opening salvo/parting shot, in respect to AP generation

jredd

So basically the ai cheats and scores the computer controlled team free ap. why? it's basically cheating. my team doesn't get free ap. yet i get ai teams pulling off special moves after 2 turns. and not making matches involving the colour the moves take. not to mention the 'character is one move away from dying, and hey, here come all three of their special moves' move.

is this really the way things should be?

figure out a way to make it harder without going outside the way the game is played.

loroku

This is a great example of why their latest UI change was so terrible. At least before, you had a notification pop up of what AP the AI gained. Now you have exactly zero idea at any given moment. And since the game obfuscates what AP the enemy team is getting, you will see more and more of these "the AI cheats!" threads.

Please fix the UI, or at least take it back to the way it was!

Unknown

There has never been any evidence to substantiate claims of the AI cheating with AP. If you have screenshots or videos to the contrary, it would be best to post them in the bug forum or send them to the devs directly.

Oldboy

OP is prob referring to the goons generating free AP for the characters

OnesOwnGrief

Had an epiphany this PvE. Couldn't figure out what to do with these scaled nodes. Just recently came into a halfway decent Kamala. Took out my XForce and Magneto and watched the cascades come. Downed two enemies from full just on turn 3. You don't need as much AP as you think when you can generate it yourself.

jredd

Vynyv wrote:

There has never been any evidence to substantiate claims of the AI cheating with AP. If you have screenshots or videos to the contrary, it would be best to post them in the bug forum or send them to the devs directly.

dude, i have seen a team of non goon, strictly main character based teams, make a white match and then somehow gain 8 black ap. with no cascade. it happens. all the time.

i've played several nodes where the ai team fires off specials after 2 turns of 3 icon matches. of different colours.

i'm not making this up.

CaptainFreaky

jredd wrote:

Vynyv wrote:

There has never been any evidence to substantiate claims of the AI cheating with AP. If you have screenshots or videos to the contrary, it would be best to post them in the bug forum or send them to the devs directly.

dude, i have seen a team of non goon, strictly main character based teams, make a white match and then somehow gain 8 black ap. with no cascade. it happens. all the time.

i've played several nodes where the ai team fires off specials after 2 turns of 3 icon matches. of different colours.

i'm not making this up.

It would be great to see a video of this - cause I've never seen any. Sorry - it's not that I don't believe you (or others) but it seems odd that nobody has ever posted video of AI gaining AP without it coming from somewhere - eg Goons or Matches or Abilities.

Cartz

I have had this happen to me on a few rare and annoying occasions. No goons involved. Have had enemies pull off a move that requires more than 9AP on the third turn when they have only matched that colour once.

Its rare but does happen.

Unknown

The A.I. does cheat with the board weighting (i.e. cascade generation etc..), but I've never seen it cheat with respect to firing off powers it didn't have the AP for. Just my extensive experience.

TLCstormz

Just so you know O.P., the White Knights are going to treat you a new one, in about 10 hours. lol

:+/

Anyways, HappyDance, have you seen the screen caps from various people, where random tiles on the screen have little numbers on them? It's really bizarre and more than likely telling.

El Satanno

TLCstormz wrote:

Just so you know O.P., the White Knights are going to treat you a new one, in about 10 hours. lol

"White Knight" doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. Furthermore, dismissing or debunking what amounts to nothing more than conspiracy theory doesn't even fall under a misinterpretation of White Knight behavior. As CaptainFreaky and others have pointed out, there is exactly zero evidence of anything of the sort that OP is suggesting going on. After this long and who knows how many threads of a similar nature, it is right to brush off these kinds of claims, precisely because they are to date nothing more than baseless griping.

dkffiv

I haven't seen it generate AP out of nowhere but occasionally I've noticed the game forget to charge the enemy for the moves they used. Most noticeable is back to back GSBW Pistols (which cost like 16 AP) or back to back Ares Onslaught (which is supposed to drop the AP stock to 0).

Barring insane cascades by either side, the AI does tend to get a lot more AP than the player. During PvP climbs I don't use boosts and I started counting which side is leading on AP generation. I analyze the board and come up with great cascades generating 2 or 3 chains and the resulting fill from the top gives the AI a 4 or 5 match. Especially frustrating when the only move left is a match 3 on TU tiles and the AI either gets a 4 match or a fresh board with several 5 matches.

El Satanno

dkffiv wrote:

I haven't seen it generate AP out of nowhere but occasionally I've noticed the game forget to charge the enemy for the moves they used. Most noticeable is back to back GSBW Pistols (which cost like 16 AP) or back to back Ares Onslaught (which is supposed to drop the AP stock to 0).

Pistol costs 15 at level 4, and thus is totally possible to fire off twice. Furthermore, if the ensuing drop produces enough red AP then there are more ways to get this off and even at level 5. As for Ares using Onslaught back-to-back, I have never seen such a thing, and I suspect that is selective memory at work. Like most unlikely/impossible situations, I would not put stock into such claims without any evidence.

Barring insane cascades by either side, the AI does tend to get a lot more AP than the player. During PvP climbs I don't use boosts and I started counting which side is leading on AP generation. I analyze the board and come up with great cascades generating 2 or 3 chains and the resulting fill from the top gives the AI a 4 or 5 match. Especially frustrating when the only move left is a match 3 on TU tiles and the AI either gets a 4 match or a fresh board with several 5 matches.

This speaks a lot more to me, if anecdotal. Someone whose name eludes me at the moment did a test of sorts and did indeed conclude that the AI generates more AP per match on average. I've watched AP generation myself and from my experience it plays out. Confirmation bias sure does play a strong role in these kinds of "tests," though. At the end of the day, it is nigh-impossible to make a truly objective judgment on the subject. It's a lot easier to just take the devs at their word when they tell us, on several occasions, that things are as random as they can be.

binarypillbug

TLCstormz wrote:

Anyways, HappyDance, have you seen the screen caps from various people, where random tiles on the screen have little numbers on them? It's really bizarre and more than likely telling.

I'm pretty sure they're leftovers from timers.

Unknown

The only time I distinctly remember getting completely BSd was when the enemy AI used CTS and it said -11 Green. I tried to SS it but the delay caused me to miss it. But it does feel at times that the AI is generating more AP than they should.

acescracked

jredd wrote:

Vynyv wrote:

There has never been any evidence to substantiate claims of the AI cheating with AP. If you have screenshots or videos to the contrary, it would be best to post them in the bug forum or send them to the devs directly.

dude, i have seen a team of non goon, strictly main character based teams, make a white match and then somehow gain 8 black ap. with no cascade. it happens. all the time.

i've played several nodes where the ai team fires off specials after 2 turns of 3 icon matches. of different colours.

i'm not making this up.

Yes this does happen. When the AI is shield hopping it loads black\green and all AP boosts. The AI doesn't want to get sniped.

Xenoberyll

I never noticed that problem until day 453...yesterday Moonstone had 13 red ap and fired her red 3x in 3 turns, matching red only once in between. I hope i'll not see that again until day 900something

Rogan_Josh

Boldbrute wrote:

The only time I distinctly remember getting completely BSd was when the enemy AI used CTS and it said -11 Green. I tried to SS it but the delay caused me to miss it. But it does feel at times that the AI is generating more AP than they should.

i'm assuming this was pre UI update?

the reason for that is because the AP gained/lost shows after the turn ends meaning that in that turn the AI matched 3 green and then CTS. Technically it lost only 11 AP that turn. unhelpful i know.

Rogan_Josh

people, the AI doesn't cheat. It doesn't generate AP out of nowhere and it doesn't fire off abilities without the proper AP.

unfortunately our brains are not as robust as we like to think. It is quite common to miss large amounts of detail that we later "fill in" with logical reasoning and previous experience.

If you still think it is cheating then i urge you to gain evidence of it anyway you can. I will be highly surprised if you manage to get anything though.

Buret0

jredd wrote:

Vynyv wrote:

There has never been any evidence to substantiate claims of the AI cheating with AP. If you have screenshots or videos to the contrary, it would be best to post them in the bug forum or send them to the devs directly.

dude, i have seen a team of non goon, strictly main character based teams, make a white match and then somehow gain 8 black ap. with no cascade. it happens. all the time.

i've played several nodes where the ai team fires off specials after 2 turns of 3 icon matches. of different colours.

i'm not making this up.

They are probably using your teamups to generate AP. Have you tried not bringing in any team ups?

Unknown

I'm guessing the gain in AP with characters goes something (roughly) like this from highest to lowest:

Ultron Fighter
Loki
Iron Fist
Hood
Scarlet Witch
Kamala
Cyclops
Ultron (Tetris)
Storm (any)
Mystique
3*Thor
OBW
Hulk
Cap Marvel
Magneto (any)
GSBW
4*Thor
Juggernaut
XForce
Kingpin
Ragnarok
Devil Dino
Daken
Yelena
Bullseye

Everyone else.

If you're not using board shake-up or transformers in your core team, you may get less AP than the enemy. Every time I hear someone say that the AI generates more AP than they do (excepting goons or Ultron) I can't help but think that they must suck at match-3, or like using powerful non-transforming characters, in that order. I don't think I'm alone. Maybe I'm mistaken? I've had enough first or second turn kills to prove the opposite is true. Maybe it's because I use Iron Fist, Storm, Thor & Mystique a lot? Maybe because I like the AP denial game? I know whenever I use Loki I'm swimming in AP: polarize the board, then use illusions.

aside: Maybe the sane people know well enough to stay away from this sort of played out topic, but I can't help but feel that we rarely discuss character selection when talking about this.
At least with these threads: there was actually some attempt to justify said remarks.
Collecting Data on Player / A.I. cascades
Collecting Data on Player / A.I. cascades Part 2
Collecting Data on Player / A.I. cascades vs Ultron/sentries