Survivor bots improvements, suggestions, and observations
I was really excited and happy with the introduction of survivor bots, and how capable they are despite their weaknesses. However, some of those weaknesses could fairly easily improve bot proficiency and allow for them to be a more faithful recreation of a competent player
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Corner crouching: They absolutely love to run half way around a loop and crouch in what i presume is an attempt at hiding. The main weakness here is that this completely loses them distance and will almost always result in a hit. I think this behavior should be replaced with them continuing to run the loop.
Z and C walls: Even though they seem less inclined to run to these tiles since the PTB, they will still try and loop on these tiles, when a much more efficient option would be to continue to make distance from the killer. These tiles should be an absolute last resort if the killer is already right on top of them.
Drop the Pallets earlier / Predropping: Bots can actually do pretty well running a standard loop, they often run fairly tight lines and can be efficient in their movement. Unfortunately they seem to have the mentality of "Pallets must stun the killer" and they end up almost never using pallets for distance. They often end up getting hit on the other side of pallets, as they wait too long to attempt a stun at risk of not getting it. Long text short: they should drop pallets earlier, even when it might seem wasteful
Flashlight usage: In the rare case they loot a flashlight from a chest, it almost always results in them walking slowly and trying to blind the killer for no reason. This causes them to often take multiple hits in short succession resulting in a down. While I understand the massive difficulty in getting them to time and position blinds properly. I'd either disable their flashlight usage altogether, or only allow it right after a pallet stun.
Locker usage: Bots love to slow enter and exit lockers when the killer is nearby, they often do this not only in extremely obvious places, but sometimes in plain view of the killer. This feels awful to play against as they basically give up both health states immediately. I would heavily reduce how often they use lockers
Cowardice in game progression: Bots will sit on a generator working away just fine against stealth killers, and often get lots of gen progress in the early game. Unfortunately they seem to run and hide as soon as they are in the terror radius, often meaning they leave for no reason when the killer is simply passing through. On vertical maps like midwich or the game, they almost never do anything as they're perpetually in the terror radius.
Cowardice in high priority situations: The same issue as above happens when in other time sensitive situations, a common one is someone will be on hook, about to hit the next stage / be sacrificed, they'll get close for the save, and as soon as the terror radius gets anywhere near they abandon the save and run. In this situation i think they should commit to the save and perhaps take the trade for time. Another high priority situation is opening the exit gates; I had a match where I killed 3/4 survivors and closed hatch, and the last survivor got to a gate switch. They had the gate at ~97%, easily able to escape. But as soon as I got within vision of them they abandoned opening the gate in favor of running. Surely if they're that close to finishing an action like that, they could realise that i'm 20+ metres away and continue.
End-game: When 3/4 survivors are dead, the last bot often continues doing generators instead of searching for hatch.
Broken navigation: On certain maps the bots will get stuck on objects. Maps i've noticed so far include Temple of purgation, Mothers dwelling, Crotus prenn, Haddonfield, Pale rose, Grim pantry, various badham preschool maps
Broken killer interactions: Bots often fail to wake themselves with Freddy's alarm clocks. They will run up to the clock and just stand there looking at it. They will remain there until pushed away by the killer. This will result in afk crows if undisturbed. They have a similar but less constant issue with Pig's boxes, which will often result in death.
Poor window pathing: Bots almost never manage to fast vault, presumably because they often run one continuous loop instead of ever chaining loops of vaulting into a loop from the open. This results in them taking lots of hits that could otherwise be avoided with a bit more advanced movement.
Trapper: Bots seem completely unaware of traps, and will always walk into a trap in their path, even extremely obvious or visible traps.
Legion / Other deep wound causes: In some situations they seem to prioritise incorrectly and ignore the deep wound. The most common instance is during a chase they'll do the hiding behind a corner thing, and slowly bleed out as to not mend during a chase. They'll occasionally climb into lockers while deep wound is active, and bleed out as they cannot mend in a locker.
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This is what i've noticed all in a few days of playing some occasional matches against 3 bots and 1 human survivor. I don't know what the end-goal of survivors is for the dev team. I hope the bots go the direction of classic games where bots can be worthy opponents to practice high level play against, and they don't just end up as baby's first target practice.
Keep up the good work devs, I look forward to what you do with the bots in the future!