bot improvement suggestions
I just got around to trying the latest bots, and I must say that I believe bots are almost near perfect. In my opinion the best state of the bots would be to be as player like as possible when it comes to capability. These bots have always been overpowered when it comes to its capabilities and advantages over players and the spell casting interupt change is a really nice step. The only changes I would like to request are to keep the balance of having a bot in your group vs having a player in your group more fair.
1 - The bot death penalty is a big improvement, although it seems that not all of the res effects are active. My ogre sk for example did not just lose any stamina or hp , but his other vital stats were lowered. I also do not think their mana regen is halted like it should be as well. If these changes were implemented along with a respawn timer that could be changed by the server admin we would have a pretty good bot death penalty. Another idea I would love to see although I doubt it would ever be implemented is maybe a price you pay to spawn bots and then an upkeep price every 15 minutes or so similar to how eqlive uses mercs.
2- One of the biggest issues I have with the current bot system is that bots do not grab aggro from wandering mobs. I know the argument is that people can afk and level, but I think there can be ways to solve that with maybe a rule in the db or some kind of afk check of some sort. Bots not grabbing aggro gives the bot owner a huge reason not to ever group with another player. You can put your bots anywhere you want without having to worry about wandering mobs giving a really artificial feel to the whole bot system. Bots for the most part follow you pretty well in my opinion and we still have the #bot summon command so why cant this be implemented?
3 - Melee misses - I believe that the bots are still not missing anywhere close to players of the same level. This makes a bot group of level 1-10's killing machines that are twice as powerful as players of the same level.
4- class tweaks - Some classes currently dont perform some functions that they should. Bards should be able to mez, for example, and clerics should be able to cast invis vs undead. There are probably others but I dont remember.
These are the changes that I think would solve the problem of the artifical feel of the bots and the advantages having bots in your group vs grouping with players. It would be even better to maybe one day have individual exp per bot that you can pay or group to raise, but thats just wishful thinking.
All in all the bots are near perfect and I thank everyone working on the bots for all the good work they have done with all the recent changes.
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