Add: Castle Fight 1200+ bot

[Oo_skiller]

Hi ENT community,

I would like to propose launching a 3v3 Castle Fight +1200 elo bot.

Those who regulary play CF are aware of the fact that 90% of the games are totally unbalanced. Usually its a few good players stacking up vs. low elo guys. Adding a 1200+ bot will raise the fun for both high & low elo players: High elo players will finally play against each other on a regulary basis, while low elo players do not get trashed in 10min and can practise against players of a similar skill cap.

Will the standard bot be under-populated as a consequence?
On weekends there are roughly 160x 3v3 CF games per day, hence a game every ~8min or so. During the week its around 130x games per day, hence a game every ~11mins. A 1200+ bot will be slow from morning till afternoon, but should be populated from afternoon until late evening. In the long term a higher-skill bot will increase the CF players base, since less ppl will quit due to frustration by pre-making / stacking of high elo-players. Matches will be more balanced on average and the fun factor should increase for players of all skill caps.

I'm not sure of what requirements & costs arise with launching an additional bot, but I'd very much like to discuss the proposal with both the ENT staff and the CF community (:

[Ekolog]

Totally agree with that. For sure I would quit from the beginning if all my first games I played vs people who played it for years and I didn´t even have time and opportunity to understand what is going on. But this would at least partially separate people by their game level and let new people adjust to the game easier.

I hope Ent staff will consider the suggestion

[Panopticon]

While I don't necessarily play CF, I know there's quite a number of people, mods included, that regularly plays it and the community might be able to benefit from having a 1200+ bot active. If more players from the community are willing to support it, and if need be, I'll throw in a couple of keys for the bot itself.

[Cleave]

I agree, everyone involved would benefit. The majority of games are very one sided and therefore not as much fun as they used to be.

[Gunhild]

This should be added, it such a high amount of stacking in the cf community, games would be much more even and more fun.

[J3sp]

This is such a great idea! Most games are "ugh, let's just finish this" because the match is incredibly one-sided and unbalanced.. not too exciting for both the good and lesser good players! can't express how much I support this idea.

Great initiative, Skiller!

[PrtyPsux]

@Oo_skiller
First of all thx for your suggestion, really appreciate your post.

Totally support your suggestion because of the following points.

1.)This leads to more balanced games, therefore the players will have more fun (prevents hard stacking).
2.)Prevents game ruiners and trolls -almost always.
3.)There will be much less Smurfs around there
4.)Every Player can learn more, if he is playing vs. better competition.
5.) long term effect -> More Players will enjoy this great game, weaker Players get more wins when playing more often vs. a balanced competition (cuz more +1200 player will compete among themselves).
And won't lose the fun so fast and moreover some of them are striving to reach the 1200+ bot. So overall the player pool is growing.

Personally I've experienced the imbalance in many many CF games (On both sides).
There are alot of good Players which are stacking >90% of games.
Maybe because ELO means the world to them or they wanna brighten their Ego, by winning in hardcore stacked games.

Additionally I've experienced gameruiners and trolls when I played with my main Account (and lost the games).
And furthermore I've played in many games on the underdog side and sometimes it can be really frustrating.

E.g. when your teammates doesnt even know the basic tactics such as Caging,starting buildings+combinations etc.
Especially Caging is immensely important and a game changer.
And then u play with weak or bad team mates who dont know how to cage or even if they know, they caging the wrong units, making the cage too small/big or caging too late.

And then u gotta cage yourself with inappropriate units to counter the opponents specials buildings.
Yes sometimes you can help out your team mates, but the thing is then that your own game often will suffering.

And with a 1100+/1200+ bot all that is not gonna happen because your team mates understand the basic tactics.
And the other team cannot exploiting u so hard, e.g. by just massing special buildings or massing 1 unit when your team is lacking that attack/armour type.

And I know how much enjoyable it is - to play on a 1200 bot, due to my 1200+ LTD games.
When u don't know before the game who's winning or losing.It makes fun and its motivating and you play more often your A-game.

Best regards

[wTc[JediMaster]]

Yes Please Give CF 1200+ Bot

@Oo_skiller Having a 1200 will not lock out players that have over 1200 from the "main/orginal" bot tho. So to think that everyone over 1200 will play there only and with that account isnt really right

Seems you did some math on how many games & when they are played GJ on that. (hopefully its not made up XD) That it will overall improve the CF on ENT I would agree on but how remains to be seen but having a "safe" bot from 900 randoms that may or may not know english & coop or the map would be nice

If they will need anything its probably CDKeys still, the "CF Community" have war3eu & p1l1s aswell while the ulti mode & race have kinda messed it up theres still a big part of CFers over there.

@Ekolog Im suprised you didnt quit then playing vs better players when new is something everyone kinda do & has to do to improve themselves tho. However if that was the only games one had then the exp from playing on that bot might not have been that good. One is able to play on other bots & host it oneself tho. (Main problem Id say is all the DCdraws & Desyncs tho not really fun to win 5 games and to have them be draw cuz the other team RQ and then game works fine when you lose xD) But to learn one also need to play & observe or that teach, figuring out everything oneself can be hard & mostly takes longer.

@Apoth It is compareable to the LTD & DotA 1200+ bots tho I would say no? They improved it overall or atleast gave fewer complaints.

@Cleave Haha ye 1500+ team1(west) vs 900 team2(east) is a very common sight.

@Gunhild Elo & friend stacking overall is heavy in every game & map. Not many enjoy playing RT in teamgames.

@J3sp This have been suggested a cupple of times before but seem this time we get more support for it (finaly!) But ye some games can feel more rather time consuming than fun..

@PrtyPsux Hear hear! Is nice to see another CF related post in Suggestions again
#1: Yes more of them, also important to remember that more ≠ all.
#2&3: This is a wish but will not happen, might be redused abit for awhile but overall fakeaccs & smurfs & trolls will not go away.
#4: Perhaps if they look & ask questions and get good replies or pointers. Players have a tendency not to give hints to the other team/side. (even less so when game is ongoing and you dont know them)
#5: Ye it/should improve overall

But alot of the good CFers are like the same 50 people that just jump between accs tho. And from what I've seen it is mainly just the same 50 good people playing and the rest is 1k(new people/accs) or 900 people that play the game rarely is there 2 teams with "even" elo or skill.

& winning 0.1 games isnt that fun more about the risk of losing 29.9 then I would say.
But ye Elo hunters have been around and will remain aslong as theres elo on the bots and thats one of the main reasons why manly play aswell.
Was a talk awhile ago about making a floor for people that drop too low, and odd thing to alter/tweak stats to make it look better then it is.

And ye thats a risk most of us have when playing on main acc even more so when playing alone, its not uncommon to have friends get on newly made accs and fill up the other team while youre alone with 2 randoms that have no clue whats going on Thats also a reason many dont wanna play on their main all the time. (Worse thing is when your team8s dont speak english & dont know CF xD not speaking english but can play is annoying but works, speaking english and dont know the map one mostly have the posibility to "take command" over them and hope they can follow orders )
You might wanna try to Teach&Lead when playing with people with less skill, takes abit of getting used too but its like playing with mp3 but with delay, that way you will prob not lose as much and they might learn how to play.

I for one have been cursed on my main almost only getting DCdraws & desync errors when I play on it xD

LTD-Cult :S but ye LTD overall has more players so more RNG less chance of you knowing/seeing the same 50 good people over and over again facing randoms with 1k-900 then when theres a mass of people with 1200-1500

__________________

Verry nice! Glad to see so many known faces here showing support tho lets see who else will show up

Spoiler!

Ima drop link to this on the FB page

[Quetra]

This is what I said last time this was suggested:

I have some experience playing on the Castle Fight ENT bots and while like with most competitive games a high elo bot is a great idea for this map, I'd personally say it's unlikely that such a bot would gain popularity, for several reasons:

A. Most obvious, while the current bots fill, it's popularity is significantly less than Hellhalt for example which fails to regularly fill a 1100+ bot.

B. Quite a majority of the players are 1100 and below casual players, as there is a large split between such players and the higher elo players who win potentially almost every game they play such as kunert and his fellow players.

C. Related to the above point, many players are comfortable queuing with other high elo players and usually end up playing comfortable easy games: I'm not sure how interested these high elo players would be in playing each other

I don't think circumstances have changed. Hellhalt has 3x the games played and yet no games were played on a bot that only required 1100 elo.

There are exactly 199 players (including smurfs) 1200 elo or above in Castle Fight. LTD Mega has 1000+ (the 1000th player is at 1239). A Castle Fight 1200+ bot will never fill. I would suggest organising inhouse games instead.

[PrtyPsux]

Hi Shadow,
thats my opinion to your points.

to A.)

Yes the overall popularity in Hellthat TD might be higher,
but that doesnt mean a 1100+/1200+ bot in CF would fail aswell.

It could get definitely more traffic on average.
And future popularity might change towards CF.

to B.)

Yes but with a 1100+/1200+ bot the Split will be reducing imo.
(If good players are willing to play against each other.)

Because the lower ranked players will get more wins on average.
And if they get more wins, they get more ELO and at the same time they have more fun playing CF.

While the ELO of many higher ranked players will reduce drastically.

Cuz many good Players got a fake ELO due to hardcore stacking.

So in the long term the split reducing should lead to an increasing popularity in a +1200 bot.

And not only in a +1200 bot moreover in the normal bot aswell, when weaker players facing less good players.

to C.)

I cannot speak for other players, but I would always prefer playing on 1100/1200+ bot.

I'm ready to jump in any +1100/+1200 game (as long as my bluescreens are fixed...).

The question is if other players are willing to queue up too, especially the stackers.

Or if they are afraid playing vs. a better competition.

Conclusion:

All in all CF should get the opportunity to increase its own popularity by getting a 1100+/1200+ bot.
I mean its not only for the better players as mentioned earlier,
the most players can benefit from this.

Yes ofc there is a possibility for failing, but imo you should give that a try.

The other option is to say, it will fail with a high probability (because of other game statistics, other factors)

And therefore we are not implementing such a bot.

But as long there is a tiny possibility that such a bot will bring back the fun to many players

- then in my opinion you should give that a try.

[Oo_skiller]

@PrtyPsux: You have pretty much summarized all the arguments I had in my mind, thanks for that!
@Jedi: Yes the maths is legit! Did some counting via stats haha.

@Shadow: I can only speak for myself here, but crushing your opponent every game in about 10min is not fun for either side. Especially not the team that's getting crushed and as a consequence might just quit CF. We already organize inhouse games, but it's a nightmare with the wc3 interface to queue with 6 individual players on the standard bot. I agree that the number of eligible players for a +1200 bot might be too low, I personally wouldn't mind lowering it to 1100 or 1150.

I do know that the numbers don't neccessarily support a full utilization of a +xxxx bot, however as PrtyPsux has outlined in detail, it is in ENT's long term interest to keep low elo players from quitting due to frustration and to offer some additional value to high elo players. CF is a game with great strategical depth and I'd be a shame if it has to keep on slowly decaying.

That being said, I would very much like to know from the ENT guys what the constraints are for adding a +1200 CF bot. Is it just the cost of running that bot? And If so how high are these per month? Personally I'd be willing to donate towards it in order to test out our theory. I'd imagine that others would chip in too.

Thanks for all your replies guys!

[Jabba41]

Because the lower ranked players will get more wins on average.
And if they get more wins, they get more ELO and at the same time they have more fun playing CF.

Dude that makes no sense.

• If there are not enough players with 1200+ ELO at the beginning, then no 1200+ ELO games will start.
• Therefore, all the 1200+ ELO players will join the regular Castle Fight game.
• Thus, same # of players with 1200+ ELO.

The only constraint is time. If you donate $1000 then probably you can convince someone to spend the time to set up a 1200+ELO bot so they can show you that it will never fill.

I cannot speak for other players, but I would always prefer playing on 1100/1200+ bot.
I'm ready to jump in any +1100/+1200 game (as long as my bluescreens are fixed...).

You would be willing to wait 80 minutes in lobby for a 30-minute game? Other players will not be willing to do that, believe me.

We already organize inhouse games, but it's a nightmare with the wc3 interface to queue with 6 individual players on the standard bot.

You can use the public hosting bots (https://host.entgaming.net) to host your in-house games. There's no reason to have a bot lying around just for your in-house games, but if you donate $1000 we can spend the time to set it up.

(The Battleships Pro host bot is like that, some people convinced mods that it would fill since they were filling their in-house games that have 8 in-house players and 2 pubs. Now all the games on that bot are just their in-house games. LOL)

At any rate, I recently had a desire to make a matchmaking system for DotA where players enter a matchmaking queue when they join a lobby. The matchmaking system would try to put players with similar ELO together, but if players have been waiting too long, it would gradually relax ELO constraints. It will support parties so that up to 3 players can play on the same team; larger parties are possible but wouldn't be guaranteed to be on the same team.

It was too much work to implement but yesterday I found some old code lying around that already does most of it. So I think it could work. If it happens then we can deploy it for DotA, see how it goes, and then maybe deploy it for Castle Fight. This would work better than 1200+ bot since all players would join the same lobby, and the ELO constraints would adjust dynamically based on how many players are active.

[PrtyPsux]

Hey thx for your input uakf.b

Dude that makes no sense.

If you wanna contradict to my statements, you shouldn't list 3 points out of context.

I've said that weaker Players win more often when facing a weaker competition +having more fun and getting more ELO(on average).

And thus in the long term perspective the CF popularity should increase and the player pool should growth(less frustrated players).

Or does it make for you more sense then when,

A.)weaker Player winning more games with no reduced stronger competition?

B.)meanwhile theyre getting on average more ELO when playing more often vs better player and losing in 99% of cases?

C.) And in Addition theyre having more fun when theyre losing more on average?

D.) a decreasing enjoyment of weaker+better players contributes to future popularity of CF?

The only constraint is time. If you donate $1000 then probably you can convince someone to spend the time to set up a 1200+ELO bot so they can show you that it will never fill.

Only because sth. is expensive or time investing it doesn't mean its a bad investment.
keyword:long term effect.
From your words I can pick out that you are quite pessimistic.

à la "it will never fill" "that will never work", "u shouldnt do that because you are too stupid" etc.

More then often we as human beings should work on our mindset.

I know how difficult that can be and I dont say I have a perfect mindset (in reality I have to improve my mindset too)

Just your point that a bot will never fill, is per se false, because from time to time a bot will fill, even though it might take a longer time in the beginning.

You would be willing to wait 80 minutes in lobby for a 30-minute game? Other players will not be willing to do that, believe me.

I would wait 80min, if I'm busy at the PC with other things to do and I would know that after 80 min a game would be achieved.

And who says that it always would take about 80 min. Sometimes a game would fill faster.

Especially if some members in the cf clan arrange to play.

And u gotta see that with a long term perspective. With an increased popularity and growing player pool,
more player eventually entering a higher bot.

(The Battleships Pro host bot is like that, some people convinced mods that it would fill since they were filling their in-house games that have 8 in-house players and 2 pubs. Now all the games on that bot are just their in-house games. LOL)

Battleships is not CF and CF not Battleships. So sth. that applies for Battleships might not apply for CF.
Sure the CF Bot could fail too but as long there is a chance to increase CF's overall popularity then imo we should take that.

So while I couldnt go d'accord with many of your points, I would rly appreciate it
when you could implement a matchmaking system in cf.
I agree with u that it would work better than a 1200+ bot.
And it would lead to interesting games, e.g. 1good player on each side with 2 weaker player.

Best regards and enjoy life

[wTc[JediMaster]]

Is the topic still open for debate seems like the "demand" for 1k$ isnt really a fair standpoint to continue from.
(also first time that I can recall that ENT asked for money to do something. Asking for CDKey donations is another thing...)

So why not just deny the topic and leave it at that, yet its still open?

[kasper699]

i would play on 1.2k elo bot but i find cf bot dont fill to fast to start with. maybe give the option to vote start so it can be 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 up to the people in lobby?