I have several problems with the current AI that I’d like to talk about.
Firstly, and I’m sure this one has been brought up a thousand times already and the devs are probably aware of it, but the AI soldiers (especially on Lone Fighters mode) are practically telepaths with an extra pair of eagle eyes in the back of their head.
As soon I slightly even glance at the enemy from behind them, atop a tower, at 500 meters distance, they immediately become aware and turn around straight towards me and shoot with deadly accuracy, within the span of 1 second.
Removing their omni-directional awareness would be an obvious first step, and reducing their sight capacity only towards the direction they’re facing, and perhaps a proportional distance check, where the AI has a different % chance to detect an enemy facing the AI directly at different ranges.
Secondly, I’ve had many friendly AI soldiers spawn right on me (so far only in Lone Fighters) and it’s not just unfair for the enemy, as the AI may spawn right on me after I sneaked behind enemy players and proceed to fortify or capture bases without having to get there on their own, but it’s also a problem for me too; as they either bump into me and move me right as I’m about to make a shot, or they block my view entirely and alert the enemy players of my location.
(Keep in mind, here I am not talking about bots spawning inside friendly camps or on spawn points placed by engineers; they are spawning directly on me, regardless of how far away I am from any friendly spawn point. And I am 100% sure they are not real players, as I may be inside a house on the other side of the map with a sniper, with all the doors and windows closed except the one I’m shooting from, and suddenly I get bumped by a bot that then gets stuck inside the room; during this time none of the doors or windows got opened at all)
I’m not sure why there’s so many bots in Lone Fighters in the first place. I don’t necessarily mind it, especially now during closed beta where the number of real players isn’t high enough to guarantee fast matchmaking time, but I do hope that post-release there will be a game mode where absolutely no bots will be present what so ever.
Next I’d like to address the path-finding issues of the bots, and the engineer’s constructions. I’ve tested this many times so I can confirm that if you build barbed wires in front of all the doorways that lead to a capture point, and then you further build sandbag walls and a machine gun nest, the only soldiers that will attempt to enter to capture the point will be real players, as the bots will entirely avoid those capture points and stop trying to capture them anymore, without anyone ever getting inside to see that the capture point has been fortified.
Alternatively, if it’s the only point they haven’t captured yet then the bots get stuck as they cannot find a path towards the capture points, and they instead start acting erratically, like trying to access the point directly in a vertical path through the ceiling if the point is upstairs; or they simply start moving back and forth around the doorways and trying to pass through walls if the point is downstairs.
Finally, I’d like to suggest implementing a, perhaps temporary way, to tell real players from bots at a glance. Maybe make it so as far as Lone Fighters mode is concerned, bots always have a specific hat that is different from player ones.
As far as the closed beta is concerned, I believe it makes sense to give us the ability to tell bots apart from players, so that we can better identify and diagnose AI behavior and provide more accurate feedback over how it’s performing.
So far these are my only complaints; I’ve been having a blast with this game for the past 2 weeks, and I can see myself playing for years to come and getting stuck in the addictive gameplay loop just like with war thunder.