Had a couple of games in a row just then of near complete bot teams save for a handful of other people. The last week or two I’ve noticed it getting worse and worse, getting full bot teams is becoming more and more frequent to the point of regularity. Bots - as it seems - are not limited to Lone Fighter. I’ve been playing the game up until now because, despite the grind, wrong direction and Gaijin hi-jinks, the game was fun. But this + a whole bunch of other stuff and direction is slowly making this game less and less fun and is making me much less inclined to play. Honestly the game was more fun in the first few weeks of OBT - it felt like it was in a better place too than it is now. I wasn’t apart of Alpha or CBT but from what I gathered (and seen) the game played better then, too.
Back to topic: is this a mark of a declining player population? I don’t know. The fact that the game and developers try to obfuscate the fact that this game has a butt-load of bots masquerading as players raises other questions in my mind, too. I know some of the inevitable responses to this will include (but not be limited to): “this is necessary otherwise 5 or more minute long matchmaking queues” or “nobody wants to wait in long queues” or “game fine” or even “What bots? There are no bots” but I am not advocating to get rid of bots completely, and bots filling out teams in Squads mode make the most sense for certain “phenomena” we see in this game.
What I am saying though is that when the AI is this bad and rudimentary, when the bots are this useless - to the point where it is actively making the game worse and ruining the gameplay, matches and team balance, with no huge turnaround or major improvement in sight, you cannot have a game, gameplay or game design so heavily reliant on bots. Nor can you, or should you, rely on bots to act as padding to fill out the numbers in teams and make it seem like there are more players than what there actually are. It is not good for the health - and future - of the game.
i mean, it’s Lone fighter that you are talking about.
what else do you expect?
i don’t think bots are the issue as those are the backbones of this game. sure, they can be improved ( and they MUST if i have to be honest )
those are the main reasons.
believe it or not. i’m not sure you would like to wait half of an hour just to fill an LF match that will probably last less than 10/5 minuts.
so, perhaps you should be thankefull that there are bots allowing us to play.
and sorry bud, but playing LF it’s like playing call of duty just for the vehicles… not their cup of teas.
eh… i… disagree.
that’s pretty much debatable. countless of titles out there are based on bots. and yet, they are still with us. i don’t see why or how gaijin with darkflow can’t.
sorry again, but that’s not ( partially ) true.
like, the reason why the game it’s not doing great ( in my personal opinion and experience ), is the same reason why bots are in the games.
( which by not, let me tell you. if you play squad, you encounter less bots )
is because the lack of players.
and the lack of players is due to others major issues.
that is why I stopped playing LF, because the amount of bots a team has while the other has none, making the game super boring not even being able to leave from the spawn
I created a post with the solutions and very interesting reading. What I recived was the post being deleted due to the haters jumping into the thread and making it very toxic.
Basically what I said was that both teams should have the same amount of bots, and that could apply aswell for squad mode, for the future when the population is lower.
If a faction has few people queuing a message should appear to the opponent faction " long queue because you opponent faction doesnt have enough people queuing", so people can switch faction if they really want to play quick.
with time the queue will be balanced since nobody wants to wait queueing, and the faction low populated will find instagames, lets say the game starts with 5 players on each team so imagine russians have 50 players in queue and germans 5, what will happen is that 45 russian players will have to wait until more players on the oponent team will be there for playing a new match, or they could switch faction if they really want to play
You seem to have fundamentally misunderstood my entire OP.
I am not talking about Lone Fighter - I am talking about Enlisted in general. Perhaps more importantly is the “I don’t think bots are the issue as those are the backbones of this game. Sure they can be improved (and they MUST if I have to be honest)”
That is EXACTLY what I am talking about in the OP. Bots lay at the foundation of this game and yet the AI that controls them is absolutely horrible. We have a problem here.
Again, not talking about LF specifically, nor am I suggesting for the removal of bots - which I said as much in the OP.
Again, circles back to point 1 and the main contention of the OP. Bots are the backbone of this game (in your words) yet the AI that controls them is very bad. Bots are ineffectual and helpless at the best of times. The bots in your squad is more useful as instant respawns half the time. It’s even worse when literally half or more of your team is controlled by them. 2 or 3 or even 4 real players and a whole bunch of bots vs half a team or more of players, there’s no contest. In a game where success is so heavily predicated on capturing or holding objectives, assisting your team, holding ground and forward defensive lines, not exposing yourself to enemy fire, not standing around in the open right near an enemy etc etc, bot teams (which love to do the opposite of all that) are a problem and a severe handicap. It stands to reason, then, that the incredibly poor AI which is unlikely to see a major change to bring it up to a competent level or the standards of a lot of other games any time soon, is actively harming the game in terms of gameplay, matches and team balance.
I’m not saying you can’t have bots, that Enlisted or Darkflow can’t have bots, or games can’t have bots. These countless other games that use bots and AI can do so because in most cases, the bots and AI are good, or at least decent enough to support the gameplay and game design. They are still with us because the AI is good enough for the game’s design and purposes. The main point here is that Enlisted relying so heavily on AI + Enlisteds game design and gameplay is completely incongruent with the functionality and competency of the AI. You can’t rely on the bots as the backbone for the game when the bots are not good and cannot fulfill its function. It might as well be a shooting gallery in that case. We’ve all seen single player games where the AI was bad and it harmed the game and gameplay. This is the same but for a multiplayer game. Darkflow CAN rely on bots in this game, but the bots must be good enough to do so first.
Also those two bits you quoted here should be taken and addressed together as one.
Again the quoted section here from the OP should really be with the rest of its paragraph because its part of the same point. The clarification on this in the response is in the bit above the quoted section.
You do encounter less bots in Squad, however as the player base continues to dwindle, you will see more and more bots in teams, including more matches with near-full bot teams, as I (and others) have noticed over the last couple of weeks, which was my impetus to make this thread in the first place. The AI is completely subpar for the purposes of the game and its gameplay and yet the game relies heavily on it. Combine these two together and you have a positive feed-back loop that will get worse as more players leave the game. As I said earlier, it is making me less inclined to play and it is helping to suck the enjoyment and fun out of the game too (by way of AI behaviour, more steamrolls/more dud matches). Make no mistake, it is a significant problem in and of itself that will cause people to just simply not play - or at least not play as much. It is also a compounding problem that adds to the other major issues this game has.
This will further contribute to the lack of players, furthering this positive feedback loop.
The last thing I want to address is that we need to distinguish player squad bots from team-filler bots. Yes they are controlled by the same AI (I think) but their purposes are completely different.
That is what this pokes at:
Player squad bots are a core part of the game design of Enlisted. There is no illusion about that, what they are (bots) and what they are for. Team-filler bots (bot controlled and lead squads that fill out the team) are different and are exactly as my new nickname for them suggests: they exist purely as padding to fill out the teams and the appearance of player numbers and serve no game design or gameplay function otherwise. Why isn’t it made clear about who on our team is a bot or not? Why isn’t it even clear about their existence? Why are they masquerading as players?
No.
I know this is part tongue in cheek, but they are doing everything wrong.
This dicussion and grievance will continue until the devs acknowledge and address it and until there is a big turnaround in the AI and their implementation as well as the game design where it is all up to a standard where it isn’t a problem anymore.
TLDR: bots and AI are an issue and its harming the game with the way things are and a positive feedback loop which I see forming.
Yep, the typical responses in these forums. The rise of the zealous “status quo” faction.
Those are some interesting ideas. I can see some potential small problems with them but they are only kinks that can be ironed out, and it would be better than nothing at the moment.
they could be better if only the team wouldn’t waste time behind premium content when the game is unpolished.
and i agree there.
sounded like you were pretty much against bots in anyway at the point of saying:
which, considering the team size, i can’t really blain them.
for experience, they improved over time by alot.
and yet they are not perfect.
i’m well aware of the current issues.
and i can’t say more than,
" it’s just matter of time ".
and that’s… somewhat true.
nothing to deny here.
well, the AIs i don’t necesarely think are the issues.
because again, you can’t really make assumptions over something that it’s not final. ( and we are still waiting for the 1st developblog to be truee ).
where things will surely change as it matters position, behavior and awareness of those last.
if i have to be honest, AIs are the least issue of this game.
but the microtransactions, lack of skill based matchmaker, game mode selector, and above all, umbalance between key factors of factions & lack of content that makes this game somewhat unenjoyable.
well, those were introduced because back in the days we barely had testers or enough players to furfill matches. as such those were introduced. the point of being introduced were so that people would not leave because they had the suspect of being bots.
that partially fixed the issues of than, which could partially fix the issue of now. but not many changes has been made, so it has becomed an outdated solution which partially works. but barely due to their lack of equipment and improvement.
i won’t lie that there’s a huge work to put behind, but i’m somewhat confident in what devs have done til now ( outside the trashy market and microtransaction situation ). but i still believe in AIs.
well, they are AI. but pretty much Baby Ais.
just like cakes, they require quite some effort, time and above all, ingreditends to be made perfect.
and Ais are not different.
they requires actual devs to work behind, which are about 30<50 people. and they are working behind 4 different campaigns ( that’s what we can see as far we are testing ) and there are many different things to count on.
it’s not easy at all. not for us, neither for them.
i’m not trying to play the devil advocate because in the recent time i’m being quite the " revolutioner " against the team it self. but you have to give credits when they have. and i recognize the huge work behind.
enlisted is made by a small team somewhat financially and assets supported by gaijin.
which it’s not a task job for such team. because they are no AAA development team.
and that’s the difference.
what they truly need, is stop thinking about incomes or unpolished premium content, and focus more on the overhall product.
something that it’s hard.
until than, it’s either A the product dies, B the product will succeed depending on the devs works.
If nobody wants to search for a match for a few minutes then ask them another question. Do they like those 6-minutes long matches in FPS? It’s like 2 rounds in competitive MM in other games. And if you play as a pilot - it’s 2-3 drops. Enjoyable? Naah. Gonna quit if this ain’t fixed in month or two.