Hard/Smart Mode

TheBaku

As someone with a fairly developed roster,  I was thinking of a way to make the game more challenging...

How about a hard mode vs smart AI... As in,  an opponent that matches L shaped 5s,  protects their countdown/special tiles and tries to use their powersets effectively or with synergy...

Of course it would lead to more losses,  but maybe rewards could be tweaked to incentivize play at this level...

Thoughts?

Vhailorx

Competitive Mpq requires certain, fast victory in every match and viciously punishes loses in a variety of ways. 

I don't want a smarter ai so long as these mechanics remain in place.

But I would be happy with an experimental hard mode for good rewards in a gauntlet-style event that was pure pve.

TheBaku

Sorry, I most definitely meant for PvE! Should have specified...

It may help put some 'puzzle' in my puzzle quest!

HoundofShadow

I have proposed this a couple of times. The dev replied to this and also pointed me to this link about playing against a smarter AI:

https://www.demiurgestudios.com/engineering/a-worthy-opponent/

The verdict is: they are unlikely to implement this.

I think they could implement this in SCL 10. The number of clears needed will be reduced to 1 clear. Since those who are going to choose SCL 10 are experts in playing MPQ, a few more conditions could be implemented:

1) The player is considered to have lose the match either by being defeated or retreating. This is to prevent players from re-rolling the board. The player will get zero point and that node will not be playable again.

2) All heals and healthpacks are suspended. All boosts and teamup are suspended. The health of characters will not be healed back in SCL 10. However, outside of SCL 10, everything is back to normal.

3) All enemies are immune to Stun and have supports equipped.

4) Downed characters will remain downed for the entire run of PvE.

5) Enemies will be able to move player's characters to the front during their turn.

6) There will only be 1 timeslice and 1 shard. 

Top 3 Placement will give out 1 5-star cover, plus other rewards.

Zeofar

Indeed, it would appear the ship has sailed on a better AI for a variety of reasons. Better match AI is probably viable in some sense, but a surprising proportion of players are actively against even that.

HoundofShadow said:

I think they could implement this in SCL 10. The number of clears needed will be reduced to 1 clear. Since those who are going to choose SCL 10 are experts in playing MPQ, a few more conditions could be implemented:

...

3) All enemies are immune to Stun and have supports equipped.
...
5) Enemies will be able to move player's characters to the front during their turn.
...

Interesting set of conditions here, but I don't care for these two myself. Removing stuns makes sense on boss characters, but I don't really see the appeal in locking them out entirely. Including supports is OK, but it's problematic that the interface doesn't make it terribly convenient to inspect opponent's (potentially very impactful) supports.

For target selection, I'd like to see player advantage equalized the other way: players can't manually select targets and are instead limited by the standard tanking mechanics. This is also just easier to implement than designing targeting logic for the AI.

DAZ0273

So basically lock out Thor and Okoye from SCL10 and punish players for using 5* Thanos, Lol! I can see that going down well with 5* players...especially as Gritty seems to remain intact...

Also the enemy targeting mechanism sounds like it would be very easy to confuse the AI when you are using the likes of Bishop or Thing which in turn will almost certainly break the game, so Zeofar's suggestion sounds less like armageddon.

Tony_Foot

Remove one hard node and then add one node that's repeatable for as long as you can do it. Adding 50/100 levels per clear. Get people using Whales/Health packs and what ever strategy they can come up with until they can't go any further. Separate the scores from just being a speed fest. Not needing for progression but the more you can come up with the better you can place.

Malcrof

Moving to suggestions

Tony_Foot

Always phrase these threads as a question rather than a suggestion to stop them being moved to die.