Originally posted by Yggdrasil:

Hi,

This is a letter to the Valve official about Dota2 bot scripts. If you are not interested in dota2 bots please feel free to stop reading.

As you know the bots supports in terms of default bots and APIs are out of date for a long time. As far as I can tell, no more new api support was introduced for bot scripts since 2018. And new patch updates for Dota2 kept breaking the experience for bot scripts. Below are the major issues with the current bot experience:

1. Most bot scripts can not be played in any remote servers. Only some specific scripts, seems only a few Valve selected scripts, can be played with remote servers, all other scripts can only work with local server.
   
   1. For example this script https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3246316298, doesn't work in remote server, it gets reverted to default bot script when played against remote server. The same happen to (almost) all other script that's created in the past few years, and old scripts that weren't so popular.
2. Lack of APIs for a set of new features:
   
   1. API for neutral item token options selection. Bot for now can only pick up neutral items but there is no way for bots to choose a specific neutral item out of the token.
      
   2. Facet selection. There is no way for bots to pick a facet.
      
      1. Some bots, in patch 7.37 and 7.37b even lost some their abilities due to the facet change where if no facet was selected, the relative ability won't exist in the bot's ability slot. Faceless void and life stealer need a hot fix for this bug.
3. Broken APIs from official website. Please update the docs as well! The website (https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Dota_Bot_Scripting) is just with too little info and even missing some APIs that are actually supported.
   
   1. GetAvoidanceZones. This api is too broken such that whenever it's called, the dota2 client directly crashed! There much be an fatal error in the game engine. This api is crucial to the bots ability to react on so many AOE damages. Can we improve the logic such that it's at least returning the visible zones?
      
   2. GetNearbyTrees doesn't return the trees created by heros like Nature's Prophet. In fact there is no way to get the trees created by heroes, so the bots cannot escape or do propery actions.
      
   3. Wisdom rune or any other new runes in future.
      
   4. Use Twin gates. The api simply doesn't work to use the hidden Twin gates ability.
      
   5. Use Lotus pools
      
   6. Visage Summon Familiars Ultimate is broken. The api `bot:Action_UseAbility` is making it alt-cast the spell instead of using it to spawn summons.
4. Some heroes do not inherit default functionality of the bot behavior/modes. I think what happened to those heroes was the official devs from Valve didn't add the layer of default modes for those heroes. This should be as simple as adding the hero names to a hero list or something. But those heroes didn't have that layer of modes added so they fallback to the real basic stub methods, which are just retuning really basic mechanics like go directly to a dumb target point.
   
   1. 'npc_dota_hero_muerta',
      
   2. 'npc_dota_hero_marci',
      
   3. 'npc_dota_hero_lone_druid',
      
   4. 'npc_dota_hero_primal_beast',
      
   5. 'npc_dota_hero_dark_willow',
      
   6. 'npc_dota_hero_elder_titan',
      
   7. 'npc_dota_hero_hoodwink',
      
   8. 'npc_dota_hero_wisp',
5. Missing modes
   
   1. we have a mode for going outpost or side shop, etc. but we do not have a mode for doing Tormentor.
6. Item stats do not apply properly. Sometimes when any heroes get a new item, the stats won't get added to the hero, and only gets added after the hero drops the item and pick up again. This might be a display issue but is annoying and can be problematic in some cases such as for Morphling's ability to shift properly.

In fact, we are looking for a better support for the scripts in all aspects. And want to know if Valve is ever going to improve the bot performance again.

The OpenAI-Five ( https://openai.com/index/openai-five/ ) was completed so many years ago, is there a date we will be able to play with similar ML AIs again? Or will there be a time Valve improves the default script empowered by the ML AIs and other developers can do further improvement later.