LoL Co-Op Update

I have written about the upcoming co-op renovation that is in the works for League of Legends on the Personal Computer and it looks like the early result of Riot Games promise for a better versus A.I. experience can be seen on today's patch. When playing a custom game, there are now nine A.I. champions that the players can assign to the teams. I believe it was only limited to six before. This means that when playing alone for a 5 versus 5 match, each team can now have their own unique lineup, if that is something that the player chooses to do. Riot Games stated that this minor roster additions is not final and that we should expect more champions to be added into the list.

Bots are supposed to be annoying. We are not there yet.

Perhaps the more important thing is the A.I. itself. I created a custom game where I played with 4 A.I. teammates versus a full A.I. team on the other side. There have definitely been some tweaks made to the programming of these computer-controlled champions and the one thing that is very noticeable is that they now don't do crazy things anymore like diving across two towers to their deaths. Since one of my fellow A.I. teammates chose to "AFK" by staying at the base throughout the entirety of the match - wow, just like real players! - I observed that the champions who had to solo their lanes were tower-hugging to ensure their safety. This resulted in less unnecessary deaths. The most impressive thing that I saw the A.I. did was that they seemed to coordinate their attacks better when they were fighting side to side with ally champions. The bot that played Shen, the awesome ninja who can use his ultimate ability to transport himself to an allied champion - best used to save a dying ally - did use that ability properly. However, there are still a lot of problems with these bot champions. The one obvious flaw is that when you are chased by enemy champions, all you have to do is run into a bush and they immediately lose interest in pursuing you. They also don't react to "ganking" because I frequently approached them from behind out of the fog of war and they did not move to a more defensive position. The difficulty of the A.I. is marked as "Beginner" and it is the only option available at this time. Overall, this update is definitely a good start and I cannot wait to see if Riot Games will be able to create "Expert" level bots in the future.