Honestly I wish more games had offline systems like TF2 does. I used to have terrible internet as a kid and remember the pain of 200+ ping trying to play with my friends.
Bro same I used to watch this one guy who made Bot Vs Bot videos with specific class like "Engineer vs Engineer" in dustbowl I tried to replicate that so many times and just go spectator to watch the chaos.
My favourite simple custom bot I’ve seen is battle medics, which asides from having supped up syringe guns will spam the no voiceline and only pop their uber selfishly
My favorite weirdness for tf_bots is when they just start walking in circles in spawn and more join in and you literally can't do anything for the rest of the match because your teammates won't leave spawn I find this happens the most on Upward second on BLU
This is because of a nav mesh bug marking the exit door as “blocked”. The only way I know how to fix it is to delete the nav area in the door, and just connect the two areas behind and in front of the door. It does get BLU out of the spawn, usually.
what's valve gonna do? update the game? yeah, ok. last time they updated anything, it was taken away from us (R.I.P blu pants for scout oct 16 2024 - oct 17 2024)
That's why I mentioned at the end of the video that Valve could make additional revenue from this through new tours and items. A monetary backing makes it feel slightly more realistic that an update could happen (this is probably just cope tho).
There are actually custom MvM servers out there that do have custom made bots with different loadouts ranging from genuine to joke loadouts, and they have made variants based on the ones you've suggested. There are Trolider bots and they are as terrifying in action than they sound on paper since their only goal is to target players. Dragon Fury Pyro bots, both in the normal and giant variants, again equally terrifying as the bots have accurate precision, so the Dragons Fury will just incinerate you in seconds because 5 Pyro bots decided to lock on you at once. I have seen a giant "Battle Engie" bot equipped with the Widowmaker though they never use their secondary weapon, nor place down a sentry and instead behave more like a normal giant robot. Personally speaking it's the Dead Ringer Spies you need to watch for because there's a lot of them that spawn at once, they recharge quickly, and they actually use their revolvers instead of awkwardly trying to get in front of you and somehow still get a facestab (which they can still do anyway if you're too close). But that's just a few of the robot loadouts these servers have made, they also have custom Tank and Sentry Buster variants, entirely new enemies, and some servers even have allied robots that fight alongside you in really tough waves which is pretty awesome! These custom servers really fulfil that desire of having more and expanded MvM content that this mode is much need of. But I have noticed it can be very overwhelming to keep track all of them and the icons at the top to indicate the type of bot can be a little difficult to tell. But hey it's still a really fun time regardless ...Now if only there was a Saxton Hale robot that you could fight like in VSH Facility.
About your last idea... During the bot crisis, I joined a VSH server in which both players and bots were. Hale kept destroying bots with ease, with the support of human players each time... And at some point a bot became Saxton Hale. Boy was it funny. It couldn't do crap, and eventually got crushed to death. Fun times
There is a custom mission that has a Saxton Hale bot as a final boss It's called Marathon, and it's an all-scout only mission on Rottenburg, it even has custom weapons for the players to use Video: th-cam.com/video/t_E5xwYaQt8/w-d-xo.html
@@joachimcornu3245 Oh yes I remember this vividly and I will say this, thank God they quickly added in stalemates because as funny as it would for the first few minutes, those rounds would just go on endlessly and the only option was to leave the server.
@@joachimcornu3245i remember the bots couldnt do shit on VSH, me and another demoknight straight up tickled the saxton bot to death one round, then i went hale, killed the bot then celebrated with the rest of the lobby
Heres something I've noticed They LOVVVVEEEE To just "randomly" bump into me They dont know im spy But its like the game keeps trying to hint im there even though they shouldn't know
@ahmethacikasimoglu5819 I know but why are they going WAYYYY out of their path to just walk sideways to bump into me Like who coded that (I get your point though)
I'll always have a soft spot for these bots, back in 2013 my first 6ish months of playing the game were exclusively through offline practice. It was so gnarly because I struggled when I finally switched to real servers since my brain was completely wired to predict and counter the bot players. Good video! Good job touching on a topic largely forgotten in our lil community
Im really surpised at the level of quality on this video, went in with the "its got 300 views so its probably mid" mindset, half expecting the video to have a 7 year tangent telling me how valve made the nextbot, and the significance of them in valve games, but this is probably the most straight to the point video ive ever watched, and it was really high quality too, defo an underrated youtuber (srry for long comment lmao)
Trolldiers should be iimplemented like spies/snipers in mvm, a side annoyance type of bot that is meant to distract and annoy you. maybe have a second variety with shotgun/bison secondary (with an upgraded shotgun style bison effect) for a close range lethality for later waves.
The worst is when I play in playload cart, the engineers put the sentrys in especific spaces, so if you don’t have a spy or a heavy ubercharge, you’r team stucks
I remember two months back I made a video suggesting how one would like to use TF2's Offline Practice. One topic I almost ignored was how the bots were dumb. And just went on to say that TF2 Classic's bots are better and you probably wanna use them instead. After upload, I hated the video and since then set it as unlisted. But before upload I did plan to talk about it and how weird it was. Like how Demomen were able to accurately place stickies on Sentries they couldn't even see prior, and how enemy Spies can detect you as a Spy even while invisible and disguised. I would even rant on how the more higher the difficulty was, the more jank these bots got. Their aim was accurately better (in a bad way) and it didn't make up how in every training match, one team would do worse than the other to simulate a winning team vs losing team. And it stays that way without change for the remainder of your time playing on that server, unlike in real matches where it varies. Then the navigation on bots was so unpredictable, it makes it a nightmare trying to practice Sniper unless the difficulty was lower then they move more predictably. But I never included that stuff in the video because I was suggesting that Offline Training might not be a bad thing as it usually is, but with how I dislike how I made that video, it's gone from my channel and hidden in the "unlisted videos" playlist even if the topic's concept is something I wanna bring out.
I think it’s interesting how bad the offline bots are but in reality it makes a lot of sense when you think about how old they are. Originally I wanted to talk more about all the work around and weird things bits do but felt like it was redundant and cut it. If you make your video somewhat available I’d love to watch it. When making this video I was looking for more content surrounding offline and bots but didn’t see much in general.
@@lil_lion69 It is available, on my channel home page there are 3 playlists. The first one titled "unlisted videos" is where I left the video available to watch. It's the most recent video added so it's on top of the playlist.
I can answer some questions about some behavior. I've worked with tfbots for quite sometime so I have a pretty decent understanding of how they function. Many issues with bots actually involve the nav mesh. It's ideal for the user to heavily tweak it after generating one because a generated mesh is guaranteed to have issues. There are systems in place to reduce problems but they usually aren't enough. Especially if the map is more complex and has doors that open and close depending on the point, there are specific tags and such you need to add to the nav manually alongside many other fixes to make the bots work as good as possible. Obviously navs with hand tweaks are pretty uncommon even in valve's offical navs which are usually just auto-generated ones outside of mvm. Nav issues are the common reason for them repeatedly jumping against a wall, they think there is an optimal pathway there. But it also causes for specific issues as well. Sniper bots look for ideal sniper spots and its true they factor in the objective as well. But they use the nav to determine where they should snipe from. This is a particularly hard thing for them to be good at because bots don't really see the world the same way a player does. Imagine the nav is their world, (what you see with nav_edit 1) they see those flat squares and have to figure out where the sightlines are from that alone. This obviously results in them being a bit stupid at times when choosing their spots. It's a similar situation with engineer but he usually fairs a bit better in finding a decent spot. There are actually hint objects made for snipers and engineers and they will use them if you add one. But obviously that's very uncommon outside of mvm. It takes a lot more work too because you need to add a lot of them (and have some disable/enable depending on the point) to add some variety so they don't build in the same spots all the time. Technically bots can work a lot better with what they have already. But it takes a lot of work out of the developer to make those improvements themselves. It's something most community mappers will reasonably not care enough about. It goes without saying that there are tons of bugs too though. Some are almost hilariously stupid, like how valve accidentally broke bot deathmatch support. Which does exist, you just need to set the command "tf_bot_offense_must_push_time" to "0". Valve accidentally broke this feature when adding other gamemodes back in the day. This is something the mod I made, tf2 bot overhaul, fixed. I still want to go back to that at some point and properly fix bots through vscript which should make it possible to really improve them beyond bandaid fixes. I think bots also have a lot of potential for a campaign mod of some sort. Which is another thing I experimented with in that mod. It would honestly be great if valve could make something like that more easily possible.
@@lil_lion69 you'd be surprised by what the humble TFBot can do, in reality they're a fairly complicated implementation of the NextBot AI platform. fun fact! TFBots are derived from CTFPlayer (same object class that real players use), but they are nearly identical: all it does is spawn & attach the specific AI that presses buttons and otherwise have all of the same limitations, physics, movement, etc as a real player. calling the bosses siblings of the TFBot is a bit of a stretch though; yes, they both use the same API, but the movement of each is completely different & defined by the specific entity. player movement is nuanced and does apply to TFBots since they are in fact real players (as far as the engine is concerned, anyway - they have a user ID and everything), but the boss AIs and skeletons are NPCs with their own AI & movement implementation entirely (and technically this even includes the tank from MvM) - this is why the skeletons have kinda float-y movement, if you observe closely you'll notice that it's the exact same movement found in the witch & CI from l4d2 because they, too, are NPCs (all other specials are real players with the same trick though, even the tank - perhaps not surprising seeing as you can play as them). in the video, you mentioned that the behavior of the TFBots seems to be a product of the limitations of technology at the time, but in reality the platform is essentially the same & just takes some creativity/understanding of how players actually behave to improve the bots' individual logic. many bots share the same basic code and only have a couple of small tweaks made for specific weapons (e.g. equipping a RL causes soldiers to lead shots, and equipping a GL causes them to arc shots but not lead them). there are outliers of course: - snipers have entirely custom AI that does not actually try to capture objectives - try spawning a server full of sniper bots and you'll find they just endlessly fight eachother without intentionally capturing control points at all. they specifically try to seed nav squares that have LOS to the control point. this obviously does break sometimes in really funny ways. for payload, you'll notice attacking snipers will get stuck defending the point that the payload cart captured, rather than trying to defend the area around the payload cart itself - this makes no sense logically but is derived from the same code that causes them to hang around a control point their team owns. when a sniper sees no targets over the course of a specific period (i think 20 seconds by default?), they let out a hardcoded sniper negative vocalization (note: entirely separate from the voice command system, for some reason), and pick a new position to try. since often times, the last point a payload captured is well behind the payload, this leads to them getting stuck in some really odd places defending that point. - medics are mostly custom, they have special code to handle the whole 'find a healing target and heal them' thing, and very simple logic to trigger an ubercharge that involves their health dropping below 50% on a given think. they, hilariously, were not instructed on how to lead shots with the syringe gun and are absolutely terrible at landing shots with it as a result (very accurate to pubs). - engineers are easily the most complicated and like snipers have entirely custom AI to manage their nest - unfortunately their AI was not programmed very generally, and as a result they have limited functionality on most gamemodes, they really only function correctly on payload, KOTH, and standard CP (not 5CP - they technically work here but they really suck at it and sometimes just sit in spawn for a while, and immediately break their buildings when the point changes) - spy has custom AI as you might expect, but interestingly, it's a little too good. spy bots have the uncanny ability to never forget a spy, even if they cloak, and if they choose to target you (a real player), they actually ignore your own cloak state and just keep following you until you die. it can feel like complete BS because it is, but to be fair they aren't convincing at all otherwise. it's kinda jarring to see once you know what to look for; antagonize a spy bot and then cloak, and you'll find that they will always follow you until the end of time. - as mentioned in the video, demo does the whole 'impossible sticky shot' thing, which is actually a hilariously complicated song & dance involving them first standing completely still where they want to go, then aiming at the precise vector they need to arc the shot correctly, and then they actually begin firing until all 8 stickies land & arm, at which point they detonate - right up until detonation, they will be completely oblivious to their surroundings, often times tanking damage without caring at all until they get moved far enough from their spot, resulting in what looks to be a super delayed reaction. this kind of thing is why bots were never programmed to rocket jump even though that's sort of a core mechanic of a particular explosive class: getting them to actually be this precise is very hard to do in a way that's general enough to be useful. bots intentionally track targets for a second or so after losing LOS to them, which results in some odd wallhack behavior. also, sometimes bots literally can't see through some specific open doorways, because apparently their LOS is blocked by some very specific brush entities (might just be area portals?). check out process, in both sewers the bots cannot see through any one of the three total doorways, but can path through them no problem, resulting in a comically high number of collisions where a bot on either team is pathing into the same doorway from different directions and don't even realize there's an enemy there until one or the other crosses the doorway & suddenly they have LOS. many of the stuck spots are a result of the "automatic" nav generator built into the game server. while it does a shockingly good job at making a map playable a tall, it still gets stuff wrong and may make some connections that very obviously don't make sense or neglect to put nav squares in places where they probably should be. a lot of the weird nav squares that have kinda broken over time has everything to do with using very old nav meshes from when the map was either still being developed or from before any later patches were applied - check out snakewater, there are some boxes in the last point area that are just misaligned because the boxes were moved at some point after the nav was generated. some of the stuck spots are due to the bots' poor understanding of the general gamestate - payload and 5cp maps in particular fairly regularly will have entire teams get stuck in specific spawnrooms on specific maps, which is some quirk of the bots' objective solver that is making them try to go directly to an objective when they obviously cannot do that, which then calls the "stuck" script; common problem maps include fastlane and pl_upward, in fastlane the bots tend to get stuck in the second-to-last spawnroom(s), in upward the blue team tends to get stuck in either the second spawnroom or the second-to-last spawnroom - pretty sure these issues are actually the result of poor AI code and not necessarily bad nav design, i've tried fixing them a few times but nothing really works. bots do have a "stuck" function, which is the weird behavior you see where a bot just walks against a surface, looks around randomly, and crouch-jumps randomly - this shockingly simple thing actually works most of the time and it's so good you may not even notice it works, but if the bot is trying to go somewhere a player cannot go anyways, then this will of course fail endlessly.
Overhauling MvM's bots would be a GODSEND. I really like your proposed ideas for bots, and I think a few more loadouts could also be implemented as well. I remember seeing a community map that had base jumper soldier bots parachuting out of a plane, so definitely an air strike + base jumper bot. Other ideas could be fat scouts, comboknights, or pistol scouts.
Honestly I'm surprised Valve hasn't thought about legit implementing some of the Bot upgrade mods. They do community fixes for other things why not the bots.
@@lil_lion69 agreed. I personally only play single player just to relax. They would be a welcome addition, and valve has hired or incorporated community stuff before.
A thing I find funny about the training bots in tf2 is once you die to them, they then proceed to taunt after killing you, also bots on easy mode can’t get out of the water in lakeside which is funny and sometimes disappointing but still funny at times.
My first ever training round I had an issue with a Medic bot who would neglect it's entire control point and follow me, who wasnt even camping the right control point
I checked the comment section. Did nobody mention Rcbot? Combined with a plugin to let them use non-stock weapons. They can rocket jump, sticky jump, engineers do sneaky teleports, medics are conservative and careful when ubercharging, engineers constantly reposition sentries and dispensers even to their detriment. The only oversights with rcbot that are introduced are that spy bots are effectively useless with the sapper and keep staring engineer buildings. Snipers with Huntsman still try to play long range and don't sit in medium range. Soldier bots cannot use the airstrike. Pyro bots can use the Dragon Fury but they prefer to switch to shotgun or detonators from medium range. Demo bots don't know how to handle demoknight loadouts and do not charge. Snipers don't headshot as often even when they have line of sight of the opponent for longer than usual time. However they are quite an upgrade for players playing spy and are very difficult to hit as sniper because of their state to constantly dodge projectiles. Trollider is gonna be quite a hurdle to script and program in a bot logic because the bots don't have a notion to strafe and can't control themselves in the air, scout has some hacks for his double jump but he doesn't use the double jump that often to dodge shots, just to get to areas like other scout players.
Every bot problems I see BEFORE I watch the video: -Demoman can aim sticky incredibly well (when shooting sentries) -Bots get stuck in some place (especially Hoodoo) -Medic switch to syrine gun when Ubercharging cause it see a spy -Medic trying to be combat medic with stock -Medic Ubercharge before get to the Medi -Spy decloak right in front of engineer buildings -Spy cloaking in the middle of everyone sightlines -Where is Scout? -Doesnt move in Setup as BLU (except Engineers and Snipers) -Engineer keep spamming M1 at Sentries -Engineer sometimes ignore damaged buildings -Sniper never headshot (in easy mode) -Sniper got VERY tunnel visioned -Bots can see thru ally -Bots ingnore disguised spy when you cloaked and decloak -Bots ignore decloak sounds And sooo much more that I may know and may didn't know...
You should try the Dragon's Fury on expert level bots and see what happens when the enemy pyro finds you. I swear for some reason against the Dragon's Fury the bots have a 100% reflect rate.
If there's a Spy bot, they lock onto you if you play as Spy. So many times I've cloaked after backstabbing and they just walk straight towards ye to backstab ya
I love how, whenever I go to spectator and spawn these guys, go to an attack/defend map, pause or turn off the timer, and then watch as they'll get stuck in a stalemate for HOURS, if not forever I'm not joking, BLU wouldn't be able to capture a point or push the payload further past the 1st checkpoint a lot of times
The bot ideas feel out of place, I think this would have been better as a pure analysis of their behavior I've always loved playing with bots, love their quirks
If I wasn't interested in the topic of the video, I won't have clicked on it, which is likely the case for anyone who clicked on the video. It isn't necessary to make your case several times in the video as to whether or not the video has a point to exist, especially due to how short it is. It's not like this was an eleven hour long video. Be more confident in yourself.
I just want Bot Overhaul to work again 😭 it was broken after the 64-but update a while back, don’t know if the author has fixed it yet or will ever bother since the mod is at least a few years old
Jump Academy's Market Garden Arena has had soldier bots which can market garden you for like, a long time now, so it's definitely possible. I think it would be awesome to see an update to casual where an overhauled bot system could place bots (which could use the unused RED bot model if they're on that team) to balance out the players when the map changes and a bunch of people leave. Or, they could bring back quickplay, that would be cool too.
hello, ive been playing tf2 since this july, and didint play casual once until october, so almost all my experience comes from these bots, and whatever leftover skill i had from play pvz garden warfare as a kid! (im sorry if whatever i'm about to say either doesn't make any sense or is spelled so incorrectly that you cannot understan it, i have not slept in around 27 hours due to depression. i'm running on an empty stomach as well, so bare with me) in my experience, the bots are extremely flawed, and how tolerable they are depends on the server. in most the servers i join, the bots are set to their lowest possible difficulty, with no sniper, spy, or pyro bots. you'd be surprised with how difficult these guys can be though, just on the basis of being bots. enemy engineers will often place sentries in the most inconvient areas possible, and since the bots will catch onto you being a spy the moment you backstab someone or sap something (the sapping is 50/50, sometimes you can hold left click on a build repeatedly and destroy it with ease, sometimes the team will decide they gaf and kill you.) you're pretty much dead. bot heavy's are the hardest to defeat, since them being bots basically turns them into super beefed up walkiny sentries which are constantly being healed by medics, they'll often snap onto you and instakill you. the medics barely work, you can hit the E key as much as you want, but youre lucky if they even look at you sometimes. when there are bot snipers, most servers have them programmed to just... kill. they wont cap or anything, they'll just lock onto you and headshot you with perfect aim. some servers offer "advanced bots", which in my experience are just bots on expert mode, where the heavies in specific become super annoying and near impossible to kill. the bots also dont work on some maps, even within the same gamemode. the bots are totally broken in some point capture and payload maps, but are totally fine in others. yes, these bots can be irritating to play against, but i actually still reccomend it. having some practice against the bots already made it a little bit easier to start on casual, and im way better at the game than when i started. of course i also watch a lot of tf2 youtube, so i take what i see there and incorporate it into my gameplay to improve as well. i'd reccomend it even if you've played a lot of tf2 already because you can do whatever you want most of the time, bots wont tell you how to play the game. it's fun to go in with playstyles which are normally considered annoying or bad for the team and just have fun trying them becaue bots cant tell you how to play lol (also funny tidbit, the bots love taunting after killing you, they do it way more than actual people do and theyll do it no matter how cool or lame the kill was. this makes the bots more toxic than the players lol)
DUDE, I WAS PLAYING THE GAME FOR THE 1ST TIME A COUPLE MONTHS AGO ANDTHE TF2 TRAINING BOTS KEPT KILLING ME AND I COULDN'T GET 1 KILL ON THEM. I RAGEQUIT AND UNINSTALLED IT AND HAVEN'T PLAYED IT SINCE.😭
It is a song from Mega Man but I can't remember what off the top of my head. In my next video I will probably throw any songs I use in the description.
If their was a mvm related update, it would be fitting to make the non mvm bots better. That and still wanted a winter/tundra industrial theme ever since the mvm trailer.
TL:DR: I want smarter bots and a campaign mode that puts the player in controlled scenarios against bots. This really makes me want a huge update for Bot intelligence in general. Maybe Easy modes can just have the same bots, but harder difficulties will have bots become smarter, and give them actual combo weapons that complement playstyles. In Harder modes, players would start encountering actually serious threats like a Vaccinator medic escorting a Brass Beast heavy, or Huntsman snipers that will try to tauntkill at corners. And to top it all off, each class gets its own "Campaign" where you learn to play the character through scenarios that ramp up in difficulty, and beating a Campaign for a specific character would give an Achievement item exclusive to that character, like a graduation cap or a medal. Ideas for these Campaign scenarios could be stuff like learning how to take down a hardened Engineer nest, or how to counter an Uber push. All stuff that wouldn't occur naturally, or at least less often in Bot servers, or ramped up in difficulty to help the player learn to properly deal with common strategies in Casual servers.
8:10 then here's the question: how would the sentry work? would the giant engi's have one super sentry? or able to place several-infinite mini sentries at the cost of a cooldown (5-20 seconds/on kill)
This is something I had thought about but didn't know what would actually fit in MVM best so I just decided to cut it out of the video. Originally, I thought depending on distance that the Engineer bot makes it would place additional sentries but I almost felt that was counter to the idea of the Widow Maker. Def need a bit more theory crafting but these ideas are more just starters.
@@lil_lion69 ok the two replies that were shortly deleted was because I forgot then remembered about sigsegv, however they didn't mention some underlying issues, so I Guess I will make a very long list about them: to start swinging the issues around sniper are correct, say dustbowl last blue after the first point, any residing sniper will ALWAYS stay by the first point and never help the team. however the problem listed about the engineer (that high tower breaks them) is not the full story. for instance engineers will neglect their teleporters religiously, they will never leave their sentry nest (no matter how far from the conflict it is) unless provoked or in search of metal, or the engineer being in a constant state of reconstruction and deconstruction can possibly happen on hondoo second blue right between spawn and the building where the cart is held at the start (prob after the first checkpoint as well), if they don't set up an engi nest five meters away. what about the fact that if a medic does not see a power class (or something like that) on spawning in they will basically have a stroke, and if that medic happens to respawn alone and before a power class can respawn the spawn point is moved up, well guess your ####ed. or that enemy spies can see you as a spy WHILE DISGUISED AND INVISIBLE, or that bug on gold rush third where if a red bot is by the door exiting spawn and heading to the first control point, and blue caps that control point, the door will slam shut in that red bots face, and they will refuse to play the game after that point, alongside every other bot who was unlucky enough to meet that fate. oh and spies can just afk in front of a sentry suspiciously, so if that's a sentry nest in the middle of nowhere, then chances are both those classes effectively left the game. furthermore engineers will avoid aiding other engineers with as much fervour as they avoid teleporters. not counting the fact that soldiers and demos can't rocket or sticky jump, but that's small potatoes compared to literally everything else.
What's really weird is how theres no base "class" for the tf_bot to be, I really thought there would be a Freeman or Survivor "class" in the files somewhere for the bots to originate from
update idea... Training day. payload mvm maps with updated bot ai. the bots have to move a payload up for new spawn points and the final is a giant mech either picks up the payload or it opens up the bomb hatch so the bots can work how they normally do, alternatively the payload can be loaded into the bots hq where we have to push them back and blow them up for a change. Heavy gets his update, changing his mechanics a bit so he can fill his role better across the various game modes. Balance his weapons and bring him up to speed with the other classes in the game. New train/sports cosmetics where the mercs are doing workouts to train for the upcoming locomotive madness.
thank god sometime talks about this, as a tf2 player who constantly plays tf2 with tf_bots, i constantly run into problems where my engineer is straight up useless or take too long set up a decent nest, and not to mention the subclasses, I wanna fight demoknights but the change i want the most, is bots having randomized classes within the team. casual is always unorginized, such as having 4 pyros and 4 soldiers for some reason with no medic. i basically want a offline practice mode with bots that mimic the casual mode (no friendlies tho) and fits with all the offical valve maps. edit (im just yapping more here, so ignore): spy is the easiest class to play as and to fight against. as a spy, you can just walk past their entire team with a disguise, and they won't suspect a thing. and the bot spies do the same thing, expect they make it so obvious, you can tell immediately when a *teammate is walking towards you with their primary out* the tf_bots require a complete rework with adjustable difficulties other than the regular 4. the bots require their own sub-classes of course. such as... trollider battle engi demoknight fat scout pybro and just bots that use diffirent weapons
5:50 custom loadout mostly cannot be done without internet connection at the only expection of mvm bots so you need also to change the weapon system in tf2
it's not imposible tf2Classic did it but there unlike that vavle will do it because weapon are on the same system than cosmetic offline access can open the door for cosmetic duplication
I mean just imagine if they had other types of spies in mvm. Like a dead ringer spy that spawns with a larger health pool or resistances. A boss spybot that uses the kunai. Or my favorite idea, a YER spybot, that when he kills a player it prevents them from being respawned, turning the spybot into a real tangeble threat that NEEDS to be dealt with
The official bots are made to do something different than the bot crisis bots though. The official bots are meant to at least somewhat convincingly make errors.
A giant battle engineer bot that has a despenser on his back that has a healing area around him. He also shoots out mini sentrys or teleporters that spawn other bots.
I’d also like to see the TF_Bots get updated to listen to other console commands. Once, I made a LAN server and I used some console commands to make the other team be all Pyros, but bots have an ideal team order in mind. What I mean by this is that bot 1 is always Medic, Bot 2 is always Engineer, Bot 3 is always Soldier, and so on. But, when I used the commands to have the other team be all Pyros and stay that way, they kept killing themselves to switch classes, only to not switch classes, because of one of the commands I had on, respawn Pyro, and then kill themselves again in an endless loop.
Originally the bots were only available to few gamemodes/maps where they worked pretty well. We got new maps for bots some years ago and the AI was improved along it but they never handled the new maps.
I do think it's interesting how new maps seemingly break them even though the new maps can have nav meshes but I also don't know how the spaghetti code works.
Medic bots in general are super funny. I've noticed when they uber they sometimes opt to shoot with their syringe gun instead of continuing charge and its hilarious.
@@lil_lion69 I assume this is usually when they loose their medibeam connection with their patient. Medics aren't that great at picking healing targets quickly. (Without being squadded.)
Not necessarily related to anything covered in the video but I recall the MvM update broke Engineer bot behavior for a good number of years because they stopped being able to destroy their nests and move up with objectives, which means they'd get stuck at the first sentry spot they picked and would just stay there forever until the match ended or their stuff got blown up. Somewhere along the line this was fixed (maybe Jungle Inferno?)
Teleporters are also broken for the Engi bot and I have no clue why. They will place them at the first spawn point and then never move them (or even upgrade them for that matter).
I agree so heavily that I am desperate. When we get new maps or a new game mode, sometimes they get stuck, not knowing how to go around. And they just stand there because they don't know what to do. What if we want to train on a new map until we are ready to face real players, and they just don't work? They need to update the nav_generat and their AI.
Potential mvm bots inspired by what I've seen in custom servers: Flying Black box Soldier: Slow moving flying Soldiers with the Black box, and a Thermal thruster on theirs backs as a visual cosmetic. Flying Liberty launcher Soldier: Same but liberty launcher. Eternal Spy: Cloak and Dagger, Your Eternal reward, L'étranger. CaberKnight: (Maybe) Drunk Elemental: Inspired by custom wave 666 bots I've seen in custom servers. Basicly a Demoman who fires flaming ghastly skulls that explode and set others on fire. Name is insipired by the Pain Elemental from Doom. Gun spy: this is more of a change rather than a new bot but Spy robots don't use theirs revolvers unless they are bomb carriers. This should change so that every Spy should use theirs guns.
A tf_bot enthusiasts bot difficulty tierlist (this counts expert difficulty only and several other factors) 9: Spies. If you follow basic spychecking etiquette you will very rarely die to them and become a non-issue if you’re playing pyro 8: Demos. They only use their grenade launcher for battle and stickies for traps. their aim doesnt usually compensate for the grenade launchers projectile so they mostly miss when you’re rushing at them. they may take out sentry nests occasionally 7: Scouts. They’re nigh on useless whenever an engie is around and usually rush to the point while very rarely flanking. they are a lot more scarier on 5cp maps where engies dont have much time setting up 6: Medics. They have the shittest position of all the tfbots and could very easily be taken out if you play your cards right or have your own medic buddy. if left unchecked they could become unstoppable with a heavy or soldier 5: Engies. They always turtle on defense, so the only way to take down a nest is using uber or playing spy. 4: Soldiers. They aren’t as accurate with the rocket launcher as they are with their shotgun, but they very quickly become a problem with a medic buddy. 3: Pyros. A i r b l a s t 2: Snipers. They have perfect accuracy but they don’t move around very often and are basically stronger versions of engineers. They’re useless on offense. 1: Heavies. They’re very scary on their own and are a lot more scary with a medic buddy. they can roll your team with a medic alone if you don’t pay attention
i subscribed just because you asked in a so gentle way, most youtubers are like: "SUBSCRIBE NOWWWW!!!!!! SUUUUBBBBSSSSCRRRRIIBBBEEEEE!!!!!!!" but not u! loved the video
imagine an entire tour based around blast jumping bots; like mecha engine but based trolldiers, caber demos, or hell, even roamer playstyles from the comp scene. You could have maps with more verticality, insane amounts of space like in bigrock... would be so much fun to play against.
Soldier bots were originally planned to be able to do rocketjumps as seen in the early training maps but it seems it was very scripted. Also bots are supposed to work in unsupported maps, as in they are supposed to randomly walk around and shoot an enemy if they see one, but that's broken because they will try to force push the objective, that they don't know, instead
I searched up "TF2" to see what the results would be It amazes me how this community still manages to talk about interesting and unique topics for this game Genuinely love how passionate people are about TF2
like the ideas of new bots in MVM. The thought of playing a round and facing a wave of trolldiers would be pretty fun, but going against a bunch of battle engineers sounds reaaally cool ( and annoying to deal with (in a fun way?))
Tf2 bots when they are snipers filling up the lobby’s: unstoppable killing machines Tf2 bots when they where made by valve for a actually good purpose:
A troldier bot in mvm would be good, i think that itll be unique, as a sniper, you would now have to worry about a soldier bot falling from the sky box with a 195 dmg crit
On the third map of basic training payload or whatever it’s called because I forgot, My blue team would huddle together in a tunnel with a gate blocking their path. Only some team mates would come from spawn to help but it would only be a few. I remember playing as Heavy while hiding in a corner spamming negative and Jeers lines pretending Heavy was experiencing fear and loss lol.
They should add enforcer revolver spies to mvm. It being the only weapon that's good at range and shoots through resistences would be dangerous. That's without thinking about a giant crit boosted enforcer spy dolling out 144 damage every few seconds from any range.
YES honestly these things drove me crazy when i started playing. for context i started playing around the summer update after hearing that the bots were gone but i was too shy to play. these things are stupid in the way they make kt really easy to feel like the best player on earth when starting out but also stupid smart when you're trying to practice spy or get though a horrid choke. someone else mentioned that these things are CRAZY when it come to spies i mean, propably bc i played on expert but, you dont even bump them or uncloak or anything but the second you appear in their vicinity it's over. you hear a single "spy!" and youre gone. its almost like theyre hacking or something.
Oh. I didn't think anyone but me would notice it. I was trained for the first time day or two ago rand it took me an hour just for the training bots to start working (they weren't acting weird, they just WEREN't on the map at all) after graduation, ALL my statistics flew off (the statistics that appear when you join the server, they are COMPLETELY reset), despite the fact that all my counters, strange clocks and the same statistics in the steam remained the same (on account, but is not displayed in the game). Very sad... but nothing too bad. Thank you for video.
![[TF2] How to Trolldier: Direct Combat Techniques](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oRf80kQVsuA/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TF2] How to Trolldier: Direct Combat Techniques](/img/tr.png)
You thought this was a video on training bots, WONG, here's a theoretical MVM update
WONG
@@reptiliannoizezz.413 WONG
WONG
WONG
WONG
its crazy thinkin how i used to play tf2 like this due to unstable connection LMAO
Honestly I wish more games had offline systems like TF2 does. I used to have terrible internet as a kid and remember the pain of 200+ ping trying to play with my friends.
That's me right now 😅
Bro same I used to watch this one guy who made Bot Vs Bot videos with specific class like "Engineer vs Engineer" in dustbowl I tried to replicate that so many times and just go spectator to watch the chaos.
I used to play so much offline tf2 at my desk during high school. Good times
Hell, I still do sometimes. It helps me overall get better at the game sometimes
Tf bots are the worst to fight with spy. They aggro when you bump them, and track you when you cloak for like 15 seconds. Definitely need a rework
i mean they are computers, they should always know where you are.
They have to ignore you intentionally
Three words. Your. Eternal. Reward.
@@fujiwaranonekobiodrando1257 yeah...? Thats how ai works
@@marshmellowguy586 yeah so tell me how it will ever be reworked to be good
@@fujiwaranonekobiodrando1257 by... making the ai behave more like a real person? Are you dumb??
They also can’t taunt properly at all, staring at them is like a oblivion npc especially when heavy casually throws his gun up.
they do taunt with you though, and will conga around / do other taunts like hi-five with you :)
My favourite simple custom bot I’ve seen is battle medics, which asides from having supped up syringe guns will spam the no voiceline and only pop their uber selfishly
Ha
lore accurate medic
My favorite weirdness for tf_bots is when they just start walking in circles in spawn and more join in and you literally can't do anything for the rest of the match because your teammates won't leave spawn
I find this happens the most on Upward second on BLU
I think one of my favorite things is smacking a bot in spawn and then it slowly turns, looks at you, and then taunts.
@@lil_lion69 "Kaboom!"
- Ribs grow Back
And when they leave, they leave one by one and get cooked by sentries
jumping eround randomly cause they cannot find nav mesh properly i know x)
This is because of a nav mesh bug marking the exit door as “blocked”. The only way I know how to fix it is to delete the nav area in the door, and just connect the two areas behind and in front of the door. It does get BLU out of the spawn, usually.
what's valve gonna do? update the game?
yeah, ok. last time they updated anything, it was taken away from us (R.I.P blu pants for scout oct 16 2024 - oct 17 2024)
Clearly never played a game. Go back to playing overwatch, little kid.
That's why I mentioned at the end of the video that Valve could make additional revenue from this through new tours and items. A monetary backing makes it feel slightly more realistic that an update could happen (this is probably just cope tho).
@@Amis5474 wat
@@Amis5474where did that come from?
@@lil_lion69 But the game already has a ton of monetary backing.
There are actually custom MvM servers out there that do have custom made bots with different loadouts ranging from genuine to joke loadouts, and they have made variants based on the ones you've suggested.
There are Trolider bots and they are as terrifying in action than they sound on paper since their only goal is to target players.
Dragon Fury Pyro bots, both in the normal and giant variants, again equally terrifying as the bots have accurate precision, so the Dragons Fury will just incinerate you in seconds because 5 Pyro bots decided to lock on you at once.
I have seen a giant "Battle Engie" bot equipped with the Widowmaker though they never use their secondary weapon, nor place down a sentry and instead behave more like a normal giant robot.
Personally speaking it's the Dead Ringer Spies you need to watch for because there's a lot of them that spawn at once, they recharge quickly, and they actually use their revolvers instead of awkwardly trying to get in front of you and somehow still get a facestab (which they can still do anyway if you're too close).
But that's just a few of the robot loadouts these servers have made, they also have custom Tank and Sentry Buster variants, entirely new enemies, and some servers even have allied robots that fight alongside you in really tough waves which is pretty awesome! These custom servers really fulfil that desire of having more and expanded MvM content that this mode is much need of.
But I have noticed it can be very overwhelming to keep track all of them and the icons at the top to indicate the type of bot can be a little difficult to tell. But hey it's still a really fun time regardless
...Now if only there was a Saxton Hale robot that you could fight like in VSH Facility.
About your last idea... During the bot crisis, I joined a VSH server in which both players and bots were. Hale kept destroying bots with ease, with the support of human players each time... And at some point a bot became Saxton Hale. Boy was it funny. It couldn't do crap, and eventually got crushed to death. Fun times
There is a custom mission that has a Saxton Hale bot as a final boss
It's called Marathon, and it's an all-scout only mission on Rottenburg, it even has custom weapons for the players to use
Video: th-cam.com/video/t_E5xwYaQt8/w-d-xo.html
@@joachimcornu3245 Oh yes I remember this vividly and I will say this, thank God they quickly added in stalemates because as funny as it would for the first few minutes, those rounds would just go on endlessly and the only option was to leave the server.
@@joachimcornu3245i remember the bots couldnt do shit on VSH, me and another demoknight straight up tickled the saxton bot to death one round, then i went hale, killed the bot then celebrated with the rest of the lobby
The best part of TF bots is their namelist. I like how a bunch of them are random mapping/source engine terms
Heres something I've noticed
They LOVVVVEEEE
To just "randomly" bump into me
They dont know im spy
But its like the game keeps trying to hint im there even though they shouldn't know
I think since they are made to teach you the game, that's the developers way to say " make sure you dont touch others when spy"
@ahmethacikasimoglu5819 I know but why are they going WAYYYY out of their path to just walk sideways to bump into me
Like who coded that (I get your point though)
I'll always have a soft spot for these bots, back in 2013 my first 6ish months of playing the game were exclusively through offline practice.
It was so gnarly because I struggled when I finally switched to real servers since my brain was completely wired to predict and counter the bot players.
Good video! Good job touching on a topic largely forgotten in our lil community
Hai Indii :3
Im really surpised at the level of quality on this video, went in with the "its got 300 views so its probably mid" mindset, half expecting the video to have a 7 year tangent telling me how valve made the nextbot, and the significance of them in valve games, but this is probably the most straight to the point video ive ever watched, and it was really high quality too, defo an underrated youtuber (srry for long comment lmao)
It didn’t start so concise but as I went though the edit I realized how much was unnecessary 😂. I’ll try and continue to make great stuff.
@@lil_lion69 good to hear bro! cant wait for another upload like this
Oh, Medic bots also have a habit of letting engineers, snipers, scouts, and spies die if heavier classes around.
Basically everyone before uncle dane
Trolldiers should be iimplemented like spies/snipers in mvm, a side annoyance type of bot that is meant to distract and annoy you. maybe have a second variety with shotgun/bison secondary (with an upgraded shotgun style bison effect) for a close range lethality for later waves.
That’s a fantastic idea!
Me: _hits m1_
Every enemy bot within a 5 mile radius: *”hello there.”*
The worst is when I play in playload cart, the engineers put the sentrys in especific spaces, so if you don’t have a spy or a heavy ubercharge, you’r team stucks
I remember two months back I made a video suggesting how one would like to use TF2's Offline Practice. One topic I almost ignored was how the bots were dumb. And just went on to say that TF2 Classic's bots are better and you probably wanna use them instead.
After upload, I hated the video and since then set it as unlisted. But before upload I did plan to talk about it and how weird it was. Like how Demomen were able to accurately place stickies on Sentries they couldn't even see prior, and how enemy Spies can detect you as a Spy even while invisible and disguised. I would even rant on how the more higher the difficulty was, the more jank these bots got. Their aim was accurately better (in a bad way) and it didn't make up how in every training match, one team would do worse than the other to simulate a winning team vs losing team. And it stays that way without change for the remainder of your time playing on that server, unlike in real matches where it varies. Then the navigation on bots was so unpredictable, it makes it a nightmare trying to practice Sniper unless the difficulty was lower then they move more predictably.
But I never included that stuff in the video because I was suggesting that Offline Training might not be a bad thing as it usually is, but with how I dislike how I made that video, it's gone from my channel and hidden in the "unlisted videos" playlist even if the topic's concept is something I wanna bring out.
I think it’s interesting how bad the offline bots are but in reality it makes a lot of sense when you think about how old they are. Originally I wanted to talk more about all the work around and weird things bits do but felt like it was redundant and cut it. If you make your video somewhat available I’d love to watch it. When making this video I was looking for more content surrounding offline and bots but didn’t see much in general.
@@lil_lion69 It is available, on my channel home page there are 3 playlists. The first one titled "unlisted videos" is where I left the video available to watch. It's the most recent video added so it's on top of the playlist.
I can answer some questions about some behavior. I've worked with tfbots for quite sometime so I have a pretty decent understanding of how they function.
Many issues with bots actually involve the nav mesh. It's ideal for the user to heavily tweak it after generating one because a generated mesh is guaranteed to have issues. There are systems in place to reduce problems but they usually aren't enough. Especially if the map is more complex and has doors that open and close depending on the point, there are specific tags and such you need to add to the nav manually alongside many other fixes to make the bots work as good as possible. Obviously navs with hand tweaks are pretty uncommon even in valve's offical navs which are usually just auto-generated ones outside of mvm.
Nav issues are the common reason for them repeatedly jumping against a wall, they think there is an optimal pathway there. But it also causes for specific issues as well. Sniper bots look for ideal sniper spots and its true they factor in the objective as well. But they use the nav to determine where they should snipe from. This is a particularly hard thing for them to be good at because bots don't really see the world the same way a player does. Imagine the nav is their world, (what you see with nav_edit 1) they see those flat squares and have to figure out where the sightlines are from that alone. This obviously results in them being a bit stupid at times when choosing their spots. It's a similar situation with engineer but he usually fairs a bit better in finding a decent spot.
There are actually hint objects made for snipers and engineers and they will use them if you add one. But obviously that's very uncommon outside of mvm. It takes a lot more work too because you need to add a lot of them (and have some disable/enable depending on the point) to add some variety so they don't build in the same spots all the time.
Technically bots can work a lot better with what they have already. But it takes a lot of work out of the developer to make those improvements themselves. It's something most community mappers will reasonably not care enough about. It goes without saying that there are tons of bugs too though. Some are almost hilariously stupid, like how valve accidentally broke bot deathmatch support. Which does exist, you just need to set the command "tf_bot_offense_must_push_time" to "0". Valve accidentally broke this feature when adding other gamemodes back in the day. This is something the mod I made, tf2 bot overhaul, fixed. I still want to go back to that at some point and properly fix bots through vscript which should make it possible to really improve them beyond bandaid fixes.
I think bots also have a lot of potential for a campaign mod of some sort. Which is another thing I experimented with in that mod. It would honestly be great if valve could make something like that more easily possible.
The king himself!
you dropped this 👑
2:59 hey wait a minute, that guy looks familiar...
I didn't know TF_bots had the capability to leave the game and watch TF2 videos
@@lil_lion69 you'd be surprised by what the humble TFBot can do, in reality they're a fairly complicated implementation of the NextBot AI platform. fun fact! TFBots are derived from CTFPlayer (same object class that real players use), but they are nearly identical: all it does is spawn & attach the specific AI that presses buttons and otherwise have all of the same limitations, physics, movement, etc as a real player.
calling the bosses siblings of the TFBot is a bit of a stretch though; yes, they both use the same API, but the movement of each is completely different & defined by the specific entity. player movement is nuanced and does apply to TFBots since they are in fact real players (as far as the engine is concerned, anyway - they have a user ID and everything), but the boss AIs and skeletons are NPCs with their own AI & movement implementation entirely (and technically this even includes the tank from MvM) - this is why the skeletons have kinda float-y movement, if you observe closely you'll notice that it's the exact same movement found in the witch & CI from l4d2 because they, too, are NPCs (all other specials are real players with the same trick though, even the tank - perhaps not surprising seeing as you can play as them).
in the video, you mentioned that the behavior of the TFBots seems to be a product of the limitations of technology at the time, but in reality the platform is essentially the same & just takes some creativity/understanding of how players actually behave to improve the bots' individual logic. many bots share the same basic code and only have a couple of small tweaks made for specific weapons (e.g. equipping a RL causes soldiers to lead shots, and equipping a GL causes them to arc shots but not lead them). there are outliers of course:
- snipers have entirely custom AI that does not actually try to capture objectives - try spawning a server full of sniper bots and you'll find they just endlessly fight eachother without intentionally capturing control points at all. they specifically try to seed nav squares that have LOS to the control point. this obviously does break sometimes in really funny ways. for payload, you'll notice attacking snipers will get stuck defending the point that the payload cart captured, rather than trying to defend the area around the payload cart itself - this makes no sense logically but is derived from the same code that causes them to hang around a control point their team owns. when a sniper sees no targets over the course of a specific period (i think 20 seconds by default?), they let out a hardcoded sniper negative vocalization (note: entirely separate from the voice command system, for some reason), and pick a new position to try. since often times, the last point a payload captured is well behind the payload, this leads to them getting stuck in some really odd places defending that point.
- medics are mostly custom, they have special code to handle the whole 'find a healing target and heal them' thing, and very simple logic to trigger an ubercharge that involves their health dropping below 50% on a given think. they, hilariously, were not instructed on how to lead shots with the syringe gun and are absolutely terrible at landing shots with it as a result (very accurate to pubs).
- engineers are easily the most complicated and like snipers have entirely custom AI to manage their nest - unfortunately their AI was not programmed very generally, and as a result they have limited functionality on most gamemodes, they really only function correctly on payload, KOTH, and standard CP (not 5CP - they technically work here but they really suck at it and sometimes just sit in spawn for a while, and immediately break their buildings when the point changes)
- spy has custom AI as you might expect, but interestingly, it's a little too good. spy bots have the uncanny ability to never forget a spy, even if they cloak, and if they choose to target you (a real player), they actually ignore your own cloak state and just keep following you until you die. it can feel like complete BS because it is, but to be fair they aren't convincing at all otherwise. it's kinda jarring to see once you know what to look for; antagonize a spy bot and then cloak, and you'll find that they will always follow you until the end of time.
- as mentioned in the video, demo does the whole 'impossible sticky shot' thing, which is actually a hilariously complicated song & dance involving them first standing completely still where they want to go, then aiming at the precise vector they need to arc the shot correctly, and then they actually begin firing until all 8 stickies land & arm, at which point they detonate - right up until detonation, they will be completely oblivious to their surroundings, often times tanking damage without caring at all until they get moved far enough from their spot, resulting in what looks to be a super delayed reaction. this kind of thing is why bots were never programmed to rocket jump even though that's sort of a core mechanic of a particular explosive class: getting them to actually be this precise is very hard to do in a way that's general enough to be useful.
bots intentionally track targets for a second or so after losing LOS to them, which results in some odd wallhack behavior. also, sometimes bots literally can't see through some specific open doorways, because apparently their LOS is blocked by some very specific brush entities (might just be area portals?). check out process, in both sewers the bots cannot see through any one of the three total doorways, but can path through them no problem, resulting in a comically high number of collisions where a bot on either team is pathing into the same doorway from different directions and don't even realize there's an enemy there until one or the other crosses the doorway & suddenly they have LOS.
many of the stuck spots are a result of the "automatic" nav generator built into the game server. while it does a shockingly good job at making a map playable a tall, it still gets stuff wrong and may make some connections that very obviously don't make sense or neglect to put nav squares in places where they probably should be. a lot of the weird nav squares that have kinda broken over time has everything to do with using very old nav meshes from when the map was either still being developed or from before any later patches were applied - check out snakewater, there are some boxes in the last point area that are just misaligned because the boxes were moved at some point after the nav was generated.
some of the stuck spots are due to the bots' poor understanding of the general gamestate - payload and 5cp maps in particular fairly regularly will have entire teams get stuck in specific spawnrooms on specific maps, which is some quirk of the bots' objective solver that is making them try to go directly to an objective when they obviously cannot do that, which then calls the "stuck" script; common problem maps include fastlane and pl_upward, in fastlane the bots tend to get stuck in the second-to-last spawnroom(s), in upward the blue team tends to get stuck in either the second spawnroom or the second-to-last spawnroom - pretty sure these issues are actually the result of poor AI code and not necessarily bad nav design, i've tried fixing them a few times but nothing really works.
bots do have a "stuck" function, which is the weird behavior you see where a bot just walks against a surface, looks around randomly, and crouch-jumps randomly - this shockingly simple thing actually works most of the time and it's so good you may not even notice it works, but if the bot is trying to go somewhere a player cannot go anyways, then this will of course fail endlessly.
Hidden reply rip
@@RolandTheLibrarian unlucky. had a cool detailed breakdown of what i know and everything
The TF2 better bots mod was a godsend when I had bad or no internet. I'd love to see an official update to the training bots
Overhauling MvM's bots would be a GODSEND. I really like your proposed ideas for bots, and I think a few more loadouts could also be implemented as well.
I remember seeing a community map that had base jumper soldier bots parachuting out of a plane, so definitely an air strike + base jumper bot. Other ideas could be fat scouts, comboknights, or pistol scouts.
You're probably thinking of either silentsky or radar.
@wizardii4961 I *think* radar? It was very vertical and there were jump pads.
@@ryan_1314 Sounds like Radar.
What if CRITBOOSTED, INFINITE EXPLOSION CABERKNIGHT
@@nameless...................... All of that is possible in vanilla mvm except being able to regenerate caber. That requires Rafmod.
TF_Bots are that one group of weird kids in school you're forced to sit next to
i remember 10 years ago waking up at 6 in the morning and playing with bots for hours
This is why you use the TF2 bot overhaul mod. They are much smarter.
Honestly I'm surprised Valve hasn't thought about legit implementing some of the Bot upgrade mods. They do community fixes for other things why not the bots.
@@lil_lion69 agreed. I personally only play single player just to relax. They would be a welcome addition, and valve has hired or incorporated community stuff before.
A thing I find funny about the training bots in tf2 is once you die to them, they then proceed to taunt after killing you, also bots on easy mode can’t get out of the water in lakeside which is funny and sometimes disappointing but still funny at times.
Is Nobody gonna talk about that bots in tf2 never upgrades teleport
My first ever training round I had an issue with a Medic bot who would neglect it's entire control point and follow me, who wasnt even camping the right control point
I checked the comment section.
Did nobody mention Rcbot? Combined with a plugin to let them use non-stock weapons.
They can rocket jump, sticky jump, engineers do sneaky teleports, medics are conservative and careful when ubercharging, engineers constantly reposition sentries and dispensers even to their detriment.
The only oversights with rcbot that are introduced are that spy bots are effectively useless with the sapper and keep staring engineer buildings. Snipers with Huntsman still try to play long range and don't sit in medium range. Soldier bots cannot use the airstrike. Pyro bots can use the Dragon Fury but they prefer to switch to shotgun or detonators from medium range. Demo bots don't know how to handle demoknight loadouts and do not charge. Snipers don't headshot as often even when they have line of sight of the opponent for longer than usual time.
However they are quite an upgrade for players playing spy and are very difficult to hit as sniper because of their state to constantly dodge projectiles.
Trollider is gonna be quite a hurdle to script and program in a bot logic because the bots don't have a notion to strafe and can't control themselves in the air, scout has some hacks for his double jump but he doesn't use the double jump that often to dodge shots, just to get to areas like other scout players.
I don’t know a lot about tf2, but I found this video very interesting and engaging. I can tell you put a lot of work into it and it turned out great ❤
Every bot problems I see BEFORE I watch the video:
-Demoman can aim sticky incredibly well (when shooting sentries)
-Bots get stuck in some place (especially Hoodoo)
-Medic switch to syrine gun when Ubercharging cause it see a spy
-Medic trying to be combat medic with stock
-Medic Ubercharge before get to the Medi
-Spy decloak right in front of engineer buildings
-Spy cloaking in the middle of everyone sightlines
-Where is Scout?
-Doesnt move in Setup as BLU (except Engineers and Snipers)
-Engineer keep spamming M1 at Sentries
-Engineer sometimes ignore damaged buildings
-Sniper never headshot (in easy mode)
-Sniper got VERY tunnel visioned
-Bots can see thru ally
-Bots ingnore disguised spy when you cloaked and decloak
-Bots ignore decloak sounds
And sooo much more that I may know and may didn't know...
You should try the Dragon's Fury on expert level bots and see what happens when the enemy pyro finds you. I swear for some reason against the Dragon's Fury the bots have a 100% reflect rate.
If there's a Spy bot, they lock onto you if you play as Spy. So many times I've cloaked after backstabbing and they just walk straight towards ye to backstab ya
😭 that is vile
I love how, whenever I go to spectator and spawn these guys, go to an attack/defend map, pause or turn off the timer, and then watch as they'll get stuck in a stalemate for HOURS, if not forever
I'm not joking, BLU wouldn't be able to capture a point or push the payload further past the 1st checkpoint a lot of times
You have a great speaking voice, hope your channel grows big my dude
Thanks, I appreciate the support! 💪
The bot ideas feel out of place, I think this would have been better as a pure analysis of their behavior
I've always loved playing with bots, love their quirks
If I wasn't interested in the topic of the video, I won't have clicked on it, which is likely the case for anyone who clicked on the video. It isn't necessary to make your case several times in the video as to whether or not the video has a point to exist, especially due to how short it is. It's not like this was an eleven hour long video. Be more confident in yourself.
Yo wtf underrated Tf2 youtube channel
😎
The bot engineer building a lv 3 sentry at the spawn room when we are pushing the cart far away :
9:54 oh well, that's so cool! congrats and i wish you good luck in the future (with channel too) c:
this is the video I needed, I feel like people don't appreciate the existence of TF_BOTs enough, great video !
I just want Bot Overhaul to work again 😭 it was broken after the 64-but update a while back, don’t know if the author has fixed it yet or will ever bother since the mod is at least a few years old
Jump Academy's Market Garden Arena has had soldier bots which can market garden you for like, a long time now, so it's definitely possible. I think it would be awesome to see an update to casual where an overhauled bot system could place bots (which could use the unused RED bot model if they're on that team) to balance out the players when the map changes and a bunch of people leave. Or, they could bring back quickplay, that would be cool too.
Props for using the Mega Man 2 soundtrack.
hello, ive been playing tf2 since this july, and didint play casual once until october, so almost all my experience comes from these bots, and whatever leftover skill i had from play pvz garden warfare as a kid! (im sorry if whatever i'm about to say either doesn't make any sense or is spelled so incorrectly that you cannot understan it, i have not slept in around 27 hours due to depression. i'm running on an empty stomach as well, so bare with me)
in my experience, the bots are extremely flawed, and how tolerable they are depends on the server. in most the servers i join, the bots are set to their lowest possible difficulty, with no sniper, spy, or pyro bots. you'd be surprised with how difficult these guys can be though, just on the basis of being bots. enemy engineers will often place sentries in the most inconvient areas possible, and since the bots will catch onto you being a spy the moment you backstab someone or sap something (the sapping is 50/50, sometimes you can hold left click on a build repeatedly and destroy it with ease, sometimes the team will decide they gaf and kill you.) you're pretty much dead. bot heavy's are the hardest to defeat, since them being bots basically turns them into super beefed up walkiny sentries which are constantly being healed by medics, they'll often snap onto you and instakill you. the medics barely work, you can hit the E key as much as you want, but youre lucky if they even look at you sometimes. when there are bot snipers, most servers have them programmed to just... kill. they wont cap or anything, they'll just lock onto you and headshot you with perfect aim. some servers offer "advanced bots", which in my experience are just bots on expert mode, where the heavies in specific become super annoying and near impossible to kill. the bots also dont work on some maps, even within the same gamemode. the bots are totally broken in some point capture and payload maps, but are totally fine in others.
yes, these bots can be irritating to play against, but i actually still reccomend it. having some practice against the bots already made it a little bit easier to start on casual, and im way better at the game than when i started. of course i also watch a lot of tf2 youtube, so i take what i see there and incorporate it into my gameplay to improve as well. i'd reccomend it even if you've played a lot of tf2 already because you can do whatever you want most of the time, bots wont tell you how to play the game. it's fun to go in with playstyles which are normally considered annoying or bad for the team and just have fun trying them becaue bots cant tell you how to play lol
(also funny tidbit, the bots love taunting after killing you, they do it way more than actual people do and theyll do it no matter how cool or lame the kill was. this makes the bots more toxic than the players lol)
yeesss i need more reasons to fuck around in offline play
I really enjoyed recording clips for this video just because of screwing around in offline mode.
Yep, i would love to see a trolldier and battle engi with EVERY POSITIVE ADDCOND and specifically the haste powerup
DUDE, I WAS PLAYING THE GAME FOR THE 1ST TIME A COUPLE MONTHS AGO ANDTHE TF2 TRAINING BOTS KEPT KILLING ME AND I COULDN'T GET 1 KILL ON THEM. I RAGEQUIT AND UNINSTALLED IT AND HAVEN'T PLAYED IT SINCE.😭
I think a base jumper soldier with an airstrike would be a good mvm bot
0:32 can someone tell me the theme playing here? I'm sure it's from a childhood flash game I used to play, but I can't remember it's name.
It is a song from Mega Man but I can't remember what off the top of my head. In my next video I will probably throw any songs I use in the description.
If their was a mvm related update, it would be fitting to make the non mvm bots better. That and still wanted a winter/tundra industrial theme ever since the mvm trailer.
this is a very well built video, and super interesting, keep it up
TL:DR: I want smarter bots and a campaign mode that puts the player in controlled scenarios against bots.
This really makes me want a huge update for Bot intelligence in general. Maybe Easy modes can just have the same bots, but harder difficulties will have bots become smarter, and give them actual combo weapons that complement playstyles. In Harder modes, players would start encountering actually serious threats like a Vaccinator medic escorting a Brass Beast heavy, or Huntsman snipers that will try to tauntkill at corners.
And to top it all off, each class gets its own "Campaign" where you learn to play the character through scenarios that ramp up in difficulty, and beating a Campaign for a specific character would give an Achievement item exclusive to that character, like a graduation cap or a medal.
Ideas for these Campaign scenarios could be stuff like learning how to take down a hardened Engineer nest, or how to counter an Uber push. All stuff that wouldn't occur naturally, or at least less often in Bot servers, or ramped up in difficulty to help the player learn to properly deal with common strategies in Casual servers.
Look into the TF2 bot overhaul. It has a short campaign, too.
I havent even played a single hour of mvm and i watched the whole thing lmaoooo good video!!
8:10 then here's the question: how would the sentry work? would the giant engi's have one super sentry? or able to place several-infinite mini sentries at the cost of a cooldown (5-20 seconds/on kill)
This is something I had thought about but didn't know what would actually fit in MVM best so I just decided to cut it out of the video. Originally, I thought depending on distance that the Engineer bot makes it would place additional sentries but I almost felt that was counter to the idea of the Widow Maker. Def need a bit more theory crafting but these ideas are more just starters.
@@lil_lion69 fair enough, here is another idea; the engi just focuses on shooting the enemy team and gets no sentries.
@@lil_lion69 ok the two replies that were shortly deleted was because I forgot then remembered about sigsegv, however they didn't mention some underlying issues, so I Guess I will make a very long list about them:
to start swinging the issues around sniper are correct, say dustbowl last blue after the first point, any residing sniper will ALWAYS stay by the first point and never help the team. however the problem listed about the engineer (that high tower breaks them) is not the full story. for instance engineers will neglect their teleporters religiously, they will never leave their sentry nest (no matter how far from the conflict it is) unless provoked or in search of metal, or the engineer being in a constant state of reconstruction and deconstruction can possibly happen on hondoo second blue right between spawn and the building where the cart is held at the start (prob after the first checkpoint as well), if they don't set up an engi nest five meters away. what about the fact that if a medic does not see a power class (or something like that) on spawning in they will basically have a stroke, and if that medic happens to respawn alone and before a power class can respawn the spawn point is moved up, well guess your ####ed. or that enemy spies can see you as a spy WHILE DISGUISED AND INVISIBLE, or that bug on gold rush third where if a red bot is by the door exiting spawn and heading to the first control point, and blue caps that control point, the door will slam shut in that red bots face, and they will refuse to play the game after that point, alongside every other bot who was unlucky enough to meet that fate. oh and spies can just afk in front of a sentry suspiciously, so if that's a sentry nest in the middle of nowhere, then chances are both those classes effectively left the game. furthermore engineers will avoid aiding other engineers with as much fervour as they avoid teleporters. not counting the fact that soldiers and demos can't rocket or sticky jump, but that's small potatoes compared to literally everything else.
What's really weird is how theres no base "class" for the tf_bot to be, I really thought there would be a Freeman or Survivor "class" in the files somewhere for the bots to originate from
There's is the civilian class but that's quite broken.
0:17 pretty sure it was closer to the cs:s bots rather than left 4 dead ones
They actually reference the L4D bots in the original bot update blog, which is why I mention them specifically.
in practice mode i’ve had many cases where my teams engineer just jumps at a wall at spawn for the entire game
flawless
I love engi bots and teleporters. They put an entrance up at the first spawn point, never put an exit, and never replace the entrance.
update idea... Training day.
payload mvm maps with updated bot ai. the bots have to move a payload up for new spawn points and the final is a giant mech either picks up the payload or it opens up the bomb hatch so the bots can work how they normally do, alternatively the payload can be loaded into the bots hq where we have to push them back and blow them up for a change.
Heavy gets his update, changing his mechanics a bit so he can fill his role better across the various game modes. Balance his weapons and bring him up to speed with the other classes in the game.
New train/sports cosmetics where the mercs are doing workouts to train for the upcoming locomotive madness.
thank god sometime talks about this, as a tf2 player who constantly plays tf2 with tf_bots, i constantly run into problems where my engineer is straight up useless or take too long set up a decent nest, and not to mention the subclasses, I wanna fight demoknights
but the change i want the most, is bots having randomized classes within the team.
casual is always unorginized, such as having 4 pyros and 4 soldiers for some reason with no medic.
i basically want a offline practice mode with bots that mimic the casual mode (no friendlies tho) and fits with all the offical valve maps.
edit (im just yapping more here, so ignore):
spy is the easiest class to play as and to fight against.
as a spy, you can just walk past their entire team with a disguise, and they won't suspect a thing.
and the bot spies do the same thing, expect they make it so obvious, you can tell immediately when a *teammate is walking towards you with their primary out*
the tf_bots require a complete rework with adjustable difficulties other than the regular 4.
the bots require their own sub-classes of course.
such as...
trollider
battle engi
demoknight
fat scout
pybro
and just bots that use diffirent weapons
i got fucking trickstabbed by a training bot and a fucking sniper air quickscoped me at light speed
5:50 custom loadout mostly cannot be done without internet connection at the only expection of mvm bots so you need also to change the weapon system in tf2
it's not imposible tf2Classic did it but there unlike that vavle will do it because weapon are on the same system than cosmetic offline access can open the door for cosmetic duplication
As a person who primarily plays only against bots, this video makes me happy.
nice ctr themed christmas feeling with the background music there
my favorite part of this video is when you go completely off topic on training bots and go to mvm
i came for a training bots video, i stayed for the mvm ideas video
Vanilla bots are so stupid that once you tried Bot Overhaul, you can't go back
7:39 "...Chile?"
"...OH- Right wait, Chile and Texas have the same flag *yeah* that makes sense..-"
🤣
I mean just imagine if they had other types of spies in mvm. Like a dead ringer spy that spawns with a larger health pool or resistances. A boss spybot that uses the kunai. Or my favorite idea, a YER spybot, that when he kills a player it prevents them from being respawned, turning the spybot into a real tangeble threat that NEEDS to be dealt with
Peak 2007 AI
for a very long time i was a offline tf2 player, they were the only thing ive had, good memories
If a MVM update ever happens that does also change the training bots, I think "The Return of the Machines" would go hard as an update name
Good luck on the job hunt! I recently graduated myself and I'm struggling with the job search haha
Sad to see cheating bots work better than the officiall bots.
The official bots are made to do something different than the bot crisis bots though. The official bots are meant to at least somewhat convincingly make errors.
A giant battle engineer bot that has a despenser on his back that has a healing area around him. He also shoots out mini sentrys or teleporters that spawn other bots.
I love the dispenser idea and hadn't even thought about that. Crazy cool concept.
I’d also like to see the TF_Bots get updated to listen to other console commands. Once, I made a LAN server and I used some console commands to make the other team be all Pyros, but bots have an ideal team order in mind. What I mean by this is that bot 1 is always Medic, Bot 2 is always Engineer, Bot 3 is always Soldier, and so on. But, when I used the commands to have the other team be all Pyros and stay that way, they kept killing themselves to switch classes, only to not switch classes, because of one of the commands I had on, respawn Pyro, and then kill themselves again in an endless loop.
IS THAT WHY. I remember I was trying to make the bots certain classes but I couldn't figure out how to get them switching. That is whack.
Originally the bots were only available to few gamemodes/maps where they worked pretty well. We got new maps for bots some years ago and the AI was improved along it but they never handled the new maps.
I do think it's interesting how new maps seemingly break them even though the new maps can have nav meshes but I also don't know how the spaghetti code works.
I love how Medic bots have godlike syringe aim. They just straight up melt you.
Bots with high enough skill have godlike aim in general. They just don't tend to lead their shots.
Medic bots in general are super funny. I've noticed when they uber they sometimes opt to shoot with their syringe gun instead of continuing charge and its hilarious.
@@lil_lion69 I assume this is usually when they loose their medibeam connection with their patient. Medics aren't that great at picking healing targets quickly. (Without being squadded.)
Not necessarily related to anything covered in the video but I recall the MvM update broke Engineer bot behavior for a good number of years because they stopped being able to destroy their nests and move up with objectives, which means they'd get stuck at the first sentry spot they picked and would just stay there forever until the match ended or their stuff got blown up. Somewhere along the line this was fixed (maybe Jungle Inferno?)
Teleporters are also broken for the Engi bot and I have no clue why. They will place them at the first spawn point and then never move them (or even upgrade them for that matter).
I agree so heavily that I am desperate. When we get new maps or a new game mode, sometimes they get stuck, not knowing how to go around. And they just stand there because they don't know what to do. What if we want to train on a new map until we are ready to face real players, and they just don't work? They need to update the nav_generat and their AI.
sorry i don't want dead internet theory in tf2 i hate bots in my games
Potential mvm bots inspired by what I've seen in custom servers:
Flying Black box Soldier: Slow moving flying Soldiers with the Black box, and a Thermal thruster on theirs backs as a visual cosmetic.
Flying Liberty launcher Soldier: Same but liberty launcher.
Eternal Spy: Cloak and Dagger, Your Eternal reward, L'étranger.
CaberKnight: (Maybe)
Drunk Elemental: Inspired by custom wave 666 bots I've seen in custom servers. Basicly a Demoman who fires flaming ghastly skulls that explode and set others on fire. Name is insipired by the Pain Elemental from Doom.
Gun spy: this is more of a change rather than a new bot but Spy robots don't use theirs revolvers unless they are bomb carriers. This should change so that every Spy should use theirs guns.
technically caberknight is just sentry buster
Great video!
You made my lunch far nicer :)
A tf_bot enthusiasts bot difficulty tierlist (this counts expert difficulty only and several other factors)
9: Spies. If you follow basic spychecking etiquette you will very rarely die to them and become a non-issue if you’re playing pyro
8: Demos. They only use their grenade launcher for battle and stickies for traps. their aim doesnt usually compensate for the grenade launchers projectile so they mostly miss when you’re rushing at them. they may take out sentry nests occasionally
7: Scouts. They’re nigh on useless whenever an engie is around and usually rush to the point while very rarely flanking. they are a lot more scarier on 5cp maps where engies dont have much time setting up
6: Medics. They have the shittest position of all the tfbots and could very easily be taken out if you play your cards right or have your own medic buddy. if left unchecked they could become unstoppable with a heavy or soldier
5: Engies. They always turtle on defense, so the only way to take down a nest is using uber or playing spy.
4: Soldiers. They aren’t as accurate with the rocket launcher as they are with their shotgun, but they very quickly become a problem with a medic buddy.
3: Pyros. A i r b l a s t
2: Snipers. They have perfect accuracy but they don’t move around very often and are basically stronger versions of engineers. They’re useless on offense.
1: Heavies. They’re very scary on their own and are a lot more scary with a medic buddy. they can roll your team with a medic alone if you don’t pay attention
i subscribed just because you asked in a so gentle way, most youtubers are like: "SUBSCRIBE NOWWWW!!!!!! SUUUUBBBBSSSSCRRRRIIBBBEEEEE!!!!!!!" but not u! loved the video
Thank you, it really means a lot
Great video, def deserve more subs.
imagine an entire tour based around blast jumping bots; like mecha engine but based trolldiers, caber demos, or hell, even roamer playstyles from the comp scene. You could have maps with more verticality, insane amounts of space like in bigrock... would be so much fun to play against.
I used to play with them back in 2013 when I had no internet for weeks at a time
Based Wily Stage 2 background music
oh you got to 1K while i was watching. congrats!
Thank you, it means a lot
4:46 whats the server name?
arena.awk.gg:27015 I think it has since closed but I try and check on occasion
@lil_lion69 k thx
Soldier bots were originally planned to be able to do rocketjumps as seen in the early training maps but it seems it was very scripted. Also bots are supposed to work in unsupported maps, as in they are supposed to randomly walk around and shoot an enemy if they see one, but that's broken because they will try to force push the objective, that they don't know, instead
I searched up "TF2" to see what the results would be
It amazes me how this community still manages to talk about interesting and unique topics for this game
Genuinely love how passionate people are about TF2
like the ideas of new bots in MVM. The thought of playing a round and facing a wave of trolldiers would be pretty fun, but going against a bunch of battle engineers sounds reaaally cool ( and annoying to deal with (in a fun way?))
Tf2 bots when they are snipers filling up the lobby’s: unstoppable killing machines
Tf2 bots when they where made by valve for a actually good purpose:
thay removed one MVM bot and it spins
Fr fr?
A troldier bot in mvm would be good, i think that itll be unique, as a sniper, you would now have to worry about a soldier bot falling from the sky box with a 195 dmg crit
i played like this when i didn't have internet
it was still very fun
On the third map of basic training payload or whatever it’s called because I forgot, My blue team would huddle together in a tunnel with a gate blocking their path. Only some team mates would come from spawn to help but it would only be a few. I remember playing as Heavy while hiding in a corner spamming negative and Jeers lines pretending Heavy was experiencing fear and loss lol.
Im surprised you didn't talk about the Bot Overhaul mod
They should add enforcer revolver spies to mvm. It being the only weapon that's good at range and shoots through resistences would be dangerous. That's without thinking about a giant crit boosted enforcer spy dolling out 144 damage every few seconds from any range.
YES honestly these things drove me crazy when i started playing. for context i started playing around the summer update after hearing that the bots were gone but i was too shy to play. these things are stupid in the way they make kt really easy to feel like the best player on earth when starting out but also stupid smart when you're trying to practice spy or get though a horrid choke. someone else mentioned that these things are CRAZY when it come to spies i mean, propably bc i played on expert but, you dont even bump them or uncloak or anything but the second you appear in their vicinity it's over. you hear a single "spy!" and youre gone. its almost like theyre hacking or something.
Oh. I didn't think anyone but me would notice it. I was trained for the first time day or two ago rand it took me an hour just for the training bots to start working (they weren't acting weird, they just WEREN't on the map at all) after graduation, ALL my statistics flew off (the statistics that appear when you join the server, they are COMPLETELY reset), despite the fact that all my counters, strange clocks and the same statistics in the steam remained the same (on account, but is not displayed in the game). Very sad... but nothing too bad. Thank you for video.
Fr like seeing the Blu Engie is lowkey funny to me. He's just a little guy with a Shotgun trying his best