Issues regarding experience with bots in BF6

Hello. 

I have always wished for a mode that allowed me to play Battlefield with bots, either alone or with friends, and I was extatic to find ut that Battlefield 6 would come with bots in Portal; I had already had a good experience with bots in 2042 and I had high hopes for what BF6 would deliver, but unfortunately, those expectations haven't been met, so I wanted to leave some constructive criticism and requests for an update on this part of the BF6 package, as it seems I am all but alone in this.

I also want to preface that, despite this issue, BF6 is great, it just so happened that the part I was awaiting the most was pretty much the only one that suffered a downgrade, and seen how good BF6 is, I am confident that the team will deliver at least some update on this.

The problem I have had with bots in BF6 is that their AIs suffered a major downgrade compared to 2042, which made them very unfun to play against, so I will also draw parallels with their 2042 counterparts to better explain the problem; here are the main issues with them:

1. They rarely if ever pick up vehicles: I have observed this seems to be dependant on the map, as in Mirak Valley they would enter vehicles fairly often, as opposed to Liberation Peak where they would rarely enter them and Siege of Cairo where they would never enter them. Given how important vehicles are to the gameplay of Battlefield, it's easy to see why this downgrades the experience so much; in 2042, bots would pick up vehicles all the time and use them fairly well, which contributed greatly to capture that Battlefield feel.

2. They don't push or defend objectives: in 2042, you would have bots dynamically try to conquer objectives or defend them in some way, and you rarely had a situation where your team managed to hold all objectives, which made the game more engaging, in BF6 though the bots very rarely do that, and in almost all games you'll have your team holding all the objectives (also leading to a critical victory), which makes you almost want to not capture them because otherwise the games would be lightning quick and unengaging.

3. They mostly just stand still and shoot while fighting: This was also a thing in 2042, but it was far more noticeable in BF6, and in general, it is something that warrants an update to the AIs. Bots in BF6 tend to just stand still and shoot whatever target they might have, instead of moving around in any attempt to find cover or close up a distance; now while this isn't always the case, it happens fairly often and it makes the fight much less rewarding than it is supposed to be. [To fix this and issue nr. 2, I would persoally suggest implementing a few simple behaviors for pushing the objectives, defending them, seeking cover while under fire, suppressing enemies or pushing enemies, as well as a random characteristic value per AI which makes them more "biased" towards picking one behavior over others; this is just a raw idea but, observing the examples of older games, some of which being nearly 30 years old, I believe this to be a very feasible option that wouldn't cause any noticeable overhead, especially if bots are handled on a server or on separate threads on the player's machine].

4. Sometimes they just don't fight: This is something I mainly noticed in those rare instances where bots would pick up jets, so I can't say if this is a problem that's only confined to jets, but what I observes is that bots would just fly around the map in jets, flying over objectives or past helis or other jets, without ever shooting a shot, they would just fly around, doing a coreography and nothing more. In 2042, bots would actually use jets and bombers to attack the objective; you'd see bombing runs with the A-10s, dogfights in the sky and jets using flares.

All these factors contributed to making the game experience with bots pretty underwhelming and unenjoyable, and while I understand that solo play isn't the focus of Battlefield, I would dare suggest that it should be considered a must have feature in shooters in general, given how most big names either have one or had one until recently (some examples being Quake, Unreal & Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty, Rainbow Six Siege with Terrorist Hunt [which unfortunately was recently removed] and Arma), and aside from that, it is still part of the BF6 package, part which has worked as a selling point for many people, myself included.

That being said, I want to reiterate that I appreciate the work that went in BF6, and that the reason I am making this post is that I believe in the developers' ability in making what is already a good product even better. Thanks for reading and have a nice day.