The ‘lucky’ Greg

Coilbox

Right, straight to the point...

I wouldnt just bother to create a thread on this forum because i lost a battle or two... But there is something that is frustrating and annoys me like hell...

There is a more than notable difference on how the board ‘randomness’ works comparing the training grounds with any other events.
I play lots of training grounds every day. When i say lots, trust me, its LOTS. Enough battles to test my decks and build some percentages to know what works better and what doesnt.
I have what i consider a nice collection of cards and planeswalkers, product of time and cash investment, and with little differences deppending on the color, planeswalker and format i came with a bunch of decks that have a very high victory rate, roughly a 90% i would say.

This is not a bragging thread or anything, im just trying to point out something.

Whenever i go to a battle in any events other than the training grounds these percentages drop down massively, and its not product of bad luck, its just systemathic.
The way the board works, and how its balanced towards the AI is just ridiculous. In most of my turns i look to the gems and what im able to match is a couple loyalty gems here and there and maybe three gems of any other color other than my PW colors... Of course from time to time i get to match a 5 or a 4, and do nice cascades... But In the other side, when Greg moves... oh god, he always has the table in his favor. Cascading massively and always having gems of his colours. When i use terms like always or never its obviously an exageration, but my point is that the difference between TG and some other events (this special angels event for example) is just... massive and frustrating.

A more intelligent AI is great, a Greg able to match 5 gems is great, a more tactical oponent in combat that reassembles his cards in hand deppending on the situation is great. We all want that and we always complained about the sillyness of the AI. But giving him the favor of the table, cascades and all the odds to match his colors and get the best mana in order to make him win... That is FRUSTRATING, very cheap and just irritating.

Thats it. My rant is off. Im sorry about it.

Edit: just correcting some typos.

Matthew

You're aware they fixed the AI, right? He will now make match-5s all day long, and he even sets himself up for cascades. Did you figure those factors into your analysis?

Coilbox

Matthew said:

You're aware they fixed the AI, right? He will now make match-5s all day long, and he even sets himself up for cascades. Did you figure those factors into your analysis?

I did indeed, im just pointing out the massive difference between the TG and other events

DaddyO

I like to tinker in training grounds and play more “tuned decks” in the events. I’m sure I’m not the only one. On a side note, I did finally get creamed by an Omniscience deck in the 2x mana event. That deck is ridiculous with HUF and double mana. 

FindingHeart8

Coilbox said:

A more intelligent AI is great, a Greg able to match 5 gems is great, a more tactical oponent in combat that reassembles his cards in hand deppending on the situation is great. We all want that and we always complained about the sillyness of the AI. But giving him the favor of the table, cascades and all the odds to match his colors and get the best mana in order to make him win... That is FRUSTRATING, very cheap and just irritating.

Thats it. My rant is off. Im sorry about it.

Edit: just correcting some typos.

Guess you got to be careful what you wish for.  If this is true, I'll miss the fumbling AI.

Rhasget

DaddyO said:

I like to tinker in training grounds and play more “tuned decks” in the events. I’m sure I’m not the only one. On a side note, I did finally get creamed by an Omniscience deck in the 2x mana event. That deck is ridiculous with HUF and double mana. 

I have had the same 'feeling' for a while. Always easy wins in TG, even with experimental, weak decks. And struggling alot more in events with my proven decks (that I have used and tweaked for long and placed top with).
Partly I think it's because of BC though with more players able to build top decks, but not all because of it.


And the Valentine event has been dreadful for me. Two losses to Omni decks and two more to HUF/Deploy combos. All on or before turn 3.

wereotter

FindingHeart8 said:

Coilbox said:

A more intelligent AI is great, a Greg able to match 5 gems is great, a more tactical oponent in combat that reassembles his cards in hand deppending on the situation is great. We all want that and we always complained about the sillyness of the AI. But giving him the favor of the table, cascades and all the odds to match his colors and get the best mana in order to make him win... That is FRUSTRATING, very cheap and just irritating.

Thats it. My rant is off. Im sorry about it.

Edit: just correcting some typos.

Guess you got to be careful what you wish for.  If this is true, I'll miss the fumbling AI.

I already miss him..... I'm not the most strategic or smartest person when it comes to matches on the board. I can maybe identify that matching one set of three will also match another three when they fall, but that's about as far as my brain can process. The AI is now superior when it comes to identifying matches. It cascades far more frequently, and its cascades more often lead to a match-5 giving it an extra swap.

On one hand, I appreciate the challenge to step up my own skills, but on the other, sometimes you just want to relax and enjoy it, and the more powerful AI isn't really conducive to that.

Gilesclone

I like the new Greg.  He keeps me on my toes!

ArielSira

Rhasget said:

And the Valentine event has been dreadful for me. Two losses to Omni decks and two more to HUF/Deploy combos. All on or before turn 3.

Just had my first loss in the event, Ajani RW. I match 2 x 3 gems and pass the turn; then watched the AI play gem block destruction guys into HUF into Deploy into Approach. After 1 minute of this I had lost. I get that it's a supercharged match and otherwise probably wouldn't have happened on the *first* turn but this was just stupid.

FindingHeart8

wereotter said:

FindingHeart8 said:

Coilbox said:

A more intelligent AI is great, a Greg able to match 5 gems is great, a more tactical oponent in combat that reassembles his cards in hand deppending on the situation is great. We all want that and we always complained about the sillyness of the AI. But giving him the favor of the table, cascades and all the odds to match his colors and get the best mana in order to make him win... That is FRUSTRATING, very cheap and just irritating.

Thats it. My rant is off. Im sorry about it.

Edit: just correcting some typos.

Guess you got to be careful what you wish for.  If this is true, I'll miss the fumbling AI.

I already miss him..... I'm not the most strategic or smartest person when it comes to matches on the board. I can maybe identify that matching one set of three will also match another three when they fall, but that's about as far as my brain can process. The AI is now superior when it comes to identifying matches. It cascades far more frequently, and its cascades more often lead to a match-5 giving it an extra swap.

On one hand, I appreciate the challenge to step up my own skills, but on the other, sometimes you just want to relax and enjoy it, and the more powerful AI isn't really conducive to that.

I think if there were greater rewards for each event I wouldn't mind as much of a challenge.  Sometimes though it feels like there are more events going on then I can reasonably participate in (and not have this game as a part time job), it's times like those that I do not appreciate every match being either painstakingly long or difficult.  Sometimes you just want to get through it lol.

Mainloop25

Isn't this what we were all complaining about?   The inept AI? 

Kinesia

Mainloop25 said:

Isn't this what we were all complaining about?   The inept AI? 

Some people, yes, but there were many many levels of complaint.

Most people were amused but upset about things like Skythingy's Shot targetting it's own creatures.
Some people were also annoyed the AI couldn't match five but there were far fewer people complaining about that.

Other issues as well, but it all had to do with personal comfort level.

Unfortunately all the complaints got lumped together in "make AI better" when they are different things.
The Sky shot is just a bug fix really, adding match 5 is a deliberate choice to make the AI harder.

We really need scaled difficulty somehow...

wereotter

Mainloop25 said:

Isn't this what we were all complaining about?   The inept AI? 

I was never bothered by the bumbling AI....

I did sometimes find it disappointing that the AI was SO dumbed down that it would avoid a match on my 1-shield remaining Hixus gem and not enable its creatures, or that it would avoid matching gems on my color when it didn't have any of its own. But those are small things that could have been adjusted.

The AI has seemingly gone from completely inept to expert level over night.

Dropspot

This game is ridiculously easy. It's so easy that it's even not challenging enough to keep me interested in playing it. Having a better AI is the minimum they can do to improve this game. I barely remember the last time I lost a match. And considering the incredible number of perfect ties I can assure this happens far more often than a balanced game should look. 

Some time ago I started playing another game and I lose far more often. I barely can make it to 50% win rate. And I can assure you I prefer the challenge over this 99% win rate.

Difficulty makes wins more rewarding and would also solve the ties problems.

octal9

I'll repeat it until I'm blue in the face but I'd really prefer to not have to repeat it that long:

The AI doesn't know which gems are coming in. And the myth that it generates more cascades than the player during gem generation is exactly that - a myth.

And here's why:

This is an analysis of mtgpq's client side RNG algorithm. As near as I can tell, it's a mersenne twister. This analysis contains 262144 (512²) samplings:



Note the distinct lack of a pattern, and now compare it to php's rand() function:

That pattern? That's a bad RNG.

mtgpq's client-side pseudorandom number generator is as effective as a random number generator can be.

Brigby

@octal9

FindingHeart8

octal9 said:

I'll repeat it until I'm blue in the face but I'd really prefer to not have to repeat it that long:

The AI doesn't know which gems are coming in. And the myth that it generates more cascades than the player during gem generation is exactly that - a myth.

And here's why:

This is an analysis of mtgpq's client side RNG algorithm. As near as I can tell, it's a mersenne twister. This analysis contains 262144 (512²) samplings:

that's not science, that's my 90's TV screen.

ZW2007-

I think the biggest issue here is that Greg has been unrestrained and is using his full capabilities of being a computer against us once again. The problem isn't that Greg knows what gems will be generated and fall into place, the problem is that he can make the optimal match every single time. Even the best player will miss the perfect match every now and then (Especially during events with supercharge or enrage when the bloody effects make it difficult to see gems on the outsides of the board.) This makes it seem like Greg gets lucky moves when in reality he is able to comprehend where every single gem that he can see will fall into place on the gem board and is also able to predict where the highest probability for an incoming cascade might happen even if he doesn't know what is falling from above. When you can make the perfect move every single time, you are going to get a lot of cascades.

That said, I have no way of knowing if he is programmed to make the optimal move every time or if he's just playing better than he used to and getting a little luckier. I have no doubts about what octal9 posted being true but here comes the tinfoil hat anyway; sometimes I have doubts that there isn't some kind of rubber band effect hidden elsewhere in the code that does generate large mana gains outside of the RNG gem creation. I'm sure that conspiracy theory will completely invalidate the rest of my post but whatever. Keep in mind, I don't think the rubber band effect is one sided if it does in fact exist. 

wereotter

I didn’t claim the AI knows what’s coming so much as at this point the AI is probably smarter than your average player (or at least smarter than me) at being to identify what matches will cause larger cascades based on gems currently on the field.

its obviously my own opinion, but I’m not a huge fan of playing a mobile game against an AI opponent who is able to calculate further ahead than I can, and would say for me, optimal would be inbetween where it was and where it is now. 

octal9

Good article on this by Steve Fawkner:

https://gemsofwar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210140183-Does-the-AI-Cheat-

Bullvinne

I am fine with the new AI, it is definitely harder and I have lost more in the last day or so, but its not impossible. Id does make getting all of the extra objectives harder, but hey... I dont expect to be handed everything.