What’s a Bot Between Players?
What’s everybody’s opinion on bots? You may see them as the duct tape of online games, just keeping it together to make games feel fuller. You might see them as free kills (yay!) or free kills for the enemy team (boo!). Under regular circumstances, when a game starts putting bots into an online game, it’s not a good sign. It will usually be because player numbers are dropping and the developer is trying to keep the game alive. In other cases, it would be because players have been dropped from a match and replaced with bots, again to keep the game alive. Whatever the reason, it seems that EA will be making use of bots in online matches with Battlefield 2042.
The reality is, your matches won’t always have every team full of real people, bots or no bots. According to The Verge, the bots that will be found in Battlefield 2042 will act more like placeholders for real players. If your game needs numbers, bots will be used until a real human player takes its place. These “AI Soldiers” can be found in the Breakthrough and Conquest game modes, but there are modes in Battlefield 2042 that will not utilize bots.
Last month, Destruction AllStars developer Lucid Games announced that they would be using bots to fill matches in their game, which was due to dwindling player counts. It would be easier to fill games with real people if Battlefield 2042 implemented cross-play at some point, though it would probably be a while before player numbers began to drop on any platform. Sony, who has been infamous for resisting cross-play, says that they are looking into ways to make it work that suits them, so hopefully Battlefield players will see a benefit from that. If the bots in Battlefield 2042 are competent, if might not be that big an issue anyway. Battlefield 2042 will be coming out on October 22nd for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
What has your experience been with bots in online games? Let us know in the comments below.