[The "What"] AIs in ladder - season 2

ThomasHiatt

No cheating AI should ever be in ladder and the default AI are very bad and probably should not be in ladder, but low rated players are just as good at creating bad habits as the default AI, so they could be fine too really. Modern FAF AI are pretty good and I don't think any hard rating limit should be implemented, let the rating system do it's job and place them where they belong.

Sladow-Noob

Referring to the 'Modern FAF AI are pretty good'

Problem is that those AIs don't react to certain things. E.g. I can promise you every trainee I got that played actively against AI has the habits of spamming millions of stationary turrets everywhere cuz the normal AI doesn't give a shit. It'll still send the same amount of bombers to the same places.
With M27 afaik those problems are at least fixed, but then everyone has to download the mods.

Fichom

I didn't make this clear (yet) - most of those who are proponents of adding AI, are suggesting it with the core idea being that AI will be only used to fill up the queue if there are no players to match up against.

I'll be going into more details of how (not that it's not a "How" discussion, "How" only related to how it will work under the hood) those could be regulated - a quick note for those pondering it: allow only when there are no appropriately-rated players to fill the queue, and even then, maybe give priority to off-rated players than to AI, depending on the scenario.

The only idea that doesn't fit the above is the idea to "have new ladder players have a couple of first games vs AI", which sounds reasonable.

Also yeah, most people would argue that cheat-modifiers for AIs are a no-no, and that weak AIs are not worth adding (but that is beyond the scope of what we could affect, things like which AI to include and which not to would probably be decided by existing team that take care of the ladder happenings and other game-related technicalities).

I'll also be adding a more detail explanation (in a latter message, as my own point of views, as to not sully the 'Log' post) why technically adding even the most braindead AI wouldn't really matter whatsoever - rating related or "bad habits" related, it doesn't actually matter at all - but again, I want to first complete the Log message (I'm not doing it non-stop, and I ain't paid to do it, so you'll have to be patient).

Tomma

Actually integrating better ais into game is pretty pog, i dont think you need rating system for that, but addidng easy to acces option to play vs like m27/swarm is great for newer players i think. Like currently you have to download ai mod (and some players dont even know they exist), create custom game etc. I think its a bit inaccesible. Adding like vs ai button somewhere wouldnt hurt and will improve new players experience.

Sladow-Noob

I'm with Tomma. If we're talking about those types of AIs.. The bad habits are still there, but not as big and might be outweighted by getting crushed over time due to wrong investments.
Priorisations in the Queue also fixes my other concern.

We'd need a lot of newbies playing 1v1s against those AIs though so we can analyse the games and see where the weakpoints are in general and what ""feelings""/impressions the newbies have

Sladow-Noob

@fichom said in [The "What"] AIs in ladder - season 2:

so you'll have to be patient

weak. I'm procrastinating as well atm, you should do the same and prioritise discussions with randoms on the FAF forum!

arma473

Another reason to add AIs to the ladder is to increase interest in FAF. Part of the message would be: "If you develop your own AI, we might put it into the ladder." That could be a strong incentive to someone with talent to work on FAF AIs.

(Edit: I'm not suggesting that we LACK people with talent. I'm just talking about bringing on MORE people.)

maudlin27

I'd be happy with any of options 2-4 at a high level.

Thoughts on potential options
My preferred solution would probably be non-cheating AI being matched with people who join the 1v1 queue and fail to find a game after a couple of cycles, with an option for people to opt out. Players would only get matched with an AI within a certain rating range (say +/- 300 of that AI's rating), and also would only be matched if their last game (or last x games) was against a human. New players would also fight against an AI as one of their initial 'rating assessment' games (to hopefully give a better new player experience to the 1-sided initial games that can happen with the current system). I'm guessing this falls into option 2.1.

A variation on the options is to also have the AI implementation done temporarily (i.e. for the option 2s, you could have a week each month or quarter where AI gets added to the pool, a bit like how mapgen was featured for a week).

If option 4 was done (separate ladder) then I'd prefer it to have both AI and AiX; if it was done for just 1v1s against the AI then it could be done as a 'AI Challenge' button since a game could be created as soon as you click on it, with the goal of trying to get the highest possible rating. While the rating given from this wouldn't be as useful as under options 2-3 it'd still be of some value.

Potential benefits
As to some of the potential benefits I can think of initially from these options (which will vary depending on the option):

Rating for AIs [options 2-3, and to a lesser extent 4] - this helps people select the appropraite AI for their skill level in custom games, and gives a better sense of their own skill level if they beat said AI. It also helps the AI developer get a sense of how strong their AI is and incentivises them to improve the AI further (in order to improve their AI's rating).
Better assessment of new player ratings [options 2-3] - with appropriately rated AIs, it should be possible to give a better 'new player experience', by having new players fight an AI in one of their initial matches which is likely to provide a gentler introduction than being crushed by a much higher rank
Decreased matchmaker wait times [options 2-3] - allowing AI to play to some extent effectively means more 'players' are playing matchmaker at once, so you wait less time to find a game.
Potentially increased matchmaker popularity [options 2-4] - PvE is very popular on FAF. Depending on how the AI was implemented, it could lead to more people who would normally only play PvE trying out PvP (note that it's also possible for the reverse effect)
Improved AI developer feedback [options 2-4] - AI devs would be able to look at replays against their AI to see how their AI performs and identify improvements to make, resulting in better AI for FAF.
Improved PvE experience [Option 4] - I suspect many players aren't even aware of the various custom AI available in FAF and assume that the best AI we have is the Sorian adaptive AI. A queue that highlights the different AI with appropriate settings could give an easy way for particularly new players to jump in and play a PvE game without needing to decide on an AI or map. Meanwhile having AiX featured would allow PvE players to compete with each other at who can do the best against AI (since each AiX would have a rating, in turn allowing people doing this option to try and gain the highest rating by beating the highest AiX modifiers), and in turn give the AI developers clearer examples of flaws in their AI to be improved.

Potential disadvantages
There are also potential drawbacks from each of the options. The main ones I'd see are:

Time and complexity of implementation - I dont know enough about what would be involved to say which one would be easier/harder. All options would I expect require a significant amount of time though.
Potentially decreased PvP playerbase [more of a risk with option 4] - i.e. with a separate queue there's the risk people who would have queued for PvP 1v1 queue for PvE instead
People being forced to play AI when queuing for PVP [option 2-3, depending on implementation] - if there's no opt in/out option for playing against an AI then you could end up with someone who doesnt want to fight an AI getting a game against an AI (that they then lose rating for if they quit rather than playing)
Increased wait time for people who opt out of AI games [option 2] - e.g. player A joins the queue, and gets matched with an AI. 10 seconds later player B joins the queue. With no AI they'd have been matched with player A, but now they dont get matched. However it's debatable if in aggregate this would result in an increased wait time (if player A would have given up on queuing then the AI could result in more people queuing over time, meaning both players benefit)

Sladow-Noob

I especially like the "AI challenge"-idea.. Might give players a motivation to have a goal instead of just 'getting better', getting crushed by AI also isn't as frustrating as against real players, especially cuz some leave rude comments on the way.
For testing I also fully support the idea with "AI ladder-week".

Deribus

I just want to state that this is in the very early discussion phase. Development and matchmaking teams are still talking about how it would be implemented, and whether it would be a good idea at all.

thecore

I think if the AI was a self learning neural network and playing in ladder games helped it improve then that would be very cool. The google AI for starcraft did something similar in their ladder games.

Katharsas

I have expressed my opinion on this topic in a separate thread, that is hopefully more abstract level (and more about custom games) than this thread:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/5557/faf-for-casual-players

I generally don't think that queues as we have them for TMM are a good fit for PvE in general. They would have to substantially change to be a good fit, as described in that thread. I think that AIs in queues are a potential good way to asses their rating, that's it, and we should concentrate on that.

A proper coop queue meant for PvE players would at the very least need difficulty selection, so id argue custom games are better suited anyways, unless we just want to implement a way to make finding coop partners easier.

Deribus

@thecore said in [The "What"] AIs in ladder - season 2:

I think if the AI was a self learning neural network and playing in ladder games helped it improve then that would be very cool. The google AI for starcraft did something similar in their ladder games.

I agree it would be very cool. If Google wants to provide us with their bleeding edge AI tech worth millions of dollars as well as the servers to run it all for free I don't think anyone would complain.

Caliber

I like this idea. If for instance if your not matching after a few failed attempts or waiting a long time there could be an option, "would you like to play against AI" if yes instant game in an ideal situation.

But would you be playing with Ai woven into real teams or a full team of Ai vs a full team of players?

HOSCHMOSCH

if u want to play and no one is searching ladder then open a game and play the ai. The only reason something like ladder exist is to get in competion with other human beings.