Could the AI participate in ranked matches?

What if the AI, perhaps broken into 3 levels of difficulty was also competing in the online matchmaking / ranking system?

The 3 AI's would rank just as a typical players and change depending on a wins / loses. Perhaps if the AI is updated (through patches etc) you can continually see how they rate to yourself and every other player.

Every game I've played has had difficulty matching up with players of equal skill. This might make it easier for a new player (low skill) to make their way into the world of ranked game play.

Of course you could "tick a box" to not play against AI, but if you were similarly ranked and there were no other people in the matchmaking queue then this will keep things rolling.

I would not mind to see some entries for the AI within the ladder.
Would actually be interesting to see how it rates.
I doubt I'd get matched against it very often anyway

I think that would be fine as long as there were only 1 AI of each type on the ladder.

I tend to find that a 3 tier AI is flawed in it's increasing ability.
Easy is often too easy, Medium is not much of an increase and Hard will either fall short of the best players or be a massive increase on Medium.

Four or five tiers offers the option of having an entry level AI (for beginners, tutorial or for testing) and/or an brutal level AI that can take on even the best (because you'll come online and find no suitable match ups)

I don't see how this could help though... when you reach the point where it's hard for the matchmaking system to find games your level you're probably the top 1-5% of the playerbase skill wise... Unless they have a x3 cheating AI I don't think they'll provide any challenge.

Hmmm, i wouldn't see it targeted as an opponent to the top players...

Its for the new and casual gamers. The ones that typically dont give matchmaking a chance past one or two games because it might team them up with someone with a higher skill level and scare them off for good.

I don't like the idea of a cheating AI in the ladder, sort of defeats the purpose of the ladder.

i like it.

I agree that there would have to be some kind of limit to the amount of AI's... Might be interesting to have differing AI versions battle it out too?? As a kind of test bed for improving the AI.

Those AI opponents' flaws could be abused to boost your rank. Terrible idea.

Thanks for your constructive feedback.

but how? if you continually beat the AI its trueskilll / rank would drop so low you would never be matched against it. The ranking system itself would prevent abuse.

Obviously there would be another AI opponent, probably flawed like the lower ranked ones, just waiting to be taken advantage of.

I mean what's the point of a matchmaking rank if you can modify it without playing against actual people and therefore not showing where you truly stand.

They are only talking about 3 to 5 AI entities in the whole ladder.

I think a more interesting option would be if Sorian created a 'bot' personality that nobody knew about, and let it play ranked games. So you have no idea you're playing against an AI, the system just treats it like another player.

It would be the ultimate AI test.

Should it be able to pass the turing test in the chat as well or is "gg" the only term it needs to use?

True, though it depends how the ranking is implemented.
A straight score ranking would be open to abuse.
A chess style ranking wouldn't be. You earn more for beating a player above your rank, and far less if they are under your ranking.
You could also limit the number of Rankable AI matches per day/week.

I'm not too fond of the idea of mixing A.I into the ladder, mostly because I play ladder to face human opponents.

However I would like to see a utility similar to the A.I matchmaking just introduced in Heart of the swarm. Works like traditional ladder, take a few placement matches and then against increasingly harder A.I foes. Great way to practice or just play for fun.

A simpler solution is to have the AI get a place on the ladder, calculated by how well it does against humans, but having the human score being unaffected by its matches against AIs.
Thus, AIs are not exploitable, people aren't playing against AI when they want to play against other humans, but people can still get an idea of their skill while facing the AI.

Though putting an anonymous bot on the ladder could be fun. It doesn't need much of a vocabulary anyway, there are some very quite players (don't like to talk/type, don't speak the same language...)

if you go by chat content, I would bet quite a number of human players would fail a turing test.

I proclaim the day, when bots solve captchas faster than humans, we reached the point of no return .. hmm perhaps we are already too late. ...

Even I can make an AI acting like an AFK human. Easy peasy.

An even more simple idea is just to leave AI out of the whole ranking system. /thread

O.k. - you've made your opinion clear about 3 times now, although not backed up by any USEFUL statements..? Dont be a forum pirate, there are too many as it is. Its not your decision to end a thread.

Reading your posts i dont think you even understand the implementation

meh. AIs suck and i would have no interest in playing one online.