Fortnite made all the headlines recently by completely destroying the game live with players
still inside it and then shutting the game down in preparation for the release of Chapter
2: a fresh take on the ever popular battle royale that includes new locations, weapons,
mechanics, quality of life improvements and apparently... bots.
After it was hinted by Epic themselves in early October, there are now AI bots appearing
in the battle royale matches and it's been received a mixed response from the community
- because it's impossible to please everyone on the internet. But this saw me reinstall
the game recently to find out what it was all about and how well they operated. I'm
Tommy Thompson and in this episode of Design Dive, let's talk about the inclusion of bots
in multiplayer video games and why it's a great idea to add to a game like Fortnite
but also the challenges faced and considerations that need to be taken when making it work
within an established online ecosystem.
Now when you start Fortnite Chapter 2, your first match is filled with bots and is built
as a tutorial to help you play through and win a solo match. I haven't played Fortnite
since the end of Season 5 and I while I managed to nab many a solo and squad win, the game
shifts so drastically that jumping back in when you haven't kept an eye on it is incredibly
daunting and hence why I lost interest. But when you come back in for the first time,
it allows you a bit of space to figure out how all the new mechanics work such as swimming,
fishing, hiding in shrubbery and using a variety of vehicles that are lying around. And it's
this entire excercise that quite explicity points out one of the biggest benefits of
introducing bots to an online only game like Fortnite: it's a great source for training
new players.
Games that only provide online multiplayer games options anticipate that players will
simply figure out how to play the game by sitting down, jumping into a match and finding
their feet. But it's seldom as straight forward as that, it's no longer the case that you
can immediately understand all of the inner workings of a game on first passing, you need
time to figure out the variety of different components that define that experience. This
could be different weapons in Rainbow Six, to figuring out the best locations to land
in Call of Duty Blackout or the operators in Apex Legends. In fact, none of these games
provide offline modes that reflect the core multiplayer experience using bots. Black Ops
4 only provides them in split screen team death match and free-for-all, while Rainbow
Six Siege has Terrorist Hunt and the Situation missions. But the AI in these modes are limited
in their gameplay functionality and cannot take control of the operator classes that
are the crux of what Siege is all about.
What this means is that when you start playing these games for the first time, you're immediately
cannon fodder to anyone who has more experience than you. Sure, you're going to be at a disadvantage
when you're playing a game for the first time, but it's difficult to build up the knowledge
and skill you require in a battle royale when you're being killed within 30 seconds of hitting
the ground. Or alternatively landing in a safe area, scooping up items only to be shot
in the head from afar as soon as you approach the next circle. And this is a problem that
only continues to grow as these live service games continue to flourish: games that are
constantly trying to drive new players towards them while they've been active and building
their player bases for months if not years previously. Providing an offline equivalent
of that core game experience that allows you to run around, get a feel for the mechanics,
try out weapons and get a grip fighting enemies that actually reflects how the games plays
online is something that most games simply ignore and I imagine is what turns people
off these games pretty quickly. All that said, bots don't successfully replicate how humans
play games typically, given these AI creations are built and designed to operate in a more
traditional capacity (no 360 quick scoping here kids), and that sadly means you're still
kept at arms length from the reality of how this game plays online. Ask anybody who plays
fighting games about the disparity between offline modes and human vs human fights and
you're gonna get a rant, guaranteed.
Now while I stressed this in an offline context, but there is value in providing them in online
game modes. You can provide a balance of skill level for incoming players, potentially even
allow for them to get a couple of wins early on and over time as their skill grows, you
could disable the bots from the experience - which is a point I'll come back to later.
Truth is, live service games - especially Battle Royales - are notoriously bad at onboarding
their players. Largely because so many Battle Royales are developed in a hurry to get that
sweet sweet free-to-play money. It's interesting that the other big PC and console-based F2p
genre - MOBA's are actually pretty good at catering to new players, with League of Legends
and Dota 2 providing player vs AI modes that allow you to get to grips with it before joining
other humans. This is immensely valuable for someone like me who is by MOBA standards,
clinically dead. Yet funnily enough Fortnite is not the Battle Royale to do this (and it
might even the first time it's happened in Fortnite). The mobile version of PlayerUnknown's
Battlegrounds has had bots in it since launch, while it's long been suspected that Fortnite's
mobile version had something similar. In both cases. it's accomodating for players trying
to play a game with rather rich mechanics on a touch screen.
Meanwhile other multiplayer shooters such as Gears of War recognised that first-time
players often abandoned the multiplayer if they didn't get kills in their opening games.
Hence they deliberately populates your first multiplayer matches with bots and gave you
damage boosts such that you get a chance at scoring some kills. On that note, Gears of
War should be commended given that it has provided the option to play skirmish matches
since Gears 2 against AI bots and both Gears 4 and 5 have dedicated player versus AI game
modes in multiplayer, but they also serve another purpose. And this brings me to my
second point...
There's nothing worse than playing a round of multiplayer and your team is outnumbered.
Either the matchmaking hasn't found enough players or that one guy decides he's had enough
and rage quits anywhere from 10 minutes to 10 seconds into the current match. As soon
as that happens, you're at a huge disadvantage and either you're going to find a way to overcome
it, or you're just going to get steamrolled by the enemy team. Adding bots into the mix
can help address that imbalance. It doesn't rectify it entirely, given an AI bot is often
written to lack the same level of competence as a human player, but you can nonetheless
take advantage of it in order to get have a fighting chance against the other players.
This is great in recent games such as Gears 5, where players that drop out of horde mode
are replaced by bots. Sure, a bot isn't the same as having a human involved, but they're
actually still pretty vital. They help distract enemy AI from targeting you and - in my experience
- are more likely to come over and try to revive you if downed than actual human players!
And of course there are issues of connectivity and overall player count. You might be playing
in a game where the servers in your region aren't as populated as they are elsewhere
in the world? Or you're like me and have wooden internet that makes it impossible to have
consistent connections at certain times of day. Beyond all that there's the reality that
these online games are built to be disposable: try jumping back into older online-only games
and see how populated your matches are. Can you fill a lobby of the original Titanfall
anymore? I can't.
Oh and the one other unspoken thing when it comes to adding bots: it speeds up matchmaking!
When you're only looking for maybe 50/60/70 players instead of 99, it can shave time off
between matches and gets people back in the game faster.
All that said, I can understand if people get frustrated if they suddenly lose due to
bots filling up a PvP match. Hence I think there are issues that need to be balanced
and I'll come back to that in a minute.
But I think the most important fact is that putting bots in for new players or to fill
up servers is great, the real trick is enabling greater accessibility. AAA games seldom really
consider the broader audience that would ideally like to play the game, but cannot due to a
range of factors. Many of these online games are built with the intent that this is your
primary game. A lot of people own a gaming device solely to play their favourite online
shooter, but there are also large sums of people for whom this is something they have
limited time to engage with. People maybe go to college, have jobs or even have families
to take care of and want to be able to participate in their hobby without other players in the
game effectively pushing them away given so much emphasis is placed on established skill.
But perhaps more critically, there are people who may never be able to play at the expected
skill level of the game and it's outside of their control. Players with disabilities have
just as much right to participate in games, but quite often games are not built to accommodate
for them, because most action games are predicated on skill which in-turn is (often unintentionally)
ableist. By introducing bots of various skill levels and even tweaking over-arching game
systems you could cater to people for whom it would be otherwise impossible to play these
games. There is huge potential for games to better accommodate players and AI could be
a huge player in making that happen. So this is something I may well return to in a future
video.
No while I do thing it's a great idea to populate online games with AI bots, there are issues
that need to considered given it can break the experience a little bit: not just in how
they work but the message it sends or the issues they create.
First things first, tell players you're doing it. I know we like to think that sliding bots
in there to help them get better at the game is great, but not telling them you've done
amounts of subterfuge: really weak and not that interesting subterfuge that most people
will get over in a heartbeat mind you, but you're bound to get some one with opinions
who goes and yells about it on their own wee corner of the internet. Plus if it's readily
transparent that's what you're doing, you're more likely to annoy your players rather than
make them feel good about their accomplishments within the game, which was pretty much the
response when Mario Kart Tour came out on mobile (d'you remember that? That was only
a month ago?, yeesh).
Secondly, if you're implementing bots, then make sure you allow for a opt-out for players,
especially at higher skill ranks. If it's clear based on the skill-based matchmaking
system you're operating that these players would be better off shooting each other than
bots, don't put them in there. If anything it becomes a system they can game for easy
kills and resources. Unless it's Titanfall 2 where bots are a core part of the multiplayer
experience. I suspect that even in circumstances like that mentioned earlier, with players
in unbalanced matches and with shoddy internet would still rather take their lumps as it
is than let their pride take a hit for winning a match with a bot in it.
The third thing is tied into the second, in that you may well start to phase bots out
the longer someone plays the game. It makes no sense to put them in again if the player
has a consistently good run, but conversely it could make sense to drop them back in if
they're having a really bad time of it. This also comes back to the issue of telling the
player that you're doing it and the need for the opt out as I imagine someones delicate
ego and inturn their controller could take a beating if they start seeing bots repopulate
within their online matches again. Conversely, you might never want to play with people and
always play bot matches. Because people are the worst. If that's the case, don't punish
players for opting to take that approach and instead provide alternative ways to achieve
unlocks typically tied to multiplayer XP.
This is far from a settled issue and I imagine there'll be many a complaint in the coming
months, but it seems like Fortnite is approaching this a lot of positive ways. I genuinely believe
that having more AI bots - irrespective of how feature rich they are - caters to audiences
in ways that most online games simply don't bother to think about. Yes you could read
it as the death knell of Fortnite because the servers can't populate anymore or just
that more people can potentially grab a Victory Royale. Like I said earlier, I haven't played
Fortnite since the end of Season 5 and I while I managed to nab many a solo and squad win,
but it was nice to come back to some more bot-heavy matches to help me get a feel for
the game all over again.
Thanks for watching this Design Dive episode. This was a short n sweet video that wasn't
planned until I started reading about all this Fortnite bot jazz last week. But I hope
y'all enjoyed it nonetheless! Be sure to like, subscribe, watch all the other videos on how
bots are actually made in video games and even join these wonderful patreon supporters
too. I'll be back!