What am I missing...

ghost9490
ghost9490 Posts: 4 Just Dropped In
edited September 2016 in MPQ General Discussion
completing the Steve Rogers mission in Oscorp- Tower. Using Daredevil and have ambush out. Rags and Aries are still up. I match the ambush tile which takes out Rags. I get awarded the XP for clearing the mission, then the ambush trap resets and my turn ends. Aries matches the ambush tile and goes down. So.... given that's the order of events, if it's random, how'd the AI know I'd cleared the mission before ambush reset and the AI took it's turn?

Comments

  • pribian
    pribian Posts: 16
    Lol, Yeah it's happened multiple times in multiple ways for me. Some random match 3 game huh..hahah. It gave me the XP before the opponents turn and it wasn't until their cascading was completely finished and it matched a 4* DP trap that the round actually ended..about 15 seconds later....
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
    ghost9490 wrote:
    completing the Steve Rogers mission in Oscorp- Tower. Using Daredevil and have ambush out. Rags and Aries are still up. I match the ambush tile which takes out Rags. I get awarded the XP for clearing the mission, then the ambush trap resets and my turn ends. Aries matches the ambush tile and goes down. So.... given that's the order of events, if it's random, how'd the AI know I'd cleared the mission before ambush reset and the AI took it's turn?

    Because the random assignment and the AI's move have already been calculated the second you completed yours. The animations are just taking their time catching up.
  • ghost9490
    ghost9490 Posts: 4 Just Dropped In
    GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:
    ghost9490 wrote:
    completing the Steve Rogers mission in Oscorp- Tower. Using Daredevil and have ambush out. Rags and Aries are still up. I match the ambush tile which takes out Rags. I get awarded the XP for clearing the mission, then the ambush trap resets and my turn ends. Aries matches the ambush tile and goes down. So.... given that's the order of events, if it's random, how'd the AI know I'd cleared the mission before ambush reset and the AI took it's turn?

    Because the random assignment and the AI's move have already been calculated the second you completed yours. The animations are just taking their time catching up.

    That'd make sense but like Pribian, I've had it happen when cascades are involved too. Mostly in Big Enchilada when the current wave glitches so the last one standing switches it's portrait to the first out of the next wave, before the cascades start. So the tile drops are already calculated all the way through multiple cascades?
    Just something I've been wondering for a while, finally decided to ask
  • rbdragon
    rbdragon Posts: 479 Mover and Shaker
    Plus, if it's just the animations just having to catch up, why isn't the xp gained animation the last thing on the list of things to complete?
  • fanghoul
    fanghoul Posts: 311 Mover and Shaker
    rbdragon wrote:
    Plus, if it's just the animations just having to catch up, why isn't the xp gained animation the last thing on the list of things to complete?

    Because D3, despite making a game we all enjoy, can also sometimes be a little clumsy with their programming? There's a number of graphical glitches in the game, like the one metioned with character's portraits changing before the moves resolve that killed that wave.
  • Dragon_Nexus
    Dragon_Nexus Posts: 3,701 Chairperson of the Boards
    As said above, the moment you make your move the computer works out exactly what's going to happen next. So it shows you the EXP because it already knows you'll win.
    It then plays out the animations for you.

    It's like how sometimes you'll be down to your last character and you see a big cascade coming, so you figure "I'll cut my losses and quit" but the exit menu doesn't work. why? The game already knows you've lost and makes you watch everything play out before it'll let you leave -.-

    On the plus side I know when the cause isn't lost yet if I can highlight the exit button when stunned and watching a cascade.
  • areacode212
    areacode212 Posts: 150 Tile Toppler
    ghost9490 wrote:
    GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:
    ghost9490 wrote:
    completing the Steve Rogers mission in Oscorp- Tower. Using Daredevil and have ambush out. Rags and Aries are still up. I match the ambush tile which takes out Rags. I get awarded the XP for clearing the mission, then the ambush trap resets and my turn ends. Aries matches the ambush tile and goes down. So.... given that's the order of events, if it's random, how'd the AI know I'd cleared the mission before ambush reset and the AI took it's turn?

    Because the random assignment and the AI's move have already been calculated the second you completed yours. The animations are just taking their time catching up.

    That'd make sense but like Pribian, I've had it happen when cascades are involved too. Mostly in Big Enchilada when the current wave glitches so the last one standing switches it's portrait to the first out of the next wave, before the cascades start. So the tile drops are already calculated all the way through multiple cascades?
    Just something I've been wondering for a while, finally decided to ask

    Yes, the time to calculate tile cascades in a match-3 game is insignificant. It's all random, just calculated instantaneously---it's the animations that make it take forever.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Demi just forgot to lock the XP banner as the last gui animation when multiple events happen after a move.

    Computers do math good! Your puny human brain do math bad and need pretty visual representations. The time the program needs to figure out what happens after you make your move is trivial, maybe a few microseconds, maybe even less. The animatations are purely for your benefit.
  • carrion_pigeons
    carrion_pigeons Posts: 942 Critical Contributor
    What I want to know is, why doesn't the computer just compute the full match from start to finish for all of my possible moves and then assume I played perfectly and tell me if I won or lost? Then I could just watch the whole set of animations at once, already knowing the outcome. Much less stressful that way, imo.
  • JeffCascadian
    JeffCascadian Posts: 665 Critical Contributor
    There are at least two threads about this subject in the Bugs forum. It's a minor annoyance but something I hope D3 does address.
  • El Satanno
    El Satanno Posts: 1,005 Chairperson of the Boards
    It's interesting to think about this because it kinda pulls back the curtain behind AI behavior.

    I've been using Sqrrl Grrl a lot in the Heroic. Her green is pretty fun to use, and she's quite good when boosted. Very frequently over the course of this event, I've won using it, and the victory XP banner shows up immediately after I make my move. To be perfectly clear: I get my win even before the AI makes it's move and my tiles resolve. Funny that, huh? All you determinists out there, rejoice!
  • Arhiippa
    Arhiippa Posts: 12 Just Dropped In
    So what we can deduce from all of this, is that the AI calculates everything that would happen before the player's next action before the player's next action... Not that surprising... The only odd thing about this is the incongruous timing of the XP animation compared to the game animation.
  • mohio
    mohio Posts: 1,690 Chairperson of the Boards
    I've been seeing this a lot too, especially using Squirrel Girl and/or HT in the heroic. Both of their green abilities have damage implications at the start of your turn, so I have had the XP from the win show up right after I made my move, even though I needed to wait until the beginning of my next turn to actually win due to SG cascades or HT green damage.

    The reason I think this could be problematic is in PvP with the cupcake metagame. If you win with your cupcake team and the server knows it instantly and switches your defensive team before you have to sit and watch a couple seconds of animations/cascades, then that could potentially have an effect on whether you take any hits or not. Imagine using super whales to set your cupcake team...you push the button and the game says victory and changes your defensive team, but you have to watch several seconds of hilarious whales flying all over your screen, followed by your enemies dying off one by one (with the banners and everything). By the time you made it back to the event screen you've already been vulnerable a good 15+ seconds. Anyway, just something to think about.
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
    mohio wrote:
    I've been seeing this a lot too, especially using Squirrel Girl and/or HT in the heroic. Both of their green abilities have damage implications at the start of your turn, so I have had the XP from the win show up right after I made my move, even though I needed to wait until the beginning of my next turn to actually win due to SG cascades or HT green damage.

    The reason I think this could be problematic is in PvP with the cupcake metagame. If you win with your cupcake team and the server knows it instantly and switches your defensive team before you have to sit and watch a couple seconds of animations/cascades, then that could potentially have an effect on whether you take any hits or not. Imagine using super whales to set your cupcake team...you push the button and the game says victory and changes your defensive team, but you have to watch several seconds of hilarious whales flying all over your screen, followed by your enemies dying off one by one (with the banners and everything). By the time you made it back to the event screen you've already been vulnerable a good 15+ seconds. Anyway, just something to think about.

    It's been this way forever though, the XP just highlights it, and to be honest makes it easier to identify how long you were pre-exposed.

Categories