I’m a returning player, thought I’d check the new features. While I’m picking up new friends to play with, I’m playing with the AI (especially if the queue for league takes too long).
What happened to the AI?
- They refuse to respond to PINGs (defend fort, attack enemy hero, target objective).
- They are now so obsessed with the merc camps but will immediately leave if enemy heroes come close
- Ally AI healers will stick to your character, but refuse to heal
- ally AI will be stuck in a dance (walking back and forth) if the core is being attacked, if they are in the allied side of the map. Allied AI in the enemy side will continue with whatever they are doing, and will rarely hearth back to defend core.
- ally AI will not defend core from Bosses, Webweavers, Immortals and Terrors if no enemy heroes are attacking with them.
- ally AI Jaina and Tassadar casting blizzard or psistorm off target or randomly while travelling through map
- ally AI with knockback abilities will prioritize anything I target with an AOE spell, knocking enemy away from the spell effect
- ally healers, particularly Morales, will stand in front of the character they are healing - taking hits from the enemy or towers instead of moving away from them.
Battleground specific behavior:
Battlefield of Eternity:
- AI allies not guarding allied immortal will go to the enemy immortal but will not attack, just walk or stand around it - taking damage from its attacks
- AI allies refuse to attack advancing enemy immortal despite PINGs
- have a tendency to proceed to the off-lane (middle) enemy gate and get stuck… just standing and taking hits from the towers.
Blackheart’s Bay:
- Enemy AI actively attack the chests while ally AI will stand around chests but do not attack
- Enemy AI will always proceed to a chest as a group, allied AI will always split between the 2 spawned chests (but still won’t attack the chest) resulting to easy ganks if they chance on the chest with the enemy team
Warhead Junction:
- enemy AI actively seek and pick up dropped warheads, ally AI won’t
Garden of Terror:
- ally AI will immediately attempt to gather seed without attacking shamblers, will keep attempting until killed by shamblers
- ally AI refuse to attack shamblers
- ally AI will use offensive abilities (mostly AOE spells) against enemy Terrors, but do not use basic attacks
Hanamura:
- ally AI obsessed with attacking turret merc camp, even if all of them are already carrying unused turrets - leaving turret powerups to be picked by enemy AI
- ally AI will randomly stick a turret on the ground while travelling through map, even if there are no targets
Tomb of the Spider Queen:
- ally AI keeps collecting gems, refuse to surrender gems at altar
- ally AI will use abilities (mostly AOE spells) on enemy Webweavers, but will rarely use basic attacks
What happened? The enemy AI seems a bit better than before, but ally AI almost guarantee an automatic loss unless I pick heroes that can “solo” an AI game.
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Very thorough list, good job. About your question - they probably outsourced quality assurance to their player base 
Overall it is an improvement from previous patch AI but there are still issues that cause the AI to loop the same task on repeat without actually completing it. It starts off well, they time mercenary camps properly with objectives, soaking is decend, but at some point 90 seconds into the match it all just falls apart and they start following illogical patterns.
Why I’ve stopped playing. Never liked player matches due to the rampant toxicity but AI matches used to be fun.
AI is a total mess. Played a game recently and noticed that enemy AI most of the time will travel as a 5 man deathball and will focus every attack on you. Absolutely frustrating to play now.
A lot better games out there to bother with this one. Just not fun with AI getting worse with every update.
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I understand why some players are frustrated with the AI. The bots will spend most of the match gathering around the mercenary camp on the opposite end of the map rather then their own, but the very moment you decide to clear a camp yourself, the entire team will beeline to your location to destroy you. They will drop all other activities and priorities to do this one thing.
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I have noticed that many allies will either not use basic attacks at all, or do so very infrequently. The ones easiest to notice are Probius and the Vikings, you can see them use abilities but not attacking at all when they are allies with you. On the other hand, enemy Vikings will attack normally.
Another bug that is very common is ally healers will break off from the player and other bots, and go to solo a lane with their pathetic DPS, often when there is an objective like an Immortal or a Payload (happens most often with Lucio and Lt. Morales). Even if you ping Assist Me at either location or Retreat at theirs, they will completely ignore this. Ping works like 20% of the time now in general, often only having a single closeby bot come to you when you ping Assist Me whether at a camp or in lane.
Most AI allies also tend to leave objectives when it is close to complete (e.g. 90%+ at Foundry). Some will go start a camp and others will go to lane.
On the maps with 2 lanes and a middle gate, both ally and enemy AI often get stuck near the camp near the enemy middle gate, killing the guardians and then not capturing it and walking back and forth just outside of the turrets. My guess is when they added turrets to the middle gates they forgot to tweak the AI, so the old command to attack it and the general command to stay away until there are minions keeps the bots moving back and forth.
In general ally AI will prioritize mercenaries and bosses. Problem is if the boss is almost dead with 10% health and another objective like a Tribute spawns, the whole team would just drop the almost dead boss and go there with low health. This brings up another bug, in lane low health bots both ally and enemy will often get stuck at a fort or keep. They would stand next to it until an enemy is close enough to attack, but would not recall to heal up until then.
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VS AI used to be a fun mode to relax and practice or warm up, now it’s an absolute joke. Other than the fact that enemy AI refuse to defend their core (because they’re busy taking every possible merc camp on the map and 5-man maphack ganking any attempt the player makes to take one) they legit play better than most players in diamond, even on BEGINNER. This mode (especially w/ Ai allies that refuse to respond to pings, and sit on their mounts and watch you die if pinged to follow) is all but totally unplayable.
Whoever is responsible for the state of this game mode needs to be blacklisted from the video game industry. Absolute disgrace.
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All these issues have gotten even worse with the last patch. At least before my AI teammates would be getting the camps too, but I just played a game and I don’t think they got one the whole time! The enemy AI got every freaking camp over and over again, and my useless team mates didn’t do a thing to stop them pushing lanes. I almost lost a game on BEGINNER because of how badly the AI is behaving. There is only so much you can do by yourself when the enemy team makes a wrecking ball and face rolls everything. My AI “team” was happy to ignore pings and just watch me die from a safe distance while they dance back and forth!
People have been complaining about this for awhile now, and I have yet to see a single response from Blizz. We get that you are trying to make the AI “improved” so that when someone leaves a PVP match the AI that fills in isn’t useless. But these changes have broken the game for people like myself who just want a nice relaxing AI game where we don’t have to deal with the toxic PVP environment. If you want to keep “improving” the AI for PVP games, fine. But in that case, you could at least code a separate AI system for AI players, so we could actually go back to enjoying the game! I used to love how the AI behaved before all the changes happened. Why can’t we just go back to that? Let the PVPers have their “improved” AI and the AI players can have the old AI that actually knew how to play!
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I just played a vs AI game (recruit, I think; playing with a friend new to the game) and can confirm that AI heroes rarely turn in gems. We almost lost because of it. Our Sonya had 75 gems at the end of the match, and one or two others had 20+.
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Also, I don’t think my teammates ever took a camp either.
Devs could use another round of specific feedback. This last patch made some positive improvements on how a group of enemy AI will behave when they realise they can overpower you or fight back in general.
But crucial issues still remain, friendly pinged bots will not properly assist with taking mercenary camps. They will wander around at short leash range and get stuck in the terrain repeating their follow command and interrupting it every few seconds with another command to assist, meaning they will not share mercenary inflicted damage or help auto attacking, aside from the odd AOE spell they will throw at a camp if you get lucky.
Playing against bots can to an extend be entertaining, but playing with one is not. I’m talking about disconnected players that turn the 4v5 into a 4v6. Please implement a command for bots to stay leashed in the spawn area until the real player is ready to take over.
The bots will never be up to par with human players and if they ever reach a point where they can be, players will just disconnect on purpose for increased chances of winning. Same bots could just as well be programmed to never miss a skill shot and even perfectly chain-coordinate their spell casting, but their mechanics don’t quite solve everything else.
If it were a FPS game, it could work, but this game has too many deciding factors other than simply killing your competition that have their priorities change from one moment to the next.
Adding some more findings:
Cursed Hollow:
- Ally AI will always drop everything and try to get a merc camp while a tribute is spawning. If more than 3 enemies approach the merc camp, all AI allies will leave, even if almost near completion. If the enemy steals a merc camp that was previously targeted by the ally AI, allies will no longer attempt to obtain the tribute even if the tribute is not guarded by the enemy.
- Ally AI rarely responds to pings to obtain/guard tribute. When they do respond, AI tries to proceed to the tribute but immediately leaves after touching the tribute circle.
Suicidal AI:
- Thrall, Tychus, Malthael AI observed dancing around enemy towers, taking potshots until death. *this behavior might not be exclusive to these characters, but I only noticed it on them. Other AI characters seem to keep clear of enemy tower range.
Is it just me?:
- Thrall and Tychus AI seem to like dodging Anna’s heal shots. Observed this behavior for both AI when they are in the clear, no enemies or (other) abilities headed their way. Is this behavior being copied from player data?
Credit where credit is due:
- Thanks Team for the improved enemy AI. I love the slight challenge and smarter interactions even in (relatively) relaxed AI games. It’s just that the ally AI - well, they’re not intelligent at all.
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