With the latest update 7.1, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) received bots as a new feature. They are extensively used in the new Stadia version as well. However, instead of enriching the game, they are reportedly ruining it according to our author Jürgen Horn and many other players.
What’s the deal with the bots? With update 7.1, bots were introduced to the game. They were supposed to enhance the battle royale experience and provide more success experiences. Especially for the recent launch of PUBG on Stadia, bots are essential as fillers. Currently, Stadia only allows crossplay with PS4 and only if you play as a Stadia player with a gamepad.
If you want to stick with keyboard and mouse, you can only compete with other Stadia players, who unfortunately are still quite rare. Therefore, missing teammates are filled in with bots. And this is not just the case on Stadia. According to various players, bots also seem to be part of the player lobby on other platforms, as mentioned on reddit.
Does this make the matches in the battle royale game more exciting, as you can enjoy more kills and action against the bots?
Bots really ruin everything
These were my expectations: I was never particularly good at PUBG. The rather slow, tactical gameplay is not really my thing; I prefer faster battle royale games like Apex Legends. Nevertheless, I wanted to check it out again for the Stadia release, as I could quickly dive in without installation or annoying updates thanks to game streaming.
And beating up some bots while maybe taking out a player here and there should be fun. I was particularly looking forward to the intense battles in wildly contested hot zones, where the action kicks off right after landing. So I landed in a big city that promised plenty of loot and action.
This is how the landing went: I haven’t played PUBG in a long time, but I was used to more people jumping out of the plane. Somehow, no one except me was jumping. But who knows, maybe it was the graphics that were scaled down due to Corona on Stadia, and I just couldn’t see the other parachutes well enough.
But actually, there was also no one to be seen down on the ground. Nobody was there. The ghost town was indeed frighteningly empty. Therefore, I could equip myself undisturbed. The carefully trained battle royale reflexes had me cautiously sneaking around at first, but at some point, I realized, “There’s really no one here!”
It took several minutes – during which, by the way, no one died, the player counter was still at 100 – until I thought I heard footsteps. So there was someone after all! I went on the prowl, but nobody was to be seen anywhere. A real player would have ambushed me long ago, but here, there was no one.
I was about to go back to looting when I suddenly heard gunshots. I immediately took cover. But again, nothing happened. Whoever was shooting, must have been done wasting ammunition.
My first kill that wasn’t fun: Strangely enough, this happened regularly. Someone kept shooting at me, and I never knew who it was. A real player would have chased me down long ago, but some dumb bot seemed to be stuck in one spot and only shot when he randomly saw me.
After I finally figured out where the cowardly bot was hiding, I easily bypassed him and shot him down. The bot was just too stupid for everything and couldn’t give me a run for my money.
From then on, more and more bots suddenly appeared. According to reports on reddit, they spawn gradually and are not even present from the beginning. The new bots primarily distinguished themselves by wild shooting and pointless camping. When they weren’t doing that, they ran around like startled chickens and got shot down.
That’s why the bots are a plague: It wasn’t exciting. Quite the opposite. It mocked every memory I once had of PUBG. The game was my first battle royale game, and my first rounds were marked by great adrenaline release. At any moment, an opponent could be lurking somewhere. Were those footsteps I just heard? Oh my god, an enemy is coming, and I only have a frying pan!
With the bots, however, all those terribly beautiful moments of suspense are for nothing. Because even if I play like a complete idiot, I will still defeat the bots; they are that dumb. Winning against these wooden dummies is really no achievement, and even a chicken dinner – once an absolute highlight for me – turns into a bland, boring chicken meat substitute.
Victories against this bot cucumber group are really worthless, and you feel more ashamed than happy. And waiting deep into the endgame only to finally find a real player is, in my opinion, also a waste of time.
Community also angry about bots
What do other players say? “Yes, dear Jürgen, just because you find it so dumb doesn’t mean everyone has to feel the same,” you might ask here. Good point. But if you take a look at platforms like reddit, there is a growing number of angry complaints about the bots.
- CatFlapFever on reddit: “I used to load into a match in less than 5 seconds with 99 real players. Now it takes about 5 minutes to get into a game with 88 bots. Thanks again!
- Whatabouttaco on reddit: “Tonight was terrible; every kill felt cheap and questionable. I won a game, and I didn’t care at all. When there were still 4 people left, there was no thrill. I was sitting comfortably on the hill, shooting without any fear of being killed.”
- Tmc200922 on reddit: “We sat on a rock in duos for 15 minutes while bots rushed us and committed suicide. 30 real players against 70 bots. We never had to reposition because it wasn’t necessary. Absolutely zero fun, zero excitement. This nullifies the difference between PUBG and other games.”
It seems that the developers have not done the community any favors with the bot idea. Because when a victory becomes meaningless due to the lack of challenge and the entire game turns into a tedious search for bots, the fun of the game suffers, leading players to turn to competitors like Fortnite, Apex, or CoD: Warzone.
Bots in battle royale seemed to work better with the competition, especially Fortnite. They may also be quite dumb there, but they only appear in large numbers in matches that are ranked low by matchmaking. Good players rarely encounter them. In addition, there are henchmen bots that even caused trouble for Ninja.
