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Just wanted to thank Riot for getting rid of the bots

icyhotTaco·1/17/2020, 9:19:37 AM·1 votes·1,512 views

Most everything I see on these boards is negative, so I wanted to mention something positive by thanking Riot for something they silently fixed behind the scenes (or at least I think they did).

For those unaware, co-op vs. ai has been plagued by bot accounts that would feed and otherwise be useless in games. They were mostly in twisted treeline, but when that was removed they all moved to summoners rift. It was common to see 2-3 of these a game.

I know many people don't care about co-op vs. ai, but these bots destroyed the learning experience for new players and made it much more difficult/tedious to use them to grind missions. Not to be hyperbolic, but it was a major issue that would have at the very least killed the game for new players. And it seemed like Riot wasn't doing anything about it.

But after grinding quests for the past few days, I just realized that I don't recall seeing a bot that entire time. I haven't tried intro or beginner bots, but at least the bots are seemingly completely gone from intermediate bots.

Assuming Riot cracked down on the bots...

Thank you, Riot. Truly. They may have silently taken care of the situation, but I want to be vocal in my appreciation.

20 Comments

FioraWillCarry1/17/2020, 11:27:10 AM1 votes

I played a couple bot games on a low level account just the other day and I saw a lot of bots. They didn't fix anything, not that I care too much. I don't mind the bots at all to be perfectly honest. As long as they stay out of PvP, I'm good.

Infernape1/17/2020, 11:30:46 AM1 votes

You got lucky. Riot hasn't got rid of them.

True Garen1/17/2020, 1:30:54 PM1 votes

I think that you just played more matches, so your MMR rose above the bots.

It seems that many accounts had some kind of MMR reset in norms and maybe co-op at the start of Season 10. Bots have the lowest MMR, so you may have had to climb out of the low MMR all over again. (You had the bots in your matches when you first started playing, too, but you didn't recognize them.) The bots were always in low MMR norms and co-op and apparently even ranked.

That's what's new. Before, I don't recall bots leveling past 30. I see bots with higher levels now, apparently farming rewards, another side effect of Runes Reforged and infinite leveling and all of the changes that went with it.

Deνiruchi1/17/2020, 2:26:44 PM1 votes

{quoted}

Most everything I see on these boards is negative, so I wanted to mention something positive by thanking Riot for something they silently fixed behind the scenes (or at least I think they did).

Because they didn't, and most important, they really can't. In F2P games, bots run rampant if there's money to be made and you can only stop them temporarily with ban waves, but they come back because it doesn't take them effort, they're called bots for a reason. They just set up new accounts. The only ways you can hinder them is also by hindering your regular playerbase or competing against the bots by selling accounts themselves cheaper than botted ones, but you might see the issue here, that's not healthy and would just start a economy war that would make buying accounts faster and more efficient than actually playing the game by selling them ultra cheap so bots don't take over the prices by lowering them even more.

Games like Aion saw a massive influx of gold sellers when it became F2P that quickly got out of hand with wall of texts nonstop spam in all channels and whispers. Manually blocking them wasn't an option because it was pointless, there would be 13213 new ones 5 minutes later. What they did (Europe at least, run by Gameforge) was basically make the game unplayable for new accounts, removing the ability to trade, use auction house, chats, whisper and limiting the in game currency income daily, all of that lifted with a premium pack system (that they also used as an excuse to introduce p2w stuff) so new player experience dropped hard just to stop bots, and they didn't even stop them, just slowed them down a bit.

KVbqbFsC8e1/17/2020, 8:41:41 PM1 votes

I played a co-op vs ai game this morning, and all 4 of my teammates were bots. Riot will never be able to get rid of them.

hRnrBbWoTr1/18/2020, 9:34:20 PM1 votes

What the hell are you talking about there's still bots in every single game.

FazerPowerZ1/20/2020, 12:25:32 AM1 votes

There are even bots in normals "blind pick" too. Just had a pyke feed. He kept running it down. It had specific instructions. They aren't just on co-op vs ai... they are even on blind pick too.