AI by Jamesbettis172

[fluid delta]

Welcome @frail storm! Any feedback from the community will show up here.
Please note that this thread discussion is not shared with SMG.
It is solely for the RISK Community to discuss ideas & provide constructive feedback!

[simple yarrow]

Pre network overhaul this wouldn't be a good idea at all - it'd basically be an exploit for players with reliable connections to wait out their opponents / this would also encourage stalling

[frail storm]

Damn I hadn't thought of that, but I don't think it would be much of an issue though, as people with a weaker internet connection could simply avoid this setting.

Also a kind of "suggestion in a suggestion". I think more suggestions should be implemented into the game and if they work they stay, if they don't they go. It could be a better way of testing things out rather than overthinking them and never bothering, but back to the point, I also think the amount of players in games currently that bot out as a way to cheat is 100% spread across gamemodes, the idea with this suggestion would be that the "self destructing bots" category would be the first gamemode with 0% bot out cheaters. I think reducing the amount of cheaters in players games while having a negative trade off (not being able to join back even if you disconnect), would 100% be accepted by a good amount of players. (Hope this makes sense).

[simple yarrow]

The potential increase for stalling (even if it's more hidden, like just using camera animations and taking 80% of each turn) would increase at the minor benefit of the few selective players that intentionally abuse reconnection system - at the bigger expense of genuine disconnects

I like the idea for having test modes/features in-app that are trialed, but we do have a pretty small team on RISK so having 50% of implemented features discontinued vs maybe 5% of implemented features discontinued would be quite expensive as well I'd assume

There tends to always be a backlog of good improvements & QoL fixes that can be worked on instead, which won't run the risk of being rolled back too

[hazy egret]

If it was adjusted to allow reconnect for a short reasonable time period maybe 90 seconds. And after that It did exactly what is proposed. Why not? more options are always better. I like the idea of a warning on the mode.

While we are at it can we please please please get neutral bots with active bots for ready up fails or at a minimum a neutral bot that doesn’t persist adding troops and wasting time forever (times out after some period just like the neutral bots replacing human players)

And here are a couple other hot tips for SMGs feature development department:

[frail storm]

Thanks for agreeing and adding to my suggestion, obviously an idea is better when more people put their thoughts and ideas towards it. I don't like how so many peoples ideas are just shut down cause ironically, SMG are afraid to take risks. I think a very short time to reconnect could also work, but then maybe a cap of 3 disconnects max (maybe even 2).

[frail storm]

Honestly people stalling wouldn't be that much of an issue. I'm sure if someone were to stall that person would likely get targeted anyway, so that problem would solve itself, and no sane person would voluntarily use camera animations to purposely give themselves a speed disadvantage - camera animations should literally be removed from the game. The thing I have a problem with is the fact someone can bot out, come back when they like and not only that.... they can do it as many times as they want. I don't see my idea being a complete idea, but I think with a few decent contributions, a few tweaks and a little bit of thought, my idea could really create a game mode where players don't have to worry about this specific type of cheater.

[frail storm]

To add to the botting out part, when someone bots out it leaves the remaining players completely stuck for up to 10 minutes at a time (as mentioned it can also happen multiple times too!). If alliances aren't on, the remaining players would have a hard time communicating on whether or not they want to target the botting player to make the rest of the game fair, and if they are on, you have to trust that the other player/players will actually work together to kill the botting player... This shouldn't be a part of risk that players should even have to deal with in the first place.

[grave furnace]

I don’t know what the answer is, but to have someone leave and suddenly you have their entire bot army attacking you is awful. You can spend hours in a game with a strong alliance that all of a sudden is gone and your game is over.

[simple yarrow]

But these are things that, after the network overhaul they can just be applied globally - additionally this is pretty much what inactive ai does (just not as strict a time thing, due to relatively common disconnects over time)

[hazy egret]

When’s the next time SMG will share info about which if any of the community suggestions from risk ideas have peeked their interest or are currently in the works?

[simple yarrow]

No idea, we don't normally comment on where they come from - but the risk ideas are:
a) export previous month at least 15 days after it has ended (so Jan is exported ~15 Feb or later)
b) I don't know specifics for the RISK team but I'm pretty sure they're looking at ideas across topics etc every week or two

It also means because of our current export route that changes to reaction counts for ideas posted >6 weeks ago are not currently tracked - the idea is that every idea needs to have at least 2 weeks of voting time before being exported. There isn't really any optimal way for doing that but most voters won't go back >6 weeks just for voting on ideas anyway, just looking at the last few days / week or two.

Might add buttons in future to enable these being voted on for fixed times in future, but it might not be good UX as you may want to add your reaction gradually to older ideas, taking that away doesn't really provide much benefit

[hazy egret]

Thanks

So bringing back older ideas from before this process was in place (or posting my newest brain farts) might get them in front of the relevant eyes in as little as six weeks assuming they receive the necessary number of upvotes.

This one post is chocked full of bangers* that are all previously discussed on this discord.

*Aside from the log-rhythmic progressive cards and 12 sided capital dice those two were meant as jokes, but not entirely without merit now that I start to think about them. I believe 8 sided capital defense has been discussed seriously.