About bot behaviour

[lauqerm]

For context, I am using fretbots and playing exclusively on the Radiant side as a position 3 or 4.

I'm not sure if these are features or bugs, so I will describe every behavior that I found odd or think should not be intended. I have had some great games, but more often than not, I experience some really frustrating moments. In short, sometimes it feels like those bots play in spite of the player, not with them.

• Top lane experience usually involves enemy bots skipping the first wave to focus on me at level 1. They chase me back to the T1 tower or kill me with blood grenade, while my lane partner continues farming as if nothing happened. I had a game as Abaddon where I literally struggled for a full minute against 3 bots in my own triangle with no help, but the moment I try to initiate a gank, 2-3 enemies TP instantly rain down on me. The reverse is also true, it is very hard to "persuade" the bot to gank unless we have more heroes, so very often my initiation gets wasted, and after that, the bot suddenly decides to go back and fight, leading to a lost fight.
• T2 defense is a nightmare, my teammates keep teleporting in front of the T2 directly into the jaws of 5 enemy bots. While the enemy bots stick together and essentially form a death ball, my teammates are very scattered. They seem to rarely agree on whether to defend or give up the tower, and so make the worst decision that is some does a yolo TP while others refuse to retreat, resulting in not only losing the tower but also going down 1-2 men. Enemy bots will occasionally go for Tormentor, but our team never does.
• Pushing can sometimes be a nightmare as well, as a simple T1 tower threatened elsewhere is enough for 1 or 2 bots to abandon the siege and TP back. The enemy team is very adept at utilizing Glyph so unless I play a hero with pushing power or get BoT early, it need 2-3 combat wins to even touch the barrack. While in contrast, every push from the enemy usually consists of 4-5 heroes who rarely give up unless their own barracks are under attack. Again, the number of heroes seems crucial, as bots (from both team) refuse to defense even with long range spells at hand. They just run around and watch the lane burn.
• The jungle farming experience is especially frustrating - the bot will try to contest with me every time they walk by and see that I am trying to clear a camp. I must either farm far away from their positions or waste spells to secure the last hit just to obtain the damn neutral item. Unlike everything mentioned above, this happens constantly. Maybe the bot thinks position 4 has no right to farm the jungle or something; I don't know.
• The way they utilize CC is also very frustrating, as they will try to cancel your casting animation. They basically wait for the last possible moment when your hero is casting a spell and chain CC into it (notoriously with Eul or Orchid), so you effectively extending your own disable. This min-maxing behavior is very petty and not human-like at all, and it doesn't help that bot games usually suffer from FPS issues due to all the calculations. So when you press the button and don't see your spells happening, it makes the game feel unresponsive and infuriating.
• A minor bug sometime occurs when support buys multiple of the same items (mostly recipes or drums of endurance).
• Some powerful spells can be wasted easily, such as a one-man Black Hole or Epicenter, especially on illusions. I appreciate it if the bot did not try to detect real heroes using methods like calculating damage taken, but it would be great if the bot could utilize these crucial skills better. I once used Tusk to bring my Enigma bot into a fight with three enemies, but the Enigma simply blinked away, leaving me to die in tears. It was quite an experience, to say the least.

Overall, I think the being able to influence the bot by pinging is greatly appreciated. Simple commands such as "go for this hero," "go for this objective," "go back", "defend this tower," and "help (me)," etc... could significantly enhance the experience. Hoping the bot can keep developing and Valve's update does not fk this up.