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Playing against bots in offline multiplayer: Yay or meh?

I think it should be standard and am pretty disappointed so many developers have given up on bots.

Yes, they are not like real players. But they provide a way to practice, and experiment. They also help with backfilling when a game's population is low. If a game has bot support, it doesn't matter if the player base is down to 2. Those 2 people can still play a match that has some kind of excitement rather than feel empty and abandoned.
 
Yes. Especially when the online MP traffic starts to die down on any particular game, gotta keep some some type of bots to keep things interesting.
 
re: thread title...Yay!

In COD Black Ops II for Wii U for example...I tend to warm up before joining online multiplayer by playing against a few bots...besides getting used to the controls again if I haven't played in a while, it's great imo for giving you a kind-of-sort-of feel of playing against others...wish bots in offline/online multiplayer games was standard tbh
 
I'll say Yay, definitely when online dies out and you still want to do multiplayer against the computer.
 
Shock32 said:
I really enjoyed the bots in Gears of war . I would set them to the easiest difficulty on king of the hill so they would all pile up on the hill and I would try to kill them all with one shot of the mortar or hammer of dawn. It was also fun to follow one around the map just to see what they do or how they fight, it was just funny when they did something out of the norm. So i'm all for them.
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Pretty much most of this post sounds hilariously cruelly funny to me haha :P
 
As a content tourist, I like to see the design and artistry of the multiplayer levels in my games even if I have little intention of going online to actually fight humans. So I'll load up matches with bots and dick around in the MP until I've seen everything. Then I'll probably never touch it again. So Yay, but maybe for an hour or two tops.
 
Combat training was fun in blops 1 because it had its own progression. So it was like an rpg. Too bad all cods since have gone away from this (except ghosts).

Some other games like gears 4 let you play against bots and still earn xp so that's good.

Otherwise they're fun to mess around with occasionally but not much lasting appeal.
 
Bots are always welcome for me. Especially if I just want to not care about how well I'm playing if I'm doing something else (like listening to a podcast).

It's also a good way to show the game off to others, and let them learn to play.

Radiant Silvertuna said:
I love bots. Timesplitters 2 might be the most fun I've ever had with couch multiplayer, and bots were a huge part of that.
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This was the first thing I thought of. A friend and I would spend afternoons fighting 2vWhateverthemaxnumberofbots is defending the prisoner on the Mars map.

Great times!

The ability to edit bot's difficulty levels lead to some cool experimentation in game balance. Eventually we started cranking them up all the way, but giving ourselves 1 or 2 bot allies set to low intelligence.

Really wish Splatoon 2 would add it, since they have those Octoling bots in the single player.
 
Bots are a great, low pressure way to get familiar with the different multiplayer modes of a game as long as they are somewhat competent.

Does anyone know why you can't play a game with bots on your team in Overwatch? I never understood why they don't have some kind of "AI only" mode.
 
I love bots. You can learn a lot about the game before jumping into online. Sometimes I just want to get an idea of what a mode is or how it really works and don't want to drag a team down just to get an idea of how something functions. Bots let me do that on my own time without screwing over the team because one person has no clue at all as to what they're supposed to be doing or how this mode even works.

The lack of bots and other stuff I thought would be standard in console shooters in a post-N64 world is what turned me off to the genre post-N64.
 
Well, I've played the tournament modes of UT, UT2k2 and UT 2k4 to completion multiple times, so I'd pretty much have to say Yay. They don't replace proper MP, but they still be great fun and they can be used to prepare for the real thing.
 
I like playing against bots either alone of with friends. It is all the fun of a multiplayer without the toxic part.

Instead of buying the battlefornt why not go for originaccess? that way you can test the game and if you don't like it you still have the rest of the vault.
 
It's great for non-competitive types like myself. Used to play so much Perfect dark and Conker, single or split screen with bots. That was way more fun then I ever had online. Battlefront was a nice return to those simpler, less frustrating times.

Also a bit of a heathen in that I play a lot of Star Craft but never online. Bots are just fun. Can make them as challenging as I want and not a bit more.
 
What games this gen even have bots? There aren't enough of them.

Bots are great. Timesplitters 2 bots were fun as hell. It's part of what made it one of the best games ever made.
 
Bots are great and add a lot of value to multiplayer-centric games. It's a great way to enjoy the core gameplay without the stress that often comes with playing online. Bot modes in COD are a blast.
 
I thought the Bots of Battlefront weren't that great, serviceable at best, and not all modes/maps are open to you. The older Battlefront games had way better bots (And Galactic Conquest was awesome damn it.)

That said, EVERY MP-ONLY GAME SHOULD HAVE BOTS.

That way, even if the bots suck, someone could still play Battlefront 1 20 years from now if they so choose.

I realize that AI waypointing is not an easy thing at all, especially with more complex games like PUBG. But allowing your game to stand the test of time and players not having to worry about the game having zero players is a good thing.

For example, I could still play Shattered Horizon if I ever want to. I couldn't if the game had no bots.
 
Lived in rural Ireland with 56k up to like fuckin 2008 iirc

Games with bot matches have a weirdly special place in my heart, on console and pc.

Unreal Tourney, Battlefront 2, Operation Flashpoint, BF2, day of defeat, CS source, Rogue Spear, were all great experiences precisely because I could just boot them up and shoot some cool guns and just listen to music / radio without worrying if I was tanking my teams performance with my shitty internet. I miss those days far more than I ever expected I would.

A game having bot matches at all these days woudln't make or break my purchase but it's so fuckin rare that it would jump out at me as a feature, I've actually been trying to compile a list of modern games with bot matches;

For PS4 all I can think of is Killzone Shadowfall?

edit: Also, this topic reminded me of a great Super Bunnyhop episode about bots in games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoYjayrKRDs

It's very detailed and it explains why resources just aren't put in bots
 
Should be standard. They can keep people occupied when internet is down, the servers are down, or the population is low/dead. They also serve basically the same purpose as the CPU in fighting games -- letting players learn and practice the maps and basic game mechanics. They should be standard, if for no other reason than basic training.

I've heard some developers state the opinion however that PvE survival modes serve the same purpose if they use the MP maps. That might be true, but regardless I actually think basically all shooters should have PvE survival modes like horde. I can't think of a single shooter that wouldn't benefit from one. They basically create a test bed for both players and designers to explore a game's combat mechanics without having to fill them up with human players.

So if your game doesn't have bots, at least have horde or some equivalent that uses the MP maps.
 
while I like most people vastly prefer fighting real humans I think bots are of the utmost importance for the preservation of the games themselves. I mean actually, a small amount of games need bots because technically games like cod or halo(not counting 5) can be played locally with friends but games like battlefield or titanfall will become pretty much useless. I still play the first titanfall a lot more than I'm willing to admit and it's mainly because I know once the player base completely dies out I can't return ever again. And that feeling sucks.
 
I agree bots should be standard for every shooter with a multiplayer component, especially for those that are multiplayer only.

Bots in MWR were one of the welcome additions Raven made to COD4's multiplayer.
 
SliceSabre said:
The only games I have ever played to do it right are Perfect Dark and the Timesplitters franchise.

Perfect Dark's bots having certain personality traits made playing against them a crazier than playing against people. Timesplitters bots were tough to fight and were able to do moves the player couldn't which made them a joy to fight as well.


I say YAY to playing with/against bots.
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Yep, Perfect Dark with some friends and bots mixed in was the bee's knees. FistSim, JudgeSim, and the whole gang with their specific personalities were fun to play with. Always made for a good laugh when FistSim rolled up on someone and knocked the snot out of them leaving them with blurry vision.

Damn I love that game.
 
I have no issues with bots. It's a good way to practice before trying it out on real people. My only issue would be like in HotS where you can progress your characters without ever setting foot into MP.
 
i have played untold hours of UT99 and UT2k4 with bots and i have no regrets and would gladly continue doing it
 
I like having the option, but it gets old quickly in a lot of games as the AI isn't up to par. The bots in battlefront were ok(no where near great) when I played but they may have gotten better in an update.
 
I don't like a lot of the anxiety that goes with online competitive games and offline bots are a good way for me to enjoy something without feeling like I'm going to have a heart attack.
 
It's a nice feature, but usually only for practice or getting achievements. It never really holds a candle to playing actual people once you get decent at the game.
 
Tagyhag said:
I thought the Bots of Battlefront weren't that great, serviceable at best, and not all modes/maps are open to you.
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Last I heard not every map is available. I downloaded a free four hour trial of the full game to try it all out before I buy. Hopefully the bots are half decent.

And I completely forgot that I play against bots all of the time in CS GO.
 
PantsuJo said:
Yes. Especially Quake 3, bots on Nightmare were fucking hell.

Great memories.
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Indeed. It was part of my warm-up routine before going online. It's baffling why more games don't feature this. The player population doesn't suffer, it can only draw in more players who would otherwise be put off by online only.

Similarly puzzled why bots aren't used online to fill slots when there aren't enough players. Leavers or disconnects should also be replaced with an equivalent bot according to MMR. Would prevent a lot of griefing and ensure greater longevity of the game.
 
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