4 ms·

The relevant question is surely how much of the game is strategy, and how much is reaction time and twitch motor skills. I mean, "human vs AI" matchups are ost

The relevant question is surely how much of the game is strategy, and how much is reaction time and twitch motor skills. I mean, "human vs AI" matchups are ostensibly about strategy - machines already win at timing and twitch, there's nothing to test. But esports games aren't pure strategy, they all involve various amounts of timing, twitch skills, the ability to monitor lots of details at once, etc. Those are all things that AI opponents can (trivially) do perfectly, which gives the AI a huge advantage. It then follows that an AI player should be able to win even with an inferior strategy (which makes you wonder if these games are really suited to AI research in the first place?).

yvdriess 8y ago
Dota is a bit different from other esports such as SC2, in that it leans much more on game-sense and decision making than twitch skills[1]. Nevertheless, OpenAI dulled the reaction time artificially to be more human-like. It makes sense if the goal is to make a sophisticated strategic/gamesense AI, and not one that wins by just executing better. [1] For an entertaining case-study, check out Day[9]'s learns DotA2 series.
- fenomas 8y ago
  Oh, that's interesting about the reaction time. Not having played DotA I have no idea how big an issue it is (and I couldn't make heads or tails of the video :D ). It occurs to me that for a really even playing field, the humans should probably be allowed to make and install UI mods if they want to. E.g. if there's an advantage to using an ability precisely when your hit points hit 50% (or whatever), an AI can easily do that reliably so the human should probably be able to if they want to. (Of course, for heavily twitch games like Counterstrike, being allowed to use UI mods (i.e. aimbots) would break things. But then, I suppose that the extent to which UI mods break a game is more or less the extent to which that game favors twitch over strategy.)
  - yvdriess 8y ago
    Good point, and a hot topic over the years in the DotA community. The developer introduced some UI changes over the years that do exactly that: show every bit of information that an expert human or AI could realistically figure out and exploit. For some, it's dumbing down the game for a new audience, nullifying their hard work. I think the community consensus now is in favor: the game is complex enough that it does not need arbitrary skill-differentiation mechanics. For instance, high-level players used to memorize and practice the duration of some abilities (stuns), because you have an advantage if you can chain these perfectly. Valve introduced a visual progress bar that showed how much the disabled effect on a hero lasts, making it much easier to chain disables. They now also show how far 'towers' can shoot, but also which entity it is currently targeting (tower 'aggro' mechanics has its own special logic). They go so far as to show spawn boxes for neutral monsters.

yvdriess 8y ago

Dota is a bit different from other esports such as SC2, in that it leans much more on game-sense and decision making than twitch skills[1]. Nevertheless, OpenAI dulled the reaction time artificially to be more human-like. It makes sense if the goal is to make a sophisticated strategic/gamesense AI, and not one that wins by just executing better. [1] For an entertaining case-study, check out Day[9]'s learns DotA2 series.

fenomas 8y ago
Oh, that's interesting about the reaction time. Not having played DotA I have no idea how big an issue it is (and I couldn't make heads or tails of the video :D ). It occurs to me that for a really even playing field, the humans should probably be allowed to make and install UI mods if they want to. E.g. if there's an advantage to using an ability precisely when your hit points hit 50% (or whatever), an AI can easily do that reliably so the human should probably be able to if they want to. (Of course, for heavily twitch games like Counterstrike, being allowed to use UI mods (i.e. aimbots) would break things. But then, I suppose that the extent to which UI mods break a game is more or less the extent to which that game favors twitch over strategy.)
- yvdriess 8y ago
  Good point, and a hot topic over the years in the DotA community. The developer introduced some UI changes over the years that do exactly that: show every bit of information that an expert human or AI could realistically figure out and exploit. For some, it's dumbing down the game for a new audience, nullifying their hard work. I think the community consensus now is in favor: the game is complex enough that it does not need arbitrary skill-differentiation mechanics. For instance, high-level players used to memorize and practice the duration of some abilities (stuns), because you have an advantage if you can chain these perfectly. Valve introduced a visual progress bar that showed how much the disabled effect on a hero lasts, making it much easier to chain disables. They now also show how far 'towers' can shoot, but also which entity it is currently targeting (tower 'aggro' mechanics has its own special logic). They go so far as to show spawn boxes for neutral monsters.