Tripware, please, do not ruin this game as you did with RO2 at the beginning

[Srinidhalaya]

I believe our panel at PAX West should have covered most of this.

There are a variety of map sizes, but the big ones are bigger than most of the ro2 levels.

Pilots spawn outside of the helicopter and are not bound to their helicopter. They can crash land and exit their vehicle.

Ranked and unranked is going away. There will just be "standard" and "custom" servers - only that will change are server rules. No affect on leveling or anything like that - we do not want to harm the modding community.

We're officially dropping bot support - may pick this back up in the future, but right now it would distract from getting the core multiplayer elements done.

Attachable/detachable bayonets are back.

Outstanding! Those are positive changes. Now, if only we could get better explosion sounds.

Priorities, I do agree bots are a pain in the ***. But they are needed on larger maps. Considering there's a game mode centering around small competitive play it makes sense as bots won't make much of a difference there. I don't know about you, but Id get bored pretty quick with playing 8v8s with no bots on say bridges.

I disagree completely. The reason you cant find a populated server, is because of the bots. There are literally 1, sometimes 2, fully populated servers (my region, USA) as it is right now, but usually only during peak gaming hours. During off hours, even those servers are empty. BUT, there is about 50 other players, spread out across 50 other servers with good ping, playing with bots. Get rid of the bots, they will get bored running around in their empty server with nothing to shoot, and consolidate.

If they don't, the game fails, which in my opinion, it already has the second they put bots in. Bots are for Modders.

 

[-Moody-]

Priorities, I do agree bots are a pain in the ***. But they are needed on larger maps. Considering there's a game mode centering around small competitive play it makes sense as bots won't make much of a difference there. I don't know about you, but Id get bored pretty quick with playing 8v8s with no bots on say bridges.

I wouldn't want to play 8v8 everytime too. But 8v8 is more fun than 8v8 players +48 bots. I might as well play offline which is boring af. Having no bots means more diversity on public servers, no bot farming and more immersion since TWI/AMG can't program flawless AI without spending too much money on it.

Playing with less than 64 people means more down time between firefights. This could lead to a lot of tension especially in a jungle where vietnamese could stand behind every plant and tree. Imagine playing 2v2 with a friend. You both crawl in dirt together with your scoped rifle finding those other two which are trying to do the same. I think it's exciting and builds up a lot of tension. But it shouldn't be the standart for sure but thats how you used to populate a server in a multiplayer game. And it works well

 

[boxman500]

Outstanding! Those are positive changes. Now, if only we could get better explosion sounds.




I disagree completely. The reason you cant find a populated server, is because of the bots. There are literally 1, sometimes 2, fully populated servers (my region, USA) as it is right now, but usually only during peak gaming hours. During off hours, even those servers are empty. BUT, there is about 50 other players, spread out across 50 other servers with good ping, playing with bots. Get rid of the bots, they will get bored running around in their empty server with nothing to shoot, and consolidate.

If they don't, the game fails, which in my opinion, it already has the second they put bots in. Bots are for Modders.

This is a silly debate, You can simple look at the servers that support bots, and ones that don't. The servers with Bots always have people in them, 40-1/Merrill's/Weekend warriors/ They all support bots and are almost always full. Bots help jump start servers, they help keep half full servers from dying.

Ever consider the fact that maybe those players like playing against bots, and wouldn't be playing otherwise? Bots give people something to shoot at. As someone who has experience hosting servers(Clearly you don't), the games(not limited to Ro2/RS) that support bots, have a much higher rate of player traffic than server that don't support bots. Servers like battlefield, stay empty because who would want to join a server with 0 people and nothing to shoot at? I mean if you hate bots so much, why don't you play on servers without them? Your answer is most likely, because there's no players. People don't join empty servers,

I understand you don't like bots, because they don't play like humans. Who knows, maybe you can be one of the first, to program a intelligent, low CPU intensive, low latency AI for Antimatter Games(hint its extremely hard for even the best programmers). I don’t think, people here understand how significant bots are to this game.

With larger maps and even fewer players causes imbalance. If you look at the battlefield forums, you can see that even with servers half full at 32 players, people complain about imbalance. We see this same thing with the game Squad. This is not a debate, it’s just fact. There is no Philosophically moral high ground gamers take when choosing to join a server. They pick one that has lots of players and or friends and they stay till they get bored. They don't think, “Geez this server here, Man its full, you know what rather than wait for an empty spot, I should go and join this empty server and wait indefinitely for it to fill up, because it’s the right thing to do...” They either get into their preferred server or they don’t play at all.
Now I’m sure there are some exceptions to this, but I’ve been hosting servers for years, and no matter what the game, the results are all the same.

 

[boxman500]

I wouldn't want to play 8v8 everytime too. But 8v8 is more fun than 8v8 players +48 bots. I might as well play offline which is boring af. Having no bots means more diversity on public servers, no bot farming and more immersion since TWI/AMG can't program flawless AI without spending too much money on it.

Playing with less than 64 people means more down time between firefights. This could lead to a lot of tension especially in a jungle where vietnamese could stand behind every plant and tree. Imagine playing 2v2 with a friend. You both crawl in dirt together with your scoped rifle finding those other two which are trying to do the same. I think it's exciting and builds up a lot of tension. But it shouldn't be the standart for sure but thats how you used to populate a server in a multiplayer game. And it works well

Have you even seen how large the map is? This sounds like wishful thinking, A 2v2 game mode would consist of you and your buddy flying around and capping the points, and would probably never see an enemy the entire game.

 

[Srinidhalaya]

This is a silly debate, You can simple look at the servers that support bots, and ones that don't. The servers with Bots always have people in them, 40-1/Merrill's/Weekend warriors/ They all support bots and are almost always full. Bots help jump start servers, they help keep half full servers from dying.

Ever consider the fact that maybe those players like playing against bots, and wouldn't be playing otherwise? Bots give people something to shoot at. As someone who has experience hosting servers(Clearly you don't), the games(not limited to Ro2/RS) that support bots, have a much higher rate of player traffic than server that don't support bots. Servers like battlefield, stay empty because who would want to join a server with 0 people and nothing to shoot at? I mean if you hate bots so much, why don't you play on servers without them? Your answer is most likely, because there's no players. People don't join empty servers,

I understand you don't like bots, because they don't play like humans. Who knows, maybe you can be one of the first, to program a intelligent, low CPU intensive, low latency AI for Antimatter Games(hint its extremely hard for even the best programmers). I don’t think, people here understand how significant bots are to this game.

With larger maps and even fewer players causes imbalance. If you look at the battlefield forums, you can see that even with servers half full at 32 players, people complain about imbalance. We see this same thing with the game Squad. This is not a debate, it’s just fact. There is no Philosophically moral high ground gamers take when choosing to join a server. They pick one that has lots of players and or friends and they stay till they get bored. They don't think, “Geez this server here, Man its full, you know what rather than wait for an empty spot, I should go and join this empty server and wait indefinitely for it to fill up, because it’s the right thing to do...” They either get into their preferred server or they don’t play at all.
Now I’m sure there are some exceptions to this, but I’ve been hosting servers for years, and no matter what the game, the results are all the same.

You're right about a couple of things, first it is a silly debate. The rest is pretty far off. The problem is some people's ego's are too big to give up their precious server, even though 90% of the time it's empty, and when it isn't empty, it only has a few players. I actually have ran servers before. Just because the successful servers allow bots, isn't the reason for their success. They are successful because they have decent ping, and the player base recognizes them as good servers. Admins aren't abusive...ect. If you want to run a successful server, then have regulars, enough member count to get things started, and don't be a douche bag to the pubs that join.

If that isn't enough, then either the game in it's entirety has failed, at which bots aren't curing the disease, only the symptoms, or you're competition exceeds you, and there are better options in the server selection. A server admin hanging on to a failed server, running bots, but can still pull 3 or 4 players, TAKES those players from other potential servers to consolidate.

Literally in the server browser right now, are 3 US servers that are full, there is 1 US server that is half full, and about a dozen servers with 1-5 players. That is enough active players online to fill 4 US servers. If those dozen servers had 0 bots. 9/10 they would consolidate to the half full server.

But all in all, don't get me wrong, I'm not 100% anti bot. Your second point you nailed, AI isn't easy, and to expand, it's not cheap. If a Modder want's to make bots and get them working, have at it. A modder could spend the time to get it right, not worried about deadlines. TWI did not, and all the time and money they spent implementing half assed bots could have been used on actual content, that would have kept the player base a bit higher based on features that count, like a higher map count on release, more tanks...ect.

But it's a silly debate, and I doubt my views will change yours, and yours most certainly wont change mine.

Cheers.

 

[Cwivey]

We're officially dropping bot support - may pick this back up in the future, but right now it would distract from getting the core multiplayer elements done.

That's a shame. My ol' dad would like to play against the bots in Vietnam (he does in RO:Ost and RO2).



As for the OP's post, RO2 is so very far away from the playstyle of the CoD's and BF's. It's fine to disagree with certain directions it took, but the comparison still isn't valid even after 5 years.