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Topic: Bot Ladder feature (Read 4322 times) |
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omar
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Bot Ladder feature
« on: Feb 11th, 2006, 3:54pm » |
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Just added a "Bot Ladder" link in the gameroom.
I had been meaning to add this feature for awhile now. This will provide beginners with easy access to the various bots on the site.
It might still have some bugs, so post them here if you see any.
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PMertens
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #1 on: Feb 11th, 2006, 7:24pm » |
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ok ... I found plenty of bots ahead of me ... looks like a bug :-D
Anyway ... cute feature
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omar
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #2 on: Feb 11th, 2006, 9:23pm » |
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Those are probably bots which you haven't played yet. You have to defeat the bots two time to pass them. It probably won't take you long to get to the top of the list 
I hope this feature makes the site more interesting for the beginners.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #3 on: Feb 12th, 2006, 1:16pm » |
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I love the new bot ladder! I think it makes sense to have the lowest-rated bots be at the bottom of the ladder (except for ShallowBlue getting an automatic bottom). That way, instead of us guessing which bots will be easier and harder for beginners to overcome, the bots will naturally sort out that way. Also beginners will be presented with a much greater variety of opponents.
At the moment, it is still possible to bypass the presented order of bots by going to the Arimaa Bots page. Do you intend to continue to allow people to skip over some bots if they know about the backdoor, or will you require everyone to work up through all the lower bots in the ladder before playing higher ones?
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Fritzlein
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #4 on: Feb 12th, 2006, 4:49pm » |
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I just thought of two additional refinements, if they seem worthy of incorporating:
1) Since beginners now have a whole slew of weak bots to work through, we might only require them to beat each bot once to be able to play up. Beginners will still be learning more by beating each of eight bots once than each of four bots twice.
2) Instead of having the first bot on the ladder automatically be ShallowBlue, let the bot with the lowest rating be the first bot on the ladder, whether or not it is ShallowBlue. I'm actually curious to see the relative ratings of LocP1, ShallowBlue, and Arimaalon if they are allowed to float on equal footing.
However, to preserve the nice feature of unrated practice games, automatically make games against the lowest ladder bot be unrated. If people want to play unrated games against a bot other than the lowest on the ladder, they could still set their flag to play unrated.
Giving ShallowBlue equal status with the other bots would remove the last vestiges of artificiality from the ladder of bots that newcomers face. The ladder would instead be a totally natural one.
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frostlad
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #5 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 12:43am » |
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I do have a couple of things that I wish were slightly different from a kid that is just starting.
1. I have been trying to beat arimaazon for a week or so now, but no longer have the option of playing that bot on the bot ladder. Where did arimaazon go to? I know I could probably get to it through the bot pages but that was a nice challenge for me and wouldn't mind it being in the bot pages.
2. It might be nice for a beginner to have a choice of the next two bots to play. That way if one bot's strategy is just difficult for a beginner to deal with at first then they can play try to play the next highest bot.
I do really like the feature though. I hadn't been playing anything but the 4 standard bots because I still really don't know how to start my own games very well. And, I don't know how I would start it against the different bots that are out there. ( I know I'm showing how new I am and how little I've explored around so far ) I've just wanted to play a lot and the bots have been plenty hard for me to explore and start playing other bots. It is nice to know what bots you've progressed beyond and what ones you still have to work on and have a variety of bots.
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Ryan_Cable
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #6 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 4:18am » |
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Congratulations Ryan_Cable. You've reached the top.
I agree with frostlad. The old ladder bots should be kept on the new ladder, if only so we can continue tracking their ratings. The idea of making the next 2 bots available sounds good as well.
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PMertens
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #7 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 4:33am » |
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The next 2 sounds better to me as well ...
Anyway ... if the order of bots can change than we could repeatedly run into the problem Frostlad described:
You suddenly cannot play against your current archrival-bot anymore ....
Therefore it would be nice to be always allowed to play against a bot if you where allowed to do so once.
Something else:
Do not emphasize to much you are a noob, Frosty ... we are afraid of noobs ... they have a tendency to win the next championship 
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RonWeasley
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #8 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 11:51am » |
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I like the Bot Ladder idea very much. For short, I will call it "The Bladder."
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frostlad
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #9 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 12:25pm » |
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on Feb 13th, 2006, 4:33am, PMertens wrote:The next 2 sounds better to me as well ...
Anyway ... if the order of bots can change than we could repeatedly run into the problem Frostlad described:
You suddenly cannot play against your current archrival-bot anymore ....
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That actually did happen to me last night. I played bot_bomb2005P1 and lost, then I wasn't able to play it again because it jumped bot_gno2005P2 in rating.
On one hand it is sort of annoying for that to happen, but it also gives me a reason to want to beat gno2005P2 so that I can have another crack at bomb. So I'm sort of torn on whether I don't like that or not.
The time when it would get annoying is if every time I try to play a bot ahead of me it flip flops with another bot and I have to try and learn how to beat a different bot. I don't know the likelyhood of two bots having a rating that close to each other.
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PMertens
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #10 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 12:59pm » |
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Hmmm .... I would have be annoyed.
I believe that bots are primarily a good exercise for concentration ...
To play against the same bot over and over will make you win against this one faster because you learn the specific weakness of this one bot and you can concentrate on it.
Playing against alternated bots might give the same exercise or even more, but certainly less motivation because it will take you longer before you see your first success.
Also the difficulty of a bot cannot be measured in rating points anyway.
A bot has a certain behavior that might suit a human or go against his nature ... one more reason to allow more than one and avoid alternation.
What would happen if I for example lose against the worst bot and win against the third worst ?
Someone who just managed the first one ... will he have to play the former third worst that now became worst ? or the second worst since he won against the first already ?
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Fritzlein
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #11 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 3:00pm » |
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It's hard for me to guess what it would feel like to try to work through the ladder in various configurations, because I'm no longer new to Arimaa. Frostlad, it is great to have your perspective while you are still working on overcoming certain bots for the first time. The rest of us talking here are looking from the perspective of being able to beat all the bots.
I can understand chafing at the restrictions on which bot is available to play next. Maybe I want to play a certain bot that is my nemesis, or maybe I want to avoid it and try a different bot instead. Maybe I want to play the same bot over and over, but I can't because it bubbles up in rating. On the other hand, maybe I don't want to keep playing the same bot, and I would prefer some variety, but I have keep banging my head against the wall because one bot happens to be lowest rated.
Part of me thinks that there should be no restrictions at all. Why not let people play whichever bot they want to play? That would avoid several types of frustration.
On the other hand, part of me likes the idea of being forced to play the lowest-rated bot, even if there are rating flip-flops, and even if different bots are different difficulty for different people. The sense of accomplishment in completing a challenge is directly related to how difficult (and frustrating?) it was to do it. Video games don't let you jump to level 17 if you are having trouble getting through level 16, and it is well that they don't. Getting past the barriers is the fun part.
So I guess I would leave it pretty much as it is now.
One new concern of mine is that people with slow connections might not be able to beat the Blitz bots even if they are otherwise sufficiently skilled. Maybe we should stick with just P1, P2, and Fast, i.e. only 3 versions of each bot. When the 2006 versions come into the mix, that will be almost 30 bots. (And by the way, we should definitely reduce it to one win to pass a level when the 2006 bots are added, if not sooner.) But playing at Blitz speed is a different kind of challenge, and perhaps a fun type of challenge, so I don't really object to having 4 versions of each bot.
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Ryan_Cable
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #12 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 4:12pm » |
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Omar told me that there are two different ladders, one for beginners and an advanced one that top players are seeing. The beginner ladder does not have the Blitz bots.
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omar
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #13 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 4:14pm » |
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Thanks for the suggestions everyone.
I changed it so that if you played a bot before you can always play it again.
Also added a page to list all the bots that are available to play. This is like the back door if you really want to play a particular bot.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/bots/index.cgi
The bots listed in the ladder are ones that move quickly. The slower moving bots can be accessed through the back door.
Ryan had asked me in the chat room why bot_Arimaanator is not listed. It's because this bot runs on a windows machine and logs in to the game room from my notebook PC. The bots in the list are all on the arimaa server which is a linux machine.
Also games won by timeout or repetition do not count; you must win by goal or immobilization.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 13th, 2006, 4:58pm by omar » |
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omar
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Re: Bot Ladder feature
« Reply #14 on: Feb 13th, 2006, 4:33pm » |
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on Feb 13th, 2006, 4:12pm, Ryan_Cable wrote:| Omar told me that there are two different ladders, one for beginners and an advanced one that top players are seeing. The beginner ladder does not have the Blitz bots. |
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The beginner ladder has:
bot_ShallowBlue bot_Arimaazilla
bot_Bomb2005P1 bot_Clueless2005P1 bot_GnoBot2005P1 bot_Loc2005P1
bot_Bomb2005P2 bot_GnoBot2005P2 bot_Loc2005P2
The advanced ladder also includes:
bot_Bomb2005Fast bot_Clueless2005Fast bot_GnoBot2005Fast bot_Loc2005Fast
bot_Bomb2005Blitz bot_Clueless2005Blitz bot_GnoBot2005Blitz bot_Loc2005Blitz
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