Okay, Blizzard. Please revert the AI changes. They are so broken now. I usually play AI mode to relax and burn some daily quests, but since the patch it’s been impossible.
People have talked to death about this, but Follow literally doesn’t work. Bots on follow very frequently get stuck and end up walking back and forth in a straight line. That’s of course if they ever decide to follow you, since for some reason follow causes bots to Hearthstone back to baseconstantly. Also, old issues like followed bots not mounting if your hero can’t mount and bots not turning in objectives while on follow are still in (presumably at least, it’s hard to test since follow is so insane now).
Bots have this weird new behaviour where they never walk past the pushing minions waves, like it’s a solid wall. They also walk up to gate early and wait for the minions to arrive before moving out. It makes aggressive early pushes outright annoying and nearly undoable. I don’t get the logic behind this. I mean, it’s not something humans do.
Those are the two big new ones, but unfixed issues are still ruining things. If you’re going to try and adjust bot behaviour, I’d like to see these things addressed.
Shields. Bots don’t shield you unless you’re already injured, like it’s a normal heal. This works okay for Tassadar, but for every other bot, they never use them correctly. This especially makes Medivh worthless.
Roles. Bot matchmaking goes by in-game roles. For some reason. Bruisers (including ones like D.Va) are matched like main tanks. I just had a game with Tassadar as a healer, Zarya as a tank, and an Abathur all on the same team, against a perfectly normal enemy one. Why not just use the ones from Blizzcon? You know, the ones already implemented in Quick Match?
Objective priority. Bots have a spastic relationship with objectives. On multi-objective capture maps like Braxis and Dragonshire, they’ll take one area as a 5-stack, then abandon it to go take the other as a 5-stack, losing the one they took in the process. On many maps, they’re no-shows for many objectives, or even weirder, only one team will decide to show while the other… does… things? The worst in my opinion is Battlefield of Eternity. After the Immortals switch over, bots often buzz off and ignore the objective from then on, like it’s already been completed.
Towers. Bots will suicidally chase into forts and keeps - sometimes to secure kills, but usually just to push minions or the fort or keep itself. More often than not, they’ll not react until they’re fatally low, either getting out with a sliver of health or just dying to the tower anyway. If a bot is shot by a fort, it should prioritize moving out of range.
Cleanse and other CC removal. Plain and simple, bots will cleanse anything. No matter how minor the CC is, they’ll blow a cooldown to clear it. A very silly and common one is clearing off Stukov’s slow from his ranged AA… just for him to reapply it.
Sgt. Hammer. Bots are completely stupid vs Hammer. If there’s a Hammer on my enemy’s team, I have to reload the game, because otherwise it’s too annoying. Bots will walk into and just stand in Hammer’s AA range.
Because I don’t want to play Quick Match, and I really don’t want to play Hero League. I shouldn’t have to be forced to play against players when I’m not in the mood.
Besides, AI Mode is still a mode, and it should be given at least a fraction of respect.
Yes, because broken AI enemies are whatever. I can beat up AI all day while listening to a podcast. Like I said, it’s how I like to unwind. What’s not fun or relaxing is herding cats, AKA dealing with suicidally stupid AI teammates.
I mean, that can be a solution, but it shouldn’t have to be. Pure AI is a gamemode, and just sweeping it under the rug isn’t an option. I’ve enjoyed it more or less since I’ve been playing this game, and Blizzard absolutely thrashing the mode and doing nothing about it is unacceptable.
Besides, I use AI to drag out matches for as long as I possibly can to eek some extra levels. Not everyone in vs AI is going to be as willing to do that.
Also, allied bots affect the whole game. Right now, a leaver is essentially a death sentence. The AI is borked to hell. If you improve AI for this mode, you make a leaver just a little bit less frustrating.
I don’t understand why they don’t just roll back the AI changes to the AI during the winter event for the time being.
The only thing I can think would make sense is that it’s too time intensive to separate the exact code changes. I work at Cisco in the SW department and when we have a production release it is a HUGE deal to try to extract the code from one specific capability once the release to live production has already happened.
Usually we have a bunch of separate capabilities but they all go into a single “test environment” for each of our scheduled releases. So once the code is put into that jumble of a test environment you can’t individually separate out the this or that rule you tweaked it’s all meshed together. For our go lives when we release to customers it is done by exporting the test environment changes as a bulk update to the production environment.
This begs the question though, if it’s so hard to undo a change in a live SW build why would you release this defective AI? I don’t think they did proper testing before release in their internal dev builds and the 2018 announcements have caused the population to take a nosedive, meaning there is even less in PTR. They may not be having as productive of a PTR cycle as previous hots releases due to lack of participation.
Apart from the obvious, this is also creating a problem where having a disconnect in your team is even more of an automatic loss in a PvP match.
At this point you could start arguing that if a dodge deserves a 600 point penalty, a disconnect that lasts over a minute deserves a 1000 point penalty (5x200), applied as a flat 1 rank loss. But it’s not a discussion worth having, I’d rather have the AI re-fixed - as it happens to both sides.
Yes this is very disappointing. I hope they address it soon.
I have heard up to 40% of the population plays vs AI, so it is not insignificant. Also, it affects anyone that has an AFK in their game (which happens a lot).
they’re likely to withhold these changes until week of March 13th, the late most when the PTR is expected to come up, considering all the promises about ranked play, the matchmaking and the hero role rework they promised a while ago, and considering that the ranked season is ending a week from then
and by withholding I mean releasing the fixed AI for public testing first, because last time they advertised it as a significant improvement it ended up in the state that that we have to endure now, which is completely broken, so I doubt they’ll be stupid to repeat the same mistake again
Blizzard stated that Vs AI is the most popular mode at 40%, so yes, they should care about it. I don’t play vs AI, but I want everyone to have a good experience with this game, so should Blizzard.
It’s was extremely difficult to win when you had an AI replacement in a PVP mode prior to these wonky changes to AI. It should be difficult to win when a player disconnects, but not impossible. The new AI is so bad I assert it plays like it’s working to help the other team win, rather than simply being a huge liability.
Please Blizzard, just swallow your pride and roll back these terrible changes.
