Remove Startled Awake + Crush of Tentacle looping combo

Steeme
Steeme Posts: 784 Critical Contributor
in MtGPQ Bugs & Technical Issues
Spent 18 minutes grinding through a match where the AI would cycle with Kiora through Startled Awake + Fertile Thicket + Prism Array + AA + Glimmer of Genius + Crush of Tentacles either every turn or second turn.  It causes turn-by-turn looping due to the massive ramp + multi-landfalls which causes a neverending supply of cards and the ability to dump all cards each turn.  Loyalty gain is also never-ending thus guaranteeing extra mana or the ability to tutor a creature back out.

The AI just board wipes everyone anyways, so it is nothing but a timewaster.  I did eventually win the match due to its stupidity, but this is nothing but a grief deck.  The player made a mistake of including Moon in the deck which at some point I was able to buff with Dovin's third to start ramping myself.

Since players cannot behave themselves when constructing grief decks, the developers must step in once again.  Nobody enjoys dragging a match out to 20 minutes, never knowing if there will ever be an opportunity to win the match.  I was actually just going to force quit once I saw the third crush of tentacles cast (considering I have no spells in my **** event deck, not that it would have mattered in this case).


@Brigby It seems I can only post in General Discussion but this likely belongs in the Technical Issues sub-section.

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Comments

  • Ohboy
    Ohboy Posts: 1,766 Chairperson of the Boards
    What grief deck?

    Ramp to tentacles + skill 3 spike is a legit deck I play often. 


  • Steeme
    Steeme Posts: 784 Critical Contributor
    Ohboy said:
    What grief deck?

    Ramp to tentacles + skill 3 spike is a legit deck I play often. 


    Just to clarify, a grief deck is something that is constructed in such a way that provides an overwhelmingly negative experience due to the AI pilot script.
  • Rogan_Josh
    Rogan_Josh Posts: 140 Tile Toppler
    Agreed, this isn't a grief deck, just a good one. 

    I'm honestly having difficulty seeing how you had such a bad time of it. Sounds like you just had a bad game. 
  • Steeme
    Steeme Posts: 784 Critical Contributor
    Rogan Josh said:
    Agreed, this isn't a grief deck, just a good one. 

    I'm honestly having difficulty seeing how you had such a bad time of it. Sounds like you just had a bad game. 

    The AI spams crush of tentacles every turn or second turn, and you don't see how anyone could have "such a bad time of it"?  The match took 18 minutes (no exaggeration).  Is that how long your matches take?

    Just because you got lucky in the event to not match up against it, doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

  • Rogan_Josh
    Rogan_Josh Posts: 140 Tile Toppler
    Steeme said:
    Rogan Josh said:
    Agreed, this isn't a grief deck, just a good one. 

    I'm honestly having difficulty seeing how you had such a bad time of it. Sounds like you just had a bad game. 

    The AI spams crush of tentacles every turn or second turn, and you don't see how anyone could have "such a bad time of it"?  The match took 18 minutes (no exaggeration).  Is that how long your matches take?

    Just because you got lucky in the event to not match up against it, doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

    No, i understand that it was a pain in the **** to play against but that was just one game. It sounds like it was more RNG than deck design that gave you such a problem.
  • Steeme
    Steeme Posts: 784 Critical Contributor
    Rogan Josh said:
    Steeme said:
    Rogan Josh said:
    Agreed, this isn't a grief deck, just a good one. 

    I'm honestly having difficulty seeing how you had such a bad time of it. Sounds like you just had a bad game. 

    The AI spams crush of tentacles every turn or second turn, and you don't see how anyone could have "such a bad time of it"?  The match took 18 minutes (no exaggeration).  Is that how long your matches take?

    Just because you got lucky in the event to not match up against it, doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

    No, i understand that it was a pain in the **** to play against but that was just one game. It sounds like it was more RNG than deck design that gave you such a problem.


    It is definitely deck design.  Every opponent I face stuffs Startled Awake in their deck.  Some even stuff SA + Ulvenwald.  This is not the issue.

    The single specific combo that I listed in the OP in particular is constructed in such a way that the AI will just loop and board wipe everyone including itself.  Yes, that gives the player opportunity to win the match, but it also drags the match out just like Baral cycles would.

  • Mainloop25
    Mainloop25 Posts: 1,961 Chairperson of the Boards
    That deck is probably pretty amazing in  human hands. Having just gotten CoT, I can make that actually work for me.  However, the AI is dumb and doesn't know how to prioritize/switch off CoT so this is going to keep happening. 

    Doesn't mean any cards need to be banned or whatever. 
  • Steeme
    Steeme Posts: 784 Critical Contributor
    Mainloop25 said:
    That deck is probably pretty amazing in  human hands. Having just gotten CoT, I can make that actually work for me.  However, the AI is dumb and doesn't know how to prioritize/switch off CoT so this is going to keep happening. 

    Doesn't mean any cards need to be banned or whatever. 


    This is only going to get worse.  Suppose the players that win this event have the most optimized decks (since they got full perfect scores after all).  Now they end up with Rishkar's Expertise.  With glee they take their new card and the combo becomes SA + Ulvenwald + AA + RishkarEx + Fertile + Prism + Herald + Engulf.

    You might think the AI is terrible at playing Rishkar since it has been playing it with an empty hand, but Kiora's hand is always full with the above combo, which further perpetuates the cycle.

  • Mainloop25
    Mainloop25 Posts: 1,961 Chairperson of the Boards
    Ok so we agree that a lot of cards need to be rebalanced, because it's not any one card in that deck that's so scary. It's the combo of mythics. I don't disagree with you there. Sounded at first like you were just whining about a particular combo you couldn't figure your way around. 
  • THEMAGICkMAN
    THEMAGICkMAN Posts: 697 Critical Contributor
    Steeme said:
    Rogan Josh said:
    Agreed, this isn't a grief deck, just a good one. 

    I'm honestly having difficulty seeing how you had such a bad time of it. Sounds like you just had a bad game. 

    The AI spams crush of tentacles every turn or second turn, and you don't see how anyone could have "such a bad time of it"?  The match took 18 minutes (no exaggeration).  Is that how long your matches take?

    Just because you got lucky in the event to not match up against it, doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

    I had a match go for 3 hours once. I've heard tales of longer matches as well. Just sayin'

    Anyway, it's not the decks problem - it's simply well build and you got unlucky. It wasn't built to grief anyone, it was built to be played. It's the cards and the potential to loop that's the problem here. Loops are generally ok so long as they're hard to pull off, aren't infinite and aren't an auto-win. Sounds like this is none of those. Tough to play against, sure. 
  • shteev
    shteev Posts: 2,031 Chairperson of the Boards
    http://forums.d3go.com/discussion/61762/tezzeret-the-schemer

    Steeme said:
    Not going to argue about power creep this, nerf that.

  • GrizzoMtGPQ
    GrizzoMtGPQ Posts: 776 Critical Contributor
    edited May 2017
    This is not a loop @Steeme these are just good cards. Baral was broken because the deck on turn 1 could go on forever and kill you without you EVER getting a chance to do anything. We've had that before with Seasons Past returning a copy of itself. Loops must not be allowed. Everything else is just cards interacting and some do it better than others.

    If you're looking for a really broken set of cards try Behold the Beyond with Rattlechains and Startled Awake.
  • Steeme
    Steeme Posts: 784 Critical Contributor
    shteev said:
    http://forums.d3go.com/discussion/61762/tezzeret-the-schemer

    Steeme said:
    Not going to argue about power creep this, nerf that.


    You're a little off-topic, but just in case I wasn't clear, this is an issue with the AI mindlessly cycling through cards in a sequence that takes forever.  This isn't a topic about power creep.

    GrizzoMtGPQ said:
    This is not a loop @Steeme these are just good cards. Baral was broken because the deck on turn 1 could go on forever and kill you without you EVER getting a chance to do anything. We've had that before with Seasons Past returning a copy of itself. Loops must not be allowed. Everything else is just cards interacting and some do it better than others.

    If you're looking for a really broken set of cards try Behold the Beyond with Rattlechains and Startled Awake.

    They are not "just good cards", they are a specific selection of cards that the AI pilots mindlessly.  Yes I agree it is a "well constructed deck" in the hands of a player, but there is a glitch in the AI script which causes grief.  I'm sure there are worse combos possible now with Tezz 2 but the existing of something "worse" does not mean this issue should be ignored.


    Regardless, given the lack of support, I should have placed a disclaimer that the proposed fix is to correct the AI behaviour so that it plays more intelligently.  Then at least everyone facing the deck will just lose on turn 8 instead of winning on turn 50.


  • shteev
    shteev Posts: 2,031 Chairperson of the Boards
    Steeme said:
    Yes I agree it is a "well constructed deck" in the hands of a player, but there is a glitch in the AI script which causes grief.
    Are you saying that if the AI was different, say, it played more intelligently like a player, that there wouldn't be a problem?
  • ElfNeedsFood
    ElfNeedsFood Posts: 944 Critical Contributor
    Yes, the AI needs to not trigger when it should keep its creatures and attack instead.  So the fix is really to tune the AI on Crush and not accuse people of building this deck to ruin someone else's day...
  • Steeme
    Steeme Posts: 784 Critical Contributor
    shteev said:
    Steeme said:
    Yes I agree it is a "well constructed deck" in the hands of a player, but there is a glitch in the AI script which causes grief.
    Are you saying that if the AI was different, say, it played more intelligently like a player, that there wouldn't be a problem?


    You can't just flip the switch and make the AI more intelligent, because the current state of the game is somewhat balanced on its current level of "intelligence" (read: lack thereof).  Obviously it would create other issues but in general the goal is to eliminate cycles that cause matches to be painfully extended.  Some of us have things to do in real life and in general wasting 20 minutes on a single match is not enjoyable.  Notice how I have an issue with this match, which I eventually won with full points, but am not concerned about the 4 matches that I did lose in this event, simply because those matches were well fought.


    ElfNeedsFood said:
    Yes, the AI needs to not trigger when it should keep its creatures and attack instead.  So the fix is really to tune the AI on Crush and not accuse people of building this deck to ruin someone else's day...

    I find it strange that you use the word accuse, so I believe you must take this personally.  This is not personal, I assure you.  The community has proven (in general), by evidence of the rampant abuse of Baral cycling, that players can and will build decks which knowingly cycle and will not dismantle it without Dev intervention.  Perhaps they are servicing their own needs, but you will never convince me that someone who can consciously build such a finely tuned deck is not at the same time aware that other players will face it.
  • Matthew
    Matthew Posts: 605 Critical Contributor
    Whenever I run into this setup, Crush only ever goes off once or twice on a single turn. Add to that the fact that the deck shuffling algorithm makes decks extremely clumpy, and at worst, it only sets me back a couple of turns. Generally speaking, the AI is too stupid to correctly pull this off with any consistent degree of lethality. I'm almost always able to overcome it when it happens, and the times that I die, I chalk it up to bad luck.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    Moved to Bugs & Technical Issues section per OP's request

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