14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Riot Games announces that it is delivering a new update for the game which does not focus on the core mechanics or the balance, but on the bots that allow players to try out the game and test new strategies outside the competitive space.
The official developer blog states that their main aim was to make all the opponents more human, which means both less predictable in terms of strategy and more focused on the aspects of the game that real players tend to mostly use.
The team explains that, “Surprisingly, ‘tougher’ bots was a less frequent response by comparison. Based on this data we set our sights on more-human bots as the overarching goal for this update, especially since such changes will make harder bots more interesting down the line.”
The company then uses a lot of formulas and paragraphs to explain exactly how bots tend to behave in League of Legends and which aspects of the core Multiplayer Online Battle Arena formula it failed to properly take into account.
Neither wall jumping nor juggling will be viable options for bots, but the team will explore how they might be added to the AI in the coming months in order to increase their competitiveness.
Riot Games also says that many more variables need to be tracked in League of Legends as the bots get smarter, but that improvements in the code base have managed to make sure that the server load remains balanced even after the new update is delivered.
The developer adds that bots are “certainly not Diamond-level (probably not even Silver) - but for now that’s not what we were trying to do. Our next steps are to look for ways to build on the new bots and better tailor a Co-op vs. AI experience for players’ first few games. Look for more information on this next project soon!”
As always, gamers who play League of Legends are invited to share their experiences with the new bots in order to help the Riot Games team to improve them in the future.
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