Cascades Need Fixing

Mezzanine85

I'm almost certain that I'm not the only one that thinks that D3 needs to do something about ridiculous cascading. In this simulator alone I'm loosing games in turns counted on one hand with character lvl 180* vs Lvl 75. On more than a few occasions, so it's not a one off.
Why not have it so the lucky match-ups being done from stones coming from outside the visible board at the start of a players turn do damage only, but not generating AP? It's fair for everyone and cuts out the CPU from getting an endless supply of free AP. It means the only AP gettable is from the stones that are visible at the beginning of a players turn. Can anyone think of why this would be a bad idea? Curious if anyone agrees.

The fact that D3 never seem to address this issue is a huge insult to the players that make this game possible. No players means no game. Surely D3 owe it to themselves to fix this long ongoing problem. D3, these complaints are meant help you. Not hinder you. Listen to your customers for a change.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Bring along Loki when you're worried about cascades. He usually proves very valuable.

When the D3 Aggrandizing Master Network notices all the AP getting sucked up by Loki, the "Aggressive Cascades" flag gets turned off for awhile, and you can use other characters safely.

esoxnepa

Mezzanine85 wrote:

I'm almost certain that I'm not the only one that thinks that D3 needs to do something about ridiculous cascading.

Cascades have always been part of Puzzle Quest, and should remain. It's just the way it is. The cascades wouldn't bother you nearly as much if it wasn't for the health pack system stopping you from playing.

For every 10 AP a cascade generates, you should get a free healthpack. Of course then we might be TRYING to get the AI to cascade on our weak teams.

rednailz

I guess with all the MMR changes and nerfs there has been no time for yet another another cascade companint thread.

Unknown

Mezzanine85 wrote:

Why not have it so the lucky match-ups being done from stones coming from outside the visible board at the start of a players turn do damage only, but not generating AP? It's fair for everyone and cuts out the CPU from getting an endless supply of free AP. It means the only AP gettable is from the stones that are visible at the beginning of a players turn. Can anyone think of why this would be a bad idea? Curious if anyone agrees.

Based on that sentence, only the CPU should be prevented from getting an endless supply of free AP. Any player cascades from off the board are skill based and should generate AP.

Personally, my offensive win percentage has dropped from 95% to 90% with these changes. I don't think we need to hamstring a dumb AI any further than we already do. What needs to be addressed is healing times that was brought up here http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=28000#p339232

JVReal

Virus_Type_V

Don't you love how the game sometimes flatters you with a super glorious end of the game cascade...


and the previous 8 turns was a total headache with nothing worth matching that nearly costed you the match...

saintsomebody

Virus Type V wrote:

Don't you love how the game sometimes flatters you with a super glorious end of the game cascade...


and the previous 8 turns was a total headache with nothing worth matching that nearly costed you the match...

This. So many games ended with a beautiful cascade, doing about 2k overkill.

Dragon_Nexus

Virus Type V wrote:

Don't you love how the game sometimes flatters you with a super glorious end of the game cascade...


and the previous 8 turns was a total headache with nothing worth matching that nearly costed you the match...

Had one of those just yesturday using Grocket and Thor in the PvP.
Scraping by on pinks and blacks because there was nothing else to match and each thing would produce nothing in the way of cascades. I finally manage to get 8 reds to finish off a character, I make a match and down the other guy...and somehow it produces this hige yellow L-shape made up of about 8 yellows, giving me 16 yellows. After I'd already won.

Infrared

Mezzanine85 wrote:

Why not have it so the lucky match-ups being done from stones coming from outside the visible board at the start of a players turn do damage only, but not generating AP? It's fair for everyone and cuts out the CPU from getting an endless supply of free AP. It means the only AP gettable is from the stones that are visible at the beginning of a players turn. Can anyone think of why this would be a bad idea? Curious if anyone agrees.

I agree on the cascades created from newly generated tiles. Even though they are a fair result of a totally random process, and they can happen equally to the player or the AI, they add nothing positive to the game experience but are a source of frustration. Cascades from tiles already on the board are something you can strategize around. Cascades from newly dropped tiles are just dumb luck. Doesn't matter if the player gets them or the AI does, it makes the game less like a puzzle and more like a slot machine.

The game already knows how to drop tiles that won't automatically result in a cascade. It does this every time the board resets. I would like it to apply this to all newly dropped tiles. It would still be fair because it would apply equally to the player and the AI.

MarvelDestiny

Virus Type V wrote:

Don't you love how the game sometimes flatters you with a super glorious end of the game cascade...


and the previous 8 turns was a total headache with nothing worth matching that nearly costed you the match...

It's the cheater AI trying to cover its tracks by balancing the "cascade equation".

Malcrof

i was on the side of the hate the ai cascades until about 10 minutes ago.. when i got an almighty one on the first turn in sim 10 (daken, punisher, she-hulk), i put punisher up front to die first, while i collect purple for doom to take care of daken, 3thor gets what he gets, mystique was there because she had to be... First move was an L 6 blue.. then the board exploded... i made the move, went to take a drag off my vap and looked back, punisher was dead, daken was 1/2 health, i had 3 critical tiles on the board and enough yellow for my FINALLY 5 covered 3thor to hammer daken. Once that was done, daken was downed, i had enough green cascades that a call of storm offed she hulk.. they didn't even get to take a turn..

This was the best match i think i've ever had lol.

Unknown

i've restrained myself from partaking in these cascade threads for a while now because in the past cascades were tolerable and more or less humoring (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18453), like i would actually chuckle to myself thinking how pathetically desparate the ai must be to drop 30 greens from the heavens into a 100+ ap cascade along with hundreds of criticals (ok, hyperbole, but aren't cascades hyperbolic anyways?)...and all this would amuse me and give me a good laugh.

that was then. but the game done changed. not only have cascades become more regular for the ai, so have match 4s, and ESPECIALLY those annoying little 3 , 3 3 mini cascades, which, to me, have become a whooooole lot more prevalent. and those are NOT amusing. taking this phenomenon into account with other recent changes really makes it hard to sustain climbs, despite the fact that more of our characters are usable in pvp now. health packs disappear before you know it...

Adrock1020

Has there been any confirmation or evidence that ridiculous cascades happen more often for the AI than it does for the player? I was always under the impression it was a 50/50 split.

CrookedKnight

In my experience it is, it's just that the way MPQ is built a player needs many consecutive wins to make substantial progress, while a single lucky cascade by the AI can cost you three health packs and essentially block you from playing at all for hours. So while both sides get roughly equal numbers of cascades, the ones the AI gets "matter" more.

Unknown

Adrock1020 wrote:

Has there been any confirmation or evidence that ridiculous cascades happen more often for the AI than it does for the player? I was always under the impression it was a 50/50 split.

It's a 50/50 split if you play as stupidly as the AI but a reasonably intelligent human can predict at least the next move and someone with higher-level pattern recognition can see several moves forward given the AI's predictability and ease of manipulation resulting in a higher rate of cascades for the player.

Adrock1020

shade_tree wrote:

Adrock1020 wrote:

Has there been any confirmation or evidence that ridiculous cascades happen more often for the AI than it does for the player? I was always under the impression it was a 50/50 split.

It's a 50/50 split if you play as stupidly as the AI but a reasonably intelligent human can predict at least the next move and someone with higher-level pattern recognition can see several moves forward given the AI's predictability and ease of manipulation resulting in a higher rate of cascades for the player.

I understand that, I was just referring to the random element of the off-screen tiles in my original question. With your point in mind (the player is hopefully smarter than the AI) I really can't see why anything should be "fixed" regarding cascades.

MarvelDestiny

This is a little 'conspiracy theory/Hal 9000'ish but hear me out:

The tiles above the screen may generate randomly but I think the RNG generates at least +2-3 rows above the top row and the AI knows it. How do I know this you ask? Has the match hint provided by the AI ever made you wonder? LIke, "Why the hell would I take that match-3 when I have a match-4 over here?" (Or some variation of this.) So you take your match-4 and the AI takes the match-3 resulting in a cascade or multiple match-3s from the new tiles dropping onto the board.

If I ever hear 'Joshua's" voice coming out of my tablet or computer I'm outta here.

--For those that don't know Joshua, watch Wargames (1983).