Yikes. I had no idea the bots were that sophisticated! 
Today I took Somewhat Zen up the cold and chilly mountains to go bag myself some infusion to keep those pesky Mursaat off my case and encountered possibly as many as three bots in the space of two games. First up was Bas something who the group quickly identified as a bot early in the rescue Evennia mission. Bas quickly became the butt of much joking, after dying at the hands of some Stone Summit dwarves and nobody felt particularly inclined to rez the damn thing.
By the time we had finished that mission and the infuse run/kill Markus mission next, we were all fairly certain that one "Prodigy Of Death" was also a bot and there were strong suspicians concerning a certain "Hfa Ng", whose lack of communication seemed to coincide much more with a lack of human thinking power than a lack of English.
There's Something About Bas
How the hell this thing got into the group I don't know, but Bas made our day by waking up more than she could handle and then running off into the arms of a waiting mob where she promptly died. This of course was only a few minutes into the level and caused much celebration. Bas started to show how sophisticated bots can be by pinging the the compass several times on her location.
Anyway after the Yak stampede cutscene brought Bas back, to our horror, she died yet again under fairly predictable circumstances. This time we were more alert to the overall 'botness' of Bas, so it was a mild shock to see first the word "coma" and then "pals" appear from her festering corpse. Makes sense eh? Bots with basic dialogue to trick you into believing there's a person back there somewhere and this would account for 2 of the 3 pieces of dialogue I would read from one during the day.
Bas got kicked pretty quickly after the successful completion of the mission. She was easy to spot too. She had stripped down and start dancing, whilst spamming team-up tags around. She got kicked, she immediately tagged us, she got declined, she immediately tagged us.
We tackled the next mission and unfortunately picked up Prodigy Of Death who evidently did not have the AI to handle the concept of an "infuse run". Prodigy wanted to kill stuff and that was fine by me, because he only lasted as far as the first pack of Zealots vs. Stone Summit. After the cutscene resurrection Prodigy quickly got locked up in the caves when some numbskull went north after the seer had specifically instructed us to go east. I stopped, on account of not actually being a moron, and the three players who had not experienced this level before, along with two who had, went racing off to find out why I was frantically typing "STOP!".
The good part about this was that Prodigy Of Death couldn't handle the team split and just stopped. Wonderful. The only one following orders and it's the bot who's only doing so because it has worse following AI than Alesia. Needless to say I had the fun job of trying to figure out how to resurrect the entire team out from under a pack of Mursaat, a process which got me trapped between two groups of them with two other now-upright characters and one character clear to play Mr. Bait. He found a Monk boss shadow thingie and proudly boasted about how he'd dragged it back to Prodigy Of Death before dragging his new pet monkey back to the Mursaat so the rest of us could get clear.
And we successfully completed that mission too.
Later on I went back to the staging area with another character and who did I see standing in the middle of the place? Prodigy Of Death. "LFG Mission" appeared at least once on the screen. Hfa Ng was there too and surprise of all surprises somebody wrote "Don't take Hfa Ng. He doesn't speak English." I haven't mentioned Hfa Ng in the anecdote yet. He died in the wrong turn Mursaat suicide action and we left him there for reasons of suspicious bot-like behaviour, but I can't be sure either way. The name alone gives reason for the lack of communication, so I can't be certain either way.
But anyway, how bad is the bot problem? Has anyone else here had some crazy or exasperating moments courtesy of some script kiddie's program hunting for something while he's in school?
Today I took Somewhat Zen up the cold and chilly mountains to go bag myself some infusion to keep those pesky Mursaat off my case and encountered possibly as many as three bots in the space of two games. First up was Bas something who the group quickly identified as a bot early in the rescue Evennia mission. Bas quickly became the butt of much joking, after dying at the hands of some Stone Summit dwarves and nobody felt particularly inclined to rez the damn thing.
By the time we had finished that mission and the infuse run/kill Markus mission next, we were all fairly certain that one "Prodigy Of Death" was also a bot and there were strong suspicians concerning a certain "Hfa Ng", whose lack of communication seemed to coincide much more with a lack of human thinking power than a lack of English.
There's Something About Bas
How the hell this thing got into the group I don't know, but Bas made our day by waking up more than she could handle and then running off into the arms of a waiting mob where she promptly died. This of course was only a few minutes into the level and caused much celebration. Bas started to show how sophisticated bots can be by pinging the the compass several times on her location.
Anyway after the Yak stampede cutscene brought Bas back, to our horror, she died yet again under fairly predictable circumstances. This time we were more alert to the overall 'botness' of Bas, so it was a mild shock to see first the word "coma" and then "pals" appear from her festering corpse. Makes sense eh? Bots with basic dialogue to trick you into believing there's a person back there somewhere and this would account for 2 of the 3 pieces of dialogue I would read from one during the day.
Bas got kicked pretty quickly after the successful completion of the mission. She was easy to spot too. She had stripped down and start dancing, whilst spamming team-up tags around. She got kicked, she immediately tagged us, she got declined, she immediately tagged us.
We tackled the next mission and unfortunately picked up Prodigy Of Death who evidently did not have the AI to handle the concept of an "infuse run". Prodigy wanted to kill stuff and that was fine by me, because he only lasted as far as the first pack of Zealots vs. Stone Summit. After the cutscene resurrection Prodigy quickly got locked up in the caves when some numbskull went north after the seer had specifically instructed us to go east. I stopped, on account of not actually being a moron, and the three players who had not experienced this level before, along with two who had, went racing off to find out why I was frantically typing "STOP!".
The good part about this was that Prodigy Of Death couldn't handle the team split and just stopped. Wonderful. The only one following orders and it's the bot who's only doing so because it has worse following AI than Alesia. Needless to say I had the fun job of trying to figure out how to resurrect the entire team out from under a pack of Mursaat, a process which got me trapped between two groups of them with two other now-upright characters and one character clear to play Mr. Bait. He found a Monk boss shadow thingie and proudly boasted about how he'd dragged it back to Prodigy Of Death before dragging his new pet monkey back to the Mursaat so the rest of us could get clear.
And we successfully completed that mission too.
Later on I went back to the staging area with another character and who did I see standing in the middle of the place? Prodigy Of Death. "LFG Mission" appeared at least once on the screen. Hfa Ng was there too and surprise of all surprises somebody wrote "Don't take Hfa Ng. He doesn't speak English." I haven't mentioned Hfa Ng in the anecdote yet. He died in the wrong turn Mursaat suicide action and we left him there for reasons of suspicious bot-like behaviour, but I can't be sure either way. The name alone gives reason for the lack of communication, so I can't be certain either way.
But anyway, how bad is the bot problem? Has anyone else here had some crazy or exasperating moments courtesy of some script kiddie's program hunting for something while he's in school?