AI making too many lucky chains

Unknown

The other thing to note is that everyone in here is talking about selection bias/selective memory like they are above it all. It is an almost universal human trait that is very hard to completely weed out, and even if you know it rationally, emotionally you will still get really ticked off and feel like the game is working against you when these things happen. I'm not claiming I'm some superhuman who has tamed my cognitive weaknesses.

Unknown

I'm not claiming I'm some superhuman who has tamed my cognitive weaknesses.

Moondragon says that the cascade balance is entirely fair.

Unknown

RangoFett wrote:

The other thing to note is that everyone in here is talking about selection bias/selective memory like they are above it all. It is an almost universal human trait that is very hard to completely weed out, and even if you know it rationally, emotionally you will still get really ticked off and feel like the game is working against you when these things happen. I'm not claiming I'm some superhuman who has tamed my cognitive weaknesses.

I suppose my tone came off a bit wrong there - I'm certainly not above cursing like a sailor when it happens. I just take solace in the fact that it's not only happening to me, it's not "rigged", and that it will eventually run in my favor too. The fact that my wife also has a potty mouth makes this easier for me.

Unknown

Mrazy wrote:

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.

That's as lazy an argument as your opening one.

But we can agree to disagree, if you like. I can't stop you feeling the way you do, and wouldn't want to.

Unknown

"Why is it always the last place you look"? The Thread


Like many here, I've played 100's of hours of this game and have noticed no real AI bent on cascades. My theory is that the OP doesn't play a lot with characters that are tile smashers, because then you wouldn't feel the way you do.

Eddiemon

P(5 in a row)
= 7 colours x (1/7)^5
= (1/7)^4
=(1/49)^2
=1/2401

However, you are dropping in 8 tiles, not just those 5. So you could have 0, 1, 2 or 3 tiles before the run of 5. That gives you 4 opportunities.

So the odds in an empty column would be 4 x 1/2401 or about 1 in 600.

The odds of dropping a set of 4 is about 1 in 70.

Eddiemon

Eddiemon wrote:

P(5 in a row)
= 7 colours x (1/7)^5
= (1/7)^4
=(1/49)^2
=1/2401

However, you are dropping in 8 tiles, not just those 5. So you could have 0, 1, 2 or 3 tiles before the run of 5. That gives you 4 opportunities.

So the odds in an empty column would be 4 x 1/2401 or about 1 in 600.

The odds of dropping a set of 4 is about 1 in 70.

Ok so actually looking that I realise that I got lazy.

The odds of getting 5 in a row in 4 chances is actually 1-P(4 failures)
=1-(2400/2401)^4
~=.0016649
Which is still about 1 in 600.

Unknown

Just be glad the AI doesn't make T and L and 5 matches... Think about how many times you've dodged a 5 match from AI vs how many times they get a lucky cascade. I'm happy to take an occasional kick to the nuts from a crazy cascade.

optimiza

As someone who's gotten **** way too many times in the original Puzzle Quest games, I say you've got nothing to complain about because the AI is taking it easy on you.

That having been said, it definitely does suck when the AI cascades a ton of stuff and they have OBW or MStorm, and all of the sudden you can't do anything.

You can also match offensively or defensively. Freak accidents like getting 4 or 5 of the same color dropped on your are gonna happen. But if you see

gyg
ryr
xxx
xyx

and you are facing Wolverine or Patch, etc., let it go. They have a non-negligible chance of getting either the G and/or the R, but less than 50%. Plus the yellow is a dead color for them. If it's Thor though, and he's on 9Y or 11G, you have to take that chance. I would say you could let it go if he's at less than 9Y (and 6G or less) and even 5R since that won't kill you.

Alternatively, for defense, if you see a

xyg
gyx
xxx
xyx

and if you are trying to deny green and this is at the top corner of the board, you definitely try to match stuff on the other side of the board, no matter what it is. Don't go near that side until they do since it's impossible for them to get a G match by taking Y.

I think there was probably a thread about gem matching somewhere else but I don't remember where I saw it.

chamber44

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.

the answer is here in your post. when you're playing weak opponents, you won't (didn't) notice bad cascades as much because they don't (didn't) damage you as heavily. Now that you're moving into middle to high opponents, their overall damage is stronger and so is their cascades.

Unknown

streaks happen in any probability. you are just having some unlucky days. there was a week where I got creamed by any team that had OBW but this last week seems to be a lot better.

you tend to remember events that cause pain way more than events that are expected.

Unknown

I think new tiles, especially one dropped in a row/column, are especially favorable because I suspect the game tries to give higher weight to colors that are low. For example, after a Technopathetic Strike, there will be no blue tiles left. If the replacement is completely random, then it should take 9*7 = 63 tiles = ~21 turns before blue returns to its normal value of 9 average tiles. It never feels like it takes that long for blue to return to normal. Similar arguments can be made for Magnetic Field which destroys pretty much all the blue tiles and it never feels like you've to wait as long as the average predicts. In a row/column match, you're obviously destroying a large number of one color, so it should be more likely to get the color you just destroyed as a replacement.

Unknown

I think selective memory plays a part but it doesn't tell the whole story. As ICEIX has said before the computer matches to a basic algorithm. Means the computer can't tell where there's gonna be matches but it know where the highest probability of cascade matches is going to occur. The AI being an opportunist in this manner makes up for it missing the match 5's and not being able to use skills properly, at least to a certain extent. In the end the user still has the advantage. The AI is fine as is.

Unknown

Mrazy wrote:

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.

I'm usually in the camp that says this is user bias but I know what you mean. I've noticed this on my own in the past week. I pay attention because 95% I run with Thor, mStorm, and OBW, and I love looking for the 5crits after a lightning strike but I'm also well aware that sometimes I only get a match3 out of it. By the same token I watch the A.I. But I mean, the A.I. has just been bananas in the past week. It was so bad the night before last that my OBW was downed from 2700+ health just from a lucky chain. That was actually a freak incident but it was on the night that I was getting slaughtered just by lucky chains. I was ahead in a pvp match where I had been doing well every move against a way higher level team, and not just my first higher level team (I might have moved to a new MMR bracket or something, I find that confusing) and I read the chains as trying to level out the difficulty issue. Which is not how it should be, and not how it was before. It's pretty disheartening when you think that RNG is never going to be on your side.

That said, I smooshed Daken and Yelena in one of the Hulk events yesterday with a lucky chain - first move, downed 2/3 enemies, granted their level was lower than mine but still it was cool - so I'm not sure how much I should complain.

farlus

The real issue we should be discussing is that the AI has unfair advantage of knowledge of the tiles that will drop in next. I have noticed many times, typically when there is a crit tile present, that the AI will make a seemingly innocuous move that doesn't match the crit tile, which results in a tile dropping in from off screen that matches the crit tile. Not from a random cascade, mind, you, but a simple 1-2 deal. Seen it time and time again.

Unknown

farlus wrote:

The real issue we should be discussing is that the AI has unfair advantage of knowledge of the tiles that will drop in next. I have noticed many times, typically when there is a crit tile present, that the AI will make a seemingly innocuous move that doesn't match the crit tile, which results in a tile dropping in from off screen that matches the crit tile. Not from a random cascade, mind, you, but a simple 1-2 deal. Seen it time and time again.

Um yeah, that's the part that has been discussed 10 billion times already and has no validity or further reason for conversation.

Eddiemon

farlus wrote:

The real issue we should be discussing is that the AI has unfair advantage of knowledge of the tiles that will drop in next. I have noticed many times, typically when there is a crit tile present, that the AI will make a seemingly innocuous move that doesn't match the crit tile, which results in a tile dropping in from off screen that matches the crit tile. Not from a random cascade, mind, you, but a simple 1-2 deal. Seen it time and time again.

The probability of matching a crit tile is almost 2 in 7, unless the crit tile is at the very edge of the board. It will happen a lot.

Unknown

Yeah, the AI knows about the tiles dropping and sets about a sneaky move to get it to proc on a cascade.

That's why it ignores crit tiles half the time unless it can form a match 4 with it, right?

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

I think selective memory plays a part but it doesn't tell the whole story. As ICEIX has said before the computer matches to a basic algorithm. Means the computer can't tell where there's gonna be matches but it know where the highest probability of cascade matches is going to occur. The AI being an opportunist in this manner makes up for it missing the match 5's and not being able to use skills properly, at least to a certain extent. In the end the user still has the advantage. The AI is fine as is.

So that's why the AI doesn't make L or T match-5s? I didn't know that. Cool beans.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

Yeah, the AI knows about the tiles dropping and sets about a sneaky move to get it to proc on a cascade.

That's why it ignores crit tiles half the time unless it can form a match 4 with it, right?

I've never seen the AI turn away a match 4 that can be formed with a crit tile, but it seems to prefer a natural match 4 over one that requires a crit tile, even though the one formed with a crit tile is almost always better.