Hi, I'm David "Phreak" Turley,
and welcome to a special edition of League of Legends Patch Preview.
In this episode we'll introduce you to a new breed of bots,
that will change the way you play co-op vs ai in League of Legends.
With a massively expanded roster of champions and improved intelligence
its a massive upgrade to the League of Legends co-op vs ai experience.
Joining me now are Mark Norris, one of the producers on League of Legends and game designer, Rob Garret.
Mark, let's start with the basics.
What were the goals with this update?
One of the big things we wanted to do was evaluate how we can provide the biggest impact for players.
So we took a look at co-op vs ai and broke it down into its two element parts
which is kind of easy, it's co-op and ai.
And we said, how can we recreate that amazing competitive experience that also requires a lot of cooperative play,
and put that into co-op vs ai.
One way we decided to do that was by expanding the bot roster.
The other thing we wanted to do was make sure the bots felt really fun to play.
And with that we decided to do a whole bunch of improvements on their map awareness and how they interact with one another.
The most exciting part of this update is the size of the bot roster, how many bots do we have now?
Well, we started with 12 and there were a lot of bots that people became intimately familiar with,
like Renekton bot, and Annie bot--we've now gone to 40 bots.
And that's 40 bots on Summoner's Rift, and the huge thing is
it is also 40 bots on Dominion.
So for the first time we're actually going to enable players to have a co-op vs ai experience in a different game mode.
We're really looking forward to players getting a hold of that.
The other major thing that the number of bots allows us to do,
is to allow players to go in as teams.
And take on the bots, who are now in different team compositions.
So we're going to have a lot of different bots that can be in the tangle.
And a lot of different bots that can be AP Carrys or AD Carrys.
So what that allows us to do is to have a different bot team that youre facing every time.
And what that allows you to do as a player,
is to try new champs or to try new item builds or to go in with your team
and practice strategies against a different bot everytime.
We've actually done the math, there are literally thousands of bot team compositions.
What does that mean for our players?
In a word Phreak, it's uniqueness.
The ability to have all those different bot combinations,
allows you to have a brand new experience each and everytime you play co-op vs ai.
So just like when you're doing matchmaking or just like when you're jumping into a ranked game,
and that experience is always new and different and exciting,
the uniqueness of all those different bots, all those different characters that are bots now.
AD Carrys AP Carrys those all combine into an experience which says, everytime you play Co-Op vs AI
its new and its fresh and its fun.
Now it is more than just the roster size, it's also gameplay.
Rob what kind of new things from the bots, and what can players expect from this?
The team was really excited to revisit co-op vs ai.
And we've made a number of improvements and added new features to the bots.
Some examples of this are better attack and retreat behaviors.
We've added the ability for the bots to use skillshots.
This allows us to make a bot like Amumu with his bandage toss, or Lux with her light binding.
Additionally the bots will use more Summoner Spells now, like Cleanse and Flash.
And they'll also use activatable items, so you might see a bot using Deathfire Grasp or a bot using Zhonya's Hourglass.
You made a lot of improvements to the bots awareness to their surroundings.
What kind of gameplay can we see from that?
So on Summoner's Rift, the bots make more intelligent decisions regarding their attack and retreat behaviors.
This means that a level 18 bot won't consider enemy mininons a big threat when they're chasing you to try to kill you.
Additionally during a teamfight, they'll be more intelligent about targeting a low health opponent.
Or maybe a support character on the other team.
And from personal experience, Fiddlesticks is my favorite new bot.
Most player's tend to think about Fiddlesticks as a champion that hides in the brush,
and jumps in during a teamfight with a Crow Storm.
Well Fiddlesticks bot is way more aggressive than this.
He will just in a one on one situation walk right up you, he'll fear you, he'll silence you, he'll Crow Storm you.
He'll leave you wondering, 'what just happened?' when your screen turns grey.
And also we have the bots playing on Dominion now,
so what kind of things are they doing on dominion?
That's one of the most exciting things about this update,
is that we now support bots playing on the crystal scar.
So they understand how to attack points, and how to defend points.
How to even ninja points, and they'll also use the resources on the map.
So they'll collect a Health Relic, or they'll use a Speed Shrine to quickly move accross the map.
And they'll even grab the Greater Relic in the center of the map to try to give themselves an advantage.
It's a lot of fun.
Obviously we're very excited about this update.
And for you to experience a brand new breed of bots.
For more information on these bots, click the link below in the description of the video.
Thanks very much to my guests Rob Garret and Mark Norris,
I'm David "Phreak" Turley, thanks for watching!