This is what I’m talking about: ten spots inside which you can drag and drop a unit, a color or the skull.
The idea is to indicate to the game which are the priorities of the team.
In the example above I drop in position 1 the Bone Dragon, indicating that (before every AI move) the game have to check, first thing, if he can use the BD skill.
On spots 2 and 3 we drop purple and brown, indicating that, if BD isn’t “ready to be cast”, the colors we want to match are purple and brown.
And so on…
1st courage ability on spot 4…
2nd courage ability on spot 5…
red match on spot 6…
wraith ability on spot 7…
blue match on spot 8…
skull match on spot 9…
empty spot 10 (we don’t need green or yellow)
Of course, this 10 steps are intended after any 4 or 5 matches, which should remain the priority for the AI.
I think this will make the defense finally an interesting aspect of the game.
Casting before using skulls would not only make the game a lot harder, but also “re-invent” how you play the game, as you can no longer strategically make skull moves for the opponent (to keep him busy).
Mind you, I’m not saying that’s a bad or good thing… just saying it changes the whole game.
It also means the whole PVP reward system would need to be redesigned as well, since it gets a lot tougher.
A system where you could at least say which mob should cast first, kinda like your system, but then just the cast order of the mobs, would make it more fun to set up your defense teams though.
i like it a lot, finally good proposition for ai customisation without making it “automatically super hard” unless someone is good with team planning =D
the one thing id hate is ppl who put no thought into team building to have the best defense ai as a standard, really appreciate this being dependant on a persons planning skills
well i dont exclude the possibility that this programmable ai could have for example each time 5-10% chance to do random move choice instead of the chosen priority move
I’m pretty sure you’re going to get the same system that they released on console. I just can’t see them going back to the drawing board on this when they’ve already released an AI customization interface on one of their platforms.
If you don’t know, you can customize your defence team AI using 7 sliders that increase or decrease the priority of each of the 7 gem types (6 colours plus skulls). Apparently, these sliders not only affect the priority for gem matching, but also influence spell selection in some unspecified way. I’ll see if I can find the dev post that described this and link it below if I do. It doesn’t do exactly what you’re describing, but it does have a noticeable impact on gameplay.
Edit:
Here is the post I was thinking of. It is in response to a question of whether changing the gem priority sliders would also affect the choice of gem colour that the Guardians would choose as the 2nd colour when casting their spells. This was an effect that I don’t think any of us had ever thought about before.
When console and PC/Mobile are synced for normal gameplay you will be able to use the defense sliders to customise your team’s AI.
When the sync happens neither PC/Mobile or console will be able to use the sliders in Guild Wars at first. This will take a little additional time to add to Guild Wars.
@Rickygervais Yep they work, they work too well. If you move a slider all the way the AI will completely ignore that color/Skull, a month ago I tested them quite a bit. SMALL adjustments is all you need.
Well i remember when i was trying snow sprite, i puted blue slider on the left cause i wanted to focus on skulls and the ai was always going for blue first
So i puted green blue flag and both color to the max and skull to the left cause i wanted skullbeard full first then use his magic to refill bone dragon
AI was going for brown or purple first and when skullbeard was full he wasn’t using his spell and was going for skull, for some reason gorghota and skullbeard doesn’t fit well together, so i tried to change gorghota for jonny bonze and the AI was acting totaly differently
So the plan is to increase the game’s difficulty but not the rewards?
I will never understand why people who play casual games want to make them harder and their time investment longer.
If the AI improves dramatically, I will quit. Not out of rage, just the simple fact of finding something better to do with my time than lose frustrating match after frustrating match when I could be playing one of 1,000 other Match-Three games.
Even if the defense rewards became amazing, I would quit. Defense isn’t fun: it’s a background process.
This game is 90% RNG.
The AI on defense is what makes it playable. (And palatable.)
I had assumed they understood that–thus, the game–but if they don’t, the AI will be the first nail in a rapidly closing coffin.
