@KrudlerTheHorse. Here you go.
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If you’re going to go pinging devs, then let me just say that I have the opposite opinion. Inducing rage is bad, but so is inducing boredom. I like the way that the AI plays a little smarter when it comes to certain things and a little dumber when it comes to others. What I don’t like is the ‘spiky’ or ‘streaky’ tendency that seems to be there. Leave the console AI as it is, but if there is a problem with the way gems refresh, get to the bottom of that and make sure it is sufficiently random.
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As your typing out your opinions to the developers. I’m also going to include my thoughts after playing years on both systems (99% console). I personally don’t agree with your stated preferences.
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AI Decision making. Yes the console AI frequently makes sub-optimal matches compared to the PC as you accurately noticed. This doesn’t change the end results after another GW week. It is noticeably harder to win battles on console. Players do get very upset over loosing battles so this might agitate the PC crowd. The thing is: the console AI is far more enjoyable due to the greater variety of “decisions” it makes.
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RNG and Cascades. It is also apparent after a years reading the same posts over and over again: some people see gem dropping patterns, while most don’t and chose to stay quiet.
TL;DR Keep the console AI. I don’t care what gem dropping algorithm they use.
Perfect capture of bullshit skydrops. Let’s see people ignore that! Nice one. Thanks for the job you and ryu did here.
Best job yet.
Perfectly in sync with my thoughts. There’s six colours plus skulls. To see drops like that every few games is NOT right. Probabilities of those drops are so small yet on ps4 they’re a regular occurrence. You will could play ten games and get zero cascades like that, or it could happen in every single one. It’s streaky and highly unlikely, in fact mathematically almost impossible in probability terms.
And the dismissive nature towards mad_butch is pretty rude in my opinion. I come across this ‘random’ cascading all the time and I can’t prove it. I have no real idea how to video or share stuff with my ps4, I just play stuff on it. The only time I did anything like that was to show a broken rowanne on console and I’d recorded it by accident and had to ask stan for help!
Please don’t be so aggressive and dismissive just because you don’t agree with someone.
Cheers folks,
Great thread stan
Regards
Daniel
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Which of the videos are you referring to and at what timestamps, and what do you think it’s showing? I’m sincerely trying to understand what you guys are reporting but didn’t notice anything exceptional in @Stan’s video, so wondering what I’m missing that you think it’s a “perfect capture” of?
@beanie42 Thought you might be interested in an older thread containing some Developer thoughts before Sirrians group took ownership of console version. These AI drop and matching threads have been exceedingly plentiful over the life of the game, and Mr. Strange sometimes posted a bit more detail than others.
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He’s referring to the video that Ryuhou recorded, which I linked when responding to Krudler in post #7. When people ask “What are you console players talking about”, this is the most extreme example that I have ever seen recorded, but I say repeatedly that it is way beyond what I ever see. I certainly do see some goofy drops once in a while, enough so that it doesn’t seem crazy to me to think that there is something different between the console and PC gem-refresh mechanisms.
If you have an infinite number of players playing an infinite number of games, sooner or later, this kind of thing is going to happen. Does it prove anything? I don’t know. Honestly, I’d rather keep this discussion out of this thread as it really isn’t where I wanted to go with all this.
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Hadn’t seen that thread before, thanks for sharing it. Well written explanations that pretty much fun up my thoughts and the math I’ve been playing with.
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Thanks for clarifying, and I won’t bother commenting on that here since I agree that isn’t what this thread is for. I’ve enjoyed your lengthy videos though, they’ve helped a lot to see for myself some of the things on console. Having mixed feelings on what I’m hoping happens with the unity merger, but at least I understand the reality of the console stuff a bit better. Thanks!
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I finally had some time to go back and watch the other videos on the AI customization’s. I’ll apologize in advance for what will likely be a lengthy post, as I can finally comment on the videos and some of the follow-up conversation. I also want to thank @Stan for taking the time to put together the videos, it has been super illuminating. This is one of the first console threads I’ve really found enjoyable and useful, since it seems more research based rather than just complaints. And the addition of review-able evidence with the more lengthy videos gives a more complete view, and something to focus the conversation around. Thanks!
[quote=“Stan, post:43, topic:24721, full:true”]
I like the way that the AI plays a little smarter when it comes to certain things and a little dumber when it comes to others.[/quote]
From what I watched, I can totally understand some of the hate for the console AI. If it came to mobile, I’d be hugely disappointed. While a lot of the conversation seems to be phrased as “easy” vs. “hard” or “smarter” vs. “dumber”, my reason is “strategy”. Obviously this is just my opinion and many will disagree, but for me a lot of the enjoyment is figuring out how to beat the AI, and that requires a degree of predictability that doesn’t seem to exist in theses videos.
I mentioned it in another thread, but not being able to skull bait is OK, but a different strategy like baiting with greens or 4-matches or something else should be available. And at the start of the game you might not know what the AI will do and it will seem unpredictable, but with careful observation through the match you should be able to understand what priorities the AI is working on. From watching the videos, the AI seemed far too random, choosing different colours at different times during a match regardless of slider settings or other available matches. For me that introduces far more RnG than even devour/DM does, which are at least somewhat predictable as you watch the troops mana build, and counterable with things like gem denial or mana drain. Playing an opponent who seemingly makes decisions at random would be super frustrating, at least for somebody with my mindset/preferences.
Things did look slightly streakier than mobile, but only marginally. From @Stan’s videos, the individual sequences of multi-cascades didn’t seem worse than what I see on mobile. The frequency of those sequences did seem to happen a little bit more, my guess-timate would be 10-20%, but not significant enough to be something I’d care about having fixed. The parity of those sequences did seem to be fairly even between the player and the AI. I do feel that when some of the sequences occurred was more unexpected than normal, but it “feels” like that’s more due to the unexpected move leading up to it (the random AI mentioned earlier) rather than a cascade algorithm problem. So if the videos are indicative of how things normally occur on the console I’m not really seeing a problem.
@Stan, not sure if you’re planning on doing another video, but if you are I have a request/idea. First, just to clarify, how do the sliders work functionally. It appears that they are “free” and can be set anywhere along the line rather than “snapping” to specific locations, but I just wanted to confirm? Anyway, as was mentioned by you in the videos and others in this thread, the extreme ends of the sliders seem to affect things to severely. So what I was wondering is if you would be able to redo your test with Kraken/Valk/Justice/Mab with settings like the following:
Specifically, treating the slider as -100% at the far left and +100% at the right (and 0 in the middle), set Blue to +90%, Green/Purple/Brown/Skull to -90%, and leave Red/Yellow at 0. As an additional request, if you could do 2-3 battles with those settings but with a Giants banner (+2 Blue) and then 2-3 battles with a Progress banner (+1 Red & +1 Yellow), it would be interesting to see if the banner somehow interacts with or affects the sliders/preferences. But no pressure if you’re done doing videos 
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@beanie42 The sliders are completely Free, they are finicky (small changes are difficult to preform), and there is no way to replicate your previous settings once changed. Here is my request to @GoldPhoenix0 to give some type of feedback on screen to the end user.
PS: Based on my testing those sidebar settings in your MS Paint photo are sill pretty extreme on each edge.
I appreciate the feedback, since I really don’t have any direct console experience. Hopefully what I’m trying to suggest/achieve is clear, basically making Blue the priority while ignoring G/P/B/Skull, and leaving R/Y as normal. Do you have a suggestion for where the sliders should be to achieve that (if @Stan decides to try this)?
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Thanks! Our discussions in another thread were part of the inspiration for doing this. As someone who asked for exactly what I did, I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t actually watched.
If you’re talking about the video I did where I was messing with the AI settings, I think I would agree. However, I generally find that the AI is more sensible in live play. There is an element of randomness, but just enough to keep things from being too formulaic. I think the combination of the team that I chose plus the degree that I pushed the settings was causing some really unusual results. I’m sure my surprise and confusion were evident from my commentary.
That is actually quite surprising to me. I’m accustomed to the console environment, but everything that I saw felt totally normal and there was little or nothing that I felt was noteworthy or unusual. There are other times when I have played in the last week where I have seen some eyebrow-raising gem drops and combinations where I didn’t happen to be streaming and didn’t feel like fighting with the PS4’s video capture and editing features. Anyway, the fact that you could watch such a (relatively) short stream, where I thought that things were perfectly fine, and feel that there was a noticeable difference from PC/Mobile gameplay reinforces to me that there might actually be something to it. Again, I take it as just one person’s impression, but it is still one more impression leaning in the same direction.
Also, I mentioned at the end of stream #2 that I was going to try one more after I ended the stream. That one worked and got the team looping like crazy. Their stats were all up in the 400’s before I finally succumbed. To me, that is another element of strategy that the AI customization opens up, though it is perhaps less satisfying because you never actually know what your defense team is doing in live play.
I was leaning toward doing some additional videos, but maybe not for a week or two now. I’ve been waiting for my daily tasks to line up in an interesting way on a day where I have time to stream so that I can re-do my first video with a more interesting combination. I was going to ask if anyone had any requests or suggestions and I’ll be happy to oblige your request on the next round.
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I really don’t want to encourage this Meta team anymore than it already is on console, and help bring it to PC on day 1.
However, Using the reference scale you provided in your post above. I generally keep all the (moved) sliders in the ±10% to ±50% range. Of course there are exceptions to these guidelines but that seems to be safe without causing the console AI to behave uncustomary silly. If he begins in the ±25% range and makes adjustments based on results of the Defend tests you’ll have a better idea.
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That same thought had occurred to me before I started the stream on Sunday, but I thought “it really can’t get any worse, so what the hey?” .
Would it help if I first tuned up that team to optimum efficiency and then showed myself annihilating it with my “Blue balls” team?
You still can predict the AI, some troop got patern and you will notice them and make your strategy about it, of course sometimes the AI do something you were not expecting but that’s the beauty of the console AI imo cause you always need to be alert and never think the game is in your pocket
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Hi everyone, i just wanted to post this video to show you what is waiting for you when pc guys get console AI. This one is about Justice the strongest troop on console
@beanie42 @Jainus you guys might be interested to see this
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Thanks for sharing!