OpenArena Message Boards

This is the most annoying thing ever.
It is SO DAMN HARD to find a populated server on the list now. Server admins are putting lots of bots on, which make it look like it populated. I think this is a form of trickery.

IF I WANTED TO PLAY AGAINST BOTS, I'D PLAY FUCKING SINGLE PLAYER.

I understand that it could be useful for evening out teams, as OpenArena has no damn auto-join option (fromhell...), though really, it is doing more harm than good, as players have to constantly switch from server to server trying to find a game with HUMANS in.

This is really killing OpenArena for me, as I really can't be pissed to keep switching servers over and over.
 

Agree that it's stupid to use bots just to make it look populated, many server admins do not realize how much damage it does.
If there are 4 bots on a server, then most players who know that, avoid that server if there are 4 players on it, but since 4 bots, and 4 players look the same; then they won't connect even if there are 4 'legitimate players' there.
So, they shoot themselves in the foot with using bots.

The missionpack has a nice feature that allows you to see the human players on a server.  You could install what is done in the missionpack in your 0.7.1 directory and start your multiplayer sessions that way.

Bots are almost necessary for starting off CTF games. You don't want to wait for one person to join at a time. Besides, if people see one player in a CTF server, do you really think they are willing to join it?

If I want to start a CTF match in my clan's server then I want to play with bots until people join. Even if newbs join, that increases the number of players in the server and people will become more willing to join it.

true, but some servers have 4 or more bots on each side in ctf. bots destroy ctf gameplay even if there's players on the server.

i'd say no more than 2 bots on each side, and they should leave if a player joins the team, imo :)


this is awesome! :)

where can i get this missionpack thing ? what is it, found no serious informatiion in the wiki.

at the moment i check for players with this bookmarked link:

http://dpmaster.deathmask.net/?game=openarena&nocolors=&showplayers=yes&hide=empty

Yeah I just check the master servers before I start playin OA.  Then I can find the server I want to be in and dont have to skip around.

you could also use n external  server browser like qtracker or xqf to check for 0 ping players (bots or lan players)

Yeah, those sound like good ideas for _avoiding_ the problem. But I really think the server admins should do something.

The other day I saw a server with _EIGHT_ bots on, no players. Seriously, wtf.

That seems excessive.

Using XQF here, it helps a lot for these issues. The number of player column doesn't count bots, good to quickly see if it's worth joining ;)
Eventually, I'd prefer having a way to call a vote to kick (or add) bots ;)

I have figured out a fix for this, from the server admin side. View my post about the [TASF]CTF server...

My opinion:

FFA: set bot_minplayers 3
CTF: set bot_minplayers 2
TDM: set bot_minplayers 2
1 vs. 1: set bot_minplayers 2

Explained:

FFA you want 3 players at all times, to keep it from being 1 vs. 1, at bot_minplayers 3, if two people are there, one bot is there and leaves if a 3rd human joins.

CTF you want 4 player slots filled at all times, to keep it balanced and playable, at bot_minplayers 2, each side has 2 slots filled per side, until 4 real people are active, then all the bots are gone - a bot leaves when a player joins.

TDM, same as CTF in regards to balance and gameplay.

1 vs. 1 you want 2 slots full but that's all, this keeps a person busy as he/she waits for a real human to join.

bot_minplayers = slots of a given # are filled until a human joins. For each human that joins, a bot leaves, until all defined # of slots are occupied.

I'm one of the "guilty" admins.  The cat-man-du.com servers are running CTF and TDM, which are both able to be VERY boring when there aren't many players on.  Before 0.7.6, both had bot_minplayers=4.  The updated configs for 0.7.6 have bot_minplayers=2.  I think this seems reasonable for these game types, but I'm willing to listen to other opinions.

To be fair, I'm sure the server admins aren't trying to be jerks, lets all stay calm :P
Bots can be lame, especially if you want to play with people.  But people tend to clump on one server or one team and its nice to have bots to balance everything out.  It really only takes 20 seconds or so to load a server, see that its all bots, and leave again.  Is it really that big of a deal? 
Instead of banning bots from online servers I would be more for an option to see which servers have human players and how many... much more practical!

agreed, a feature in the serverlisting to show how many human player the server has would be nice.

Personaly I would rather play a 4v3 game than a 4v4 with 1 bot, they're just so moronic and unrealistic that I really think they hinder proper gameplay. If an admin must have bots though either have 2 or 4, no more... and I don't see why you can't do the same thing one guy has done (I've forgotten who) with their server and state in the server name how many bots are currently playing.

Another thing I hate about bots is that they split the players up, you sometimes get 8 players spread over 3 or 4 servers when if there wern't bots on all those servers the players would know where to go.

Anyway, since I found out about this http://dpmaster.deathmask.net/?game=openarena&showplayers=yes (http://dpmaster.deathmask.net/?game=openarena&showplayers=yes) it's the only thing I use for finding servers as you can see just how many of the players on each server are bots.

an alternative would be if someone created a good open source cross platform external server browser for open arena that had all of the good options from ASE, xqf and qtracker, including being able to see how many actual humans are playing on whatever server. im no programmer so im not going to be able to do it, but whoever wants to pick up this project go right ahead.

also would be neat if we could contact this guy and get the script he is using to change the hostname to reflect how many bots are on: http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=1591.0

Ok :P I kicked the bots of my dualzone server
see what happens now......
;)

Well right now the few 7.6 CTF servers that pop in and out are always empty, or have one player (Hi Sophie!).  I would be happy to have bots there to make things a bit more interesting but there are none...

escapedturkey logic makes best sense here for sure.

On the [TASF]CTF server, we're running bot_minplayers 4. However, the name of the server is auto-updated to reflect the number of bots in so that no one is deceived. I find that 8 bots in the game allows me to join with a friend, screw around for a while, and then as soon as 4 real human players are in, the server fills up. The bots are on nightmare mode because we found it was more frustrating to have idiot bot teammates than it was to get absolutely destroyed by them with the lightning gun.

Bots suck, sure. But it's better than an empty server.

Given the number of open slots on all the servers combined, there really aren't enough players to keep the OA servers populated.

I agree with Overkill and think its great how your server name always reflects the number of bots... a rolemodel for other sysadmins!

I myself have bots on my server only to keep visitors buzzy until a real human enters the game.
Then the bot always leaves.........
;)

bot_minplayers "2"  for 1on1 tourney games.
Thats the only reason for having bots running online for me.

Yes it's a real pain to search for real people and have to connect to the servers one by one and check. Would it be difficult to add an automatic feature in ioquake3 to let the players know how many bots there are on each server on the servers page ? Thanks to the admins specifying how many bots they have, shame to the others...

Ok, I have registered on the forums only to write about this topic.

I uses to connect to play some OA  after a long working day but it become really very very frustrating to connect and disconnect from servers trying to find human players, I think it's very needed to have a way to easily view from the game which servers have bots inside, also it will be better to have just a couple of server but with many people, maybe a cuple of servers only for human players and stated clear on server name.

On the other hand, thanks for this great Game to the developers.

Endurans

Agreed. E.g. in HLSW (a Win server browser; not sure if cross-platform) there the number of players altogether is given and next to it the number of bots in brackets. If there are 2 players and 4 bots the browser shows "6(4)". I think this solution is easy to implement but not sure on this. At least you wouldn't have to add a new column in OA's server browser.