40 replies to this topic

[Siilk]

I'm all for bots being included as a substitute for a single player campaign. I see online bot matches as having no XP or CBills gain at all and no repair cost. Effectively it would be a sort of "training grounds" to hone the skills or just have some fun, alone or with a couple of friends, without risking your assets. Ideally, I'd like to also have the ability to play botmatch without connection to the server altogether, in a purely offline environment: no online player account used, just classic MW-style instant action with free access to any mech and mechlab.

[El Loco]

I have to admit, the idea of a game mode featuring player vs bot fights very appealing. Bishop has listed many reasons for doing so. To stretch the example of League of Legends a little more, when you start as a new player and/or casual player, it's not very helping if you're paired up with kids starting flamewars on their less experienced team members frequently. The less competitive environment of the bot mode allows you to learn to evaluate your own performance and later on just ignore the little ones (and trust me, the servers will be flooded with 12 to 17 year olds who think that piloting an Atlas makes them gods of war).
Plus, you can use these games to test strategies, new loadouts, new 'Mechs, trial new members of you merc unit, and whatnot. And what is better than stomping on some enemies with a reduced probability of getting your arse handed to you after a very long day at work, when you know you are too tired to actually compete in pvp.
Having a player vs bots mode is good. It can't be a priority, but it should be in the game eventually. Again, see League of Legends, at launch you had 2 maps, 16 or so heroes, and two game modes: pvp and an "invite your friends and if you don't have enough people add some really stupid bots" mode. The real bot mode was added over a year after launch, when the flaming campaings got out of hands and new and casual players were greeted with hate rather than help and eventually quit the game without spending money on it.

Nevertheless, bot farming for xp is an issue, but League of Legends has a very elegant solution... you have only a certain amount of minutes you can spend in the non-pvp modes and gain xp (I think it's 150min). A game vs bots on average lasts 20-25min, which allows for 6 to 7 matches per day. But, in League of Legends XP output somewhat scales with match duration. If you're faster, say you win within 15min, you will have significantly reduced xp. Being able to play 10 games doesn't even out the disadvantage in xp. Additionally, you only get about half as much xp for playing vs bots.

[Naduk]

@OP

i don't think we need bots at all

MW2 had a nice training ground, some Slalom pillars to practice mech movement, some stationary targets and a few moving targets
its all anyone needs to get enough skills to be competitive in this game

all the advanced things you will learn along the way
things like turning to spread damage and protect wounded areas and other advanced combat /survival tactics
they are not necessary to win a match and play against competitive teams
i know this is true because i saw veterans of countless years playing competitive MW4 and they didn't do these things

it is much more important that you understand your role and perform it well rather than be a super elite pilot dripping awesome sauce

if you see someone perform a maneuver that amazed or beat you and you have no idea how to do it
load up the training map and try it out and if you cant its likely someone will have a forum thread on how it works

honestly i wish i could remove all my knowledge of tactics and game skills and go into this game a fresh noob
to come into this game like i did with MW2 would be so glorious, so much to explore, so much to discover, so many layers of depth to peel away. imagine it (or remember) how every minute you play something new and amazing is thrust upon you. ending up with the new player thirsting for that mind melting experience again and again.

I am honestly very jealous of the players for whom this will be their first ever MechWarrior

people want the challenge of a deep game that will take them along time to learn
we want the thrill and complexity of hunting a living, thinking, intelligent opponent
we want the fear factor that comes from being hunted by that very same opponent
if you don't want any of these things ..... perhaps you are in the wrong place

if you really need to go beat on hapless AI there are plenty of other games out there ready to play
MW:O doesn't need to add to that list

[VarietyOfCells]

Agreed. AI would be unnecessary if there's a training map. And there definitely needs to be a training map if they are going to try and appeal to a larger audience.

[Kaemon]

bishop, on 25 March 2012 - 10:53 PM, said:

Well let's take a look at some of the big popular titles out there that are PVP focused.

Call of duty - A very low barrier to entry, you can give a 12 year old the controller and as long as they've played a game at some point they'll probably have fun. The mechanics are very simple and to the point.

Counter strike - Another very easy to get into game, point and shot is the name of the game with CS.

Battlefield - Still another shooter, direct, simple, action oriented crazy nonsense.

The reason I say people may want to ease their way into PVP for MWO is that MWO isn't as simple as your call of duties and your counter strikes. Heat management, loadout customization, a plethora of different types of weapons with different effects and downsides to them. Generally more going on than your typical game. This is why I bring up League of legends, League players generally encourage new players to play around in bot matches to learn the controls, practice how the game works and basic strategy and then once they've adapted to things they can start playing pvp; but at not point do they feel like they're wasting their time by playing bots because as you said they still get rewarded a little.

Another example, Rise of Flight, a flight sim that I enjoy. There is a group of people that run a server specifically made to introduce new players to the game without having them get thrashed around on the "big boy servers", they turn on assists and have trainers in the game to answer questions and give pointers. If this server didn't exist, I imagine that a lot of players would join a server, get destroyed repeatedly and call it quits; and we see this in the ROF forum all the time, people start and join the wrong server and then come back to complain about how challenging and impossible it is to succeed.

As for me being biased against PVP games, my concern is that this game is going to be out of my league because I don't intend to dedicate a majority share of my time to playing it. I like to enjoy a vast majority of games over a long time frame and when something like Mechwarrior asks me to practice, learn and develop my skills in this one game, I personally am more inclined to just pass on it. I love mechwarrior but I don't know that this game is going to be accessible to me because mechwarrior multiplayer has never been fun to me.

I can understand this point of view, but frankly I am against it. I have no desire to have the devs waste time and effort holding hands for people because they are afraid of multi-player or come from an era where console games have almost eliminated complex (and this is not complex, it just looks like it because we're not in Beta hands on yet) sims.

This is a core aspect of the game, if you don't like multi-player, you're not going to like MW:O, shifting focus into lengthy (and constantly updated) single player gameplay is going to do little more than split the community and dilute the final product (which, as stated by the devs, is going to be a minimum viable product at launch).

After launch you have less than a year before Clan invasion (major event) then successive events after that, so with the bug fixes, tweaks and DLC updates, when are they going to have time to work on this?

They won't, and it may not be a good idea to even try.

If they want to open it up to the community to try to get something together, I'm all for it, but diverting the devs attention to it (like I said beyond a brief tutorial or Mechlab instance) seems a poor idea because some people are afraid of multi-player.

[DarkTreader]

Even if there were no bots, I wouldn't object to a 'Training Ground' of some sort, akin to the training grounds on Outreach. Some target dummies that will pop out and fire at you, some movement obstacles, etc... Maybe 1 "enemy" 'Mech that doesn't actually move, but has infinite health that will regen over time - allowing you to test weapon loadouts, ranges, things like that.

As others have stated, I don't like taking an untested 'Mech onto the pubserv. If I roll the C-bills together to purchase another 'Mech, I want to know how that thing works, inside and out, before I take it out to try some fragging.

As far as the AI programming on something like a training ground? There really wouldn't be much - range triggers, fire weapon until destroyed. Everything else is pretty well static. And a 2km^2 map for a training ground shouldn't take long to put together, especially if it's designed as a 'simulation' within the game.

[MaddMaxx]

DarkTreader, on 26 March 2012 - 09:20 AM, said:

Even if there were no bots, I wouldn't object to a 'Training Ground' of some sort, akin to the training grounds on Outreach. Some target dummies that will pop out and fire at you, some movement obstacles, etc... Maybe 1 "enemy" 'Mech that doesn't actually move, but has infinite health that will regen over time - allowing you to test weapon loadouts, ranges, things like that.

As others have stated, I don't like taking an untested 'Mech onto the pubserv. If I roll the C-bills together to purchase another 'Mech, I want to know how that thing works, inside and out, before I take it out to try some fragging.

As far as the AI programming on something like a training ground? There really wouldn't be much - range triggers, fire weapon until destroyed. Everything else is pretty well static. And a 2km^2 map for a training ground shouldn't take long to put together, especially if it's designed as a 'simulation' within the game.

The Dev have made mention of a Training Server. Just nothing in the concrete form just yet. Fingers crossed.

[StompyMcGee]

Bots, yes, but not as Mechs.
Using AI to control crawlers, infantry and air units, either as support or targets(or even as 3rd party, if you you get your scenario weird enough) could be fun.
But you shouldn't be looking to PvE your way up the skill and gear brackets.

[bishop]

I have to say it's the most disappointing thing in the world when you bring up new ideas and every fan in the forum jumps to say "Eh it's a waste of time the Dev's should spend their time on better features, they don't even have enough time to waste on dumb bots"

This exact same mentality is rampant in the rise of flight community and it's really disgusting to watch people pick apart every new idea because they think their own ideas should take precedence.

Are bots the most important thing? No, but the game should have them at some point as I said in the OP, post launch is a fine time to add them.

[Kenyon Burguess]

no point AI vrs for practice +1 vote
AI additions to PVP for bigger, better missions +1 vote
AI vrs 1 player mission with point distribution - no! ppl will just farm this

[movingtarget]

maybe have simulator matches divided into human players and bots? bot matches cost nothing and give nothing but are good as a test room, while simulated human matches you gain a 1\10th xp and maybe a small c-bill reward(maybe you can make bets? )

[VarietyOfCells]

Aegis Kleais™, on 26 March 2012 - 11:03 AM, said:

SP (you vs. bots) or Co-Op (You + Friends vs. Bots) would use an Offline Pilot account. It can go through gaining XP/MXP that is usable only in SP/Co-Op campaigns.

MP (you vs. humans) would use an Online Pilot account. It has it's own Pilot/Mech trees/unlocks that are not shared from the Offline Pilot (nor can you use any of the Pilot/Mech Perks gained from SP/Co-Op play.

That's about the best I would offer. It allows you (or you + friends) to fight all the bots you want. But the rewards you got from doing so would not exist if you decide to fight human AI. That way, you can get all the training you want, and when you're ready for more challenging fare (be you classifying yourself as casual or not), you start from scratch.

Sounds too complicated to implement, especially since they haven't mentioned anything about going in that direction.

And really, any "training" you do against bots is going to be next to useless against humans. To beat a bot you learn how the AI thinks and then exploit its weaknesses. The AI can't tell when you've caught onto its patterns. Humans change up their strategy when something isn't working (well, decent humans), and have a bunch of different strategies that will surprise and confuse a player raised on killing bots, leaving them in no better position than having not trained at all.

Though as has been mentioned, there definitely needs to be a training course with some moving targets and maybe an obstacle course for getting used to the controls and tweaking your button maps and what not. I don't want to get killed because I haven't been able to adjust my joystick sensitivity properly.

[Halfinax]

bishop, on 25 March 2012 - 10:53 PM, said:

Well let's take a look at some of the big popular titles out there that are PVP focused.

Call of duty - A very low barrier to entry, you can give a 12 year old the controller and as long as they've played a game at some point they'll probably have fun. The mechanics are very simple and to the point.

Counter strike - Another very easy to get into game, point and shot is the name of the game with CS.

Battlefield - Still another shooter, direct, simple, action oriented crazy nonsense.

This is a horrible strawman argument. First of all I specifically said PVP games with great longevity so right away you can cross both Battlefield and Call of Duty off of there as their player base disappates rapidly after launch and is moved to a new version of that game after one year.

Counter Strike fits the bill of what I was talking about, and breaking it down to "point and shoot is the name of the game" is very disengious. It is a team-objective based game with a single life to get. Not sure where you get "easy to get into" from either as it is considered amongst FPSes too be one of the harsher games for a learning curve.

That said other than that all three of those games are FPS they aren't terribly much alike at all, and you only provided examples from one genre of game. League of Legends is a PvP game with rampant popularity, as it's predecessor Defense of the Ancients. World of Tanks is brought up frequently as well, and is fairly popular and falls somewhere between simulation and arcade much like MWO will.

bishop, on 25 March 2012 - 10:53 PM, said:

The reason I say people may want to ease their way into PVP for MWO is that MWO isn't as simple as your call of duties and your counter strikes. Heat management, loadout customization, a plethora of different types of weapons with different effects and downsides to them. Generally more going on than your typical game. This is why I bring up League of legends, League players generally encourage new players to play around in bot matches to learn the controls, practice how the game works and basic strategy and then once they've adapted to things they can start playing pvp; but at not point do they feel like they're wasting their time by playing bots because as you said they still get rewarded a little.

I agree with the concept of simple low to no reward bot matches for the exact reasons you point to League of Legends (which you tried to ignore as an example of a PVP centric game). There will be some complexity to learn, but at the same time I think you are underestimating the ability of most gamers to adapt, and learn new mechanics, so I don't think they need to be hand held to get into PVP. All of us will need a simple trainer, hopefully with bots but others have pointed out that a simple gauntlet could teach one the mechanics without having to code even rudimentary AI.

bishop, on 25 March 2012 - 10:53 PM, said:

Another example, Rise of Flight, a flight sim that I enjoy. There is a group of people that run a server specifically made to introduce new players to the game without having them get thrashed around on the "big boy servers", they turn on assists and have trainers in the game to answer questions and give pointers. If this server didn't exist, I imagine that a lot of players would join a server, get destroyed repeatedly and call it quits; and we see this in the ROF forum all the time, people start and join the wrong server and then come back to complain about how challenging and impossible it is to succeed.

Here you are talking about a flight sim that uses private servers. There are two issues with this example: 1) Flight sims are notoriously complex with dozens of systems to manage all while keeping your situational awareness at high levels, 2) MW:O will not have private servers, but like I have said I concur with a few ideas in this thread on how to introduce all of us to the basic mechanics of playing.

bishop, on 25 March 2012 - 10:53 PM, said:

As for me being biased against PVP games, my concern is that this game is going to be out of my league because I don't intend to dedicate a majority share of my time to playing it. I like to enjoy a vast majority of games over a long time frame and when something like Mechwarrior asks me to practice, learn and develop my skills in this one game, I personally am more inclined to just pass on it. I love mechwarrior but I don't know that this game is going to be accessible to me because mechwarrior multiplayer has never been fun to me.

Well you are assuming a few things here. First of all you are assuming that players will simply be randomly thrown in a match without any kind of matching based on Pilot/Mech/Whatever level. League of Legends (which you yourself have brought up and therefore should be looking at this) uses such a matchmaking system. It's not a huge leap to assume that MW:O may use something similar, perhaps not at launch, but it is something I personally think would be a boon.

Funny that you are concerned about a gaming being too complex when one of the games you enjoy is Rise of Flight, and arguably Combat Flight Simulations are the most complex and difficult to learn and master genres of game out there anywhere, and if I am not mistaken it is also most MP centric. I could be wrong on that last bit as I haven't actually played it because I am not a fan of their price points and content scheme, also more of a WWII guy personally.

Lastly "This isn't your father's Mechwarrior" the previous Mechwarriors weren't PVP centric they were focused on the Single Player content, and the Multiplayer stuff was just a bonus, and generally was very poorly balanced. I too did not enjoy previous MW MP experiences, but not because they were too difficult, but because they were too flawed.

I consider myself mostly an example of a modern online gamer, and personally I find PVP in my games to be the most satisfying gaming experiences, but I do occasionally enjoy a well done SP experience. I'm glad that the trend in the industry is moving towards focusing games as either SP, or MP the old way of trying to do both generally didn't make for a well balanced or interesting experience in at least on of those areas. I also am not a kid I'm husband and father, and can't necessarily devote huge quantities of time to any game, but as long as the game is balanced it will get my free time and my money when I feel like contributing it.

[Siilk]

Aegis Kleais™, on 26 March 2012 - 11:03 AM, said:

SP (you vs. bots) or Co-Op (You + Friends vs. Bots) would use an Offline Pilot account. It can go through gaining XP/MXP that is usable only in SP/Co-Op campaigns.

MP (you vs. humans) would use an Online Pilot account. It has it's own Pilot/Mech trees/unlocks that are not shared from the Offline Pilot (nor can you use any of the Pilot/Mech Perks gained from SP/Co-Op play.

That's about the best I would offer. It allows you (or you + friends) to fight all the bots you want. But the rewards you got from doing so would not exist if you decide to fight human AI. That way, you can get all the training you want, and when you're ready for more challenging fare (be you classifying yourself as casual or not), you start from scratch.

Exactly what I have in mind. No complications here, just two types of account, online and offline. A lot of games work that way, there's nothing out of this world here. Actually, the biggest barrier that separates us form having bots at the game launch is AI itself. I admit, it's rather hard to do, especially if you want it to be good, but it's not impossible, it just require time. That's why I think it shouldn't be a top priority and could be released later, after the game is launched.

[JP Josh]

count they just barrow some of the command strips from the other mechwarrior games for the bots in offline play?

[DarkTreader]

Doubtful, as those would have to be totally reworked to fit with CryEngine's AI coding, and even though they have the license for MW, I doubt Micro$oft would give them code.

[Siilk]

CryEngine got a robust AI built in for PGI to use, the main problem would be adapting it to the mech combat. Managing heat, weapon groups, range etc etc, all that would have to be written from scratch.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

A lot of the details of weapons groups, ranges etc, all the data would already exist. My feeling is that if they ever do it, it would be as a stand alone game if the present crop of mech games prove popular then they could get funding.

[lawsondgage]

I want bots as well, not for training, but just because my internet sucks and I lag out of every match I try to play. It would be great if there was an offline mode that anyone could play with the trial mechs.

[roflplanes]

lawsondgage, on 09 February 2013 - 01:02 PM, said:

I want bots as well, not for training, but just because my internet sucks and I lag out of every match I try to play. It would be great if there was an offline mode that anyone could play with the trial mechs.

It's alive... IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!! YOU RESURRECTED IT AFTER A YEAR IN THE GRAVE!!!!

But seriously haha. Like all the previous posters said, bot play will probably never happen. The game is even titled "Mechwarrior: Online" for that matter. I would absolutely LOVE to see this spawn a single-player reboot in the future, but right now I'm content with the devs finishing what they've started here first, THEN moving on to other projects like a single-player standalone.