Well this week has seemed to favour the AI with cascades and general board control for me. Please don’t start yelling “bias recall” at me - this is just my opinion on the week. I have had quite a few matches this week where there was no mana for me to build my troops up or mana to take to keep the enemy from getting it but matches that I had no choice but to take that would leave a match 4 for the enemy or my one and only available move led to cascades of skulls and match 4/5’s that led to my death.
I had noticed a snippet of a conversation on global chat about a rework of the AI and a match where “AI is playing AI to test it out”. I was wondering if we as players could have a little information about that.
I am an end game player that is barely holding on to this game more and more. Troops being nerfed that in comparison to others don’t need to be for example. ie : Valkyrie vs Manticore / Emperor Korvash. Rewards reworked that took away most of what we used to be able to collect. A ladder system that does nothing but reward those that are willing to forgo almost every other aspect of life to play the game to get that magic placement on the leaderboards. A chat system that crashes regularly and drops lines of chat put in by users. And every change that is said to benefit the game seem to just increase the grind of the game.
I am very worried that an AI rework is just going to push me over the edge. I am constantly trying to find fun in the game to keep going but find it harder with every update. I just would like to know if the changes you are thinking of devs (@Sirrian, @Nimhain and the others which sorry but not sure of) can be shared yet.
Trying not to be rash and walk away from the game. Any help would be appreciated.
And to those that are going to tear me apart for this rant . . . . bring it on. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. This is mine and I’m sure you will find colourful ways to share yours.
If the devs have changed the game AI, they’ve done so without official notice. Given that they have been open and honest in their communication thus far, I find it hard to believe they intentionally changed the AI in the latest client update. (All match logic runs client-side, it’s not something they can tweak server-side.) That’s not to say they didn’t accidentally introduce a bug in the code that affects either the AI or gem drop rate, but I suspect they don’t touch that portion of the code unless they have cause to do so.
No AI changes have been released yet on PC/Mobile… I believe a couple of issues were addressed in the console version with the last update though (just based on bug fixes though - no cheating or changes in “luck”).
However, we’re currently doing a full AI rework, which (for a change) will be released on CONSOLES first… this includes a reprioritization of how the AI chooses colors to match, along with completely new spell AI that is a lot more selective in both its targeting and timing, AND a few other goodies which we’ll share with you all when they’re ready!
@Lyya I do not believe the devs did anything intentional or secretly to the code. Nor do I believe they would. That would just create more issues for players and the player base would dwindle very quickly. No conspiracy theory is being forwarded.
@Sirrian I wasn’t insinuating you made any changes but was just curious about any planned changes and if we could know about them yet. You answered both questions with your reply and I thank you for that. The dev team works hard to produce a game that hopefully a majority of players will enjoy and I have for about a year now. That can’t be easy. Especially considering the number of players we have. Thumbs up for your efforts.
@Sirrian What’s up with chat disappearing in guild and global these past few days? Friday chat comments kept disappearing all day from the chat log. Can’t even talk and help members in my guild @ Blazing Dragons.
Real PVP would be a good option to have. More rewards + the extra challenge !
@Virginia1984. No idea on the chat issue. We’ve reproduced the issue here… but unfortunately it’s a holiday weekend, and the chat system is something I am completely unfamiliar with, so I don’t have:
a. Any information to share on the possible cause
b. Any estimation on a turnaround time for a fix right now
Sorry! We’ll try to get somebody onto it as soon as we can though.
@Sirrian , Sorry that I got off of this topic with my concern about disappearing chat comments. I just saw you online here and asked you. Hopefully you can understand that it was frustrating when people were getting confused in guild chat Friday.
Otherwise known as “The Horse Race that Stops a Nation”.
It does.
Literally.
If anybody ever wants to invade Australia… first Tuesday in November is when they’ll do it. 20 million people either drunk at a horse race or glued to TV screens… we wouldn’t even notice.
@Sirrian are you taking into consideration putting ai difficulty changes to be flexible with the game difficulty? (please do)
i actually totally dislike the idea that game difficulty is nothing but some enemy stat boost, id prefer to fight against super hard ai without so high boosted stats then the other way around when im expecting a higher difficulty game.
id love higher difficulty to chellenge my mind not my wallet/game_progress
that is an interesting idea, imagine the “smarter” AI was added as second type of “difficulty”, which you could toggle on/off or scale (not necessarily in more than 2-3 levels, i.e. doesn’t have to be 6 like difficulty), similar to how the difficulty works now. To make a mix of AI level and regular difficulty the player wants to face. Of course for ranked pvp the AI version DEV’s are comfortable with would apply (just like difficulty does not affect ranked PVP). But it would be interesting to be able to use various mixes of extra stats and AI being able to pull off clever moves.
(it’d be nice to be able to toggle it on/off in pvp too, but in the end people playing smarter AI in pvp would have to trade any chances of racing in rank, for more fun due to more clever opponent, since most - I won’t say ALL … - of the rank-racers would just play the easiest AI possible)
i was actually disappointed when i found out that all the game difficulty changes is the stats and ai doesnt become smarter, and then again disappointed when i saw how it reflected higher difficulty arena - that thing doesnt challenge the mind not even the wallet/game_progress just pure luck…
i mean when i see ‘difficult’ i expect a challenge to ‘player skills’ but man, hard to train my luck skill xD
and then again if the changes to ai are throughout all the difficulties the same then the easy/normal game will become ‘hard’ huh? and the hard+ game will be… ugh out of names…
ps. im glad this time consoles are going to be the beta testers, goodluck guys!
- of the rank-racers would just play the easiest AI possible)