So the AI still cheats...

farlus

It's because you were playing City, there's a sniper on the rooftop feeding Ares green AP and you can't hit him.

Totes. Mc. Gotes. Happening.

In all seriousness though, this is actually happening. Have seen it multiple times. No goons, single green match gives 4 green AP.

And as noted by a million others, Ares Sunder bug is still not fixed.

Hooray!

Unknown

Just happened again. Ares sundered me 5 times without making a damn yellow match

kensterr

Seriously don't know if we are just imagining it or the bug is real. In the TaT subs Juggs Headbutt me without AI making any red matches, and Ares Sunder me as well with maybe only one yellow match.

Unknown

I suppose if one were to do nothing but play, sacrificing work and sleep, the battles may end up merging together and it's difficult to tell where one battle ends and another begins.

Kikujiro

HailMary wrote:

I thought it was just me, but I've seen similarly sketchy behavior in the PVE. I've had at least three different fights where enemy Ares uses Onslaught-Sunder-Onslaught when I thought I knew that the AI had less than 6 green AP and only 6 yellow AP. (The node had no goons)

Being on mobile, with no AP display constantly onscreen, I dismissed it as an egregious counting error on my part, but now... hmmmm

That said, I've definitely had a couple of instances where a big cascade gave me enough for double-CTS afterwards.

Edit: typo.

Same thing happened to me some hours ago in Scotland Yard 9 and one hour ago in Scotland Yard 8 ... Onslaught-Sunder-Onslaught. Yesterday I saw the same sequence 2 or 3 times in the Ares-Bullseye-Muscle node, but thought it was because maggia ap magic.

Poor Hulk was slapchopped to death everytime, Ares must hate him so much.

over_clocked

I swear I did a ton of Ares battles last days, too, and haven't seen a single instance of him getting AP out of thin air, besides yellow/green-feeding goons.
Video records or didn't happen.

Unknown

I swear there's some kind of lag in the AI AP update that's far beyond the usual. It seems like sometimes the AI just gathers the AP but it never updates though that doesn't stop them from using the AP they have, either that or I was just really tired when it happened. They're definitely not getting AP out of thin air, though.

mohio

I did notice a 4 AP match just a little bit ago when I was making my last push in TaT. I think it was in the Ares/Juggs/whoever node. At first I thought I must have just missed a line clear or something (I had been playing non-stop as fast as I could for almost an hour) but then I realized that would produce far more than *just* the 4AP it showed the opp gain. I did notice a few times a Sunder or Onslaught that seemed a little off, but I had only checked a couple turns before and never noticed a new match (or else I'd have used my saved up AR), so I don't really know for sure what happened. Maybe their new idea for scaling is to have the AI cheat instead of increase their levels?

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

I thought it was just me, but I've seen similarly sketchy behavior in the PVE. I've had at least three different fights where enemy Ares uses Onslaught-Sunder-Onslaught when I thought I knew that the AI had less than 6 green AP and only 6 yellow AP. (The node had no goons)

Being on mobile, with no AP display constantly onscreen, I dismissed it as an egregious counting error on my part, but now... hmmmm

That said, I've definitely had a couple of instances where a big cascade gave me enough for double-CTS afterwards.

Edit: typo.

At max green, Onslaught only costs 5 AP, so that may be a part of it. I haven't noticed this behavior, but I have noticed final-turn or near final-turn cascades for the A.I. that seem to happen on an otherwise stable board to punish you for not taking enough damage/ using enough health packs. The other thing I've noticed with goons, is that it seems to cheat in their favor by either starting them off with a bunch of AP or else giving them free 1st turn abilities. This last PvE on goon levels there were several times they dropped 3 countdown tiles (all 7-10 AP cost) on turn 0.

Actually, what could be happening is some kind of bug that carries over enemy AP to the next match under some conditions, instead of wiping it like it's supposed to.

Unknown

I just played against Patch/Thor/OBW in Cage Match. I knew he had a lot of yellow already, so I checked his AP, he had 11 yellow. I checked his abilities, it said Thunder Strike takes 12 AP. I made a yellow match to deny him. He hits me with Thunder Strike and now has 0 yellow. Whether he gained a yellow out of nowhere, or he already had 12 and it just displayed wrong, I don't know. But there's a bug in there somewhere.

Spoit

Did they also change how the AI chooses to do moves? I.e. looking at AP totals on the fly, rather than deciding the moves at the beginning of the turn?

Because the thor had 12 yellow and green, so I let him go ahead and cast thunderstrike, since I thought it wouldn't cast call the storm until the turn after that. But he did anyway

Unknown

I just figured one out. Obw's recon costs 10-11 to steal 4 ap each, but for the ai it only costs 8. Still waiting so see about ares, who pretty obviously cheats.

danae

Had it happen to me in TaT where Ares sundered one turn and then again the following turn. I thought I might have been mistaken until I saw two yellow countdown tiles attributed to him. I didn't really investigate too much because I was rushing to try and make Top 40. I attributed it to Goon generating the yellow but I wouldn't have thought it would be enough with just one turn.

Haven't seen an issue in PVP, though.

Kelbris

This thread is hilarious.

I can't wait to see if the same discussion happens when enemy AP is always on screen and you don't have to swipe to see it (there's tons of free space, just use colored numbers for god sake)

Kelbris

Spoit wrote:

Did they also change how the AI chooses to do moves? I.e. looking at AP totals on the fly, rather than deciding the moves at the beginning of the turn?

Because the thor had 12 yellow and green, so I let him go ahead and cast thunderstrike, since I thought it wouldn't cast call the storm until the turn after that. But he did anyway

Thor does this a lot. It's intended.

Unknown

1. Some people on mobile are not aware of the enemy AP totals because it is a chore to check every turn.
2. Some people don't know what ability costs what. Some people are not aware costs change when the chars have different amount of covers.
3. Some people don't know devs change ability costs of enemies when they scale.
4. Some people are not aware of goons generating AP and how they generate AP. Some goons generate multiple AP of the same color by themselves.
5. Some people are playing half asleep or very tired and can't follow the game.
6. Some people don't know AI doesn't update their AP total until their matches, ability usage and thus, their turn ends.

There might be legit cases too but I haven't seen one myself.

Unknown

Just happened again. It's my Thor and hulk against the enemy's Thor in the shield sim. He doesn't have enough for any of his abilities. As soon as I am about to win, he uses all three abilities in one turn and kills me. I looked at his ap on my turn right before he did this and he couldn't have used them. His build wasn't different because his abilities did the same damage and dropped the same number of tiles as my Thor.

Spoit

Kelbris wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Did they also change how the AI chooses to do moves? I.e. looking at AP totals on the fly, rather than deciding the moves at the beginning of the turn?

Because the thor had 12 yellow and green, so I let him go ahead and cast thunderstrike, since I thought it wouldn't cast call the storm until the turn after that. But he did anyway

Thor does this a lot. It's intended.

So they did change the AI then? It used to be that they don't cast powers unless they have the required amount at the start of their turn (unless they get matches from hulk tiles (or maybe IM/cap countdowns?))

over_clocked

Spoit, it has always been the case as far as I can remember. That's why you need to deny both yellow and green to LT, because if he gets enough green on the turn he uses Thunder Strike, you can bet he's gonna Call the Storm. Same with cStorm, if she uses green and gets enough blue for Wind Storm, she is going to use that immediately; if m(ohawk)Storm gets enough black after using her green, she's gonna apply it immediately and not wait another turn. Depends on teammates, too.

Unknown

I think the inconsistency of whether an AI uses an ability they didn't start out with enough AP is that the AI does not use any ability it chose to skip for that turn, including skipping due to a lack of AP, and it doesn't take that decision back. However you do not know the order the AI checks the ability. This is fairly obvious from something like Thorned Rose, where you see the AI uses a Thorned Rose but still doesn't use any abilities even though it clearly has more than enough AP, so my guess is that Thorned Rose is at the bottom of the AI's list of moves to check, so by the time it gets to Thorned Rose it already skipped all the other moves. If the AI checks Thunder Strike before checking Call the Storm, then it can have enuogh green AP from Thunder Strike to use Call the Storm even if it didn't start with enough. During Cage Match I saw a sequence of Magneto doing Magentized Particle followed by Patch's Berserker Rage, even though they didn't start with 9 green AP (gained green from Magnetized Particles). It's probably rare overall because the only way you'll see an AI use a move it didn't start with enough AP is if that move is checked after another move which can generate AP is used first.