Throughout the years, various iterations of Counter-Strike allowed players to have a more relaxed experienced by playing with bots instead of real players. Plus, playing with bots could be beneficial for aim training without having to sacrifice your CS rank and your pride. Plus, we’ve all hopped on a TeamSpeak to hang out with our friends while terrorizing bots at least a few times. However, with the release of CS2, there are some key features missing, including the toggle that we had in CS:GO. The implementation of bot difficulty selection is yet to arrive to CS2. The sad part is that CS: Source had some of the toughest bots, but now they feel a bit lackluster, especially if you don’t change bot difficulty prior to launching the game. We’ve provided all the information needed to know how to tweak bot difficulty in CS2 below.
What Bot Difficulty Options Are There in CS2?
There are six difficulty options in CS2, and they are represented by the numbers from 0 to 6:
bot_difficulty 0. These bots are completely harmless, they’ll sing you a John Lennon song and won’t even dare to shoot you. I guess there’s a use case for these as well, especially for target practice.
bot_difficulty 1. At this level, bots are barely harmful, they won’t react too fast, and you’ll have plenty of time to kill them in the most sophisticated way possible while doing 360 noscopes and all kinds of acrobatics.
bot_difficulty 2. This is where bots acquire some basic movement and tactics knowledge, but still won’t do a lot of damage unless you let them do it. Pretty tame experience, but not as boring as the previous two.
bot_difficulty 3. At level 3, expect bots to have some decent ‘nades and a few headshots in your way. Not exactly challenging, but not a walk in the park either.
bot_difficulty 4. At this point, bots will have a good command of grenades, they’ll use covers, and you’ll be surprised by how quick their reaction time is. Don’t sleep!
bot_difficulty 5. These are the hardest bots available at this point. They’ll one tap you with no hesitation with the same AWP you had dropped a round before and have your pride shattered if you’re not prepared for this kind of pain.
On a serious note, many players have reported that bots feel a bit sluggish compared to CS:GO, and especially compared to CS:Source, where bots felt the most challenging in the series. However, it also boils down to CS2 now assigning the second-easiest difficulty as default.
How To Change Bot Difficulty in CS2?
There are two ways of changing bot difficulty, and both methods are quite easy to pull off. One can be done prior to or while playing the game, and the second one is activated once you’re on a server. Here’s how you change the bot difficulty:
How to Adjust Bot Difficulty Before Starting the CS2 Match?
Launch the game, and make sure that your console is set to active (Settings > Enable Developer Console > YES)
Open the console (~) and enter bot_difficulty 4 (four is just an example, you can set it from 0 to 5)
Press Play, then Practice, choose a map to your liking and annihilate those bots!
If the command didn’t work, try to open console, press ↑ (arrow up) on your keyboard and press enter to repeat the previous command.
How to Change CS:GO/CS2 Bot Difficulty Via Console Commands
If the previous method didn’t seem to alter the bots’ behavior, here’s what you need to do:
Midgame, open console and enter bot_kick to get rid of those weak bots
Reopen console and enter bot_add expert and then press Enter
Repeat the previous step as many times as you want
You can add bots for specific teams by entering bot_add ct expert or bot_add t expert
You’re all set!
By the way, instead of using the numbers from 0 to 5, in this method you enter “easy, normal, hard or expert” after the bot_add command, depending on your needs. One more important thing, if you’re playing competitive practice, if you might want to add more bots in your opposing team, then you should enter the “mp_autoteambalance false” and “mp_limitteams 0”commands so that the game allows you to create disproportionate opposing team and won’t autobalance upon next round.
Why CS:GO/CS2 Bot Difficulty Command Is Not Working?
If the bot_difficulty command doesn’t work, simply use the second method we’ve covered in this article. Midgame, open console and kick all the bots (bot_kick), then use the bot_add expert (or easy, normal, hard) command and you’re set.
How To Increase Bot Difficulty In CS2?
Open the console, then enter “bot_difficulty x” (where x stands for a number from 0 to 5) and you’re good to go!
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