The Hunt: July 12-16

Unknown

dr tinykittylove wrote:

For me, the AI saves up ap over a few cascades ( how is it getting so many?) then unloads them in series all in one go. Tinykitty doom for the poor schmuck targeted with Moonstone, Ares(?) and Venom all getting their bit in.

They're not noticeably acting to remove special tiles.

It's cascading so much in the AI's favour that I gave up using suboptimal teams even on the essential nodes, because I get wiped so much otherwise. I seem to remember reading about what causes "volatile boards", but not the details. What am I doing wrong that's giving me all this bad board karma?

The AI has become very aware of holding onto AP and saving them for combos, especially if there is a stunner involved like Venom (ugh... paired with the Lieutenant feeding Purple).

The AI is also actively firebombing abilities onto weak characters that accidentally (or are forced) to the front line for even a single turn. The same logic is being applied to the regenerators (LDaken/Patch). I've seen Venom stun LDaken/Patch and then go to town trying to down them before they break out of stun and being regenerating. This is going to be very much a big problem on the 2nd pass through all of the subs, especially on nodes with Venom + Ares, where those two probably can't take an Onslaught + Sunder + whatever else in a single round.


And as I type this, Moonstone just Gravity Warped one of my Spidey Defense tiles to a position where she match could match it away with two other Spidey defense tiles in a single match-3. /sigh

Unknown

started the first sub. did about 3/4 clear. sitting 1/1 sub/main.

im already weary of this event. i dont think im even going to start florida.

marc

Unknown

Hrmm... interesting notable.

The AI still doesn't seem to know what to do with Gravity Warp and special tiles, if the color of the special tile is grabbed is not a primary color of any of the remaining members of the opponent roster.

In the previous post, Moonstone grabbed a Purple Spidey defense tile and knew what to do with it as Purple is a primary color for her.

On a second attempt through the same node, I used Black Panther and created some Blue Defense Grid tiles. Moonstone grabbed the tile and dropped it in a random position and then ignored it. Interestingly enough, the tile could have been simply matched away at that point, but the AI ignored it. I wiped the majority of the enemy party with a Rage of Panther, but Moonstone still stood. She Gravity Warped the tile again in a useless manner.

Thus, the AI appears to still be hamstrung with limiting itself to colors it can actively use, even in a defensive role.

Unknown

Ghast wrote:

Pulled a red Matchstick. He's 2* but still! at this point in the game it still feels nice to pull a cover that I "need."

Agreed.

Reached my 10k token and pulled.... Blue LDaken.

Didn't know whether to be happy over the Daken or mad that I didn't pull a Matchstick.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

pasa_ wrote:

The last run of Hunt was enough for me to avoid the next dozen instances unless they change something substantially.

The amount of repeats was overt the top one third into the event and it even issued a 4th set of subs ovet the estimated 3 repeats. This one at least has just 2 sets but it is still way too much.

Nope.

As far as I can tell, nothing appears to have changed at all from the previous run, unless something changed in the Savage Land sub.

The node difficulty should get to be fairly astronomical soon (as usual for this event), as nodes are already in the Yellow difficulty range and increasing relatively quickly.

The scaling has been resetting in new subs as opposed to just keep going up in recent events, though of course we can't know if this is the case until Alaska is run again.

Savage Land has always had extremely high base values. Even in the days of level 395 scaling, you can see very clearly that everything Savage Land is much higher than any other sub.

HairyDave

I just wiped my team (IM40, Candle and Spidey) on the last essential node in Alaska because there's very little I could do NEVER GETTING A TURN

Rags just kept cascading purple every time he used Godlike Power. Venom stuns the whole team, makes another green and/or red match and the whole thing starts all over again. I pulled out CMags and Punisher to get through it.

The one slight upside is I pulled a black Candle cover so at least he's got all his abilities now.

Unknown

Nothing like watching Moonstone hijack a single Recharge countdown tile. You want to be stunned for 2 turns for 3 Red & Blue AP? Deal.

-- The AI has learned how to check to see if it has gained enough AP to cast an ability on the same character after casting another ability by that character on the same turn. (Did Thor gain enough Green AP from casting Thunder Strike to immediate cast Call the Storm on the same turn?)

This one's been the case since I started playing again a few months ago. But yeah, I think the AI as been improved. I notice the AI waiting for a specific target more often. It'll hold off on blasting Hulk for a few turns, I'll assume it's saving for a costlier move, then I have Widow switch in out comes the Thunderclap.

Unknown

It's hard to tell the difference between an AI tweak or just bad luck but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if they made the AI less likely to use up AP on cheap moves, since the game by design is supposed to reward you for saving up for expensive moves, and when you're in PvE with all the unfair advantages the AI already gets, you definitely should save up for the more powerful ability in general.

This event has been one of the hardest PvE events. While Daken is no longer godlike he's still one of the top high PvE characters when at levels players cannot obtain, and he also prevents you from using Daken which hurts you a lot. Ares likewise is top tier when given unobtainable levels. The powered up heroes in this event are also pretty weak.

over_clocked

Not to mention that BP cannot kill scaled Ares/Venom/etc in one go, so as I said: heavily geared towards 2* rosters where oBW and Thor are actually top characters.

HairyDave

I'm just going to throw this out there - overscaled Bullseye is the most OP.

Yes Daken, Ares, Juggs and even Moonstone can do a huge amount of damage, but one or two purple matches and Bullseye shuts you down.

Or maybe I'm just annoyed I had a 25 minute long suck-fest of a fight (The Data Core) between Rags and Bullseye and what was left of my IM40 and Spiderman after BP got put down hard. Rags was the only one doing any reasonable damage thanks to his miracle cascades and all the protect tiles.

over_clocked

HairyDave wrote:

I'm just going to throw this out there - overscaled Bullseye is the most OP.

Yes Daken, Ares, Juggs and even Moonstone can do a huge amount of damage, but one or two purple matches and Bullseye shuts you down.

Or maybe I'm just annoyed I had a 25 minute long suck-fest of a fight (The Data Core) between Rags and Bullseye and what was left of my IM40 and Spiderman after BP got put down hard. Rags was the only one doing any reasonable damage thanks to his miracle cascades and all the protect tiles.

You should burst down Bullseye quickly (IM, Spidey and BP obviously cannot, while Psylocke, Punisher, Human Torch, A.Wolverine + oBW can) if you don't want to bring a Loki to deal with spawning protect tiles. You gotta have a cheap strike/attack tile user against Bullseye teams.
I tried using Falcon against the double trouble Daken/Bullseye, he can get rid of a ton of tiles, but he's getting swarmed in them anyway. Loki and/or quick burst damage are still your best friends.

HairyDave

Roster diversity at work. All my good strike tile options were dead or super beat up.

Bullseye just seems to screw me over fairly frequently

over_clocked

I'll take Bullseye/Venom/Moonstone any day over Ares/Daken/Juggs. Bullseye/Daken** aren't very tough by themselves either since they cannot deal damage with abilities outside of Murderous Aim which never happens.

Was your Astonishing dead as well? I am using him half of the time on easier nodes with oBW.

HairyDave

Yup.

He met the business end of a Onslaught/Sunder combo in "Ares". It was him or CMags and I figured he'd be back sooner.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

-- The AI has learned how to check to see if it has gained enough AP to cast an ability on the same character after casting another ability by that character on the same turn. (Did Thor gain enough Green AP from casting Thunder Strike to immediate cast Call the Storm on the same turn?)

That happened from the very very start of the game.

Phantron pointed out the most like algo the AI uses moths ago that is going trough abilities and asking question:
- enough AP? -- pass if no
- most expensive ability? -- shoot if yes
- roll random -- shoot if won

Lyrian wrote:

-- The AI has learned how to recognize special tiles, especially defense tiles, and will actively work to remove them if it is convenient or beneficial for the AI to do so (Ex: Can I remove a special tile while matching a primary color for my team?)

-- The AI has learned how to chain match 4 and 5s together to remove special tiles in hard to reach places, such as corners. Very annoying.

-- The AI has improved with its ability to starve the board for the player, or force the player to set up matches that are beneficial to the AI on subsequent turns.

TL;DR: The AI appears to be have tweaked to not necessarily play smarter (although this is a noticeable effect of these changes), but rather to cause as much collateral damage to the player as possible.

All those happened alright doing the random just the random selection of closeable tiles and the semi-random matches. It was really amazing from the beginning that some characters like mHawkie were completely jinxed to get the counter killed even if placed in seemingly safe location. it still fell pray to some newly forming match-4 collateral.

I doubt there was any tweaking lately -- except maybe they reordered some ability checks.

But due to character scaleup the incoming damage is up and with no healing the impact of that is much greater that makes you way more aware of events you were not interested formerly unless downed a character.

I didn't see mnmags/gsbw purple in effect lately but many plays on CMags show random tile placement -- that still hurts a lot especially if he does it many times having a stock of blue for any reason.

over_clocked

Is it just me, or does the 70k prog reward seem achievable this time around? I barely played and already have 24,8k, while Moon Roach who's leading my main has 31k.

dr tinykittylove

djsquillz wrote:

started the first sub. did about 3/4 clear. sitting 1/1 sub/main.

im already weary of this event. i dont think im even going to start florida.

marc

The only thing I like about this event is that handsome Devil Dinosaur. Even so, when I played him earlier, the board was filled with bluem, purple, black red and yellow tiles and never more than 1 green tile in each quarter, pining away for each other. Tinykitty that.

GrumpySmurf1002

Lyrian wrote:

-- The AI has learned how to check to see if it has gained enough AP to cast an ability on the same character after casting another ability by that character on the same turn. (Did Thor gain enough Green AP from casting Thunder Strike to immediate cast Call the Storm on the same turn?)

It's been doing the Thunder Strike/Call the Storm combo for a long while. Rags will hit both of his on the same turn too.

Unknown

I'm not going to start the new sub until this evening - hope the scaling doesn't go nuts before then. If they start a new sub at midnight I usually don't get to it until I get off of work 18 hours later; makes a 24 hour sub kind of weird to me.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Is it just me, or does the 70k prog reward seem achievable this time around? I barely played and already have 24,8k, while Moon Roach who's leading my main has 31k.

It does. It's also a 2* HT that most people will never use except where required for certain nodes so, y'know, swings and roundabouts.