One example.. of course, you goto keep it civil. No pro players dunking on the mom&pop gamers who just want to have 5mins of fun on a tablet.
Like if all the humans use the AK because it’s super over powered, and your optimization algorithm sets the AK damage to 0; what are your “human” bots going to do? Because all the training data says to use the AK.
This approach only makes sense if you’re evaluating bot-optimal play outcomes.
It also takes away a lot of the design thinking behind balance. You probably don’t want to nerf the AK. You probably want to buff counterplay options (guns are not a great example but still)
There is precedent in Maia Chess, which does a good job of mimicking human chess players at various ELO ratings. Of course, it's a lot more difficult to extrapolate to games with significantly more state/movesets, but I imagine that this space will be further explored in the near future.
> And if you’re going to be optimizing game parameters that means you’re assuming that either the AI doesn’t change its behaviors even though the game is different or you’re assuming that humans will adapts in the same way the bots do.
This could be addressed by including the game parameters of interest (what map, what character, the weapon stats at time of gameplay, etc.) in the input to the training data.
> It also takes away a lot of the design thinking behind balance. You probably don’t want to nerf the AK. You probably want to buff counterplay options (guns are not a great example but still)
Tool-assisted QA is nothing new. Using AI is a newer iteration of the concept. You still have to interpret the results it gives and make decisions based on that. The design thinking isn't replaced, it's augmented with additional insights. Are those insights potentially inaccurate? Sure, but you can account for that with sanity checks/manual intervention/play testing.
There’s nothing wrong with using bots in play test data but you shouldn’t ever expect an optimization algorithm to generate fun balanced game mechanic stats based on their behaviors by tweaking things until the bots are evenly matched.
You’re making this up. Chess is not solved.
It’s also largely irrelevant to my point.
I think it is highly likely that perfect play results in a tie for both sides.
Saying black can at best tie against perfect play is not the same thing as saying both players can at best tie when facing perfect play.
I used to work on F2P games, and you have to balance things. As nice as it would be to ignore the loudmouths, unless you can guarantee that no one else is listening to them either, which you can't, you'll have to cater to them somewhat to pacify them.
You need the power fantasy of being strongest characters and the underdog tale of winning against the strongest characters as a less meta one.