New Changes to PVP AI & Boards
Comments
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Lerysh wrote:Ok, no, it can't. The "AI" isn't smart. It chooses everything it does by Random Number Generator, except in hard coded cases like match 4's and TU tile preference. I guarantee the selection of TU used by the enemy has nothing to do with your team or your chosen TUs.
As for "Board Hostility", you could have taken that weak match and gotten that cascade. You didn't because it was weak. The AI did because the RNG told it to. Board cascades to oblivion. These things happen. They happened before yesterday, they will continue to happen tomorrow.
Computers cannot achieve 100% random generation unless all cached data is cleared before every attempted generation. You are correct that AI is not smart, however like all computers it is adaptable.
I will always believe that, just like online poker, mpq servers should be frequently reset with all memory caches cleared in order to prevent the system from attempting to randomly build the "Best Hands" with every tile board change, partial or complete.
Obliviously system resets will not change the fact that AI has been reprogrammed to be more competitive, but this is within d3's control and we can only hope they do not "improve" the system until the AI is unbeatable(because this would be easily achievable). If the Devs feel that this improved AI system is working as intended, I recommend that all characters get a 100% increase in hit points across the board so that we can enjoy longer matches that will allow us to take full advantage of the characters abilities, and give us the chance to actually puzzle our way out of a match, instead of having to relinquish to defeat.
quad0 -
I've had games prior to R60 where the game ended with only one Phermone Rage triggered in the entire game (so only 1 green match was made in the whole game). It sure wasn't normal but I didn't think it was some kind of secret plot to punish green users since both teams needed green.0
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quadiak wrote:Lerysh wrote:Ok, no, it can't. The "AI" isn't smart. It chooses everything it does by Random Number Generator, except in hard coded cases like match 4's and TU tile preference. I guarantee the selection of TU used by the enemy has nothing to do with your team or your chosen TUs.
As for "Board Hostility", you could have taken that weak match and gotten that cascade. You didn't because it was weak. The AI did because the RNG told it to. Board cascades to oblivion. These things happen. They happened before yesterday, they will continue to happen tomorrow.
Computers cannot achieve 100% random generation unless all cached data is cleared before every attempted generation. You are correct that AI is not smart, however like all computers it is adaptable.
I will always believe that, just like online poker, mpq servers should be frequently reset with all memory caches cleared in order to prevent the system from attempting to randomly build the "Best Hands" with every tile board change, partial or complete.
Obliviously system resets will not change the fact that AI has been reprogrammed to be more competitive, but this is within d3's control and we can only hope they do not "improve" the system until the AI is unbeatable(because this would be easily achievable). If the Devs feel that this improved AI system is working as intended, I recommend that all characters get a 100% increase in hit points across the board so that we can enjoy longer matches that will allow us to take full advantage of the characters abilities, and give us the chance to actually puzzle our way out of a match, instead of having to relinquish to defeat.
quad
It's not enough to increase everyone's HP by 100% because the AI is definitely better than the human the longer the game goes on if only because they never get tired.
What would make sense is if they can make the AI roughly 50/50 on equal strength team (currently limited to mirror matches but mirror matches are quite common in PvP already) then they should put a change that reduces the damage human takes in PvP games so that you play more than 2 games before you use up all your health packs, as it'd only take a 25% chance 'bad luck' to be wiped out after 2 games if the odds are indeed 50/50. For PvE that shouldn't be needed because PvE is inherently unfair in both directions and it's offset by that the matches that are unfair in the AI's favor gives you significantly more PvE points, while in PvP you're often stuck with no choices due to MMR.0 -
Variance is a bigger tiny kitty than most think. Great poker players can go of runs of thousands of hands of running bad. Even if each tile match is considered a hand, that could still be hundreds of MPQ matches that seem statistically unlikely. But people are going to come on the forums and complain about the bottom .5% of the bell curve, not the top 99.5%.
Plus, as soon as someone asks an alliance mate or opens this thread, confirmation bias is in play. Add observation bias on top of that, and you got the makings of a conspiracy.
Yesterday, I had a shield hop where everything that could go wrong did. Two matches where the AI played World Rupture and Sacrifice perfectly, and had trickery ready when I tried the same. Then the next shield hop, 3 matches that went exactly as expected for me.0 -
scottee wrote:Variance is a bigger tiny kitty than most think. Great poker players can go of runs of thousands of hands of running bad. Even if each tile match is considered a hand, that could still be hundreds of MPQ matches that seem statistically unlikely. But people are going to come on the forums and complain about the bottom .5% of the bell curve, not the top 99.5%.
Plus, as soon as someone asks an alliance mate or opens this thread, confirmation bias is in play. Add observation bias on top of that, and you got the makings of a conspiracy.
Yesterday, I had a shield hop where everything that could go wrong did. Two matches where the AI played World Rupture and Sacrifice perfectly, and had trickery ready when I tried the same. Then the next shield hop, 3 matches that went exactly as expected for me.
Just because variance exists doesn't mean the AI can't be improved. Both can be happening though I'm not sure how anyone's supposed to prove that the AI is suddenly better without having thousands of games recorded prior to R60 and thousands of games recorded after R60. Board hostility, in particular, makes very little sense in PvP where most of the top teams are mirror matches of each other. Even if they're not the identical team, they usually need the same key colors (usually green/yellow).0 -
I didn't pay enough attention to the way the AI play but after reading this thread, I definitely will.
However, recently I feel that I received signifcantly more def wins than usual. It could be a logical consequence (and a positive effect) of a 'smarter' AI?0 -
Phantron wrote:scottee wrote:Variance is a bigger tiny kitty than most think. Great poker players can go of runs of thousands of hands of running bad. Even if each tile match is considered a hand, that could still be hundreds of MPQ matches that seem statistically unlikely. But people are going to come on the forums and complain about the bottom .5% of the bell curve, not the top 99.5%.
Plus, as soon as someone asks an alliance mate or opens this thread, confirmation bias is in play. Add observation bias on top of that, and you got the makings of a conspiracy.
Yesterday, I had a shield hop where everything that could go wrong did. Two matches where the AI played World Rupture and Sacrifice perfectly, and had trickery ready when I tried the same. Then the next shield hop, 3 matches that went exactly as expected for me.
Just because variance exists doesn't mean the AI can't be improved. Both can be happening though I'm not sure how anyone's supposed to prove that the AI is suddenly better without having thousands of games recorded prior to R60 and thousands of games recorded after R60. Board hostility, in particular, makes very little sense in PvP where most of the top teams are mirror matches of each other. Even if they're not the identical team, they usually need the same key colors (usually green/yellow).
Oh, I agree. Of course the AI can be improved. I'm just saying it's less likely that the Devs decided to do that this week than it is that there's just a lot of confirmation/observation bias.
The board hostility people are mentioning, IF the devs programmed it, would require dropping less of a certain color, which means altering the RNG. And they'd have to do it against certain user characters. Less yellow/green for Thor/Sentry, less black for BP. This seems like a pretty ridiculous theory if this what people think the devs did.
What about color denying? The AI has done this for a long time, so it's nothing new. Try taking a color that the AI doesn't even have a character in, and watch them take that same color just to deny you. If you haven't noticed this before, I don't know what to tell you. Learn how the AI plays.
And the AI has always been better at causing cascades than most players, because most players don't think about 3 or 4 level chains. Or the percentage chance that the unseen tiles from the ceiling will cause a cascade or offer a possible match of a certain color to the AI. Most people say, "Me Sentry, me want green/yellow". A similar problem, I noticed for myself during the Loki event, I was never gathering purple, so that left lots of purple for the AI to grab, which led to lots of AI swaps, which led to AI cascades. I started using this tactic later in the event and it helped a lot.
Is it possible the devs made tweaks? Sure. But barring lots of statistical evidence that is now impossible to go back and get unless someone happened to already be collecting it, the only way to confirm would be for a dev to comment in the affirmative. Everything else is biased speculation.0 -
DrNitroman wrote:I didn't pay enough attention to the way the AI play but after reading this thread, I definitely will.
However, recently I feel that I received signifcantly more def wins than usual. It could be a logical consequence (and a positive effect) of a 'smarter' AI?
If the AI is indeed playing better than of course you should get more defensive win since they play all your defensive games. But it could be related to the fact that Magneto can no longer win almost every game with 5 blue too.
It'd be interesting if the game showed you the boosts your opponent used in your games since boosts still easily trump AI. Even the weak ones like the 2 color boosts is a huge advantage.0 -
scottee wrote:
Oh, I agree. Of course the AI can be improved. I'm just saying it's less likely that the Devs decided to do that this week than it is that there's just a lot of confirmation/observation bias.
The board hostility people are mentioning, IF the devs programmed it, would require dropping less of a certain color, which means altering the RNG. And they'd have to do it against certain user characters. Less yellow/green for Thor/Sentry, less black for BP. This seems like a pretty ridiculous theory if this what people think the devs did.
What about color denying? The AI has done this for a long time, so it's nothing new. Try taking a color that the AI doesn't even have a character in, and watch them take that same color just to deny you. If you haven't noticed this before, I don't know what to tell you. Learn how the AI plays.
And the AI has always been better at causing cascades than most players, because most players don't think about 3 or 4 level chains. Or the percentage chance that the unseen tiles from the ceiling will cause a cascade or offer a possible match of a certain color to the AI. Most people say, "Me Sentry, me want green/yellow". A similar problem, I noticed for myself during the Loki event, I was never gathering purple, so that left lots of purple for the AI to grab, which led to lots of AI swaps, which led to AI cascades. I started using this tactic later in the event and it helped a lot.
Is it possible the devs made tweaks? Sure. But barring lots of statistical evidence that is now impossible to go back and get unless someone happened to already be collecting it, the only way to confirm would be for a dev to comment in the affirmative. Everything else is biased speculation.
Yeah, it definitely seemed like the AI always had way more purple than I did, even on complete mirror matches, but that was probably just me saying, "X Force needs black and green!" and not paying attention to the purple tiles.
When you make a beeline for a color, it's likely the moves you make are increasing worse. After all, if you need green you'd start by taking the green match that looks the most promising for chains. That means your one color move is likely to be below average in terms of quality toward the end, while the AI is fairly insensitive to hitting certain color thresholds. Now, it used to be hitting certain threshold, most notably 5 blue, wins you the game so you don't care if that wasn't exactly the best move. Of course Magneto is gone now, and even Sentry is affected because Daken's nerf makes it hard to win with a strict green-based WR from Phermone Rage. Without boosts, getting the yellow and green takes nontrivial time and does give AI to respond, and they certainly have more time to respond compared to pre R60 where Phermone Rage + World Rupture is often enough to win by itself. I don't think the AI focuses on prioritizing chains, because there are times where they definitely miss them, but it is possible they miss them less frequently than before but this is way too difficult to prove.
I think what happens a lot is that most people end up digging their own graves without even thinking about it. You focus on one color and you try to take the best moves without realizing you're setting up the last few matches of that color to be terrible moves. Yet the AI, who has no special preferences on colors beyond what's represented on their ability list, is unlikely to hit those traps beyond random chance, and then the player usually end up hitting their own traps and get hit by a monster cascade in return.0 -
Phantron wrote:...After all, if you need green you'd start by taking the green match that looks the most promising for chains...
...You focus on one color and you try to take the best moves without realizing you're setting up the last few matches of that color to be terrible moves...
I've suspected most people play this way. People don't put enough stock in the puzzle aspect of the game, which is why I think I've done better than most F2Pers. People see it is as a battle game. Collect mana, unleash power. People think too much about offense when matching.
When I make a match, I don't only look for matches that have the most potential for chains. I visualize what the board will look like after my match with the tiles I know for sure will be there, and choose a match that doesn't leave the AI a 4/5 match, and doesn't leave them good options for the colors they need or for chains. Most people are trying to race the AI in color gathering. But taking a
match doesn't deny the AI if there's still another match on the board. Sometimes there's a move, even of a different color, that changes the board so that there's NO matches left for the AI. (and you can even lower the prospect of the ceiling dropped tiles giving the AI that match by looking at what's adjacent to the empty slots)
People say defense doesn't matter within a match. I agree most of the defensive powers aren't that strong. But you can't match only thinking about offense and then complain when the AI wallops back on you.
EDITTED to play with emoticons.0 -
and Onyxia deep breaths more... at least what you would heard in Blizzard forums
As a 2* player, I haven't noticed anything different. AI always go for match-4 over match-5 unless it's impossible to make 4 without doing 5. It prioritizes
tiles. Claim that they always use best TU to situation is pure ****, you can see what TU is loaded for them when you start match. After that they go for colours they are strong with. I play Ares/OBW and against Daken, he still often takes 
with other options available. After lucky cascade, they don't seem to know how to order stuff and will place countdowns before board shake ability. They will make countdown tile and then match it. MNM 
often fails to make any matches during cast or any 4s in move after. Loki random shakeup being rigged would be actually ridiculous, writing special lines of code just for one borderline unused move? And the only case of increased difficulty I found is that second I'm passed/near 600 in PvP I'm getting offered fights with maxed X-Force/Fury which I assume game telling me to get lost before I luck on fully covered 3* team from 2* pulls to even dream of shieldhopping.
As for people being able to be targetted for longer and such, I have no idea, I'm not on high enough level to game system.0 -
I have noticed, but not within the update, but before it, by about three weeks or so, that the AI is budgeting AP more effectively. They also seems to be choosing matches a little smarter (choosing colors they "need" over a random color).
The rest seems to be confirmation bias.
As for the guy talking about system resets and whatnot...MPQ is not Skynet. Random Number Generators don't "store information". They randomly generate numbers, based on no prior number sets. In some case, there may be perimeters, such as 'integers within 6 and 23', but they are still chosen within that bracket with no bias. This is why you do get the instances of four of the same colors falling into the chasm a 5-Match created - if there was some hidden perimeter that prevented this...it would be prevented.0 -
1) Have you noticed any recent increase in difficulty of the AI and or Boards?
Yes but only in AI
2) What level roster do you have? New Player ( 1-2*'s); Transitioning Player (2-3*'s), or Veteran Player (multiple maxed 3*'s)
Got a few maxed 3*
3) Have you noticed if the AI and board lay out gets harder as your PVP score goes up, is difficulty throughout the entire PVP, or the level of difficulty is sporadic throughout the PVP?
no
4) Do you have any other examples of increased difficulties?
Just Ai seems to play better
5) Any screen shots of AI using abilities without the required AP? no
6) Any other useful comments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
and in general http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias0 -
How much of an uproar would we have on the forums if the AI was "taught" to recognize the T shape match 5 instead of matching 4 on a line?
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scottee wrote:Phantron wrote:...After all, if you need green you'd start by taking the green match that looks the most promising for chains...
...You focus on one color and you try to take the best moves without realizing you're setting up the last few matches of that color to be terrible moves...
I've suspected most people play this way. People don't put enough stock in the puzzle aspect of the game, which is why I think I've done better than most F2Pers. People see it is as a battle game. Collect mana, unleash power. People think too much about offense when matching.
When I make a match, I don't only look for matches that have the most potential for chains. I visualize what the board will look like after my match with the tiles I know for sure will be there, and choose a match that doesn't leave the AI a 4/5 match, and doesn't leave them good options for the colors they need or for chains. Most people are trying to race the AI in color gathering. But taking a match doesn't deny the AI if there's still another match on the board. Sometimes there's a move, even of a different color, that changes the board so that there's NO matches left for the AI. (and you can even lower the prospect of the ceiling dropped tiles giving the AI that match by looking at what's adjacent to the empty slots)
People say defense doesn't matter within a match. I agree most of the defensive powers aren't that strong. But you can't match only thinking about offense and then complain when the AI wallops back on you.
EDITTED to play with emoticons.
Well a human tends to think of immediate payoff. If you got 4 green, one more match gets your World Rupture, so that sounds like a great deal. The AI, of course, never thinks about the game like this. You can see them flat out ignore the 'last match' they need for a move if they think there's a better move that doesn't touch the color. They don't even care if the last match they need is for a power like Prehistoric Bite, which is way unfair and should definitely always be prioritized. There's advantage to both methods but after R60 trying to go for the big picture is a stronger strategy with the removal of Magnetic Field as a game winner, and World Rupture is harder to win on green alone. Even if you got a move like Call the Storm, being able to race to that immediately doesn't mean much if your opponent is Hulk/X Force/Thor who can easily withstand that, and if racing to Call the Storm puts you significantly behind in the total AP gained you'd still have a high chance of losing even if you got off a Call the Storm first.0 -
I think there's definitely some truth to improved AI as far as color prioritzing, but I suspected that before R60. Overall difficulty doesn't seem to be different; in other words I'm not randomly wiping out with any more frequency. I think I've taken two losses all Juggernaut heroic, clearing every node with every pass. Both were caused by Juggernaut inspired cascades (one was Twin Pistols + Crash), not from gem matches that triggered hell on earth, so I didn't think much of it.
Given the amount of well-respected players chiming in, I'll certainly pay a little more attention to detail, since it's not like every subtle change to MMR/sharding/rubberband has been announced before.0 -
If the devs made any significant change to AI logic, I think they'd mention it in release notes, even if they chose to be vague about the specifics. Not everything has to be a horrible conspiracy to sell health packs, no matter what forumgoers think.0
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DayvBang wrote:If the devs made any significant change to AI logic, I think they'd mention it in release notes, even if they chose to be vague about the specifics. Not everything has to be a horrible conspiracy to sell health packs, no matter what forumgoers think.
New character release on Jugg Heroic where you have a limited roster and nearly every fight involves a Juggernaut seems like a conspiracy to sell health packs. I'm surprised there aren't more nodes with Jugg and Analysts.
Also the addition of the blue ability to 2* Daken and a lower threshold for heat on the 2* compared to the 3* version seems to be more targeted at PvE nodes with hyper scaling as opposed to benefiting new players trying to transition into 3*.0 -
DayvBang wrote:If the devs made any significant change to AI logic, I think they'd mention it in release notes, even if they chose to be vague about the specifics. Not everything has to be a horrible conspiracy to sell health packs, no matter what forumgoers think.
1. Hence the term ninja update.
2. Who is to say it was intentional? Maybe they changed something else which had the unintended consequence of increasing the overall difficulty of the game.0 -
It's most likely some kind of random thing that doesn't mean anything, but man alive since R60 this game has been a cascade-fest. The AI is getting a lot more mega-cascades, and I'M getting huge cascades all the time as well.0
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