Who flipped the "F*** You" switch?

[Vangor]

Ok in the spirit of beating a dead horse to… Well… Death, when will the problem of ppl still setting 1 troop defense and ppl like me being made to fight a team who should have a score of 9.5k (and appropriate rewards) but actually has a score of 4.5k (and associated rewards)

I am still seeing this every single day. It is costing me a freakin lot of gold every week and nobody seems to care. Nobody talks about it and there has been no comment from the devs… @Saltypatra any word?

[Gouki]

Well if John communicates all that it is fine. But in this case John didn’t, he didn’t even acknowledge the clogged sink until Marsha nagged him several times with it. Then John said he took care of the sink, but it still didn’t really work the way it should. But John just stated that the sinks functionality is close to where it was and he might take further steps in the future to increase its functionality, but he never really did, and now Marsha wonders if this halfbroken sink is the sink she has to do the dishes in for the rest of this weird analogies lifetime or if it ever will work like it used to in the good days.
It appears in this antiquated fictional household nothing really ever gets done without Marsha nagging.

[Vangor]

Thank you @Gouki your response to my story genuinely made me smile

[Hoop]

Yes, i would give this more than 1 like if i could

[Vangor]

@Gouki

It appears in this antiquated fictional household nothing really ever gets done without Marsha nagging

I dont know how things work in anyone else’s house but in my house i dont get anything done until my wife @Sassy tells me several times lol

[Emos]

You summed it up in a nutshell! I’m rather aggravated about the spawn nerf and a couple other things about GoW lately but I still hang in there primarily because of the Investment reason - I’ve put in a ton of hours and a not insignificant amount of cash over the past two years into this game and it just seems awful to abandon it at this point. I’m getting to wonder if I’m a victim of the Sunk Cost Fallacy, but things aren’t dire enough yet and I always see a light at the end of the tunnel!

[jeno]

@Eika

I never understood the players that is moaning that the game is not fun anymore, go find another game for god sake if ure bored with this one. Easy fix!

maybe they already have. those who stick around clearly care so much to give feedback and hoping for the best. telling people leave like that is very unwelcoming.

[Eika]

@jeno

telling people leave like that is very unwelcoming.

Sorry that I offended you, that was not in my plans to offend anyone, but help. But sometimes its hard to not go bananas(especially in these boards) even for me, and with it one touch someones strings.

[Tard_Carnival]

@Eika

I just leave and never look back.

By all means, don’t limit yourself by reserving this technique for games you don’t care for.

[Eika]

Okay.

[trickycdr]

At 11pm or so, July 9, 2017 EST, I clearly noticed a change in the AI.

• Almost every match 3 by the AI is followed by falling from above several more match 3’s…typically 12-15 mana collected per turn, you can see after each AI turn (rarely the players) the little flashes at the top of the screen as they fall and match, fall and match…
• Falling match 4 mana drops would fall 2 or more after AI matched 3 skulls or 3 color, this could go on for 3-20+ moves
• Falling match 4 mana drops would be the exact color the AI needed, especially if they had only 1 troop left
• Exploding the board by player would result in a skull match for the AI more often
• Exploding the board by the AI would leave the board with no skull matches for the player

Please revert create gems troops on PC to pre Unity, it worked fine.
Please revert skull drops on PC to pre Unity, it worked fine.
Please revert match 4/5 drops after a match 3 on PC to pre Unity, it worked fine.

The changes recently made on PC are causing single turn cascades that change the outcome of the match.
Too many skulls are falling, I have named it SkullFall™. Too many match 4’s are falling and causing 20+ mana collected.

Today I started setting a timer, if I am not done with a battle in 2 minutes, I retreat, because by that time the AI boost is so extreme (appears to be boosted each time you kill an AI troop) that you can see 10+ mana collected for the AI and a skull hit most turns, with mana being denied the player.

Your boosts are overdone, heavy handed, and clearly unnatural. I can often get hit with skulls 8 turns in a row, and see Famine cast every 2nd or 3rd turn.

Ease it back for both the player and the AI, cascades are ruining the game, I often retreat and can still see the AI matching in the background it’s 20th+ move.

I am fine with the AI playing smarter, I am not fine with the AI getting “luckier”.

[Arelana]

@Zuboki

The changes to spawning gems makes a large number of troops not just less effective, but rather actively detrimental to your own team: Here, pay X mana to give your opponent multiple free turns. Without “fairness” adjustments, this was a tolerable risk, which could be lessened by saving the cast for an opportune board; now, even with a good board, we’re at the mercy of ambiguous mechanics that readily work against us.

This x1000.

And with the “built-in” combo breaker to prevent endless looping, I am down to ONE team that can get me steady wins at a steady speed. (I know there are other teams that can do just as well with invades but I am missing required mythics for them.)

The one solid converter team I had been using occasionally now feels worthless due to not seeing gems of the correct colors dropping. No, the AI isn’t converting them to another color - they’re dropping in such small quantity and sufficiently far apart where they’re useless. Thankfully I tested in Casual PVP so my rating didn’t take the hits.

When I use a generator like Deep Borer or Elspeth, I leave at least one 4-match for the AI almost every time.

When the AI uses a generator like Elemaugrim or Gar’Nok, they self-loop between 3 and 8 times almost every time.

I know “further possible changes are being investigated” but the fact that this may well be the new normal is, in a word, frightening.

If you’re going to break generators for human players, then break them for the AI too. Make the AI leave us a bouquet of ready-made 4-matches after using Justice or a Kraken instead of looping half a dozen times.

@Courtaud

I cannot fathom the concept of “fair to the AI”.
The AI is not playing. It’s a string of code lines. It cannot get frustrated or feel cheated.
I, as a player, can. And right now I am not having fun.
Several teams I spent time and work upon are now useless. All looping teams, in fact, and then some that have gem spamming as a collateral effect - Kraken teams, for example.

I’m in a maze of flavour-of-the-week defence teams, all the same, that get insane cascades in addiction to an insane 50% status boost.
Is this intended as being challenging, or fun? It is not. AI is not smarter, just luckier.
Maybe I’m luckier, too, in a unpredictable, inconsistent, unreasonable way. I don’t want this kind of luck.
It’s not gratifying to win thanks to insane cascades or weekly hyperboosts.
And, for the book, I don’t believe that the loop-breaking cheat is the only one that is been used to make the game “fair to the AI” without warning the player:
unprovoken skull storms, cascades intensifying when the defence is on its last leg…
TLDR: it’s not fun. Stop this.

+1000 to this too.

[Delinquent]

I think anyone that’s played Gems long-term knows that it has its up’s and down’s but at the end of the day the dev team cares and wants the game to both succeed and be good/fun. We’ve had to ride through many bad times but it always seems to come through okay on the other side. Outages, Webspinner, True Shot/Agile, Maw/Mercy, the list goes on and yet it’s still hard to beat and keeps getting better in the long run.

[Jainus]

@Fourdottwoone

There’s one very important thing that isn’t mentioned here. Since the move to Unity, mana gain per turn has gone up significantly, rendering mana drainers next to useless. It often spikes for both sides, I’ve had my whole team fill up in a single turn just from cascades, and I’ve had the AI doing it. And it doesn’t require any kind of board seeding, it just happens.

I’ve raised this before. The console versions play more like this - and I dislike it.

I’ve seen more troops die to consecutive sky drop skull hits in the last few weeks than in the previous 2.5 years put together.

I have reduced concerns about the gem-spammers: I’d like to see them evolve slightly and be a little more viable - but not if the cost is easy AI no-brain spam Justice defences everywhere.

On the RNG, cascades and drops, and sudden game swings, I refer to this thinking (which I posted before):

[Annaerith]

i agree that extra mana and (currently) more frequent skydrops are not needed

[Courtaud]

Another thing I’m noticing is failure to perform skull-hitting.
I make a 3 skull line, the skulls disappear but no hit.
Happens more or less once a day, onetime twice in a fight (GW of course. I won).
I’ve checked: my troops aren’t under effect, enemy troops haven’t skull-dodging traits and sometimes are Entangles.
I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature; my guildmates are experiencing this too.

[Tache]

So take home message is simple. Game is rigged.

[Santandrix]

Finally, you guys are seeing what we have been for months. We are just used to it by now.

[Vangor]

Guys… I am sorry but i am not seeing these things everyone is talking about and its not like im not playing enough to see it. I got all 200 of my snotstones yesterday afternoon.

Im not saying other people aren’t seeing it but im just… Not

[Drathas]

Play less…