LoL devs revealed new AI Bots that will feel like real players

Riot is improving its bot AI in the newest League of Legends update to provide a better experience for players

If you’ve ever played League of Legends versus bots, you know that the AI may feel miles behind real players. Bots have been there since the beginning of LoL, although they have never received much attention. This should change now that the new bots are more lifelike and behave like actual players.

Riot provided an update earlier this year on their efforts to revitalise the game’s bot AI, as well as how players might utilise bot games as a practise tool rather than a tutorial.

Riot Games on new AI bots in League of Legends

In a recent Dev Update video, League’s executive producer Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee and Riot’s head League Andrei “Meddler” van Roon laid out on those intentions. The new version of League’s bot system revolves around how these bots deal with Summoner’s Rift players.

“We’re currently focusing our bot work on helping new players learn the game,”

While the existing AI bots largely farm lanes and rarely engage in teamfights, the new bots will be able to gank, jungle, tank objectives, and even manage their roles in champion select. To put it another way, they’ll be actually playing League of Legends.

For some new LoL players, beginning with the current bot games to jumping into facing real players is an extreme gap. Riot intends to make bot games “feel more like a real game,” according to van Roon.

Thus, according to their Dev Blog, here are some goals that they hope to achieve:

• Provide an upgraded bot experience that better mirrors the common League gameplay experience.
• Provide a better way to learn and improve in League that is less stressful than PvP.
• Build the bot tech to be scalable, maintainable, and extendable so designers have fun levers to pull to delight players.

The new and enhanced League bots will be ready for testing on the PBE in September for two weeks. Riot aims to begin this public testing initiative with intro-level bots before going on to a beginner and intermediate-level testing phase.

While they are unlikely to be live until later this year, the PBE allows players to test out new features before they are publicly accessible.