On some things the AI aren’t bad. They can dish out some heavy damage, and they seem to dislike healers with a passion as well. I spent way more time spell locked as a healer against the bots compared against players.
But their movement behaviour still is so bad. Alot of times they just move back and forth 1 meter for like 3 minutes because you are standing next to the flag they are going for. Or how they easily are stuck to one spot because players are near one of the 3 routes they take when leaving their keep
I’m pretty sure i had one of them cast an unstable affliction on me which was ticking for 45k, and then another shadow priest hitting bolts for 40k, even i cant get them to 35k with alot of crit. that’s insane.
They dealt little damage on Wednesday. Yesterday they ramped up a bit. Today was horrendous. I kept dying. To bots. And their healers were almost unkillable.
I like the fact that on my horde alt you did not have to wait forever and a day to queue. I think we need more bot AI battlegrounds and brawls to help with queue times.
I don’t know i have been one shotted by bots way more than real players.
Bots constantly just spam their one shot macros and work as a team way better as a team than random teams but when they are just alone bots suck more than random EU alliance.
Also bots seem to focus on healers on sight when in comparison random EU alliance tunnel focus on everything but the healers.
I found that on average, 3 out of 4 battles would be fairly straightforward but then suddenly you’d get one where they hit loads harder and healed constantly. There does seem to be some coded target prioritisation as if you try and stealth cap with any nearby they tend to stop fighting whoever they were fighting and target the capper, even if they wouldn’t be in los when starting to cap. I’ve not been on in a couple of days so it’ll be interesting to see later if they’ve got harder overall.
Unless attacked, they will zerg nodes (defending in 4-5’s and attacking nodes in 4-5’s). When doing this they will typically ignore you unless you pick a fight first, then they will insta-dismount and engage.
They prioritize stopping captures, so if you stand at the flag and spam it, they will interrupt you constantly without necessarily making you their prime target. I play two Prot characters and one Healer, so my daily rotation of BG’s and Brawls involve mostly watching what these bots do. They don’t always focus me just because I’m a healer and/or I’m back-capping. Even as Prot (where I make it my business to get as many as possible on me), they will happily swap from me even when I’m on low health in order to interrupt heals, flags, or stun other players, so it’s not as arbitary as “They see me, they focus me, I ded”.
Their focus rotates between viabilities, hence sporadic behaviour, yet they love interrupting heals and spell casts, particularly healers (implying spell interruptions [when lots are cast simultaneously] are on a priority-interrupt list).
Melee will even swap priority entirely to interrupt spellcasting and often go back to hitting what they desired. It’s not uncommon for me to be casting away from a stunned bot looking to kill it, when out of nowhere a rogue-bot wails on me to help their bot-comrade. They won’t always focus the healers as then it’d be as easy as bunching healers together, fake-casting heals and luring 90% of bots away. They’re not THAT predictable.
However, they do fall into a pit-trap once all four bases are captured and you pin them at the final node. Seeing as they will not try to avoid a fight, they will only back-cap if not damaged while mounted (and don’t always go via sneaky routes). This means that once they only have one spawn point, it’s extremely easy to just force them to stay there indefinitely, hence a lot of matches involve capturing 4 bases, rushing the last one and just keeping them busy there.
Yeah I’ve found the same. It’s amusing as that’s usually the best AB tactic against humans however usually ruined by those that insist on running to the stables/farm before the other bases are taken and messing up the respawn points rather than boxing them into a corner lol. Your point on the interrupts amused me as I find my lock does indeed get interrupted by the bots a lot more than when playing vs humans.
That will always be the case seeing as it’s handled by AI that doesn’t rely on visual cues nor have human delays. A script will be pointing it out and it won’t be uncommon to find yourself interrupted almost instantaneously (assuming they aren’t using those interrupts on other targets).
Just observing an oddity with the AI that it sees or quickly spots something a human player would be unlikely to notice and react to. I do get the feeling that whoever coded the scripting has spent a lot of time watching how people play. There’s some really clever use of building such as at the blacksmiths that adds a nice touch to the AI gameplay. No matter the opinions on whether the AI battle should exist it’s nice to see a bit of skill at work in creating it. Definitely potential to do more of this type of thing.
They’re not really oddities unless you view it from the perspective of an AI trying to act human and failing at it. A lot of what they do is very predictable from a ‘coded’ perspective.
The ‘real’ oddities come from the fact that they are treated like NPC’s, meaning my Prot Paladin can keep one permanently silenced with Avenger’s Shield like they do any other mob, yet they are technically meant to be a step up from basic mobs and act like players, so where do you draw the line between brainless mobs and ‘bots’? Should they be treated differently at all?
Should they not have that ‘mob’ tag so that the Mob vs Player differences of abilities apply, or do you go all in and use them as the next generation of basic mobs to be treated just like you would any other PvE?