Private Bot Matches: Hidden King team always set to hard bots, even in easy and medium. Bot difficulty selection only affects Archmother team.

[morganarochelle]

I want to preface this as it is not a complaint, just something I want to point out. I actually enjoy the challenge this presents, but I can imagine it could be awfully frustrating to new players.

I play only against bots because I have never played a MOBA and don't want to ruin others games. But playing with other players against bots is too easy, just steamroll all the time. So I play bots against bots for more of a challenge.

Medium bots and hard bots are easy. But if you do easy bots and get put on Arch Mother's side in particular, it becomes insanely difficult. And I think I know why.

I think easy bots private match mode was coded assuming you would be on Hidden King's side, since you used to always be on his side. So it made the bots on Arch Mother's side easy for you to kill, and maybe even made the bots on Hidden King's side medium or hard to help you win easier.

But now as you can be on Arch Mother's side, this becomes a problem. Your teammate bots are insanely dumb and spend a lot of time running in circles. They often only get 1-3 kills per match and usually only with help from you. The enemy bots meanwhile seem to push in a more coordinated manner, get way more kills, and you end up spending the whole game on defense as they are constantly pushing into your base.

After testing many many bot games on different characters, I have no problem winning easily on medium or hard bots private match regardless of which side I am on. Additionally, in a custom game, playing easy bots on either side is fine because as you can see when you make a custom game, both sides are set to easy if that is what you choose.

It is only this insanely difficult on private match easy bots Arch Mother's side.

I tried looking up anything about this but it looks like no one else has noticed it? Maybe because not many people play easy bots. I only realised because I played a lot of easy bots with friends who don't want much challenge.

As I said I enjoy the challenge but maybe this should be fixed for the new players? Also it would be nice if in custom match we could set each sides bots separately so I could recreate the challenge this poses (easy bots against hard bots).

 

[falabern]

Without getting wordy, I (and my friends who only play Bots as they're all new to MOBAs, and I just want to spend time with them / have a fear of people) have 100% noticed the same thing and I feel less crazy cause you're spot on.

We've all noticed it as well and it gets frustrating for them because they're still learning the game, and there's only so much I can teach them given the very small window of time before the bots start roaming / grouping / Hard-Pushing Objectives. It's also noted that on Arch Mother's side our bots will ignore our base in favor of 'Have To Get The First Row Guardians[Objectives]' and you Will Lose because in those cases only the Real Players are defending.

Long story short, you're on the money and more than you have noticed that! But as you've said, it's difficult to ask about because there's a small expectation of 'you're playing against people right?' that the tuning / balance of the AI-Bots is falling to the wayside. (This isn't even mentioning how the core-fundamentals of how the game works aren't being taught in those bot matches either, and people without a guiding player will have a horrible time when they try PVP matches cause they're missing 'basic info' and that makes me sad.)

 

[morganarochelle]

I've actually done more bot matches since making this post, especially medium ones when trying new characters since I don't want my ass handed to be as badly by Hidden King's team, and I actually think I was wrong about one thing.

It's not just easy bots mode.

I think Hidden King's side are always set to be hard bots in private matches.

Because even on medium bots, if I am on Archmother's side it can still be a bit of a struggle compared to being on Hidden Kings side. I still see the same sort of behaviours by the bots on Hidden King's team in medium that I do on easy, and they can still prove a bit of a challenge. Though it's a bit easier to overcome if you have medium bots on your team compared to easy ones, so not quite as much of an overwhelming steamroll as easy, but you still have to do a lot of base defense yourself while your medium bots feed into the hard ones.

Overall probably the easiest and most balanced bot match mode is probably ironically hard bots. (Or just leaving matches until you get put on Hidden King's team)

I am updating the title of this thread to reflect what I actually think is going on here.