That one bot...
So this is my first post and it's of course complaints about bots!
Sort of?
It isn't really a rant against bots in general. I think for the most part they are... fine... ish? They do what they're ment to and fill out matches with some amusing targets. They could obviously use some work as their habit of either having laser level accuracy that would make a Army Ranger blush or the shot proficiency of a small child trying to straight arm a barret 50 cal with no in between is somewhat annoying, but overall they're fine.
No, no. This is instead a rant against one specific type of bot that I have come to detest on both sides of the field.
On the enemies side I often don't even realize it's there until either it walks right up to me to die or my team pushes through to the far side of the map (often with surprising ease) and he's just there... walking in a circle. Then I realize we won so easily not because we're amazing, but because the enemy team had a drunk turkey piloting one of their mechs.
On my side I don't notice this guy until I start wondering why it seems we've been fighting 4v5 the entire match until I pan my view backwards and there he is! A single blue mark standing in the spawn without seeming purpose. I can only assume he's vibing to death metal.
Yes, my fellow pilots I am of course talking about the Mortar Guardian bot.
Now like I said most of the bots are at least capable of doing basic tasks to an acceptably novice level. They walk towards objectives or targets and shoot guns at enemies in their line of sight. They can even do so competently on occasion! Sniper mechs in particular can pick targets off in a crowd without issue. That's better then probably half the player base!
Then there's this guy. He has two modes I've noticed. Either he A) Vibes in spawn without attacking at all until somebody shoots him or B) He walks forward like any other bot completely ignoring the fact he has a proximity limited weapon. If you're lucky if he's in type A somebody on the enemy team will spot him and make the mistake of pinging him with something in which case he will transition to Type B. In that state he might (big might) get at least a few shots off before he's too close then he might System Crash someone if you're really lucky. Then he dies and respawns with something more useful.
The thing that prompted this post was the most ridiculous match I've ever had in the several thousand I've done. Match starts we (a premade team of five) start walking forward. No enemies. Nothing. We take B. No enemies. We take the enemy points. No enemies. We get to the enemy spawn and we see two players standing awkwardly outside it looking back inside. So we walk up, nobody shoots and all five of us just kind of pile up next to these two poor bastards and we see it. Three Mortar Guardians walking in circles in spawn. We all just kind of sit there together staring at them until the match kicks over to 100 and it ends without a single shot being fired. The bots never even tried to do anything they just walked in circles while staring back at us.
My question is simple. Why do the bots even get the option to have this mech setup? 1) It isn't good. At all. It is, infact, a terrible setup. 2) They obviously can't use it at even a basic level for whatever reason. Either their programming isn't solid enough to understand the weapons workings or something about it breaks thir poor little machine brains. It adds nothing to the game, but annoyance for both sides. Why not just get rid of it? Give them pulse guns or something instead. They could actually use those with some moderate success and then they'd at least be meat shields.
Right, I feel better now! Thank you for your time, back to shooting things.