Boards›Player Behavior

Bots, Bots Everywhere (and seemingly nothing being done about them)

LXII··3 votes·623 views

I realize this is kind of a small matter to complain about, but it's annoying nonetheless. While leveling my EUW and other NA account I have encountered SO MANY bots. They're clearly bots as they only use the same keywords over and over ("Frozen", "Gj", "Push", and my favorite "WTF") while simultaneously just walking down lanes autoing the other bots all the way to the turret. Winning against other bots with these guys on your team isn't really an issue because.. well.. they're bots, but that isn't the point. I've reported these bots on every sighting with a very detailed write-in on each of them and have yet to receive feedback on even one of them. So is botting just okay now or what? These accounts are obviously for other things that would break the ToS so why is nothing being done about them when they're served up to you on a silver platter.

TL;DR bots are inherently anti-fun and can seriously hinder the ability of new players to learn the game, yet they are not punished.

11 Comments

ModWuks4 votes

Riot has been cracking down on the bots and made their detection and punishment systems more aggressive in recent days. I personally haven't seen a bot in any of my matches on my smurf (normals, ARAM, and Co-Op vs. AI). However, if you're still running into bots, please report them in the post-game lobby under Cheating and Intentionally Feeding. They'll be reviewed by the system and potentially manually reviewed, and they'll be punished as appropriate. I appreciate your concern, and thanks for the assist!

LXII1 votes

Honestly on the NA servers it's not nearly as bad, but EUW has been bot city for me. Most of my AI games are myself, then 3 or 4 player bots. But I will continue to report as I see them, thanks for letting me know!

MisterHealYoGirl1 votes

They are punished, it just takes awhile. The volume of bots about equals the rate at which they can be removed.

xEPICxGoldx1 votes

i dont know but if someone uses bot in BOT with AI, i accept it cuz they used it to train their lvl and it doesnt affect to anyone but if someone use bot in normal and ranked game. Report them right away

Elite4Runner2 votes

{quoted}

i dont know but if someone uses bot in BOT with AI, i accept it cuz they used it to train their lvl and it doesnt affect to anyone but if someone use bot in normal and ranked game. Report them right away

Player bots in co-op games does hurt the game because there are often newer players who are still very early on the skill curve for learning the game. Having one, two, or even three bots who are pretty much intentionally feeding the other team makes it very difficult for these players to learn, and could potentially denture them from wanting to continue trying.

Aside from that, people who do have a better idea of what they are doing, often use bot games to try out interactions for champions with different items, builds, or roles. Bots don't call lanes, and they don't care if a lane is already taken. They force players to fill a role they didn't plan on playing, or babysitting to keep them from overly feeding.

As a more experienced player myself, this is normally the problem that I run into. Player made bots can absolutely make co-op games more fun because they generally go too quickly with 5 mildly competent players. Getting to "late-mid" or "late" game requires a significant amount of stalling. However, this always seems to happen in games where I want to take someone into a position that is severely off-meta, thus very weak early game.

My opinion on what should be done about this, is that Riot should make some creative form of captcha challenge when players cue, or at some point during champion select so when a bot fails the challenge, the game gets abandoned. At the very least this should be implemented on players who have been accused of using a unapproved third party program.

LXII1 votes

I had a similar idea, but with a Captcha only being required after that account has been reported for botting (similar to the Leaverbuster popup after a game). Sure, they'll still ruin one game, but it'll be the last one.

Gary B Enkelis1 votes

{quoted}

Player bots in co-op games does hurt the game because there are often newer players who are still very early on the skill curve for learning the game. Having one, two, or even three bots who are pretty much intentionally feeding the other team makes it very difficult for these players to learn, and could potentially denture them from wanting to continue trying.

Aside from that, people who do have a better idea of what they are doing, often use bot games to try out interactions for champions with different items, builds, or roles. Bots don't call lanes, and they don't care if a lane is already taken. They force players to fill a role they didn't plan on playing, or babysitting to keep them from overly feeding.

As a more experienced player myself, this is normally the problem that I run into. Player made bots can absolutely make co-op games more fun because they generally go too quickly with 5 mildly competent players. Getting to "late-mid" or "late" game requires a significant amount of stalling. However, this always seems to happen in games where I want to take someone into a position that is severely off-meta, thus very weak early game.

My opinion on what should be done about this, is that Riot should make some creative form of captcha challenge when players cue, or at some point during champion select so when a bot fails the challenge, the game gets abandoned. At the very least this should be implemented on players who have been accused of using a unapproved third party program.

I like the captcha idea!! However I still don't like bots. They don't make games fun for me. If I want to play with really terrible bots to practice out late game builds and stuff then I can make a custom game and fill it with the bots Riot provides.

Elite4Runner1 votes

{quoted}

I like the captcha idea!! However I still don't like bots. They don't make games fun for me. If I want to play with really terrible bots to practice out late game builds and stuff then I can make a custom game and fill it with the bots Riot provides.

Oh I wasn't saying that I like player bots at all. I honestly think that it would be better for Riot to add tougher levels of bot difficulty. There are tons of things that would actually be very easy for Riot to add or fix about bot games that would make it difficult enough to have a new level or two.

Gary B Enkelis1 votes

{quoted}

Oh I wasn't saying that I like player bots at all. I honestly think that it would be better for Riot to add tougher levels of bot difficulty. There are tons of things that would actually be very easy for Riot to add or fix about bot games that would make it difficult enough to have a new level or two.

Yeah, tougher bots. I miss doom bots. :D It was still kinda weak AI though. I don't know.

Elite4Runner1 votes

{quoted}

Yeah, tougher bots. I miss doom bots. :D It was still kinda weak AI though. I don't know.

Well, that was 2 years ago. They have already shown that AI has improved since then.

Gary B Enkelis1 votes

I report it as cheating and it does not matter what game mode it is except perhaps a private custom game but even then I don't know.

The description for Co-op vs. AI even says "Team up with other players" and bots are not players, and also I wouldn't be surprised if botting is against the terms of service we all agreed to in order to play this game.

Sure enough: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/legal/termsofuse#code-conduct

"ix. Using any unauthorized third party programs, including mods, hacks, cheats, scripts, bots, trainers and automation programs that interact with the Software in any way, for any purpose, including any unauthorized third party programs that intercept, emulate, or redirect any communication between the Software and Riot Games and any unauthorized third party programs that collect information about the Game by reading areas of memory used by the Software to store information;"

This seems to fit.

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