This sort of reporting does take a chunk of time to get together, so I doubt it’s something that will be able to be done frequently. That being said, I will make sure to look into it and see if we can put reports like this together on relevant occasions.
As many players are aware, we recently made changes to how gems are spawned, so if you give it some time there will likely be less of these looping Justice teams in the meta. (Though we are still tweaking this algorithm, so please bear with us.)
You should have emergency plan to block justice until 3.1
But more seriously @Saltypatra why it’s not in a plan when a troops is so broken then it break the game? Pretty sure if you look the data you gonna see everyone getting more defeat just because of 1 troop
Once again a pc player think console complain for nothing, very easy to say when you got a stupid AI who decide to go for skulls instead of doing his magic
Zuth you are missing the point. The issue with Justice does not exist on the PC as they are adjusting and nerfing the hell out of the gem spawners. It DOES still exist as a HUGE problem on console, read more forums and you will know this. Please refrain from dismissing anothers post without knowing the whole story or at least researching their point of view a bit more.
@Saltypatra I don’t want to put word into @Stan post… I posted right under his comments and will say it differently. He was far too nice, circumspect, and indirect in just asking for someone to run a report.
I will be susinct: There is an increasing mess being caused by the monolithic meta on console.
Posting a report or graph of this on the forum is irrelevant and won’t help console players one iota (other than add fuel to the forum fire). The problem exists and is increasing weekly. Developers don’t need to post a PowerPoint presentation to alert console players ‘team Justice’ is a problem. Someone needs to tell the person in charge that there is an unhealthy situation, this should be addressed somehow in the ‘soon’ timeframe.
@Rickygervais was just offering one possible alternative solution to reduce the problem. All the players (including myself) are looking for any solution, not ‘everything will be roses’ in 3 months after PC is done testing.
Unfortunately we cannot offer banning or blocking a specific troop. This isn’t a solution we are able to implement without taking significant time away from what we are working on. Also, it is only a quick fix (that we also believe goes against the spirit of the game) to a problem we would rather address on a deeper level to stop it from happening again.
Our team is aware of the problem and is currently working on a few different things that will help fix it, while also stopping similar issues from appearing in the future. We have no official eta yet, but once we do and I will inform everybody.
@Saltypatra I think the OP along with many other console players are asking for this block as a temporary option as historically in the past it seems that getting patches and updates approved for consoles can take a considerable amount of time.
I understand that, but implementing a way to block a troop wouldn’t be able to be released until our next update, so it’s better that we focus on the root of the problem.
Just keep losing players of gems of war and maybe then you’ll start to fix the issue,
I’m glad I’m over level 1000, because a new player might as well not even try to compete.
It’s great how one team build can ruin the whole game. 350 troops and all I ever see is 10 of them, with the 4 being the most popular.
Giving guardians 15 gems, that’s a wee bit high for spawners now isn’t it. And it can be 10 blue and 5 of whatever.
Maybe do 7 and 7 ole just lower it period, at least with the guild wars troops, all they do is make a storm.
I just want to respond to a couple points on what you’re saying:
My suggestion to run the report was not so that it would be shared here on the forums, but so the team could see how extreme the meta has gotten on console. I honestly believe that the results would show it is worse (meaning more monolithic) than it ever was on PC, even during the height of the BD meta.
Tweaking and balancing the gem spawning algorithm on PC, and then rolling those changes out to console on 3.1 is not going to solve the Justice problem on console. Since the two versions are running different AI’s, we are still playing two different games. What you are proposing to do is more likely to ever-so-slightly reduce the problem on console while summoning a Justice-storm on PC/mobile. Once PC has an AI that won’t reliably take skulls to break its loop and has customizable mana preferences, this team will run wild, even if the gem-spawning has been adjusted to be fair.
From what I understand (based on anecdotal reports of the effects of the updates on gem-spawning), the tweaking that the team is doing is mostly around how random the gem-spawning is. Personally, I find this to be a little unsettling. My preference would be for gem spawning to be random and for spell effects to be balanced by altering the number of gems created (which is what we always thought was happening). If a combo-breaker override must exist, it should only kick in when random streaks have gotten out of hand, not be constantly intervening in subtle ways to prevent random streaks, or to fight against unbalanced gem spawn numbers.
The proliferation of the Valk/Justice/Mab teams on console is not just about Justice not-overwriting existing blues when it casts. It is a combination of that, plus the standard AI being relatively smart about choosing which secondary colour to choose to maximize the likelihood of extra turns, plus AI preferences allowing players to fine tune colour choices, plus the AI not breaking its own cycle by taking a 3-skull match over a spell-cast when given the option, plus the base AI tending to cast Mab only when it will get an extra turn. This combination allows this team to loop, which because of the synergy between Justice and Mab creates an unstoppable juggernaut once Justice is able to cast once. ONCE. Some minor adjustments to gem-spawning won’t significantly change this combination.
One additional issue which is widely believed but so far not conclusively proven is that something funny happens with normal gem refreshes from matches. This is the ‘skydrop’ or ‘cascade’ problem. Maybe this is real, maybe it isn’t. I honestly don’t know, but when we feel the effects of this problem (real or imagined) when facing these VJM teams, it is extraordinarily frustrating. A player can end their turn in complete control of a match, with the enemy team having literally zero mana, only to have a simple three match cascade twice to fill Valk or Justice, triggering a loop that leaves the player with no chance to win. It doesn’t happen that often, but every match against that team runs a risk of that happening.
I don’t go in for hyperbole. I don’t believe that the game is unplayable and don’t buy into the numerous conspiracy theories that pop up when people complain about the state of the game. I think I’ve been very calm and reasonable over the last number of months as this Justice situation has worsened, but I am ringing the alarm bell now. If the report I asked about is never run on console, and none of the devs play on console, then it seems that no one in the dev team is really aware of how bad the situation is. It is going to be a problem if gem spawners are balanced on the current PC platform and then those changes are released at the same time that PC/Mobile gets the upgraded AI. The balancing needs to be done with the future state of the AI in mind (that is, the current state of the console AI), or you’re just going to be in the same situation again after 3.1, plus you’ll be dealing with a host of new bugs and issues that will keep the team from focusing on this.
Aren’t the PC and Console AIs the same now that PC is on Unity? (With the exception of the recent changes they’ve been making on PC to fix problems Console players have been suffering through for a while.)
