Something for players to do.
Today I played a round of the United 1944 demo and when I say a round I mean one singular round. And then I uninstalled the game and thanked the lord I didn’t actually buy the thing. This game launched roughly a month and a half ago and it’s dead. Twelve players online worldwide dead.
And I’m kinda disappointed at that because I saw some mechanics that could have made for an interesting game if only there were people to play against. It’s a WW2 first person team shooter that also includes base building mechanics and crafting, you weirdly have to craft your own guns and they eventually break. Could be an interesting mechanic.
Games like United 1944 need bots, and they don’t have to be anything fancy. In a game like this they would need to be more advanced than your usual shooter bots, but I think it’d be doable. Something to let them find resources, craft guns, and build/defend bases. I’m not saying it’s a simple job, I’m just saying it’s a good investment.
Because had I actually been able to find someone to shoot in United 1944, hell I may have actually stuck around to continue playing the demo. Hell I might have stuck around and actually eventually bought the game. But I didn’t, because I encountered two whole people during the match and one of them was on my team.
Now bots are not and never will be a replacement for real players, and I would never argue otherwise. But it does give the game a little bit of survivability. I occasionally go back and play older shooters whose multiplayer is dead because they either have bots or the community has built bots. They aren’t perfect, but they do scratch that itch.
I’d also like to note that a game that has bots will at least get some people playing if the game gets off to a rocky start, and if those people are still playing they’re still talking about the game. A bad launch with literally nothing to do (United 1944) just leads to those few people leaving and not coming back, and that’s a lot harder to recover from.
Hell there are plenty of MMOs whose PvE keeps the game going despite not having enough players for PvP. So what I’m saying is; your game needs something to do in the absence of players. It’s literally better than nothing.
MMO Fallout 