So how is everyone experiencing the console cascades?

well i can assure you that if player cannot loop a creator then the ai wont be able to either - so how will that be ideal?

Oooh, you would be surprised :smirk:
I can somewhat loop with them, at the moment. Somewhat. Risk/reward for me.

If AI learns to handle them at least partially - that would bring more troops with freeze into my PvP pool. And that is a good thing.

my point is that ai can perform at best equally “well” as a human,
if human cannot perform well with creators then ai neither

if ai plays like you with your “somewhat loop” will you be satisfied? that will be the best possible outcome, with high probability ai will play worse then that

i dont think that kind of end result is intended

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There seems to be a lot of confusion about what exactly the problem was with the spawns the way they were and I hope the devs make a more detailed post on why, exactly, this glitch was a problem. The issue wasn’t “spawners too reliable” it was that they were causing spawns to invariably cluster near existing gems and the glitch would only activate after one extra turn was taken, though, so many people may have though “oh, but my spawners were failing sometimes but then I got control when I put out more gems”.

No. It didn’t matter how many gems were on the board of a given color or even how many you were generating, it just mattered how spread out the existing ones were and that you got an extra turn before you started spamming. What was happening was it was causing a near 100% incidence of extra turn right down to troops like Wight that were spawning 5 gems on a board with four purple and causing a match 5. Also, the AI was capable of doing this too. It didn’t make spawners viable, it made them strongly dominant to the point where it removed a large portion of decision making from any given game, being on either side of it.

Freeze doesn’t even stop it if you don’t get frozen before you get one extra turn, or if you prime your extra turn with something that cleanses like Mercy or Apothecary. Even my Mantis/Anariel/Kraken/Kraken team wasn’t even phased by freeze unless Anariel got frozen, because blue lined up over and over and over. I stand by my earlier point that having this in the game would have created irreparable damage as people got used to it, and by a lot of these comments it appears it already has. We had this for a week, it was clearly bugged, and the bugfix is catching flak like this has always been the way people have played the game and its removal is the worst nerf to ever come to the game. Imagine if this had been discovered a month or more down the road. Would the devs have just let it stand? Would they have still removed it? Either one would reaching repercussions for the playerbase of way greater magnitude than this.

So far, these troops are feeling very similar to how they felt a week ago - like garbage. Not worse than they were in the Adobe version, but in the Adobe version they were really bad - that is the problem. I brought this up in my posts over and over again, practically pleading that they not use the code that causes gem spawns to magically move away from each other at all. So far, it seems like that has been reactivated, though. However, we are going to need evidence here. Preferably videos, not anecdotes. The more the better.

If this is to get fixed, we need to highlight that having spawners have such a high rate of critical failure on stacked boards due to outside influence is not okay. In the current state, on average, you will give more extra turns and mana to your opponent using these types of troops than you do to your own team casting 8 or 9 spawners on 14+ stacked boards, and many of them don’t have that much magnitude to their initial effect other than the spawns in the first place. The risk/reward ratio is way way off and you can’t plan to use a spawner by priming the board with a color when the matches just magically spawn away from your color and screw you over. It still feels like the number on the board beforehand for dual spawners is mostly irrelevant, especially if they spawn 8 or less of each, more gems on the board has more influence of magnitude of your subsequent success or failure than it does your success rate. We need to highlight that they are still broken, but in the other direction.

tl;dr: It is not a good idea to go back to how it was, but we can move forward and get spawners to an acceptable level of extra turns, and, most importantly, a lower rate of critical failure.

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This is just terribly slow… I think they just need to up it a little bit more so you can actually hit a 3 even a 4 match with a spawn.

We’ve had teams where we - as players - could win on turn 1.
… Will you be satisfied if AI was never allowed to make a first move?
Obviously enough - people want advantages. So if advanced AI can handle looping - this might turn out to be fine.
But currently - we don’t know. It’s a speculation.

I mean, I didn’t even have enough time to test it, yet. It’s out for a day.
… 3 matches where I didn’t get a loop because I was used to getting one every single time - is not enough evidence for me to demand one thing or another.

EDIT: To be frank, I misunderstood what the problem was, at first.
… After all - the whole thread is about something completely different than the issue. If anything - there are more cascades than before - but not from summons but rather the clean-up.

I agree that spawners were too strong the last week, though i disagree on the priority of this issue, i would not have minded riding this a week or so longer but well what can you do, back to doing effectively exactly the same with the transformer pairs which apparently is ok.

Now this is were you are just plain wrong. Yes 8- spawners were bad, ending up more harmful than good most of the time.
But 9+ spawners were great and got extraturns regularily, they wouldn’t loop endless, but several times in a row once the board was prepared with their colour was the norm.
Elemaugrim with 2+ burning targets was almost surefire extraturns since the day he was released, often leading to him just chaincasting the enemy team to death after he was filled once with most enemies burning. Now he can’t seem to hit two consecutive extraturns at all.
Jarl was a great looper before the patch as well, i enjoyed my Jarl/Ketras team a lot before, while not being the most efficient with only single target damage i liked that playstyle, and Jarl chaincasted a lot in that team after his initial missing cast preparing the board with his colours, now he can’t seem to get consecutive extraturns at all.
Webspinner did also loop well after his Initial board preparing cast.

The state of spawners is currently nowhere near it was in the Adobe version, and while last weeks state might have been too much, i at least want it restored to how it used to be before the patch.

Edit: after 20+ more games of testing, Elemaugrim at 4 burns(12 gems) still kinda gets consecutive extraturns by the sheer amount of gems he spawns, but with a lot more misfires than he used to.
Jarl is just aweful now, in these 20+ games i didn’t get him to get 2 consecutive extraturns once, and it was a hustle to even get him started with one often, it is a small samplesize and nothing representative, but that made me close the game, and decide to sit this out and see where we land once the dust settles. Jarl is not amused.

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Evidence is needed. Thats how I uncovered the problem in the first place. I’ll be doing some tests later, but more people contributing can’t hurt. Comparisons between the current mobile version with the old codebase and the new codebase would be even better.

I highly doubt they can just put spawns back to how they were in the Adobe version, though. Its a completely different codebase. Thats why we are even here in the first place. The PC/Unity port always had the inverted spawn streak breaker code, because when they were taking the Unity code base to make the PC version, they added similar code, because it apparently isn’t a thing on console at all. I still highly suspect they have not turned off spawn streak breaker code and instead have the inversion “fixed”, but since its a new codebase is isn’t going to work exactly the same and it is far too aggressive. The streaks I showed when it was inverted make it very clear to me that this code has way too much influence on where gems spawn, period. I’ve been saying over and over and over that they need to disable it completely and let the gems fall where they may, so to speak, and THEN we can go from there.

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if you ask about the current 1-turn teams - i dont mind them, they still depend on the starting board and luck so not always 1 turn victory is achievable (ofc if we dont take the bug Mithram found which was recently *fixed as a standard)
i dont mind them in the sense how they worked at pre-3.0.5 pc/mobile

i also dont mind if both player and ai would be able to loop as successfully as player was able to loop pre3.0.5 on pc/mobile - i dont mind such result to be achievable for the ai coz those results even for human were not a 100% guarantee continuation, i think the looping odds were fine

but im hearing that the looping ability is greatly reduced now compared to pre3.0.5, that amount of odds to loop is not good enough imo, regardless to the idea that ai would possibly reach same “level of odds”

@Annaerith I was talking about player always starting the game. Which is obviously a not-balanced feature. But it’s friendly. So if AI can handle things worse than a player - it doesn’t mean we do not want that, necessarily.

Anyway - after a few more games - I feel like the state is very wrong. It feels more logical, but less satisfying. It definitely is an improvement for GW battles - assuming you don’t use gem spawners - but raising a flag “No to Gem Creation” doesn’t feel right to the game.

If this is the “correct” state … Then a complete rebalance of amount of gems created should be addressed. Or something. I don’t even know anymore. Each thought I have only leads to 20 more possible disasters at this point.

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i think right now gem spawners have adjusted code calculating where the gems will be spawned - and that adjustment spawns them to purposedly miss?
i didnt test it myself but from reading all that - thats what my guessing,

i would agree with @Mithran that there should be no calculation adjustments just pure random in that case

they were balanced before 3.0.5 - not much of looping but still a decent looping chance, try to remmember that times :stuck_out_tongue:

and yeah i agree the game should be player friendly so player starting first or ai not being as smart as human are good things

You deserve more than just a Gold Star for all this work.

I’m terrible with emoji, so here is the loaded die of Gems of Oww. :game_die:

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I will make some eggs and bacon to @mithran. :slight_smile:

I am really not understanding devs on all this. So we had pre 3.0.5 game mechanic that no one complained about, and people considered it normal. And that gets changed? For what reason? After the change doesn’t work, it gets changed to something else, but not reverted to the previous - normal working system?
This, with also changes to 1 troop defenses and overnerfs out of nowhere, what are devs doing? Is it the goal to get the players angry and quit the game? There was never a time in GoW when i witnessed so many players are angry, stressed and tired of GoW. And i am one of the oldest remaining players - partly because of the high number of older players that left the game since GW introduction, so i have seen behavior of players through many GoW updates. Recently I’ve got a mythic that i was missing for almost whole year - death, and i wasn’t even happy about it. I am afraid that with the path GoW has taken, game won’t survive for much longer (and when i say this, i mean 1 year or less). @Sirrian @Nimhain your player base needs you to step out of the shadows and clarify your thought process behind all these changes. Discuss with us, make us see what your ultimate goal is. Players might accept all that is happening a bit better if they knew why it is happening.

21 Likes

An interesting find:
… Elemaugrim can obviously miss a board with 21 purples.
… And enemy humility can still cast 6 times in a row. Only 2 out of 6 had a 4-match in them. The rest connected because of a 3-gem match that was followed by 4/5 ones.

If the data helps anyhow.

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Seems like each new patch they make the game more miserable to play lately :cry:

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Well said, where is the Devs when we need them at most. I fully understand that they said they would spend less time in these boards, but totally disappear doesnt make sense under such circumstances @DonBoba is describing so good.

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I always try to watch it through many perspectives. For example i take Blizzard devs of HS. They have a tremendously successful game, but they are bad devs. But when things start getting really bad regarding some aspect of the game, they show up and comment it. They dont comment anything else, but they do when its most needed. I liked GoW more when devs were active here with us. Made this a good expirince. I don’t dislike GoW now, I’m a mobile player, and these changes haven’t still hit me. But i see what it is doing to members in our guild. I won’t play a game if 1/3 of my guild leaves. I am playing this game because of my people in there, and not so much because of the game itself at this point. I want to be playing for both, but that isn’t likely to change. So if my people start packing things and quit i will follow. That is why i want devs to really start seeing whats happening. To start fixing things before theres nothing to be fixed.

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Why are you spoiling the secret of ‘PvP’?

I think they are dealing with old code that was poorly implemented around the time of Web Spinner. I agree with you completely: TURN IT OFF, balance the gem creation troops lets things fall where they will using “true” RNG without the secret hidden hand.

That would be my definition of ‘spawners too reliable.’ And I still don’t see any counter argument as to why a decent portion of once useless troops becoming viable options is a bad thing. [quote=“Mithran, post:244, topic:26097”]
Also, the AI was capable of doing this too. It didn’t make spawners viable, it made them strongly dominant to the point where it removed a large portion of decision making from any given game, being on either side of it.
[/quote]

strongly dominant is the definition of viable. If your team doesn’t dominate your opponent then your team is not viable. Also the fact that it removed much of the decision making is what made it so much more fun.

It wasn’t the way we always played the game, but maybe once we tried it we decided that it was the way we wanted to play the game from now on.

Also, if one change was made and it rendered 15-30 (I haven’t counted how many spawners are actually in the game) useful and fun troops into a stinking pile wouldn’t you define that as a pretty bad nerf? Maybe even the worst nerf ever?[quote=“Mithran, post:244, topic:26097”]
So far, these troops are feeling very similar to how they felt a week ago - like garbage. Not worse than they were in the Adobe version, but in the Adobe version they were really bad - that is the problem.
[/quote]

Elemaugrim begs to differ.[quote=“Mithran, post:244, topic:26097”]
If this is to get fixed,
[/quote]

I’ve seen how you want to ‘fix’ things and I’d rather you didn’t try to help ‘fix’ anything else thanks![quote=“Mithran, post:244, topic:26097”]
tl;dr: It is not a good idea to go back to how it was, but we can move forward and get spawners to an acceptable level of extra turns, and, most importantly, a lower rate of critical failure.
[/quote]

You and your cronies might not think its a good idea to go back to having a larger pool of fun and useful troops. But I do.

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