this exact thing happened to me too. thanks for bringing it up
2 Likes
Not at all. I can easily go 15+ casts with troops that spawn their own color or between 2 that spawn each others color. The only reason I haven’t seen more is the battle is over by then unless I purposely loop things that don’t really have any additional effect versus things that I can’t quickly kill with just secondary skull cascades. It keeps going just as strong on the 15th cast as it does on the 5th. Conversely, on the Adobe/mobile version, its rare to even get to five casts in a row, even on a stacked board.
4 Likes
This should also trigger if you have a Link trait in your team. So for Purple if you have Magic Link, or any colour if your have Aurora’s Rainbow Link etc
1 Like
To be fair though, Jarl could do this before the patch too. It was his one redeeming factor keeping him competitive as he does common level single target damage nowadays, and eats up half the mana his gems generate so you basically have to cast him multiple times just to achieve the kind of impact other legendaries achieve with just one cast.
2 Likes
He could do something similar sometimes. Not to this degree. As I’ve stated, this is not an outlier that I posted in the video. He was always one of the weaker legendaries for the reasons stated, decidedly not competitive in my book for the reasons stated - his damage sucks, he has to get the extra turn, and he does so randomly. I’d never gotten 12+ extra turns in a row with Jarl using only spawners to feed him before this, and it is commonplace now. According to the post of Sirrian I linked earlier, 12+ should not be possible with this setup period. The clusters on the Unity version look very unnatural.
Here are two more videos. The first one is the current PC Unity version. The second is the mobile version. I used the exact same team. Note the streaks on the Unity version. Pay attention to where the gems spawn. Look at the incidence of critical failure even on stacked boards on the mobile version.
(spawns start at 0:36, x1 speed used for parity)
(Spawns start at 1:40)
Most importantly, test for yourself. Its not all that hard. Just use gem spawners that can feed each other. The first cast feels random regardless of how many gems are on the board (but more will have a higher incidence of extra turns, because thats how random should work). After that, it barely matters. Just spam and spam and spam. The gems will line up where you need them. Its not just the player side. The AI side does this too, but we still have the crappy AI that is stopped by skulls and likes to take all their looping color off the board if they have an extra turn from it.
6 Likes
No Need to test, i am aware of the changes in gem spawns and have commented on it several times in multiple threads since 3.0.5 went live, in this thread even.
I used Jarl extensively before and after the patch, and i know the loops are more secure now, but not groundbreakingly so, at least not for Jarl, as i also know the outcome of gem spawns is more predictable now.
On a related note, you might want to test out Garnok too, he seems quite a bit different to other locked two colour spawners, he seems to spawn all of one colour and then all of the other, sometimes going out of his way to overwrite his own spawns. One would think with how reliable 9 gem spawns are now, a troop spawning 11 gems of two colours would be 100% surefire, but he does miss every now and then, so there are different methods at work here clearly.
1 Like
Here is another good example of what I was talking about. I know that many people have looped Giant Spider and Kraken in the past for a few casts, but how many consecutive casts would you usually get out of Wight and Kraken? PC Players that have used Wight in the past, think about how many extra turn casts you’ve ever gotten from Wight, period. With that in mind, watch this:
Again, pay special attention to how “random” the casts are if they are cast without first getting an extra turn versus after getting an extra turn.
Heres an even better one. Watch as my cursor traces over to the area where the gems spawn before they do. Take special note of the time the Wight got a five match with his six gem spawn with four gems on the board. The video shows how I expected this to happen, converting out a ton on purple just so I could cause this phenomenon to happen.
I’ve tested Gar’Nok a bit, and I see the same thing with him as I do with the others - I’ll get one extra turn and then never give up the turn again. However, since he spawns brown second as you stated, he will often not have enough mana to chain with just himself. Drake Rider is often not enough to refill him on red because there arent enough yellows to convert, and Alchemist will also occasionally not have an opening to convert yellow to fill him. When the gems clump up the way they do, spawning too many can also be a liability, because they’ll overwrite as you said. With just one other orc on the team and Nobend Brothers behind him (so as to not block red), though, you can often sweep without dropping the turn. Drake Rider/Mercy/Gar’Nok/Nobends, for example.
9 Likes
Great observation, gave me some direction to investigate, and spent the last 6 hours or so looking at this. I can confirm the same findings, after you get an extra turn, subsequent gems creations seem to be clustered around existing gems of the same colours. Am continuing to investigate, will post more info as I can.
3 Likes
I’m experiencing the same things as @mithran. Just wanted to add my thanks for putting a lot of effort into these posts and vids to show evidence…
6 Likes
Agreed, thanks for all the investigative work and videos!
Hopefully it can help the devs pin point what’s going on…
And I agree, they don’t have to go back to being as crappy as they were… but a little less would be a good thing in this case.
I still hope the consecutive cascades can get trimmed down a tad to…
1 Like
I’d like to bring this up again. If this turns out to be the case and the combo breaker code activates after one extra turn and is reversed on Unity, it is probably better for the game if they just turn off the combo breaker code altogether and let the random be random but influenced only by how many of the gem you can get out. Spawners on the Adobe version feel like useless garbage until they get up to the point where they are creating 9 gems of a single color on a heavily stacked board and I have to believe this is contributing to the problem.
Oh, and here are a couple more particularly egregious examples, in case anyone isn’t sold yet.
6 Likes
Thanks for posting these. Finally some well respected guys are seeing what we’ve been complaining about for all this time and now maybe people are starting to take notice. The thing is it’s pretty aggravating and disrespectful to the console ‘complainers’ that only now are people starting to think something Is wrong.
6 Likes
If I recall correctly, Krudler the Horse recorded an hour of console play a while back. Do his matches mirror what the PC crowd is now seeing? Is it possible that this is new behavior related to a change made in 3.0.5?
1 Like
He was also very rude and ignorant and claimed it ‘was all in our heads’.
1 Like
if you are really asking me then here:
im sure it is not qa good thing and im against mana surge possibility on 4gem matches
the bonus mana from banner and “link” traits are fine
yeah i know, the devs said that the 3.0.5 supposedly not override colors when gems spawned so its “more” gems spawned that way in comparison to previous version - but they also said they are thinking of turning it back to previous version
i want it back all the way: no 4match surges and allow gem color override, coz i felt that old pc/mobile way was balanced pretty well: when you wanted to loop you could do it quite well but it blocked ai from endless loop - now it doesnt.
and if you think about it - its obvious that allowing gem creators for infinite loop with no strategy for both player and ai sides is nothing good for the game
exactly
6 Likes
This, exactly.
3 Likes
If you go back up and watch the videos I posted, its pretty clear there is something else going on. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter how many of the color were on the board or even how many were spawned. Once the first extra turn lands, all subsequent gems cluster up instead of being distrubted around. One or two times of this happening would be an outlier, hundreds of games observing this behavior and a recorded incidence of 40+ times in a row is not. And Unity version still does overwrite with dual spawners (also pictured in my videos). Thats not what is causing this. The spawns are most likely being influenced and not actually random. Its pretty well impossible to stop any kind of looping in its current state whether dual or single, high or low gem spawners are being used, if any extra turn lands on the turn a spawner is cast, thats pretty much it if they sufficiently feed each other.
You’ll notice on my 40+ spawns video that the only thing that stopped the loop at the end was a gem of the other color spawning over what would have been another extra turn and that gem also spawned clustered near a gem of that color. Try this team on PC/Unity, you’ll consistently get a similar result (if you don’t have plague, you can throw in a Grphyon Rider and see that he never misses either unless the yellows on the board are also so spread out that he can’t spawn enough to guarantee the extra turn). Try this same team on mobile, you’d be lucky to hit three casts in a row regardless of having plenty of mana to continue casting.
Most my videos show at least a few times of attempting to cast the spawners without first getting an extra turn, and it feels sufficiently random regardless of how many gems were on the board, especially with dual spawners. If you have a lot of the color on the board, you are more likely to hit, but its not free. Subsequent turns are free. Again, match 4s are contributory toward getting the initial mana or if you happen to miss that first case, but then it won’t matter. The higher incidence of cascades is also contributory given it is much easier to set up the circumstances to get looped to death. The spawn streak breaker on Adobe (if that is what is happening here) is completely ridiculous in the other direction, causing you to critical fail on a board full of your color after two casts even if you have control.
If you pay attention to the success/fail rates of initial casts only (before any extra turn is triggered), that is about the success rate random gem spawners should have. A risk for every single cast but not so much of a risk that they basically can’t be used in concert with stuff that gives extra turns. Streaks will still happen, but be outliers. It will mean still having losses on defense due to RNG streaks, but most of these spawners are pretty easily stopped when it actually matters how many of their target color are on the board.
Basically, both versions are ridiculous with how they handle gem spawners. Unity is more ridiculous because it takes out any semblance of thought when extra turns are guaranteed to the degree they are now, while Adobe is just “this troop is bad, don’t use it on invade if you like winning consistently and you can mostly pretend it doesnt exist”.
5 Likes
That Wight looping was mad.
Forgot I’m on mobile and don’t have it and my Wight loop team got soundly beat. 
1 Like
What you’re describing makes me think that the anti-streak code on Unity is bugged – that the chance of spawning a gem near the same color is being increased rather than decreased. (Also that it is being invoked after one extra turn instead of the five originally advertised, but that is a separate issue).
6 Likes