Ask HN: Do you MOBA? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you MOBA?

3 pointsitchyjunk12 comments

I find MOBA[1] games to be really amazing. Not just the learning curve or how every game is different but also stuff like you learn to stop blaming conditions in the game (your team being part of it) to trying to figure out how to make the best of it. I actually play a lot of bots and when I became aware of all the AI stuff (ML, NN etc) just a few months ago, I was excited about real AI bots in moba game. But I can't get anyone as excited as me :(. I mentioned this stuff in OpenAI[2] and ##machinelearning in freenode but got no excitement (the env is too complicated type reactions). I did see deepmind is doing stuff with starcraft II now[3]. So it seems like it CAN be done. :'( But getting back to the point, do you play MOBA games, HN?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer_online_battle_arena

[2] https://gitter.im/openai/research

[3] https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-and-blizzard-release-starcraft-ii-ai-research-environment/

Edit: Formatting

I really liked Battleborn (moba/fps hybrid) when I got it maybe a few months after the release. Too bad it flopped so awfully and seems to be failing at gaining new traction despite aggressive discounts. I still play it occasionally but since there are a lot of experienced and dedicated players on the servers and I'm not exactly a veteran in the game I feel I'm a burden for my team most of the time. The game would really benefit from new blood to guarantee better matchmaking also on the lower levels.

Yup, just started playing DOTA2 six months ago and I'm very much enjoying it.

The enormously deep gameplay and learning curve are tremendous fun.

I've also got some datamining projects I want to do with it at some point - the visibility of data on DOTA games is amazing and incredibly useful - but I haven't gotten around to them yet.

Have you played against the `Unfair bots`? If you primarily play against humans, would you play against bots more if they were using machine learning?

I haven't played unfair bots. Graduated to humans after hard bots.

I'd play against bots, probably, if they exhibited much more human-like behaviour. I don't really care what's on the backend.

Having said that, I enjoy PvP, so I'm not sure what the selling point for "Better Bots" would be.

Imagine if you could have a game with all the ups and downs of a real PvP game but without the toxicity that is so prevalent in Dota. That's the appeal I see anyway.

If the bots could pass a Turing Test, fair enough, yes, that would be appealing. Something of a high bar though.

Would you count www.codingame.com? They have bot programming, quite funny games can be played over there.

I started with codinggame. I like the place. Sadly, I am not a good programmer :P I am level 5 there i think. I asked there also, in their chat.

Please don't make Starcraft 1 AI any tougher.

After so many years I still can't beat that beast on Easy.

I used to but I got addicted and quit. (dota & dota2). Though I didn't care about ai.

Would you consider Co-OP if the AI was considered better than humans? Or considered to be like 7k MMR average?

I've almost never co-op. So I don't care. (especially don't care co-op with non-human)

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