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Some of my ideas for the next AI/bot update.

Drugoth··2 votes·228 views

I'm going to preface this post by saying that I am in no way, shape or form a programmer/scripter. I am not claiming that any of these ideas will be easy to implement.

I have read a few posts now talking about practicing jungling in co-op vs AI and most of the issues being brought up are about there being a 1v2 for the top laner if someone on your team wants to practice jungling. This got me thinking about Riot's AI and ways that the bots could be improved to give an overall better user experience and better practical experience.

Without further ado, my ideas:

  • First things first, the easy stuff. Let's equip bots with a full runepage and masteries. This will accomplish 2 things; 1. fighting bots will more accurately reflect fighting players stat-wise for better practical experience and 2. Bots will be better equipped to handle the jungle. Edit: I have been notified that the bots are apparently on equal footing with us now base stat-wise, thanks to: RAMP Schmidtty

  • Laning bots could help leash for the jungler like players already do, for a more healthy first clear.

  • Bots fighting for vision and contesting objectives. Now I won't beat around the bush, this will probably be one of the hardest changes to implement, I'm uncertain of the challenges this places on the scripting team, but it must be quite the barrier or something like this would already be implemented. Maybe implementing some sort of priority queue in their coding? For example, a support bot's priorities could be: Defend lane partner from immediate threats > Keep obvious entrances from the jungle to the lane warded > only CS when the ADC bot isn't in range to last hit

  • Bots coordinating with each other and ganking. Let's be real, bot AI isn't very intelligent, most bots will just do 1 of 2 things, 1. Run straight at you and blow their entire load, or 2. Run away. This obviously makes abusing their AI very easy and for veterans to the game, it becomes easy to predict how a bot will react and abuse it. Some things bots could do better: Coordinate their CC with each other (chain CC). Roaming, for instance, if a player leaves lane or gets pushed out of lane by a bot, that bot could push up to the turret and roam for a possible gank on another lane, pushing their advantage like real players.

Like I previously stated, I have no clue how hard all of this would be to implement.

I hope some of this is useful to Riot, although I doubt I've voiced any ideas that haven't already been thought of. What do you guys think? Do you have any other ideas to add to the intricacy of bots and improve our co-op vs AI experience?

4 Comments

SchmidttyGames2 votes

Intermediate Bots already have full Mastery Pages, and likely rune setups as well, as their stats at Level 1 are usually comparable.

It would be exceedingly hard to build an AI to effectively work the jungle. Exceedingly. Primarily due to the nature of the jungle and the standard "if/then" composition of most AI programs. If they ever did make a bot that could legit jungle on any real level, it would be an amazing achievement in itself due to the raw number of variables the jungle presents.

All they really need to do right now, as far as appeasing players that want a harder bots challenge, is to put out a Doom Bots mode minus the Doom Bots cheese. The AI the Doombots used was exceptionally vicious and would be a fine challenge to many players without the BS ability buffs they also had.

Drugoth1 votes

Oh, I didn't realize bots were using rune pages now, since I don't play against them that often personally. I had heard they had keystones masteries earlier but was unsure if they were running on full mastery trees. Thanks for updating me on that.

I see what you mean about the variables in the jungle. I still think warding and objective contention isn't too far out of Riot's scope. The doom bots were doing something like teleporting all at once to the dragon at a pre-determined time if I remember correctly. Would it be all that hard to add scripts that would make them start warding neutral objectives past a certain point in the game when those objectives would likely start to get focused on?

SchmidttyGames1 votes

If they would track through the jungle from time to time, that would be great. Even dropping misc. wards to give them more information would help the bots "do better" overall. But as it stands now, only the Doom Bots ever really did that unless it was a "response rotation". (I.E. - Your team is beating down Inner Top Tower - Bots will rotate to stop you).

Some bot setups still have old masteries on them. They show up as blue boxes on the loading screen, and I wonder if they still "work" for the bots. :o

For the logic code, they could add little bits like:

If "Dragon" is alive at 14:30, then all bots rotate to dragon. Of course, players would see this and respond. It would be a nice "teaching" method, as it would force players to respond to what they are doing for a change.

Drugoth1 votes

I like your idea for the dragon rotation. It sounds rather simple and easy to implement.

It's true that the regular intermediate bots don't respond quickly enough to sudden pressure in a single lane.

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