Trading Way Too Easy

[PSUColonel]

Sometimes I propose ridiculous trades to see how the AI will react...in essence, testing it. It failed miserably here, and I may have found a bug along the way...that's all.

[Gil Thorp]

Do you ever just play the game for the enjoyment of it?

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Gil Thorp

Do you ever just play the game for the enjoyment of it?

Best post in the thread so far.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by D-BacksJosh

Leave him be guys, he's poking holes in the AI...

...or something.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Gil Thorp

Do you ever just play the game for the enjoyment of it?

I play another game where the forum is full of people who delight in trying to mess with the AI or push the engine to where it falls apart. After a while, without ever making a conscious decision, I started avoiding those threads. It made both my game and forum experiences better.

I'm going to try it here, too.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

Sometimes I propose ridiculous trades to see how the AI will react...in essence, testing it. It failed miserably here, and I may have found a bug along the way...that's all.

So you go out of the way to try to "break" the AI trade decisions with "ridiculous" (your word not mine) trades and then proclaim in a thread title that "Trading Way Too Easy"? Why? Bit unfair to Markus and co., no?

How did it fail miserably? You yourself admit it is a ridiculous offer made in a solo environment. Should Markus use valuable coding time to close every possible "ridiculous" trade idea anyone can come up with? Really?

Markus: "Well I was going to tighten up the cpu roster management for OOTP15 but instead I think I'll close the "human adds 5 million to a ridiculous trade offer bug" instead.

The tread title should be more like..

"Hey, if I really try I, a human being, can fleece the AI in a trade"

Hey, it's your game instead of making realistic trade offers go ahead and knock yourself out ripping off the AI in ridiculous deals and let it ruin your game. Just please don't follow it up with threads with misleading titles that can damage the reputation of the game to new users that may be looking to purchase OOTP.

Potential new customer comes to the boards having heard of OOTP to check it out and is greeted by a thread title proclaiming trading is way to easy. Even if he opens the tread he doesn't understand how you tried to break the AI but simply believes the trading, like many other sports titles, is not good. Moves on to try to find the "game he dreams of" because obviously OOTP isn't as good as he heard.

[jaysdailydose]

I don't see anywhere where the AI was broken...

All I see is someone trying to exploit the AI to try to make themselves feel better.

Can the AI be better? Sure, but things can ALWAYS be better.

I'm still not seeing the problem with the initial trade after getting more information. Unless we're acting like Colby Lewis is Clayton Kershaw.

[BIG17EASY]

I'll post it once again -- a human outsmarted a computer, and we're supposed to revamp the trading AI because of it? Has there ever been a computer game (text-based or console-based) that didn't have exploits? The answer to both is NO. If someone's purpose is to simply dupe the game and then complain about it, that person isn't really helping us.

On the flip side, there is some great discussion that has come from this thread, and it got me thinking and I came up with this idea ...

What if OOTP got rid of the Trade Block list and function all together. And instead, we have either an assistant GM or frequent news stories that tell us there are rumors or scuttle that "Team A" is looking to trade "Player A", or "Team B" has been calling around to gauge interest in "Player B." Then, it would be up to us as the GM to keep track of who these players are, so we'd effectively be keeping track of players on the block on our own. (More reason for Markus to add the ability to keep different types of shortlists.)

And an offshoot of that, it would be nice if, when we offer a trade to an AI team, the AI would tell us when it has no interest in trading a player who it considers untouchable. I can't tell you how many times I've spent close to an hour trying to work out a trade for a prospect and can never get it done. If the AI would just say he's untouchable, then it would save a lot of time.

[endgame]

FWIW, the AI as it currently exists does allow for flexibility in the user's style, at least with regard to trading. I'll admit that historically, I've utilized a add cash to trade mode on many occasions to shore up my roster, but three things should be mentioned while pursuing that philosophy: 1) there are fiscal consequences and you do pay a price in the final analysis long-term, 2) this method is much more difficult in v14, and 3) the process is significantly affected by settings in AI evaluation/trade difficulty/preferences.

Perfect? No. But I'd submit that there's no sustainable definition of perfection in a game that attempts to cater to so many variable styles of play and personal preferences. The very most it can do is mitigate extremes, not eliminate them. Otherwise, consequences for mainstream mentalities are too severe. Outliers in execution and performance make for a dynamic experience. The character outliers in our forum, believe it or not, serve a similar purpose. It drives us toward, and helps solidify and define, our own beliefs and style of play.

[JMDurron]

Originally Posted by RchW

My impression is that money, payroll, roster placement and player value seem to exist as separate entities. It's the only way to explain why a player on waivers and a player on the block get treated like they are core assets.

This nails the issue I am seeing. Completely separate from the OP's particular trade scenario, the AI is willing to give a player a 40-man spot, waive that player, then trade for that player and immediately waive the same player again far too often for me to think that this isn't the exact problem. Trade value and roster placement decisions by the AI are completely separate modules of coding logic that do not interact, and it creates a gap that lets a certain subset of trades be too easy to execute.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by jaysdailydose

Obviously I didn't mean that it works EXACTLY like that. What I mean is that the CPU must have a mechanism to trade between AI teams or else there would be no trade movement.

Yes, the AI makes trades with itself. But that's not what we were discussing. The AI is not comparing the offers you make with the offers it might get from other AI teams. It very possibly should, but I know that the trade engine is the most computing-intensive part of the game, and that kind of change could dramatically slow down the game, which is why Markus might be reluctant to implement it.

Originally Posted by RchW

but right or not the current trading block in OOTP is generally filled with overpaid duds. That status equates to reduced value and the AI should adjust accordingly.

But that was one of the major advances with the Trade AI overhaul in v13. Of course these issues are complicated, so the AI is imperfect about this kind of thing, but the AI now knows how to compare player value with player cost. I've noticed the AI is perfectly willing to offload 'negative value' players (players paid more than they're worth) for negligible returns. That's a huge advance over, say, OOTP-11, when you could trade a $25m guy for an exact clone making $500k. So while I gather you'll still see some weird things from time to time, I think most of the time the AI is doing a good job about understanding salary and player value. What the AI is not doing quite as successfully is anticipating how newly acquired players will 'fit' into their roster. So you sometimes see the AI request a player in a trade (when you "make this work now"), then immediately waive him. Or the AI will be arranging a trade with you to pick up a superstar Catcher, and when you "make this work", the AI will request your other star Catcher (and leave him on the bench if you do trade him).

So I think you're exactly right about the limitations of the AI, especially when it comes to understanding which players are of no value - players on waivers, for example. There are a few changes that could be made to the Trade AI that would make a world of difference, and that's one of them.

edit - Oh, and I have the impression we fundamentally disagree about what the Trade Block should be, which is the root of any other disagreements we had before. I personally don't find the Trade Block implementation very interesting right now, and I think the whole feature should be redone from scratch.