18 replies to this topic

[The6thMessenger]

FP seems dead to me, i know even a lot of other people even say that it never really lived.

Here's a suggestion, This is of course, assuming that PGI is willing to work for this, NPC Bots. You know how certain games can be played with a single-player, and against with bots, like counter strike, Dota 2, TF2, etc?

What if FP can be played with bot fillers?

Of course these bots aren't going to be as good as players, but they can fill out a lot of missing players, or at least i think they won't be due to technical limitations. But they can even fill in for the disconnected player, maybe even respond to the company commander, or lance commnder.

How it works might be a bit more flourished, but i think Players would be balanced, and would have equal bots. This way, people can still play, even with low amount of players, 12 v 12 is just not needed. It could be even just 3v3 on Invasion.

I saw the Onslaught on the Academy, i am quite sure that they are able to script simple Bot, even if it looks terrible. They could probably just put different levels of reactivity, like they immediately torso twist when they are hit by lasers or LRMs, or arm shield when their weapon is in cooldown. Likewise their movement is quite predictable, as they may be bound on fixed way points.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 29 September 2016 - 04:43 AM.

[Novakaine]

Strange did four drops last night six the previous day.
Not a single dry drop.

[Spheroid]

@Novakaine: I would like to know where these battles are, because I was logged on shortly before midnight ceasefire last night and it was 0/0 across the board. Only action was on Twycross involving 420 vs. D'C with the planet at 47% and that took a long time to populate before dropping.

Edited by Spheroid, 29 September 2016 - 07:57 AM.

[Idealsuspect]

Huh lol ..

If we go to this we will see soon some NPC bots creating topics about how FW is boring as hell

[Ghogiel]

Dial back your expectations mate.

AI programming for mechs is probably fairly complex to do well, I do not expect much more than the run straight at you face tanking bots pretty much ever in MWO

Spheroid, on 29 September 2016 - 07:56 AM, said:

@Novakaine: I would like to know where these battles are, because I was logged on shortly before midnight ceasefire last night and it was 0/0 across the board. Only action was on Twycross involving 420 vs. D'C with the planet at 47% and that took a long time to populate before dropping.

JGx farmed FP yesterday evening to about midnight GMT. Was getting drops defending against liao, davion, FRR and CW.

Edited by Ghogiel, 29 September 2016 - 08:28 AM.

[Appogee]

Ghogiel, on 29 September 2016 - 08:28 AM, said:

JGx farmed FP yesterday evening

And there's the reason FP is deserted.

[FupDup]

MWO's mechanics like positioning and torso twisting are probably hard to translate into effective AI even for any developer out there, much less this developer we have now.

[Ghogiel]

Appogee, on 29 September 2016 - 08:38 AM, said:

And there's the reason FP is deserted.

Last night we mostly farmed 12man premades, who will likely have had enough farming of skittles themselves to not want to outright quit.

[Airwind]

definately would be hard to program. it just can't match up to a 12 human players.

unlike previous SP titles where you are 1 player with some cpu ally against waves of enemies. this enables them to weaken you before they bring in the main mechs which would just come at you and try to finish you off. the cover system and convergence would be nightmare to program properly. unless they make the each computer player have air and land support vehicles to help even out the handicap.

maybe a genius programmer can do it.

[JediPanther]

I'd love an A.I. bot with Left for Dead 2 level programing to take over disconnected mechs after a small re conection window of thirty seconds. And I wish they add in the ability for us to use steam workshop and host our own dam games while i'm wishing. for my last wish I want a pc with quadruple video cards and quad cpus that can crank out 300 fps running all games on ultra for the next twenty years.

[C E Dwyer]

I don't advise it.

The N.P.C bots would likely get better scores than a lot of players presently

[Mechteric]

Bots are not suitable replacements for real players. It just makes me think of how I'd connect to a Mechwarrior 4 server back in the day expecting 7 people in a lobby, only to find after connecting they were all stupid bots. Then I would just disconnect to go back to searching for one without bots.

[LordKnightFandragon]

They should just make a PVE Faction play. Where players drop in with their 48 mechs and the AI get like 96 mech spawns. same rules apply, but the AI get alot more mechs haha.

[Novakaine]

Spheroid, on 29 September 2016 - 07:56 AM, said:

@Novakaine: I would like to know where these battles are, because I was logged on shortly before midnight ceasefire last night and it was 0/0 across the board. Only action was on Twycross involving 420 vs. D'C with the planet at 47% and that took a long time to populate before dropping.

Well HHoD did plenty between 8:00 and 11:00pm CST.
Maybe later I logged off at 11:00.
Outside of the other inherent problems in FW.
I feel the basic problem is no one wants to cannon fodder.
A lot of other factions have simply fell apart.
If one of the merc teams are not playing a particular faction then that faction almost doesn't exist.
And when those clan "mercs" go back to playing whatever clan then the IS factions simply vanish.
Except for House Davion and the FRR
This is what I see.

Edited by Novakaine, 29 September 2016 - 01:08 PM.

[627]

AI for mechs is hard? Seriously? AI is not rocket science and cry engine has one of the best AIs since it was called farcy back in the day. even if you lock torso and arms and don't implement twist to damage reduction those bots could surely wipe the floorwith 60% of the playrs. And don't forget AI can always cheat.

MWOis special, yes but all it takes is someone who knows how AIs in computer games work. It is not impossible, it just requires effort. And llook who's problem is back... that is why we don't have PVE, not because it is too hard. I mean kudos to PGI for this brillant arena shooter mod for crysis but they can't even implement an alternate firing mode...

[Albino Boo]

People already farm pugs. Why do think people won't only drop against bots for cash and avoid human players entirely, if the option is there.

[Darth Hotz]

Remember why Mechwarrior became a multiplayer game? Because they failed to get a proper KI working.

Also it is stupid too waste resources in developing a KI to fill up the shrinking playerbase. These resources should be used to fix why the player base is shrinking.

[Alpha087]

Darth Hotz, on 29 September 2016 - 02:10 PM, said:

Remember why Mechwarrior became a multiplayer game? Because they failed to get a proper KI working.

Also it is stupid too waste resources in developing a KI to fill up the shrinking playerbase. These resources should be used to fix why the player base is shrinking.

I completely disagree. The playerbase has reached a point where it's so small that you can't even expect a quick play queue to not take a little bit (depending on your selected mech). Having the option to play against AI would at least allow people to be able to actually play the game without nonsense meta-build swarm teams and huge queue times. I only returned to the game a month ago and am already moving to other games more and more now that I realize Quick Play is just as stale as it ever was.

More people played older Mechwarrior titles and never touched the multiplayer than you realize, and I think those people would love to get a modern version of that experience from MWO, with the potential for co-op as a nice bonus.

[Alex Morgaine]

LordKnightFandragon, on 29 September 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

They should just make a PVE Faction play. Where players drop in with their 48 mechs and the AI get like 96 mech spawns. same rules apply, but the AI get alot more mechs haha.

I'd play it. I bet other people would too.