Your buddy started the discussion by asking me directly a question.
How insightful you are to express guidance to them. Better to just watch and read what everyone says right?
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You keep focusing on just one aspect of at least 3 doomskulls impacts. Yes âjustâ 4-5 extra mana may not seem much, as does 5 extra damage, but 4-5 extra mana + 5 extra damage + the additional cascade opportunity from the explosion may very well result in deciding the outcome of a battle.
Sure it wonât have decisive impact on each of your battles or even the majority of it, but did we really need an additional random factor to influence our games at the state the game is already in?
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Update.
Luck factor still seems good in the raids.
But the constant skull storm like drops made me go 0-4.
But hopefully this just cleary demonstrates that doing them right after reset is a horrible choice. 2 nights of back to back shit mechanics against troops that are unforgiving of them.
This week is again a repeat of the âbadâ week. In PvP, nearly everything is stacked against you.
I have noticed ridiculous cascades - more than once an enemy Elemaugrim team reduced my attack to zero in a single turn. Using Mercy, I have seen today about a 5% rate of being able to use her spell without losing my turn. This is a far cry from normal. There are countless other examples, but perhaps the most telling is that my underpowered and mostly ignored defense team is winning way more often, which means the same thing is happening to other players.
Go watch that stream with the Doomskulls.
Next weekâs going to take a lot of 
.
My weekâs been entirely normal. *shrug*
Bad luck sucks. People are really good at remembering bad luck and forgetting good luck. Itâs the same reason my kid will come home cranky and angry because one bad thing happened, blowing away all recollections of everything that went right that day.
My week has been too easy thus far.
It either favors the player too much, or makes it more frustrating than fun.
I donât consider either one balanced.
I know itâs not easy making a game thatâs challenging but fun also.
But perhaps more focus should be spent on finding a better balance to it⌠Rather than the desire to add distractions that end up making the balance even more out of whack. (like how extra turns are no longer guaranteed either).
See what few people realize is that we are all not playing the same âRNGâ at the same time. Itâs hard for me to imagine itâs relative to player. Perhaps region? Whatever it is⌠The reason why @Flint is having a rough week. Has nothing to do with âluckâ but most likely because of where he plays. Endure this week⌠And next week itâll be better.
For centuries people have debated whether âluckâ is real. What I know for certain⌠Is when it comes to AI and coding⌠Luck isnât real. Itâs a mathematical formula that decides whether you (the player) get an easy road or fd over.
Thereâs at least 5-10 bugs in this build currently. But I guess thatâs ânormalâ right? Lol
The term âluck factorâ is being used in general to describe the AI changes because that was on a datamined variable that someone pulled from the game files quite awhile ago (perhaps with the initial version of the 3.3 patch).
At this point, Iâd be willing to say that âluck factorâ isnât really an appropriate term to use for what people are experiencing. Rather, Iâd forward an argument that what everyone is witnessing is more of a dynamic difficulty setting for modes that do not have an adjustable difficulty setting (everything outside of Story mode at this point).
The issue, I believe, is that unlike Story mode where increasing difficulty ratings simply increases the opponentâs stats, under the dynamic difficulty system other gameplay factors are being modified. These include skull drop rates, skyfalling âlucky dropsâ, and other statistically improbable events occurring with unusual regularity. What really confounds many players, is that I am reasonably sure that not only can the difficulty slider be set before a match begins (by the AI, unknown to the player), it can also change mid-match. Sirrian alluded to something like this in his own clever way on one of the streams with a response to a comment about why the âluck factorâ seemed to greatly increase for the AI when there was only one opponent left.
What is really frustrating players is that there is no way of concretely knowing what factors will cause the difficulty slider to dynamically ratchet up unknowingly. At best, players can only anecdotally take stabs at what is causing the increase in artificial difficulty (win rate/streak is too high, advancement far into the prize tiers in an event, and so on).
The only real fair conclusion at this point, is that given a certain level of success in the game (by whatever measurement âsuccessâ is measured by in an event), the game will ratchet up an uncontrollable artificial difficulty against the player.
Indeed. I can see why Salty didnât exactly want to show off King Bloodhammer (and really didnât want to play the story match with that unit as the opponent after playing the Ozball PvP team; donât blame her in the slightest for that). It would be reasonably safe to say that the balance on his doomstorm is still being worked on. Nevertheless, when Salty said that the purpose of doomskulls and the new kingdom was to make skull damage relevant again, umm⌠mission accomplished?
Next week is going to be really, really interesting as I canât see him not being used in most teams going forward because of his potential. However, heâs an incredibly high risk / high reward unit. As long as the player or opponent has a strong tank to absorb the doomskulls, that risk is mitigated. But without a tank (or after the tank dies), the amount of potential damage that Bloodhammer can bring against the opposing team is going to be insane. On the other hand, if the board spawns badly for the player, the AI can probably just mop up the gazillion doomskulls on the board to mow over the entire player team in the next turn from doomskulls alone. Going to be a fascinating observation to witness, for sure.
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My predicition for next week
20 new threads about AI cheating
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Oh I resisted the urge to show last weeks Raid match where at level 335 I had 4 troops left against Marilith and ZuulâGoth had 20 life left. But since ZuulâGoth insta filled and Barrier. I couldnât win until 4-6 tries later. Only because a Valraven replaced the Skull Fâr that reflects 25% lethal damage as 100% lethal. I donât know how those that got to level 500 were able to without checking into an insane asylum afterwards.
Worst raids ever
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Every raid is the worst raid ever.
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Yeah that suck the fact gnome and valraven steal the trait of the troop they replace.
Sometime i see a treasure gnome but he steal the fast trait and only need 1 match to cast and escape. Im glad it didinât happen yet with pet gnome
I havenât seen the stream so maybe he changed, but the spoilers say he is a transformer, not a spawner, you can(and should) fire him with 100% chance of 4-match connects and be absolutely risk free aside from maybe a remaining 3 match after you cleared the board of 4s.
Nah last raid was definitely the worst raid ever I lost 2x more battle than any Raid before and the team we had was probably the best so far. But th problem was the Boss barrier and the ridiculous Marilith Bone Naga and Naga QueenâŚ
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Raids have definitely gotten old. But, the last raid âŚwhoaâŚ
It was drudgery and irritation.
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I also didnât like this RB event because of the AI troops and the Raid Boss with Barrier.
But the troop choice was fine.
Looking for the next events makes me worried about how horrible this Event will become: Zaejin (this one should be okay), Ghulvania, Blackhawk, Panâs Vale.
Devs didnât do any tweaks about the scaling difficulty and the battle rewards. Itâs maybe time to wake upâŚ
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123 matches won in a row⌠Ended by the AI getting all the breaks. Weird. 
(Same team won at least 60 matches today, couldnât even kill a single troop this time around).
Kinda begs the question⌠Has posting on the forums ever worked out in the players favor?
(Dawnbringer being removed from your arena took 8 monthsâŚI credit global chat for the fix. 
)
All the time, we are constantly reviewing the forums to check out new issues before they come as tickets, and we get a lot of solid feedback on game improvements or potential changes for you guys here.
I think I posted on your other thread where you were concerned about the AI, but yeah, we havenât changed anything regarding the AI to work against the player. Do you mind if I moved this to feedback/suggestions as it is not a bug report?
If you are experiencing the AI being more difficult in Raids/Invasions, this is due to the difficulty of the Events overall rather than the AI itself in those events. The AI has been in the playerâs favour for the last few years, weâve tweaked it a few times as the game changes to accommodate new changes: The last time being about a 2-3 months back, when we made a small adjustment in the playerâs favor.
I didnât think you had changed anything on purpose. Which is why I put it under a bug report. Since 3.4 was released everything has been cray cray.
âThe luckâ was very favorable to me all day. A few hours after I posted that I was fortunate. I had âbad luckâ again.
The âdifficultyâ for the raids last week was insane. Truly. At level 350⌠So I couldnât imagine it at level 500.
But since you brought it up⌠Iâll show you.
Beginning of the match. (Taken from the next match since I wasnât planning on documenting it prior. Originally there was a bone Naga who took out Mang thanks to lethal being reflected back. )
Iâll let the images do the talking moving forward.
Just now I had a level 180 player ask how to succeed in the pet rescues. I advised him that as he increased in level and troop power that they become much more doable. That these new additions are designed for end gamers. But when an end gamer needs 4-6 sigils to make it past level 350 out of 500 in the raids. What hope can I really offer him? I have all the kingdoms Max leveled, 99% of the troops, and am a seasoned player. Yet, what does all of that matter when the AI is âdesignedâ to win no matter what⌠Unless it decides to let you win? I might as well play a slot machine at that point.
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Ya that boss was BRUTAL!
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