I had a feeling this game cheated...

Unknown

Seriously, I've felt that way for a long time... but now I am convinced it does. Playing ISO-8 India, a normal difficulty node against Hammer. Was essentially running the board, on my way to an easy victory. The enemy hadn't touched me all game. I scanned the board closely for countdown tiles, and found just one green Pyro tile with a four-turn timer. Thinking I had this in the bag, I ignored it and let my powers fly. Ended my turn, last enemy almost dead... when suddenly, a one-turn green countdown tile appeared out of NOWHERE, and in a spot that I couldn't destroy it in time. BAM! Pyro nails my characters for 2,300+ health. Oh, and I'm out of health packs. ****?!?

I know some of you are probably thinking I just missed the tile. NOPE. I watch those things like a HAWK each time one pops up, and check the board thoroughly before deciding my move. This one seriously just appeared out of nowhere. No warning, no little bleep to let me know a new tile appeared, nothing. To me, this equates to a blatant attempt to try and cheat me out of an easy victory, hoping I will decide to buy health packs with coins to keep playing instead of waiting for health and packs to recharge. Which, by the way, won't be until AFTER the India event time is over. Meaning, I miss out on rewards worth my time and energy.

What a freaking JOKE this game has become.

RWTDBurn

Mandorallen wrote:

Seriously, I've felt that way for a long time... but now I am convinced it does. Playing ISO-8 India, a normal difficulty node against Hammer. Was essentially running the board, on my way to an easy victory. The enemy hadn't touched me all game. I scanned the board closely for countdown tiles, and found just one green Pyro tile with a four-turn timer. Thinking I had this in the bag, I ignored it and let my powers fly. Ended my turn, last enemy almost dead... when suddenly, a one-turn green countdown tile appeared out of NOWHERE, and in a spot that I couldn't destroy it in time. BAM! Pyro nails my characters for 2,300+ health. Oh, and I'm out of health packs. ****?!?

I know some of you are probably thinking I just missed the tile. NOPE. I watch those things like a HAWK each time one pops up, and check the board thoroughly before deciding my move. This one seriously just appeared out of nowhere. No warning, no little bleep to let me know a new tile appeared, nothing. To me, this equates to a blatant attempt to try and cheat me out of an easy victory, hoping I will decide to buy health packs with coins to keep playing instead of waiting for health and packs to recharge. Which, by the way, won't be until AFTER the India event time is over. Meaning, I miss out on rewards worth my time and energy.

What a freaking JOKE this game has become.

I seriously doubt the developers designed the game to cheat. Nothing could hurt their sales and popularity more than doing so and they have far more to lose from it than gain. A bug perhaps, sure. But an intentional cheat, sorry, I don't buy it.

LXSandman

You missed it

scottee

I'm going to go with user error on this one.

Unknown

The game has much more stealthy ways of cheating than creating countdown tiles for example endless cascades, team up abilities before having enough AP, or regular powers that would more likely be overseen than a countdown tiles appearing from nowhere. You'd be surprised how after staring at that board for hours on end how many things you miss. I sometimes will make an unusable match 3 and watch the computer take the match 4 I missed of a color I desperately need. It goes without saying that during long PvE grinds we'll get lazy and disinterested to a point where we're only concerned with finishing the battles rather than finishing them efficiently. Although I don't often miss CD tiles I can see how a 1 count timer could blend in.

Unknown

Random stuff occurs...I am convinced of it...customer service can't do anything unless you capture it but more than likely you won't. For me it just doesn't hinder the gameplay enough to get too upset over it. But I know how you feel, I feel like this every time I lay down an xforce recovery tile lol

Unknown

I'm going to say it again; I didn't miss it. I check the board THOROUGHLY when playing against any countdown-creating minions. It was simply not there. I can swallow it being a random glitch, maybe... but I'm telling you, it was not there. It wasn't.

Yeah, I probably missed it. F**K.

Unknown

RWTDBurn wrote:

Mandorallen wrote:

Seriously, I've felt that way for a long time... but now I am convinced it does. Playing ISO-8 India, a normal difficulty node against Hammer. Was essentially running the board, on my way to an easy victory. The enemy hadn't touched me all game. I scanned the board closely for countdown tiles, and found just one green Pyro tile with a four-turn timer. Thinking I had this in the bag, I ignored it and let my powers fly. Ended my turn, last enemy almost dead... when suddenly, a one-turn green countdown tile appeared out of NOWHERE, and in a spot that I couldn't destroy it in time. BAM! Pyro nails my characters for 2,300+ health. Oh, and I'm out of health packs. ****?!?

I know some of you are probably thinking I just missed the tile. NOPE. I watch those things like a HAWK each time one pops up, and check the board thoroughly before deciding my move. This one seriously just appeared out of nowhere. No warning, no little bleep to let me know a new tile appeared, nothing. To me, this equates to a blatant attempt to try and cheat me out of an easy victory, hoping I will decide to buy health packs with coins to keep playing instead of waiting for health and packs to recharge. Which, by the way, won't be until AFTER the India event time is over. Meaning, I miss out on rewards worth my time and energy.

What a freaking JOKE this game has become.

I seriously doubt the developers designed the game to cheat. Nothing could hurt their sales and popularity more than doing so and they have far more to lose from it than gain. A bug perhaps, sure. But an intentional cheat, sorry, I don't buy it.

But this kind of reasoning is exactly why they can get away with it, don't you see? The other explanation is that the AI is growing sentient, but that is too scary to even contemplate.

snlf25

The A.I. may not be sentient but it does know the future. I've lost track of how many times for instance Ares will match purple that nobody on his team needs ( bypassing red and yellow matches) and that drops in a 4 match green in the top row which leads to a cascade that earns his team an extra turn which leads to a Onslaught and a Sunder being dumped on me. The devs say that A.I. and player cascades are equal...how come theirs hits in the beginning or middle of a match and mine come right after I finish the last guy. My last match always seems to unleash a Hellstorm that goes on and on after I drop the last guy.

Unknown

I remember seeing the Gems of War (pretty much same as MPQ) developer had a thread where they said they ran an experiment where players get to cheat on your cascades without knowing (they're better than random) and people still feedback saying the AI is cheating.

Unknown

snlf25 wrote:

The A.I. may not be sentient but it does know the future. I've lost track of how many times for instance Ares will match purple that nobody on his team needs ( bypassing red and yellow matches) and that drops in a 4 match green in the top row which leads to a cascade that earns his team an extra turn which leads to a Onslaught and a Sunder being dumped on me. The devs say that A.I. and player cascades are equal...how come theirs hits in the beginning or middle of a match and mine come right after I finish the last guy. My last match always seems to unleash a Hellstorm that goes on and on after I drop the last guy.

That is completely real. I'll swing nasty board shaking moves like surg strike and xf only to see it lay still... but if I move a match 3 and the guy has like 100 life left the end cascade is so sick I could easily dump another wave of of the same enemies.

RWTDBurn

PPPlaya wrote:

RWTDBurn wrote:

Mandorallen wrote:

Seriously, I've felt that way for a long time... but now I am convinced it does. Playing ISO-8 India, a normal difficulty node against Hammer. Was essentially running the board, on my way to an easy victory. The enemy hadn't touched me all game. I scanned the board closely for countdown tiles, and found just one green Pyro tile with a four-turn timer. Thinking I had this in the bag, I ignored it and let my powers fly. Ended my turn, last enemy almost dead... when suddenly, a one-turn green countdown tile appeared out of NOWHERE, and in a spot that I couldn't destroy it in time. BAM! Pyro nails my characters for 2,300+ health. Oh, and I'm out of health packs. ****?!?

I know some of you are probably thinking I just missed the tile. NOPE. I watch those things like a HAWK each time one pops up, and check the board thoroughly before deciding my move. This one seriously just appeared out of nowhere. No warning, no little bleep to let me know a new tile appeared, nothing. To me, this equates to a blatant attempt to try and cheat me out of an easy victory, hoping I will decide to buy health packs with coins to keep playing instead of waiting for health and packs to recharge. Which, by the way, won't be until AFTER the India event time is over. Meaning, I miss out on rewards worth my time and energy.

What a freaking JOKE this game has become.

I seriously doubt the developers designed the game to cheat. Nothing could hurt their sales and popularity more than doing so and they have far more to lose from it than gain. A bug perhaps, sure. But an intentional cheat, sorry, I don't buy it.

But this kind of reasoning is exactly why they can get away with it, don't you see? The other explanation is that the AI is growing sentient, but that is too scary to even contemplate.

No, I don't see it because it's likely not there. With the amount of data mining going on in the game, code like that would likely be found. Again, there is far too much to lose and very little for a developer to gain if they intentionally cheat their customers. I can easily believe it's a bug, especially with the limited amount of Beta testing D3 seems to do. I can also believe that he could have simply missed the 2 turn green countdown attack tile the Empiricist creates for 1 turn before seeing it the next. What I can't believe is that D3 would risk everything be creating code to cheat players so they might be an additional health pack here and there.

Baddkitty

Too little to gain? I wonder just how many people start buying health packs at the end of pvp/pve events , just to ensure their rank?? How better to ensure they buy them, then to let them get a few easy matches in, then obliterate their childhood dreams of getting their favorite marvel characters??

The biggest...and i mean BIGGGGESSSTTT cascades are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS at the end of the match. with very very few exceptions. I made 3 crit tiles with polarity shift and watched the cascade to a total of 13k damage. my screen timed out almost twice.

over_clocked

If I had a cookie each time there was a 'cheating AI!!1!one!' thread created, I'd be morbidly obese!

jojeda654

I know I'm late to the party but...

Mandorallen wrote:

I scanned the board closely for countdown tiles.

One thing I found handy about they way the implemented the tile ownership notification is that you can cycle through the enemy team and the countdowns will pop up. Makes it much less likely to miss them that way than scanning the board. I usually cycle through twice, just to make sure.

JamieMadrox

jojeda654 wrote:

I know I'm late to the party but...

Mandorallen wrote:

I scanned the board closely for countdown tiles.

One thing I found handy about they way the implemented the tile ownership notification is that you can cycle through the enemy team and the countdowns will pop up. Makes it much less likely to miss them that way than scanning the board. I usually cycle through twice, just to make sure.

^^^THIS!

I miss countdowns all the time when I'm playing. I'll be concentrating on one section of the board and completely miss that one in the bottom corner until it goes off.

Unknown

Not sure if anyone remembers the comedian Gallagher, he had a Sledgeamatic and smashed stuff, this was basically his routine. Well he brought out an Atari once and was yelling that the system cheats and he smashed it, but then he was like "It's not the game, it's the controller" and smashes that too.

This is what I think of when people cry and and upset that the "AI cheats", sometimes you are just unlucky...

The only time I know for a fact a game cheated was a few years back when a poker company allowed some players who paid them money to see others cards in their hands... Other than that it just isnt worth it to allow the "AI to cheat"...

Unknown

What ceases to amaze me are the apologists that have come here and defended a company they have no vested interest in... unless they actually do? Look, I probably did end up missing the tile somehow, though I still don't think I did. However, do NOT think that a company, whose sole purpose is to make as much money as possible off its customers, will not resort to whatever covert means necessary to achieve its goals.

Do people really believe that D3P is altruistic? No, they are going to do whatever they can to make us purchase health packs, buy coins for covers and take our money greedily. That's how they MAKE THEIR MONEY. I can understand a little skepticism, but to dismiss the possibility of cheating outright is completely NAIVE.

Unknown

If the game cheated, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference because they'd think it's cheating even if did not.

Unknown

Mandorallen wrote:

I'm going to say it again; I didn't miss it. I check the board THOROUGHLY when playing against any countdown-creating minions. It was simply not there. I can swallow it being a random glitch, maybe... but I'm telling you, it was not there. It wasn't.

Yeah, I probably missed it. F**K.

Yeah, it happened to me this morning. A tile that wasn't there went off.

It's too weird to think the computer actually cheats, but I could have sworn I checked everything.

I'm thinking there's an AP problem, though. The Decoy, or whichever Doombot mook creates the black Temporal Flux tile that stuns you, managed to put out five of them in about five turns. I think even with the synthetic Technopathic Strike they do, they'd have needed 30 black AP, and a further 20 in the next few turns. Maybe, maybe not.

It's not the first time I've noticed this. A little while ago, the computer's Sentry managed to rattle off a World Rupture in four consecutive turns, with 4 green AP left over. I just can't see how the computer could have gotten 52 green, even if Hulk and GSBW teamed up.

IamTheDanger

While I'm fairly certain that the Ai does not cheat, I do believe that D3 has bumped up the intelligence a bit recently. They have said before that they leave the Ai intelligence low, or dumbed down, on purpose. But my recent experiences are leading me to believe that they may have raised it up a bit, not much, but enough to notice.

I say this because, before, I could set up the Ai to make moves I wanted it to. Also, when the enemy would get enough Ap for an ability, they would use it. And the Ai hardly ever took colors I needed that it did not, denying me certain Ap colors.

Yet lately, especially in the Iso-8 Brotherhood event going on now, I've noticed a change. The Ai will save it's Ap, and use it at the worst possible time. Like in the essential nodes when I use Deadpool. I collect as much purple as I can, and as soon as I make the last match I need to drop the whale bomb, I suddenly get hit by 3 to 5 abilities in a single turn, taking out my Deadpool before the whales drop. It wouldn't be so bad, but I can see very plainly that the Ai is hoarding enough Ap, just waiting, instead of using abilities several turns before that when it can. Like it's just waiting to hit the most dangerous character on my team. Or, if I'm using Steve Rogers. The second I get enough red Ap to get him rolling, the Ai hits him with multiple powers in a single turn right before I can toss out my first shield.

Now, I do understand that it can all be a coincidence. Or that I've just had abysmal luck the last month or so. But it's just so consistent that I honestly am starting to think the Ai has gotten a bit smarter. And if so, I hope that D3 did it intentionally, because if not, then that means the machines are coming alive and getting ready to take over the world.
Unless they already did and we are all currently in the Matrix and don't realize it! In which case it's too late and there's nothing I can do now except go play some MPQ .