Are Bots Really Necessary?

[TIKI - ikislma 19]

Lotus, have you ever considered removing the bots from the servers? They don't help at all, and in fact have ruined many good games. For example, today when the server reset to a new map (2Fort WC), we had 12 real life players join in. That's enough for a good 6 on 6 match to get things started. However soon the bots started joining, and as always seems to be the case, we ended up with a disparity of 4 real life players on one team and 8 on the other. It always seems to work out that the real players end up mostly on one team while one or two others end up on a team of bots. This of course drives people away so instead of slowly building to a full server, you just get a revolving door of frustrated players. BTW, the incident I just described was this afternoon (Saturday). That should be prime time but players were leaving as fast as they were joining in. The bots just seem to be a waste of space and simply add to the frustration of the game. For example, have you ever cleared an intel room of two sentries just to have a bot sweep in and grab the intel before you got the chance? I have! And let me tell you it really sucks since every time they get the intel, they end up getting stuck over the grate, repeatedly running into the wall. The way I see it, if a server is going to die off for the night, it's going to happen no matter what, using bots to bridge the gap just drives people away even faster......just my humble opinion. I used to play Lotus servers exclusively, but now I find myself looking for other places to play.

[DrkEagle 15]

While the bots will always remains on Lotus servers and the countless times this has been brought up over the years, I think the bot autojoin to human players needs to be lowered back to 12 or even 10, so 5v5/6v6 no bots can happen. I remember before the Uber (maybe Replay) update, bots would only come in if the human player count dropped below 12 (<--- I think). Now it's up around 16 human players (8v8) I think.

[Krash 1,040]

If it were up to me, i would make the cap at 6 at most. 3v3 minimum.

[Mariposa❧ 483]

Yea I hate how the bots start coming when its under 16 :/

[ultr@BUNNY 8,565]

Do we need an army of soulless bastards? Perhaps, the only problem its the lack of soul in such big numbers, 3-6 bots, ok, 12 bots...jesus...i'm trying to play a game without heaving a dozen of those doppelgangers doing a taunt each time i look at them.

"Don't start dancing, just take the ******* point you monkey!"

The point is, its possible to have a nice game with bots, but i disagree with you when you say that its better to take them away, but that sometimes they're useless, damn straight....peace bro.

[TIKI - ikislma 19]

I'd like to see them totally gone, but as others are suggesting, simply lowering the bot count would be a good step in the right direction and would surely be tolerable.

[Galactic 4]

Wait... you mean podsaurus was a bot? But I was talking trash to him the whole game last night!

....

well played, Lotus.... well played...

[Mariposa❧ 483]

loser. You're a loser!

[Wallydrag 31]

loser. You're a loser!

Do you feel sorry for yourself?! Well you should be because your a LOSER!

[deterior13 0]

i'm glad someone made this topic. op is right on the money. as a long time player of 2fort west coast, i've noticed the same thing lately. it was fine the way it was before, but now there seems to be bots in the game if there are less than 16 human players. i'm not saying the bots should be removed entirely but the way the system's been changed isn't doing any good.

the worst part of it is that as soon as a human player leaves, the server adds a bot to one team, so even if i join with a friend and want to join the team stacked with bots to even up the teams a little, the player count on the bot team is always higher than on the human team, making it impossible. this results in a team entirely consisting of human players vs a team of bots with 2 or 3 humans. you can see why even a lot of the old regulars will now stop by for a few minutes and then leave as soon as they see this. it's not fun to roll over a team of worthless bots nor is it fun to be on said team.

to conclude, i think what would fix the problem is changing the minimum number of players before bots are added back to 10 or 12 (or whatever the old figure was).

[Mariposa❧ 483]

Do you feel sorry for yourself?! Well you should be because your a LOSER!

Correction: you're

[Wallydrag 31]

Correction: you're

Oh, its grammar war your looking for? Well, i don't want to participate.

[Wallydrag 31]

I would love to know what the argument is about, besides the bots.

Mari, hates me because I left her. <insert emoticon here>

[Mariposa❧ 483]

HAHAH Yeah! You left me to my own devices to fend off the forces of the Blu team and I did not appreciate it! Also, you did not capitalize I. Okay I am done because annoying.

[Wallydrag 31]

HAHAH Yeah! You left me to my own devices to fend off the forces of the Blu team and I did not appreciate it! Also, you did not capitalize I. Okay I am done because annoying.

By George's thumb i WILL DESTROY YOU! (jk )

Well? I'm still waiting for you to insert the emoticon so I know how to react. I would like some lulz. Thank you in advance.

and i guess that a sad face would be most appropriate here

[NoobSpy 0]

I'm with the OP on this one. I mostly play payload servers and bots simply do not play like people at all -- they are jittery and get off way too many 1 frame 90 degree turn + pot shots.

I'm also a TF2 gamer with a few dollars in my pocket looking for a community to support. Unfortunately, the larger ones like Lotus and Skial are littered with bots during the hours I play.

There's more than just the fact there are bots, the bots are masked in a way to trick unsuspecting players into thinking they are real people. For example:

http://gyazo.com/6dc...ed4881e32f5.png

There are upwards of 9 bots on the server at the time of the screen capture, but there is no sign of them in the server list even when refreshing the players. This seems like a fairly disrespectful tactic and doesn't do anything except upset people who don't like playing against bots, driving down server popularity over time as the more long-term players make additions to their blacklists. Plus, who wants to give money to people who try to trick the community?

Personally, I would much prefer to play 3 vs 3 against humans than 6 humans and 10 bots mixed across teams. Also please consider the TF2 community as a whole. The vast majority of the community doesn't like bots and doesn't like being tricked. Just my 2 cent on the matter.

[Bombz 31]

I'm never tricked by bots. When I see our team working together I know it's bots and when I see people going all sniper and being useless I know they're human.

[Mariposa❧ 483]

I'm never tricked by bots. When I see our team working together I know it's bots and when I see people going all sniper and being useless I know they're human.

Hahaha. touche!

[NoobSpy 0]

I'm never tricked by bots. When I see our team working together I know it's bots and when I see people going all sniper and being useless I know they're human.

That's all well and good, but I don't see why admins feel the need to try hiding them. Valve's already tried patching against this at least once and used the words "malicious operator" in reference to covering up BOT with a fake ping in their release notes.

Tuned scoreboard logic to guard against malicious server operators spoofing bot pings to hide the "BOT" tag. (01/04/10)

Anyway, I just figured I'd visit over the "tell us how to make our servers better" thing that occasionally pops up on the servers. Being honest and not trying to be sneaky would be my top recommendation as it is the only thing that prevented me from donating. I'm not saying that as a teenager living on parental scraps, but as an old guy who worked in data centers through the 90s and am familiar with the expense and logistics of keeping an operation like this running.

Farewell for now! :/

[Oprah 5]

OP has my vote.

[Skaruts 14]

Bots only serve one practical purpose: they keep the server high in the server list when sorted by number of players, and they keep it IN the list if the "has players" checkbox is checked.

The second issue could be easily solved with a sourceTV bot (if that's available in TF2), while the first one couldn't. But the advantages of this are only one-sided, it helps the server owners but it doesn't help the players. I would agree it feels a bit better to have them when the server is almost empty, since it keeps the match a bit more interesting lively than if it was a 3vs3, but still bots are NOT interesting fun to fight with/against. I understand that having the server in the top of the list is quite advantageous for the owner, but when someone goes in and finds out the server doesn't have 25 players but 15, the players are mostly bots, and the real ones are leaving, what do you expect his reaction will be? He leaves.

If he is like me he leaves as soon as he sees 1 bot and blacklists the server (typing "status" in console will show you if there are any bots in disguise - and yes, my blacklist is infinite). The only reason why I still play in Lotus 24/7 2fort server is because it's one of the very few servers that has quite challanging regular players, otherwise it would be blacklisted from the day they implemented the bots.

And why are bots bad for the players? Let's examine it.

- Bots have a very bad artificial aim, much like an aimbot in all hitscan weapons (minigun, shotgun, pistols, etc) or rapid fire weapons (syringe gun).

- Bots get stuck in many parts of the maps.

- Bots don't defend their own intel.

- Bots don't attack many times, becoming cannon fodder for the enemies.

- Bots are more often useless kamikazes when they are medics

- Bots dont chose classes considering the team needs, often turning 60% of the team into useless kamikaze m1+w medics.

- Bots as medics can only be useful if someone attacks them head on, making their botty aim + syringe gun a surreal threat

- Bots don't destroy sentries. They run mindlessly into their line of fire before they can do any real damage.

- Bots make teams uneven at times (1 human + 6 bots vs 7 humans = bot team loses). The real problem is that this happens too often.

- Bots prevent a joining player from chosing either team, as they often stack by 1 more in one of the teams (can be bypassed only by joining spectators before chosing teams).

There are probably more downsides that I can't recall right now. But I stil guess this is plenty of them already.

So, in short, you can pretty much expect a match with bots to be the most annoying thing. Even more annoying than playing in a server full of complete newbies. I would feel happy if the minimum players were lowered to 10, leaving enough space for 5vs5 matches to be played by real players only. As it is, it is making me chose other servers more and more. And, once again, if it wasn't for the skill level found on the server regularly, it would be blacklisted already.

Pray that not many people think like me or you will end up losing the player base you have, sooner or later.

That's how I roll, although I do that if there are any bots at all, masked or not, it doesn't matter to me. I'm delaying that action on Lotus servers because bots are a fairly recent adittion, and I'm hopping they may come to withdraw their decision. If not, that's, like I said, what I will do.

[Tummystix 0]

Hmmm, what's going on in here!

[Mana 3,867]

To put it simply:

Quickplay decides it's time to start sending players to our server:

It sends 1 or 2.

Those people join, see that it says 0vs0 and leave right away. Process gets repeated, server fills up later.

Now when there's bots on the server, people aren't as likely to quit because they can at least play and due to matchmaking once they stay the server will fill up quick.

So when people are less likely to quit the servers fill up faster.

So are bots necessary? Yes.