Nimhain's Lair: June 12th

:sparkles:Surprise!:sparkles: (Just for your cake day). It’s just a small update, mostly Quality of Life stuff. We’re still waiting on a final date for release, but we believe it should be available in a week or two.

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2 weeks really? I was thinking if it’s only QOL it would be quicker to approve

thanks for the apology

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@Alpheon is this the equivalent of the 3.05 updated Sirrian wrote about having mostly QoL stuff headed to PC/Mobile “soon” or is this more like a 3.01 console specific patch, with 3.05 planned sometime for the future after this one is deployed?

Thanks

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Oh, so there has been a problem with the AI… but those PC players told us it was recall bias.

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I’ve been following this topic with interest, and previously commented on @Rickygervais video in a different thread that the defense looked scary but not problematic. While it was able to get a long loop going, that’s what I would expect if the AI made better gem selections, so I didn’t see a “technical” problem from that video (although that would definitely be frustrating). Also, console players have been raising concerns about gem refresh problems for a while, but since nobody has been able/willing to provide extended video of it, PC/mobile players haven’t been able to see this problem so far. So could you provide more details on what the “excessive” issue was and what was fixed? Was there a problem with the actual gem refresh that caused these loops to occur abnormally and outside the bounds of normal drops? Or was the issue simply that loops like this take control away from the player and decrease enjoyment? Basically, was the “bug” a technical one that things weren’t working “fairly”, or was it a design issue that it wasn’t “fun”. Just curious :wink:

As a small follow-up, since you mentioned “a new system with some differences”, can you let us know if ultimately the plan is for console and PC/mobile players to be on the same code base, or is the plan to always have “some differences”? Specifically, when PC/mobile get the defense sliders, will the AI decision making be the same code on both platforms, and will the gem refresh algorithms be the same code on both platforms?

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There is no defence to cycling - 30 consecutive turns later u are dead. You wait to see if you get a turn before its over. It just loops from 1 troop to the next - the three of them over and over. Each 4 peat Mab freezes anything.

It isn’t fixed, and its killing the game. Its an exploit that involves non working defensive traits and justice’s behaviours. Its done considerable damage to the console game, because there is no game or contest once the cycle starts. This can be after 1 move with mercy, who was buffed last week. You have to eliminate justice before it starts or hope that you can get 1 shot in after. Seriously famine is easier to deal with.

The top guilds as ever have used it nonstop for some weeks. Bone dragon was a delight in comparison. Its as cheap as it gets.

The AI looping you to death just doesn’t happen on PC/Mobile because the AI gets distracted when a 3-skull match shows up, goes “Ooo shiny!” and cedes the turn. This is the “combo breaker” we have, but a clever Console defender can effectively turn the combo breaker off by depriotitizing skulls. As neat as a customizable defense sounds, I wonder if it is really worth the headaches it creates.

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You don’t need to touch the slider at all and it will still loop that way

Happy cake day!

I admit I don’t know what the slider defaults are, but you should consider PC/Mobile’s unchangeable “sliders” to have skulls cranked all the way up to max priority all the time.

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As much as we complain, I would still take the current console game over the predictable PC/Mobile game every single time.

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Ty Lyva, yeah im affraid if you guys get same AI then us, you wont be able to lure AI with skulls and it will result as the forum will be flooded by complains. So if we can do something before it happen that will be great. I also like the console AI i never played pc version and i am glad we can’t always predict what AI will do, it addind element of surprise. Yeah i agree sometime it’s not a good surprise lol but i still like it :slight_smile:

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This sounds different than the normal console complaints I’ve seen, which are normally about “magic cascades”. You seem to be describing something like traits not working properly, and I’m curious if you can explain more? What do you mean by “non working defensive traits”, what’s actually happening compared to what you think should be happening? From what I can surmise from the posts, it sounds like Justice is acting as if all 4 troops are frozen all the time, is that right?

I agree with you stan and have said so publicly. As much as the ai and cascades boil my piss pretty often, it’s much more challenging and I suppose more akin to playing against a real person, albeit a very lucky spawny jammy bar steward of a person!

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The aim is to bring Mobile, PC, and console platforms all together in one code base (the Unity version). We’re currently porting the PC version over to the Console code base, with mobile to come at a later point. Because PC & Mobile players will still be interacting with each other while technically on different versions, we’re temporarily removing the AI decision making improvements (no gem sliders for now, sorry!) we’ve made on the console side with the intent that players won’t gravitate towards one platform or another because the AI behaves differently in its decision making.
Our older system was much similar to what players currently experience on the Mobile/PC side of things.

The changes I mentioned were specifically for gem creation spells like Justice & the Guild Guardians, not cascades. I believe the big difference is that PC/Mobile will overwrite gems with the same colour (or the secondary colour). So if you’re targetting a yellow gem with Justice to create Blue & Yellow, on PC it may overwrite a Yellow gem with a Blue, or a Blue gem with Yellow. This results in the net gain of the gems you get may not be the full 15.

However on Unity, and I believe the original design intention, is that the colours you create will not overwrite any gem that is a colour that you’re trying to create already. So in the above example, you won’t overwrite Blue or Yellow gems, only other types of gems. The net result is always the full amount of gems, however this results in a lot more matches, even when we try to avoid matches when trying to decide what gems get converted, as we still create the full number.

We’re looking into more ways we can combat this, though I believe the end result that we are looking at is to return to the way it behaves to the way the current build behaves and overwrite existing colours, as the PC/Mobile version has proven much less looping than console.

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Appreciate the very detailed response. Great information @Alpheon !

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Great decision! That suck we need to wait next update lol the reign of Justice is not over but at least there is hope :slight_smile:

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Appreciate the Justice teams while they’re there, once the wait is over Famine will just take over.

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I know you’re being funny, but no one with Famine is using Justice in their defence team. It’s when everyone (including me) can craft Famine, then there will be trouble…

I don’t play on console all i know about your meta is from reading here, and judging from that Justice rules your console kingdom with an iron fist :stuck_out_tongue: