How can we help fix the draft mode?

[horsekateer]

Hey everyone I was just thinking that the booster draft mode in Forge is largely unplayable if you're looking for any sort of practice at drafting due to very good cards sticking around in packs very late. I know it is very difficult to recreate the results of an actual draft but I think it's possible to get closer.

I've seen the rankings file but it seems like the AI doesn't choose according to these rankings as I just finished a DGMx3 draft and only saw gates on my first two packs yet for the rest of the draft the rares and mythic rares were all still in their packs almost every time I got them.

I also know that there is some attempt to collect data from drafts and have it be sent back for rating help (which I've turned on) but again, it seems the AI largely disregards the info.

My question to everyone is, is there a way we can help the process, or is there something that can be done regarding the way AI drafts decks in booster mode?

[Max mtg]

Is it an option for you to set up development environment and firstly trace and debug, and later on change the ai drafting code?

[Chris H.]

My memory is not very good and a lot of work has been done in the recent past and I can not remember everything.

I do seem to remember that people were reporting a similar situation a number of months ago, that is, the AI was picking the wrong cards and was leaving the strong cards unpicked.

Some dev (who was that masked man? ) tracked this down - there was a logical error in the code that caused the AI to pick the weakest rather than the strongest rated cards. I seem to remember that this was found and fixed a few beta versions ago.

[moomarc]

I think the masked man that corrected the logic last time was Sloth, but I have a feeling this is different. I think it might be a case of a lot of the higher rarities having RemAIDeck so the AI players draft the next highest that it can actually play. This means that they'll have stronger decks even though they missed some prize picks. This is part of the reason why AI usability is hidden by default in draft columns. Perhaps we just need to make the AI a little more likely to hate-pick some high rarity cards with high rankings?

Then again, maybe I'm just wrong and some logic got messed up again...

[friarsol]

I think the masked man that corrected the logic last time was Sloth, but I have a feeling this is different. I think it might be a case of a lot of the higher rarities having RemAIDeck so the AI players draft the next highest that it can actually play. This means that they'll have stronger decks even though they missed some prize picks. This is part of the reason why AI usability is hidden by default in draft columns. Perhaps we just need to make the AI a little more likely to hate-pick some high rarity cards with high rankings?

Then again, maybe I'm just wrong and some logic got messed up again...

That was my first inclination as well. Maybe there could be a preferences flag that the AI would draft strictly by the rankings and not consider the AI flag? It would make bombs less available, but would also probably weaken AI draft decks since they wouldn't be drafting cards they would actually play until later in the draft.

[horsekateer]

Perhaps maybe turn off the AI over valuing the colours for the first pack? That way it sort of remains open in the first pack and then commits for the 2nd and third?

[Sloth]

There were two reasons the AI drafted badly:

1. The AI evaluated the basic lands higher than anything else . Fixed.

2. The AI would pick cards with RemAIDeck but only at a much lowered pick rate. For example the best pick in a 250 card set would become the 75th best pick, the 20th best pick would become the 95th and so on. I divided this factor by 3 (so the first pick would become the 25th pick).

Please test whether this has improved the draft experience.

[friarsol]

Please test whether this has improved the draft experience.

These changes look like they didn't make it in this mornings release, so you'll need an SVN or the next nightly build to test them.

[Chris H.]

This new snapshot build includes Sloth's drafting AI fixes.

forge-1.4.1-20130531.150323-1.tar.bz2

forge-1.4.1-20130531.150323-1-osx.tar.bz2