Sure they are. Except my Elemaugrim+Gar’nok team has 2 orcs and no one to inflict Burning, so my Gar’nok does 9+9 like Jarl, and Elem does just 8.
The whole idea, obviously, is that you can’t shoot them blindly and be guaranteed not to miss, because then they would be hell in the hands of the AI (which they were, for over a week). Having an almost guaranteed success with a prepared board is good enough for me.
One of the things I enjoyed most since the update is when facing an enemy Gar’nok, I wait for him to cast first on a regular board and miss, then cast my own on the board he kindly prepared for me, having 99% success. That, I believe, is the kind of play the devs had in mind for creators, and it worked quite nicely for me with various creator teams and similar strategies.
And you couldn’t shoot them blindly before 3.0.5., the first cast basically never was an extraturn and was for populating the board with the appropriate colours for future casts or chains of casts. I liked the way they were then, the problem is they are not like that now.
The Devs had in mind that for your double 9 gemspawner to be in any way viable, your opponent had to also use the same troop and misfire badly with it? I highly doubt that, that seems like terrible design.
Anyways, you are still missing the point that they don’t work anywhere close to the way they used to before 3.0.5., at which point noone complained about gemspawners being to powerful btw, so why neuter them this way?
Since the hotfix, for me there is close to no relation between the amount of gems of a relevant colour on the board and my chance for a resulting extraturn with a 9 gem spawner unless you go into nonsensical high numbers like close to 20 gems on the board, and that is just idiotic.
I’m finding Jarl misses 9 times out of 10. IK too. But AI playing same teams hits 9 times out of 10 (even over-writing to make 4/5 gem matches!). Also, with my spawner teams missing so often I’m just gifting the AI with mana that should be mine. I’m losing far too frequently. The “FIX” is breaking the game. There must be a happy medium somewhere.
For me, I don’t like random not being random. If it stays as is so be it. I’d at least have enough information to make decisions on in respect to the mechanical aspect of creators unlike some other gameplay mechanics. Bottom line 40-50 cards I will never use due to the risk association of deliberately skewed results.
I wouldn’t know, I was avoiding the use of gem creators before 3.0.5 because I felt they were too unreliable to use, so I don’t have a way to compare them. The only exception is Elemaugrim which I used often for his trait, and as far as I remember he didn’t feel more reliable then than he does now, probably less, even.
Anyway, I have no reason to argue about it. The OP asked for opinions, I gave my opinion and experience. Yours is different, that’s cool, I have no reason to try and change it. Just answering the OP question, I used creators and I feel they are where I want them to be, in the current PC version.
In a word: Money, and as someone who has already invested enough to hit VIP 6, it makes me mad.
The broken random gem spawners and the AI’s permanent Bonestorm (yes, it’s a thing) were done to slow players down because of money. Can’t have players farming gold too fast or not one will buy it, right? Consider how many LTs the top guilds have been grinding out since the implementation of 4x speed.
I really wish the Devs would just come clean about why they broke what they broke (and smack the bean counters who made them panic and break it to begin with). Making the game less fun will drive players away, not convince them to spend more money in the shop. I know I’m done spending until I see how this is handled.
I don’t expect a troop like Jarl to give a match-4 or match-5 100% of the time, but I also don’t expect it to only give one 5% or 10% of the time.
(On a distantly related note: I wish there were more MICRO transactions in the shop instead of all the $20-25-30-35-50 choices. Instead of 36 arcanes for $35, what about 5 of a specific arcane for $5? etc. Having more less-expensive options available should generate more sales, but I’m no bean counter so I could be way off.)
There was a bug in the Unity code. The devs acknowledged the problem and attempted to hotfix it. Unfortunately that didn’t go as well as hoped, and it also appears that PC and mobile use the same settings, so the PC fix broke mobile. I wish things were getting fixed quicker, I’m frustrated too. But their actions and comments have shown a desire to fix the issue, so putting forward conspiracy theories and attributing them malice is a bit of a stretch. I applaud their efforts so far, despite the poor results recently, and trust they will continue to keep trying to get this resolved properly.
I have no doubt they want to fix it. Overall I’m really happy with the game, which is why I’ve supported it
I’m patiently awaiting a fix as much as the next person (or as patiently as I can) and trying not to feel too hamstrung due to the crazy failure rates for some of my favorite teams.
There have been a few similar posts. To me this says “players were steamrolling too much, this is intentional”.
I’m down to one reliable team (missing required mythics for other still-solid teams) and only playing one team in pvp all week is boring, but I can’t bring myself to play a team that will consistently donate free turns to the AI.
My gameplay has decreased noticeably since the “upgrade”.
Just as a point of fact, the spawn streak denial code has been a part of the PC/Mobile in the Adobe version of game for about two years now (see below). Different codebase means that they had to write new code for Unity for the spawn streak breaker, and it was inverted for the first week of Unity release on PC, causing spawns to pretty much never fail after one extra turn. It is not a part of the current console code and the code they are tweaking now is part is going to be introduced to console in the future according to @Saltypatra.
From context, I can tell that they are hoping to back away a bit from the Justice/Mab meta by introducing the spawn breaker in consoles since without it, it is common to get spawn streaked to death by this team if you let it cast once. However, I think this is ignoring the larger issue that the Unity codebase itself (more generous with mana, bigger cascades on both sides) and the design of the troops is what makes this possible in the first place. A situation where a spawner has, for example, 70% chance to hit on a given board, without manipulation, then whatever reduced or increased chance based on how it mods the board from there should naturally streak break itself either by not getting enough mana, clearing out too much of the board for lower chances on subsequent casts, or just hitting that bad RNG. The issue is when the magnitude of effect on the spawner is such that a natural streak break often won’t occur until after the game is already either finished or unwinnable and the spawner will continually refill itself. Applying the same arbitrary extra turn limit before going into critical failure territory as if they all spawners get the same out of a cast just doesn’t make sense from a logical standpoint.
In my experience, the current state of things is first casts are more generous, second and third casts are about equal or maybe a bit less, and beyond that you better have 2/3 the board filled. My experience with the Adobe version has always been that “priming” by getting a lot of your color out by means of converter would greatly help the chance of your streak continuing, but Unity just doesn’t seem to work like that. Basically, I never “felt” the presence of the spawn streak breaker on Adobe like I am now (though I didn’t use spawners that much, admittedly), the distribution of gems didn’t seem to change so drastically and so quickly. If I did use a spawner, I would prime the board as best I could, then hazard the cast. How it “feels” on the current Unity version is that the amount of extra turns you have taken is far more relevant to your success with a spawner than the number of gems on the board, which is far too heavy handed for my tastes. How it feels is that you want to intentionally break your turn and start a new one before casting a spawner or it will blow up in your face, which is exactly the opposite of how I’d want to use a spawner - spending my time taking all the 4/5 matches off the board, intentionally breaking my turn on a skull or something, then using a spawner cast when I get my turn back. Coincidentally, this is also how the AI will play sometimes, which may be why people notice them getting better spawn RNG. Of course, part of this still may be personal bias based on the information that I have, so take that as you will.
At the very least, I’d like a disclosure of when the spawn streak breaker triggers and why so I can at least plan around it. It pretty clearly to me works a bit differently than described here by @Sirrian:
I’d love for the devs to clarify as well. But as best as I can tell from my testing, it seems that the combo-breaker is kicking in immediately rather than after 5 turns, and then increasing the severity (%) each additional turn after that. Which would also be consistent with your findings about casts beyond the third, since using Sirrians 20%/turn but without the 5 turn start, it means by the fourth cast you’re at 80% “denial”.
@Versheenah, though you may feel otherwise, it isn’t possible to satisfy every player with our AI and RNG. There will always be cases where the AI is perceived as luckier than the player, even if this isn’t necessarily so, due to our perceptions of luck when playing video games.
We are working on improving the AI as I have said in many other threads. However, this takes time, care, and rigorous testing. It is not something that we will be able to move on quickly if we want to get it right.
Yes, difficulty settings are for that purpose. However, Guild Wars and ranked PVP are meant to be the more challenging parts of gameplay, they shouldn’t be as easy as Explore or Quest battles.
@Beanie42@Mithran this combo breaker is working as intended, and how Sirrian outlined in February, on PC and Mobile. This will be coming to console with the next update.
And what about the actual spawns? Combo breaker is all well and good, but as it stands you don’t even need a combo breaker for gem spawners below 10+ gems.
Currently troops like Jarl have super expensive common troop level damage spells, that even if they don’t fail catastrophically and deliver 20+ mana and multiple extraturns to the opposing side, struggle to even create as much mana for the user as they cost to cast on average.
Remember Jarl was a troop notorious for being able to loop itself, with spell chains of 3-4 casts being a common sight, where he not only got multiple extraturns but also managed to fill itself each time.
This is especially hurting them since now taking a simple 3-match with the following cascades results in more managain on average than it used to and is often a more efficient way to create mana than firing a spawner which is rather idiotic in my humble opinion.
Meanwhile no combo breaker or other shenanigans interfere with transformer loops in any way, who reign supreme even more so than they did before, which apparently is no problem.
Isn’t that what this team is all about. What it should be? This is what their spells/traits allow them to do! Or should allow them to do, anyway. Why introduce such cards in the first place then?
In my experience even at the first cast with 15+ gems of the required color I still miss in the most ridiculous ways.
Lol, for that I would actually need to land an axtra turn first. But thanks for the tip! Maybe I will get a chance to try it.
As long as this is true random luck, it’s fine. Bad luck happens, good luck happens.
What you have done takes the luck, good or bad, out the equation. Now every unlucky gem spawn or cascade will be perceived as the game intentionally screwing over players.
Bad luck = players are angry at the RNG.
Your “bad luck” code = players are angry at the game itself.
Even from your perspective this algorithm is a mistake. Not to mention that the absolute majority of voters in this poll tells you so.
Are they not already? I’ve seen so many players dropping out of top guilds because GWs are too stressful.
I have guildmates who refuse to play GWs at all, even tho their losses would still give points to the guild, because GWs are torture for them.
Challenging is Casual at max difficulty. How about rewarding that more, with more gold, guild seals and more trophies, so that players who want torture had a reason to play it?
Or let ppl change difficulty in ranked pvp for more points and trophies!
Just please, please, please, think about what you guys doing and how it affects your community!
Though you might see things this way, doesn’t mean everyone does. Some players will see any luck against them as cheating, not as RNG or luck.
You also have to remember that this poll does not represent our playerbase as a whole, it is only captured the opinions of a very vocal and small part of our playerbase. We won’t dismiss the results out of hand, but we are also focussing on the big picture and how this alongside other changes will affect it.
We are always thinking about our community and how to make the game better and more enjoyable. That is why we have been investigating this issue so thoroughly and taking on board a lot of suggestions. Not all of these suggestions are viable, but we are very involved and invested in our community. I believe we have shown this many times in the past.
At any rate, a lot of the issues brought up in this thread are getting repetitive. To clarify, we are reading your responses and are hard at work doing what we can. There is nothing else to be announced at this time. When we have further information for everyone I will make an official post outlining everything.
