Warrior General Games

Originally posted by Greywolfmeb
What don't you people understand about CPU levels meaning nothing. They scale to the opponent each and every time. Doesn't matter if they are level 1 or 100.

Finally a voice of reason and a sense of reality here.

Can you explain "They scale to the opponent each and every time" for me - what does that mean? Are you saying the CPU players have different skills each game?

Originally posted by lhass
Can you explain "They scale to the opponent each and every time" for me - what does that mean? Are you saying the CPU players have different skills each game?

Their attributes fluctuate in comparison to their opponents before each game. Its designed so that they always drop down or rise up in ability to be at a level somewhat weaker than the average of the players on the team you have to play each week.

Thanks - wish I had known that a few days ago Water over the dam guys.

Originally posted by lhass
Can you explain "They scale to the opponent each and every time" for me - what does that mean? Are you saying the CPU players have different skills each game?
From announcements...

Original announcement
Jul 26, 2010
- Make CPU players auto-scale their level based on the levels of the human players in the game

Most recent two about CPU's. and as you can see they even lowered their abilities at the lower levels.

Nov 2, 2011
- Improve CPU players to catch up with modern players' higher skill point totals

Nov 9, 2011
- Adjust recent CPU boost down a bit for lower levels

Originally posted by Greywolfmeb
Originally posted by yello1

The Reg Pro conferences are what they are. Yes its a through way for the up and coming teams. But its also the final destination for the middle of the road casual players. Those people are still customers and need to be considered in making business decisions.

If the league is half filled with 50 levels, then the CPUs in that league should not be 72nd levels.

But either way, the disincentive I suggest in my OP should still be applied or something like it to reduce the growing tendency of some owners to bail on the recruiting gig and try out a CPU team for kicks and giggles.

What don't you people understand about CPU levels meaning nothing. They scale to the opponent each and every time. Doesn't matter if they are level 1 or 100.

How is it scaled though? If half the guys are 50s and half 70s, who are they scaling to????

If its the 70s only, thats not good for all the same reasons set forth above.

But even then its not a huge problem so long as its not a whole team of CPUs, which is why the OP suggestion is made.

Anyone who loses to an all-CPU team isn't as good a dotballer as they think they are. Sorry, but that's a fact. If you lost to an all-CPU team, man up, admit you have a lot more to learn, and start learning. And shut up about it in the meantime, because if you whine about it in the forums, we're not going to agree with you... we're going to point at you and laugh.

That said... all-CPU teams are bad for GLB overall, since they discourage the building of human dots, and human dots are what make this game exciting and fun. So, I agree with the OP's suggestion. Anything which discourages people from buying a team just to fill it with an all CPU-dot roster is fine by me. The OP's suggestion does that without punishing the owners who are trying to field a legitimate human team and just have a couple of holes to fill.

+1

Just make CPUs a lot weaker than their human counterparts but not too weak to result in clownouts

Originally posted by Novus
Anyone who loses to an all-CPU team isn't as good a dotballer as they think they are. Sorry, but that's a fact. If you lost to an all-CPU team, man up, admit you have a lot more to learn, and start learning. And shut up about it in the meantime, because if you whine about it in the forums, we're not going to agree with you... we're going to point at you and laugh.

That said... all-CPU teams are bad for GLB overall, since they discourage the building of human dots, and human dots are what make this game exciting and fun. So, I agree with the OP's suggestion. Anything which discourages people from buying a team just to fill it with an all CPU-dot roster is fine by me. The OP's suggestion does that without punishing the owners who are trying to field a legitimate human team and just have a couple of holes to fill.

+1

There were several all CPU teams in Regional Pro #4 this season and they kicked a lot of tail - Devonport, Demon Llamas, Hellas Hoplites, etc. nearly all of them made the playoffs and they beat playoff teams in both conferences during the season. Not good dotbuilders is bull - you don't know what you are talking about so you shut up!!!

the CPU players "adjusting" creates several problems based on my observations:

1) if the opponent has a mix of levels, it would seem they adjust to the same measurement that gauges a teams overall effective level, being that it only looks at the top half or less of the team... so if a team has half level 70 dots and half level 65 dots, the CPU players will all be set to level 70 and therefore be superior, overall, to the human team, which will average out to level 67.5. If this is indeed how the formula works, it should be fixed.

2) the CPU dots seem to retain their inherent levels (it can be seen in the matchup pages) and when TWO CPU teams play each other, bizarre crap happens, since one team can have a bunch of level 70 guys and one have a bunch of level 20 guys. There doesn't seem to be anything that forces these two teams to balance with each other since there are no humans to balance to.

3) Things also get really crazy when an all CPU team plays a team with just one or two human dots... if those dots are really good, the opposing CPUs adjust up to their level--if they are really bad, they adjust down, but the CPU dots (95% of the roster) on the team with the one or two humans have no one to adjust toward, so stay at whatever inherent level they have. So the best way to beat an all CPU team is to have 1 bad human dot (the opponents will scale DOWN to him) and a bunch of high level CPU dots (who won't scale to their opponents).

GLB needs to crush the incentive for an owner to field a CPU or mostly CPU team and be competitive vs. humans while still offering an owner (who's flex is just as good as that of anyone else) who wants to own and run a team an avenue to do so... the natural solution might be some kind of new reverse D-leauge where owners can own a team and run the AI, but not have any humans allowed. That would solve a lot of problems... If you want to take a season off without losing your franchise, move it to the CPU leagues for a bit, then bring it back when you're ready to put humans on board again.

Part of the problem, too, is how teams are assigned to conferences in the first place. Its overly based on previous record and the previous season's roster rather than letting teams recruit, then freezing the rosters, then assign the teams into leagues and conferences. If it were done logically then all the CPU teams would fall to bottom anyway rather than be scattered throughout the various leagues. "Elite" leagues should never have CPU owned or teams with primarily CPU rosters teams--but it happens in many leagues... teams get promoted and feel they can't compete at that level so they gut and leave the empty shell of the team there for one season until it gets demoted the next. The process feeds the problem.

None of this is in support of the suggestion, which just tinkers more with the problem and makes it more complicated rather than solving it.

Originally posted by lhass
There were several all CPU teams in Regional Pro #4 this season and they kicked a lot of tail - Devonport, Demon Llamas, Hellas Hoplites, etc. nearly all of them made the playoffs and they beat playoff teams in both conferences during the season. Not good dotbuilders is bull - you don't know what you are talking about so you shut up!!!

Indeed, the 100% CPU team Devonport Devils are in the Reg Pro Competitive #4 Championship Game.

Plankton is kicking azz with a stable of Droids.

Kudos to him.

But is that within the range of outcomes that would really best serve GLB and Bort?

Personally, CPUs should just be set up so all of them are the same as the average of all Agent players in the League at the start of a season and be locked in.
This allows teams with lower levels to try & make up ground on the CPU players but also keeps CPUs to a reasonable level as opposed to scaling to the higher end of an opponent week to week.

Originally posted by yello1
Indeed, the 100% CPU team Devonport Devils are in the Reg Pro Competitive #4 Championship Game.

Plankton is kicking azz with a stable of Droids.

Kudos to him.

But is that within the range of outcomes that would really best serve GLB and Bort?

Working as intended, yes.

There is another problem that muddies the water on this issue.

By default an empty team is filled with CPUs in positions that make no sense. This is the standard, default all CPU roster:

http://goallineblitz.com/game/roster.pl?team_id=3462

The O players make sense. However, the script stops at 40 players, which means there are only 3 CBs, no SS, no FS, no K, and no P. Thus, when that team plays a game, they have a OG handling the kicking and punting, and a very winded D. This leads to tons of ST and O scores for the human team and makes it look like CPUs are worse than they really are.

I think if they changed the default CPU roster to include K, P, at least 1 FS and 1 SS (have one less OT, one less OG, one less LB, one less WR), you would see all CPU teams performing better and they would have a more complete picture of the relative strength of CPUs. As it is now, there are only a handful of all CPU teams that have reasonable rosters, so when one or more of them do well, it is easier for the Admins to pass it off as a fluke vs. CPUs actually being better then they intend. It would also serve to make scores against CPU teams more realistic, which was the stated intent of the CPU buff back in the day.

Originally posted by Plankton
There is another problem that muddies the water on this issue.

By default an empty team is filled with CPUs in positions that make no sense. This is the standard, default all CPU roster:

http://goallineblitz.com/game/roster.pl?team_id=3462

The O players make sense. However, the script stops at 40 players, which means there are only 3 CBs, no SS, no FS, no K, and no P. Thus, when that team plays a game, they have a OG handling the kicking and punting, and a very winded D. This leads to tons of ST and O scores for the human team and makes it look like CPUs are worse than they really are.

I think if they changed the default CPU roster to include K, P, at least 1 FS and 1 SS (have one less OT, one less OG, one less LB, one less WR), you would see all CPU teams performing better and they would have a more complete picture of the relative strength of CPUs. As it is now, there are only a handful of all CPU teams that have reasonable rosters, so when one or more of them do well, it is easier for the Admins to pass it off as a fluke vs. CPUs actually being better then they intend. It would also serve to make scores against CPU teams more realistic, which was the stated intent of the CPU buff back in the day.

And if they went that route, the CPU teams will still be winded come 4th quarter. But the score won't be the 400+ - 0 scores we used to see.