The bots suck for veterans, who knows what we're doing. If you bring in a player who hasnt played these types of games before, or games with a much simplified combat system, the bots are fine. I definitly think the AI could use a massive upgrade though.But the bots suck? How are players going to learn how to fight properly against other players if they don't fight them at all?
Which game mode (that currently exists) in your mind, and others if they are reading is best for a new player playing MP then?
The point I'm trying to make is if people want to be able to learn how to fight other players, Siege is probably the most forgiving game mode that is available right now for newer players.
If you disagree and indeed think bots are better to practice with then you're in luck, SP has a training ground that you can practice with bots.
Check at the Twitch streamers who play singleplayer. Alot of SP veterans get their asses kicked in arena and tournaments, and would be absolutely crushed even on a public TDM server.
What I would do to help new players ease into the game is improve the tutorial, create an option in multiplayer where 1-4 or so players can go in, spawn bots, using multiplayer classes and factions and a menu to change the difficulty of bots as they feel theyre getting the hang of it.
Once the players get a good feel of manual blocking, there should be a new player friendly server, probably TDM where they can fight other players of equal skill, and then get into MMR based Skirmish and fight on a more competitive mode, should they wish to do that.
Obviously the playerbase isnt big enough for this, but it was the first days and weeks of early access release. This should have been put in place already then if they actually wanted to keep their playerbase happy, instead of people queueing against competitive players who literally can play with our eyes closed and win. I played with a friend and I think we had a 90 game winstreak at some point. We didnt hunt the new players, we simply knew what we were doing, and they didnt.
I dont have alot of experience in singleplayer, but from what I felt when I played it, the combat parameters are very different, probably because of the proficiencies. I took a look at multiplayer proficiencies and it looks like the way they enforce the proficiencies might even be different, so it wont be a good way to familiarize the players with multiplayer. Not to mention the weapons will be different.
Basically, the point I'm making is the game is making it impossible for new players to start playing the game, because they're just gonna get crushed and die on repeat for the first 50 hours, maybe sometimes getting a kill. The absolute massive majority of people in the world wont bother learning a game if theyre just gonna get smashed.
And I didnt even mention the toxicity element....