Is it just me or the AI has become smarter?

Pylgrim

Not by much, mind you, but I've been noticing little things here and there breaking well-learned patterns. For example:

-Instead of spending AP foolishly in the cheapest abilities as soon as they have enough, I've caught it saving it up for the biggest ones (like Photon Blast). Additionally, I've seen them holding it until the character in front is OBW. Not sure whether this happens because they have been programmed to loathe OBW, or simply because they now prefer to use those abilities on characters that will be one-shot by them.
-Abilities that place or alter tiles on the board such as C.Magneto's blue, and Moonstone or Yelena's purple used to be hilariously ineffective and wasteful, hitting random tiles. Lately they have been adroitly putting them in places where they cause matches and cascades.
-Speaking of cascades, I've noticed it going more often for the matches that will cause other matches (for example an horizontal match dividing 2 and 1 tiles of the same colour and the such). It used to be that the only "smart" matches it made where the obvious 4 and 5-in-a-line matches, and the rest were completely random.

Since we recently learned that the AI actually /can/ be much smarter than it is but that the devs dumbed it down purposefully, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they recently restored a bit of its smarts. Has anyone else noticed this or am I going crazy?

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

Not by much, mind you, but I've been noticing little things here and there breaking well-learned patterns. For example:

-Instead of spending AP foolishly in the cheapest abilities as soon as they have enough, I've caught it saving it up for the biggest ones (like Photon Blast). Additionally, I've seen them holding it until the character in front is OBW. Not sure whether this happens because they have been programmed to loathe OBW, or simply because they now prefer to use those abilities on characters that will be one-shot by them.
-Abilities that place or alter tiles on the board such as C.Magneto's blue, and Moonstone or Yelena's purple used to be hilariously ineffective and wasteful, hitting random tiles. Lately they have been adroitly putting them in places where they cause matches and cascades.
-Speaking of cascades, I've noticed it going more often for the matches that will cause other matches (for example an horizontal match dividing 2 and 1 tiles of the same colour and the such). It used to be that the only "smart" matches it made where the obvious 4 and 5-in-a-line matches, and the rest were completely random.

Since we recently learned that the AI actually /can/ be much smarter than it is but that the devs dumbed it down purposefully, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they recently restored a bit of its smarts. Has anyone else noticed this or am I going crazy?

Usually, my first reaction to this sort of observation is that it is confirmation bias, but if it is, I'm suffering from the same thing. I definitely feel like there have been some subtle tweaks, particularly in the saving up of AP.

GrumpySmurf1002

I've had the same instinct, that some kind of slight ninja change was made to the AI decision making at the same time as the retaliation change.

Unknown

In my case AI have always been saving their AP for biggest attack but just recently I got hit several times with Ares' green rather it saving up for Thor's green. Also, Mag and Moon are silly as ever.

mohio

Sometimes it seems like the AI knows what's in the next 2 or 3 rows above the screen, making amazing cascades appear out of nowhere.

In all seriousness though I have noticed the OBW thing. They'll go a turn or two without using it, so I take a chance and match purple, only to get whacked with whatever ability I thought they wouldn't use. Might just be that KO'ing a character has a higher priority in their calculations so if you have a different (higher HP) character up front they'll save the AP for the higher cost ability, but putting the lower HP character in front later will cause them to use it if it kills that character.

Then again the AI will still do silly things like match environment when your last guy is at 30 HP and would die to basically any match.

HairyDave

KevinMark wrote:

Also, Mag and Moon are silly as ever.

Mags, yes; Moonie has been suspiciously intelligent lately.

A couple of times she's either Grav Warped one of my tiles into a match or the target tile she was switching caused a match. It's getting spooky

pmorcs

I agree, I have noticed seeming improvements to both Gravity Warp & cascade matching. I also think it's going after my strike tiles a little more proactively.

Or it all could be my imagination.

Taganov

I did notice the smarter 3-matches to cause cascades! They still willfully ignore 5-matches, but it's definitely sharper. Also, has anyone noticed the not so subtle increase in the effectiveness of their environmental tiles? For the last 3 days at least, any count down tile I have on the board has conveniently been eaten by environmental effects. I'm more willing to accept the desert/oasis conversion, since that's a spread, but a single critical conversion from lab tiles? EVERY TIME?

suspicious.

Unknown

Yesterday when cMags made match-5s with his blue tiles TWICE, I thought skynet was out to get me. Maybe it wasn't just coincidence

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Yesterday when cMags made match-5s with his blue tiles TWICE, I thought skynet was out to get me. Maybe it wasn't just coincidence

Hey, we have nothing to do with it! Flame thread!!! Lock it down mods.

Unknown

I've noticed the AI targeting characters usually OBW.
I've noticed the AI usually getting much better cascades out of abilities that shake up the board.
I've noticed when they use the environmental tile that makes crits it usually ends up as a free move since it lands in a position where it creates a match more than 50% of the time.
I've noticed the AI going for specific colors to get to use a specific ability. With Ares it is usually green. Sometimes it is yellow.
I've noticed the AI avoiding a match that will set up a 4 or 5 tile match.

Unknown

mohio wrote:

Sometimes it seems like the AI knows what's in the next 2 or 3 rows above the screen, making amazing cascades appear out of nowhere.

The AI prefers risky moves, like doing a row/column instead of a L/T/+ match 5, to gamble for something crazy like 6 of the same color drop in a new row/column. It's just that nobody really remembers the usual case where nothing interesting dropped in that new row/column but everyone sure remembers the time 6 of the same color dropped in a row.

Unknown

I had not seen more than 5 in a row until this last march or april. The AI does make smarter decisions, but i think its based on additional code they feed the ai as new characters are released. There seems to be a greater tendency to match opponents special tiles than there was before. Months ago I recall wondering why the ai didnt make efforts to match them away. It seemed that matches were coincidental. Now they seem more deliberate, with an attempt to sometimes not do it for that "organic" feel.

Unknown

All the listed things were there all the time.

Pylgrim

pmorcs wrote:

I agree, I have noticed seeming improvements to both Gravity Warp & cascade matching. I also think it's going after my strike tiles a little more proactively.

Or it all could be my imagination.

Oh right! I've noticed that too but forgot listing it. It used to be that if you avoided carefully to match near your strike tiles, you could have them around for long, but now I notice the AI desperately digging around them and more often than not its efforts are rewarded by cascading into a match that eliminates the strike tile.

Unknown

I'm glad i'm not the only one that has been thinking this...... I've been arguing with my phone during some games lol the AI has been getting some ridiculous cascades in some of my games

Unknown

nessahcity wrote:

I'm glad i'm not the only one that has been thinking this...... I've been arguing with my phone during some games lol the AI has been getting some ridiculous cascades in some of my games

It also seems to come in streaks for me. If the AI starts getting crazy cascades, it seems to go on the entire day. It seems to occur most often within 8 hours of a PVP event ending.

Unknown

I had a game where the AI had some crazy cascades while limiting me to matching environmental tiles as the only available move for at least 5 moves in a row. Fortunately the opponent was X-Force so nothing bad actually happened.

danikalil

I've noticed it too, especially in this last PvE. The AI would have two or three moves ready, yet they would not cast them until OBW (weakest team member) was in front. Once Juggs had to red attacks ready, and he waited three turns until he could cast it against OBW.

Unknown

Definitly!!

Played against a GSBW and it placed the green tiles from her purple to create a killer critical.

I was in shock, because I never saw that coming, since AI placed them before pretty poorly. And they are definitly holding AP for a better use depending on the power.

over_clocked

danikalil wrote:

I've noticed it too, especially in this last PvE. The AI would have two or three moves ready, yet they would not cast them until OBW (weakest team member) was in front. Once Juggs had to red attacks ready, and he waited three turns until he could cast it against OBW.

Imo the AI often uses abilities against any lowest health team member, not just oBW. She's just hard to outclass health-wise