Heroes' Beginner AI is too stressful

General feedback relating to Heroes’ gameplay and AI. Possible bug issue
Returning player after taking a few years off. I know Battlefield of Eternity is diffcult to begin with but my last game there to retest my skills was a laughing stock to say the least. When you play on Beginner, the AI shoud reflect that, my AI was useless for the most part. The whole experence turned me off big time. I have no problem at all losing, you can’t win every single match you play. I do, however have a big problem with the game being too smart for a beginner setting and the AI was that, whereas my AI was barely even there to assist me. So unless you have upped the lower levels to be more hard across the board for some unknown reason, this is a bug issue. None of my other matches the last day and a half were this hard and they were all on the next level of difficulty. If you want to welcome back players into the game, this isn’t the way to do it. The knobs of the diffcult should be turned down or the AI to assist the player should match the level that the player is playing against. I entered the beginer mode to relearn the gameplay and to train before I faced off with other players and assist others on my team. This last match made me question why I would ever want to play the game again and that should not be the question a player has after a match. The next level up, the AI is easier and that’s backwards. If you want to have new players enter the game or returning players return to the game, then this is not the way to do it. I’m writing this feedback because I actually care about the game and the developers, certainly not to bad mouth anyone. I’m just confused by the beginer level diffcultly

I don’t know if they are still working on it, but the AI has been wonky for a couple of years now. Here is the offical thread about it:

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A.I mode is ONLY there for you to test-drive/learn a character decently before taking them into active competition with other players. Also just a dumb mode for you to have fun smacking around the AI guys.

But there’s only so much you can learn (and only so much fun to be had), beating up the AI. Just like every other competative game out there: You ONLY get better when testing your Metal against other players.

QM, ARAM and, Ranked, are the real stars of the show here. So i can’t blame the developers for not sinking much development/maintenance work into AI mode.

The Devs posted years ago that VS AI mode was the most popular mode after QM. Many people played this mode exclusively. Even if you and I both don’t like it, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t/hasn’t still got its audience. Some players don’t like PVP modes at all and that’s just fine.

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That’s fine but, they’ll NEVER, EVER develop good skills, or even have a GOOD understanding of the game…by smacking around the AI.

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As Minky said, AI has been wacked for some time now. They changed some part of it as an improvement (it did improve, yes), but it broke in other parts.

I would recommend co-op instead of AI teammates. It’s 5 humans vs AI match, que time still fast as far as I remember. And most people there understand if some players aren’t good at the game in it.

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As a former sole AI grinder I have to disagree, sure you might not develop skills quite as quickly, and it doesn’t teach you about the whole “why aren’t you going middle raynor wtf”, it allows you to quicken controls, get some characters (which idc how much yall say you can get the characters instantly via gold, you can’t i still don’t have all the characters and im 5 years in), and learn the ins and outs of macro without having to bare the brunt of the migrane you face when your bad on ladder. Took me 3 years to come and actually play a second game of quick match in a row, im pretty sure it was the second mech event cuz i thought mecha tyrael looked cool and the ai quests were too hard, either way AI definitely developed 90% of my viking skill and helped me actually find a hero I liked.

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The players I’m talking about have no desire to step outside of AI, they are simply playing for fun so many of them don’t care if they have good skills or understanding of the game. They just want to enjoy playing the game in the mode they prefer.

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You could take two full sets of New players (10 guys). One set of 5 noobies: Have each play 10,000 AI matches. The other set of five noobs: Have each play 1,000 QMs. Then pit them both against each other one day.

The QM players would utterly STOMP the AI guys. It wouldn’t even be a challenge. The QM players would have a lot less play time but, they’d have a significantly better understanding of the game and the various aspects of competitive play. You don’t get better or build skills by PWNing the crappy AI.

Edit: But this is every “versus” type game out there. Like Street fighter II. You can play and destroy the AI for years but, the moment you go up against a real player, who’s been playing other real players for the same amount of time? The gap in skill will be immense.

Oh wow, this changes absolutely nothing at all.

Some players like long dreary draft to get certain team comps.
Some players like chaotic comps with regular maps.
Some players lime to perma-battle it out on one lane.
Some players like to chill and kick some AI around.

There is no right way to play the game, there is no training mode from where you progress from to the one true mode.

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^^ You’ve completely missed the point of my post.

Nope.

You though missed the point of the original thread and tried to derail it into bashing vs AI players and claiming a one true right way of playing the game. Do not bother to make a reply to this post as i put you on an idefinite ignore as i do with all such people.

Have a nice day.

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Mechanically the AI players would probably be severely overpowering the QM players, however game knowledge and maybe teamwork wise the QM players would have the advantage, however if we are talking about 5 AI players they probably all would have some decent amount of teamwork because they’d be working off of the assumption that this would be similar to an AI game, additionally from my experience AI players tend to be a lot more macro focused then QM players, because AI’s rarely get into fights, they simply gank alot and run away when they see the enemy team (unless it’s an objective), so they would probably also lead in the macro field BUT, might not understand just how easily the QM players could shut down a push, I would say the AI players win majority of the time in this exact scenario but it depends.

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Ok let’s put this thread in a different perspective sin everyone is focusing on the vs AI mode than the difficulty as a whole.

AI difficulty are just basically how mich response time there would be in the process but because there’s equal amount of screw ups from both sides it results certain randomness involved especially when you are the only human in the game this results in to make this at least bearable through pinging all 5 and just push a single lane.

The difficulty side of beginner is as much as ironic it is… Is working as intended.

This is because an elite group of AI are more optimized than the beginner when we consider that it’s a team based game.

For example, Elite has coordination they can do CC chain follow ups and their aim of deciding a task is instant that temporary, they can comprehend soaking fundamentals, including bruisers literally double soaking, which helps cutting off a lot of the issues you’d face.

These are most of them in a certain form don’t exist in beginner AI, so because of the team work nature the AI would definitely in beginner st least do more screw ups, both sides which can give a feeling of randomness.

IMO, up the difficulty to medium or adept and you may find your games more bearable, and no they aren’t difficult, the scale between adept and elite AI is very noticable.

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It really depends how good the AI player is. I once had a Li-Ming on my team with over 5000 games in AI and she played like a bot. Never showed up to teamfights ended the game with 2k dmg done. Only thing she did was playing her own game with minion waves.
So I do think qm/ranked players would stomp those AI players if they truly is this bad as this Ming.

AI players like them just think its yet another bot game and then walk around like most ultra casuals do and have no clue what happens around them. And when game is over they have learned nothing.

Sure AI players who actually has a brain will get better to the point that they can challange real players and even win. Its just all about how much the player want to commit to learning the game.

This Ming I played with on the other hand was just one of the few AI players that only treat the game as a singleplayer simulator game and he/she dont have to learn anything. Just walk around and play like little kids do and the AI are his/her imaginary friends that he/she plays with.

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I’ve seen plenty of these. Some part of me does think they are very young kids. Who of course have every right to play too as long as they have consent.

I usually see them when clearing quests in AI as clearing them with AI teammates is a chore so I prefer humans.

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This is the best possible outcome IMO. I’d prefer those kinds of players to just enjoy themselves in VS AI mode, rather than play that way in PVP modes.

I had a Jaina player in QM yesterday who did exactly what you described, she would only clear waves and get camps and then hearth at close to full health and mana and repeat. The other players on my team were calling her a bot, but I knew she wasn’t. Indeed the player did type in chat when the game was lost “GG”!

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I wonder if it’s possible to program a bot to type GG each game when it ends?

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It probably is, although the Jaina player did also say something odd during game about “clipping”, which kinda sounds like a bot!

I’m still waiting for the Devs to program the AI to use abusive chat, faithful to the personality of the hero of course. :wink:

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AI Butcher will have by far the simplest, least variable yet most effective abusive chat lines KEKW

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