For those who are unaware, a new MM system was implemented for NF2 on April the 20th, 2016, guaranteeing 16v16 matchups with reduced wait times. The pre-patch announcement failed to mention that not all 32 players would be human.

 [EDIT: Upon closer inspection, the bots DO attack enemies to some non-negligible degree. But only if there is vision of the target.]

AI Bots are now being used to inflate the teams, with about 2 or 3 actual humans on each side. Each bot has a creative name, instead of "bot1" or the like, perhaps to trick new players into thinking there are 32 humans (NF2-style Turing Test?).

Main problems:

1. Bots sail straight towards the enemy base, then get stuck in the borders. They do not attempt to capture bases or launch scouts. The AI is clearly incomplete.

2. Bots do minimal damage to each other before getting stuck on opposite ends of the map, forcing human players to clean up with very limited ammunition.

This new update doesn't address the low playerbase or MM imbalance as intended, since the bots do not contribute at all to the battle and tier imbalance among human players remains. An AI Yamato will not help my T2 destroyer win against a human-piloted Iowa if it steams towards the opposite end of the map and sits there for the remainder of the fight. I am appalled that the devs delayed the release of Fleet Battle and Harbor Assault in favor of spending precious manpower on this half-baked bot system.

I am immensely proud of reaching NF2 endgame, playing competitively against the best players of top fleets from all over the Pacific - Koreans and Australians and perhaps even some British people vacationing in China. Just now, I sank 6 ships and dealt 340,000 damage, a new record. Too bad 5/6 of those were bots that were incapable of shooting back - just wiggling back and forth trying to unstuck themselves from the border. To devolve from celebrating victories over my fellow rivals to compstomping unarmed bots - how it fills me with shame and disappointment.

The old MM, however flawed, is surely still preferable to the "single player" monstrosity currently in place. I also believe that an NF1-style MM, where players are able to choose their team and spawn location, and interact with each other while waiting for the battle to start, is the best option for NF2, even at low population.

Please restore the old MM while the AI is corrected; right now it is just pure embarassment to a company like SDE, whom I normally associate with a high standard of excellence and a keen sensitivity to player concerns. Or perhaps try a completely new MM-style. This current one is unacceptably bad.

Sincerely,
Wednesday

P.S. Why, amongst all the hype about 16v16 matches returning, did you neglect to mention that bots would constitute the majority of battles? It would have been obvious upon patch release anyway. And why did you give them deceptive nicknames to pretend they're human?