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I wanted to find out the amount of bots in aram and co-op so I made a smurf

deathgod5·1/20/2017, 5:07:22 PM·71 votes·11,405 views

Right now there is somewhat of a problem with league, that is there are a lot of bots in aram. I always thought people overreacted so I decided to make a smurf to find out. Until I reached level 20 I only played bot games to find out how bad it was. I made a list below:

In league of legends co- op I have met around:

  • 1 scripter(admitted scripter)
  • 100 bots(on my team)
  • one that did the heimedinger trick of having a turret always attack gromp to not be counted as an afk.
  • 25 legit smurfs that actually level their account using effort, they probably need it so they can play again after a ban or something.

This doesn't seem so bad overall, but these bots are there to level so that they can be sold at a decent price. They are being used by permanent banned players to get back to ranked without effort or new players that want to directly play ranked(and ruin ranked games from silver to bronze). This however wasn't the worst of it tho.

Bots in aram After I reached level 20 I played around 20 games of aram. I would call it unfair, but I suck at this game. My current winrate on my smurf is around 50 percent in aram.

I actually wanted to count the bot's at first but it was an uphill battle. On my server(euw) around 2 of the players are bots in an average ARAM game. This is a bigger problem than the co-op games, because the players that play with bots here get extremely frustrated. I saw people rage, saw people get mad after they got one of those "intentional feeders" in their team again. If you have one of those bots on your team, you probably lose. They are the worst thing that happens to these new players.

But I am not just here to complain, I also noticed a lot of things about the bots that might help with banning them. So for riot here is a list of things that make the bots stand out. some things I noticed

  1. some actually apologize 100 percent of the time after you mentioned their summoner name or champion name, so even if you spam their name in the chat they respond every time with a long response.
  2. One group of bot's starts chatting on an exact amount of deaths. They are not talking at any other point, it is quite noticable
  3. Before they run in randomly using summoners they actually walk the same route every time, It is a pixel perfect route stopping at the same places and going the exact same direction.
  4. For many of them they build until their inventory is full so their build looks like this in the end: item 3010 item 3006 item 1028 item 1028 item 1028 item 1028. No matter how long the game goes after that, their final builds keep looking like this.
  5. after level 30: their win rate will skyrocket from around 20 percent to a normal winrate(because they are being played by humans now).

all of these things are detectable and could be spotted with a ban bot.

If you notice things like this in one of your players in aram, ban them for inting and third party programming. In the description write: is a bot. If he doesn't get banned for being a bot, the inting will.

so why did I go through the effort 2 reasons

  1. Because I like the Idea of helping the lowest level co-op players in league
  2. Because I thought that players were overreacting when they said that they got 1 bot every single aram.

To the players I didn't believe, you have my apologies, the problem is worse then I thought and needs to be stopped.

68 Comments

Villainous V1/20/2017, 8:41:32 PM32 votes

You think that's bad? I once had a TTT game where, I shit you not, the other 5 players were all bots. I can't even make that up. I'll look for the game for proof.

MUSHROOM MIDGET1/20/2017, 6:39:18 PM9 votes

good job.

i dont know why some people refuse to believe in these bots. all you have to do is make a new account and play 1 aram and they are everywhere. after winning a few games you wont see nearly as much, since your mmr will quickly raise far above the level of any bot. but at the lowest mmr levels i have no doubt there are thousands of games being played right now with no human in them at all. just 5 bots vs 5 bots grinding up new accounts to be sold.

LostFr0st1/20/2017, 5:31:11 PM6 votes

The hunt is fun, isn't it^^Kindred I did the same with a smurf myself a little while ago... and found similar observations. I found quite a few Heimers and item 1031 Shacos too though. There are a lot of bots. Luckily the new players don't usually notice, but we need to keep hunting them for their sake.

Keep up the good fight Deathgod.~

Odinakos1/20/2017, 8:48:17 PM6 votes

I sometimes play my EUW smurf (made for those rare EUNE downtimes). While i havent saw a huge problem in coop games (vast majority of the smurf), its ARAM that blatant botting exists. I played < 10 games for chests and there were clear indications of botting behavour.

The most obvious one was the build. For examples Marksmen tend to rush Bansee's after boots. Which if in recommended items, is down at the list and rarely first. There is no way a good percentage of new players came to the same conclusion that bansee's first is the best idea.

Playpaterns was another one. Bots dont fall back even alone against 5 enemiues, instead they tend to attack forwards with throwing abilities targeted exactly at the enemy. Ofc they stop when they encounter enemies, but still dont fall back unless very low hp. And they are clearly not noob players, because they start walking instantly and spam abilities close to cooldowns. They dont seem "lost" at all, like a new player would be.

Lack of chat is a very loose suspicion and may fall into confirmation bias. But what i noticed on arama games, the accounts that are active on chat seem to be smurfs (deam love the salt) and frustrated players. But there are silent ones, over half. Maybe thats because i compare to coop where everytime i started light discussions and in coops there have been despice language barriers. Or we are EUNE smurfs salty about EUNE being down/laggy.

While i havent done such extensive research as you, the fact that botting was so easy to spot in aram in so small number of games, makes it a significant problem that should be dealt with. Really appreciate your time and this should be more visible.

NocturnalOutcast1/20/2017, 7:09:05 PM5 votes

You should see the amount of bots in Twisted Treeline, I've played games where I was the only real person on either team...or games where I was only real person on my team vs 3 real people. Makes going into TT unbearable.

Miku Append1/20/2017, 9:43:06 PM4 votes

I wish Riot would allow a masterlist of these bots to be posted, but of course, you can't call anything out.... not even a bot. :/

Cosnirak1/21/2017, 12:02:34 AM3 votes

The problem is that this isn't where the real fight against bots lies. Riot can probably detect most of these accounts as bots rather easily. And they absolutely do care. But if you just ban the account the botter will simply make another. Even if you ban them all the botter will realize their current methods are easily being detected as bots and will work to change and likely improve the botting to be harder to detect. Dealt with like that it's simply an endless arms race where no one really wins.

Instead Riot can monitor these accounts, see who eventually buys and plays them, if that person has other accounts, and ideally gets enough info on the botters themselves to finally catch them offline. In the mean time the known bots largely get put into games with each other and with smurfs (at least in pvp games), thus causing less damage. Actual new players are more typically paired with each other instead.

You can't just go around cutting off the heads of a hydra, it will simply grow two back. You must swiftly apply fire to the stump when you behead it if you want to kill the beast. ;)

Supreme Senpai691/21/2017, 12:45:13 AM3 votes

The bots are an issue. But what's even worse are the people that aren't bots. They're leveling accounts mostly because they were so toxic that Riot decided they would be among the .1% that are permanently banned. And rarely do they learn their lesson. If anything now they have a reason to be toxic after losing all those hours of work. The people who are actually new to the game give up around level 10-15. I've tried to get friends into this game but none can make it to 30, and even I have to tell them I don't think I can play with them anymore. It's just too toxic.

Play v AI and get nothing but bots. Play v people and get nothing but AFKers, intent feeders, and toxic flaming pieces of shit literally every game.

3TWarrior1/21/2017, 8:49:11 AM3 votes

the sort of sad thing is that riot has not implemented any sort of anti-cheat mechanisms client side...it wouldn't be that hard to submit their file to the antivirus companies to have it whitelisted...

everything riot does is server side and a lot of bots do go unbanned but you would think riot would kill bots just because it cuts their profits (most of them do play until they have enough IP for every champion after all )

DemainaNyx1/21/2017, 5:18:03 AM2 votes

I just made a post about this cause I experienced this a lot when I was new to the game but kinda forgot about it. After making a smurf, I realized again how many there actually were in my games. It doesn't really matter how many you report cause it doesn't really feel like it makes a difference especially in bot games. Obviously I would rather AFKs, Scripters, and bots in ranked/normal matches be focused, but that doesn't mean we should ignore these bot games.

As you pointed out, normally these are people recovering from bans, the occasional person leveling up a smurf, and then actual new players. If a person recovering from a ban is leveling up their own account and playing, fine, they are allowed to play the game. But just sitting AFK or using a bot to do that just makes the game unfun for new players. I remember a while back there was a bot script going around where a bot would basically follow around another champ all game. They would stand like 3 Teemo's behind you, take CS and kills, but do nothing else. It was so frustrating. Obviously now I might have a better idea what to do and at least know I can carry without teammates vs bots, but at that time, I was lost.

TryndaOrGTFO1/30/2017, 3:27:33 PM2 votes

I returned to League after 1 - 1,5 year ... I love aram , so I played 5-6 matches ... I can confirm EVERY match had bots, in one of them only 2 of us were humans from the 10 players ... Aram is the only mode I like, but it is totally unplayable now

50000000000000001/20/2017, 7:55:23 PM2 votes

Just wondering, but wouldn't it be easier for bots to just make custom games and 5v5, with bots only? One team can intentionally lose as quickly as possible, and the other team can win by grouping 5 early and pushing a single lane (I'd guess bot lane, without the fortification). I'm getting a strong feeling that this will make the leveling process so much easier.

BigBellBrute1/30/2017, 10:15:28 PM2 votes

This would really be incredibly annoying to me at first. But I could live with it temporarily to discourage the practice of botting.
Institute 3 bot checks in games at random points. If everyone passes, the game continues. If someone fails then those that passed get their full IP and experience for the game and the game doesn't count. The person or persons that failed get a loss and zero IP and zero experience.

The bots are there so someone can be doing something else and get their IP and experience. Take that away and there is no reason for botting.

jsdghjhduehdej12/12/2017, 4:19:08 PM1 votes

If you don’t want to play against bots, then don’t play aram lol