Predicting future states in DotA 2 using value-split models of time series attribute data

In Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games, teams of players compete in combat to complete an objective and defeat the opposing team. To stay alive, players must closely monitor their character's status, especially remaining health. Understanding how health may change in the near future can be vital in determining what tactics a player may use. We analyzed replay logs of the game Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2) to discover methods to predict how players' health evolves over time. For DotA 2, our results suggest that forecasting changes in a player's health can be done by viewing gameplay as two separate processes: normal gameplay flow in which changes in health are smaller and more regular, and less frequent but higher-impact events in which players experience larger changes in their health, such as team battles. We accomplished this by considering health data as two separate, but interleaved, time series in which separate processes govern low magnitude changes in health from high magnitude changes. In this paper, we present a value-split approach to predicting changes in health and describe the results of our approach using autoregressive moving-average models for low magnitude health changes and a combination of statistical models for the larger changes.