League of Legends offers ranked and normal play modes, but before players can access them, they frequently play against an AI opponent.
These bots allow users to experience Summoner’s Rift without the pressure of being in a PvP fight until they become accustomed to the game, but regardless of the difficulty setting, the bots aren’t always reliable predictors of how a match will really play out.
Riot Games, the creator of League, concurs and has assembled a team to work on improving the AI in the game. Gamers will get to test this new AI sooner rather than later.
At the moment, bots usually wander through their lanes in odd places as well as other matchups give people a little bit more resistance as they grab farm, towers, objectives.
In spite of playing quite a few matches against real opponents, Darcy “Riot DashiJador” Ludington, the technical product lead for the game’s bots, claimed that the experience didn’t truly prepare them to go against real opponents.
She also acknowledged that the issue wasn’t specific to them and that there is evidence to suggest that bots are not great at truly helping newbies practice to the extent that they would win a PvP game after.
Ludington said that “Our data shows that regardless of how many co-op vs. AI games a gamer played prior to entering a PvP match, these games wouldn’t improve this new player’s chances of winning. So we want to give gamers an area to enjoy all the strategy and team aspects of League, in a much less stressful environment with more varied skill levels.”
.@RiotBrightmoon and @RiotMeddler are back with guest Reav3 for another Dev Update on:
⚔️Midseason itemization
🤖Bots
🐾Champs
🗺️2v2v2v2 mode
➕And more! pic.twitter.com/2QoqX39l2l— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) April 28, 2023
The activities of these new bots will be more diverse, such as cooperating “more tactically and cohesively” with one another rather than acting independently from the team (even if renegade teammates aren’t really unheard of in League anyhow).
Riot anticipates that soon, bots will be able to gank, claim objectives in the jungle, and also jungle like dragons. Throughout the season, they will even be able to react to changes in the meta.
Riot is also developing some things that would encourage people who are already heavily invested in PvP but have little incentive to revisit bots other than to play with beginners who want to try League.
According to Riot, they’ll choose from a larger pool of champions, so the unusual selections that aren’t precisely indicative of the meta may soon be dropped altogether.
Perhaps even more intriguing than that, Riot stated that they hope to have bots scale to personal skill level, though it is unknown how accurate this scaling can be.
Although a precise release date for the upgraded AI has not been determined, these new bots will appear on the PBE for 2 weeks later on in the year.