An Open Letter to BHVR regarding disconnection bots.

While I have no illusion that this post will actually change anything, I want to express concern over the upcoming feature to add survivor AI/bots as replacement for disconnected players. While I see there are some very minor benefits to such a system, the negatives in my opinion far outweigh the potential gains.

The positives that I can see are that killers can gain perk value from disconnected survivors (for example, blood warden will activate even if the survivor disconnects when downed), and survivors can sometimes(*) have an extra body for the killer to juggle after a player disconnects. The killer part can be much more simply accomplished by leaving the disconnected survivor's avatar as a motionless body in the world for a short time (30-60 seconds) and then have the entity dispose of the survivor.

The biggest problem is this: This is a band-aid fix that solves literally none of the reasons why players disconnect. And while, sure, there are a variety of reasons why people might give up on a game, and it's unrealistic to deal with all of them, this solution deals with none of them, and is rife for future problems and abuse.

The issues that this solution presents are plentiful:

• This system will lead to more disconnects. I'm personally not one to disconnect because I want to be a good teammate (among other reasons). I don't want to play a PvP game with AI teammates, that's not what DbD has ever been. But for people who don't want to play a match out for any reason, the core game now offers a win-win solution to the problem: that player can leave the game at the cost of only a disconnect penalty, and the survivor team isn't down a member and can play the game out. I don't feel like disconnecting should ever feel like a win-win scenario. (This isn't encouraging, or condoning disconnecting.... this is an observation of human behavior with this system in place).
• This system is prime for abuse and griefing. Apparently if all 4 survivors disconnect, the killer is trapped in a lobby with 4 bots unless they, too, leave the match. This was my first thought of how the system could be flawed, and apparently this is how it functioned on the PTB (though I am unable to find video that shows this happening). It'll also be possible for killers to just "slug for the 4k" and camp the last survivor on the ground while the bot does gens or is given hatch. It gets even worse if and when the bots have pathing issues or get stuck, which can lead to soft locking the match (nemesis zombies are notorious for this). Which leads to the next issue...
• Bots are prone to bugs, getting stuck, or getting into infinite logic loops. If there is ever a map geometry issue, it can and will be exploited. There are numerous situations, including hatch or hostage scenarios, where having a stuck bot teammate can unintentionally drag out the match for longer than necessary. In normal matches, if your teammate is bad, or makes a mistake it can turn a match, but you likely won't ever see that player again in your games. If the AI bot is bad, or buggy, or easily abused, you will potentially see them in every game you ever play. You can't avoid them, block them, or even lobby dodge them. The only way to guarantee you won't be playing with a bot teammate is to not play DbD at all.
• Bot cannot/do not coordinate or strategize. The bots will simply try to avoid the terror radius and try their best to be helpful. But with no other changes, this will severely strengthen the 3-gen style of gameplay, since the bots will just do the gens that aren't being camped by the killer. Essentially, the bots will guarantee the 3-gen is successful and hand the killer map control. With BHVR having stated that "the strategy of camping a 3-gen from the start of the game is not being intended gameplay," I'm unbelievably disappointed that this solution will make that play style stronger. This doesn't even include other situations where the barest minimum of coordination can make a difference.
• Bot capabilities are also possibly problematic. If the bots are "bad" at the game, then there's little benefit to the survivor team to have an extra warm body. If the bots are "good" at the game, then it opens up a different kind of griefing where survivors teams could "bully" the solo out of the game to "get a better bot teammate instead."
• Players who want to "spite" the team can still avoid the DC penalty, avoid the bot entirely, and just give up or afk. A sacrificed survivor isn't replaced, so having this solution in place becomes meaningless. (Again, I'm not condoning this behavior, but this is something players already do, and will continue to do).

While it's subjectively my opinion, game balance is seemingly the biggest contributor to early disconnects. Every game currently feels like a one-sided match in one direction or the other. Killers often feel like the game is over if they obtain their first hook and pressure by the time 3 gens are done, and survivors are very often tunneled out of the game for next to zero BP and little opportunity to actually play a well-rounded match.

The members of the dev and community teams that post here are often saying that everything BHVR works on takes time and resources, and you can't feasibly work on everything at once with finite manpower. I agree. Though I am sad that something that I consider to be vastly detrimental to the game has taken away from other fixes that the game currently needs, balance included.

I personally think the potential negatives of this system far outweigh the minor positive gains, and I think this system should not go live. I seem to be in the minority of players concerned about the upcoming bot replacement system, but at least I've voiced those concerns at this point.