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Co-op vs AI matches are being overwhelmed with scripted accounts

Mystic Blue Fox·12/5/2019, 11:07:45 AM·36 votes·13,564 views

Hello,

I apologize in advance if this is not the appropriate place to discuss. I have been a frequent user of Co-op vs AI for quite a long time and as of late sightings of scripted accounts playing are becoming a significant issue. It is greatly detrimental for not only new players to League of Legends, but any and all players who wish to test or train themselves.

I have not had such a high occurrence in matches this much at all ever and I make effort to ensure that each individual account is a scripted account as well. There are general indications to notice such as intentional feeding, but there is only one report category that is close and that is "Cheating" for third party program use. It is very frustrating to experience this, I play this game mode for a variety of reasons and I cannot enjoy the game if it is entirely AI. The few other players that I encounter when this happens are also upset by this and I encourage them to report these accounts.

I would suggest to observe for the most common occurrence I see, I will detail this below. Usually all these are visible in the event a scripted account is present. (Please note that there is potential for a player to match these attributes and not be a scripted player, it is important to watch their actions and look for AI like patterns in their movement)

  • The summoner spell summoner 6 is bound to the "D" key and summoner 7 spell on the "F" key
  • The summoner icons are Master Yi or Miss Fortune
  • The accounts are very often under level 30
  • Keystones that are extremely out of place
  • Items that are extremely out of place and clearly not experimental
  • Excessive deaths due to intentional movement into towers and enemy champions

There are more instances that indicate a scripted player beyond what I have listed and scripted players will go beyond what one would expect with actions such as designating honor to another player and building optimal itemization.

Below is a match where there were four other scripted AI, creating a game entirely of AI.

https://imgur.com/a/CxSMeVY

It is imperative to take time to notice and report these accounts, as for Riot Games I hope that this has been noticed and that efforts are being made to improve the stability of Co-op vs AI. Thank you for reading.

44 Comments

Silly Neeko12/5/2019, 11:40:28 AM6 votes

By the way, to help out with identification of them.... they are generally starting boots and a health potion. Finishing boots often first.

They use the preset rune pages, which is normal for anyone under level 10, but a little less normal for those over level 10 (especially over level 20).

They will often say nothing at all, and then proceed to walk and wander between lanes. Usually whoever is fed on the team will get the bot visit first.

AroushTheKween12/5/2019, 1:33:22 PM4 votes

Omg this is a big issue nowadays! At first I thought they were new players but even I wasn’t so bad as so intentionally run into the enemy turrets.

I use this to practise new champions/play my mains after a losing streak to feel better about myself :P

It’s always been my fear to lose a match against bots since that would be so embarrassing and I couldn’t deal with it! I know people who have but thank the lord it’s not been me.

Worst part is that I’m a Support main who plays enchanter supports and no amounts of building AP will help turn the tide as much as other role champions could.

But what’s worse is that for the first time in the past 9 months of playing this game, I had bots all day in my lobby for Blind Pick which is surprising.

Having bots there is worse than co - op VS AI if you ask me because bots really do influence the course of the game and how many times can you dodge!

Hope Riot does something :’-(

XJ9999999999999912/5/2019, 3:40:44 PM4 votes

i report everyone with "bot".

pretty sad. i just wish riot just made 1 account allowed, no smurfs allowed. smurfing ruins the game.

dota 2 realized this and banned smurfing. same with fortnite.

player experience and game integrity comes first. Clearly not for Riot though.

Chinese Rakan12/5/2019, 5:42:38 PM3 votes

This is because they used to put the bots in tree line and now that TT is gone there isn’t anywhere else to go

korppi tuoni12/5/2019, 1:13:32 PM3 votes

I've noticed this too. I've been teaching my 8 year-old how to play and last week we had a game with 3 botted accounts and us in it and how am I supposed to actually teach him when the game is 2v5? He's brand new and still struggling with the controls, how am I supposed to coach him when I'm playing river Neeko. When I finally got the map to the point where I could start fights with him I was 30/1 and all I had to do was look at the enemies and they'd die. So just last night he tells me that he can't wait until he can play Neeko and one-shot people, it usually doesn't work like that kid.

I can only imagine what an actual brand new player is going through when they end up in games where they're the only actual person playing. Can you imagine continuing to play a game when you've lost your first couple "easy" co-op vs bots games because your team mates aren't interacting with you and are just running around willy-nilly randomly running under turrets.

If this game is gonna continue to grow, these botted accounts need to go, and they need to go quickly.

Speeedy12/5/2019, 3:18:34 PM3 votes

just to give another games experience with bots and how it ruined the game. Diablo 2 was great at its prime and about 4-5 years after it was released and ladder seasons didnt really exist anymore botters took over the game and crashed the in game economy in less than a week. Two of the most popular items for sorc and necro were Stone of Jordan Rings(SOJ) and Shako helmet. The SOJ was not super rare as it was the basis for the currency. Once the bots got going you could get SOJ for free. Then because it was free money every other item lost its value in the following week. You could get any item in the game by just making a game saying 'need XXXXXX for SOJs' and you would get the item in less than 3 min. I remember that after the bots came over and would do baal, diablo, necro, meph, and andy runs in matter of 7 min or less on hell difficulty. They had some sort of auto pickup where it would get the item ever before you could. It just ruins the players experience when you do not get to play the game.

Then now in league what is happening I have been seeing bought bot accounts crop up in my plat ranked games. I had high silver accounts playing in plat ranked games and you can instantly tell these people are smurfs. You can see how the bots tanked the MMR but soon as they do their placement they have insane mechanics. The lee I played with yesterday would land a Q start to take it in then realize it wasn't good and im guessing ward hop the opposite direction. I have only seen that done in youtube and never at my elo. It is giving players easy access to accounts to ruin other peoples games. This is a practice that needs to be stopped immediately. I'm perfectly fine if you take a new account and level it up yourself as I did that to test and at the time I placed 1 rank below where my main account was at the time(main gold 5, test acct silver 1). I have come across 3 accounts in the last week that were high silver, clearly smurfs and/or trolls, just to mess around.

Ser Nightmarre12/5/2019, 11:11:15 AM3 votes

these are mostly just smurf maid ac%%%%s to get them to lvl 30 it isnt really a big deal but some new players are as bad as that so there is no point in baning those acc's

Magical Memories12/5/2019, 11:51:34 AM2 votes

Pardon me, but I thought I might add you in case you wanted to play with someone whos not a bot. No worries if you don't.

mailbox head12/5/2019, 6:55:15 PM2 votes

Blocking scripters and smurfs is nowhere near "impossible".

When you play, Riot gets your public IP address, which can easily go into a database of {public ip address,account name,login date, logout date}. At that point they would have a map of all of the accounts that play from any given ip address. IP addresses come from certain subnets provided by the ISP; Riot can obtain these subnet ranges in a couple of ways (including a simple traceroute from the client to riot upon login) and keep them in another table on their DB. Internet cafes can be identified for exclusion.

If 100% of pre-30 games are from x subnet, and 100% of games 5-50 of post-30 play are from y subnet, and account had more than [threshold] reports pre-30, it's a bought account. BAN IMMEDIATELY. If the owner of the account wants to appeal they need to explain how they legitimately moved across country coincidental with reaching level 30 and suddenly got skillful at the game they were atrocious at 5 games ago. Let them deal with player support to get the account unbanned.

Sure there might be an edge case or two where this is legit, but if every bought account has to go through player support and come up with a fresh excuse, that's certainly a strong deterrent. It's worth keeping the new player experience at some level of WORKING. No new players means the game dies.

Yin Yang Taoist12/5/2019, 1:16:27 PM2 votes

{quoted}

what measures CAN they take?

I really don't want to do the thinking for them. Honestly, I actually did post something on the measures that they could take in one of the zillion AI games are rampant with bots on player side threads. But I'm a little lazy to salvage it and re-post. I'd also be embarrassed if my ideas were not quite upto par. If you're asking me, there are options available. For example, going to the root of the problem and fixing it. Supply & Demand. Remove the demand and the supply will wane down on its own. Offering level 30 accounts at a moderately high price. However, put some restrictions on a bought level 30 account and give some advantages to one that was leveled from 1-30.

Stricter punishments which are applicable to the main accounts (if they exist) for the people who buy these botted accounts. Even if you don't punish their main accounts, you can throw in a red text visible to everyone which says what they were punished for on a different account. A lot of these bought accounts (I noticed) in Ranked are people buying them for themselves and then higher elo friends to help boost them out of their divisions. Or smurfs doing ranked on bot leveled accounts. If you punish their main accounts as well, make an example out of it. People will automatically be hesitant to buy these unless they have no main accounts.

In which case, you're left with mostly Toxic players who lost their mains, still want to play league but have no time to level up accounts. If they have enough money to fork out on a level 30 account sold by Riot for rankeds, let them. The advantage of this is that these toxic players will not mess up with the newbies who recently started out. And Riot can supervise them better. Punishments for these should be an immediate perma. ban for a single infarction.

If you're wondering like me, I'm really interested in what they do compared to what I proposed.

Arammus12/5/2019, 11:15:33 AM2 votes

nameshame isnt allowed on the boards.

also yes riot removed TT now they have to go to SR. get used to it. sorry to tell you but this will be standard from now on.

Finders Keepers12/6/2019, 5:35:30 AM1 votes

Worst part is.. they don't even honor so your team doesn't get that small tick.

Padoµch12/6/2019, 12:27:01 PM1 votes

As @Timethief49 said, Riot Games bans them in waves, but the issue is there "they create new ones".

I would actually go and say, that the means of banning them in waves is so that even more accounts are created so Riot Games can show there are still a lot of new players "playing" consistently their game. Just to show the reports every 3 months.

Timethief4912/5/2019, 11:29:59 AM1 votes

Riot bans them in waves, but they just keep creating new ones.

Need Gold 4 Tent12/5/2019, 1:15:00 PM1 votes
  • Keystones that are extremely out of place
  • Items that are extremely out of place and clearly not experimental

Please don't ban me for playing AD jungle Vel Koz, it's the only mode I can have fun with it lol

Ztoka12/5/2019, 4:48:19 PM1 votes

I just report them all when I see them. Often times add a note also. All ya can do really.

Immortal SOUŁ12/5/2019, 6:04:01 PM1 votes

I dong understand how bots being in ur team ruins the game for u , you'rr playin against bot with the IQ of a table , do u wanna rely on ur random mates to beat them ? Also , leveling up an account to lvl 30 is r%%%%%edly hard I stopped completly even tho I hate the MMR on this account

8640012/5/2019, 8:01:04 PM1 votes

Turn exp off in co-op and act on reports for once when they join actual games.

Śhunpo12/5/2019, 11:49:02 PM1 votes

It's actually terrifying just how good some of the scripts are too!

Most "scripted accounts" I run into nowadays legitimately track your cursor movements, so that they follow you the entire game PERFECTLY, with no delay.

Riot ignoring this is bs as it's scripting to the Nth degree.

zimabIue12/6/2019, 2:03:04 AM1 votes

I've actually noticed so far, that there are at least two different types of program schemes for bot-accounts that are simple to spot ingame. First one: Immediately walks to first inner turret (always the exact same spot, not moving until the wave comes) and proceeds to run it down mid (regardless of how many allies are around, unlike official enemy AI from Riot). Second one: Literally keeps disconnecting and reconnecting all game without leaving the fountain. In similar cases they stood in fountain and made little movements periodically to dodge the AFK-timer. I'm also even sure I have had times where these bot accounts actually typed useless sentences without context occassionally. Amyway, if you emcounter those two types, a report can surely be issued.

Wolfalisk31812/6/2019, 2:17:21 AM1 votes

Credit given where credit is due, some of these bot scripts are actually fairly decent at not inting. I play quite a bit of Vs. AI and their presence is certainly an issue, but many of them do have low deaths.

Tahngarthor12/6/2019, 3:20:19 AM1 votes

This is because they removed TT. TT blind pick and vs AI was where all the bots used to be. (Ranked is where anyone who gave a care about the game was, so no bots there)

huhndog12/6/2019, 4:43:50 AM1 votes

Just had a 1v9 myself a bots game myself; I only wanted to do my daily missions ;-;. Instead , I had to spend 35 minutes to fight a fed renekton bot and jinx bot just because my bot teammates kept running down their lanes