I don’t know if I see it more because I’m higher level, but the cascades and extra turns are so broken it’s not even funny anymore. How can a match 3 in the top right corner turn into a 20 move cascade for the AI? Instead of getting better it seems to be getting worse and worse.
Just wondering if another color on the board would help fix this because nothing seems to be changing.
I have a feeling the only thing a 7th gem would do is make it harder to play if you’re not using a looping team.
The only games I’ve played that are NOT plagued with cascades have intentional modifications to the RNG algorithm to prevent things from getting out of hand. For example, one generates its skyfall in intentional checkerboard patterns designed to not interact with each other.
This does mean that getting a cascade above 3 or 4 in that game is a rare event, especially one with a 4-match or better in it. They did it because it’s a puzzle-based game, therefore getting a ton of cascades would make every level trivial. I don’t think GoW is THAT hurt by cascades. I feel like it’s a player problem where the amount of “skill” involved is vastly overestimated.
I definitely feel like skill doesn’t matter much anymore. No matter how I play or what team I use, I get a 90-95% win rate. I’ve tried time and time again to break it and I can in small spurts but when I lose, the AI just goes bananas and forces me to lose the match.
I’d argue in a good game, 100% win rate shouldn’t be attainable.
Go play Puzzle Quest and 4 or 5 variants for 30-40 hours a piece. This style of game always involves a little bit of luck. There’s not a way to remove it without also taking away everything that’s at least a little fun.
I’d prefer they add troop-spawned special gems.
Exemple:
Mines. A Mine-gem trigger if you explode them or if you make a color match with them. If you trigger them, X damage is done to all your troop, where X increases every turn.
Glue. If you match a glued gem, your turn ends.
Shield: If you match a Shield-gem, all your troop gain armor.
So, a spell could be: Deal 15 damage to an enemy troop, boosted by armor. Add 5 shield to the field.
( then 5 curent gems/skull become shield instead of balls, with same color to be matched)
Attainig a 100% winrate is not his point though.
What i think Daveis23 was aiming at is that you have this 90+ % winrate when playing your topteam with highest awareness without being able to avoid those 5-10% losses even with the most careful play, while on the other hand when you are using trash no synergy teams and play half afk, you are still at a vastly positive winrate as long as you have some explodes/create + deal mindless aoe/speread damagespam in your team.
It has been this way ever since Unity and if you want to use this word, “player agenda” has clearly taken a back seat.
Another color on the board would make natural cascades and extra turns rarer. It would also make any artificial manipulations of the gem board (such as those mathematically all-but-impossible skyfall cascades) much more apparent.
From this thread five months ago (Remove Increased Luck Factor for the AI - #27 by akots), I’m still not completely convinced that luck is a neutral event in the game, despite multiple dev responses on the matter (it is possible that the statements were true at the time of posting but are not anymore). From the thread, “Luck” is quantitatively measured throughout a match and assessed to determine whether the luck breaker kicks in. Sirrian’s post mentions the scoring criteria in how lucky events are scored on both sides.
Personal thoughts on the matter (all anecdotal):
If both sides are scored on luck, then lengthier matches would favor the AI’s luck as the 3x point cap potential points spread increases over time as luck points accumulate for the player. (Ex: Turn 3: Player Luck = 10, 3x cap = 30, a 20 point spread. At Turn 15, Player Luck = 40, 3x cap = 120, a 80 point spread). ← This could partially explain why the AI seems to become luckier when there are only 1 or 2 units left, late in a match.
I’m highly suspicious that other background factors are increasingly tilted towards the AI’s favor the longer a player’s current win streak actually is, until the player loses and the tilt is reset back to natural rates (and the process starts anew until the next loss and so on). The most apparent anecdotal observation of this is during matches where it feels like there is a permanent bonestorm (could very well be a storm of any color that favors one side over the other) going on the background and there are an unnaturally high natural skull appearance rates. Coupled with the Luck Factor, this is a deadly combination. Also, ever notice after losing from one of the AI’s crazy combo streaks, that the subsequent match seems like an unusually easy win?
Food for thought.
It is unlikely to help IMHO. The main issue with 8 colors will be lack of regular 3-matches and frequent re-drawing of the board. For 64-tile board, 7 is the “ideal” reasonable number while 6 would result in endless cascades.
The mathematical theory of these things is somewhat related to Renju, a traditional Japanese board game. Although Renju (and related Gomoku) is more PSPACE-complete, and match-3 puzzles are more non-deterministic. See, for example, this wiki for some basic concepts.
To put it short, if you want random spawning, there will be cascades. These two are linked together, there is no alternative. Some tweaking and reducing the number of low probability random streaks might help. Otherwise, it is quite natural for this type of systems.
Totally agree with your points. Seems exactly how it is for me. In fact… if you purposely lose a few pvp matches or wait until the hard game comes up then play guild wars, it’s much easier…
Jep, also something I think
These points are very agreeable. However, this doesn’t stop the AI from having a 10 move cascade mostly filled with skulls/doomskulls.