The A.I programmed to win sometimes...?

Bustapup
Bustapup Posts: 181 Tile Toppler
edited 21 July 2025, 08:36 in MPQ General Discussion

This is more of a general observation/musing but have you ever noticed that sometimes you try to exit a match and the game doesn't let you because it knows it's about to win?

Sometimes, most often against Jane/Thor, I'll try to quit a match (sometimes on turn one or two) because I've got off to a slow start and don't expect to win but the game doesn't let you pause/quit. It makes you sit and watch the endless cascade it's about to do that will wipe out your entire team.

I don't know much about programming and game development but that seems off and not random at all. The game obviously knows exactly what matches and cascades it's about to perform and knows it's going to do xxxxxxx amount of damage in one turn to kill your whole team.

Annoying AF but try it......at the start of each of the A.I turn, see if you can pause/quit. If you can, you'll know you're going to survive that turn, if you can't, that's a clear sign you're about to die no matter how much health all your characters have. It's like the A.I is programmed to just win certain matches from the start.

Im on Android btw

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Comments

  • Kross
    Kross Posts: 168 Tile Toppler

    I am on iPhone. It has been this way for quite a while for me.

  • Bustapup
    Bustapup Posts: 181 Tile Toppler

    Yes same for me too and it REALLY annoys me each time it happens because I'm like how is this fair if I'm sat with a collective total of about 200k health and you lock me out on turn 2 and make me watch each character die lol

  • Grantosium
    Grantosium Posts: 46 Just Dropped In
    edited 21 July 2025, 09:31

    You can close the app and relaunch it to skip the wait time but it doesn't save your team's health.

    You could see the pause button grey out before the update as soon as the game had realised that the match is a foregone conclusion. The pause button no longer greys out but otherwise the behavior is the same.

    It's not the AI cheating, it's the games way of telling you that you've already lost and just playing through the remaining operations. If the opposite were true and you were able to save health by quitting out before an animation had finished surely that would be the bug?

    Edit: If it were chess and you were in check mate you wouldn't expect to be able to say "alright let's call it a draw" but you also wouldn't expect to have to sit there while you're opponent smiles maliciously and topples all your remaining pieces tauntingly one by one. It would be bad sportsmanship at best.

  • kuntilanak
    kuntilanak Posts: 194 Tile Toppler

    From my observation (steam version), i belive the engine pre-process all moves made by player and AI as a whole during their respective turns, so the cascades will continue once any parties made a match. You may force close the app, but whatever cascades (and powers fired by AI) will be processed when it is AI's turn, so your team will get the damages when you reopen the app. So far, i only experience app not closing once a while when hitting the close button. Outside of battle, that is...

  • Dayraven
    Dayraven Posts: 42 Just Dropped In

    It calculates the moves in an instant rather than step by step as you watch them, that’s just the animation showing you what’s happened. Thor’s cascades make the disparity very obvious.

  • Bustapup
    Bustapup Posts: 181 Tile Toppler
    edited 21 July 2025, 11:18

    @Grantosium said:
    You can close the app and relaunch it to skip the wait time but it doesn't save your team's health.

    You could see the pause button grey out before the update as soon as the game had realised that the match is a foregone conclusion. The pause button no longer greys out but otherwise the behavior is the same.

    It's not the AI cheating, it's the games way of telling you that you've already lost and just playing through the remaining operations. If the opposite were true and you were able to save health by quitting out before an animation had finished surely that would be the bug?

    Edit: If it were chess and you were in check mate you wouldn't expect to be able to say "alright let's call it a draw" but you also wouldn't expect to have to sit there while you're opponent smiles maliciously and topples all your remaining pieces tauntingly one by one. It would be bad sportsmanship at best.

    Yes but considering the fall of the tiles is supposed to be random, the fact this happens at all shows it's not really random at all and a lot of it is pre-determined . The AI clearly knows how the tiles not yet on the screen will fall even when it's multiple cascades ahead....

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,692 Chairperson of the Boards

    I'm on android. If I scroll down from the top to bring up my notification list instead of hit the back button, after I leave the notifications it will be at the pause screen and let me retreat. This way you can retreat and not have to restart the app.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,504 Chairperson of the Boards

    This normally happens when you are being cascaded to death. It is the AI's winfinite moment and yes it is deeply annoying! I want to retreat (with dignity!) but nope, gonna make you stay until the very last health point is zapped.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,504 Chairperson of the Boards

    Yeah. The game is running through the AI side of things and not finding a moment when you can ever do anything again in that match. So you have to die. Sometimes painfully slowly. Without anything you can do to speed it up or stop it. Painful. :(

  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,603 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Bustapup said:

    @Grantosium said:
    You can close the app and relaunch it to skip the wait time but it doesn't save your team's health.

    You could see the pause button grey out before the update as soon as the game had realised that the match is a foregone conclusion. The pause button no longer greys out but otherwise the behavior is the same.

    It's not the AI cheating, it's the games way of telling you that you've already lost and just playing through the remaining operations. If the opposite were true and you were able to save health by quitting out before an animation had finished surely that would be the bug?

    Edit: If it were chess and you were in check mate you wouldn't expect to be able to say "alright let's call it a draw" but you also wouldn't expect to have to sit there while you're opponent smiles maliciously and topples all your remaining pieces tauntingly one by one. It would be bad sportsmanship at best.

    Yes but considering the fall of the tiles is supposed to be random, the fact this happens at all shows it's not really random at all and a lot of it is pre-determined . The AI clearly knows how the tiles not yet on the screen will fall even when it's multiple cascades ahead....

    heheeh

    Lets clarify a few points.

    The "opponent AI/Decision maker" is actually pretty limited and predictable. It always prefers its "dominant colors" and prioritzes straight matches over L and +. There are actual dev blogs that have evaluated better / smarter versions. and explained how it actually evaluates the "current" onscreen board state to decide on a move. And their are well established behaviors on whether it can double fire (ap willing) etc.

    the game "referee"is what is in charge resolving matches and effects in proper order. When people complain that powers fired incorrectly, or are surprised by how board resolves. Its this "algo" that was responsible for evaluating other "elements" before resolving cascades.

    In chess terms, Player 1, Player 2, FIDE tourney director.

    The main point is that most of the bugs/behaviors described are really about order of operations calculations applied by the game referee. example what is the value of "= 8 ÷ 2(2 + 2)"?

    From that POV. There's a long list of bugs/power interactions that could be simplified and better documented.

    So NO, the AI doesn't cheat

    but yes, they could do a much better job of documenting how all the various power types are "supposed" to interact.

  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,603 Chairperson of the Boards

    back in the day. Black Suite Spiderman had a great for his time stun. It technically reads random, but there was a weird order of operation issue where the "random" modifier only applied after the game identified "who could be stunned".

    In gameplay, it meant on a enemy team with 1 stunned char, 1 active, 1 SilverSurfer. The stun would automatically be applied to the first active char. instead of the equal chance of applying to the stunned char, or applied to Silver Surver (and get immune). this got patched about 6 months later.

    There are lots of interactions like that, where the board does something different that what you expected based on wording.

  • JoeHandle
    JoeHandle Posts: 705 Critical Contributor

    No, matches aren't scripted as in pro wrestling.

    Each turn, calculating the action is relatively simple, happens in an instant. You can't retreat because you're already dead. "Math-killed".

    Rendering the visual action takes longer, and it slowed much farther for the benefit of the human observer. If delays weren't built in it'd be a mass of blurs.

    This has been discussed many times.

    IIRC, I changed was made and some previous build on the old engine that allowed the player to interrupt the action by hitting retreat. Just another thing that was lost in the transition to the new engine.

    So glad the devils can understand that their new engine. Too bad they don't understand the game.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    @JoeHandle said:
    No, matches aren't scripted as in pro wrestling.

    Each turn, calculating the action is relatively simple, happens in an instant. You can't retreat because you're already dead. "Math-killed".

    Rendering the visual action takes longer, and it slowed much farther for the benefit of the human observer. If delays weren't built in it'd be a mass of blurs.

    This has been discussed many times.

    IIRC, I changed was made and some previous build on the old engine that allowed the player to interrupt the action by hitting retreat. Just another thing that was lost in the transition to the new engine.

    So glad the devils can understand that their new engine. Too bad they don't understand the game.

    This was changed at some point, but the change was made awhile ago, well before the new engine (at least for me!). For most of the game's history you could interrupt a death-cascade and retreat.

    I don't know why it was changed but it wasn't super recent. It was probably also by accident.

  • Blackstone
    Blackstone Posts: 745 Critical Contributor

    You don't need to close the app all the way...

    Just swipe up from the bottom (on iphone anyway) as though selecting a different app.

    Then go back to MPQ.

    On my phone out forces a pause regardless of what's happening in game and I can just retreat from there. Faster than closing then reopening.

  • BubbaGump
    BubbaGump Posts: 18 Just Dropped In

    @Bustapup said:

    @Grantosium said:
    You can close the app and relaunch it to skip the wait time but it doesn't save your team's health.

    You could see the pause button grey out before the update as soon as the game had realised that the match is a foregone conclusion. The pause button no longer greys out but otherwise the behavior is the same.

    It's not the AI cheating, it's the games way of telling you that you've already lost and just playing through the remaining operations. If the opposite were true and you were able to save health by quitting out before an animation had finished surely that would be the bug?

    Edit: If it were chess and you were in check mate you wouldn't expect to be able to say "alright let's call it a draw" but you also wouldn't expect to have to sit there while you're opponent smiles maliciously and topples all your remaining pieces tauntingly one by one. It would be bad sportsmanship at best.

    Yes but considering the fall of the tiles is supposed to be random, the fact this happens at all shows it's not really random at all and a lot of it is pre-determined . The AI clearly knows how the tiles not yet on the screen will fall even when it's multiple cascades ahead....

    Why did you think the falling tiles are supposed to be random? There’s absolutely nothing in game that states that.

  • kuntilanak
    kuntilanak Posts: 194 Tile Toppler

    After the Unity update, I experience more wipes than previous engine. More so in those effing stupid CLASS PVP (6 wins cost > 10 health packs). So, I still firmly believe that the AI is plain cheap.

  • Bustapup
    Bustapup Posts: 181 Tile Toppler

    @BubbaGump said:

    @Bustapup said:

    @Grantosium said:
    You can close the app and relaunch it to skip the wait time but it doesn't save your team's health.

    You could see the pause button grey out before the update as soon as the game had realised that the match is a foregone conclusion. The pause button no longer greys out but otherwise the behavior is the same.

    It's not the AI cheating, it's the games way of telling you that you've already lost and just playing through the remaining operations. If the opposite were true and you were able to save health by quitting out before an animation had finished surely that would be the bug?

    Edit: If it were chess and you were in check mate you wouldn't expect to be able to say "alright let's call it a draw" but you also wouldn't expect to have to sit there while you're opponent smiles maliciously and topples all your remaining pieces tauntingly one by one. It would be bad sportsmanship at best.

    Yes but considering the fall of the tiles is supposed to be random, the fact this happens at all shows it's not really random at all and a lot of it is pre-determined . The AI clearly knows how the tiles not yet on the screen will fall even when it's multiple cascades ahead....

    Why did you think the falling tiles are supposed to be random? There’s absolutely nothing in game that states that.

    I see your point and you're right, the game never explicitly states the tiles are random. But it's fair to assume a degree of randomness because that's the core mechanic of a match-3 game.

    The issue is that the game's AI behaves in a way that suggests the randomness is an illusion.

    The "un-quittable" matches we have to sit through are the perfect example of this. When the AI makes a move that leads to a huge, game-ending cascade, it's not just getting lucky. The AI is a computer program that can process every possible outcome of a move in an instant. It can see the entire board, including how new tiles will fall, and calculate the chain reaction far beyond what we can see.

    So, when the AI makes that one move that triggers a game-winning cascade, it's not a lucky guess. It's a calculated move based on its knowledge of the entire game state. The fact that the game locks you into watching it play out shows that it's already "written" the outcome. The game knows you've lost, and it's simply executing a pre-determined script.

    So, while the tiles falling might technically be generated with an element of chance, the AI's ability to perfectly predict the outcome of that randomness makes the game feel unfair. It's not cheating in the sense that the AI is breaking the rules, but it does have access to information that we, as players, don't, which fundamentally changes the playing field and annoys the HELL OUTTA ME 🤣

  • kuntilanak
    kuntilanak Posts: 194 Tile Toppler

    @Bustapup said:

    @BubbaGump said:

    @Bustapup said:

    @Grantosium said:
    You can close the app and relaunch it to skip the wait time but it doesn't save your team's health.

    You could see the pause button grey out before the update as soon as the game had realised that the match is a foregone conclusion. The pause button no longer greys out but otherwise the behavior is the same.

    It's not the AI cheating, it's the games way of telling you that you've already lost and just playing through the remaining operations. If the opposite were true and you were able to save health by quitting out before an animation had finished surely that would be the bug?

    Edit: If it were chess and you were in check mate you wouldn't expect to be able to say "alright let's call it a draw" but you also wouldn't expect to have to sit there while you're opponent smiles maliciously and topples all your remaining pieces tauntingly one by one. It would be bad sportsmanship at best.

    Yes but considering the fall of the tiles is supposed to be random, the fact this happens at all shows it's not really random at all and a lot of it is pre-determined . The AI clearly knows how the tiles not yet on the screen will fall even when it's multiple cascades ahead....

    Why did you think the falling tiles are supposed to be random? There’s absolutely nothing in game that states that.

    I see your point and you're right, the game never explicitly states the tiles are random. But it's fair to assume a degree of randomness because that's the core mechanic of a match-3 game.

    The issue is that the game's AI behaves in a way that suggests the randomness is an illusion.

    The "un-quittable" matches we have to sit through are the perfect example of this. When the AI makes a move that leads to a huge, game-ending cascade, it's not just getting lucky. The AI is a computer program that can process every possible outcome of a move in an instant. It can see the entire board, including how new tiles will fall, and calculate the chain reaction far beyond what we can see.

    So, when the AI makes that one move that triggers a game-winning cascade, it's not a lucky guess. It's a calculated move based on its knowledge of the entire game state. The fact that the game locks you into watching it play out shows that it's already "written" the outcome. The game knows you've lost, and it's simply executing a pre-determined script.

    So, while the tiles falling might technically be generated with an element of chance, the AI's ability to perfectly predict the outcome of that randomness makes the game feel unfair. It's not cheating in the sense that the AI is breaking the rules, but it does have access to information that we, as players, don't, which fundamentally changes the playing field and annoys the HELL OUTTA ME 🤣

    This, and whatever toons the AI uses will be super effective because of this.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,504 Chairperson of the Boards

    In terms of the tiles falling, the AI part which controls that surely has but one single initial aim - make it so the board can be moved with a match 3. The two operations which disrupt that are when cascades happen or when the board is reshuffled because no match 3 is possible. So that is all that part of the AI is doing and as soon as it finds a state it no longer needs to do anything then it stops but not until the board resolves. Don't forget that after match cascades also happen on a players turn - I have killed the enemy team and had to wait for a good 10 seconds or so where the board is still resolving my cascade before I get the win banner. Probably what is happening is that the AI isn't checking for win conditions until after it has found a stable board for whomever turn it is, so it allows the cascade, that finishes and then it looks to who can fire a power or move the board, determines there is nobody and ends the match. The player is locked out from retreating because the AI hasn't finished trying to establish it's primary task and isn't ready to hand over turns.

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