40 replies to this topic

[Mercsn]

I've been gone from the game since 6 months after release (because the devs radically changed the game design shortly before launch and didn't fix it).

 

Now that I'm back, I notice the faster queue times.  This is great, except that matches are filled with bots!  Apparently, the devs were messing around at some point with skill based match-making, got the algorithm wrong and ended up with some players having 10-20 minute queue times to get a low pop match.  Then, they decided to chuck that and use bots to fill in matches for faster queue times.

 

Hi, WG:  it's PvP (Player vs Player) game.  That means....well, it means Players (humans) playing against other Players (human).

 

My motivation for starting this thread, other than a general hate for bots (ANY BOTS) in a PvP match is a short chat I had with a player after a match that I won because, quite simply, my bots played smarter.  Both humans on the other team outperformed me and the other human on my team in score. But, we won.  Ok, I won, but this is silly nonsense.

 

The WG saying used to be "carry harder!"  They even had a fun little video about it.  Now, apparently, from a dev blog, the saying is:  "you don't make a difference in match outcome!"

 

Wait, wut?  Whut?  Whaaat?!

 

So, I mention to this player that....well, you can read what I said in the screenshot below, and his response.  For translation purposes, should an NA WG employee forward this to Kiev:  I say, "I prefer little longer queue time and three tier matches over bots."  The players response is "Oh, really.  I will be keen for that".

 

The player's name is blacked out, but I looked him up.  He signed up in 2011 has been in his clan for over 2000 days, but does not have an alpha or beta tag and has no data for patch 1.9.  So, that seems to indicate a WoT player that is trying WoWP 2.0 and has not played in the last iteration of the game.  Note that he thinks it's a "joke of a game" because my bots played better than his bots, even though the humans on his team outplayed the humans on my team.  It's lame.

 

WG, if you want any of the people who come in or came back for a PvP (player vs player) game to STAY, you'll need to remove the bots from PvP gameplay modes.

 

Bots only work in co-op.  Other than that, well, you just run into issues of ai simply not playing fair or equally or in a manor sufficient to simulate a human player.

 

Please remove the bots (all bots) and bring back human vs human PvP.

Edited by Mercsn, 11 November 2017 - 12:03 PM.

[ArrowZ_]

We who experienced the sharade of the 1.X fiasco already know this. You're just catching up to the last 3 years of history that might again repeat itself. Which is looking to be quite favourable the longer WG goes down this direction of more pve less pvp.

 

Long story short this is the explanation of why bots (to this day with 2.0) are staying and im paraphrasing here - "We will keep the bots in player filled matches until we deem it necessary to take them off when the population starts to rise"

 

Now that can be interpreted in many ways. At what point will this game reach the desired population level that the devs themselves will decide its ok to disable bots? And what are they waiting for exactly? 2.0 is here yet the bots are still present.

 

You tell me what they are doing. I'm just here waiting for the proposed pvp content that's supposed to come after conquest. And to no surprise with no feasible release date. 

Edited by ArrowZ_, 11 November 2017 - 12:11 PM.

[Mercsn]

Once players who came for a "pvp" game figure out it's mostly bots they are playing against and that they are losing despite turning in a better performance than the humans on the winning team, they will leave.  And then the population will cease to grow or fall.  WG, by using bots, are making a self-fulfilling prophecy:  the population is low because bots aren't pvp, so we keep the bots, which results in lower playerbase, which means we need the bots.

 

Granted, the bots aren't the ONLY thing preventing the game from growing, but it's certainly a factor.  If you advertise a PvP game, you need to have a PvP game.

 

Bots don't work in a "Player" vs "Player" game.

[hoom]

I disagree.

Bots (both player & defense) create the target & threat rich environment that makes the game fun.

I'd be out of here if the game was returned to just a whole heap of mostly less than 5v5s.

 

 

Their behaviour could certainly do with some improvements (not just where they go on the map but particularly the dumb roll they do when you shoot them could at least be a proper barrel roll) but if you think 'oh its just a bot' & let one get a good position he'll certainly shoot you down.

 

 

Time of day is a significant factor, today I had a bunch of T5 battles with well over half actual players, some with only a couple of player bots.

Other battles have been me, a guy on the other team & a heap of bots. A lot of the time the bots play smarter than players.

Edited by hoom, 11 November 2017 - 02:39 PM.

[MelBrooks]

Bots can be helpful in certain ways for the game, if you program them correctly. The bots have never had anything resembling good AI or RNG parameters. Thus, the constant frustration from 1.xxxx players about them. Funny how a multitude of players in open testing brought up the point of better bot attributes in testing for the new mode. 

[pyantoryng]

MelBrooks, on 11 November 2017 - 02:15 PM, said:

Bots can be helpful in certain ways for the game, if you program them correctly. The bots have never had anything resembling good AI or RNG parameters. Thus, the constant frustration from 1.xxxx players about them. Funny how a multitude of players in open testing brought up the point of better bot attributes in testing for the new mode. 

 

At least give them something resembling tactics...the Superiority mode bots are just...lost in Conquest.

[clodhoppr]

Bots can be a means to provide some predictability to the battles therefore have some control over player outcome.

Has anyone noticed that you tend to win about as many battles as you lose?

 

[Conal_Cochran]

Not enough players to go without bots, the wait time would be rediculous and what players that are here would leave. The mistake they made was making conquest mode so overly involved. They should put in less battle areas and put in one control point only that everyone fights for then maybe you could ditch bots. It would also give players more if a sense that they make a difference. Right now you can win or lose and not really feel like what you did made a difference. They need to simplify a bit.

One thing about 1.9 and earlier faults and all is at least you had more player interactions, the feeling of accomplishment when you beat a good pilot etc...Now I hardly know whos in the game and even if I did doesnt matter because of the format. 

[hoom]

A side point is as the population rises the player bots go away automatically.

Just had a T6 battle with only 3 bots per team.

[MelBrooks]

clodhoppr, on 11 November 2017 - 09:27 AM, said:

Bots can be a means to provide some predictability to the battles therefore have some control over player outcome.

Has anyone noticed that you tend to win about as many battles as you lose?

 

 

 Clod, if they truly did that, using bot behavior to balance game outcome versus actual excellent player play to carry a match, put the final nail in the coffin now. Nothing will drive away players faster than playing extremely well and losing to something they have no control over. We've seen this before....

[MelBrooks]

On a very important side note here in the US, please accept my deepest gratitude to wish all the veterans a great day. Freedom is never free <o.

I don't know if he still plays, but a player by the name of KloudRains was a true combat pilot flying the 

F-4 Phantom and F-15 Eagle. A great person and player. If you are interested in truly getting an in-depth account to combat aviation, he's the guy.

Edited by MelBrooks, 11 November 2017 - 02:50 PM.

[Conal_Cochran]

MelBrooks, on 11 November 2017 - 09:40 AM, said:

 

 Clod, if they truly did that, using bot behavior to balance game outcome versus actual excellent player play to carry a match, put the final nail in the coffin now. Nothing will drive away players faster than playing extremely well and losing to something they have no control over. We've seen this before....

It's already like that...went 1-4 then won 4 in a row...did nothing different. It was like that in testing as well so not just basing it on my 9 battles. 

[hoom]

Block Quote

 They should put in less battle areas and put in one control point only that everyone fights for

 I'd certainly like to see that as an option for the MM.

But probably only a certain % and while it wouldn't need defense bots I'd still want the teams filled out with player bots.

Edited by hoom, 11 November 2017 - 02:48 PM.

[BrushWolf]

They really can't be completely removed but they need to rebuild the MM so that it emphasizes more humans in each match.

[Thornir]

BrushWolf, on 11 November 2017 - 04:22 PM, said:

They really can't be completely removed but they need to rebuild the MM so that it emphasizes more humans in each match.

 

​Agreed, and they can't do THAT until there are more humans. You limit play to PVP only, and make people wait for 10 minutes for a T6 match, they won't stay. This game mode is playable and it's fun. Which is why I came back. OThers hopefully will too, or join for the first time, and the game survives and bots aren't needed. But let's not get the cart before the horse, here. Game has to survive first, which is no way a sure thing.

[BrushWolf]

Thornir, on 11 November 2017 - 11:46 AM, said:

 

​Agreed, and they can't do THAT until there are more humans. You limit play to PVP only, and make people wait for 10 minutes for a T6 match, they won't stay. This game mode is playable and it's fun. Which is why I came back. OThers hopefully will too, or join for the first time, and the game survives and bots aren't needed. But let's not get the cart before the horse, here. Game has to survive first, which is no way a sure thing.

 

Actually they can, they could go back to the closed beta type of MM which with a similar population would produce 12 - 15 per team matches in a couple of minutes. This would make three tier matches the norm instead of the exception but with a few exceptions that could be handled with preferred MM every plane can do well as bottom tier in three tier matches. Back in CB I was vocal against tier 2 meeting tier 3 4 but as I got more experience I realized that they had their own advantages against the tier 4's and would do well against them when the pilot made use of them.

Edited by BrushWolf, 11 November 2017 - 09:01 PM.

[Mercsn]

MelBrooks, on 11 November 2017 - 08:40 AM, said:

 

 Clod, if they truly did that, using bot behavior to balance game outcome versus actual excellent player play to carry a match, put the final nail in the coffin now. Nothing will drive away players faster than playing extremely well and losing to something they have no control over. We've seen this before....

 

This is my point.

[Mercsn]

BrushWolf, on 11 November 2017 - 11:56 AM, said:

 

Actually they can, they could go back to the closed beta type of MM which with a similar population would produce 12 - 15 per team matches in a couple of minutes. This would make three tier matches the norm instead of the exception but with a few exceptions that could be handled with preferred MM every plane can do well as bottom tier in three tier matches. Back in CB I was vocal against tier 2 meeting tier 3 but as I got more experience I realized that they had their own advantages against the tier 4's and would do well against them when the pilot made use of them.

 

This is also my point.

 

 

Queue times weren't actually very long, unless you were the goob willing to spend 30 minutes or more in queue so you could be the lone tier 8 in a tier 6 match.   With a 2 or 3 tiers per match MM (smaller spread as population rises), wait times won't be excessive.  In a team based, pvp game, there's just not much teamwork when there's lots of bots in a match.  Opening up the tiers per match spread and adding a couple minutes to the queue time will yield a better, more rewarding match.  And, now with respawns, that extra minute or two doesn't detract from play time if you mess up and die early in a match.

 

As it is now, sure the queue time is very fast, but there's no teamwork outside of babysitting the bots and trying to help them clean up whatever mess they got themselves into, if that's even possible.

[Psicko23]

I would prefer no bots either, but we can't do that in this state of the game without long waits, especially since persha took the plane type count from each tier out of the queue. They also seem to have taken out the player online count. 

[ArrowZ_]

I would guess the major reason why most of the players who joined WOWP during 1.X iterations was the assumption at the start that it was a PvP MMO and was going to continue down that trend with more pvp focused content. Somewhere along the lines that "vision" obviously changed from the devs, leading to alot of disappointments and not following through promises being made; more game modes & the big ol grinding issue of no clan wars. Or any real tangible content to utilize clans - other than just acquiring the name tag. When I saw the advert for this game online on some random WWII website, it stated a heavy focus on "PvP" and large sized battles "15v15" online players. So anyone interested in competitive gameplay would easily gravitate towards such advertisement. WG's job is done - I join and what do I see - exactly 15v15 all players pvp battles. Ofcourse at the time (just like now with 2.0) alot of the newcomers were starting in low tiers. So it was only natural to see alot of new faces and no signs of any AI. 

 

Regarding the bots. Compared to now and what we had with 1.9 - I can safely say the 1.9 bots are way better than 2.0. Why? Because they listened & responded to our F2, F4, F6 commands - Coordinate attack, Attacking Target, Clear My Tail. These 3 commands were crucial in turning the battle around when 90% of the battle consisted of bots with 1 player on either side. The player who utilized their bots better almost always wins the "AI circle jerk". For whatever reason they did not follow through with this feature onto 2.0. Which obviously is an oversight that's going to cost them in the future if they don't implement it back.

 

The whole purpose of this section of the forum is to engage with WG or the developers in the form of giving advice, feedback, suggestions to make the game better. In my experience all that effort has resulted to naught. But since we're all putting our tinfoil hats on I might as well indulge on the idea of giving ideas into how to make bots better in 2.0 (seeing as they won't go anytime soon):

 

 

>    First start with programming bots to acknowledge player commands like before with 1.9. Bring back the basics - Coordinate attack, Clear my tail.

 

>    In order to eliminate bias from players giving these commands, the bots should be programmed to assist at least 50% of the entire team bot forces - like not to have your ENTIRE bot team chase down the one enemy plane you can't shake off. That would be counter-intuitive and a penalty to your team, espeically so for conquest where your forces need to be adequately spread out to be efficient on capping/defending/raiding etc. Or even better only have bots that are within a certain range of your plane assist you in any command, or while being in the same cap circle etc. Many ways to program and balance this.

 

>    Pinging on the map has always been an underrated, sometimes abused system, that nobody really pays attention to. Why not utilize it for directing your bots where to go? Have a key to bind and while holding down, with the left mouse button, just ping the map and you can coordinate the majority of your bot forces to go at a military base, a command center, an airfield etc. By default the CTRL key is used to ping the map for general purposes, mostly to annoy players with that annoying pinging sound. Honestly there needs to be more a reason to use this feature. Bots can be that. Best way to balance this is have a cool down period of say 30 seconds. Could be less. Could be more. Or just have an ability to assign a "Squadron Leader" (really the name could be anything - just a guy) that can organize where the bots should go. Put those 2 features together and you have a coordinated AI team that actually knows what they are doing.

 

 

I mean you can go wild with ideas. But if nobody in the right group in WG or in Persha Studio reads this section. Then all this is wasted pixelated text. Just waiting to be once again archived for what ever purpose. Usually to collect dust I suppose. But that's what I propose they do with bots in 2.0. Whether they take this up to the developers is up to them. As the saying goes "The ball is in your court". It always have been from the very start.

Edited by ArrowZ_, 11 November 2017 - 11:29 PM.