DISCUSSION: Bot skill in SVN

[arand]

This was brought up in a discussion on IRC, and there seemed to be a general opinion that the overall bot skill in the current SVN is too high. With the note that the default should be beginner-friendly rather than challenging for experienced players.

I am compared to others a rather bad player, partly because I don't play much at all, but I do consider myself distinctly better than beginner players.
My personal impressions (based on minimal testing with bots on bath) on current bot skill in SVN is this:

• Normal deathmatch is comfortable for me, and I win somewhat easily
• Normal instagib is quite challenging, but I win if I try hard
• Coop-deathmatch is super-hard and it feels almost impossible to win (bot team get about twice my points)
• Coop-instagib likewise seems almost impossible (~twice my points again)

Again note that I am not a good player compared to many others, so the impressions are subjective to that.

So, I think:

• The people playing against bots are more likely to be beginners, and in particular when you test the game for the first time, since many will go for offline practice in that case.
• The current bot skill level is set too high for beginner players, and that this might put some people off since it gives the impression of being a very hard game.
  
  • Overall bot skill could be lowered to be more beginner friendly?
• The bot skill in coop compared to other modes is very high, and this high skill step feels strange.
  
  • Bot skill in coop could be lowered to feel closer to that of normal bots (unless this is meant to be a very hard mutator)?

On this note, it might also be a good idea to expose (in the options/profile?) some way to set the bot difficulty, since it's quite a useful thing to adjust, in particular if the bot skill by default is going to be this high, it would be nice for beginners to be able to find some way to lower it?

For reference the values in 1.3.1 were (second last value is default)

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, botskillmin, 1, 50, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, botskillmax, 1, 75, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, coopskillmin, 1, 75, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, coopskillmax, 1, 95, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, enemyskillmin, 1, 65, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, enemyskillmax, 1, 85, 101);


and the values now in SVN are

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, botskillmin, 1, 75, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, botskillmax, 1, 85, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, coopskillmin, 1, 85, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, coopskillmax, 1, 95, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, enemyskillmin, 1, 80, 101);
src/game/vars.h:GVAR(0, enemyskillmax, 1, 90, 101);

The bot skill is set to a random value between the min and the max value, for each bot.

[Ulukai]

I agree that RE needs some bot skill level options so it can be pleasant to play for beginning, average and experienced players. The way to enter min and max values as it was done in BF was nice to me. But you could also place some buttons (easy - medium - hard - suicide) with the min and max levels baked in. This would not be hard at all, but would fit everyone's taste.

[Dratz-_C]

arand, Ulukai,
Assuming the botskill B# is shown and changed in the profile (B0neutraldefault, B1 easy [1-25], B2 medium [26-50], B3 difficult [50-75], B5 suicide [76-100]), online servers could set the botskill by ignoring playersB0; summing playersB1, playersB2, playerspB3, playersB4, and playersB5; then dividing by the # players with botskill values 1...5. If I calculated correctly, that should be the botskill level most people want. A more human version of the B curve could be more like 1-50, 51-75, 76-88, 89-100.
Cheers

[riidom]

One thing I don't like, is that the botskill is usually in a range of 20, be it 40-60 or 80-100, what makes the bots rather uniform.
I'd prefer if the botskill can always go from 1-101, but you specify one value, and that a bot will have a skill close to this value is more likely than a skill far away from it. I bet this thing has a name already in the world of maths.
This way you would play with a few noobbots, a few killerbots, but the mass of them would be roughly at the skillvalue you want them to be. Basically, more like when you play online.

[ballist1c]

I like riidom's idea the best ^^


edit: grammarfail @ 10 am

[arand]

One thing I don't like, is that the botskill is usually in a range of 20, be it 40-60 or 80-100, what makes the bots rather uniform.
I'd prefer if the botskill can always go from 1-101, but you specify one value, and that a bot will have a skill close to this value is more likely than a skill far away from it. I bet this thing has a name already in the world of maths.
This way you would play with a few noobbots, a few killerbots, but the mass of them would be roughly at the skillvalue you want them to be. Basically, more like when you play online.

Kind of a normal/gaussing distribution then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution though it would need to be mangled to fit the range...
That's interesting concept, and it would simplify the variables (but complicate the actual code though..). I'm not sure how much it would be noticeable though, and maybe it would still need some tweks to avoid very odd skill settings (cutting outliers).

So there's a lot of "We should have fancy bot skill settings" (which I also agree would be nice).

But what do you think the default should be? And is it too high at the moment in svn?

[riidom]

Oh yes, I lost the original question out of eye a little. It is hard to answer, when I play offline matches, I usually set bots higher than defaults. The problem is, we would need to ask mainly the persons that don't show up here. I have some auto-fetching of data in mind now, that collects results of player standings and skills of participating bots and sends them online for statistic issues, but that is kind of over the top, I assume.

I do like the idea of baking botskills in some easy, normal, hard, ultra terms, and make these obvious to change in offline play. Maybe a message displayed somewhere on the scoreboard (only in offline play) like "press [..] to alter bot difficulty". Also, save this as default in some config, so it doesnt need to be done on each start.
I believe, then the question of initial botskills wouldn't be that urgent anymore, since everyone can adjust theirselves easily.