It’s been one of those days… On top of still dealing with the stress of Albertsons.com losing my order and having all of my grocery money locked up and unavailable for a week, I’m still working on my RL project even though I’ve been at it since about 5:00 this morning.
And yet, a conversation I had with Ayame recently keeps coming back to me, even while I’m working. She’s got some ideas and some projects she’s working on which utilize bots built on libsecondlife code which will, I believe, be a very nice benefit for the C:SI community. I’m going to be assisting in any way that I can, and I’m quite excited about the idea.
Thinking about her ideas keeps bringing me around to the idea of how I could do so many things with bots to make my own life easier, unit tests being a prime example.
I’m still very much trying to come up with more objective methods to determine whether a weapon is balanced, and I can think of several ways that automated testing via a bot running a predefined script of actions can assist in that process.
Unfortunately, my schedule being what it is, I haven’t really had time to think on this too deeply. The technical details of how to implement the tests are not the big challenge, really. The big challenge, as I see it, is coming up with a valid and reasonably complete list of tests that should be performed for all C:SI weapons.
I will continue to think on this topic as time allows, and should have some time this weekend to really dig into the topic, but I wanted to post this now in order to elicit feedback from the community as well.
I know that many C:SI members are software devs, and even many who are not have repeatedly shown that they have a pretty solid understanding of ways to test the weapons for balance and "correctness", so I’m asking anyone and everyone who has ideas to go ahead and submit them.
So whatcha think, got some good ideas for ways to objectively test C:SI weapons for balance and correct function? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Personally Robby I’ve got nothing. I’m at a loss for ideas. Thats probably more or less due to the fact that I’m not exactly sure how the bots would work. But, on top of that I still think that a balance test is still best done by a live comprehensive comparison made by devoted beta testers.
Of course I’m not opposed to the idea of automated balance tests. But I also don’t think you should ever rely on them solely. However like I said before I think right now my understanding of how even a basic test would work leaves me at a stand still on ideas for you.
Bots for testing.. that could work. The problem that there arent any ideas how this testing could be done shows that in some ways no one really ever talked about gameplay in csi. i know that the formus are used to discuss this and that, but the most important topic in a “computer game” has never ever been discussed. no one every thought about whats making (lets say made) csi balanced and how easy you can screw things up by accident.
i wasnt sure where to post my “opinion about the wave/taketori” and if i should do it at all because i start to fear that ppl start to talk bad about me cuz i complain so much *lol. at least i know that my opinion is shared by probably the best csi fighter out there so that makes me feel like i dont fight windmills alone.
balancing in csi consists of the stone-paper-scissor principle. if you want you can think of a csi spar imho as a series of “encounters” (ppl approach each other, fight, someone moves back and they approach again.). for every given action my opponent can make i should have the ability to respond to it if i concentrate and if i’m pretty sure what i can expect him to do (like, if i know he’s very likely to slash/kick me when i approach i should be able to counter that).
so, to ensure this the following things should work:
musashi has a harder to see kick-animation (because only the lower body is animated and that kinda fast) but the transition from kick to block has some kind of gap so you still have the chance to slash it. (the wave had the same befor the big update with “improved” transitions. and during this time the wave was balanced too but ppl didnt like it because it didnt feel “smooth” i guess.. or whatever).
1. if you kick and i’m concentrating on your kick (or when i expect you to kick) i need to be able to slash it. thats the current big balance-issue with the taketori (and the wave katana) because it has such a hard to recognize and fast kick that most of the time when you actually “see” someone is kicking you simply are to late to slash. ashes and archatek swords have a pretty good kick-animation that is easy to respond to with some practice. (as a sidenote. i’m using archtaek too as my main sword and i’m still known to be hard to beat. so consider this befor you think a “slow” kick is an disadvantage …
2. if someone makes a kick-slash combo you should be able to counter-slash the slash-attack of your opponent.
3. if someone makes a 4-hit-combo (or in general you see someone is doing one of these 2-hit attacks) you should be able to counter-slash the last of these two slashes.
4. if you are blocking and you watch out, expect your opponent to slash and you see the start of the attack-animation you should be able to counter-slash this attack. thats the big issue with the wave (not sure about the tak because i stopped to spar it a while ago). while the wave can counter every sword easily you arent able to counter it. so either you are forced to use the wave too to prevent having a MAJOR drawback or you fight with a old-fashioned sword and you get killed if you are fighting someone with at least a basic understanding of CSI. if you watch wave vs. wave spars you’ll notice that it mainly consits of uncontrolled kicks because with the lack of counter-slashes and the lack of being able to slash kicks reliably like against other swords the stone-paper-scissor principle doesnt apply anymore and hence everything ppl used to “teach” or what made csi such a unique experience simply vanished.
guess these are the most important points to consider for testing a new sword imho. maybe i’m gonna take some time and point out the above mentioned things in more detail if someone is interested in it. (btw, the same way you can explain every balance issue thats out there right now.)
btw (my last sidenote i promise
if i look at my list the “counter slash” thing seems to be quite important. if i was csi dev i’d think about ways to include this counter-slash in csi gameplay.
oh damn, looks like the was a copy paste error at the beginning of my comment. sorry for that
The Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) principle is exactly how one should approach sparring against the Wave and Taketori. You can’t wait to see what hand the other person will throw. You have to throw your hand at the same time as the other person or you get disqualified. What happens in RPS is that you have to base your current throw on the past behavior of the opponent. There are actually named sequences of throws in real-world RPS tournaments that people use to psychologically affect the other player. The same applies to the Wave and Taketori. There are two skills that a really good C:SI fighters has to have: great reactions, and the ability to pick up the other player’s habits/patterns/whatever. And strength in one aspect can help to balance weakness in the other, as has already been discussed in this blogsite. Judo and I have pretty slow reactions times (200-300 ms range according to the web-test)and moderate computers systems (I’m lucky to get 30-40 fps per spar), yet we hold up reasonably well in fighting. The prediction of the opponent’s moves is the heart of RPS, not reactive hand-throwing. I think Kasumi’s RPS analogy stems from the fact that there are only 3 combat actions in C:SI: slash, kick, and block. All sparring encounters consist of some mix of those three.
Frankly i think the kicks are perfectly slashable on both swords, but this is a difference of opinion. Unless the kicks are not counterable for a majority of C:SI users, then it’d be a shame to go tinkering with them. One thing that i do have problems with is the Wave slash. The Wave slash-to-block transition is often too fast for me to counter unless I’m expecting it. Even if I use a Wave also, I have issues countering it. If I use a kick to draw the slash, and try to counterslash that slash, it’s still very hard to beat the Wave block. But I still find myself using kicks a lot more against the Wave because I have to take advantgage of every stun I earn. I find the Taketori slash more counterable for some reason.
A few footnotes, I think the Ninjaken slash-to-block is at least as fast as the Wave’s. And I do try to be a lot more observant against that weapon too. Also my weapon of choice is the Archetek Heart of Darkness, my secondary is the Daikon Forge Wave, with the Taketori climbing quickly up my list thanks to the last update. I agree with Zero Gee that beta testers are quite important, but i also understand that Robby had literally an army of beta-testers when he developed the Taketori, and he still was often incredibly frustrated.
I’ve got to agree with Sol in terms of the way to go against the Tak/wave. I have a habit of going back to block even when I have a good sense what my opponent’s next move will be. Vs a Tak I can’t do that. I have to run the combo so that I meet the person’s next step. imo that’s a good thing. I prefer when a spar becomes more about pattern recognition and projection than reaction time.
One thing I have noticed with the tak, it’s a lot harder to slash a kick and get pushed back than it is with any of the other katana on the first kick if you’re going by reaction time alone. I went through some reaction tests with Zero to check on that. I’m pretty sure though that I’ve pulled it off quite a few times in a spar so I think it’s still doable if you’re going on patterns and reacting as they’re acting.
I have gone back and forth on the balance issue v the Take. As I become more comfortable with the Take’s animation sequence, I am more inclined to think it is balanced, and I find countering possible, particularly when you have figured out the other player’s pattern (the simulataneous game thing). That being said, my sword of choice against the Take is the Wave because of its percieved speed. I find that with the introduction of some push, there is less kick spamming from Take fighters, or at least, push back limits their ability to do a bunch of kicks in a row. Still, I find that people I beat easily HOD v HOD are generally harder to beat when they use the Take.
And objective testing would be great Robby!
Yeah Mal, I noticed some quirks too with the Take since the kick-push returned. I thought that the Take kick for some reason was able to push through a block. But on testing, I think it was more of an SL lag/anom issue than a sword issue.
And I have to say, when i started to get comfortable against the Take, I was using the Wave too, just like Judo. But since that time, I’ve felt pretty comfortable against the Take with all makes of katana, although primarily I would use HoD, Wave, or Take against it. Musashi is up there too, and Ashes is toward the bottom although manageable. The biggest issue for me was simply learning the new anims and how to time my counters against it.
The tak has only a kick-issue and is good to counter. the problem is you hardly get a chance to counter it because it turns ppl into kicker. the reason why i actually hesitate to talk about these things is cuz i know what kind of respons i might get lol. as you described the wave and tak need a diffrent approach to spar them and they are “different” compared to the remaining other swords. i guess we are talking about “balancing” and i understand this word as “making swords behaving the same way in the most important aspects of fighting”. and i simply wanted to point out what you can apply to ashes, archatek and musashi.
even if someone doubts theres a kick-issue. i’m asking myself two questions. first, why do alot of ppl suddenly got so much harder to fight against if they use a take/wave while they were pretty easy to defeat if they used one of the remaining eleven swords? and second, befor the take and wave you saw a quite even distribution out there concerning the swords ppl used. if you look around today you find mainly two swords. hmmm. isnt it strange that almost the whole community changed that drastically?
i dont want to say these swords are bad, all i want to point out is that you cant fight against them like you can against the remaining 11 swords out there and i think the goal should be to make them all equal. i always loved csi because it wasnt the sword that made a difference but the player.
i think its gonna be hard to make something “balanced” when there isnt a standard defining the word “balanced” in csi-terms.
Gah!!! I didn’t expect so many comments so quickly, haha… Looks like I’ll have to wait until lunch to be able to read these with the kind of attention they deserve, but I’m super-pleased that there’s so much here to go through
Well, one can’t fight against the Nagi, Ninjaken, nor Blood Drinkers (BDs) in the same way either. And people also got a lot harder to fight against when they picked up the BDs too, mostly due to kick spamming. I did notice that against the Take, but I find the kick spamming isn’t impossible to counter using repeat W slashes. I can often match the timing of my Ws to their Cs, unless lag rears its head. I disagree that the weapons should all behave the same. To me that wouldn’t be very much fun. I fight against the kats differently than I do against the nagi, ninjaken, or BDs. I fight against the Musashis, especially the Dynasty Flame, differently than I do against the Ashes and Archeteks. But people have made their choices against what they’re willing to fight against. Makk certainly has, and Kasumi makes it very clear in her Profile as well. Those are their choices, and they have sound reasons and strong convictions in their choices. Frankly, it’s good to get these opinions out because it appears different people are seeing different things.
Oh and you’re right Makk, “balance” is very tough to define. I think actually we agree on our own definitions: for each action, there should be a counter action; for each strategy. there should be a counter-strategy.
Blarb blarb blarb! EVERYONE BUY A TAKETORI and then you’ll be fine! lol
LOL Shindo, or just wait for the next transaction outage and get one for free from Robby’s vendors! Oh Robby’s gonna boot me from his beta-tester army for that one.
lol sh*t…this is what the C:SI community does when SL is down.
uhh.. i was talking about katanas when i said they should behave the same. i dont really care about nagis, BDs, Ninjakens, Machineguns, Nukes or whatever ,)
As Judo said its possible to counter take kicks with this “simultaneous game thing”. all i’m saying is that you dont have to do that against other swords. So.. while i have to pick the right timing to slash a take kick befor i actually have an indication that a kick is comming the take can wait for my kicks like it used to be.
Hm. What are the consequences when i have to do this “simultaneous game thing” (lemme use SGT as an abbreviation lol)? The right thing to do when someone kicks me is in general to slash him (when i’m not expecting a slash after this kick). If i kick too i’m just reacting without a gain of advantage, when i stay in block i obviously lose. So.. its slashing. But when it comes down that i have to “predict” the timing of the kick (and its not enough anymore to know the next thing he’ll do is to kick) then i’m in a much more difficult position then he is. if i’m slashing his kick he can still slash back. if i miss this mysterious timing i need to have then i get stunned and get either a couple of kicks or a counterslash. So.. on the long run i have a pretty hard time against the kick which shouldnt be the case. (And the great thing of csi without the need of SGT is that ppl came up with faking to prevent kicks from being to easy to slash and all this stuff). Allright.. and now imagine a good take-fighter with a decend understanding of tanking *sigh
And thats the reason why its easier to survive with the wave against the tak, because you cant counter the wave so all you get is a kick in worst case.
if someones tanking-qualities are limited to “wait, kick, block, wait, kick, block, wait, kick, block” he should be dead kinda fast because that doesnt really show any kind of understanding how csi works (worked). but the same guy is doing a lot “better” when he uses a tak cuz if i fail to predict the time i’m in a bad position again.
And yeah, if everyone would get a take/wave things would be “balanced”, but what about the other swords then? But lets be honest, the take/wave is making a lot ppl feel better so.. anyways, “objective” testing is the goal of all this and i tried to come up with what should be tested/ensured from my point of view. If you want to test something you need to know how to test it and *what* to test.
I’ll follow. Back to the issue of testing. A bot will be able to determine fairness in terms of being able to counter a particular move within some standard period of time, i have no doubt. And this time parameter could mimick some reasonable human reaction time. Lag conditions could even be simulated. I firmly believe bots would be able to give you more info in more in-world environments. But I think one problem is that bots would counter based on some specific trigger in the C:SI scripts? If so that doesn’t account for the difficulty of the human user learning and reacting to the animations, which is why AOs are also such a hot topic. Animation times and action-transition speeds aside, I’m not thinking a bot could give you info on this decidely human factor, i.e. the learning curve to recognize new anims and new features. So back to Zero’s comment, bring in the testers. I guess I’m saying there are important roles in C:SI weapons development for both bots and humans, RObby.
Don’t miss quote or misunderstand anything I said. I have no problem with the idea of bots for testing things. Given the right amount of time, and the appropriate AI level they might be able to give some kind of realistic feedback on balance issues. But I can only see that happening with the code side of things. Simulated environments are still simulated and thus in my view have inherent flaws.
There are some flaws in some weapons concerning the topic of balance that wont even be seen by the community users until after the weapon has been out for several months. The human aspect in testing and product development is must, it is a very much needed thing. I highly doubt Robby would ever consider the idea of not using beta testers to provide feedback so don’t get me wrong in that aspect either.
The best balance test I can see is still a comprehensive comparison made by testers with data feedback tools. Which reminds me Robby, check your email
You aren’t going to believe this but I have an opinion! lolz
I am more ignorant about how C:SI even works than I should be for playing with it for so long so I guess I would assume that bots can measure stuff that would be useful and more “objective”. But as annoying as it probably was for Robby to be getting 50 conflicting opinions on the Taketori I don’t really think you can do bots alone either. I guess thats kinda obvious, but I’ll say anyway that whatever you attempt to measure you don’t know the directions human creativity will take with the basic components combined into more sophisticated technique. So when actual people use something it can be different than whats on paper. But everyone knows that already.
Someone mentioned that in my profile I state that there are weapons I won’t spar anymore. I feel bad doing that because for one I think the issue with the Wave and the Taketori might just be that they work better. I and a few others noticed how many people have started using Taketoris and Waves almost exclusively and how at least a good portion of them must have the system sensitivity to realize they are using a katana that is better than the other competing models. But its sort of a difference in philosophy I think, that some people feel Robby has a better product so they will support that, whereas others see the balance issues created by 1/4 of the katanas meaning that you should stick to the 3/4 that are more closely balanced to each other (since the Wave and Taketori are in the minority within the system). I think a lot of people just find Robby’s swords more enjoyable to use and so its not necessarily about them seeking unearned advantages (but people are people, so there obviously is some of that going on too).
On just what the issues are I’m not totally confident about specifics, so the bot idea is probably a great way of narrowing it down. As is the case with a lot of people though, we have used this system way too much and can practically balance our checkbooks while we spar from being so familiar with the system, and the slightest thing being off can trigger that sensitivity right away, even if we can’t figure out specifically what we are feeling.
The Wave is the easier to pinpoint though. It goes from block to slash to block much faster than other kats. Makk already mentioned that though. I haven’t sparred one in a while so forget some of the other things I’ve noticed. But the counter feels somewhere between the other kats and the ninjaken, maybe closer even to a ninjaken than a kat (or it seems that way).
The Taketori I think is either countering faster OR is just countering more consistantly based on the intentions of the user than the other weapons do in a wider set of circumstances. But the result is the same. I don’t think its a huge difference though, but I can tell that its there, again for one of those two reasons I’m guessing.
Also I’ve noticed that it seems to benefit more often off the block bug, where if you hit a block JUST on the side of it being a good block you will not stun. I’ve noticed that I am getting hit through tiny block fakes by Taketoris that normally would result in them being blocked and unstunned on other swords.
This is also the case with retreats after a stun. I know that if I am a certain distance away and I am stunned, if I retreat within a certain time, and retreat a certain (usually short) distance back, and then put up a block, I will not get hit as my avie moves just over the line of being within and outside of range. The Taketori user can get these hits that normally would be blocked, again cause of either the speed difference on the counter or in what I mentioned about it getting a lot of slack on these close call hits that the others swords will not get.
I’ve also noticed that in long chained tank exchanges that as the hits of the exchange progress there seem to be opportunities for the Taketori user that have traditionally been unavailable. This is harder to describe but if you imagine a linked exchange of blocks and kicks and slashes, and the sequence and timing in which they fall, there are certain safe gaps of transition where you know in that instant a hit cannot come, based on when their last hit came and on when you can get your block up again. The Taketori seems to occassionally get hits in on these spaces that I’ve never had to deal with before and cannot do myself with another sword model (I primarily use Musashi).
I had a conversation the other day with someone suggesting that I am maybe not skilled or experienced enough, or too maladaptive, to contend with things that are actually fair. So thats one possibility =D
I’ve also heard things expressed that its the user and not the sword. I agree that the benefits of the Taketori are going to be small with a new user, but the slightest edge in strength will be amplifed in the hands of an experienced or skilled user. I think that fact comes into play in these discussions all the time. A lot of people would talk about how they think nagi’s are easy to spar against, and in the hands of a lot of users thats probably true. And if you look at someone like Meludo or Hibiki, those guys are just flat talented. But to point out that the Nagi gives a user certain advantages (since April 07, lolz), then its a false dichotomy to say “no they are just really good.” Yes they are good, which is what allows them to maximize the pay off of the imbalances of the Nagi. Same goes on with Taketori.
Another thing I hear a lot is the opinion that people are glad to have diversity and that if they all functioned exactly the same that would be dull. But thats not what balance is. Balance refers to advantages without accompanying and meaningful weaknesses. Imbalance takes some burden off the user’s skill to get a certain result. And C:SI being so sport-like and centered on competition for its own sake, thats a problem, since C:SI doing that so well has been the main draw at least when it comes to the main community of users. There are some other pretty fun and well made weapons for RP systems, but the strength differences in your character set up or weapon abilities matter less since its more an RP suppliment. The more C:SI resembles that, without an RP element to justify it, the less compelling C:SI becomes relative to other systems. So balance really *should* be obsessed over cause its what makes it worth doing.
And one last thing. Robby is one of the nicest guys Ive met on SL. He is very devoted to this system and to us. He tears his hair out using his big brain and experience on something that prolly translates to less than a minimum wage job for him. And when someone puts all that work into something primarily for someone else’s enjoyment it can feel awkward and mean complaining. Not that it stops me, lolz. So I hope Robby knows those things and that its not personal, and I am only avoiding sparring these things cause I’m sentimental and old school and can’t help getting aggrivated by the consequences of balance issues, and I also totally expect things to work themselves out cause I don’t doubt his commitment to the issue, so its just temporary. Its mostly just me trying to have as much fun as I can, just as some people have more fun using his weapons than others. So just hope no one gets offended =)
Kasumi Hashi’s latest blog post is : It sucked me in again.
I’m still at work, so I still haven’t had time to really read these comments and absorb it all yet, but I do wanna make a quick comment of my own with regard to how useful bots would be for testing…
They would *certainly* never be able to give me the kind of feedback that a human would, and cannot conclusively tell me whether a weapon is really operating as it should, but here are a very few of the things I expect to be able to do with them that I think would make them useful:
So while they can’t tell me everything I would need to know, by being able to perform an exact set of steps for any number of repetitions and for any length of time, there’s certainly a lot I could learn that would be beneficial. And the less time it takes to develop a weapon, and the less bugs, the better, right?
Last note before I head back to work : Ideally, by making the bots use standard key commands to perform their actions, they should be able to test all weapons, and all combinations of them as well
I get between $0 and $15 USD worth of sales on any given day, lately averaging about $5 or so (when there’s a “Please refrain from transactions” problem that day, I typically get only one or two sales at most for the entire day)
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So I’ve started compiling the thoughts and ideas I got from the comments here into a list of what I want the bots to be able to do and to test, and I hope to be able to turn that into a set of tests within the next couple of days. Once I get that done, the coding part will probably be mostly getting my bot code up to date with all of the changes to Second Life and libsl, which I expect to be frustrating but not terribly difficult. I’ll keep everyone posted on the progress, and will most likely ask for feedback on individual tests once I get that far.
wave and taketori are two entirely different weapons and it is not possible to either describe or critisize them both using the same arguments since their advantages differ from each other. i want to quickly sum up some of my own conclusions which are just things i noticed while i used and sparred against the wave and point out some of the most important issues with the taketori which i almost never used myself but had the change to face in spars a lot lately. i know that many of those things are just my impressions, others may experience something else but i can only come to an opinion if i compare what others say with the things i come across.
the main problem when i spar against the taketori is the higher push. if you stand as close as possible to another AV it takes 3 kicks of a normal katana to push somebody who isn’t blocking out of range whereas it takes only 2 for the taketori to achieve this. the increased push also flings the kicked person up into the air a bit, more than it happens with other katanas and that makes it harder to counter a kick of the taketori because you have to adjust and point your mouse down at the right moment, also you cannot move out of the way in time because you cannot run as long as you are in midair and so the taketori user can get a slash in without problem or even a second kick followed by a slash.
another thing is the random damage assignment for slashes. i compared this some weeks ago using the old hud to get the exact numbers and noticed that a slash of the taketori very often takes away 19 HP a few times even 20 whereas the max of others usually was 16 to 17 with very few exceptions when it went higher than this. i was too lazy to take notes of exactly how often i got which results as i tested this out but i’d love to do this again, if anybody is interested in doing some testing like this please feel free to IM me inworld.
those two things are to me the most noticeable issues which give anybody who uses the taketori an advantage over other swords. nothing like this occurs with the wave.
it is not impossible to counter the wave, i don’t understand why this is said so often. i use and spar against it often and got used to the anims and i cannot say it is exceptionally hard to counter but yes i believe ashes and archs are easier to counter, not musashis. i don’t think this is because they are faster but both the anims of the musashis and the wave are lacking keyframes and that makes them appear choppy. if you watch somebody W-slash with the HoD you’ll see the AV lifting block, turn to the left, one leg goes back, the arm stretches out and then the attack follows. there is a recognizeable transition from block to attack and this is missing or reduced with the wave and the musashis, there is not that much time to recognize that an attack is about to happen. since the anims of musashi/wave attacks are not that fluid it is harder to spot the moment when an attack is about to begin but that doesn’t make them faster per se.
also my experience is that the wave just works more consistently, i noticed huge differences in the length of one and the same attack move with most of the other swords, huge gaps and extended timewindows, sometimes it can takes ages to go back into block after you kick with an ashes kat. also respond times vary widely, often it is impossible to chain attacks in a fast tanking encounter because at one point in a block/kick/block/slash/block/slash sequence most swords stop responding to my keys at on me point although i am spamming.
the wave responds better, when i press keys things actually happen and they happen in time and in a consistent manner. it works best and this makes it - for me - the best sword out there and besides the HoD my weapon of choice.
i don’t see this that much as an advantage, it is more that i can see more or less obvious flaws with other blades. and as a european who spars with average ping times of 180-200ms i very often find the most unbalanced matter is to spar somebody whose respond times are 1/6 of a second faster than mine.
thank you robby for this great weapon (the wave, not the taketori lol), good luck finding adequate testing methods.