*** Loki (Dark Reign) ***

Dayv

ThePolarCow wrote:

Locking threads with titles critical of new character powers seems...awful.

Having six different threads for one discussion isn't the best. Nobody was told not to be critical of the power, but having a critical opinion doesn't require a separate thread.

GothicKratos

ThePolarCow wrote:

Locking threads with titles critical of new character powers seems...awful.

IceIX locked the thread to keep all discussion in one place. This is an extremely common practice, not only here, but on forums in general. Feel free to read this thread and see plenty of people that agree with you, and their posts still exists, as do your in that very thread. Nobody is silencing you.

EDIT: Davy beat me to it.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

ThePolarCow wrote:

Locking threads with titles critical of new character powers seems...awful.

Having six different threads for one discussion isn't the best. Nobody was told not to be critical of the power, but having a critical opinion doesn't require a separate thread.

Please guide me to these six other threads. Cause to me it appears IceIX only locked one.

I'm not disagreeing with having discussions in one place. Totally agree.

However, this is the first time I have seen a thread locked for that reason without seeing the threads merged.

Your telling me it isn't to the companies benefit that that other thread falls off the first page fast?

How about putting a link to each thread so that users can go between them?

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

ThePolarCow wrote:

Locking threads with titles critical of new character powers seems...awful.

IceIX locked the thread to keep all discussion in one place. This is an extremely common practice, not only here, but on forums in general. Feel free to read this thread and see plenty of people that agree with you, and their posts still exists, as do your in that very thread. Nobody is silencing you.

EDIT: Davy beat me to it.

I don't recall expressing an opinion about Loki's new power. I haven't played with it yet so I'll reserve judgement.

I was a very late adopter of Hood it took me a long time to come around

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

kalirion wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Ran the numbers for using illusions right after polarizing force (meaning board basically has smallest amount of TU tiles possible) - viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18598.
Turns out that the difference between level 3 illusions and level 5 illusions is 86% -> 87.7% cascade chance happening and 10.5->11.2 tiles destroyed on average. Keep in mind that this is the best case scenario for level 5 illusions.

The original numbers are done on a randomized board, which will have 9 TUs on average causing level 5 illusions to swap ~55 tiles, which is marginally more than level 4, which is why those numbers are so close together.

This cements 3 purple, 5 black, 5 green Loki for me. I would much rather have the option to use black to swing the entire board than an extra 1.7% cascade chance and .7 tiles when using it after polarizing force, and basically near no benefit when used without polarizing force.

How about making hard-to-reach tiles - an impending countdown or whatever - more reachable? Is it still about the same chance, since even if a tile doesn't move, matching tiles might be moved close to it?

Don't think higher level of illusions would make this better either. The simulator unfortunately isn't sophisticated enough to test for this... yet.

I mean, yes it would. More tiles are moved. If you're calculating the odds of a single tile moving on the board, obviously more tiles moving at random raises the odds of a corner tile moving.
Calculating the odds that a corner tile would end up in the middle is much harder though.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

I mean, yes it would. More tiles are moved. If you're calculating the odds of a single tile moving on the board, obviously more tiles moving at random raises the odds of a corner tile moving.
Calculating the odds that a corner tile would end up in the middle is much harder though.

There's no reason to go into that much detail because you'd only try to move a corner tile when it is unreachable, which is usually is. You don't know if the new spot is going to be better but it's almost certainly more reachable than the corner and that's all you can be concerned with. The chance of moving the corner tile is just (number of tiles moved by Illusions)/(number of colored tiles on board). At Illusions 5 this is basically 100% (it's possible there are an odd number of tiles TUs and the corner is the odd tile out) and at Illusions 4 it's basically 100% (when considering on average 9 tiles are TUs). At level 3 it's 44/(~54) = 81.5%. Is that enough to matter? Well it's no less likely than having more than 5 protect or strike tiles to steal in most scenarios. Note that because protect are converted to strike and vice versa, even if they have 10 of each out, after a Trickery it'd just be canceled out. Most of the time you're only worried about strike tiles, and it'd be overkill because damage can't get below 1. The only character that can create more than 5 protect tiles are Bullseye, Magneto, and Falcon, and it probably doesn't make much sense to have a character specifically designed to counter them.

Mawtful

ThePolarCow wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

ThePolarCow wrote:

Locking threads with titles critical of new character powers seems...awful.

Having six different threads for one discussion isn't the best. Nobody was told not to be critical of the power, but having a critical opinion doesn't require a separate thread.

Please guide me to these six other threads. Cause to me it appears IceIX only locked one.

I'm not disagreeing with having discussions in one place. Totally agree.

However, this is the first time I have seen a thread locked for that reason without seeing the threads merged.

Your telling me it isn't to the companies benefit that that other thread falls off the first page fast?

How about putting a link to each thread so that users can go between them?

Reading comprehension is hard.

Six threads =/= Six other threads. The exact sentence was a general statement, and not actually specific to this current situation. I'll repeat it, since it's good advice and worth remembering. Having six different threads for one discussion isn't the best.

Unfortunately, I can't link you to 6 threads, but I found 3 on the front page of General Discussion, plus the one in Character Discussion that IceIX referred to.

Thread #1: You're in it. Just in case you need the link though: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20102
Thread #2: Character Discussion Thread: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=743
Thread #3: Character Rotation Thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19948
Thread #4: The locked thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20145

GothicKratos

ThePolarCow wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

ThePolarCow wrote:

Locking threads with titles critical of new character powers seems...awful.

IceIX locked the thread to keep all discussion in one place. This is an extremely common practice, not only here, but on forums in general. Feel free to read this thread and see plenty of people that agree with you, and their posts still exists, as do your in that very thread. Nobody is silencing you.

EDIT: Davy beat me to it.

I don't recall expressing an opinion about Loki's new power.

I'm sorry, I assumed you were the created of the thread you were complaining about. My bad.

ThePolarCow wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

ThePolarCow wrote:

Locking threads with titles critical of new character powers seems...awful.

Having six different threads for one discussion isn't the best. Nobody was told not to be critical of the power, but having a critical opinion doesn't require a separate thread.

Please guide me to these six other threads. Cause to me it appears IceIX only locked one. I'm not disagreeing with having discussions in one place. Totally agree. However, this is the first time I have seen a thread locked for that reason without seeing the threads merged. Your telling me it isn't to the companies benefit that that other thread falls off the first page fast? How about putting a link to each thread so that users can go between them?

Do I really need to respond to all this? I guess I will, just to humor you.

He didn't said there was literally six thread about this topic, it was an exaggeration to make his point, because, you know, things like that happen pretty often. If you agree, why even both to try and make any of these points? It doesn't benefit them at all, because them same complaints are in the thread they're leading people to. Why would we post about of links to numerous threads if we could just, you know, just have one to begin with?

EDIT: However, this is all off-topic. If you have any more concerns about our forum policies, feel free to make a thread about it, or PM me personally.

EDIT2: Put the quotes in spoiler tags, so it's not as huge of a distraction.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

ark123 wrote:

I mean, yes it would. More tiles are moved. If you're calculating the odds of a single tile moving on the board, obviously more tiles moving at random raises the odds of a corner tile moving.
Calculating the odds that a corner tile would end up in the middle is much harder though.

There's no reason to go into that much detail because you'd only try to move a corner tile when it is unreachable, which is usually is. You don't know if the new spot is going to be better but it's almost certainly more reachable than the corner and that's all you can be concerned with. The chance of moving the corner tile is just (number of tiles moved by Illusions)/(number of colored tiles on board). At Illusions 5 this is basically 100% (it's possible there are an odd number of tiles TUs and the corner is the odd tile out) and at Illusions 4 it's basically 100% (when considering on average 9 tiles are TUs). At level 3 it's 44/(~54) = 81.5%. Is that enough to matter? Well it's no less likely than having more than 5 protect or strike tiles to steal in most scenarios. Note that because protect are converted to strike and vice versa, even if they have 10 of each out, after a Trickery it'd just be canceled out. Most of the time you're only worried about strike tiles, and it'd be overkill because damage can't get below 1. The only character that can create more than 5 protect tiles are Bullseye, Magneto, and Falcon, and it probably doesn't make much sense to have a character specifically designed to counter them.

I was more picturing a Tommy Gun tile with 1 turn left and 4 strike tiles littering the board.

Unknown

Stealing strike tile is not important because strike tiles do not stack when stolen and become protect tiles. For example looking at my Blade's stats at 127. His strongest match is 64 so a match 3 would be 192. He creates 2 strike tiles at strength 47, so suppose 8 of them are on the board so you stole 5, then you've 2 47 strength protect tile to account for the 3 you didn't steal and now you're shaving 94 damage off the 192 match, which is roughly half, and at that point we can be reasonably satisfied. Anything less than 8 and you'll be taking close to no match damage. The match damage/ability damage ratio should hold up so even if your opponent is level 395 you'd still get it down to about half match strength after stealing 5 out of 8 which is something you can be satisfied with. Of course a better question to ask is how are you even alive for so long if a level 395 Blade has 8 strike tiles out which also illustrates how it's unlikely to have that many strike tiles out for so long against any threatening opponent.

On the other hand stealing protect tiles do stack because they get converted to strike tiles. But only Bullseye, Falcon, and Magneto can create more than 5 protect tiles in a reasonable time, and even then it takes a pretty long time for them to get that many protect tiles on. I guess if you have Trickery maxed out you can purposely ignore purple/yellow in the relevant matchups counting on your black to undo it but those were never the most dangerous colors to watch out for in the first place in matchups involving these characters.

Higher level of illusion is about more cascades. It's to ensure every tile you need to shuffle does get shuffled. For the purpose of cascades you don't care if the corner tiles moved or not, but if you're trying to get rid of a CD in a corner it does matter a lot. I remember one game against Nick Fury the AI just dropped Escape Plan at the middle of the bottom row which is a pretty safe place and I couldn't get rid of it the whole game and lost pretty badly. I don't know if moving it elsewhere would help much but I know I definitely can't get rid of anything on the bottom row very easily.

Unknown

Is it worth setting up 4-in-a-row for the ai just to activate his green though? I was thinking along the lines of GSBW or MnMags. Might not be too good an idea but does anyone think it is worth exploring?

Nonce Equitaur 2

In the Gauntlet, I finally got to see Loki's new power used against me. And then used against me again, and again. My calculation was -- If I do one more green 4-match, I'll have enough to trigger an X-Force. And I was right, but the X-Force didn't wipe out many of the counters. Definitely makes Loki trickier.

Unknown

Or more Mischievous even.

Unknown

From Gauntlet, against a 5 green Loki you pretty much can't make match 4/5 unless that move will kill Loki because you have only one turn to get rid of the CDs and even if half of them go off that will undo your match 4 (steal 4 AP = 8 AP turnaround) so you're better off just taking a match 3 instead, and that's quite crippling not to mention it can sometimes lead you to setup some very bad moves on accident.

There's no point to purposely let the opponent have a match 4 though. The AI will never miss one anyway, so you don't really have to help them. If you somehow feel the urge to do this, just play faster (saves you time to do other stuff) and the AI will find all the match 4s you missed. Well, it might make sense against very trivial opponents where you don't care what they could possibly do. Note that the cascade of his green is nontrivial either (up to 4 tiles per match 4/5).

Looking at how my games versus Loki went in the Gauntlet it's not clear to me if Loki's deterrence against taking match 4/5s results in more AP denied compared to Dormammu's Aid, and Gauntlet enemies probably favor The Hood just because they have way more HP than any player character can have. I suspect in a neutral (no boost) environment it is quite possible for Loki to effectively deny more AP than The Hood before he goes down if your early match 4s aren't your best colors. That is, if you have say a green match 4 right away you probably should take it against The Hood or Loki and then that will likely be turned into something that can kill them so here it is even, but if you have say a match 4 TU you probably won't take it because of the green, even though that's usually still the best move because of its cascade potential, and you'd either have to break it up or let the AI have it and both are generally bad choices.

Unknown

Against Loki in the Gauntlet this morning, I found out why I have to pay attention.
I did a match-five thinking "Yup, need that!" and 4 countdown tiles appear. Went "Oh...right. Loki. New ability. Watch out for that." and then I went and immediately did a match-4 without thinking. 4 more countdown tiles appear. "Oh, right. Loki. New...uh...wait, again? ****!"
I have nobody to blame but myself.
I am a sleepy octopus this morning.

PS: Still won the match - just.

Unknown

Hey can someone confirm how illusions works? I thought it moved tiles by swapping pairs of colored tiles. Eg, at level 1 it would be 7 pairs. Unfortunately, had dumped Loki awhile back, and now don't have the covers to test this.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

Hey can someone confirm how illusions works? I thought it moved tiles by swapping pairs of colored tiles. Eg, at level 1 it would be 7 pairs. Unfortunately, had dumped Loki awhile back, and now don't have the covers to test this.

It does swap pairs, and if you look at the ingame description for level 1 it actually does, correctly, say "swaps 14 pairs" (not 7)

Unknown

dearbluey wrote:

Against Loki in the Gauntlet this morning, I found out why I have to pay attention.
I did a match-five thinking "Yup, need that!" and 4 countdown tiles appear. Went "Oh...right. Loki. New ability. Watch out for that." and then I went and immediately did a match-4 without thinking. 4 more countdown tiles appear. "Oh, right. Loki. New...uh...wait, again? ****!"
I have nobody to blame but myself.
I am a sleepy octopus this morning.

PS: Still won the match - just.

I went "Oh look he got some tiles out the turn before I killed him, neat"

I already use too many strike tiles and dislike the illusions animations too much to not kill him first anyway.

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

Note that because protect are converted to strike and vice versa, even if they have 10 of each out, after a Trickery it'd just be canceled out.

What?? That's not how trickery works. The effects wouldn't cancel out. You'd get both strike and protects.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Note that because protect are converted to strike and vice versa, even if they have 10 of each out, after a Trickery it'd just be canceled out.

What?? That's not how trickery works. The effects wouldn't cancel out. You'd get both strike and protects.

To try to clarify this, the original poster stated that if you had 10 strike and 10 protect tiles on the board, a 4 cover Trickery would balance the board, by converting 5 of each to your side. After trickery, there would be 5 strike tiles for each side and 5 protect tiles for each side. If there are less than 10, then a 4 cover Trickery is plenty to swing the battle in your direction.