You have invalidated strategy by ramping up the Luck AI - The cascades are maddeningly ridiculous!
We wanted crafting and x4 game play, and for that, I thank you. But we didn’t want game-breaking Luck changes. To make such changes to actual game play after the game has been out so long is a slap in the face to every one of us that plays this game. You have altered the game to a point where I don’t want to, nor enjoy, playing, and I’ve been playing for DAILY for years!
At this point, I’m playing out of guild loyalty. But my patience with this game is frayed, and if this keeps up, the cord will break and I’ll be gone. I’ve already had friends quit the game in frustration.
Thank you for holding off the new Kingdom…you need to fix everything you have broken (Not getting extra turns when matching 4/5, Impervious being completely broken)
MOST IMPORTANTLY - Return Luck to its previous state. Seriously! I know you’ve tweaked it, and have said that it’s closer to pre-update, but what you have done so far is not enough. Fix the game-breaking Luck AI, or I’m outta here.
I hate to say it, but I agree with this post. I’ve been playing daily for probably three years now, and the only reason I’m still logging on since the 3.1 patch is because I don’t want to let y guild down. The enormous number of bugs that entered the game, combined with the several balancing crushing units that have caused complete team wipe out by round 2, sometimes as early as the first round, make the game unplayable.
I have a fairly high level VIP status because i believe in supporting the companies that produce games that are free to play, and yet are fun to play too. However, about two weeks ago the game became a lot less fun, and as such I’m not giving any more money until it is fixed.
It used to be that you could look at a an opposing team and generate a workable counter to give you a strategic chance to beat it. Now your strategic chance against some of those teams still only gives you a 25% success rate, and that 25% chance is still entirely based on luck… I have no problem with making the game difficult, however it should be difficult but still with a chance at victory. If I am going to continue to take my first turn and then put my phone down while the AI takes it’s four minute long total party wipeout first turn, I don’t consider that fun or worth my time.
Fix the things that you broke, like impervious, Kraken killing the last two units and then devouring the third, Korvash killing the first two and then stunning the last two, etc. So that the game at least works the way it is supposed to. And then make the difficult decision to do some major nerfs that are going to frustrate 10% of the players but will make the game more enjoyable for the other 90%.
It’s what us console folks have endured for absolutely ages. I’m getting increasingly frustrated with the state of the game and the decisions relating to the vip status, but that’s in other threads.
They want to get our loss ratio up, most of us is still at 95%+ win ratio on invades. Its barely a game until win ratio is down to 70%. Atm they are kind to us. I gonna spend this moment to thank the Devs. Thank you for making this feel more like a game and not a baby toy.
I totally agree on making the game more difficult if it’s based on smarter AI. Luck AI is essentially cheating. I love that opponents don’t always go after skull matches now. I do that all the time, especially when I have a tank with skull mitigation in the first slot. That is smart AI.
I’ve also supported this game (and my game play) by spending money for a higher VIP status. No complaints there!
Many of the game’s problems are related to the boosted AIManaCascade and AISkullFall that was first put in place July 10, 11pm EST.
Ragnagord filling Famine in 1 cast for AI but not for player? Cause: AIManaCascade (bonus match 3s and 4s falling on AI turn)
Goblins looping excessively for AI but not for player? Cause: AIManaCascade (bonus match 3s and 4s falling on AI turn)
Wisps looping excessively for AI but not for player? Cause: AIManaCascade (bonus match 3s and 4s falling on AI turn)
Also on July 10, AISkullFall was boosted, which causes these problems.
Psion suddenly super powerful stealing mana? Cause: AISkullFall allows Psion to steal more often.
Exploding troops killing your first troop? Cause: AISkullFall often drops an extra 1-3 unearned skull hits in AI favor.
Finally, we as players have to work to make the game more fun. If you see that troops are broken when you fight them, please do not put them on defense. Avoid using the following broken troops on defense (Do Unto Others):
Psion in first postion - broken due to AISkullFall
Wisps - broken due to AIManaCascade + AISkullFall
Kraken - broken due to Impervious bug
Famine - broken due to AIManaCascade
All Goblin teams - broken due to AIManaCascade
I stopped using all the above on defense after seeing how broken they are, be creative, do unto others.
Conclusion:
Devs, you have too many AI boosts in place and the side effects have ruined the game’s “fun” factor.
Players, help restore the “fun” factor by doing the only thing in our power, do not use grief/broken troops.
Kindness is fielding a game on launch day that has smart AI and a higher loss ratio. It is not a kindness to so dramatically alter a game that has been out for years. They have dramatically altered the game dynamic several years after the launch of the game. Kudos on the 95%+ win rate. That’s way better than I’m faring these days.
Im rather for this CPU than the extremely stupid CPU and mechanism that we had before. Now CPU can sometimes roll over us as we roll over them, only that we roll over them ten times more.
I understand it is more difficult to program the AI to be able to “see” the more obscure match 4s and how to drop a match 3 red below to cause a match 3 green above, BUT it is not that hard to program.
Just monkeying with the AI gem drop chances to have more mana match and cascade has caused too many side effects and is lazy programming.
I have to post here because I am very, very close to leaving the game. The simple fact is this game is no longer strategic. I am losing so many games now without a chance I feel like throwing my tablet across the room. I am a high VIP level and have been playing every day for the last year and a half but the game is beyond maddening now. Losing a fight in the first one or two turns is ridiculous and is happening way too often. The Devs keep putting new troops out which break the game even more. Goblins that once the go off you don’t get another turn, WISP that can win the entire game in a single turn, Famine that can get up in one turn and continue to keep you from ever getting a turn, Psion who gets skull it’s out of the blue the entire game never allowing your top trop to get up. This isn’t fun. As so many people above have said I’m staying for my guild but every day when I play and get this pissed at the game is a day closer to quitting. Devs better fix this quick or many more will quit.
Note, I am also a guild leader in a top 15 guild and we have been losing 1 to 3 people a week because of the recent changes. We have never lost this many people in the guild before. Take a hint, please.
My win ratio IS down to 70%, and it barely feels like a game anymore. It feels like russian roulette. I’m not a dumb player, I don’t put together poorly-synchronized teams, and I know what types of troops counter the various grief mechanics. It doesn’t matter anymore and that’s why so many players are so angry. It’s Explosions of War and the AI gets the upper hand a lot. You can try and dodge a bullet, but you can’t dodge a cannonade. If people are still reliably getting 95%+ win rates I want to see what these miracle teams are.
A friend’s win rate is down below 60%. Guild loyalty is the only reason he hasn’t quit.
We got 4X, but we’re taking a 20% (or more) hit to win rate, basically canceling out the benefit provided by the speed increase. I’d rather they pull 4X and the russian roulette AI along with it and make the game fun again.
For most of the time before update on console I used a total lottery team. Crimson Bat - Sacrifice - Elspeth - DeathKnight-class Hero. It involved zero thinking, since you just try to win the game by making extra turns. It occured to me that this Unity system has some serious “swings” in it. You may get 5-10 games in a row where you cant match sh’t, the match has luck totally favouring the AI. You might still win one or two in that downswing, but mostly you lose, since you use the draw/lottery/slot machine, if you lose that you lose. Then there are upswings, where maybe 20 matches in a row all goes perfectly. Gems fall in perfectly, and you win the lottery, thus you win the game. This was before the changes in troops such as sacrifice being able to change the color of a gem solely on those that are different color than the created two colors.
Long time ago on console we used to have that same platform that PC had a month ago. Damn it was fun. I won 99 % of the matches, but at least my thinking was the main aspect of the game, not lottery. The Unity system gives the player no change on winning a high percent of games, so that is not even wise to go for (on PvP at least). The main aspect is wins/time played, which make this game a lottery grind, not something where you can challenge your own brains. The gems of war that I really loved used to be about fighting against my own brain. Well, thankfully treasure maps are still to be played. It’s a shame everything else is boringly lotteryish.
@Bolatsi, you bring up a good point about the grind. Being I am now only playing this to help my guild (not for the fun) it has become a huge grind. I feel I am doing work now - to help others but not enjoying it. The devs need to understand people enjoy winning and losing constantly especially at no fault of your own will be the downfall of this game.
p.s. the one thing the game has for it is guilds. Not that the game created discord which allows the great communication, teamwork and strategies but none the less the guilds are fun.
This bares repeating since some people keep ignoring it. There is nothing wrong with having a smarter AI that doesn’t predicatively take skulls at all times. It’s great to have an AI that will use its spell at the appropriate time. I like that the AI has a better decision making algorithm.
However, the algorithm for gem clusters is going haywire. There is obviously a bug there. The devs have even stated they are looking into it. This isn’t even counting the countless other broken mechanics issues like impervious and one shoot cast fails.
Losing because the AI outplayed me is fine and expected; losing because of an avalanche of bugs is not.
I’m a GM also, and since update, we have been losing more and more people making recruiting a chore. On top of all the cascades and skulls falling like crazy, the impervious being broke Is a huge slap in the face.
As someone that has written programs myself, I can only assume it has something to do with them not being able to find the problem since the Unity codebase was written by another team. It may take some time to dig in and find the regression. This is just my guess.
So, I’m sympathetic yet still frustrated. It’s pretty horrifying to go into an extremely large codebase to hunt a bug especially if the code isn’t commented well or structured properly. I just hope the devs are giving the situation a higher priority than getting out new content.
