Two weeks have passed since Electronic Arts and DICE announced bots in the Battlefield 6 Portal mode, with “Verified Experiences” being the latest feature to bring about dissatisfaction in players worldwide. These core modes of play are extremely stoked by the re-introduction of such exciting components as AI combatants but came with strict limits regarding progression and server population, which is proving controversial among a much more dedicated player base.
The most striking change relates to server population and experience gain. DICE announced that all game modes will now be able to contain a maximum of twelve bots, an amount too few to allow players to fill an entire server for casual play or practice. Furthermore, for a match to be initiated, there has to be a minimum of eight human players involved in the bot backfill. This requirement makes it very difficult to start matches if fewer players are available in specific geographical regions. Most importantly, the studio confirmed that while player XP will still be at 100%, experience from playing with bots has been massively reduced. This action deals with the problem that confronted the developers before of maintaining player participation in such “bot farms” for levelling up their accounts and gears-the reason why DICE moved quickly to eliminate bots entirely.
First community reactions to the revised system are hugely negative. Publicly, many gamers said the move was “completely out of touch regarding” their expectancy from within Portal mode, especially for its initial promises to deliver full customization and progression. Feedback from players usually states that the reduced threshold of bots really goes against the purpose of the Portal experience, forcing them to wait for a big number of other players before they can play a match. There is clear demand among a segment of this audience for the ability to earn all possible experience points regardless if they are playing against other humans or bots.
Producer David Sirland provided clarification regarding his comments on the bots constantly flooding official multiplayer servers. According to him, the AI combatants serve only as temporary relief for players while they wait for queue time and quick-starting for active players in the less populated regions in core playlists. He further explained that they serve as placeholders until human players join the session. However, for the Portal community, the current limits on Verified Portal Servers suggest that the studio is struggling to balance demand for player freedom against prevention of system exploits.
