BOTS in Halo Multiplayer

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

There has been much discussion about increasing the player count in Halo. There are many who feel that the current max player count of 16 is perfect. And there are many who would like to see the player count increase to 24/32 or 64. I am one of those who would like to see a player count increase to 32. And if this was successful, 64 in a later title.

But after playing the Titanfall Beta. I know how we can make Halo feel like there are 32/64 players in the game yet still keep the max player count to 16.

…BOTS…

The Bots in Titanfall (TF) are not too bad. They don’t have the best skill but they give an illusion that you are in a massive battle with many other online players. Yet, Titanfall has a max player count of only 12. But it seems that there are many more players in the game. This has been done extremely well with the use of BOTS.

Halo needs to evolve and innovate, and many people have been asking for BOTS.
IMO, A great way to do this, is to evolve playlist that already exist but would be suitable with a higher player count. With the use of BOTS, this could be done.

Invasion and Dominion, where thse playlist would be UNSC vs Covenant.

BOTS could be added to these playlist to give you the feel that you were in an invasion or large battle. But these BOTS would not be Spartan or Elites.

But unlike TF, and to give you a real sense of Halo. It would be amazing that the BOTS for UNSC were a mix of Marines and ODST. And BOTS for the Covenant were a mix of Grunts and Jackals. You as the player would be a Spartan or Elite depending on what race you were.

With many BOTS on each side would give you the sense that you are in a massive battle, but yet there is still a max player count of only 16.

And another possible cool feature is that if it was possible to control small squads of BOTS with Voice Commands via Kinnect.

This would keep the player count at 16, which a lot of people want. But for those who want higher, this would give you a false sense. And should please this group (which I am in). I think this could be done very well. And give you a real sense of a Massive Halo Battle like those you see in campaign.

What do you think?
How could you improve this?
What Ideas do you have?

2

Although yes… in a gamers point of view… no as a developer. Do you know how much bugs would be evolved with the scripting of the bots, movement, actions they perform… Plus player created maps… would break paths.

3

No bots thank you , it’s to easy in titanfall it is fun to have like stuff going on all the time but without notice the players it feels like you are alone with bots.

4

As much as I’d enjoy having bots in multiplayer, there are certain complications that nullify and benefits from having them.

First of all, bots will not function if there aren’t meshes on the maps that tell them where to go and how to move. While it may seem trivial for 343i to just add meshes to each map, when you mix a process which involves coating all surfaces in small triangles with using a console controller, you start to see serious problems. Making an effective UI for adding meshes to maps in Forge would be next to impossible, and even if it was possible, you’d find that the process in which meshes are applied is about as tedious as searching for a thumbtack inside of a grain silo. In short, bots would not be able to function with Forge.

The issues with bots go far beyond finding a way to add meshes in Forge mode. Halo’s netcode, in multiplayer, doesn’t support advanced AIs such as bots. Campaign and Firefight’s netcode is specifically designed to harbor advanced AI, but that comes at the cost of only being able to support up to four players. While hardware upgrades with the Xbox One will allow an improved netcode which may allow more advanced AI, the bots would still be restricted an function and wouldn’t be nearly as advanced as Campaign-fairing AI or other people in Matchmaking.

5

>

Speaking of netcode, I should mention the god awful input lag when involving players and AI. I’m referring to playing the Campaign and Firefight and Campaign respectively.

6

I say yes. IF it’s in a mode like Firefight. Remember the ODSTs on Installation 04 in Reach?

Years ago I would have loved it, but now? I’m not so sure anymore. It could be a cool idea, but one that would have to be carefully implemented and frankly I’d rather they focus their resources elsewhere.

Edit Also in agreement to everything Andycu5 said above me.

7

> First of all, bots will not function if there aren’t meshes on the maps that tell them where to go and how to move. While it may seem trivial for 343i to just add meshes to each map, when you mix a process which involves coating all surfaces in small triangles with using a console controller, you start to see serious problems. Making an effective UI for adding meshes to maps in Forge would be next to impossible, and even if it was possible, you’d find that the process in which meshes are applied is about as tedious as searching for a thumbtack inside of a grain silo. In short, bots would not be able to function with Forge.

Not neccesserily a problem. At least not on maps with one level.

There are programs that learn how to navigate through user made maps or mazes. Problem arise with multi layer maps and the number of iterations required for a bot to learn how to properly navigate the map, which can go quite high.

Even TerraVol, a quite awesome voxel engine, has some sort of pathfinding system. You can set one point at your location, move around quite a lot, then set the end location and it’ll find the shortest route from start to end, if any.

There are certainly restrictions to it, but atleast it shows that it’s not impossible.

That’s not to say I want bots. As the cost of introducing them in this manner and playable on forge maps would require quite the resources. Or so I imagine. TerraVol is made by one person, I think. Not a big team if it’s a team.

8

> As much as I’d enjoy having bots in multiplayer, there are certain complications that nullify and benefits from having them.
>
> First of all, bots will not function if there aren’t meshes on the maps that tell them where to go and how to move. While it may seem trivial for 343i to just add meshes to each map, when you mix a process which involves coating all surfaces in small triangles with using a console controller, you start to see serious problems. Making an effective UI for adding meshes to maps in Forge would be next to impossible, and even if it was possible, you’d find that the process in which meshes are applied is about as tedious as searching for a thumbtack inside of a grain silo. In short, bots would not be able to function with Forge.
>
> The issues with bots go far beyond finding a way to add meshes in Forge mode. Halo’s netcode, in multiplayer, doesn’t support advanced AIs such as bots. Campaign and Firefight’s netcode is specifically designed to harbor advanced AI, <mark>but that comes at the cost of only being able to support up to four players</mark>. While hardware upgrades with the Xbox One will allow an improved netcode which may allow more advanced AI, the bots would still be restricted an function and wouldn’t be nearly as advanced as Campaign-fairing AI or other people in Matchmaking.

  1. Halo reach supported 3v3 firefight mode, spartans versus elites.
9

Generally speaking, I think it would be great if regular multiplayer and Firefight were combined, so Firefight could simply be its own gametype rather than game mode, along with AI and spawns being editable in Forge and available for the general multiplayer experience if need be.

10

They can be a good idea, but on a dev’s point of view, probably will take alot of dev time to get down.

Plus, you have to consider forge not being able to have AI work well in it, and all sorts of technical issues of making it user friendly.

From a player’s perspective, it can turn out to be a good idea. But we may not be technically ready as that can probably sink alot of time, which they may not have in one dev cycle.

11

Only in Firefight

12

Actually this has already been done in Firefight Versus in halo reach
before Titanfall. hope they bring it back.

13

> As much as I’d enjoy having bots in multiplayer, there are certain complications that nullify and benefits from having them.
>
> First of all, bots will not function if there aren’t meshes on the maps that tell them where to go and how to move. While it may seem trivial for 343i to just add meshes to each map, when you mix a process which involves coating all surfaces in small triangles with using a console controller, you start to see serious problems. Making an effective UI for adding meshes to maps in Forge would be next to impossible, and even if it was possible, you’d find that the process in which meshes are applied is about as tedious as searching for a thumbtack inside of a grain silo. In short, bots would not be able to function with Forge.
>
> The issues with bots go far beyond finding a way to add meshes in Forge mode. Halo’s netcode, in multiplayer, doesn’t support advanced AIs such as bots. Campaign and Firefight’s netcode is specifically designed to harbor advanced AI, but that comes at the cost of only being able to support up to four players. While hardware upgrades with the Xbox One will allow an improved netcode which may allow more advanced AI, the bots would still be restricted an function and wouldn’t be nearly as advanced as Campaign-fairing AI or other people in Matchmaking.

Thanks Andy, you make some very good valid points why BOTS could be an issue.

As I think the BOTS should only be used in Invasion/Dominion playlist. You would need specific maps for these to allow BOTS. And if you edited these maps with FORGE, BOTS would be disabled on any Forge edited maps. So I guess we would only have 3-4 maps where BOTS could be possible.

If this could not work in Multi-Player, maybe this could be an alternative to Fire Fight like Halo REACH verses mode. But it would be cool if 343could get this to work for Matchmaking, with 16 players.

I guess the only way around this was to only have BOTS on

14

> Generally speaking, I think it would be great if regular multiplayer and Firefight were combined, so Firefight could simply be its own gametype rather than game mode, along with AI and spawns being editable in Forge and available for the general multiplayer experience if need be.

Halo has so many great possibilities, this is just another I thought off.
I have been campaigning for a increase to the player count from 16 to 24 or 32. Many people like this, many people don’t.

After playing Titanfall, I thought it be great if Halo had bots. And thought if the BOTS were the lesser classes. And players played as Spartans or Elites would give you a real feel of a Halo Battle. You see this in Campaign, but not in Multi-Player. And thought this could be a cheat way of giving you that sense of larger battle without increasing the player count.

But having this work for every map, would require a lot of production time. And maybe this is one of the reasons why Halo REACH FireFight maps were seperate from Multi-Player.

But Halo 4 Multi-Player maps were used in Spartan Ops.

15

> Although yes… in a gamers point of view… no as a developer. Do you know how much bugs would be evolved with the scripting of the bots, movement, actions they perform… Plus player created maps… would break paths.

I don’t think it’s a healthy attitude for a developer to avoid doing something because it might be hard. Bungie tackled this subject and we got Firefight Versus. It was a start, and it showed it’s possible.

16

> > Although yes… in a gamers point of view… no as a developer. Do you know how much bugs would be evolved with the scripting of the bots, movement, actions they perform… Plus player created maps… would break paths.
>
> I don’t think it’s a healthy attitude for a developer to avoid doing something because it might be hard. Bungie tackled this subject and we got Firefight Versus. It was a start, and it showed it’s possible.

In the case with bots being extremely susceptible to glitches and debilitating bugs, especially with Halo’s netcode and engine, spending tons of resources on trying to implement the feature which will be heavily restricted no matter how hard you try won’t pay off in the end.

Is it possible? Yes.

Is it worth it? No.

17

> > > Although yes… in a gamers point of view… no as a developer. Do you know how much bugs would be evolved with the scripting of the bots, movement, actions they perform… Plus player created maps… would break paths.
> >
> > I don’t think it’s a healthy attitude for a developer to avoid doing something because it might be hard. Bungie tackled this subject and we got Firefight Versus. It was a start, and it showed it’s possible.
>
> In the case with bots being extremely susceptible to glitches and debilitating bugs, especially with Halo’s netcode and engine, spending tons of resources on trying to implement the feature which will be heavily restricted no matter how hard you try won’t pay off in the end.
>
> Is it possible? Yes.
>
> Is it worth it? No.

Considering the amount of resources 343i has spent on other things they thought might pay off, and also considering the resources they have at their disposal, and also considering Bungie did it with far less resources and time, I believe it’s up to 343i to figure out if it’s worth it.

18

Thanks for your feedback everyone.

Would you prefer to see BOTS as suggested or a higher player count, or the player count to stay at 16 and no BOTS.

19

K/D padding at its best. I vote no but I understand the argument for as well.

20

> Although yes… in a gamers point of view… no as a developer. Do you know how much bugs would be evolved with the scripting of the bots, movement, actions they perform… Plus player created maps… would break paths.

This is a pretty weak argument though. EVERY new addition to the game can be said to be “bad” from a developers point of view strictly on terms of development and QA testing. That’s not the point of game design though, what the developer should be interested in is not simply the minimization of work but the maximization of the game they’re capable of delivering. This will stretch them, yes, but that’s in accordance with the nature of human life.