Just before the season ends where we might see a new club winning the trophy an interview again
Continuing with the series of our Champions - before the end of season 48
Rabona folks - we have completed season 48 it is time to give you some more details on the reigning champion and 9 time winner of the trophy. Please read about Team Beerbased Lifeforms - some great insights that might help new players as well. The manager @twinner is a legend of the blockchain and one of the nicest guys in the entire ecosystem as well.
Interview with @twinner
Photo via pixabay, free license
1) What was the biggest challenge throughout your manager career?
The moment when I realized that my first team will go to retirement and I have to say goodbye. Season 1 till 18 I played manually with same team and same formation. I knewed every player and relied on them. Was not able to drop them. At the end I was relegated to league 2
2) When did you realize you can win the season?
Can't remember, but were though fights with Phoenix Incantatalem at this time
3)What was the toughest game?
IDK
4) What opponent do you fear?
My wife when she is drunken. joke
5) what was your personal highlight of the season?
No highlight when you play by bot
6) What is your favourite team member and why?
Difficult question, because I probably even don't know all team members.
7) What is your strategy to win?
First of all, it is important to find a way to calculate the value of players in order to compare different players.
In the beginning, I used Excel to check the stats of the players, a very useful tool for this is https://rte.emre.sh/ to download the current team. I then created a team setup in Excel for each formation (433, 4231, ...) and looked to see if there were players who could be used on multiple formations. I did this manually in Excel for 2 seasons, but the new scoutings as well as the stat changes at the end of the season and after each training forced me to create the table again and again.
In parallel, I then developed simple formulas to calculate an overall player value analogous to OS from the players' stats, and then to place the strongest players in the most important positions. I then compared this placement with my manual team setups from Excel, and in about 85% of the cases the placements were identical. This gave me hope that this could be automated.
An essential factor in the formula for the player value is the team player value TP in addition to the formation stats. You can also say that I have overweighted TP. So it happens that I scout new players with high OS but don't sign them simply because the TP is so bad.
Another advantage of a formula for player evaluation is that you can then also calculate a value for the scoutings, and thus compare the scoutings with the current players. The stats of old players get worse, and as soon as a scout has a better overall value, he is signed and also automatically used in the game. If an old player slips down in the ranking, his contract is no longer extended.
For each team part (goalkeeper, defence, midfield, attack) I always keep one player more than necessary, i.e. I always have a substitute for each of the 4 parts. These are then the players with the lowest total value for the formation played.
Another point is mass scouting. I scout 200 players per day, which takes about 5 minutes. Here, the players should also be provided with a mass scouting function in the UI instead of being forced to click on "Scout" 200 times.
After the scouting, my formula comes into play again, the 200 scouts are compared with the current team and the script then tells me which scoutings in which team section in which formation are better than the regular players + the one substitute player. These players are then signed.
Now we have our players, and come to the game itself.
The crucial thing at the moment is to choose the right counter-attacking formation to the formation of the opponent. Although the formation is encoded in the custom json of the game setup transaction, you can guess the chosen formation with a high probability based on the lined up players and their stats. When rondras announced that the setups would be encrypted, I had built an alternative that analyses the opponent's history and chooses a counter formation accordingly. However, since the set-up players are still visible in the custom-json, this variant has not been used so far.
In my opinion, the formation advantages should be reduced, as it makes a clear difference in the result whether one plays the same formation as the opponent or the counter formation.
Just as an example, in season 44 I always tried to play the same formation as the opponent, it ended with 3rd place.
In contrast, in season 46, I always tried to find the counter formation, and it ended with a clear lead.
Of course, it is particularly annoying for human players when the counter formation is set by a bot only seconds before the game, and then they have no chance to do anything about it. That was also the reason why I played several seasons with exactly the same formation as the opponents, that was the fairest approach for me. But since I was countered by bots myself, I activated the more aggressive counter mode again from season 45 onwards, which then led to the results.
I haven't changed my formula and code since season 25 or so, which means the bot plays with the same setup as in the last seasons of Phoenix Incantalem. Back then, the LoC's were always very close, usually decided in the last or penultimate game, so you can only guess what level Phoenix was playing at back then.
Season 46 was also the reason why I'm now trying to only play with 400 RBN rookies and see how far I get with that. It makes no sense to dominate the league permanently, human players hardly stand a chance against bots and end up turning away from the game in frustration. Since I don't renew contracts, the players are only at the club for 2,5 years on average, which means they hardly have time to improve their stats at the end of the season. Currently I only have 3 older players with more than 400 RBN, and it's already going down in the table. Yes, and that was it. I also gave the bot code to mciszczon months ago (the only thing missing in it is the formula I use to calculate the player values), he's welcome to add it to the UIs for all. Then the players could experiment with their own formulas 🙂
Thanks for the interview - much appreciated!
About Rabona
Rabona is a massive-multiplayer online soccer management game built on the Hive blockchain. Decide how to build and develop your team, take on the role of the head coach of your team, and manage the financials of your club. Lead your club to the top of the league, and become the champion!
If you have any questions, join our Discord server or use the comments below.
Every single reblog saves lives.
Do it.
I admire people like @twinner, who is able and has the skills to program a bot to make it almost impossible for a human to be nr. 1 of LoC.
As a normal human player I will have no chance against a bot, as he states himself.
Also, @twinner's realization that it doesn't make sense for him to be on top all the time anymore and that's why he's using his "400 RBN rookies" doesn't change the fact that he's playing with a bot. I want to play with HUMANS!
So my conclusion is to withdraw myself from the game in the long run. Sorry to say, but the "fun factor" is almost gone for me.
I get the point behind but please do stay, I personally was even winning trophies against his bot (even I often lost the 1-on-1 matches) - he can be beaten and that is for me (not talking as a team member) even more interesting to beat a bot as human - if you play Splinterlands you might compete with a majority of bots and on Rabona hardly anyone uses it. Also, given I joined the @rabona team I was playing with a bit less power not that people say team members win. However you can see in several seasons that many other teams now been able to win the Championship.
We will work on new things such as tournaments, we can not stop or disable bots - this would be totally against any decentralized idea of blockchain technology but I am sure the bots are not dominating this game in contrary to other blockchain gaming things :-).
Hi Uwe!
I'm going to take a break from the game and will play as badly as possible so that I get relegated. However, I have just seen in the match against you that even a defender can hold 3 balls as a goalkeeper . . .
I do not like bots in a game that is actually designed for real people to compete against each other. But what are "real" people on the blockchain anyway? Of course, I'm aware that bots can't be banned, but for me that's a big issue in regards to fairness and fairplay!
I really miss the sportmanship like in real life. No one would take part in competitions or the Olympic Games for exanple as an athlete, if forbidden doping substances could be used by anyone. Using bots in an online game is like doping in real competition. That's my opinion about it.
If @twinner can make 200 scouts with just one click, then that's just unfair to everyone else who gives up in frustration after 20 clicks and mostly drawn studs. If this function of mass scouts should then be integrated into the game (as suggested by him), then the game is led ad absurdum. Then we can just let bots play against each other.
No, I'm not going along with that. In the future, I will occasionally play in the lower tiers and hope that I don't encounter any bots there. I have lost interest and joy to play - like others before me (e.g. @redpalestino).
Enjoy a fresh !BEER 🍺 and have a nice day! Cheers!
!LUV
Peter
<><
@uwelang, you've been given LUV from @actifit-peter.
Check the LUV in your H-E wallet. (1/4)
Well, what can I say - everyone has its own thoughts about anything so even I do not agree with a lot you say I have to accept it. Bots in blockchain are normal, even in outside blockchain environments they are common, chat bots in e-commerce etc.
I am pretty sure over 50% of Olympic athletes (even in team sports) are using doping as this is simply a business, sportsmanship is not existing where the big money is.
Uwe, this is a very disappointing reply! You seriously compare chat bots with game bots like they are used in Rabona??
Chat bots (do I really need to tell you this?) are service tools to communicate with customers to send automated messages whereas the bot used by @twinner and others are tools to serve alone and only for themselves and don't do any good for others!
You seem to have a very negative picture of athletes in general. "Over 50%" means the majority of athletes are betrayers and criminals! I do not think so!
But . . . in case you are right, then wouldn't it be a great signal to establish some kind of ethical standard and fairplay within the little game world of Rabona? Do we really want to mimic the bad behaviour of the "outside" world?
In Rabona no big money is involved, so this would be a great chance to establish some sportmanship and fairness.
You are a teammember of Rabona! I suggest you discuss this topic with the Rabona team to find a solution.
Please let me know what you think about it.
I appreciate and accept your opinion of course, but we had the discussion about bots months ago in the Discord before i joined the team and I thought this is over now given there are not a lot bots compared to other games here - the decision was Rabona will not ban bots as it is against any rules of de-centralized blockchains.
Sure I can discuss again with the team but honestly I would have no idea how to stop a bot, that is not that easy and we do not desire to kickout players when they are simply smart. Right now the prize of RBN is pretty low, we need to focus on important things like tournaments which is already a challenge in a small team with normal jobs. When we have this and the RBN prize moves up we might re-discuss that again (the higher the prize the more bots usually to expect, look at Splinterlands.
What would be your suggestion then? @actifit-peter
More a negative picture around rules of the corrupt sports federations - athletes want to win and they use what it takes usually.
Sorry, I didn't follow the discord discussion and didn't know that it was already discussed. I wrote a couple of minutes ago a comment on discord. You might be interested to read it.
I suggest implementing captchas before submitting formations to block bots.This in combination with a statement on rabona.io something like this:
"Please do not use bots or scripts to enhance your chance of winnimg! Be a fair player, this way we are all winners!"
What do you think?
Hi Peter,
I often recommended the team to introduce a "mass scout" button for players. If they don't do that, than this is not my fault. And I can assure you that I only try to help the team and don't want to attack the game, even if I sometimes go to the limits (meaning playing the maximum that possible), just to show that the game needs to be improved.
Ok, thanks Stefan, got your point!
I understand the frustration but don't leave and let's hear from the Rabona team on this. I think there should be a rework on the game algo that will make it hard for anyone to decode. Twinner is an honest Man from the feedback he gave and he also expect the Rabona team to improve on this part. The game still has a lot of room for improvements. The fun part of any game is to be challenging at the same time with fun.
Mr Twinner has given out clue that I didn't even know it exist, I will experiment it to see how it goes on my end. 9 time champions, that's the Real Madrid of this game lol