Ricky
Matthew
Kevin
There's would be huge complexity in coding bots / AI.
There are three tiers, all of which would require bots of different strengths.
The bots / AI would have to cater for the many permutations of race length, one/two car leagues, and the configurable league rules not to mention the prevailing temperature and weather conditions at race time.
Would you expect the strategy and PL for these bots to always be the same and predictable? If not there are hundreds of possible strategy permutations.
Then you need to consider the strength of the live managers. In very strong leagues the bots would be a nuisance, randomly giving DRS to some managers and denying it to others. Blocking the progress of slightly faster cars and as a result influencing race results.
In casual leagues the same bots could be too strong, winning races and championships which would soon become tiresome for the real managers.
There are (too) many leagues to choose from. If your league only has a handful of active managers you would get more out of the game by joining a more active league. The USP of IGP Manager is live racing against other managers, if bots were introduced to pad out unpopulated leagues you may end up with hundreds of leagues with only one real manager who chooses to race against bots instead of other people.
There could be a option to not allow bots in a league in the settings. As for the strength and amount of the bots this I believe could be customized as well. Small leagues don't stand a chance to grow which is the unfortunate side of it. Also bots could gather their own points or their points could not count to the championship (a real life example being how points work for a NASCAR cup series driver who races in the Xfinity series). You have some valid points and thank you for sharing them because it is complex and having it one way won't work. If people don't mind racing with bots then I don't see a issue with many small leagues; because there would be some other leagues out there that don't allow them.
To answer your last point, there could be some restrictions so there wont be one manager leagues. But other games have ai so I assume that the coding isn't impossible.
I think you are over-estimating the developers resources to do this. Having a customisable option might seem easy, but it wouldn’t be to code and then test to make sure it is consistent at an appropriate level. Look at the current AI for inactive players it is pretty useless.
If a league is down to 2 players it’s clearly better to join a fuller more active league.
My friend, you say ai is useless but I’ve read multiple posts saying they’re too strong ? and people can’t win because of bots. I know AI is no challenge for you or me, it seems to be for others, that in itself is proof it’s well balanced, no? ?
Now back to the suggestion: I totally get the point, you want to keep people onboard so a automatically set up bot would be the perfect tool. It gives the live managers a challenge.
But in my opinion Kevin’s argument about the usp for igp beeing to race against live human beings overpowers this. Igp would not be igp without the live races against live people
And so, the bots, as good an idea as they are, should not be introduced, that’s my 5 cents
Guest
