Battlefield 2042 Could Have Up to 64 Bots in a Multiplayer Game
Battlefield 2042 is going to be releasing their largest game mode yet with 128 players. That’s a lot of players running around a map trying kill each other. No surprise that having lobbies of 128 players on demand is going to be a bit hard. I get frustrated waiting for small lobbies sometimes, can’t imagine these.
To fight this problem EA has decided the best answer is… bots. Should some of the empty spots in a match end up unfilled, they are allowing up to 64 bots to fill in if need be. Now let me start off by saying I don’t think bots belong in multiplayer games. If I want to go fight bots there can be a bot only mode. But when I que up into a live match I expect some competition from real players, not an entire team of bots.
What is the alternative though, no match? This becomes a hard thing to decide for the company. Either have long wait times, empty spots, or fill up empty spaces with bots. While I do understand this, I also don’t want a team of 64 bots towards the end of the match as people start dropping off.
EA is not the only company doing this. If you’ve ever played in a match of Fortnite you’ll notice some extremely bad players. That guy that takes five seconds before pulling the trigger and then hits the wall in the other direction? Those are their bots. Now I’ll give it to Fortnite, they’ve put in some work to make the bots a bit better, but by no means perfect. I can still tell when I’m going up against a bot. Making a bot that is not impossible to kill but also not stupid is pretty hard. Even in some of the best modern games bots are all very similar, and very predictable.
Maybe EA has hired an awesome AI developer and has some new bot tech we have no clue about. But I doubt that will be the case. Even if it is the case I’m still not keen on going against bots in my multiplayer games, especially not 64 of them. This news has had the gaming community asking some questions as to how EA will handle this. While I’m all for these huge matches and bringing something different to gaming, I hope they don’t hurt the matches and take away from what players want.
EA still has some time before we can get our hands on the game. I really hope that players will be able to enjoy everything and not even notice if they are going up against a bot, but only time will tell. The game is getting a lot of hype and people are excited so hopefully all goes well. I look forward to seeing how these huge battles play out.
