[bee_rider]

The idea of:

> For example, we have an "Early Ganker" tag for the gamers who tend to gang in the early game. [...] We provide these tags based on only publicly accessible data on the official game publisher API. For example, any gamer can search for the opponents’ game data and conduct a similar analysis.

also seems questionable to me. Is it common/practical to do this kind of thing in these games? It seems to me that, while it might be technically possible to get the info, it should be impractical for a human to actually do the analysis, in the timespan allowed by a pregame lobby, right?

I guess it could also depend on how much preprocessing they do... hypothetically we could imagine a game where every match is recorded and saved to a public user account, and a "coaching" AI system that extracts users tags by watching these offline, and then just queries them at match time. This analysis would pretty clearly be information that players wouldn't normally be privy to, despite being available through legitimate means.

[interator7]

As a League of Legends player, it's very common. Virtually everyone that I know that plays this game has some sort of overlay(LolWiz, Porofessor, Blitz.gg, etc.) that provides unimaginable level of detail about the enemy team and my team before the game even begins. I can find out what the enemy players like to do("invade", or initiate cheese fights early), roam to other lanes in the map, and more. I know what their winrate on their champion is, how many kills on average they get before 10 minutes, whether they don't ward(a crucial component of the game that opens them up to ganks if not done correctly), and who they may be connected to voice call with. If anything, it seems like Senpai.gg's tool isn't doing enough.

[andrewzah]

Well, this is what I was referring to by an arms race if these kinds of tools are allowed. It’s a considerable disadvantage to not use them, so everyone is basically forced into using them.

In my opinion for non-professional play (casual and ranked), these kinds of tools should be outright banned. The game goes from “how can I improve myself and play better” to “let’s expend the minimum effort possible solely to win”. You’re not playing to your strengths but just to the opponent’s weaknesses from the get-go. That’s just incredibly boring. Just because one can have a shortcut to a win doesn’t make for better or more interesting gameplay.

Regarding professional play, the teams have the resources to do this given the limited player pool and they’re also at the pro level anyways.

[bee_rider]

Huh, well this supports my decision to not get into MOBAs.

[eertami]

In Dota at least you can make your data private and your picks/habits cannot be tracked by third party websites or applications.

I feel like gaming stats should have way better privacy options in general.

[berkozer]

That's certainly right. We don't provide any suggestion based on private data. For example, gamers cannot see the tags of an opponent if the opponent opted out to be private.

[ZephyrBlu]

I think if people care about their data it should just be anonymized instead of hidden.

Data from games is such a good way for people to get into programming and data analysis (Speaking from personal experience).

It's easily accessible, real and has a decent level of complexity. Would be a shame for it to go away because people want to hide their data.

[andrewzah]

At least when I played, dota2 wasn’t like this (and it’s a better game, anyways ;-))

Realistically speaking this kind of stuff doesn’t really matter at a lower level anyways- everyone’s bad and makes dumb mistakes. And it doesn’t help to know about data if you don’t know how to capitalize on it.

I can’t recommend getting into MOBAs/ARTSs solo, but if you have 2-3 friends they’re quite a blast.

[JCharante]

To be fair giving this info is not helpful if you're bad at the game itself. I've tried using it but I'm still only top 65%. Once you get to the level below pro players, there's so few people that you remember everybody's usernames or remember who plays on tuesday nights and will remember their playstyle / champions to ban.

[yissp]

Couldn't you look yourself up and adjust your playstyle accordingly? Like "oh, these guys will be expecting me to do X, but now I'm going to do Y instead to throw them off".

[NorwegianDude]

From my experience it's most useful for getting information on clear outliers. The ranking system might rank a very good player with terrible players until the ranking settles in. A few players are "boosted" by other players to reach higher ranks. In such situations it might be useful as you know that specific opponent on the other team is the one to watch out for or who to focus.

There is a lot of summary stats available, but the most useful one from personal experience is the win ratio. If the data tells you that one player on the other team wins 70 % of the games, then that's usually a clear indicator that the ranking of that player is most likely lower than it should be.

It might just be a better or worse player overall, so adapting to it might not be possible, except for knowing who to put pressure on.

[berkozer]

Thanks for the explanation. Senpai.gg is still in Beta and we're continuously improving our features.

[EamonnMR]

Is an AI that aimbots by predicting player moves with uncanny accuracy really that different from a regular old aimbot?

[bee_rider]

Another interesting point in the spectrum could be, what about a program that marks up the screen or minimap with detailed heatmaps of likely player positions based on historical data?

If that's not obviously cheating, make it time dependent, make it player dependent, etc.

If that is obviously cheating, what about producing those maps and not providing an in-game overlay?

[snet0]

I think it's very simple: if you'd describe its usage as a "skill", it's probably fine. Obvious "navigating this cheat menu UI takes some practice" cases aside.

If a professional team uses data analysis and then teaches their players something like "at 30s, on this map, this player rotates from here to here in 70% of games", that's just good training. If they have this data being live-streamed to their second monitor, it's cheating.

[andrewzah]

Those kinds of maps are already available for study outside of the game for DotA2, eg. here’s the analysis for a game I played. These are incredibly useful for learning and analysis after the match.

https://www.opendota.com/matches/5501229759/laning

[EamonnMR]

I don't see as very different from a wallhack if it's any good if it's an in game overlay. I suppose if it's an offline thing that you can study but need to apply yourself that's no more of a cheat than any other prep.

[reportgunner]

I would say that a skilled player doesn't need to see the heat maps in real time, it would be enough to see them once or twice and they will remember because it "makes sense" to them that the heat maps are the way they are.

[bobobob420]

Nope it’s not and that’s why 100 percent if this tool is doing what it is saying, I would consider it cheating. I have tons of hours in Valorant and if this becomes common I will not play the game. I play specifically because of the learning curve and skill curve. There’s already a big enoug problem with Smurf’s and ranked boosting

[girvo]

big enoug problem with Smurf’s

Maybe its just because I play on Sydney servers, but I really find this a bit overblown personally -- and I've ranked up from bronze 2 to plat 1 over six months of playing. I think its honestly just that some people have "on" and "off" games, at least from the hundreds and hundreds of ranked matches I've played.

[bobobob420]

1/3 games of Mine has a smurf on my or other team that will admit it or it’s insanely obvious. I play central NA