Ripple Effect Studios, formerly DICE LA, are working in tandem with the Stockholm team to produce Battlefield 2042. One of the features Ripple Effect are developing for the game is bots - and they've done such an incredible job (they claim) that human players will have a hard time differentiating between other human players and AI bots.
Battlefield 2042 will make extensive use of bots. Not just in the ways you'd expect, but also in ordinary multiplayer games between human players. They've mentioned now a few times that in Battlefield 2042's multiplayer bots will be used to fill the lobbies and thus produce 128 player games for every match. And this has been well received; who doesn't love a few easy kills? But it did leave the community questioning how well these bots were developed. It's great that they can fill matches for atmosphere but if they're going to wander around in circles that'll really hurt immersion.
How Good Will The Battlefield 2042 AI Bots Be?
The devs have claimed that they will be "really hard" to tell apart from human players, and will engage in complex behaviors such as driving vehicles to drop-off locations, and collecting one another. We haven't seen them ourselves yet, but here's what the director of Ripple Effect Studios, Justin Wiebte, had to say:
We’ve tried to put a lot of effort into making them play just like a player would. So it would be really hard for people to tell the difference between an AI and a real human player because they will run around, they will drive vehicles, they will pick each other up, they will drop [each other] off at objective locations and things like that – it’s a very intelligent system. And then you can tweak and tune some of the things they are and aren’t allowed to do, including how difficult they are to play against.
If this is all true then it should be a delight to play against, and not just in servers that need filling; if they're really good then players might just play pure bot matches for a more relaxed change of pace.
Like keeping up to speed with all things Battlefield? So do we, here's a few of the new additions in case you missed anything:
- Battlefield 2042 Will Fill Lobbies With Bots
- These Are The Battlefield 2042 Maps Coming At Launch
- This Is Battlefield 2042's New Battle Pass
Do We Trust The Devs On This?
Whenever claims are made in gaming about a certain feature or upgrade being industry-changing, alarm bells ring. It could be that these AI bots really are incredible, and we've got no reason to suggest they aren't, but let's not forget that we haven't seen them ourselves and that the devs have a vested interest in persauding us about their capability ahead of time. Perhaps reports from the alpha or beta playtesting shall confirm these claims. We can only wait and see.
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