Why can't we bridge the gap between bots and norms?

Jo0o··1 votes·387 views

Hey, all. Silver 4 scrub here, been playing since January.

League seems to have a bit of a problem with the new and new-ish player experience, and I think part of that has to be bots. It's nice that we can practice a new champ against AI before going into a game against real opponents, but the bot experience ends at far too low a level for it to be a valuable tool after a relatively short time.

For example, I recently picked up Darius, and I'd like to git gud with him. I can utterly terrorize intermediate bots, easily 1v2ing the top lane, getting pentakills, 30+ kills in an 18-minute game, etc. But then I queue up for a normal game, and it becomes painfully obvious that I'm simply not a good Darius player. I tend to lose most laning phases, and I don't have the skills and knowledge of his kit to not get kited and neutralized later in game. Bots are therefore virtually useless to me; they offer no meaningful practice beyond getting to use my abilities and see how they work. They might as well be target dummies.

So, why don't we have Advanced bots? I respect that they're perhaps hard to program due to the nature of the game, and perhaps we'll never get a Jungle bot that can handle their complex farm routine adequately, but at the very least we could have bots be level 30 "players" with full rune and mastery pages. And balanced team comps, rather than the ARAM nonsense they currently exhibit. Putting slightly more demand on the players to win a bots game could offer some degree of preparation for taking an unfamiliar champ into a real match, at least for scrubs like me.

6 Comments

Joseph Gladstone1 votes

I recently picked up Darius

Hi

Jo0o1 votes

Sup, hot stuff.

Zero Skill Tank1 votes

Just play norms and get fucked until you git enough gud to not get fucked. That's what norms are there for in the first place. If someone flames you for being a scrub Dario, mute them and keep gitting gud. Or flame them back if you don't care about chat restrictions, whatever works best for you. Don't worry if they say to report you, you have every right to be a scrub Dario, it's not punishable.

It's not like making bots runes and keystones would be bad, but it isn't needed really, and wouldn't help much. Making AI good enough to actually make use of them - and don't even start on AI good enough to use proper teamcomp! - would be very costly on Riot side(if at all doable) for very little gain.

Jo0o1 votes

That's what I've wound up doing, with mixed results. I'm generally decent at picking up new champs in norms, but something about Darius just continues to befuddle me, so I wish I could get more practice without throwing games.

Couldn't Riot just give intermediate bots a power level boost through masteries and runes, label that "Advanced", and call it a day? If programming stronger AI is too expensive, it needn't be done. But I wish the bots I faced at least didn't have such laughably lower stats than me, since it gives me a false sense of damage capability that doesn't apply when I'm against an actual human, skill levels aside.

UberAffe1 votes

You could try practicing with no runes or masteries. Then when you use them in real games you would still feel stronger.

Restless Slumber1 votes

If you want to learn how to play a champion in laning phase, the best way is to watch a pro play lane phase on that champ, for you it would be Darius. And then replicate what they did in laning phase to get similar results.

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