Quake Champions Is Adding Bots

Quake Champions developer id Software announced that plans to add bots to the shooter are in the works to fill empty spots during matches.

The developers spoke about the new feature in a video where community manager Joshua Boyle and technical director John Dean discussed the bots in a video. Dean mentioned that bots have been a feature request for a while now and will be beneficial to the game for a variety of reasons.

"They're really fun to play with. It's nice to be able to play more low-key games, a little less stress with friends and stuff like that," Dean said.

He also said that there will be a sort of "training aspect" that'll be useful thanks to the bots. Instead of being bullet fodder AI that don't behave like players would, Dean said that these bots will be able to utilize mechanics like trick jumps and strafing while playing each game mode appropriately. He added that they're also on a skill slider to accommodate different levels of play.

"If you go down to like the easy level, they're not going to be jumping around," he added. "They're going to be more just kind of running around, staying on the ground."

These bots also won't try and take away any high-powered items or weapons from lower-level players who aren't as familiar with the game's mechanics. Instead, they'll steer clear of these pickups to allow players to interact with them. Even outside of the high-level games, these bots will defer to real players' judgement when making decisions. This means that if a bot and a player are both going for a powerup at the same time, the bot will abandon the goal and let the player have the pickup instead.

The bots will also be rolled out in multiple phases starting with the basic game modes such as Team Deathmatch and Institute. Bots will play all the champions and use all the weapons during this stage, but they won't use all the abilities. The next phase will include more support for the champions' abilities and will also introduce the bots to additional game modes.

As far as an offline bots mode goes, the developers couldn't say anything about it just yet. Boyle passed a player's question onto Dean and asked about the offline bots, but Dean said that he couldn't comment on that just yet. It doesn't rule out the possibility, but they promised that id Software has more plans for the bots in the future.