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Riot, when are you going to code jungle bots?

Arcane Azmadi··7 votes·3,341 views

Seriously, I don't know about everyone else, but pretty much the only reason I play co-op vs AI is to practice my junglers (since optimising path and clear speed, which is practically PvE, is such a big part of jungling it's about the only aspect of real LoL other than last hitting you can seriously practice in bot games). Unfortunately since none of the bots are coded to jungle, instead always going 2-1-2, whoever gets left in solo top gets an unpleasant time of it and I don't get to practice certain other aspects of jungling (invading to steal camps and hunt down the enemy jungler, contesting control of Scuttle Crab and other objectives, and counterganking).

It seriously cannot be THAT hard to program a bot that's capable of jungling, can it? Sure, for a lot of junglers there's a lot of extra knowledg you need just to avoid dying while clearing (unless you're Fiddlesticks or Warwick) but surely you can at least code a few basic tank junglers like Amumu or Sejuani? It would REALLY help improve the realism of bot games.

Of course, then I remember that this game still doesn't even have replays or any kind of protection against games being ruined by DCs even 6 years into its existence and phrases like "it cannot be THAT hard" take on new meaning...

10 Comments

Theorchero8 votes

"It can't be THAT hard to program.."

Obviously coming from someone who has no idea what they are talking about. A jungler's decisions are so diverse that it'd be impossible to program a bot that can remotely compete with a human, they would be just too predictable and essentially useless for your purposes. Co op vs AI is put in the game as a convenience for a new player. It deliberately doesn't have all the bells and whistles so you actually are encouraged to play the game the way it's meant to be played.

Arcane Azmadi1 votes

You're right, I have no idea about coding AI, but truly it CANNOT be THAT hard to code even the most BASIC jungling AI into a bot. Clear camps, move towards a lane and try to gank if the enemy is at least half-way up and the jungler happens to be close enough. That's all it would really need- even if they can only be coded to simply not die to jungle camps it would be sufficient. It wouldn't be a very good representation of a human jungler, but then again it's not like the bots are even very good representations of human laners anyway. And at least this way the enemy jungle is being farmed (so you don't have to fight the temptation to just stroll in there and help yourself whenever you like, which you'd NEVER be able to do freely in a real game) and whichever poor schmuck is stuck in top lane isn't facing a constant 1v2.

Also, arguing that co-op vs AI shouldn't have junglers so you can only learn about jungling by playing a real game against real jungle opponents is the same level of logical failure Riot reached when they argued they shouldn't implement a sandbox mode that would allow people to practice repetitive tasks because they didn't want people to feel like they had to practice on it to be able to play.

Theorchero3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Arcane Azmadi,realm=OCE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E9y5n7RZ,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-12-13T04:50:30.579+0000)

You're right, I have no idea about coding AI, but truly it CANNOT be THAT hard to code even the most BASIC jungling AI into a bot. Clear camps, move towards a lane and try to gank if the enemy is at least half-way up and the jungler happens to be close enough. That's all it would really need- even if they can only be coded to simply not die to jungle camps it would be sufficient. It wouldn't be a very good representation of a human jungler, but then again it's not like the bots are even very good representations of human laners anyway. And at least this way the enemy jungle is being farmed (so you don't have to fight the temptation to just stroll in there and help yourself whenever you like, which you'd NEVER be able to do freely in a real game) and whichever poor schmuck is stuck in top lane isn't facing a constant 1v2.

Also, arguing that co-op vs AI shouldn't have junglers so you can only learn about jungling by playing a real game against real jungle opponents is the same level of logical failure Riot reached when they argued they shouldn't implement a sandbox mode that would allow people to practice repetitive tasks because they didn't want people to feel like they had to practice on it to be able to play.

No. It is "THAT" hard because it's fucking AI.

Imagine playing jungle. Think of literally every thing you decide between which camp to go to which gank to go to if you counter gank to counter jungle and how you approach all of these things and it varies extremely by what champion you are what champion they are and at what point in the game it is and how strong you are.

It's literally not done for a reason. It would require a massive amount of effort put into to make it even SEMI competent. And the intermediate bots are probably at low silver, skill wise.

Arcane Azmadi1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Embrace the Bard,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E9y5n7RZ,comment-id=000000000000,timestamp=2015-12-13T05:25:21.539+0000)

No. It is "THAT" hard because it's fucking AI.

Imagine playing jungle. Think of literally every thing you decide between which camp to go to which gank to go to if you counter gank to counter jungle and how you approach all of these things and it varies extremely by what champion you are what champion they are and at what point in the game it is and how strong you are.

It's literally not done for a reason. It would require a massive amount of effort put into to make it even SEMI competent. And the intermediate bots are probably at low silver, skill wise.

Wait... the intermediate bots are at low silver level...? But we still get junglers in every game in bronze. So if the current bots are ALREADY better than about 1/3 of the players of the game, what's your point...?

You seem to have missed my point; what you describe are all the things you have to take into account to be able to jungle well. That's not what I'm asking Riot for, nor is it what I expect of them. What I want is a simple dumb bot that can go around clearing camps and occasionally attacking any lane that's too far pushed up (as every single lane always is in bot games because the players know there's absolutely NO gank threat) just to simulate the situation of playing against a jungler. Not a GOOD jungler, just A jungler. Because that's what co-op vs AI is supposed to be; a simulation of playing against a not-very-good team. And since not even the lowest noobtastic recesses of bronze feature teams without junglers any more, it's a flawed simulation which can be improved simply by coding a small number of simple AIs (say Warwick, Fiddlesticks, Amumu and Udyr just for starters) to be able to clear the jungle without dying to the camps.

Q.E.D.

Morcleon1 votes

Computers have a vastly different intelligence than humans. What you think is easy (determining that someone is pushed up in lane) is incredibly difficult to teach an AI. For example, telling a computer to do something like determine when to gank would be of similar difficulty to tell you to calculate the exact amount of damage every player can do to every other player every few seconds.

While coding a jungle clear is significantly easier because monsters already run off of an AI, trying to code against human players doesn't work very well. Also, intermediate bots are not low silver at all.

Theorchero1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Arcane Azmadi,realm=OCE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=E9y5n7RZ,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2015-12-13T09:37:25.463+0000)

Wait... the intermediate bots are at low silver level...? But we still get junglers in every game in bronze. So if the current bots are ALREADY better than about 1/3 of the players of the game, what's your point...?

You seem to have missed my point; what you describe are all the things you have to take into account to be able to jungle well. That's not what I'm asking Riot for, nor is it what I expect of them. What I want is a simple dumb bot that can go around clearing camps and occasionally attacking any lane that's too far pushed up (as every single lane always is in bot games because the players know there's absolutely NO gank threat) just to simulate the situation of playing against a jungler. Not a GOOD jungler, just A jungler. Because that's what co-op vs AI is supposed to be; a simulation of playing against a not-very-good team. And since not even the lowest noobtastic recesses of bronze feature teams without junglers any more, it's a flawed simulation which can be improved simply by coding a small number of simple AIs (say Warwick, Fiddlesticks, Amumu and Udyr just for starters) to be able to clear the jungle without dying to the camps.

Q.E.D.

Because it's much much easier by comparison to program lane opponents. All they really had to do was program range awareness and skillshots, conbine that with basic grouping and cheat farming mechanisms by giving them Gp/5. That makes them about silver level. The amount of effort it would take to program a jungler AI just would not be worth it. And programming a really really bad jungler into intermediate bots probably wouldn't be a great idea because of the difficulty difference. Basically it'd be the same except "Oh look a free kill at 7 minutes."

Don't get me wrong, I think it'd be cool. It's just not going to happen.

PepsiSolari1 votes

{quoted}

A jungler's decisions are so diverse that it'd be impossible to program a bot that can remotely compete with a human, they would be just too predictable and essentially useless for your purposes.

LOL, actually current lane bots are predictable and useless. So it doesn't hurt to add another predicable and useless bot to junlgle :P

Jungle Lux God1 votes

It actually is that hard to program bots to jungle.

Look at what your job is as a jungler. Your jobs are to farm the jungle, gank lanes, and contest objectives.

Making a bot that farms the jungle for the entirety of the early game would probably be easy because you literally create the bot to go on a set path from camp to camp, taking each as he goes along, then recalling when he gets too low on health or mana or when there aren't any camps anymore. Then there would be additional clauses if he gets invaded by the enemy jungler and when a camp isn't up yet. That said, a jungler that powerfarms the jungle really isn't that useful, and needs to gank and contest objectives sometime.

That's where the bot starts to fall apart. The jungler needs to be able to assess whether or not he can gank a lane, and there are too many variables for it that the bot just stops doing anything. I'm not sure if you have seen the bots that invaded Hearthstone a while back, but for many of those bots they just took too long with their turns when their opponent provided too many threats for them to handle that they just timed out, and jungle bots in League of Legends would basically do the same thing.

The reason that lane bots work is because the only real need is to gain the farm they need for later on in the game, which you can actually make a really simple algorithm for relatively easily.

BastionKross1 votes

If you feel that bad leaving someone to 1v2 top in bot games, practice your jungling in a custom game where it's just you and the jungle. This is how high elo junglers work on their clear without having to play a whole game.

SolusInCadere1 votes

It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to program. Also, try intermediate bot games. The people there are a lot better eqquiped to handle a 1v2 lane.

I for one love going solo top against two bots, but only as Yasuo, as I can pick up that lvl 3 double kill and snowball the whole game

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