Piggybacking off of a great idea in one of today’s threads by @Santandrix, I think it’d be fun to have a conditional status effect that allows the player to be able to see the next row of gems not yet in play. This can allow for the player to make combos s/he might not otherwise be able to make without that foreknowledge.
Clairvoyance
A troop that has Clairvoyance allows its player to see the next row of Gems yet to fall into the board. Clairvoyance has a 10% chance to wear off each turn.
Here’s how I’d imagine it might be implemented in the game UI. The Hero in this example has Clairvoyance, as indicated by the eye indicator over her head. Notice that with Clairvoyance, the next row of gems peeks through the UI at the top of the board; and with that knowledge, the 3-match of Yellow gems on the right of the board becomes a viable move here as the player now knows it can trigger the follow-up 4-match of Blue in the top row.
Some existing troops such as Green Seer and Stargazer seem like viable candidates to have Clairvoyance added as part of their spell effects. A disadvantage, if you will, is that this effect is purely offensive, having no bearing on how the AI would play.
What do you all think? I think this would be a great way to give players some more agency over tactical play, which seems to be a really sore point right now.
I think it’s a good idea but i would disable this option for GW and dungeon mode since i think it would Make it too easy. I have no problem to see it everywhere else tough
Thinking more pragmatically, Green Seer would probably be too powerful considering her hard loop with Giant Spider, despite it making thematic sense for her. “Scout” style troops like Ranger or Tyri might be good candidates for this effect.
Great idea @Lyya, give the players what the AI has has for years, that would help even things out in the cascade dept…
Yes, I know the Devs have stated emphatically that the AI has no foreknowledge of the gems that are going to drop, I just do not believe that they are correct in that statement.
Just because it’s random doesn’t mean the first row can’t be calculated ahead of time. There’d be some work to get it to combo-break properly but I think it’s doable.
I don’t think it’s possible, if it’s truly random like Sirrian said… The only way I can think of is to ‘expose’ an extra row for the player to see but it would be visible anyway, so all you’re kind of doing is making the play area larger. It could only work against another player, and I just can’t see how this would be implemented.
If it’s truly random (no combo breaker), it’s both doable and easy. The only complicating factor is non-random behavior that considers gems on the board.
“Random” does not mean “calculated on demand.” A random sequence can be calculated and stored.
@Rickygervais I really dislike exclusions. Why not just disable all troops in GW that help the player now: Gems spawners, Devour, enchant, convert gems, create barrier, deal damage, explode gems, create extra turn, generate Mana, heal, frozen, Mana burn, summon… etc.
('cause that would be silly)
Something like this just needs to be balanced to the troops that its given to.
I disagree. One extra row would be enough to give you an edge without completely ruining any suspense. More than one row might work too, though I’m not sure how you’d visualize it without scrolling.
Yes! We need to bring strategy back to GoW. It has become a game of power and speed and whomever can get the the right power combo off the fastest wins.
Tactical play and skull baiting were essential to this being top quality puzzle play. Now, giving the AI the ability to ignore skulls just creates a more humanistic experience so I don’t mind hat change so much but anything to give the edge to heads up human player I am ALL for!!
It seems difficult to add this feature on the current UI.
For sure, your example could work for PC player but on a small screen, I don’t think if players could be able to see the “extra” row…
Moreover, I’m not sure if knowing one extra row is that useful: yes again in your example you could have an a blue extra turn but it seems the only pattern where this feature could be useful…
Finally, if devs add that, it will be clear for everyone that the extra raws are stocked and can be known/used by the AI. So on, more “cheating AI” topics…
