A controversial idea to help populate R3E ranked servers

This sure would be a more natural solution, but:
1) We don't know which one is realistically possible for the devs. It looks like they face a lot of limitations of what they can and cannot do.
2) AI in multiplayer is something that many people want nonetheless, so on top of introducing a new feature why not use it to also address another problem.

Good analogy, however if there are positive examples of other games using bots, I don't see why it should be a no-no for R3E.

Is AMS2 always online like R3E?

 

Simple doesn't mean easy. I think I've made a sufficient case why we should consider bots instead of expecting the game to gain momentum given its current state.

You may disagree, but so far you haven't really made any plausible case for why bots won't work, you're just grasping for a reason to dismiss the idea simply because you don't like it.

Well, there are certainly professional patrons in clubs, especially girls, which are certainly artificial company, so maybe you go to the right places, just don't know enough about their inner workings.

Hiring people to drive on ranked servers would be an analogous alternative, but honestly, you don't interact with other drivers nearly enough to justify such investment.

The analogy does actually indicate that adding drivers - whatever way - would help tackling the issue though.

 

I do like the idea but when there is no ranking involved. Remember Kasparov vs Big Blue? It was fun as a challenge but you wouldn´t want robots in official tournaments. An 18 year-old unseeded British player winning the US Open makes the headlines but not if they beat a robot.

I can go into more detail about exploits etc but I don´t want to, simply because we already have AI - it´s called single player mode. To be able to mix and match friends and bots sounds neat but I don´t think it has any business interfering in the rankings. Some people might say the best players are all bots anyway but think about why we do mutiplayer. It´s the drama of who hit who, who jumped the start or cooked their tyres, who sped in pitlane and who forced an error to pass. With bots we lose all of that and it will be just like single player.

 

The game has never been down for maintenance while I have played it and weekly updates don´t take it offline. You can even see them queued up on steam waiting to be applied.
Not sure if it has an offline mode but in any case we are in 2021 having gone through COVID and all that involved in terms of distance working. Surely you can run 2 systems and have the old game client available while anothe server is updating to the new one and then switch them round when it is ready. That shouldn´t take 7 hours. Anyway, it was just an example of dedicating technical resources to solving a technical issue whereas the lack of players could be fixed by other ventures like the ones I mentioned.

CR7 wasn´t born a millionaire and Jimmy Broadbent was a nobody living with his mum so you have to work at what you do to be successful. RRE in my opinion has only recently started to try selling the game to a wider audience and that momentum takes time to build up.

 

I keep having the impression you didn't read my initial post, or at least not with proper attention.

I've said that bots would populate only near-empty servers, they would have no business in races where the grid is already decently populated, allowing for the drama you mentioned. But if there's no players, there wouldn't be any drama anyway, so we lose nothing.

 

I don't know for sure what it would, to me, feel like to race with bots and people (I'm genuinely interested), but it sure wouldn't be "just like single player". Having other people around is what makes the biggest difference for me; having only people around, is less important.

Honestly don't understand how it's relevant to the topic... Are you calling Sector 3 out for being bad at their jobs? You need a lot of insider knowledge to make such assumptions. Also we aren't dealing with one company here, some stuff is a KW's responsibility.

That most likely means it's not always online so it's much easier to deal with updates. So we can't compare it to R3E.

An example of an always online game is iRacing. It goes down for maintenance too, just like R3E, but it also has a separate "Test drive" mode which you can use while the main game is down.

 

Multiplayer-Sessions mit KIs aufzufüllen wäre eine wunderbare Sache.
Bei Rang Server Rennen haben KIs nichts verloren.
Wenn ich mit 3 oder 4 Freunden Rennen fahren würde, wäre es wirklich Klasse mit ein paar KIs aufzufüllen - ähnlich wie es zB bei Project Cars 2 oder auch Wreckfest funktioniert.

 

English please...

On topic: AI is just not reliable enough for ranked racing. They often slam into players cars and shove them off the road. I surely don't want to see the outrage that goes off when people get slammed off by the AI, collect incidents and lose positions and thus rating and reputation. The AI also does not have the same physics as players. They can plow through gravel and grass without any loss of traction/grip. And they often use this ability to either get past players or fend them off. They also aren't affected by cut rules. People will rage if they lose positions due to this. The AI also doesn't get along very well with players of a lower speed. They just can't take this into account - if you chose an AI difficulty to high for yourself they will constantly slam into your car instead of making a clean overtake. But you have all different skill levels on servers, so the AI might be OK for some, but horrific for others.

And while you could possibly disable incidents from player to AI contacs, you can't miraculously make the AI better drivers. They will still be involved in a lot of accidents that make people lose positions or damage their cars (and then lose positions due to the damage). And where to draw the line? Maybe you don't collect incidents from the contact to an AI car, but you will collect incidents from the track limits the AI pushes you over. And I haven't even started with players pushing the AI into other players to ram them out of the way without collecting incidents.

People totally rage now already when losing some rating and/or reputation for whatever reason they think they don't deserve. Just wait what comes up when the AI starts to cause this.

So, AI for multiplayer where literally nothing is at stake - fine. For ranked racing - nope.

This is only my opinion of course, but I honestly don't see the AI being ready for ranked racing in its current state.

 

This is something that gets mentioned from time to time but I can only recall a few times when it happened to me. Is it specific for some classes? For some tracks? Can it be, at least partially, explained by the fact that people are likely less careful when racing against AI?

(Upd: My point is, if this is a general problem with AI it should affect everyone, but somehow I don't see this - definitely not as often as it gets mentioned. But if these are local problems with some tracks, classes or track-class combos, then these can be avoided by not picking these ones, or addressed by fixing the tracks/classes that are going to be used.)

Regarding the amount of rage... Isn't it directly related to the number of players anyway? If you have, lets say, 10 complaints a day with the current playerbase, it'd be 20 for a playerbase twice as big (or even more than 20, if average grid size increases). The situation can only get worse if AI creates more accidents than humans on average and I'm really not sure about that...

 

The AI is good in RRE, most people wouldn't even notice if AI players were randomly/purposely added. Plus, who cares if an AI accidently take you out... real life players do that all the time.

 

That´s putting words in my mouth. My example was that natural skill is not enough, hard work is also needed and there has been a definite lack of effort in promoting the game outside the inner circle in the past. If that´s budget or staff related, I have no idea.

2021 has changed a bit with more social media activity and inviting streamers to have a ranked server but a lot more can be done.

One example is to create clan battles, which is the closest we can get to driver swaps. Have tournaments where 10 teams pariticpate with 2 drivers per race across different categories and add the points from all of them. Prizes or liveries for the winners. Teams will pitch for drivers there might even be the scope to do it on a ranked level with rank limits. I am not going to watch a 2hr esport race with no one I know in it but I would cheer on a team mate. Just an idea of the top of my head but definitely cheaper and easier to organise than porting the AI into multiplayer for the same or worse results.

 

The boldened part is a pure speculation on your part and you've proven yourself to be completely biased against the AI idea.

Even the mere fact that you need to repeat the effort and investment every single time you organize such event, and you need to organize them continuously to gain any substantial exposition, while you need to port the AI only once and then only maintain it like any other feature, proves you're wrong.

 

I read your post 3 times and found it interesting, which is why I replied in support, but not for ranked as it is influencing race results which later can have consequences for the real players like gaining or losing points against stooges which allow them or prevent them from entering capped rooms, for instance. Then there are the issues of exploits, budget and the emotional satisfaction. It´s not my job to give full details to these issues, rather yours to consider them and provide solutions so your proposal is watertight then more people will surely support it. @Arthur Spooner has already elaborated on a lot of these - what answers do you have?

BTW having an opinion is not the same as being biased and nobody is right or wrong. The title of the thread is "a controversial idea" so you were already accepting it would be divisive but now those who don´t back it or don´t question are wrong or biased?

Now, as a concession, if the stooges were invisible like ghost cars or at least in terms of not scoring rating or indeed affecting our rep and raced under the same conditions as we do (setup, tyre wear, cut rules, grip loss, lapped cars, pit speeding, damage etc), I might be persuaded but I feel it comes down to patching a problem that should be solved as a business challenge. I´d say it´s like wearing a mask or having lockdowns to protect against covid - they are better than doing nothing for our short term good but are not an adequate long term solution plus they steal resources from working on the long term one.

 

No

 

Honestly I don't see much sense in arguments like this... "Don't do this, better do that instead" only makes sense when we can evaluate the effort needed for both options or something like probability of each happening. But we are just players, we don't have enough information about that. Not to say that these two options require effort from very different departments and aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

It's not his job either. We as players are very limited in terms of information, knowledge, skills required to implement the features we ask for. So we do what we can.

Your scepticism that kinda lacks in arguments, even up to a point of your refusing to provide them... Yeah, that might be not bias, but a questionable position anyway.

 

I am not the one trying to sell the proposal though. We have raised some general and some super specific questions which the OP has not been able to answer. That´s logical as they are not part of the game development team and is lacking in all of the above things you mentioned but then please don´t call the kettle black by asking me to detail the cons either as I am not the one selling anything and in any case it´s not inventing the wheel, the idea has been raised before yet crickets.

My non-expert non-scientific view as a simple (in both senses of the word) player (who has bought all the content and recommended the game) is the ranked servers in Europe are more popular than ever but at the expense of dedi servers. No idea how it is on other continents but then again are China, Japan, Russia, North America or India key markets for this publisher? If so, why were none of the youtube/twitch streamers/influencers from these zones? Is the game even translated into non European languages? I have only seen the occasional Esports competition from some of these places but very low presence in multiplayer.

 

That's not an issue. If you're not good enough to beat a stooge with a certain rank, you're not good enough to have that rank. Bots will have rank appropriate to their performance, just like all the players do. That's how ELO system works. Nothing will change in that regard.

Yes, it is. If you're making a claim, it's your responsiblity to substantiate this claim. That's how discussions work. As far as I can tell right now, neither of these issues exist outside of your head.

I think he already got a pretty straightforward answer to his post, made by @VFX Pro. As you see, there are varying opinions on the matter, and even @Arthur Spooner didn't straight out dismiss the idea, he only raised some serious doubts about the applicability of current AI to ranked servers - which means given some improvement to their behaviour, he wouldn't be against the idea.

The issue isn't that you're disagreeing with the idea on principle - which is fine on its own. The issue is that you're trying to make it seem like it can be potentially harmful to the game, while providing nothing to substantiate these claims. Which makes me think you're not providing any feedback, but instead you actively sabotage the idea by sowing doubt.

No, I believe you're trying to ruin it, because you have a personal agenda in it. You don't like the idea so you try to make it look bad by coming up with potential issues it can bring to the game without providing any evidence pointing to it, shifting the burden of proof on me instead.

 

The easiest way to ruin a proposal is to ignore it as then it gets buried under all the newer items. I have given a counter point of view which has allowed others to chip in and keep the ball running but we can see that there is neither massive support nor objection so I´ll just put it in park and we can see what happens.

 

I am strongly against it but didnt feel like joining this discussion

 

Technically players are not the side that's supposed to "buy" it

Yeah, I remember your position regarding bots in multiplayer. What do you think if these were limited to only a few ranked servers? Or are you against the idea of mixing AI and rank?