Im losing my mind on console. I can literally lose 10 straight matches from the ai having never ensing cascades from the heavens.
What makes it more frusterating is the devs act like the coding is the same. Im like 90 and 0 on my 3 android accounts in gw. I also rarely ever lose in pvp on any of the accounts. I think through my moves carefully. I literally just watched the ai ignore a 3 skull match…to take a 3 gem mana match that neither team has…only for it turn into a 4th hidden off screen above from the heavens fall perfectly into place and what proceeded was 3 mins of loop and me dying.
I call absolute garbage trash bs on the devs ignoring the console ai. Im vip lvl 5 on console and 4 on my android accounts. I love this game and i contribute to see it grow. But the nonsense on console is making me just want to quit that version all together.
Let me be the first to say you are not alone in your fury. There is a long standing tradition of people complaining about the RNG on this game and I’m part of that culture and tradition.
We also like to throw our weight around by stating our VIP levels so the devs might cry a little bit for our pain. I’m not entirely sure it works but I did the same.
As a veteran on these forums, I’ve learned that ranting about RNG is a right and a privilege but do not take the Dev’s name in vain. I’ve also learned that having a good sense of humor helps.
I play games to unwind so I have to ask myself what I’m doing when I’m so riled up I’m staying up late to rant about how stressed I am on the forums here.
Your going to have a very difficult time going 180 (90x3) and 0 in GW on console like PC. You cannot consistently make the AI do what you want by baiting it like on PC/Mobile. Guild scores reflect this, and weekly Guild point totals are 50% Higher on PC because of the simplistic AI.
I don’t think anyone here has ever claimed the AI is the SAME on console as pc/mobile!
In fact, if you look back to our patch notes, we called out an AI upgrade on consoles, which is a pretty clear statement that they’re NOT the same.
If you can point me to where I’ve said that (or where one of the other devs has said that), whoever is responsible (me included) will offer a most sincere apology!
What we’ve repeatedly said (and provided all sorts of time and testing to show) is that the RNG is not cheating in the AI’s favor.
As @Sirrian had mentioned, during our 2.1.5 Update, we updated the AI only on console. To explain how it changed, check out this post which breaks down how the AI system works on console compared to pre 2.1.5, and how it differs from the current PC/Mobile version of the game.
Update 2.1.5 also introduced the Defense Gem Sliders, which allow players to customize their AI according to what they thought would fit well with their Defense Team. This could explain why the AI decided to avoid the skull match, as your opponent may have changed their sliders to either favor the color that it selected, or pulled down the skull preference to stop players from skull baiting.
As Sirrian had mentioned, if any of the team has mentioned that the AI is the same on Console and PC/Mobile (since Infinity Plus Two took over Console development), then we do apologize.
This thread is confused and confusing. The title and initial rant are about RNG, not the AI behaviour.
RNG
Devs have never commented explicitly on this, I think, but there’s lots of anecdotal evidence that the RNG mechs on console are different to the PC version, and on console you get a lot more chains and cascades. I have seen this myself, and I have zero sympathy usually for whiners who don’t understand the maths of randomness and recall bias. This makes the game more exciting I guess, and may have been deliberate, but it also causes more spikes, i.e. losses, as most advanced game players will only lose due to RNG silliness, or the occasional mistake.
AI behaviour
Devs have responded repeatedly, and again here, that the AI is different on console. I am unsure how much is due to the sliders and control settings, and how much is just random silliness in the AI’s decision-making code. This gives both advantages and disadvantages to the player: sure, you can’t bait them with skulls to stop a Famine or BoneDragon or other cast - but also the AI will happily take some random match in a colour it doesn’t need, ignoring a 4 or 5 match and leaving that for you.
Two main things from me
ONE - if we had pc ai on consoles I’d get bored. It’s awfully predictable and you can win without much thought.
TWO - There’s something fundamentally wrong when you destroy a full column and every single gem dropped is exactly the same colour apart from the last one, or all skulls. This DOES happen far too often.
OK, I also would finally, (is that three things?) that the ai often goes EXACTLY where you were planning to despite not even using that colour and can be very clever. And also be ridiculously dumb, taking 3 skulls instead of 4. Guardians are lethal on console more often than not too.
So to wrap up, yes it’s often downright annoying and isn’t right with single colour skydrops but I’d take it over pc any day.
(Oh, famine’s nerf is pathetic guys. Should be 25, 2 casts of an exploder that refills itself and usually gets an extra turn will still fill him easily.)
Overall great summary. Yes it can go either way for one specific AI decision, but we now have a good figure in terms of the differences on Guild Wars points.
Playing on PC/Mobile gives a Guild roughly a 50% points advantage using that version of the AI.
Thanks. After one week though, I wouldn’t read so much into it. Lower scores could just as well be due to players not yet honing their fourofacolour teams…
I was frusterated over getting just torn apart last night. Was not trying to be a jerk.
My main gripe is the example i gave. Rng or not…for the ai to ignore a 3 skull drop to take mana neither of us have only for it to result in a cascade of mighty heavens.
I shouldnt have said rng cause as i think on it. My issue is it seems like the ai see another set of 100 gems above our 100. As if they know whats coming.
thats only a feeling, ai doesnt really do that
(i can assure you since it would require a lot of programming in order for ai to do that, and devs would for sure say if they programmed something like that)
as far as i know ai reacts to current board situation only and not a future droppig gems
if you want you can ask devs for a statement regarding this but i believe in them regarding such things
but yeah when i read cosole ppl talking about it i wish the console ai (and future pc ai) to be tuned abit down on the rng part
(even if it means player side rng would be tuned same way)
Just and very common fyi. Yes, even though the issues are separate as you described, more often than not in these “console RNG/AI threads” they never are for the poster and a portion of the “AI cheating is contributors”.
Points in GW. You might be right, unfortunately I could not compare week1 on PC to week1 on console due to the behavior change +80% might have caused. We’ll know more in the next few weeks (and absolutely after the PC is migrated to Unity).
