Improving Practice Mode and Player vs A.I. matches
Ok, so I have been thinking a lot about the practice mode and the player vs A.I. games a lot in recent weeks. I enjoy practicing my champions and trying new build paths and such in these game modes, since people don't normally get after you for trying new things in bot matches. Anyway, to the point, I feel that the current level of difficulty for intermediate bots is so underwhelming that it barely even qualifies as halfway decent practice. If you can win a match against bots, no matter what champion you choose or what items or abilities you build with them, then how does this help for practice for a player vs player match? I understand that it is hard to provide A.I. players with the adaptive game play and skill that most human players process but I do have some alternative suggestions for how to improve these games and provide options for higher difficulty levels, such as hard or maybe even advanced difficulty.
Practice Mode: 1: Allow players to be able to choose which lane a bot champion starts on, allowing players to practice on different lanes. If you're practicing a mage, you would probably want to practice on the mid lane so you can get a feel for the dimensions and practice your stuff on the lane you would actually be spending the first half of the game on in a real match.
2: Allow players to practice with more than 1 A.I. character. Allowing players to practice with more enemies will not only provide higher difficulty, but will also allow them to practice against the scenario where they get ganked or have to fight a 2v1. Also allowing them to put ally A.I. champions in the game will also help them practice their team strategy, as much as A.I. characters are capable of doing so. This would also allow enemy A.I. champions better opportunities to get kills and get "fed", making them tougher to beat, instead of you mercilessly beating down a single A.I. champion over, and over, and over again without them having any hope of doing ANYTHING to you.
3: Possibly allow players to bring 1 other human player with them in practice mode, this would help players be able to practice team plays as well as being able to more fully practice support roles, jungle roles, and so on.
Player vs. A.I. matches: I do not believe we need to change anything with the Intro, Beginner, or Intermediate level bots. These bots are at an adequate difficulty to help newer players practice and get better. However, for higher skilled players, these bots, even the Intermediate ones, are little more than cannon fodder, posing no challenge and offering no threat. In order to help with this, I feel we need to add a hard, or perhaps even an advanced difficulty level. In order to accomplish this I feel we could implement a few of the following ideas.
1: We could possibly give a buff to the bots, to make them stronger and harder to defeat. Such as, slightly higher damage output, or possibly faster health regen, or gaining 100 bonus gold per kill in addition to regular gold reward, or maybe taking less damage from following attacks after the first initial attack ( with like a 6 second cooldown or something), or possibly gaining armor and magic resistance while near an ally tower or when outnumbered. I feel that if we can not improve upon their intelligence and adaptive gameplay, we could at least beef them up just a bit to make them more formidable and provide more of a challenge.
2: At certain points in the game, bots will automatically slay dragon, baron, rift herald, etc. I feel that the bots in these games do not provide enough contest to the jg and that there is currently no urgency to obtain slay any of these monsters and obtain these buffs, simply because players know that the bots will not go for it and that they can get it whenever they feel like. So allowing bots to automatically slay these creatures at certain randomized times in the game, will not only provide them with more strength but will also put more pressure on players to slay dragon or the other monsters first. Now, it would not be fair for the dragon or rift herald to randomly die while players were fighting it and have the A.I. champions get the buff, so I would also suggest that if the dragon, rift herald, or baron is in combat with human players that the bots will not slay it. I also feel like random enemy A.I. champions receiving blue and or red buffs periodically would also help provide more of a challenge.
3: Ok, this is specifically for stacking champions, such as Nasus, Veigar, Sion, and so on. These champions gain increased health, or ability power, from killing enemy minions and champions. But the problem with that is that A.I. characters are TERRIBLE at farming and using the abilities necessary to stack their power, which is crucial for these champions to do well. I feel that for these champions, we need to have their stacks go up automatically over time. The stacks would go up slowly but progressively at a fair rate that allow these A.I. champions to better perform and provide more of a challenge.
4: Possibly lower the death timer on A.I. champions, allowing them to get back to lane quicker and put up more resistance.
These are just a few ideas I had, I appreciate any feedback. If you have any additional ideas for how to improve the difficulty for bot matches, please comment below.
As I said before, these changes would not be implemented in the intro, beginner, and intermediate levels. If added to the game I would suggest making an Advanced difficulty level, and include the changes in that. These don't have to be the changes made to the game but I do feel that we need to do something in order to provide better challenge to higher skilled players.