I believe it’s smarter AI move more than cascades on console too.
The biggest problem on console is the looping teams combined with the cascades in guild wars.
Even people that have good counter teams still lose to them, and people without the necessary cards/traits/kingdom progress get slaughtered every single time.
In a way, guild wars is the biggest culprit, it really needs a redesign when it comes to defense teams.
In all other game modes, people either leave when the AI goes nuts, or see it as a fun little challenge.
In guild wars it hurts… you are letting your guild down, no matter if you tried for 2 hours…
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Put some balance into the game I believe… yeah. I feel like people can say what they want or tell what they believe. Can’t ignore what I’ve experienced. It’s out there and because if it I’m loosing more games (other guild members too) and I’m having no fun anymore. These are all facts btw. And it’s true what you say in guild wars it hurts. You make a lot of sense Mad_Butch!
Have the devs spoken about it or are they just occupied, maybe hope things will wear off…? because if this is a problem for a while on the console … and it’s now on the PC one might think they are serious and don’t want to change it because THIS is what they want.
To be completely frank…
… I like the game this way much more.
Most of teams are closer together in power. Psion, Famine teams were nerfed, and probably will be indirectly nerfed further, exploders who dominated every game mode were indirectly nerfed with 4x surges - promoting gem alignments instead of exploding.
… Now you have to be careful about gem spawners and board much more. And when you lose - you either lose because of bad alignments - or for using gem creators and missing - giving it all to the enemy. Much alike, enemy misses are punished much more when they miss.
Loosing a GW battle is not unfriendly, knowing that all enemies lose more battles - make it equal. And this will sound strange - but I like loosing. Especially if I know I missed a cascade and gave it to the enemy. I like being punished for my mistakes and for the risk/reward playstyle.
I can see why people hate it … But I don’t. And I hope there’s at least a few more who feel the same way as I do.
I really am looking forward to change in AI and more losses. Because it will most probably open much more space for team diversity, both invade and defend teams.
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I have noticed the same. One cascade after the other and all i can do is to see how my troops fall down. mostly after my 2 or 3 turn, somtimes after the first turn. Some of my guildmates noticed the same and lost GW-fights bec. of this cascades. they are insane…
Focusing in on it a bit more and using teams where both sides don’t have a lot of board mod, I’m also noticing more “streakiness” as stated. Not just the AI side, but both sides. For example, matching a 3 gem where the space cleared touches the top of the board and getting several consecutive 3 gems/skulls falling into this one tiny little space, or cascades into extra turns being triggered by three gems of the same color vertically falling into place off a fourth gem of that same color. Not that I’ve never seen experiences like this before, but in about 50 games, I noted about half a dozen instances of what I consider to be an abnormal streak of this type, including one time where a vertical double 3 match resulted in six consecutive skulls dropping (no bonestorm) and two times where 3 skulls > 3 of a mana color > 3 skulls were dropped in a 1x3 cleared space. When I think “lucky cascades” in the previous version, the most frequent thing that would come to mind would be stuff “luckily” matching with adjacent gems, causing cascades where other adjacent gems would be matched, causing a different but purely coincidental match with other gems on the board two, three, maybe even four times in a row, was not that uncommon, but very very rarely did I see more than one set of three pre-matched gems fall in the same sequence and shape.
Gem Spawners continue to be a big concern and a huge contributing factor, since they clear more space for more cascades (and bigger streaks) to happen. The way they seem to cluster up is almost uncanny compared to the previous version. I loaded up the mobile version and did a few tests and I saw a marked decrease in the amount of extra turns I gained way before the five extra turn mark, even when the board was flooded with my colors. I could never get more than 1 or 2 turns in a row using just spawners, as opposed to occasionally 20+ (if I let it go that long) on the PC Unity version. I even got to the point where most of the board was populated with the colors I was spawning and the casts still would line up in such a way to give me a little mana (or occasionally none) but still avoid the extra turn.
It actually has me wondering which version, if either, is actually closer to true random with the way gems spawns work. The success rate for spawners on PC Unity is insane and so is the fail rate on the Adobe build/current Mobile unless you are spawning 9+ of a single color on a rich board. Dual color spawners on the Adobe build don’t approach anywhere near reliable without mixing in converters, and even then there is a still a very tangible possibility of a critical fail that will generally result in handing about 4-5 extra turns to the enemy. Its almost as if the Adobe build has the gem spawn combo breaker on from the very first cast, and the Unity version has it reversed.
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I have definitely noticed that cascades and looping are more frequent. My suspicion is that it is the four gem mana surges are causing the problem. I just fought a justice/mab team. Normally, this is not a problem for me. This time I lost on turn one. One! Turn one losses are NOT fun. Something should be done to bring this under control.
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You do have a point. So we have to adapt our strategies and ‘think’ more before we act. I can relate to that. I believe I wouldn’t mind it but it’s just you know … I really do pay attention and when it’s out of my hands because of those cascades falling and I get blown away from the board… it’s not a question of giving away something. It’s just that: it happens. And frankly I don’t think that’s fair. Anna1 also comments on the same thing me and my guildies have observed:
Well my guild is kicking ass right now and I don’t know if it’s because players have left/can’t play the game or loose more in general. [quote=“peterix, post:104, topic:26097”]
I like being punished for my mistakes and for the risk/reward playstyle.
[/quote]
That’s where we differ. I’m playing GoW to relax and ALSO for a challenge not to rage quit (not that I did that but you know 
). That being sad, you really do have a point petrix, thank you for your insight
@Flip , well, if my 2 cents were any contribution to the discussion, I’m glad I could have shared.
I think we broke the issue together, for which I have to thank you back, guys.
Before entering the discussion, I would have never even bothered researching into it.
It’s good to know that something has changed.
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@Courtenay
I can relate to that feeling. It has been frustrating for most of us the exact same way.
… But then again - if someone has created a team, brainstormed behind it for some time to give it that slight chance of 1 turn win … I think it’s fair.
I have won countless of battles on turn 1, to be frank. Webspinner loop, and even currently the fastest PvP invade team does just that. Win around 70% of battles on turn 1. Is that fair against people who really put their effort into making powerful defend teams?
There will always be those 2 sides of a coin. What keeps me collected and calm - is knowing that we all use the very same currency - with the exact same sides of the coin for each of us. So the least I can say is probably… This is how our large GoW family works. 
A few days ago (on pc) enemy Jarl wiped out my entire team in one turn he started casting.
this happened to me first time in my life, and the first time i fight agaisnt Jarl after 3.0.5
i blame the surges on 4 gem matches.
i think this should be reverted back to no surge at 4 matches, its better balance for gameplay
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I thought 4 matches had a chance to surge (just like 3 matches), but 5 matches has 100% surge.
Did that change?
for pc and mobile 4matches never surged, for them console had a chance for surge but pc/mobile not
3.0.5 changed that to match the console, as it was “supposedly” a bug
but i think its better balanced if it doesnt surge - just look at the console ai + cascades…
i can see a huge difference with those surges gem creators are looping too much
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Hmm i had 4 and 5 match surged on pc, befor the update. So i always tought when someone said it, that it was so that only 3 gems doubled and the other not. But surge on them i had, i loved and hated them. Was always nice to get a 5macht surge to get my units faster full, but bad when the ai got them.
maybe you thought you got a surge on 4 gems but you didnt?
i also thought so at first but when i paid attention it turned out nope
if you search through past videos you wont find a 4gem surge on pc/mobile (before 3.0.5)
the 5gem indeed does a guaranteed surge
Ok that could be, with no 4gem surge i always tought that this include no 5gem surge. So i was a little bit confused.
So I checked this yesterday and what I’ve seen was that it’s not always a surge but a ‘mana bonus’. I don’t know how that mechanic works (mana bonus), but even with 3 matches it gives a ‘bonus out’. Like A LOT. So the dynamics of the game is really different now. The AI gets more chances to use their specials. And because of that you as a player have a higher chance to loose.
In my opinion: it’s true that the AI fills up fast and because of it games last longer. Also the mana surges/mana bonus on my side are some what the same as the AI. So I’ve noticed more mana surges/mana bonuses on both sides. It’s like a happy mana surge party going back and forth. All in all if the cascades kick in you know what will happen. So yeah maybe it’s good that the AI has a little bit more mana but on the other hand … maybe not.
What do you think?
I think “Bonus Mana” just means that the +1 or +2 mana per gem-match from the team’s banner is activating. So it should show every time you match one of the banner colors (and applies to 3, 4, and 5 gem-matches equally).
Edit: just to be clear, we’re talking about this thing, right?
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Its not just this. It is somewhat contributory to the initial casts, but the way gems spawn now, a lot of the time, it just wouldn’t matter. If you have access to both versions, its pretty easy to make a team that uses spawners that can feed each other (for example, on Jarl, use Jarl/Fire Lizard). On Unity, when you cast either one “raw”, it will be what looks like an appropriately random distribution - you’ll have a chance at an extra turn. After you get one extra turn, gems from spawners start to cluster up and give you free extra turns even when there are very few of them on the board to start with. In contrast, on the Adobe version, all casts are such a crapshoot that you’d rarely see more than 2 in a row, where more gems after the first extra turn cast seem to be as much of a liability and you’ll increase your chance of critical failure. The Adobe version gem spawners feel like crap to use at pretty much all times, but the Unity version has clearly gone overboard.
Just as an example (using this crappy team on a mediocre run because I want the focus to be on the spawn mechanics and not “that troop is just good”):
You’ll notice that I struggled to get started even with a decent amount of gems of my colors on the board, but once I got one extra turn I could practically loop them to death. I’d like to reiterate this is not an outlier. I’ve done hundreds of games, and this is the new norm on the Unity version. Its gotten to the point where I am generally able to pick out a point on the screen where the gems would “magically” line up for the extra turn, over and over and over again. They heavily favor spawning next to gems of the same color after the first extra turn. In case anyone brings it up also, no, 4x speed is not to blame, I’ve done plenty at 1x speed to test as well, same result except it takes longer.
I can’t be the only one experiencing this… right?
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Earlier, you were talking about the loop-breaker code that is supposed to kick in after 5 loops. Any evidence of that functioning in your recent play? I think I counted 12 consecutive casts of Jarl and Fire lizard there, but I’m not 100% sure…
The way that the gems were spawning exactly where you needed them is pretty consistent with what I see on PS4 a lot of the time. I don’t like the hit or miss nature of spawners so don’t use them myself much, but it’s the primary reason that the only thing that matters against the Valk/Justice/Mab teams is to kill Justice first.
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