With the awesome news that david stone is adding Pokemon Showdown compatibility to his bot Technical Machine, as well as making algorithmic improvements to increase both speed and play quality, I feel free to once again speculate on the potential of having high quality competitive battling bots.
Player Improvement
One obvious possibility is the use of it to help improve players new to the game; being able to regularly play a "top" player - in the form of the bot - would be a big improvement.
Ladder
There are a lot of possibilities pertaining to the ladder, and maybe even questions to be asked. As it stands, with bots not being terribly prominent, they are legal for use on the main ladders of Pokemon Showdown. It would be interesting to see just how far TM could climb any given ladder.
However, I foresee a potential problem - on old gen ladders, where frequently you don't get games instantly - you may end up repeatedly running into TM. On the one hand, being able to always get a game is a great thing, but on the other hand, many players may play ladder looking for an actual human to play against. I wonder, should it become something that actually happens - people regularly running into a bot on ladder - whether it might be an option for ladders to ban bots from playing, or to make ladders where you always are matched up with a bot, rather than a player, and it's seen how good players can do versus the bot. The latter thing I think could be an interesting, more objective, way of measuring skill than anything we currently have.
Use In Tournaments
Firstly, I speculate that if a bot were a good enough player of the game that you would want it in a tournament like SPL, that they probably will be and furthermore probably ought to be banned. I wonder whether bots ought to be banned from single-player tournaments. It seems interesting to me, however, the possibility of holding separate (parallel?) tournaments including bots. For example, what about a tournament where a bit over 50% (to ensure a clean bracket) of the "players" are bots - how far will humans make it in that tournament? Will a bot win instead? Humans vs machines sounds like a fun possible sort of tournament.
There is also a possible tournament format where there are no human players, only bots. The idea would be that individuals or teams sign up, and they choose what teams the bot uses. Maybe it is a purer test of teambuilding skills, in some sense.
Finally, a silly but interesting thought. As Technical Machine is named after TMs in the game, well, what use could HMs (Hidden Machines) have... maybe we could have a tournament where everyone signs up on alts, messaging the host who they are, and some amount of bots sign up too... at the end of the tournament it is a surprise reveal whether or not the winner is a bot, and how well the winners did.
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Do you have other ideas about the potential of competitive battling bots? Post them in the comments!
Player Improvement
One obvious possibility is the use of it to help improve players new to the game; being able to regularly play a "top" player - in the form of the bot - would be a big improvement.
Ladder
There are a lot of possibilities pertaining to the ladder, and maybe even questions to be asked. As it stands, with bots not being terribly prominent, they are legal for use on the main ladders of Pokemon Showdown. It would be interesting to see just how far TM could climb any given ladder.
However, I foresee a potential problem - on old gen ladders, where frequently you don't get games instantly - you may end up repeatedly running into TM. On the one hand, being able to always get a game is a great thing, but on the other hand, many players may play ladder looking for an actual human to play against. I wonder, should it become something that actually happens - people regularly running into a bot on ladder - whether it might be an option for ladders to ban bots from playing, or to make ladders where you always are matched up with a bot, rather than a player, and it's seen how good players can do versus the bot. The latter thing I think could be an interesting, more objective, way of measuring skill than anything we currently have.
Use In Tournaments
Firstly, I speculate that if a bot were a good enough player of the game that you would want it in a tournament like SPL, that they probably will be and furthermore probably ought to be banned. I wonder whether bots ought to be banned from single-player tournaments. It seems interesting to me, however, the possibility of holding separate (parallel?) tournaments including bots. For example, what about a tournament where a bit over 50% (to ensure a clean bracket) of the "players" are bots - how far will humans make it in that tournament? Will a bot win instead? Humans vs machines sounds like a fun possible sort of tournament.
There is also a possible tournament format where there are no human players, only bots. The idea would be that individuals or teams sign up, and they choose what teams the bot uses. Maybe it is a purer test of teambuilding skills, in some sense.
Finally, a silly but interesting thought. As Technical Machine is named after TMs in the game, well, what use could HMs (Hidden Machines) have... maybe we could have a tournament where everyone signs up on alts, messaging the host who they are, and some amount of bots sign up too... at the end of the tournament it is a surprise reveal whether or not the winner is a bot, and how well the winners did.
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Do you have other ideas about the potential of competitive battling bots? Post them in the comments!
