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So the april fools prank made me think....

Alex h8721··6 votes·843 views

Why is it that there can't be a bot for the Jungle? I understand that jungling is a more complicated role that laning as far as pathing when to gank etc, but I am curious if there is any way for riot to program a bot to jungle.

My thought process on this was to add perhaps an "expert" level bots option, with more realistic teamcomps an actual jungler, as well as more intelligent mechanics and better decision making from the AI. I recently introduced 2 of my friends to league, they are now ~ level 13, and only a few games in they had already outgrown the beginner bots, and by level 10 they were having very little trouble with the intermediate bots.

And it made me realize the jump in difficulty between intermediate bots and actual pvp normals, especially with the large amount of people who already play making new accounts having a big jump on actual new players in terms of experience, getting stomped by smurfs in their first entrance to pvp will not help a new player learn anything, and I think having an actual advanced/expert bots option that is more similar to how actual pvp is would be a huge help to REAL new players.

12 Comments

MysterQ4 votes

Bots actually had a nice boost recently with Keystone masteries.

Bot Ai needs to stop retreating. It pains me so much when I see a 10% teammate go HAM on a bot. The bot could win... but it decides oh shoot my hp is low run away, which just just killed instantly by retreating.

Someone might say it, but jg bot is basically free camp gold for any player. And while I have no true problem with players getting gold; I do get annoyed by players rushing every kill and ending the game before I can test the champion out. I think because jg has no safe tower it just can't work with low functioning AI and camping players.

DrCyanide2 votes

Short answer: too much work to maintain for not enough reward.

Just about every preseason the Jungle gets changes, which take several patches to balance out. Is it really worth it to create a bot where you've got to update it's AI every few months just so it doesn't die to a jungle camp over and over again? Or so it knows how to use a plant? Or how to prioritize Dragon/Baron/Rift Herald?

I think it's OK for bots to a challenge be overcome, it pushes players towards where they should be - PVP games.

Jinxalot1 votes

{quoted}

Short answer: too much work to maintain for not enough reward.

Just about every preseason the Jungle gets changes, which take several patches to balance out. Is it really worth it to create a bot where you've got to update it's AI every few months just so it doesn't die to a jungle camp over and over again? Or so it knows how to use a plant? Or how to prioritize Dragon/Baron/Rift Herald?

I think it's OK for bots to a challenge be overcome, it pushes players towards where they should be - PVP games.

Seeing as how LoL is the biggest game in the world. I think they can afford to invest in a jungle bot program. It will be hard but it will make AI more fun to play.
A lot of people like to play AI games sometimes to relax or experiment. Playing Ranked or even Normals can bring out the salty in even the nicest person :)

DrCyanide1 votes

It's a matter of priorities.

Which would you prefer first, a jungle bot or better AI on minions and pathing?

Which would you prefer first, a jungle bot or better troll detection and punishment?

Which would you prefer first, a jungle bot or improvements to the practice tool?

Which would you prefer first, a jungle bot or two-step authentication?

It's a matter of trade-offs, what isn't most important goes onto the backlog. For a PVP game where only a small portion of the population plays vs AI, a change to 1/5 of those AI's doesn't seem worth the delay in improving other areas of the game. If such changes are going to be worked on, they'll be worked on when improving Doom Bots, since that's something that benefits more of the player base.

It doesn't matter how big or how successful a company is, this process is what every company faces when figure out what their employees should work on.

Jinxalot1 votes

They rake in about 1 billion a year. I think they can afford a little side project :)

DrCyanide2 votes

Unless it's a fully supported project it'll work for a few months and then be disabled due to the bot not being able to handle the changes the next season brings.

Even if that wasn't the case, it'd still be a matter of which little side project should come first.

So far we know it's been beaten out by the likes of Smart Pings, Item Sets/Settings being saved server side, and other unsung projects. These are projects that will work regardless of balance changes in the game. The AI you're talking about could break simply by another team deciding there needs to be 6 small raptors instead of 4, or only 1 monster in the Buff Camp. We see these changes execute players every preseason, you want an AI smart enough to deal with that to be built as a side project?

Jinxalot1 votes

Yeah. It would be pretty complex.

GeminiRune1 votes

That had me thinking a bit on the topic of smite wielding bots as well. I would think the big issue regarding that is because of a bot's target selection process on top of bots in general being lane focused nonetheless. A jungle bot would potentially be linear, especially in the early game. And that's just talking at the basic level. It would be rather complicated for even a generic bot to take on camps itself unless the other bots were able to be aware of a leashing mechanic and whatnot, thus breaking the regular mold of the "lane focus".

I say smite wielding instead of jungling however because beyond that early game, when champions have a bit of power to back them up, taking on the jungle at any time should be less of a struggle. At the same time, by having that smite, the bots can be programmed to target for objectives (Herald, Dragon, or Baron); I think this case was like the recent Doombots/Teemoing but I don't remember if the bots just warped to the objective and took it immediately. Non smite wielding bots could also potentially have a built in target selection to take camps as well. But these are all quite a ways away from even being realized as far as we know.

MysterQ1 votes

I will say, despite your friends finding no challenges in bot games (most aren't). I have had teammates that fail to control a lane and let bots get to inhib turret. In 2016 at inhib turret bots would back away the instant a champion was under turret. Literally you didn't have to do anything and they would move lanes. In 2017 (in addition to keystones) bots are now better at taking the inhib turrets. This surprised me but it was a slight improvement from 2016.

That said in those games where teammate don't contain a lane, sometimes the games get more fun and challenging. But mostly because it turns into a 1or2 v5. It would be nice if the bots with such a lead could push onto Dragon (pushing Baron might throw the game for bots).

Jinxalot1 votes

When someone goes top lane solo, with a jungle teammate, it can be a challenge vs like a Galio/Darius bot team

Alex h87211 votes

This is very true, they have definitely improved the intermediate bots to an extent over the past year I just think (even without the desire to impliment a jg bot) that intermediate bots are a long way from actually getting new players ready for actual pvp games.

ForFoxSakes1 votes

Too complex if you want the AI to actually be unpredictable with jungling paths, starting route, kiting camps for healthy clears etc. Would need to implement a lane to leash for the jungle bot too, otherwise if there's no leash someone could just go get easy FB every single game while the jungle bot is working on their first camp

If the bots have no runes and masteries either the jungle camps will wreck them before they cant even hit level 3

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