Actually while im not disagreeing w your very valid point… I didn’t mean I just saw this at that time. I also noticed when I didn’t need the sigils he stays around longer. Or if he has no sigils. But like I said its not a complaint or anything
Ive noticed the AI passes on doomskulls more often than not. Picking the regular skull first or a regular gem. Mostly on PvP I believe but ive def seen it other places
The more things change… I’ve written code I know is random for an AI, only to have my brain seize up and go, “Hey! It cheated!” Humans are awful at interpreting randomness, film at 11. This topic will outlive me, I’m sure.
Nice to see you again, @efh313!
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Not here to talk about the AI, been there done that, here to be excited about the fact that @efh313 is back!
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I’ve been playing over 3 years now, and PvP is now in the absolute worst state that it ever has been in. Instead of just one annoying meta team you see over and over, now there are several that are insufferable. I get to tier one every week, and that’s about all I can stand now.
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I don’t think I am. One thing players learn pretty early is to take cascades into account when matching gems, to snag more than one match with a single move. It doesn’t have to stop there, the next level would be to make a move that prevents your opponent to snag more than one match with a single move. And the level beyond that to make a match that allows you to snag more than one match with a single move on your next turn if your opponent doesn’t intervene correctly. From player perspective that’s like gems magically aligning, because next to nobody thinks that far ahead.
Sure, gems dropping in introduce randomness, just like the move your opponent is going to make. Most moves only affect a small part of the board though, and you don’t need to be 100% correct every time. Any prediction correct more often than not is an advantage, and that adds up throughout multiple turns to significantly boost win rates. It’s like a loaded die, it doesn’t always have to roll a 6, just somewhat more often than the other numbers.
If we think the CPU opponent knows more about what will drop than humans, I agree it will have a significant advantage. I do not agree, because if I discard my confirmation bias it’s not hitting the jackpot with misplays more frequently than me. Computers are better at fast math than humans, but they aren’t better than prophecy. We don’t know enough about skyfall to really make it worth spending minute analyzing outcomes: you either have an attractive-looking almost-match in the top rows or you don’t and the 90% case is you don’t.
You may straight up disagree with that, and then we’ll talk in circles. But no smart gambler takes a 17% bet over a 100% bet. This thread is about the CPU taking that bet very consistently.
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Whilst there are numerous reasons why things could happen, we will never get away from the feeling that something seems to trigger at some point in the game.
We do remember the best and worst scenarios, the almost impossible situations. I remember beating a Guardian Crown with 750/750 HP with M Crusher and Khorvash (it took 20+ minutes). I kept getting barrier and stun for long enough to chip away at it. I remember those so many occasions when you couldn’t make it up with what happened in a loss. Entangle wearing off, death mark killing the entire team. You laugh and move on, it was a fluke, always another go.
A clear example of why we will think something isn’t quite right is one I just had. Faction 500 HOG, I’m with a full team, last troop left which has 449 attack. It can clearly one shot anything. I have Ethereal Sentry with 599 attack and enough with Gargoyle to kill the last AI Arcane Golem. It is silenced and stunned…I want a skull match now, no skull traps or a stun → GG combo. I’m now thinking I have it sewn up to move on to the next room with all intact. I had a go before when the AI exploded 2 yellow gems and had a double skull hit to destroy the strategy. This time, I am in complete control.
There is 1, 1 skull on the board at what H4?. I had just removed 2 stragglers 2 turns previously with a cast of Silent Sentinel. I match 3 brown to half fill my Gargoyle. The AI takes a vertical 3 gem match in the upper top right of the board. It pulls down from the Sky 3 skulls in a line vertically to land at the side of the one skull to instantly kill my top troop. Here is the board one move after the AI’s move…one more skull fell behind at F3 when I took my move, now 2 on the board. So the board I show is actually better than the one the AI had…
It is at this point when the AI it seems starts to do incredible things and that’s why players may think there is something not 100% right with it.
Cpu does not know what will drop. Sirrian said so, and there is no way for that to be bugged so the cpu would know.
A sky drop of three skulls is possible. Which certain people will preach night and day about. The odds are 1 in 216 that it will happen though. Statistically speaking, you should only see a skydropping skull hit once in 10+ PVP matches (Assuming 6-8 turns per match), and maybe once every 1-3 delves at later levels (depending on how high the delve is and how long the matches take).
Yet it seems that when the AI decides to screw you over, it can get half a dozen of them in the span of just as many turns…
PvP, especially three-star matches at Tier 1, certainly seem to fail to follow expectations regarding probability of occurrence. This has been documented by many people many times, and a year ago or I spent some time showing that Kraken’s actual devour chance was closer to 70%. Is that simply bad luck? Yes, it’s theoretically possible…with a probability of less than one in a trillion.
I would have thought that delves, towers, and raids would have shown that there is definitely a finger on the scale at higher levels. Last week it was the Monkey Disciple…at level 100+, you think the dodge chance was actually 20%? That goes along with the board configuration, gem drops, mana surges, percentage chances, and a bunch of other things that can be manipulated (the “luck” factor) WITHOUT changing the behavior of the AI.
It is what it is and I don’t expect it to change.