Computer science researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique to determine which strategies give players an edge at winning in multi-player (action) real-time strategy (ARTS) games, such as Defense of the Ancients (DotA), Warcraft III and Starcraft II. The technique offers extremely precise information about how a player’s actions affect a team’s chances of winning, and could be used to develop technology for use by players and developers to improve gameplay experiences.
Researchers used the technique, which makes use of various analytic tools, to evaluate logs of player actions from thousands of ARTS games. They then used that information to develop a set of rules governing team gameplay strategies, in order to identify which approaches give teams the best chance of winning.
“Our goal is to use these data to develop tools that could train game players to play more successfully,” says Dr. David L. Roberts, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of two papers on the research. “These tools could be incorporated into games by game developers, or could be developed into stand-alone training modules.
“The tools could also be used by game developers to help them understand whether the game mechanics they are putting in their games are having the desired effect, and to fine-tune their games accordingly.”
The researchers evaluated the attributes of individual team characters – such as a hero’s strength in DotA – and the aggregate attributes of each team – such as the combined total strength of a team of heroes in DotA. These attributes change over the course of a game, and the researchers also looked at how and when these attributes changed for each team.
Read more at: Phys.org