One of my favorite things about Halo Infinite is the inclusion of offline bots for the multiplayer, allowing it to be played without any other players or an internet connection.
I think 343 has done a great job of making MCC a legacy collection of the classic Halos, with preservation in mind. I think the next best step in that would be to add offline bots, preserving the Halo multiplayer experience, even if servers shut down one day.
Especially be helpful for people who may be without an internet connection and want to play some good old Halo.
That’s about what I have, just wanted to put it out there and maybe others have an interest in it, giving it attention to 343.
this was already brought up before here: https://forums.halowaypoint.com/t/master-chief-collection-needs-bots/514347/37
While they’d be a welcome feature, the amount of work it would take to get them running is a lot greater than that of Halo Infinites, as unlike Infinite that would require reworking 6 separate game engines to support a feature none had originally, 4 of which would need to account for forge (although both Halo 3 and ODST might be possible to an extent).
it’s not really an essential feature for preservation, and definitely not something that should be prioritized when theirs more important content that could be worked on to retain players.
The MCC and Infinite Dev teams are separate, so I’m not sure what player retention work the MCC has to prioritize.
But yeah, that’s definitely a lot adding to all out the gate, but I imagine support could be done incrementally over time starting with the more popular multiplayers like Halo 3.
Supposedly 343 had some form of bot players internally when testing, but since that was just leaks and I obviously don’t work at 343, so I can’t actually speak to how far along that project was or if it even existed in the first place.
I’m not trying to demand a feature or anything however, just want to put it out there and show there is interest in it and maybe others will show interest too.
they listen to everybody, they don’t always agree with everyone.
There are bigger features to work on that will extend the games overall shelf life than bots, such as mod tools, workshop support, custom map support, Digsite/other content restorations, bug fixes, CGB improvements, and Crossplay. With all of that on the table, it’s naturally no surprise that Bots, which require hefty engine retooling on multiple separate iterations of Blam (not Slipspace as with infinite), would be deprioritized.
Fact is its not essential to preserving the games multiplayer, its a new feature the games never supported that while nice to have, would take an unreasonable amount of time and work to add while so many exponentially more reasonable and needed features still require attention.
We definitely need to see AI bots implemented in MCC before 343 stops supporting the game. The sooner the better, because it’s already hard to find games in my favorite game modes… it takes forever for me to find a match in FFA no matter what game I’m playing, if I find a match at all.
Instead of listing reasons why bots can’t be implemented into the MCC, let’s actually try to find some way to realistically implement them which stays within the limitations of each iteration of the Blam engine.
I’d like this too. I play a lot of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and the bots in those games were pretty good even for 1999 standards. Halo bots would be great if you want to play weird customs that you can’t find players for.
This is really what I am waiting for. Sadly I don’t think 343 has the time and resources to make offline bots but if they read this I have always wanted offline bots for the classic Halos. I don’t know if the modding tools can do it yet but I always google every now and then ‘MCC offline bots’ to see if any mod has been made. Seen a few things here and there but never fully fleshed out.
If Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 on pc for example can have a bot mod, which mind you those game never supported bots and the bots cna trash talk, play every objective mode, use every weapon, and move quite realistically (for bots) then somehow with MCC and it mods tools that expose map editing much easier a capable mod toolpack or coder can probably make a bot mod work for Halo 1, 2, 2A, 3, and 4 one day … I hope.
Either way glad to see threads like this that are new and fresh still wondering and asking for it.