League of Legends developer Riot Games has deployed a series of changes aimed at making bots more "human-like opponents."
"Bot matches make up a decent chunk of games, even among level 30 players. That’s a lot of hours spent with our robotic friends that we thought could be more engaging," Riot Games said of the update.
It's important to note that making bots more human-like doesn't necessarily mean tougher. It just means that they are less predictable and focus on the same game elements that players do, such as last hitting and landing their combos. As noted in the recent patch notes, "bots will now factor in whether or not their opponents' spells are on cooldown when assessing threat, and the same information will also allow them to (sometimes) dodge skill shots."
Below are the bot update notes, but over on the League of Legends website you can find a more in-depth explanation behind many of the changes that went into making a more human bot.
- Improved evaluation of enemy and friendly strength.
- Improved understanding of tower mechanics and power.
- Improved behaviors while under high threat.
- Improved lane rotation decision making.
- Improved last hitting with auto-attacks both when farming normally and when pushing.
- Lane behaviors (harassing vs. farming, etc) are now more in line with human behaviors.
- Bots now attempt to dodge some skill shots.
- Beginner bots now build recommended items, while Intermediate bots now make more advanced item choices.
- Bots now scan their surroundings at variable rates depending on difficulty setting and in-game threat level.
