Riot outlines major League of Legends bot AI overhaul planned for late 2023

League of Legends devs at Riot Games have announced that massive changes are in the works for their current bot AI, hoping to increase complexity and add better tools moving forward.

Riot’s flagship MOBA League of Legends has been out for quite some time now. With many years passing since its original release back in 2009, the game has had many systems introduced across many an update over the years.

However, one system that has been left behind is the AI within the co-op vs AI game mode, which has barely been touched throughout League’s lifespan. The bots in this game mode barely represent a regular game of League of Legends, with bots being unable to jungle, gank, and often win matches.

Fortunately, Riot is looking to make sweeping changes to the AI system to improve the new player experience and create a tool for the developers later down the line. According to Riot, these changes will “provide an upgraded bot experience that better mirrors the common League gameplay experience.”

In a recent blog post, the developers outlined some of the changes coming to their bot AI.

• Bots that can jungle, gank, and take neutral objectives such as dragon
• Team AI that allows bots to work more cohesively with each other
• Bots that can react to meta shifts within the game

Alongside this, Riot announced that they’re looking to introduce bots of more champions in the game, that can also scale to match a player’s skill level, providing a challenge no matter the difficulty.

Finally, Riot wants the new AI featured in the update to be of use to the developers, allowing for editable bot behavior, tools for quick iteration, and the potential creation of new game modes using this AI.

These changes beg the question of if PvE events will return to League, with favorites such as Odyssey: Extraction, Star Guardian: Invasion, and Doom Bots potentially seeing a return with some new major tweaks.