Different AI difficulty levels

doonboat

with the issues of not being able to start a match still rumbling on, I have found myself taking the opportunity to practice and improve my deck against the AI.
the issue with this though is that the AI seems to be just one level which appears to be beginner.
So I put it to the developers that maybe there could be a difficulty level function to give a more robust deck test

TechHog

You think that devs who can't fix a bug like this are capable of making proper, challenging AI?

doonboat

you’ve got to have hope right

TheJeffers

I loved a lot of single player TCG video games in my youth, Pokémon TCG and Yugioh among them.

But now that the internet is ubiquitous and always available, no one wants to make a decent single player AI for card games anymore, never mind a story mode.

Playing against a real human opponent is always going to teach you more about how the game is really played, and AI can falsely convince you that you are exceptionally capable, only to be outfoxed by the first living opponent with a half decent deck.

Of course, people can also be annoying to play against, either through bad manners or slow play, or the types of decks that come into the meta from time to time. Sometimes you want a fair match with an AI opponent who will never complain or cheat and always makes their plays promptly.

And, as illustrated by this situation, online opponents cannot always be available. Decent AI opponents of varying levels is a great thing to fall back on.

But as card games have gotten more complex, both in terms of the function of individual cards and the decks being played, it becomes more difficult to make good old fashioned AI work in a way where it can handle a multitude of different decks and strategies in its own play while reacting to a human opponent's deck and play logically.

Perhaps soon card game AI will use learning algorithms similar to those that give us the chatbots and art we see today. I believe Konami of Japan is currently planning to host a competition to design an AI for its Master Duel client.

But on the Pokémon side of things, we can't even get multiple difficulty levels in the main series games. In fact, they took away the option to disable exp. share and shift battles.

On the Live client specifically, we still don't have a true Expanded format.

The solution to this is unlikely to be better AI. The solution is likely to be "wait for us to fix the online play".

Why patch the hole in your roof today? It probably won't rain tomorrow.