Using bots to overcome quitting issues

[RedStarRocket91]

Two of the most popular topics of discussion concern how to deal with players quitting mid-game, and the inclusion of AI-controlled players or 'bots' in multiplayer in future editions of Halo.

 

The latter is generally quite straightforward. Most people are quite receptive to the idea: it's not something which has to be included as part of a match (unlike, say, weapon balance or respawn rules) and provides more gameplay options, especially for those without Xbox Live Gold or those who have poor internet connections and thus can't participate in Matchmaking. The most common counter-argument to this is that it would require a lot of programming time and disc space to implement properly - too much, in fact, to be worth investing in something that isn't likely to be used very heavily.

 

The first issue, meanwhile, is more complex. While nobody likes quitters, there just doesn't seem to be any effective way of dealing with them. Some players insist that the only way of ensuring people finish their games is increasingly draconian penalties for failing to do so, with temporary bans both on earning credits and playing games, loss of experience, or even 'sin bins' in which quitters are forced to play against other people who quit regularly. A lot of people don't like this idea, as it doesn't allow for real life getting in the way, unstable internet connections, or other personal issues. A second suggestion is a 'drop-in/out' system, whereby players can join a game already in progress provided there is an empty slot. This too has its issues, as it could lead to unbalanced teams, slow matchmaking times, or a reduction in the skill gap so that players shoehorned in would never be much better or worse than the other players in the game.

 

So, I had an idea that could solve both of these problems. What if, when a player quit during a game in Matchmaking, they were replaced by a bot?

 

The biggest issue with this is making sure the teams remain balanced. If a fantastic player quits and is replaced by a weak bot, then that might unbalance the game. Equally, if there are two teams of fairly weak players and one quits, only to be replaced by what is literally a killing machine, then the same problem occurs. What's needed is a system that ensures the new player fits right in, and just setting them automatically to 'Normal' or 'Legendary' difficulty or whatever clearly isn't going to work. Step forward, BPR.

 

In Reach, every player has an associated BPR (Battle Proficiency Rating) out of 100. This, it seems, plays a big role in determining teams, which is why we so regularly see three Warrant Officers and a Recruit matched up against Two Generals, a Brigadier, and an Inheritor: based on credit rank alone, this match is clearly insane. However if one were to examine the BPRs of all players involved, they might discover that the teams were in fact roughly equal.

 

So how does this apply to bots? Well, this is where we start having to use maths.

 

It's Team Slayer, four on four. Red Team's players have BPRs of 65, 65, 50, and 30, giving Red Team a total BPR of 210. Blue Team's players are 70, 50, 50, and 40, giving them the same number of points. Altogether, there are 420 points of BPR in the game.

 

Now, player one on Blue Team quits. Now there are 350 total BPR points in the game. The game has two options here: it could simply give the replacement bot a BPR of 70, keeping the teams perfectly balanced. However, this bot would have a pretty big advantage over two members of Red Team, which arguably leads to the 'killing machine' problem outlined earlier. An alternative solution would be to calculate the average BPR and equip it with that. In this case, there are seven remaining human players, meaning that the average BPR is 50. So while Blue Team is now actually slightly weaker than Red Team, overall the bot is much better balanced against the skill of the other players.

 

This also allows the game to better adapt to changing game conditions. Let's assume players three and four from Red Team also quit. There are now five human players, with a total BPR of 270, giving an average BPR of 54. While the new bots replacing them will have a BPR of 54, the existing bot on Blue Team's BPR will also raise from 50 to 54. Though Blue Team now has a big advantage in total BPR, overall the human players are now facing bots much closer to their own skill level, making individual fights fairer.

 

And how would BPR affect the behaviour of the bots? Well, health, damage, and movement speed would be identical. However, team coordination, weapon use, and power weapon deployment would all differ. A bot with a BPR of 30 might wildly spam the trigger at long range, run around by themselves, and ignore power weapons or use them poorly, while a bot with a BPR of 100 would fire their weapons at almost the perfect speed for their range of engagement (spamming up close, pacing at distance), actively seek out power weapons and use them effectively, and stick close to their teammates, coordinating fire on targets and making use of more appropriate weapon types, such as headshot-capable guns and plasma weapons when around teammates.

 

I see this as a win for everyone. People have the option to play games with bots if they wish, and can customise them to be as hard or easy as they prefer; teams never need to worry about the disadvantages of having a man down or lacking targets when facing a single, incredibly strong opponent; and the skill gap does not need to be reduced in order to keep teams balanced due to the random skill level of players who join mid-game. Obviously, this would be incredibly reliant on accurately reflecting player skill levels through BPR (or whatever equivalent system is in place), but provided this could be done, I see it as a much better alternative to other forms of dealing with quitting and a lack of fun multiplayer for offline players.

 

Feedback is much appreciated!

[Zuko 'Zarhamee]

Is it possible to make bots that could do that? At best the Xbox-controlled allies that we play with during campaign have been useless, at worst they've actually been harmful to the player. If it's possible, though, I'm all for it.

[RedStarRocket91]

Is it possible to make bots that could do that? At best the Xbox-controlled allies that we play with during campaign have been useless, at worst they've actually been harmful to the player. If it's possible, though, I'm all for it.

 

I'm sure it can be done, after all they were able to get them to work on console at least as far back as the PS2. Maybe they could use the campaign Marine AI in the rare cases where BPR hit 0?

[Wheatley]

Im all for it, cause quitters make me peeved!

[The Director]

I could use this system to boost my w/l ratio rather easily. Have a two player splitscreen (or more, if you'd rather) using borrowed gamertags from my friends who have high BPRs, then sign them out one by one so it looks like they all quit. Then, I would have AI's on my team who could aim faster than most humans and fire at a rate of speed that's unbelievable. Another way to do this is to just have my friends play with me and quit out at the beginning of the games, which would prevent me from getting quit banned. Then, while my AI partners are spawn killing the enemy team, I can scoop up the power weapons and possibly get a perfection.

[Archangel Tyrael]

I've played gears quite a lot, BOTS hurt the team more than you think. In Team death match it's free kills for the other team. They bots just go out in the open and just get bodied (shotguned close ranged and blown to many pieces). They are more of a problem then they are a help. They tend to get in your way lots too. If they do add bots, they need to be very hard, otherwise their just a free kill, that is all.

[Drizzy_Dan]

This is a great idea. If they could set it so that the bot that takes over has the same BPR as the quitting player, then it'd be great. However, this takes out the 'luck factor' that humans carry. I'm sure you know what I mean when I say this, like when a player decides to take a chance and do something risky and it works out of sheer luck like a no scope across the map when they have no shield just to gain the lead. The bot would not act exactly like the human player did. So there are good things and there are of course with all ideas, some negative aspects. Very well thought out plan though RedStar, I wouldn't mind seeing this in multiplayer.

[Absolute Dog]

Red you seem to never fail to offer quality, well thought out and original OP's. I have never personally been a fan of bot replacement of players in online match making. The reason is that a bot would most likely play to a statistical standard of the player he is replacing, assumably a perfect representation. Humans are, well humans. We get distracted by something in our gaming location. We get frustrated and have bad streaks, forget to replace low batteries, girl friend/boy friend walks in the room and tickles you, etc, etc. One current example I can use is Full House Poker were I have invested a very large sum of my winnings into a game, player lags out or quits, now I am playing a bot. Personally I play MM for the tactile experience of matching up against other players from around the world and seeing what comes out in the wash. I may get out BR'd in a slayer game, but know that forcing another player at a critical time of the match, weakening his shields or forcing him out into a more vulnerable position for team mates attack which may give us a tactical advantage in that part of the map or acquire the desired power weapon from their grasp. I don't see a bot being able to have that "intuition". Players coordinate attacks using a wide variety of tactics and having a bot doing it's own thing may be worse than being a player down, which is not always a disadvantage.

 

I am fine with the "Submit Player Review" feature to help ensure limited chances of being paired with said player with the possible addition of allowing a player to have more than one bad "Player Review" be submitted on them by a player if repeatedly matched with them. This would, after say 3 bad reviews, guarantee never being teamed with them again. Eventually the quitters would end up being paired with each other depending on the overall number of quitting reviews.

 

On a side note, bots in custom games would be a great way to train, especially if somewhat programmable. Setting them up for slayer or skirmish and testing your personal skill or teams tactics would be a great advancement in gaming. Using bots to test forged maps for and weaknesses, playability in general or for determining shooting lines would be a great resource to a forger. Imagine testing a map segment for feasibility before committing hours of forge time.

[SatanicBagels]

Bots may be able to aim faster and shoot quicker than any human in existence... but they don't have the decision making ability and ability to work as a team that humans will have.

 

The problem with bots is that no matter how in depth the decision tree is it is still a system of branches unlike human thought process.

 

In my opinion bots will never be a suitable replacement for humans in video games.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In response to Absolute Dog's comment above, He raised a very interesting point. The prospect of playing your forge maps against bots to test for flaws is a near perfect scenario. While I doubt this would be included in Halo 4 this should strongly be considered for later Halo games.

[VivaLebowski]

This would be a terrible idea, even moreso now that we have drop in matches thus making it unnecassary to even have them in the first place...but even if drop ins weren't happening, bot AI would inevitably suck. If 343 could rig them up for customs that would be cool, but matchmaking? No way in hell.

[Count Quacula]

I know this is done in Counter Strike, I think it would be worth implementing to see how well it worked.

 

To the Director, if you just had your teammates with high BPRs leave, the game wouldn't give you bots that were ungodly in comparison to your friends, it would defeat the purpose of your friends leaving. And if you signed in guests and signed them out mid-game, even if you weren't kicked out of the game, you would still have been matched up against players with BPRs at the same level as the gamertags you signed out.

 

But I am quite skeptical of this as well, so if they did put this in the game, I would think that they should probably make a separate playlist for it, and maybe adding it to other playlists later on if it proved successful. I would also like to see a gametype similar to Black Ops' Combat Training, where you can play against bots. I think it could be great for warming up. Just realized Absolute Dog said the same thing, I'm still leaving it in my post though.

[DoctorB77]

I am sorry. I thinly it is a lovely idea but it would be very hard to make AIs that can play against the best players in halo. There would be so many complaints that 343 would have to take it down anyway.

 

I do think that they should use your system but put in players who are searching which have a close BPR to the average.

[drunknmasta323]

This is actually not as difficult to program as everyone thinks. a lot of the "fixes" and ideas i have seen on this forum for tournaments and such are just programming that has been done on sports games for decades. Here's how you create the bots decision tree.

 

1) a bot can only be possible for a player who has played and finished a certain number of games

2) the server takes tendency statistics for all gamertags and posts these on their waypoint profile i.e. percentage of time a player uses a precision weapon without scope, percentage of time squatting, percentage of time using armor (armor lock, sprint, jet pack), percentage of time player uses power weapons, percentage of time player throws grenades.

3) you take all these percentages to create the bot's decision tree. if the player trends toward using power weapons 60% of all their games, then when a bot runs over a power weapon, it will pick it up and use it 3 out of the 5 times it runs over a power weapon. if the player uses dmr and pistols with scope, then the bot's initial fire will compensate for zooming in. also, the player's percentage of head shots makes the bot hit more accurately or not.

 

having bots is a good idea, but it does take up a lot of memory to implement as well as changing the way they look at stats on halo, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. i wouldn't mind knowing what i tend to do when i play SWAT vs when i play Team Slayer or FFA. it also would help people who might want to game the system. in order to create a gamertag with a great bot, the person would have to play a certain way with that gamertag for a large number of games to get their bot to play the way they want it to. Halo definitely needs to reassess what stats they focus on. Whenever I get on waypoint, i could care less what stats they have for me except BPR, wins and losses. whatever weapons i used are based on the map, game type and availability at time of spawn. if i knew those stats, it would help me to try something different on similar game types and maps.

[ςHϵΑƨϵMΩηεTΞr]

Really good idea hope they put it in future halo games

[EliteSniper]

Quitters won't be a problem in Halo 4 as there is in-game join, but i like the idea.

[Mr Biggles]

this is a great idea, love it redstar

[The Director]

To the Director, if you just had your teammates with high BPRs leave, the game wouldn't give you bots that were ungodly in comparison to your friends, it would defeat the purpose of your friends leaving. And if you signed in guests and signed them out mid-game, even if you weren't kicked out of the game, you would still have been matched up against players with BPRs at the same level as the gamertags you signed out.

You are forgetting the fact that bots can aim and fire faster than any human being ever could. If I had 3 "legendary" bots on my team, with BPRs of 100, on my team, the enemy team would be pretty much screwed.

 

As far as defeating the purpose of my friends leaving, you obviously didn't read my entire post.

 

 

I could use this system to boost my w/l ratio rather easily. Have a two player splitscreen (or more, if you'd rather) using borrowed gamertags from my friends who have high BPRs, then sign them out one by one so it looks like they all quit.

 

There it is again so you can read it.

[Twinreaper]

Sweaty is correct. The amount of style data that would be required to replace an actual human in-game would almost be infinite. Also you have to.conscider that the AI does not learn nor does it record any statistical data that it can use in future matches to.choose different or new scenarios for.combat. At best, hard coded non-flexible bots will only always be good for target practice and nothing more. The only platform that has the ability to produce such a smart bot would be the pc. In order to provide such an experience, a secondary executable program would have to be run to collect, interpret and form logical reactive styles in real time. The xbox PPC OS is only capable of and designed to, run a single executable