League of Legends is Updating its AI Bots
If you’ve played against bots in League of Legends, you know that the game’s AI can feel far inferior to actual players. However, in an upcoming update to the game’s PBE, the LoL development team plans to change that.
Earlier this year, Riot provided an update on their plans to improve the game’s bot AI, allowing players to use bot games as a practice tool. League’s executive producer, Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee, and Riot’s head of League, Andrei “Meddler” van Roon, recently expanded upon those plans in a dev update.
New, updated bots will be available for testing in September, and all LoL players with a PBE account are invited to test them out. Although these bots won’t be released until later this year, the PBE offers an opportunity to try out new features before they’re widely available.
“We’re currently focusing on helping new players learn the game,” says Lee. “So these bots are deliberately intro level at the moment. We expect most of you to easily crush them, but we’d still love your feedback on their look and feel.”
Related: Riot confirms LoL’s bot AI system is getting some much-needed dev attention soon
Detailed information about the bot AI updates can be found in a dev blog by Darcy “DashiJador” Ludington and Emmett “Sentanel” Coakley, who have been leading the project to revitalize League’s bots since April. They have outlined plans to make the bots more intelligent and responsive to players.
The updated version of League’s bot system will focus on how these bots interact with players on Summoner’s Rift. Unlike the current AI bots that mostly just farm lanes and occasionally engage in skirmishes, the new bots will be capable of ganking, jungling, tanking objectives, and coordinating their roles in champion select.
In other words, the bots will actually be playing League of Legends.
For new League players, the current intro bot experience is like going from tee-ball to pro baseball in a week. Riot aims to ease this steep learning curve by making bot games “feel more like a real game,” according to van Roon.
The new-and-improved League bots will be available for testing on the PBE in September for a two-week period. Riot plans to begin with intro-level bots and then move on to testing beginner and intermediate-level bots.
League of Legends, LoL, AI bots, PBE, development team