Hello all, We recently published a new game that's based on teams playing against each other, unfortunately we still don't have many concurrent users so players play with AI most of the time. Our AI looks like a bot not a cute character for business reasons as we wanted to encourage players to invite others to play with them. However, now I'm wondering if we should make our AI looks like a cute character with a cute name until we get many concurrent players? Or maybe add fake players to give our players the pleasure of playing with people? Please help.
I think you'd have to have damn good AI in order to fool players into thinking it was another player, so there is always a risk that you'd get called out on it.
I think in this situation you're better off spending your time doing marketing and promotion for the game in order to reach a larger audience and get more players in general. Adding fake players is not going to go over well, as Dallan said you're at risk of being called out. Updating the AI character could still be a good idea to do in general so it fits into the game a bit better but if you want more users look for ways to grow your player base.