improvement when contrasted to how bad they are overall in other areas. They are even stupid with their classes. I've seen bots with Fixer class put ammo in the most idiotic spots where it's unreachable during horde waves.

At the time they released that update I tried to beat all missions on Extreme either with bots or solo. And I tell you the difference was night and day. Bots suddenly became helpful, so they saved me dozens and dozens of times either throwing a grenade at special zombies when it was needed, healing me or covering me with gas grenade when I was surrounded by zombies or got lots of damage, etc.

We often treat completely random actions of AIs as smart behaviors, because it's all smoke and mirrors, window dressing, etc. But I'm a huge fan of stealth games, so I know that it's almost impossible to make a good completely autonomous AI without cutting corners, cheating and/or manually putting way points on all levels, especially when your game involves stealth. No one can do it, even Naughty Dog devs can't.

So obviously WWZ bots do cheat, do lots of mistakes, often stand in wrong places, etc, but they were significantly improved by that update.

[BORG]

Originally posted by KenTWOu:

Originally posted by BORG:

I would say that's a very slight improvement when contrasted to how bad they are overall in other areas. They are even stupid with their classes. I've seen bots with Fixer class put ammo in the most idiotic spots where it's unreachable during horde waves.

At the time they released that update I tried to beat all missions on Extreme either with bots or solo. And I tell you the difference was night and day. Bots suddenly became helpful, so they saved me dozens and dozens of times either throwing a grenade at special zombies when it was needed, healing me or covering me with gas grenade when I was surrounded by zombies or got lots of damage, etc.

We often treat completely random actions of AIs as smart behaviors, because it's all smoke and mirrors, window dressing, etc. But I'm a huge fan of stealth games, so I know that it's almost impossible to make a good completely autonomous AI without cutting corners, cheating and/or manually putting way points on all levels, especially when your game involves stealth. No one can do it, even Naughty Dog devs can't.

So obviously WWZ bots do cheat, do lots of mistakes, often stand in wrong places, etc, but they were significantly improved by that update.

So how exactly did the bots significantly improve apart from being able to use classes? Everything is more less the same, but worse from how good they used to be long ago. They get in the way, they go down one by one trying to get a player up and don't try to eliminate threats first to clear the immediate area, they try to aimlessly hack down the Juggernaut and die, they split unevenly in co-op when teammates separate to perform their tasks leaving one player or more without any backup, etc. etc. etc. Also, how exactly do the bots cheat? I'm especially curious about that.

[KenTWOu]

Originally posted by BORG:

So how exactly did the bots significantly improve apart from being able to use classes?

I don't get it. Are you trying to move the goalposts? I've said: Bots were significantly improved in the Holy Terror update, and there were other improvements as well. That's it. I never said that other improvements were significant. But there were improvements nonetheless, Just read all patch notes one by one. Here's an example:

• AI can now carry heavy weapons
  
• AI can now use melee finishers

Now you can order bots to pick up a heavy weapon and then take it from them later. So you don't need to waste your precious time to run from your defending position to a crate with that heavy weapon. You can just turn to the bot and take another one from him almost immediately. That's very, very useful during horde attacks when you need to kill zombies as fast as possible.

Obviously melee finishers also made bots more helpful in situations when you're surrounded by lots of zombies.

Originally posted by BORG:

Everything is more less the same, but worse from how good they used to be long ago.

You're just downplaying it. They're much, much better now.

Originally posted by BORG:

they try to aimlessly hack down the Juggernaut and die,

That's more of a Juggernaut's design issue rather than bots issue.

Originally posted by BORG:

Also, how exactly do the bots cheat? I'm especially curious about that.

Bots don't know how to play this game stealthily. Like in all other stealth-action games enemies just ignore friendly Ais up to a certain point to make stealth phase even possible. You're crouching behind a zombie so he couldn't hear/notice you, meanwhile bots are running behind the same zombie completely unnoticed.

Bots don't run to ammo crates or equipment bags to replenish their ammo and gadgets. They have unlimited resources. That's why one of the tactics on Extreme with bots is using that against zombie waves to save ammo in certain situations.

Obviously some 'negative' mutators just don't apply their rules to bots, because if would be almost impossible to make special behaviors for bots for each mutator (each possible mutator combination) without completely ruining overall experience. So they cheat.

The point is AI in games (especially partners' AI) is always a cheat on top of a cheat on top of a cheat. That's how it was in Left 4 Dead games. That's how it was in Splinter Cell/Watch Dogs games, That's how it was in Uncharted/The Last Of Us games. So you have to adjust your expectations unless someone will find a way to make a believable, completely infallible AI using neural networks or something, and that tech will become a standard across the game industry.