AI making too many lucky chains

Mrazy

SInce a few patches the AI keeps making too many mofing extremely long lucky chains, i mean when thor uses his yellow, the green tiles magically form into a 4-6 green tile chain, all the time, and that chain leads to more stupid chains that make no sense, he gets like 3 extra turns, crits included, i use the same power all my tiles get scattered not one of them appear next to the other, and i make 9 effing green tiles.
Then it comes to a simple environment chain that leads to over 1k dmg in pure endless chains.

Unknown

Welcome to Marvel Puzzle Quest.

Unknown

Selective memory. Negative events stick in your mind as they hurt, forgetting all the positive events where such cascades can (and do) occur. A topic repeated ad nauseum on here since the games inception, and saddled to previous games in the PQ series too.

Unknown

The Ladder wrote:

Selective memory. Negative events stick in your mind as they hurt, forgetting all the positive events where such cascades can (and do) occur. A topic repeated ad nauseum on here since the games inception, and saddled to previous games in the PQ series too.

Truth be told, I agree with you to some extent. As the player, we do get lucky on cascades too.

But I want to ask you. In the situation where an entire column is cleared, and new tiles come in the replace it, what are the odds that you will get 5 yellow tiles conjoined together? Such situation happens, and they happen a lot.

My suspicion is the flaw is in the coding. They do not randomize new tiles falling in completely. I think they probably randomize groups of new tiles rather than singular tile by tile.

IceIX

mechgouki wrote:

The Ladder wrote:

Selective memory. Negative events stick in your mind as they hurt, forgetting all the positive events where such cascades can (and do) occur. A topic repeated ad nauseum on here since the games inception, and saddled to previous games in the PQ series too.

Truth be told, I agree with you to some extent. As the player, we do get lucky on cascades too.

But I want to ask you. In the situation where an entire column is cleared, and new tiles come in the replace it, what are the odds that you will get 5 yellow tiles conjoined together? Such situation happens, and they happen a lot.

My suspicion is the flaw is in the coding. They do not randomize new tiles falling in completely. I think they probably randomize groups of new tiles rather than singular tile by tile.

Nope, statistically, it happens just as often for AI as the player given similar tile breakages. It really is just selective memory.

Mrazy

Its not selective memory, i have over 200 hours in MPQ, and recently i started losing matches because the AI makes endless matches, and when your opponents are 3 lvs 85s, like on the pvp event, its very noticeable. AI make a endless chain at least once per match, and it doesnt even make sense how its triggered, it wouldnt bother me if it made some sense, a env chain that leads to over 1k dmg damage, a vertical simple chain at the bottom that leads to over 3 turns worths of chains, doesnt make sense.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

mechgouki wrote:

The Ladder wrote:

Selective memory. Negative events stick in your mind as they hurt, forgetting all the positive events where such cascades can (and do) occur. A topic repeated ad nauseum on here since the games inception, and saddled to previous games in the PQ series too.

Truth be told, I agree with you to some extent. As the player, we do get lucky on cascades too.

But I want to ask you. In the situation where an entire column is cleared, and new tiles come in the replace it, what are the odds that you will get 5 yellow tiles conjoined together? Such situation happens, and they happen a lot.

My suspicion is the flaw is in the coding. They do not randomize new tiles falling in completely. I think they probably randomize groups of new tiles rather than singular tile by tile.

Nope, statistically, it happens just as often for AI as the player given similar tile breakages. It really is just selective memory.

Really. So when a whole column is erased, and replaced by a new column of tiles, if we get a joined set of 5 yellows in a row, it is completely luck, and completely chance?

Even though the odds are like 1/7 to the power of 5?

Seriously?

Unknown

Mrazy wrote:

Its not selective memory, i have over 200 hours in MPQ, and recently i started losing matches because the AI makes endless matches, and when your opponents are 3 lvs 85s, like on the pvp event, its very noticeable. AI make a endless chain at least once per match, and it doesnt even make sense how its triggered, it wouldnt bother me if it made some sense, a env chain that leads to over 1k dmg damage, a vertical simple chain at the bottom that leads to over 3 turns worths of chains, doesnt make sense.

No, it's selective memory dude. Cascades happen just as open for the human player.

Unknown

Mrazy wrote:

Its not selective memory, i have over 200 hours in MPQ, and recently i started losing matches because the AI makes endless matches, and when your opponents are 3 lvs 85s, like on the pvp event, its very noticeable. AI make a endless chain at least once per match, and it doesnt even make sense how its triggered, it wouldnt bother me if it made some sense, a env chain that leads to over 1k dmg damage, a vertical simple chain at the bottom that leads to over 3 turns worths of chains, doesnt make sense.

And I probably have well in excess of 1000 (conservative guess). I don't see what you see. I get as many helpful cascades as the enemy.

Unknown

Negative events stick in your mind as they hurt, forgetting all the positive events where such cascades can (and do) occur.

Also, when the player gets a massive lucky cascade, they know they didn't plan it that way. They don't know the same way that the AI didn't plan it (even if it didn't, and I believe that).

Mrazy

The Ladder wrote:

Mrazy wrote:

Its not selective memory, i have over 200 hours in MPQ, and recently i started losing matches because the AI makes endless matches, and when your opponents are 3 lvs 85s, like on the pvp event, its very noticeable. AI make a endless chain at least once per match, and it doesnt even make sense how its triggered, it wouldnt bother me if it made some sense, a env chain that leads to over 1k dmg damage, a vertical simple chain at the bottom that leads to over 3 turns worths of chains, doesnt make sense.

And I probably have well in excess of 1000 (conservative guess). I don't see what you see. I get as many helpful cascades as the enemy.

That doesnt mean anything, only that you most likely have maxed spider man and stun lock an entire enemy team and you never get to see them chaining in the first place to begin with.

IceIX

mechgouki wrote:

Really. So when a whole column is erased, and replaced by a new column of tiles, if we get a joined set of 5 yellows in a row, it is completely luck, and completely chance?

Even though the odds are like 1/7 to the power of 5?

Seriously?

Seriously. A 5 in a row dropping vertically is only a 1/2401 chance. While that's small on its own, the sheer number of tiles that drop in every match and the number of matches overall mean that something that "rare" really isn't. That exact situation happens dozens upon dozens of times every day across our playerbase.

Edit: Took ^5 instead of ^4. While specifically Yellow would be 1/16K chance, the chance of a 5 drop of *any* color is much greater.

Unknown

These threads are easily some of the most absurd on this forum, and that is really saying something.

kensterr

It's happening more frequently to me for the past week, however it's mostly in Prologue where I heal, or in PVP matches. Luckily it doesn't happen often in recent and current PVE, touch wood!

Unknown

mechgouki wrote:

IceIX wrote:

mechgouki wrote:

The Ladder wrote:

Selective memory. Negative events stick in your mind as they hurt, forgetting all the positive events where such cascades can (and do) occur. A topic repeated ad nauseum on here since the games inception, and saddled to previous games in the PQ series too.

Truth be told, I agree with you to some extent. As the player, we do get lucky on cascades too.

But I want to ask you. In the situation where an entire column is cleared, and new tiles come in the replace it, what are the odds that you will get 5 yellow tiles conjoined together? Such situation happens, and they happen a lot.

My suspicion is the flaw is in the coding. They do not randomize new tiles falling in completely. I think they probably randomize groups of new tiles rather than singular tile by tile.

Nope, statistically, it happens just as often for AI as the player given similar tile breakages. It really is just selective memory.

Really. So when a whole column is erased, and replaced by a new column of tiles, if we get a joined set of 5 yellows in a row, it is completely luck, and completely chance?

Seriously?

Even though the odds are like 1/7 to the power of 5?

first: the odds are not 1/7^5. Because it does not require five specific tiles to be yellow. One tile needs to be yellow (or any other color, so that is a probability of 1), then either tile next to it (2/7 odds) then one tile to either side of those two, etc... this is of course not exact because if we reach a tile on the border, then the next tile to be yellow needs to be in an exact spot, so the odds are probably more like 8/7^4 on average, or .3%. Feel free to critique my math, I'm not saying it's exact.

second: As a player, we are going to remember any random event that screws us over, not just 5-in-a-rows. So if the AI just needed 3 more green to get off one of their abilities, and they clear a column and get a set of three green connects for them, we remember that as being 'rigged', or if the cleared column creates another 4-in-a-row that clears a horizontal row, we remember that as well. So when something slightly unlikely happens, we think: "What are the odds of that happening? That's B.S." When there are about 50 different things that are slightly unlikely that could have happened that we would have said the same thing about.

I will film a youtube video of myself eating a hat of some kind (my choice) if it turns out that the RNG for this game is not actually random (pseudorandom, that is)

IceIX

kensterr wrote:

It's happening more frequently to me for the past week, however it's mostly in Prologue where I heal, or in PVP matches. Luckily it doesn't happen often in recent and current PVE, touch wood!

The frequency per player of tile drops in the game is pretty well the straightest line we have in any of our analytics systems. The system hasn't changed and the overall level has remained constant since game start.

Unknown

As someone who has played a lot of real money poker, I'm used to seeing complaints of this type. The chances of your opponent hitting that one miracle card to beat your made hand are certainly small, but when you play enough hands, you're inevitably going to get your heart broken here and there. Add in the fact that you just lost the tournament on that hand (or hundreds of dollars in a cash game), and it's an emotional burn that makes the experience stick with you. So people bemoan their luck, when in actuality, they've probably forgotten all the times they made a bad play and got saved by a lucky card. As mentioned above, this has been addressed before, and some casual reading on the concept of selection bias may help you gain some context on why these experiences seem so prevalent for you.

Another concept that is helpful is to understand how variance works. Even the best poker player in the world is going to hit streaks of cards (can last days, weeks, or even months) where they simply cannot win because they aren't getting the right cards when they need them (and vice versa, those times where you just can't lose because the deck just loves you). In a perfectly random system, most people statistically will still encounter long streaks where the pattern appears to be not random, or stacked for/against them for a period of time. It doesn't mean that it isn't random, just that variance will smack you in the face from time to time. In any game that has an element of chance this will be a factor. This recent "change" towards AI making big cascades and 4/5 matches you're experiencing is just variance rearing its ugly head.

Understanding this is key in learning to cope with the up/down swings of poker, MPQ, or anything else. Coping effectively is important because a new phone or PC is way more expensive than health packs.

Unknown

Also, don't forget that the computer clears out rows and columns every time the option arises. A human player will frequently avoid doing so (to take advantage of a five-way match or to avoid collecting AP in dead colors). It is entirely possible that the AI will leave itself more open to cascades than a human player will.

I very frequently find myself thinking, "If my opponent were a person, he'd be cursing my luck right now." I had a full column get replaced by black tiles onces (all 8, top to bottom). I'm pretty sure I wasn't cheating.

Unknown

Yup. And I've had crazy combos in both directions in irrelevant matches (healing missions, vs. seed teams) that I barely even notice unless I'm paying attention, because the match result is essentially pre-ordained. I always remember them when they cost me a winnable match, though.

Unknown

I will say that the past few days the ai has been getting some amazing chains, however, today i have had several massive chains taking out nearly all 3 enemy. I guess it all evens out in the end.

Unknown

Yes. As the number of games you've played approaches infinity, it will even out.