AlphaStar Program Change In Versus AI Mode

I had to make a post about this because I don’t see anyone else talking about this. I brought this issue up a while back in a chat feed in game. Now obviously I’m a silver league scrub…let’s try not to bring up my league in this discussion please.

But so I fired up a custom game in HOTS I believe and it was a very close game. I want to say it was like TvP or TvT. In any case the AI was set to “Hard” difficulty. This AI (terran) in about a 13 minute game had close to 100 workers, 6-7 bases, and well over 300 APM…he had rally points for all of his units and he was making more units than upgrades.

Now perhaps I am having a memory lapse of some sort here. But what this “Hard” level AI was doing is what I seem to remember cheater level 3 AI’s doing several years ago. And I used to beat the “Hard” AIs pretty easily. When I attacked this AI I split my army…and attacked in two places at once…still the AI had units in both locations…it just felt like I was fighting Innovation or MarineKing…not an actual AI…has anyone else had a similar experience?

Yes, as someone who cleared my A.I. achievements 10 years ago, I can confirm that this is as what you have guessed. The A.I.s have been modified to not only be smarter, but also enjoy more benefits that do not exist previously.

I don’t know the exact numbers or features for each level of difficulty, but one of the key thing that the A.I.s enjoy is additional resources per trip (without expending the actual mineral / gas). This means that each base of the A.I.'s is more productive than yours.

Can’t recall if this is still active (but this was something I noticed many years ago).

the Insane A.I. does cheat - Insane 1 has full map vision, Insane 2 also has 40 % extra resources per trip later in the game, Insane 3 also has extra resources per trip from the start

yeah. I think it’s the Alpha Star program…but more recently I’ve noticed more changes…seems like they have vision as well…I mean like hard, harder, very hard, etc…one time I did a proxy rax cheese and it was spotted pretty quickly. Also more recently even medium and easy AIs do more timing attacks now and won’t surrender as easily…I’m okay with these changes I guess but I wish they would give more warning. I talked to people in game and a lot of guys I ran into were just as surprised as me by the changes. And they noticed a significant difference as of the last couple years or so. To me it’s irritating just because it’s one of many things that just increases the learning curve for new players. Like, for example, I will queue up a 3VAI and a lot of times my allies are brand new players…but they could have hard, harder AIs, etc…they are still learning how to play…well it becomes like a 1V3 situation because a lot of times the new players get Roflstomped and I’m left to fight them on my own…anyways once again I can tell why #deadgame is a thing.

If the AI has improved, then it’s not an issue for the new players, quite the opposite. You can always play vs Very Easy AI if you want to, but even Elite the AI was not able to prepare you for the ladder, as it’s easily cheesed. (at least used to be)
From what I remember from ~ 2 years ago, AI was able to defend cannonrush, as it was probably specifically programmed for that, but against any other proxy it stood no chance. It always scouted it (the AI scouts a lot around their base with workers), but could not respond correctly.

AlphaStar will probably never be integrated into SC2 as a playable AI for three reasons. First it gives anyone the opportunity to dissect it including competitors. Second I suspect it would reveal the AI isn’t as strong as their ladder testing indicated. Third I believe it requires proprietary hardware (physical hardware) to run it.

EDIT: Fourth, I believe they have to retrain it (which costs $$$$ in CPU power) for every new map pool / update.

Well like I said I did proxy barracks rush one time and it spotted that…it seems like they are harder to cheese…maybe even harder since the last time you played. But I think more the point Im trying to get to is like Blizzard wants to actually FORCE players to use hotkeys instead of using mouse only. You could see the beginnings of that in the LOTV campaign where they were suggesting certain hotkeys for certain actions or control groups. Now even the AIs have upticked to the point where you have to be faster.

However, this just digresses into my point that speed does not equal skill. Like if you fire up a casual game in SC1 against some AIs you will notice some significant differences. In SC1 you will have time to build your base and economy. In SC1 the AIs aren’t particularly micro heavy. In SC1 they want all of the resources but they won’t necessarily finish you…they will just starve you out and make the game time out in a draw. My point is THAT is a lot more casual friendly than this new AI in SC2 that doesnt give you time to build a base or an economy, kills you completely (will even go after flying buildings), extremely micro heavy, does not give you time, constant rush, and you more or less cant even hide anything late game if you are near dead. AI games like this might feel “casual” to Stats and Reynor but not to brand new players.

As far as I remember, in SC1 you could not select difficulty, only speed. In SC2 you have many difficulty options and increasing the difficulty of the hardest ones seems like a good thing as it gives the option for more challenge other than laddering.
Unless you are already playing against Very Easy / Casual on the Slowest speed and still can’t beat it. I that case SC2 is probably not the game for you.

But I don’t think that SC1 was easier than Very Easy AI in SC2. Certainly not Melee games (which were WAY harder than campaign)

yes well I tend to do Wings Of Liberty Versus AI FFA there is one map that playing protoss I am undefeated on. But I queue random so I could get any race but it depends on the map. These FFAs feel so weird to me too because basically if Im protoss I win and if Im zerg I lose…and then terran I might win or might lose. Because I set the difficulty levels of the AIs to everything from Very Easy to Elite. Very Easy is steamrolled and Elite has to be tackled (early) harder than an offensive lineman. So it’s fun I dont know it’s interesting…saw a couple games where Very Hard and Elite died early and then Hard and Medium do better than expected. But traditionally I can win up until like Very Hard/Elite or so. At that point it expects hotkeys I think. Which digresses to my previous point of Blizz forcing casuals to use hotkeys which I believe IS a problem. Because I have had several in game friends I can name who quit playing because they didn’t want to learn hotkeys. I myself am not a hotkey player.

But nobody is forcing you or those friends of yours to play against Very Hard/Elite.
Or do you want even the hardest AI to be so easy that any casual can beat them, without hotkeys?
Why can’t casual players simple select easier difficulty, instead of removing the option to have harder difficulty for those who may want it ?

I see your point but I still think the AlphaStar program is as toxic as smurfing, cheeses, alt accounts, bots, hackers, and team killers…it’s just yet another way of telling new players…“don’t come here.”

Why? This is like you asking to remove the option to select display resolution higher than 1280x720 because that is the highest you can play on your machine and therefore you want to remove this option from others as well.

That makes abosolutely no sense, and I think it’s quite opposite of what you are saying. Having better AI (when you can select easier one) is allowing MORE people to play, not less.