In a surprise but welcome announcement, Behavior Interactive has revealed that its upcoming title Dead by Daylight Mobile will be seeing the addition of bots for players who disconnect during a match. This is sure to be a useful feature given the nature of mobile gaming, which seems like a platform where players may be more prone to disconnecting, either on purpose or not.
As explained in the reveal video, a killer bot is designed to behave exactly as a player. As a result, a Dwight player who disconnects and becomes a bot will immediately head to the nearest locker and hide inside until the match ends. Claudette meanwhile will find a large patch of grass, crouch, and blend into the surrounding area near a corner of the map. All jokes aside, a bot player will work to fix generators, cleanse totems, flee from the killer using whatever tools they have at their disposal, and unhook teammates.
Bots that take on the role of killers meanwhile are also programmed to act as a real player, responding to alerts that give away a survivor’s location and pursuing anyone who enters into their line of sight. Compared to survivor bots, it will be fascinating to see how effective they are in a real game. This is because, unlike survivors, killers all have unique abilities and toolkits that may be difficult to incorporate effectively against real players.
For example, the Trapper is likely one of the easiest bots to program, as there are strategic places to set a trap that real players should already expect to see. On the other hand, the Nurse might be one of the most challenging to program fairly. At top ranks of play, the Nurse can be devastating because players can readily predict where survivors will be located relative to the tile set, but for a bot to teleport as if from nowhere might feel ridiculously unfair.
PC and console players should not get too excited at the prospect of seeing this transfer over to their games, as the feature is described as unique to Dead by Daylight Mobile, and there are currently no indications that it will appear elsewhere. In an interview with TheGamer in September of 2019, I asked Mathieu Côté, “for the longevity of the game, have you considered an offline or AI component to Dead by Daylight?”
“Many times, but the thing is I believe the one of the most unique things about DBD is that it’s a source of real raw human emotion and real interactions. You’re on the hook and wondering if people are going to rescue you. You see them coming and then turn around and go somewhere else and you go ‘What’s happening?’, these stories told over and over work because its real humans and I don’t know if it work well with AI, I don’t know if could imbue them with the explanation, like ‘Oh, that person is such a dick for not coming to save me, and I just saved him two seconds ago!’ It works when it is people, I don’t think it would work so well when it’s AI.”
Côté then went on to highlight that, despite his feeling, there were also potential benefits to exploring such a feature, stating, “The most to gain from implementing something like that would be when you have a disconnect from a game, but early on we took the decision whenever someone disconnects from we consider it as if they died, and it could happen, in other games players do die early.” Clearly the decision to incorporate bots for the mobile port is based on the differences between the two platforms.
For now, this feature looks like an exciting addition to Dead by Daylight Mobile. Be sure to pre-register now to unlock a tiered list of cosmetics when the game finally launches on Android and iOS!
Source: twitter.com/DbDMobile