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[frostshotgg]

If that song isn't space jam you've made a terrible mistake with your life and should strongly consider taking yourself into a medical facility for reeducation.

[Astral]

Did a solo match with a Yi (who fed, and bitched) as a jungle Shyvanna, with our Ezreal doing fairly well solo bot. Swain mid, Yi and Fizz top.

They had Galio. I don't like Galio now. Along with Karthus (occasional free moving invincibility, and a triangle wall), Zyra (who gets free plants popping up next to nearby champions), Amumu (whose ultimate is now roughly 75% larger an AoE, and transfers his crying buff to creeps, making ganks bottom painful for a while), and Malzahar (AoE now affects 7 areas total, making it much larger overall).

Still managed to go 12-1-12 with Shyvanna despite not having played a jungler (or any League games) in a few months. Just built tanky while the rest of my guys did things, and it ended with Fizz and Ezreal pushing through bot lane as their entire team was on our doorstep.

Bots are dumb, even if they get overpowered teamfight abilities.

[snelg]

Bots are dumb, even if they get overpowered teamfight abilities.

This sums up my experience so far as well. They've made some improvements since last I played (bots avoid some skillshots and attack wards under towers) but in the end they still hang around the one side of the map while losing 3 turrets on the other.

The doom bots were way more fun than the regular ones at least. I especially liked seeing people chase after Galio or getting jumped by Fiddlesticks when low hp and teleporting back. Might have to play a few more games to see what they've done with some of the other characters.

[Astral]

The other thing I noticed about the doom bots was that they all tend to be VERY AP heavy. All those extra skills don't do much if you end up reducing their damage by 75%.

[frostshotgg]

That's a direct product of the two facts that: A, ranged damage characters have skills that are very, very difficult to make interesting like Lux bindings EVERYWHERE, and B, bots are hard to make. They're even harder for the two most complicated roles to play, ranged AD and jungler. Junglers require ridiculously complex decision making that while programmable, would be impossible to get clean and well done. Ranged ADs on the other hand are basically impossible to get the degree of skill that even a mid-gold ad main has. Every single move they make is a turn in a game of 4D speed chess with 10 players and 8 of them are out to get you and a lot more possible moves.

[Jopax]

Beat level five!

Took me three tries, first two were kinda lost because we had people who seemed like they were playing the mode for the first time. Taking really terrible picks like Elise. Third game everything kinda came together, we had Ziggs, Vayne, Jayce, Sivir (me) and Kayle. So tons of pushing ability and a good amount of poke. I think the bots having a somewhat terrible comp helped a bit, with Cho, Blitz, Galio, Amumu and Karthus, so they were relatively easy to poke and push around. They did pressure us quite a bit and pushed in most of our lanes, but having teleport on four champs really helps, especially if one would push, get jumped on by the bots and then run away, drawing them away from their base, only to have someone else TP on a ward he left and continue the pushing effort.

We won with one Nexus turret standing I think, which was pretty awesome

[Arcvasti]

I was just playing Lissandra, because she's awesome. And then I hear one of her lines: "It is inevitable".

0_0 SHE KNOWS.

[penguinofhonor]

That's a direct product of the two facts that: A, ranged damage characters have skills that are very, very difficult to make interesting like Lux bindings EVERYWHERE, and B, bots are hard to make. They're even harder for the two most complicated roles to play, ranged AD and jungler. Junglers require ridiculously complex decision making that while programmable, would be impossible to get clean and well done. Ranged ADs on the other hand are basically impossible to get the degree of skill that even a mid-gold ad main has. Every single move they make is a turn in a game of 4D speed chess with 10 players and 8 of them are out to get you and a lot more possible moves.

Now I'm imagining League of Legends in 2024. Seven more champs have been added to the game (two more in 2014, two in 2015, one in 2016, one in 2018, and one in 2022), and replays have been out for two or three years. There is a 6300RP skin tier containing one Teemo skin that has had as much work put into it as a smaller AAA video game. As another champion isn't expected for at least five or six years, the community's attention has turned to non-champion releases. The newest one is... SMART BOTS: FINALLY ACTING LIKE HUMANS FOR REAL.

The bots have tapped into the full power of Lyte's infinite player data matrix and now know everything about you. Caitlyn Bot processes your replays during the load screen and uses the information to predict your moves and kite perfectly. Annie bot has access to the tribunal and knows exactly what kind of trolling pisses you off the most easily. The bots can and will comment on your terrible match history and low win rate with whatever champion you're using. They can report you when you rage back and will repeatedly type "reported" in chat whenever they're thinking about doing so. Lux bot has analyzed countless Lux strategies and has determined that spamming /l is optimal, causing win rates against Lux Bot to drop by 10%. Several bots have learned to jungle, but the rest have learned to insult their jungler and will do so in all chat. They will also insult your jungler.

Co-Op players will flee to normals to escape the toxicity. Nobody will appreciate the irony.

[Skyrunner]

Actually, spamming T is the optimal strategy because T is both accessible and bound to Laugh for me. /l means you need to actually open your chat screen.

[Frumple]

Silly PoH. At that point, the normals will be nothing but bots playing against each other and spectators unable to tell that anything has changed. Attempting to play a normal match just stealth moves you into a co-op game. It will be another decade before anyone notices anything is amiss, and by that point the LoL/DotA/HoN/<Every other AoS knockoff on the market> merger will have made the entire charade pointless.

[Putnam]

Okay, jesus christ, is every single FPS a 3D monster maze knock-off, every platformer a Pitfall knockoff, ever shooter a Space Invaders knockoff, every RTS a Herzog Zwei knockoff, every fighting game a Street Fighter 2 knockoff? Half-Life 2 still runs on what can be traced back to the Quake engine, is it a goddamn Quake knock-off?

[SalmonGod]

The MOBA genre is a bit more lacking in variation than all your other examples... just a bit...

[Putnam]

The MOBA genre is a bit more lacking in variation than all your other examples... just a bit...

You really meaning to tell me that there's more difference between, say, Starcraft and Star Wars: Empire at War than in Dota 2 and League of Legends?

The map may be nearly identical, but that's LoL's problem, not the genre's. HoN really shouldn't be considered either because its entire premise is "Dota knock-off".

[Cthulhu]

Speaking of toxic bots, I want a Bronze 5 featured game mode.

No wards, trinkets can be purchased but can't be used.  Large jungle creeps have a crit chance that increases against lower health targets for random executes.  Armor and MR items are replaced with Warmog, and attack speed items are replaced with Runaan.  Also no pinging and no ally vision.  Creeps below 15% health have a chance to ignore autoattacks to ensure everyone misses easy cs.  Inhibs and nexus turrets are invincible while baron and dragon are up.

[Frumple]

The MOBA genre is a bit more lacking in variation than all your other examples... just a bit...

You really meaning to tell me that there's more difference between, say, Starcraft and Star Wars: Empire at War than in Dota 2 and League of Legends?

Having actually played all four of those a fair amount, I'd have to say quite notably so, yes. You're looking at a degree of difference that's closer to that between Age of Empires and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Seriously, outside some ease of use/mechanical shifts (that are honestly more minor than not), there's not really a meaningful difference between the two games. They're considerably more same than different.

The map may be nearly identical, but that's LoL's problem, not the genre's. HoN really shouldn't be considered either because its entire premise is "Dota knock-off".

It really is the genre's at this point. DotA was stuck up the arse of the AoS style in general (Because yes, there were dozens when it came out nearly identical to it, and that never really changed through its entire bloody lifespan), and pretty close to everything that's come after has been pretty explicitly stuck up DotA's. There was more variation in actual AoS-style WC3 custom maps than the commercial stuff, insofar as I've been able to tell.

I mean, cheers to the ones that are actually trying something vaguely different (Which is, like, awesomenauts. S'been all I've really noticed. Starvoid, I think, looked like it was trying something a little different with a squad mechanic but I can't get it to run so *shrugs*), but pretty much the entire genre to date, particularly among the ones that have gone some variation of commercial, boil largely down to the exact bloody same two sides/three lanes (sometimes they go to two or four! It's amazing.)/small waves/jungle/almost monomaniacal focus on tactical level strategy/etc. formula. The genre definitely has a problem in regards to design similarity.

I mean, it's enjoyable enough, but the style has fossilized since DotA rose to popularity. Badly.