Several important issues of the recent bots

[Dummy Boy]

I discovered this issue when I was practising jungling so I almost never ganked and/or participated in teamfights (terrible, I know)
there I found several issues that I think should either be fixed or improved upon:

Issue1) Bots afraid to take a small amount of damage from creeps
the bots are afraid of being attacked, even when the situation are obviously stacked in their favor, (e.g. Dire and Radiant creepwaves clashing together and no other heroes are in sight)
they are also afraid of pushing a tower unless the player or creeps are taking damage instead of them, even when the odds are at their favor (e.g. several opposing heroes have been killed and we have 5 hero on the same lane pushing)
Its kinda hilarious to see a fully farmed Sven running away from a creepwave when he could just stick around for 1 second and cleave their ass off.

Issue2) Bots will leave mid-lane undefended when the lane composition is not 2-1-2
I was jungling as lifestealer and as I said, I almost never went to the lanes to farm or gank
but then I discovered that the sniper, who have took mid then decided to support the solo sven on our bot lane, leaving mid-lane undefended and allowed the opposing carry to free-farm.

Issue 2) Bots never defend towers even when 3+ enemies are imminent
There's a good thing about bots I loved in previous versions was that the player can ding your bot members into protecting/attacking towers/raxs/Roshan
now I can't do anything to influence the actions of bots except by defending/attacking the towers or Rosh myself, where by then the bots would slowly come to my aid by walking halfway across the map
I think this ability should be implemented so the bots will be able to be directed by the player's orders

Issue 3) Bots not defending towers even if 3+enemies are imminent
I often saw glimpses of 3 to 4 enemies grouping on our towers, and this will often result in 3 situations:
1.The bots do nothing, continuing on with their farming/pushing even though they have a tp in their hands and can teleport to the said tower.
2.The bots contiune to push a lane or continue to attack an enemy tower with 70% to full health even though our tower was the one that is immediate danger (20% or less remaining)
3.tp'd to the tower and help defend the said tower

in previous versions, bots will never do option 1 and 2 but only option 3
now that I am unable to ding the bots into position, the bots will just let the tower fall to pieces instead
again, I feel like that the AI should be reverted to the previous version instead (before the bane patch)

Issue 4) Bots would rather defend a tower/barracks than an ancient being attacked
this is the most frustrating issues I have encountered by far in bot matches
the bots let the lanes be crushed to pieces, then after almost everything in our base has been razed except the ancient,
the bots would rather defend a tier 2 tower and a barracks rather than an ancient being attacked by heroes and creeps on the brink of destruction

I feel that fixing the priorities issue of bots is the most important issue by far
I have never had any problems and/or lose a bot match at previous versions, now that I am unable to ding the bots into position
the AI just carry on with their retarded routines and became a group that's almost unable to be carried

It would be great if the AIs can be reverted to the previous version only in this regard, everything else is pretty much perfect.

[thepotoo]

Great work, I was going to make a post similar to this. I'll add: bots also love to grab the ageis instantly, they aren't waiting 3 seconds like the patch notes promised they would. Also, whenever I destroy dire's bottom T2 tower, the bots will fortify immediately after it's been destroyed. It's been like this since the bots got the ability to use glyph of fortification.

[Dummy Boy]

Yeah I got this too.
I thought the bots were suppose to wait a bit before grabbing the aegis, now as soon as rosh drops they just grabs it
it happens like 70% of the time though, I have had several times where the bots left the aegis untouched, maybe when their slots are full they will just ignore the aegis?

[thepotoo]

No, I've seen 2 or 3 of them drop items and pick it up instantly. The ones that don't get it will leave their items on the ground. That's probably another bug in and of itself.

Got a couple more: Earthshaker will use his ult, then blink into the enemy team (lol). He'll also just pop his ult for shits and giggles sometimes.

It would also be nice if bots would cancel their TPs when they go to defend a tower and it dies, since they often land in the middle of 5 hungry heroes.

[Vimsey]

You reminded me talking about the TPs wasted. Ive seen 4 bots TP in to defend a lane then after TPing in decide to walk back to where they came from even though the enemy bots are still in that lane they went to defend. They dont seem to consider it an important resource.

[kingnishi]

bump

[Lagomorphic]

Issue1) Bots afraid to take a small amount of damage from creeps
the bots are afraid of being attacked, even when the situation are obviously stacked in their favor, (e.g. Dire and Radiant creepwaves clashing together and no other heroes are in sight)
they are also afraid of pushing a tower unless the player or creeps are taking damage instead of them, even when the odds are at their favor (e.g. several opposing heroes have been killed and we have 5 hero on the same lane pushing)
Its kinda hilarious to see a fully farmed Sven running away from a creepwave when he could just stick around for 1 second and cleave their ass off.

I would like to know what setting the bots are on, because I have never seen this as an issue. In fact on normal or unfair bots seem to dive past towers all the time.

Issue2) Bots will leave mid-lane undefended when the lane composition is not 2-1-2
I was jungling as lifestealer and as I said, I almost never went to the lanes to farm or gank
but then I discovered that the sniper, who have took mid then decided to support the solo sven on our bot lane, leaving mid-lane undefended and allowed the opposing carry to free-farm.

Chris has stated that they are working on a system to tell the bots where to lane or that you are going to jungle.

Issue 2) Bots never defend towers even when 3+ enemies are imminent
There's a good thing about bots I loved in previous versions was that the player can ding your bot members into protecting/attacking towers/raxs/Roshan
now I can't do anything to influence the actions of bots except by defending/attacking the towers or Rosh myself, where by then the bots would slowly come to my aid by walking halfway across the map
I think this ability should be implemented so the bots will be able to be directed by the player's orders.

Lately I have only played coop, but when do you start to ping? From what I remember, if you ping when they will be at the tower in 5 seconds, they do not want to go, but if you give them 15-20 seconds lead time they usually go.

Issue 3) Bots not defending towers even if 3+enemies are imminent
I often saw glimpses of 3 to 4 enemies grouping on our towers, and this will often result in 3 situations:
1.The bots do nothing, continuing on with their farming/pushing even though they have a tp in their hands and can teleport to the said tower.
2.The bots contiune to push a lane or continue to attack an enemy tower with 70% to full health even though our tower was the one that is immediate danger (20% or less remaining)
3.tp'd to the tower and help defend the said tower

in previous versions, bots will never do option 1 and 2 but only option 3
now that I am unable to ding the bots into position, the bots will just let the tower fall to pieces instead
again, I feel like that the AI should be reverted to the previous version instead (before the bane patch)

No offense, but bots will insta gib you if you (or other bots) TP in when they are attacking it.


Form the coop matches I have played, the bots are nowhere near as bad as you make them out to be, but that is coop. Next time you are playing and stuff like this happens, can you take a screen shot with the bot info on it?

[skiminokf]

+1 for all 5 issues. But please fix the defending algorithm first!
It's so frustrating to loose 2 towers and raxs in a one chain with a bots taking NO defending actions.
It was good back then when they just port to tower in a couple of seconds after your ping.

[Arxos]

Stop asking for Chris to revert the changes. He can't. The bots had a major overhaul in their coding and reverting 1 thing will cause many, many other things to be reverted also. Many of which were major improvements, and this new algorithm once it has been fine tuned should work a lot better than the previous.
So instead of complaining and wanting the old one back, provide some info for him to work with. Screenshots of dumpstates.

[ChrisC]

Yeah, we're definitely not going to be reverting anything (not really possible at this point), but all the feedback is excellent, thanks! On a couple of the points:

1) Bots determine the number of creeps they're willing to tank, but I'm sure that calculation could use some tuning. Sounds like Sven in this case should have been more willing than he was -- if you can get a screenshot of this in the future so we can see what items he has, we can take a look.

2 & 3) Pinging a tower should cause bots to defend it, if they think it's at all possible. If they're not, this is case where a screenshot with the bot dump info displayed would be really useful. There are a few reasons why bots wouldn't respond to a ping, so I'd like to investigate which of these is causing to be less responsive than you'd like.

4) There have been a couple bugs with this that we've been fixing, and overall I still don't feel like all the internal numbers are tuned correctly here. We keep working on it though, so it should keep getting better with time.

Aegis thing should be fixed next update, at least.