A while ago, Riot released a blog post in which they revealed that they're working on new and better tech to help new League of Legends players get a foot into the game. Now, we finally have an update on these intro level bots.
A few months ago, Riot revealed that they've been working on upgrading the bots in Player vs AI games. These are games which most use when they are either trying out new champions for the first time, or are playing the game for the first time.
So, to give new players a better "real" game experience, Riot is upgrading the bots they face and it seems they're going to be releasing sooner than many might have anticipated.
LoL: New Intro Bots Coming To PBE Soon
The new introduction bots are going to be on the Public Beta Environment very soon. In a blog post Technical Product Manager Darcy “Riot DashiJador” Ludington and Software Engineer Emmett “Riot Sentanel” Coakley revealed that the bots should be available for testing on the PBE for two weeks either in September or October.
What are these bots going to be able to do though that the previous bots weren't able to? According to the blog post they'll be able to mimic real in-game situations much better than before by:
- Jungling
- Ganking
- Supporting each other
- Role Selection (with appropriate rune, spell, and lane positions)
- Taking objectives (like dragons and Baron!)
Until now the bots have always played in a 2-1-2 split, with two top lane bots instead of a jungler, something you would never see in a normal game of League of Legends.
Players will be able to test out the bots on the PBE. There will be a queue called 'Beta Bots' which players can load up, but only within the specific two-week timeframe.
Plans For Future Of In-Game Bots
Once the testing is over, the queue will go down and the team will take the player feedback to make adjustments and improvements. They also plant to make better and higher level bots as well.
On our side we’ll look at player feedback to make improvements, ensure that the bots work on a wide variety of players’ specs, and bugs found during the test will be squished. Then we’re off to start building out higher ranks of bot skill so we can eventually replace both Beginner and Intermediate bots.
Right now, Riot is planning to roll out the bots onto the live servers sometime early next year. Then finally new players – if there even still are some – will finally learn in a much better and "real" environment.