What if… they nerfed the players instead?

1

Ok, sounds crazy right?
But let’s look at the current grievances:
1- the domination of the meta by K-FG-GS-K and X-F-D-F.
2- Devour and Death Mark a.k.a RGN death (see #1)
3- Famine (see #1)
4- the 1 troop defence (to avoid #1)

The normal response would be to fix Devour, DM and Famine, right?
But technically, these incredibly stupid troops and ability are there for 1 reason: to give the AI a chance.
Seriously, the beast team and Famine + Death are probably the only 2 reasons that i sometimes lose a game.

Why? Board control. Humans are smart, and they will always control the board better than the AI.
But, if we got nerfed, then the AI would stand a better chance to win without RGNcheese and thus frustration, and maybe, maybe, we’d see a better meta !

How to nerf the human, but keeping the game fun? hmmm. Well, let’s brainstorm.
But i think the 2 main ways to abuse the AI could be adressed:

A- Leaving Skulls to the AI.
This is an easy way for players to overthink the AI. You leave skulls, so he’ll play them. So far only “deathmark / silence/ freeze / drain on attack” stops this. To fix this control of the AI by the player, i suggest adding a new trait: Fighter: Gain an extra turn when attacking. Soooooo, if you leave skulls to the AI, and he has a Fighter on first spot, sure, he’ll skull you… and then play again!

B- (this is the big one, prepare to rage): Unlimited extra-turns.
All players do this. This is how we win. We just play. Forever. Using Loops, better 4-match intelligent, etc…
So, if you just limit extra-turn, it becomes a seriously different ball game. I would propose to limit extra turns to 5, with a big countdown when you make a match or gain a turn. When you get your fifth (and last) turn, you get a big effect. Maybe an explosion of gems, maybe +2 to all stats, maybe +5 to all mana, i don’t know, you get something big and cool, but your turn ENDS.
Same for the AI. So the games become actual fights and not 1 player just playing with himself.

Of course, before removing the unlimited-Loop, you’d first need to remove insta-kills.

Crazy?

2

If ever you were looking for a way to drive your loyal player base away from the game, “B” would be high on the list of options.

14 Likes
3

I guess so. Then again, it also means that the AI can’t loop forever… But yes, it would drastically change the game, i understand that. It would be a desperate move.
But, isn’t the introduction of instakill abilities ( DM, Devour, Assassination) that are so counter-intuitive to the game and in fact just ruins 90% of your card base, already a sign that the devs are desperate to make the AI more dangerous?

1 Like
4

Thing is, with 5 extra turns i am still able to establish everything to win games, even though the AI might still play after it, i already won and just have to clean up.

Dm was not introduced to boost the AI, in fact DM was completely useless at its inception, and was later buffed on a widely expressed player-side demand.

Devour is older, aside from Maw it was mostly too weak on troops(due to low %) to be considered worthwhile until, again on vocal player demand Kerberos devour chance got buffed, a change many players were happy with in the beginning.
Until GW happened when it became an issue because of the too strong(announced as small) point bonus for surviving troops.

1 Like
5

Best way to nerf human players? Easy

4 Likes
6

My 2 cents:

  1. AI is… not very smart, most people on the forum agree on that. Yet there are still many that cry “AI cheats!!!”, because they lost a game. Most people want to win, not face the challenging AI.
  2. Careful what you wish for. Creating an AI that’s very good in board control (not only better that it is now, but much better than most humans) is pretty simple - I guess at least much simpler than many other things the devs do. But facing AI that can spot a cascade across the whole board to get an extra turn (or fill most troops with mana at least) and plays perfectly all the gem transformers and removers (which are much more difficult for human eye) would be plain annoying.

All in all it’s very dangerous for the devs to change the AI. Even if the Steam/mobile one starts working the way it does on consoles (what I can gather about it on the forum, I play on Steam) it’ll most likely make a huge uproar…

7

Well, maybe there was other consideration for the creation of DM and Devour, for sure.
But the bottom line is, currently, a good, skilled player will win most of his matches. The only real danger are bad streak of luck _in the context of _Deathmark, Devour, and Famine.
This is why we see these defence everywhere. You know that, statistically, the AI has better hopes for a lucky win with these abilities.

It makes a very poor playfield, because it kills most cards, like cards that buff, regenerate, build-up, etc… It’s all pointless if i can just 1-kill it.
And the way to not get 1-killed is to control the game.
It’s all a circle.
Player controls the game —> A.I. has very little chance unless lucky 1-kill -----> Players must control game ---- > any cards that is not control or 1-kill is 100% useless.

So, maybe if you reduce player “total” control over the game, you reduce the need for 1-kill troops.
And by reducing control, i don’t mean give everything to luck. I mean remove the ability to completely prevent the opponent from playing.

(BTW, me , i love Looping. I am just trying to find a way to fix the current aweful state of the high-end game. Aside from just removing Famine, Assassination and Devour.)

1 Like
8

I hear you! That’s why i don’t want the A.I. to get better at looping! On the contrary, stop the extra-turn madness to actually make a match where both adversary play.

9

I agree, with one caveat: I think the Forest Guardian Entourage team is not exceptionally strong winrate wise. When i tested it it proved to deliver merely 25ish% winrate. I was at least a litte more successful with several other (non devour, non Famine) teams, and my assumption is that it is nowhere near Famine based teams winrate wise, though i can’t test that for myself without Famine, i go by what i see on the leaderboard, and that might be very deceiving.

I think the overuse of FGE team in regular pvp is mostly due to its high value in GW and the amount of hype it gets on here and not a winrate based decision.

1 Like
10

Remember the Goblins. Cheap, went on for ever. I never need to see the AI doing that again.

1 Like
11

and i am not proposing that, in fact quite the opposite?

12

4 Likes
13

imo you dont need to nerf human to get better defense variety, in contrary buff the ai, but leave players choice what ai difficulty and what rewards they want to fight

1 trophy - pc ai (maybe even a little stupider if its posible, could be with combo breaker)
2 trophies - console ai
3 trophies - even smarter ai that can make correct decisions about spell casting and targetting as well as some gem matchign decisions (will still have no idea what gems gonna fall into the board and will not calculate what happens when they remove certain gem color - unles its a XXYXX match in one vertical line - but thats it)

ofc make gold rewards a little more contrasted in the 1t 2t and 3t option

i think it would be a great development if player had a choice what ai difficulty they want to face.

1 Like
14

What you say, @Annaerith, makes sense, but the implementation might ruin the plan. We are supposed to have choices of difficulty in some way now, and that doesn’t always work. I’m not really in favour of a smarter AI, @Venar, or nerfing the players, but when the friends tab is operational, playing real-time against players might be fun and give you all the smarter opponent you crave.

15

the problem with playing vs friends is inability to reward it well

ppl can cheat and loose on purpose, how do you prevent that?

16

I don’t see how that would matter. If they measure the friend’s team the way they do pvp teams, with weak teams being a 1- trophy reward, you would not gather reawards any faster or easier that way.

17

i disagree
low level can be easily boosted to the heaven and above by a maxed player with combination of mythic sacrifice copies and elspeth if need be
imagine the gold offered 500 teamscore vs 9k

and when they ban those troops there is always fortress gate

18

As much as I love GoW, this game would be terrible in human vs human. It would be a luck-race to see who starts looping first.

2 Likes
19

i think it would require to add extraturn amount limitation :slight_smile:

and first turn compensation in form of nerfing the first player’s first turn slightly (for example cant extra turn at all that turn, or cannot cast)

20

I am not sure i follow you, 500 team score how exactly? The lowest i can create is at 4k with 4 untraited level1 troops. The effort in no way seems worth it.