New Changes to PVP AI & Boards

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

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.

First, in not necessarily saying that there had been a change. I'm saying based on my recent experience of some others it seems that there may have been. However, until we get feedback from a larger sample size of players, it's hard to say for certain.

Defensive wins assume everyone gets the same board difficulty and ai difficulty. However, the level of difficulty is not global, then other factors such add characters used, MMR, roster level, points in an event, etc. Could explain why not everyone would see increases in the number of defensive wins.

Moreover, increased difficulty doesn't necessarily result in more defensive wins. The result could be longer matches or more health loss. Therefore, defensive wins are not an end all measure.

Likewise, player experience is not the best measure either. But, it is a good starting point to set of the issue should be delved into deeper.

Lastly, remember, the developers don't necessarily have to make a change that directly affects au or board difficultly. An increase in difficulty could be an indirect effect of reprioritizing what colors to match or player strength denial over gain ap for ai abilities. There have been a lot of recent changes. If there had been an increase in difficulty it could be the result of a direct change by developers to the ai or the unintended indirect effect of the culmination of a bunch of changes.

Unknown

The AI is 'smarter' for sure. Team Ups that come at 'just the right time', cascades, everything.

No discussion. It s true.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

First, in not necessarily saying that there had been a change. I'm saying based on my recent experience of some others it seems that there may have been. However, until we get feedback from a larger sample size of players, it's hard to say for certain.

Defensive wins assume everyone gets the same board difficulty and ai difficulty. However, the level of difficulty is not global, then other factors such add characters used, MMR, roster level, points in an event, etc. Could explain why not everyone would see increases in the number of defensive wins.

Moreover, increased difficulty doesn't necessarily result in more defensive wins. The result could be longer matches or more health loss. Therefore, defensive wins are not an end all measure.

Likewise, player experience is not the best measure either. But, it is a good starting point to set of the issue should be delved into deeper.

Lastly, remember, the developers don't necessarily have to make a change that directly affects au or board difficultly. An increase in difficulty could be an indirect effect of reprioritizing what colors to match or player strength denial over gain ap for ai abilities. There have been a lot of recent changes. If there had been an increase in difficulty it could be the result of a direct change by developers to the ai or the unintended indirect effect of the culmination of a bunch of changes.

More defensive wins doesn't mean the AI is better, because there are other reasons that can affect defensive wins, but the AI being better will always lead to more defensive wins because they play 100% of your defensive battles.

Spoit

stephen43084 wrote:

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.

I personally am skeptical about the changes, but seriously people. How long have you been on these forums without realizing how bad a habit they have of doing ninja changes that they don't acknowledge without a gentle nudge?

Unknown

Hey Stephen. I agree with you. This company is determined to either limit our time on their servers, or get us to pay via health packs. One indicator of a change in the AI is your win/loss percentage. I am losing at a much greater rate now. But to answer your questions here they are:
1) Recent difficulty change: absolutely. The AI is making much more logical moves. Even to the point of denying a color I need, when the AI doesn't need the color.
2) My level roster: 5 166 level, 5 153 level playing 300 days
3) The difficulty level seems to stay the same. I have not detected any variability.
4) I noticed that TU drops seem to be exactly what the AI needs. I play on an android so I cannot see in advance what the TUs are.
5) no screen shots. sorry.
6) any other comments: I am losing now with a team that in other circumstances would wipe out the AI. Example: yesterday played 140 Cap, 154 Patch and 231 Falcon. Got beat by 94 Wolverine, 94 BW and 155 Falcon. Really?? The board just went dry. The algo that controls the board was just not going to let me win. This is one of the reasons Demiurge got rid of C Mags. You could always stymy the board algo with Cmags Blue ability.
Thanks for your work on this issue. Demiurge is making a fortune on its players, and getting greedier.

Unknown

Three people already are claiming TUs are random and AI chooses which would be most devastating on situation. 2 of them are in 'high top respectable' Alliances.
Press on enemy character -> use arrows to the right -> BAM, TU visible, on Android device.
If you have people claiming bias in something that can be so easily checked to be false, how can you even trust on the much less obvious things like RNG cascades and AI playstyle?

I'm recalling my statement about prioritizing matches. It isn't set. It isn't denying anything either. It seems completely random as long as it's strong colour of one of characters. I'm in fight right now, Ares+OBW+loner Falc vs Juggs+OBW+loner Falc and 40 2* Torch as TU. AI have ability to take , or , goes for . Second time, they can take or , takes . If AI is trying to deny something, it's doing it wrong. And because I was observing moves rather than playing effectively, it had enough TU to launch Torchic black, exactly the same I checked on before.

Experiment - instead of trying to only find moments when AI did kitten you up when choosing colours, also check for moves that doesn't make sense. If you only filter things that make you loose match/hp and ignore those that did nothing (like it usually does), you end up with confirmation bias.

And if you want my take on why AI seems harder, it's easy.



That's it. Remember what was before it? Envi tiles. What did they do? Nothing. 10 strength tile. 50hp heal on multi-thousand characters. Crit tile that they leave to match for you. 1 turn stun on one char and minor AP drain. The only working, and also broken, was Oasis that was patched to not show in PvP events since our 50lvl Storm was wrecking maxed 3* teams.

So nobody took it. Ever. This lead to AI being forced, or going at random, at matching Envi tiles. You may not realize, but it was, in fact, AI passing turn to you. It gained nothing, you could make your next move. After the rather recent change and adding , many people have not yet used to mechanic. You are doing your usual stuff, collecting your rainbows to make enemy explode, happy AI takes 'useless' stuff, like usual. At one point, they finally get 14 of 'trashy' , Thor comes out and with 'get rekt son' proceeds to Lightning Storm your ****.

And that change alone make AI matches much harder, as there is no longer 'always safe' match that it will take for your free turns.

atomzed

Junior11 wrote:

4) I noticed that TU drops seem to be exactly what the AI needs. I play on an android so I cannot see in advance what the TUs are.

This is absolutely incorrect. I play on Android too, and I *can* check the TU. When in battle, go to the character tab (where you can see the description of their ability). And scrol/click all the way to the end. At the end you can see the Tu ability.

Unknown

At least for PvE the TUs are not random. It's set to a certain list of abilities depending on the event. I'm not quite sure for PvP, but I thought it's supposed to be from a limited list too. If that list contains a lot of good skills, it'd certainly be much harder compared to a random list.

Professa D

Can't comment on starting board, but I have noticed #2 happening more often where I only need one more match to get an ability off and the AI matches it away even it is not a strong color for them and they don't have any abilities in that color. As for them getting smarter on combo timing, not in my experience. They seem to follow the rule of "if I have enough AP to cast, I cast (once per turn)" unless there is another ability with same color then it will roll a RNG die to choose.

Unknown

Professa D wrote:

Can't comment on starting board, but I have noticed #2 happening more often where I only need one more match to get an ability off and the AI matches it away even it is not a strong color for them and they don't have any abilities in that color. As for them getting smarter on combo timing, not in my experience. They seem to follow the rule of "if I have enough AP to cast, I cast (once per turn)" unless there is another ability with same color then it will roll a RNG die to choose.

The AI ability selection is pretty simple.

If it has enough AP to use the most expensive ability in that color it'll always use it.

Otherwise, it has a random chance to save up for the higher cost AP ability (bigger the difference the more likely they'll save up). They're not waiting for OBW or The Hood to pop in front before they used their big ability. So let's say they have Thor and Sentry on the same team. Thor has a higher cost yellow/green, so if they've enough for both WR and Sacrifice but not Thunder Strike/COTS, every turn there's a random chance they'll use none, one, or both of Sentry's abilities. Sometimes those random chances will happen to make sense, but there are also a lot of time where it'd make no sense. Now since Sentry's abilities are cheap and powerful, it's rarely wrong to use them over any more expensive ability, and the AI really does a pretty lousy job at saving up, so from the player's perspective it'd look like they somehow knew Sentry's abilities are better since they'd use them often.

Unknown

I feel if I make my first 2 matches the same color for an ability that costs 7 or more AP, the AI will start denying that color, even though it's a weak color for them. However, if I use cascades to get that color, the AI doesn't notice. (Been using the MNNow => CStorm combo).

Could totally be confirmation bias though.

After ending 3 consecutive rounds with Call of the Storm, started a board with only 1 Should have screenshotted it.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

I feel if I make my first 2 matches the same color for an ability that costs 7 or more AP, the AI will start denying that color, even though it's a weak color for them. However, if I use cascades to get that color, the AI doesn't notice. (Been using the MNNow => CStorm combo).

Could totally be confirmation bias though.

After ending 3 consecutive rounds with Call of the Storm, started a board with only 1 Should have screenshotted it.

Actually you are not the only one feeling like this. I run the same team in this PVE (Colossus, MNMags, CStorm). Goal is to charge storm's blue and win the fight. However, in a node where there whas 1 vilain and 2 goons (Don't remember the vilain, but I do remember that blue was not a color that would profit him because I checked) the AI matched blue 3 times in a row preventing me from doing that final match to charge my skill.

Now I know I can work around this with cascades or fool the AI with useless 4match to distract them, but I am not sure whether they are actually trying to block you or just randomly do the picks. I can't confirm this as a general rule for AI, but this DID happen to me and it was quite frustrating (but challenging at the same time).

However, thinking of a conspiracy theory all the time can depict such events and you can easily point fingers when they happen. Because in 40 fights I did in the PVE the AI might have tried to block my AP only 4-5 times (which might just be random bad luck for me). But you can easily remember those 4-5 times because they are the ones that hurt the most.

On the other hand, I have won most of the matches with the AI not even doing a single ability and they where not even doing matches that would benefit them. So in this matches they seem completely useless. I don't see anyone saying anything about that though

Bottom line, I think that we all have bad fights and we get beat by lvl 30 goons just because we underestimate the fight or we got a bad board. That does not mean that every time a patch happens we need to go nuts on conspiracy theories. We are supposed to get some loses on the road.

Even if the AI is buffed a little bit it does not matter. We could all appreciate a challenge (especially the vets that are always bored of no challenges). What I would agree on is that IF there are ANY changes, we SHOULD know about them. But in this case I think we are just picking those few fights that we got it bad because, let's face it, it's really annoying to get downed and consume all your Health Packs in the middle of the node clearing. Now if you have consistently getting bad boards on each game and the AI is blocking you in every game you play or at least in 80% of them, then bring evidence of it and I am sure you will get some dev attention.

In any other case, this is just another discussion thread, which I enjoy myself and that is why I am sharing some opinions.

Unknown

Nivrax wrote:

Three people already are claiming TUs are random and AI chooses which would be most devastating on situation. 2 of them are in 'high top respectable' Alliances.
Press on enemy character -> use arrows to the right -> BAM, TU visible, on Android device.
If you have people claiming bias in something that can be so easily checked to be false, how can you even trust on the much less obvious things like RNG cascades and AI playstyle?

I'm recalling my statement about prioritizing matches. It isn't set. It isn't denying anything either. It seems completely random as long as it's strong colour of one of characters. I'm in fight right now, Ares+OBW+loner Falc vs Juggs+OBW+loner Falc and 40 2* Torch as TU. AI have ability to take , or , goes for . Second time, they can take or , takes . If AI is trying to deny something, it's doing it wrong. And because I was observing moves rather than playing effectively, it had enough TU to launch Torchic black, exactly the same I checked on before.

Experiment - instead of trying to only find moments when AI did kitten you up when choosing colours, also check for moves that doesn't make sense. If you only filter things that make you loose match/hp and ignore those that did nothing (like it usually does), you end up with confirmation bias.

And if you want my take on why AI seems harder, it's easy.



That's it. Remember what was before it? Envi tiles. What did they do? Nothing. 10 strength tile. 50hp heal on multi-thousand characters. Crit tile that they leave to match for you. 1 turn stun on one char and minor AP drain. The only working, and also broken, was Oasis that was patched to not show in PvP events since our 50lvl Storm was wrecking maxed 3* teams.

So nobody took it. Ever. This lead to AI being forced, or going at random, at matching Envi tiles. You may not realize, but it was, in fact, AI passing turn to you. It gained nothing, you could make your next move. After the rather recent change and adding , many people have not yet used to mechanic. You are doing your usual stuff, collecting your rainbows to make enemy explode, happy AI takes 'useless' stuff, like usual. At one point, they finally get 14 of 'trashy' , Thor comes out and with 'get rekt son' proceeds to Lightning Storm your ****.

And that change alone make AI matches much harder, as there is no longer 'always safe' match that it will take for your free turns.

Yes, some enviornmental tiles were useless: the city maps healing of 50 health and Latveria's strike tiles come to mind.... but those enviornmental tiles were a huge help in The Forrest, Dessert and the Icy Mountain Map (I forget it's name).

GothicKratos

Honestly, the oasis and the forest had the only good environmental abilities, and the AI could only use Thorned Rose effectively.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

Yes, some enviornmental tiles were useless: the city maps healing of 50 health and Latveria's strike tiles come to mind.... but those enviornmental tiles were a huge help in The Forrest, Dessert and the Icy Mountain Map (I forget it's name).

I forgot the rose, right. I still was in 1* land back then and AI half the time killed itself when using it. But either way, useful envi board only came 2 out of 6 nodes in PvE (if they were equally random, I do believe there was heavy amount of City), and in PvP you just choosed Desert node if farming with Storm or one of useless ones if you didn't.

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

Honestly, the oasis and the forest had the only good environmental abilities, and the AI could only use Thorned Rose effectively.

The icy mountain map was awesome for generating Blue tiles. If you maxed out the enviornmental AP, it would turn all red tiles into blue tiles. Check out what I was able to do last December:

MikeHock wrote:

Check out these other screen shots from the Forest (maxed envio. AP would turn all enviornment tiles into Red tiles) and the Desert (oasis turned tiles green, everyones favorite):

MikeHock wrote:

Here is the thread that these screen shots were taken from.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5078&hilit=satisfying+moves&start=40

Yes, the envionrnmental tiles needed to be tinkered with, but I sure do miss them and at least 3 of them were useful.