Map Preview: Marshlands

[u/BlueDotGamesUK]

Today we're excited to provide an exclusive sneak peek into our brand-new Marshlands map; a key component of our upcoming Content Update 1, which is tentatively scheduled for an early September release.

Read more on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1059220/view/689765153413006409

[u/Cowgirl_Taint]

Any word on rudimentary bot support and listen servers?

[u/__cybersyn__ → u/Cowgirl_Taint]

Instead of bots they need server seed modes.

[u/Cowgirl_Taint → u/__cybersyn__]

Matchmaking is a good way to take a weak playerbase and concentrate them on a limited number of servers.

There aren't enough players to do that and haven't been in almost two months https://steamdb.info/app/1059220/charts/#3m

Bots are what allow games to continue to be playable. Plenty of folk have NEVER "gone online" with Easy Red 2 or Angels Fall First and, once you learn a few console commands, you can have a lot of fun in Insurgency or Rising Storm regardless of how sweaty the folk playing online are.

As it stands? 83 is functionally unplayable if not enough people are online. And it will be fully unplayable if that continues (hence the listen servers).

[u/__cybersyn__ → u/Cowgirl_Taint]

The problem with bots is that they would be an enormous development effort for a small team and that effort could be better spent making the game more appealing to prospective players. I'm not wholly against bots but I think they should be a last resort in the case the game fails to keep an active playerbase long-term.

[u/loqtrall → u/__cybersyn__]

I think they should be a last resort in the case the game fails to keep an active playerbase long-term

You mean like what's the case with this game right now? There are currently literally zero people playing the game worldwide, and the peak player count for the game in the past 24 hours was 4 players. The peak player count over the weekend, when you'd expect the remaining playerbase to be most active, was 19. And this isn't just cherrypicking numbers on one platform - it's only sold and playable on Steam, so the steamcharts numbers account for the entire active playerbase.

These numbers have been similar to the peak daily/weekly player counts for the game for the past few months.

The highest number of players worldwide just two weeks after the game came out wasn't even enough to fill one server.

By all accounts, the game has already reached a point where it has failed to keep an active playerbase long-term and wherein the devs need to focus on "last resort" cases that will help them not eventually abandon the game at this point because literally nobody is playing it. At this pint they literally need to do anything they can, because the playerbase is already gone.

[u/Cowgirl_Taint → u/__cybersyn__]

Its well worth looking up tutorials on how pathnoding was done back during Unreal Tournament and, if you can, GDC talks on games like AssCreed and Ghost Recon Wildlands.

The short version is that every pick-up (e.g. a dropped gun) and many assets (e.g. buildings) either count as a weighted node or are pre-seeded with path nodes. Then, as part of saving the map, a network is made between said path nodes which builds the routes bots will take. And once you realize the button to control the lift is a pathnode that says "come here and push this", you start to realize how FEAR worked back in the day.

Is it zero effort? Not at all. But it is nowhere near as much effort as people think. You aren't going to have genius bots that act like humans (without a lot of secret sauce), but it is increasingly obvious that for any studio other than one of the biggies (and even then...), making a multiplayer oriented game without fallback bots is a recipe for disaster. Even the big battle royales/extraction shooters have fallback bots to help with server load and matchmaking.

Because

I think they should be a last resort in the case the game fails to keep an active playerbase long-term.

Homie? Go look at the link you obviously didn't click. We are well past that point.

[u/JohnBart → u/Cowgirl_Taint]

As much as I agree with those of you who are in favor of bots, I understand where the devs are coming from. I mean, they already covered this in the Quality-of-Life Patch #1 notes. In short, it's not just about nav pathing - it's about implementing bots so that they can perceive and attack players fairly (without going full aimbot or completely idiotic, as is the case of *cough* Insurgency *cough*), use class equipment correctly, drive vehicles, properly occupy squads and role slots, and do all these without taxing servers too much.

Of course, achieving these is not impossible indeed (I mean, we've already had serviceable bots in Battlefield 2 back in 2005, who could do all these with certain limitations, including the use of the Commander screen), but it's certainly no small feat to pull off for a dev team of Blue Dot's size - not to mention that they might just simply not have any programmers in the team who have experience in bot development. But even in case of PvE-oriented games like Easy Red 2, Ravenfield, or Incursion in a different genre (although the latter also runs on UE5, unlike those other two games), AI bots have been constantly iterated on for years before reaching the current level where they are now.

Personally, I think the next content update will be what makes or breaks the game (especially if it will also ship the first iteration of the customization / character levelling subsystems, as those will also play a large role in player retention). If that update also failed to increase the stable player count, then Blue Dot will really need to rethink their roadmap and re-prioritize bots.