Update 305 Live on Steam! - Natural Selection 2

2

Comments

  • dePARAdePARA Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
    I understand the idea behind the bots filling up teams. But, well, it doesnt work.
    It didnt solve the problem why they are implemented.

    People still sitting in the readyroom cause they dont want to play in a team filled with bots.
    The skill shuffle, wich was already broken before, is now complete useless.
    Lets say a shuffle kicks in but didnt shuffle the afk marked people and filling the empty spots with bots.
    What do you think happen when the afk people finally join a team?
    Right, one unbalanced round after another.

    I must say i had only horrible rounds with this build.
    Also people are kicking bots, cause they think they are taking slots.
    And with every bot kick you weaken the team.
    Sure, bots are dumb like hell. But atleast they are running around and might get a couple of kills.

    305 is one of the worst experiences i ever had in NS2 cause these dumb bots.
  • DaveodethDaveodeth Join Date: 2012-11-21 Member: 172717Members
    Amen to that, bots have always put me off. Used to avoid them like the plague if they were on other games.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    edited July 2016
    dePARA wrote: »
    People still sitting in the readyroom cause they dont want to play in a team filled with bots.
    The skill shuffle, wich was already broken before, is now complete useless.
    Lets say a shuffle kicks in but didnt shuffle the afk marked people and filling the empty spots with bots.
    What do you think happen when the afk people finally join a team?
    Right, one unbalanced round after another.

    How is any of that any different than if bots weren't present?

    If they dont want to play in a team filled with bots, then the team needs to fill more than 5 players? (arguably 5v5 isn't even a real round)
    Nothings changed with the skill shuffle afaik.. and if you have empty slots that would've meant an imbalance in the round (and back to not being a real round again) so at least its filled with something that "might get a couple of kills"
  • MartigenMartigen Australia Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2714Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Reinforced - Onos

    Good in theory but what it mostly did was extend games needlessly by preventing the winning team from finishing the game once the losing team started to quit.
    Good in theory for pickup games or compet games, but not pubs. People constantly come and go from pubs, and after playing a number of rounds on 305 this mechanic is horrible.

    Do games finish slightly quicker? Yes
    Are the games that finish this way shittier? Yes

    Result: People are left with a more negative impression of NS2, and if they're new, will be less likely to return.

    NS2 is pub now. All changes should be pub focused if the game is to survive.

  • DaveodethDaveodeth Join Date: 2012-11-21 Member: 172717Members
    I only play pub and hate drawn out games. if a game is over and people leave then don't drag that out, that will piss off new players if the rest of the team is no longer interested.
  • AeglosAeglos Join Date: 2010-04-06 Member: 71189Members
    I would think most players have enough manners to concede the match as a team in a pick up game anyway, so this change is definitely "pub focused".
  • CCTEECCTEE Join Date: 2013-06-20 Member: 185634Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    I dont like bots in general and esp not in NS2.
    If i wanna invest time in 'interacting' with something controlled by a pc i go play witcher III.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    While I get everyone's disdain for bots in general... they are there for a warmup mode only.
    If you have 6v6 (the minimum required for a balanced, real round) then they are not present.

    They merely keep you entertained while you seed, waiting for a real round.
  • dePARAdePARA Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
    edited July 2016
    How is it more "new player friendly" to give them the illusion of having 2 teams with equal skill after the shuffle while one team is 4 players down in reality?
    This might work on the rookie servers where a bot is often better than a real player but not on servers with half experienced players.

    Bots are good for training stuff, nothing more.

    I never ever, i repeat NEVER heard someone saying: "Cool, we have a bot", "Lets go, teams are fine" (while one team has 4 bots), "Bots are great".
    But what i saw was:
    People leaving the team filled with bots after the roundstart wich end in inbalance, people trying to votekick the bots and nonstop complains about the bots from every skill level (not only the high skill like after the healthbar change)
    Even a rookie knows that bots are dumb and not funny to play with.

    And btw.
    Introducing the bots cause many people have clicked "uneven teams" in your feedback formular after roundend is based on a huge misunderstanding.
    I clicked that too after a onesided roflstomp only to see later that there is another option called "not balance teams"
    Half of the NS2 playerbase have another language than english.
    So im 100% sure that "uneven teams" is more "unbalanced teams"
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    Again.. if 1 team has 4 bots, it's because you don't have enough to play a real game yet.. so it's just training at best at that point.
    If the players, including all skill ranges like you say, see that there are bots.. then they probably should not start the game yet until they have 6v6 if they don't want to train with bots?

    Using your example, it would previously have been 1 v 6 if there were 4 bots on one team.. so they would never in their right mind start a round like that unless it was for training purposes.
  • HandschuhHandschuh Join Date: 2005-03-08 Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
    And please remove the MEssage

    "Bot xyz joined / left"...
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    edited July 2016
    IronHorse wrote: »
    Again.. if 1 team has 4 bots, it's because you don't have enough to play a real game yet.. so it's just training at best at that point.
    If the players, including all skill ranges like you say, see that there are bots.. then they probably should not start the game yet until they have 6v6 if they don't want to train with bots?

    Using your example, it would previously have been 1 v 6 if there were 4 bots on one team.. so they would never in their right mind start a round like that unless it was for training purposes.

    Actually Ironhorse...

    Previously it would've been 4v3 because you couldn't stack 6v1 without the bots...

    I also think a lot of the hate for bots currently comes from how bad they are, marine in particular. They just run around willy nilly snapping to targets with aimbot-like aim... Their behavior and aim needs to become more realistic or life like.

    The other problem is how they're activated. The TF server had it almost prefect..
    A: Anyone in the steam group could activate "vs bots" mode against either alien or marine bots.. (99%of the time it was vs alien)
    B: Players couldn't join the team with bots, so it was for training purposes while seeding only.
    C: If players wanted to play a small game instead of bots they could.


    I propose you guys use TF's model to start with, making a vote to activate bot mode.. Start the vote and you get 3 options.. F1=vs marine bots, F2=vs alien bots, or F3=no bots..

    That way they aren't activated until people in the server want them activated.

    From there work on improving marine bot behavior and aim to be more realistic..
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    MoFo1 wrote: »
    Previously it would've been 4v3 because you couldn't stack 6v1 without the bots...
    Not necessarily.

    If there are 5 bots on your team (the scenario he described) then there's only 1 player.
    So if the other team has players (the scenario he described) then it's 1v6 or equivalent.

    Yes, the default server settings forbade uneven team joining, but I know multiple servers that I frequent that had that disabled anyways.
    But even if that weren't the case, having less than 6v6 does not make for a real round and would still be training, even if auto balance were enabled on the server.
    So if you're in warmup mode or just want a training round, I don't see why bots being there is a bad thing (Since that's the purpose they facilitate)

    So really, the main cause of any imbalance in teams is due to autobalance being disabled - not bots - as it'd still be 1v6 .. just without 5 bots on your team helping out.

    And just FYI, bots are already toggleable server side: sv_maxbots
    I think it'd make more sense to vote to disable bots. (still not sure why you would though, given how it still wouldn't be a balanced round... but)


  • remiremi remedy [blu.knight] Join Date: 2003-11-18 Member: 23112Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester
    edited July 2016
    dePARA wrote: »
    Introducing the bots cause many people have clicked "uneven teams" in your feedback formular after roundend is based on a huge misunderstanding.
    I clicked that too after a onesided roflstomp only to see later that there is another option called "not balance teams"
    Half of the NS2 playerbase have another language than english.
    So im 100% sure that "uneven teams" is more "unbalanced teams"
    This is completely mischaracterizing our read of the data, and the intent of the filler bots. When looking at the data, I never interpreted "uneven teams" as being due to a difference in the literal number of players per team. I actually updated the feedback survey with this patch to be more accurate in the wording as well (now it gives the option "Teams were imbalanced" instead). The filler bots were added for the reason IronHorse has already mentioned: to help servers seed up to the 12 person minimum for a decent game.

  • LastdonLastdon Join Date: 2012-06-29 Member: 153767Members
    IronHorse wrote: »
    Again.. if 1 team has 4 bots, it's because you don't have enough to play a real game yet.. so it's just training at best at that point.
    If the players, including all skill ranges like you say, see that there are bots.. then they probably should not start the game yet until they have 6v6 if they don't want to train with bots?

    Using your example, it would previously have been 1 v 6 if there were 4 bots on one team.. so they would never in their right mind start a round like that unless it was for training purposes.

    This is not true at all. I just played multiple games where we shuffled and one team had 3 bots why the other had zero plus we then lost a player so we were down 4 players in a 24 man game.

    Bots should have only been added VIA a command same with the removal of bots.

    You guys are out of control and are on the brink of putting the final stake through NS2 heart. Just stop fucking with shit.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    @Lastdon

    The default setting for sv_maxbots will always be less than the minimum requirements of ending the warmup period. (warmup ends with 6v6)
    This configuration ensures bots are used for training purposes or when there isn't enough players for a balanced match.

    If a server operator has changed that default to a different value, then that's because they want a higher minimum amount of bots on their server, for their own reasons.
    If you don't like this then I suggest contacting the server operator.
  • dePARAdePARA Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
    @IronHorse

    I got it, bots are for training.
    But why do you lose hive skill like in a real match?

    And if one team has 10 players an the other 6 and 4 bots, it is NOT balanced cause 4 bots running around braindead.
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    dePARA wrote: »
    And if one team has 10 players an the other 6 and 4 bots, it is NOT balanced cause 4 bots running around braindead.

    If one team has ten players and the other has six, it's above the warmup requirement. If the server still has bots enabled you should talk to the server operator instead.
  • soccerguy243soccerguy243 Join Date: 2012-12-22 Member: 175920Members, WC 2013 - Supporter
    dePARA wrote: »
    @IronHorse

    I got it, bots are for training.
    But why do you lose hive skill like in a real match?

    And if one team has 10 players an the other 6 and 4 bots, it is NOT balanced cause 4 bots running around braindead.

    That means the server owner has changed how the bots work. As Ironhorse and other have mentioned several times... once there are 12 humans (6v6) there should be no more bots.
  • RevanCoranaRevanCorana Join Date: 2015-08-14 Member: 207125Members
    Gotta say, I really like the bots in the end they remove a lot of the annoying wait at the beginning of a game and in general help making games more even by filling those empty spots when someone leave during a game.
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    edited July 2016
    I do have to say, though... bots + PGP = Annoying combination.

    It's like suddenly every server is full of those annoying people that are unable to understand the concept of holding your fire pregame.
  • OnosFactoryOnosFactory New Zealand Join Date: 2008-07-16 Member: 64637Members
    You added Bots and asked if we missed you? No, we didn't miss your bots. We already had them.

    Tried to play this evening, got kick from one server because *nameless* is a SLAVE, got kicked from another because - I spectated?

    Wow, Elitism kills games, we have been saying that for a few short years and no one listened.

    5 1/2 months and counting down. Work hard now, game developers, show us a game worth our attention. LOL.
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    edited July 2016
    IronHorse wrote: »
    Not necessarily.

    If there are 5 bots on your team (the scenario he described) then there's only 1 player.
    So if the other team has players (the scenario he described) then it's 1v6 or equivalent.
    Actually @IronHorse

    Previously there were no bots, so you couldn't have 5 bots on your team... Hence the scenario he described could never happen... that was my point.

    Obviously bots are here to stay, but in their current form they are just plain broken and honestly will lead to bad experiences way more often than good ones.

    For starters the bot AI is so downright awful that it's just plain broken to put bot vs bot.. The Alien bots inevitably slaughter the living crap out of the Marine bots (especially after getting Fade and Onos res) and overall it's not very fun. I tried to seed a server earlier and people kept leaving because the Alien bots were spawnraping the hell out of the Marines, and the Marine bots weren't even shooting back.

    Then you have the scenario he described of being stuck with 5 bots against a team of 6 players. That type of thing is what makes people leave servers and makes seeding take longer. (or makes it not happen... we never managed to get that server populated earlier) I get that you want to avoid people waiting in the RR to join a team, but your solution to that problem has created an even bigger problem. (and 9/10 games are shuffled anyway, so who cares if they wait in the RR until being shuffled)

    Until bot AI can be improved to the point where it is believable (mainly Marine bots) you guys should seriously consider making warm up mode be player vs bot only... At the start of each round have it default players to Marine vs Alien bots, with a vote so people can switch the server to Alien vs Marine bots if they want to... Limit the # of bots to the # of players (+1 for the Alien commander bot obviously) and voila.. You have your practice warm up mode.

    This would help seed servers much better, as players could join the server and pick a team, then have bots to practice against (without bots on their team ruining things) As more players join in simply have more bots spawn until you reach that 12 player mark.
  • IronHorseIronHorse Developer, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributor Join Date: 2010-05-08 Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
    What I keep understanding here from recent complaints is that the bot AI is poor (which I agree with) but what's really causing issues is autobalance being disabled.

    If bots didn't exist in this patch and it was just autobalance removed, you'd have that imbalanced scenario of 1v6.
    The bots complement the removal of autobalance.

    That being said, there does seem to be a bug with PGP and these bots, where they seem to ignore sv_maxbots setting..
  • sensen Join Date: 2015-06-06 Member: 205292Members
    I wonder if reinstating the logic preventing a player from joining a team when that team has more human players than the other one would improve things.
  • HandschuhHandschuh Join Date: 2005-03-08 Member: 44338Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Community Developer
    Yeah.. 5 bots vs 2 bots and I can still join the 2 bots... even more annoying is that a full server with 20 players are the bots who join just for a minute when I join a team till there is a shuffle..

    When playing on a server which needs people these bots are plainly annoying.. hell so annoying that it's not even close to comparing too healthbars which noone wants.. it makes the waiting time so frustrating that im afk for most of the time anf miss the start of the round..

    Another example for poor implementation since there is no way to shut them off .. like a vote or something especially if your alone with someone.. waiting in the RR is boring and I rather want to try things out in Sandbox without needing to pointllessly kill some Onos

    These are just glimpses of my impressions but you have to acknowledge that annoying your players is plain stupid.. especially when it doesn't do what intended.. which is helping to seed the server.. currently it seems to do the opposit from what I've seen.. since ppl rather join an overcrowded server.. even more than before
  • Legend_BossLegend_Boss UK Join Date: 2014-02-27 Member: 194394Members
    Since the update I'm not able to parasite power nodes. This is something that I did sometimes to mark them on the map to keep an eye out for when they were bulky or turned into a blueprint. I didn't see this be added to the change list so I presume it's the result of other changes to the power node - preventing the alarm flash when blueprint was previously attacked. Any chance to bring back the parasite power node feature?
  • BicsumBicsum Join Date: 2012-02-27 Member: 147596Members, Reinforced - Gold
    edited July 2016
    If the bots are just there to help seeding, then I wouldn't implement them as regular players, but as part of a minigame. You could use the concept of the hive defense game mode, where you defend against waves of marines as lerk/fade.

    Each player may initiate this mode for himself. The bots would spawn in waves at the opponents teams hive/command station and will try to chase you down. While this mode is actice, you and your bots are ghosted, meaning that you get a transparent/colorized shade and other players can't kill you or your bots. To increase the difficulty with each wave, you should scale the bots quality (hp, speed) instead of quantity right away, so you don't run into performance problems.
  • dePARAdePARA Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
    edited July 2016
    Sounds similar like the implemenation on Tactical Gamer.
    All players are on one side (rines mostly) and play against a full bot team till enough players for an real match are on the server.
    Its good for warmup also.
    And this doesnt count as a normal round. So no hive score win/lose.

    Yesterday i had round where the rineteam was full on one server and noone wanted to join the alienteam full of bots.
    For some reason (it was stack for sure) the balance vote didnt kicks in.
    Well it ended in the expected one sided round.
    Sure you can say this would be the same without bots also. No, people just dont want to play with bots.

    Its great that the serveradmins have full control of the settings.
    But to say "Hey, we are out of this. if you have problems, ask the admin" is kinda fishy while the current implementation has definitively issues the devs can tweak a bit.
    Especial when you dont know the admin this tip is kinda useless.
  • MoFo1MoFo1 United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
    edited July 2016
    IronHorse wrote: »
    What I keep understanding here from recent complaints is that the bot AI is poor (which I agree with) but what's really causing issues is autobalance being disabled.

    No autobalance is an annoyance... but the real issue is playing small games with bots... Because bot vs bot is just plain broken (like I said above and you seemingly chose to ignore)

    Try seeding a server with 1-4 people... unless you get lucky and it fills up in the first couple minutes you're guaranteed to have a **** experience... Alien bots as Fades and Oni spawnraping the hell out of Marine bots that won't even shoot back...

    Tactical Gamer and Tactical Freedom had bots mode perfect (literally P.E.R.F.E.C.T.) and you guys would be wise to use their model.. At least until bot AI can be improved to the point where Marine bots will have realistic aim, focus fire higher life forms, and you don't end up with 4 Alien bots getting 20-30-40 kill streaks off of the Marine bots... (and so bots in general don't run circles or stare at walls)

    I'll just quote DePara since he detailed it quite nicely...
    All players are on one side (rines mostly) and play against a full bot team till enough players for an real match are on the server.
    Its good for warmup also.
    And this doesnt count as a normal round. So no hive score win/lose.

    Add in a vote to disable bot mode if people are so inclined.. and you have a win, win, win scenario with no downsides whatsoever.
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