@Riot: Have Bots sub for DC'ed summoners

MsJackson·Feb 17, 2016·2 votes·328 views

Riot has decent bot software that could at least defend turrets, place wards, and farm/push. This would act as a massive damage control for when a person leaves the game.

Most DCs aren't intentional. When a teammate disconnects for whatever reason, the team is almost certainly going to lose, but even the modest AI could ensure a more fair match.

Of course, Riot will hate the "moral hazard" of this idea since it could encourage people to DC. BUT! It sucks when there's a power outage, unrecoverable bugsplat, or other failure and you know you let the team down. Certainly limits could be installed such as:

only activate AI-control after 1-min of DC
only activate AI-control X number times in a time period for an individual (e.g. once per month)
Penalize a person with IP and/or LP loss each time it's used (e.g. even if bot ends up helping win the game, only earn 50% LP and 0% IP; if the team loses, they lose an extra 25% LP and earn no IP)

PLEASE TRY IN NORMALS FOR A BIT AND THEN MAYBE RANKED??? xD

Just thinking about this because I had a power outage when my team was depending on me to carry. feelsBadMan

6 Comments

DrCyanideFeb 17, 20163 votes

Riot has decent bot software that could at least defend turrets, place wards, and farm/push. This would act as a massive damage control for when a person leaves the game.

What bots have you played against? You'd replace an AFK with a Feeder, which is a far worse problem and is why it doesn't happen.

"But Doom Bots!" Had modified abilities, cheated, and were still beaten by many.

Let's look at what would need to be added to the Bot AI for it to be remotely possible:

A strategy for how to play every champion in the game, updated per rework/champion release.
An understanding of how every ability in the game works, updated per rework/champion release.
A skill level set per rank, so you don't have a Bronze level bot in a Diamond level game or vice versa.
Some understanding of pings and how to respond to them (might be optional for Bronze/Silver bots)

A better solution (although still not perfect) would be some way for another player to sub in for a DC'ed player. Some sort of standby queue for those who don't have enough time for a full game and are willing to pick up mid game.

Arcade AndrewFeb 17, 20161 votes

They could do a "ghost" of that player that plays like the player on his best games.

DrCyanideFeb 17, 20162 votes

With what would they build that Ghost from? Almost 130 champions in this game and you'd need to save enough games per champion to teach an AI how to play like that player, probably a minimum of 5 games. The system would also need to take into account different patches, a problem that if Riot could figure out a good way to tackle would result in an official replay system before it would result in anything like this.

On top of saving a new AI per player per champion, you'd have a monumental task of trying to break down the why a player did something. A player might jump over a certain wall a lot, you don't want the AI to randomly jump that wall, you want it to jump that wall when it makes a positive difference. The why someone did something is more important than what they did. If you can't teach an AI why something was done it won't act like that player.

MsJacksonFeb 17, 20161 votes

Surely Riot could create a "defend" bot that mainly sticks around towers or groups. Sure, it might die, but it will be able to put out a few hundred points of damage more than the DC on the fountain and that could swing a fight.

DrCyanideFeb 17, 20161 votes

Regardless of what bot system they make, players will figure out how it works and what its weaknesses are. They will then have a free supply of kills (and gold) from killing that bot over and over again. The 200 damage it will do won't be worth the gold that it would feed.