I think most here are broadly missing the point of the thread.
We’ve had several devs show up in the thread and state “We haven’t changed the AI in months!”. There’s no reason to believe that this is an inaccurate statement and that the devs are lying at all.
There’s a giant false equivalence here. Almost everyone here is making the erroneous link that the luck factor is a result of a “rigged AI”. This claim is incorrect, and Cyrup confirmed this yesterday.
(AI Logic / Behavior) =/= (Difficulty / “luck factor”)
The two systems are independent of each other. The devs can present their statements because the new Difficulty system has literally NO effect on the coding of the AI’s behavior in matches.
Further, let’s stop calling this the “luck factor”. Luck implies random events occurring. What players are experiencing is a new Difficulty system, which has been intentionally applied to all new game modes implemented in 3.3 and 3.4.
The core issue here that under the new Difficulty system, unlike the difficulty slider in Story Mode, players can’t see how increasing difficulty affects the game (it’s surely more than just stat inflation; core mechanics are being modified) nor can they choose when the difficulty of a mode increases (with the lone exception of Bounty mode, where a player can go back to a lower tier fight with lower difficulty settings and rewards). These difficulty modifications are fairly applied to both sides, but there becomes an increasingly gaping bias towards the AI as difficulty increases without limit through stat inflation that is allowed to reach game-breaking levels with complete disregard for game balance.
We need an explanation of the Difficulty system, as it is clearly apparent that it is the new norm for difficulty determinations in the game.
And as a bit of a Debbie Downer for those bragging about 90+% PvP win rates, the Difficulty system hasn’t been applied there yet, as PvP/Arena and Story Mode are still using legacy systems. It’s known that revamps of both of them are in the works. It would be highly foolish to think that the new Difficulty system will not be applied to PvP/Arena once their revamps are complete (3.5?). The Difficulty system will ensure that 90% win rates in PvP won’t happen anymore, at least through using the mechanics in place right now for PvP.