Steeme wrote: One thing to note, though, is that Quick Battle is much easier than the Story Mode, especially at low levels. Quick Battle becomes tougher only at high levels when players have stuffed their decks with Mythics and the planeswalkers have much more powerful abilities and mana gain. Try using the Quick Battle matches to gain XP and then level up to blow away the story mode.
ScubaMD wrote: Steeme wrote: One thing to note, though, is that Quick Battle is much easier than the Story Mode, especially at low levels. Quick Battle becomes tougher only at high levels when players have stuffed their decks with Mythics and the planeswalkers have much more powerful abilities and mana gain. Try using the Quick Battle matches to gain XP and then level up to blow away the story mode. I'm having the opposite experience. I'm being matched with people who have clearly spent a lot of time with the game. 6 straight losses, zero wins - almost entirely due to AI cascade matches (the other part being the fact that the opponents have much better cards). Saying the word 'pay' for a game that I cannot progress in automatically makes this a losing proposition. I've spent money in MPQ, but that's because it proved to be a decent game (at the time; now it's just user-hostile.) You say that they're programmed to make 'optimal' matches, but the AI should never at any point have any insight into what the next drops are. The process that generates new gems should be entirely separate from the AI thread. This is a common problem in D3 games in general, they give 'clairvoyance' of sorts to the AI, which is clearly not right. D3 needs to adjust the balance. Non-negotiable.
Steeme wrote: Just thought I'd pop in with an update here. I know that the AI had been improved somewhat recently as I noticed the AI making certain 5-swaps where it wouldn't before. It still doesn't choose the 5-swap in certain scenarios, but I can tell it is prioritizing destroying the vertical or horizontal line for some other purpose (ie. reset the gems, attempt to trigger more cascades, etc.) It seems the AI may be a little overtuned now. I've been paying attention to how much mana the AI is able to gain without the aid of any type of mana ramping supports or abilities. I feel like, more often than not, the AI is able to outpace me with an overly significant advantage that seems to draw matches out much longer than before. Example: I will make the first match when the game starts. Sometimes I get a nice starting board and I know that I'm lucky. However, more often than not, I will take the 12-15 mana lucky start and then proceed to get completely "outdone" by the AI's counter move, which just seems to come over the top by gaining even more mana than I was able to. This compounds the issue as the AI will just quickly board wipe anything that I have just done on the first turn, as it can already see what cards I have played. Now, in addition to mana gain comes loyalty gain. The AI's ability to create optimal cascades usually snowballs into unusually swift loyalty gain. Example: AI is controlling Liliana. Player begins to fill 15 cost card. It has 11 mana. Only 3 mana can be achieved this turn. Player looks at the opponent and sees 3 loyalty points only, so there is a very low chance of the card being thrown out the next turn, as it would require a multi-cascade to build the loyalty then an extra swap. Player makes decision to fill 3 more mana into the card, and it is now 1 mana away from being cast. AI makes a magical combination, which multi-cascades into a heavenly display of mana gain AND gets a free swap. AI proceeds to throw out Players cards. I understand that you need to be prepared when the AI is controlling Liliana, and that the planeswalker abilities are used in a glaringly obvious way, but I have noticed only quite recently that due to making more optimal decisions, it is able to build loyalty and use the ability all in the same turn which takes the Player completely by surprise. This doesn't win the game but slows everything down to a crawl. Another Example: AI is controlling Ajani. AI gets a magical combination of glorious proportions and proceeds to fill entire hand with mana. AI does not play any cards. The problem with this scenario is that Ajani is sitting on 3 or 4 Swift Reckoning / Smite the Monstrous cards, and will not do anything else about it. The AI sits there until you play a creature, then it just removes it. This is fine if you have chump troops, I suppose, but not every deck synergizes well with low cost troops. In addition, sometimes the AI waits until your troop is more of a threat before removing it (ie. waiting for Noyan Dar to buff once). In reality, if a player was piloting Ajani, he/she would not sit on that many removal cards because it would take absolutely forever for the match to finish (ie. plop down a lantern scout and let her plink away at the opponents health every turn). In addition, a player would not be able to ramp up that much removal in the early stages of the game. I know that I usually have a tough time filling a single Smite the Monstrous card, I'm lucky if I can get it filled in 2 turns. However, since the AI is able to do so, and has no intention of winning the match in any timely sort of manner, we end up with a long drawn out match that's literally a near-stalemate. I am in total agreement that the AI should make the most logical choice when playing its turn. However from recent experience, I believe it is overtuned which is snowballing into an unbalance amount of mana and loyalty gain which is causing many more matches to get frustrating. Couple this with certain planeswalkers that can spam abilities to gain even more of an advantage (Koth, Kiora, Nahiri, Liliana, etc.) and you get an increasingly frustrating experience.
Pqmtg- wrote: Also, the AI does see unlikely matches that we dismiss as suboptimal. It doesn't have to be future knowledge. It's just more exhaustive in it's search.
Steeme wrote: Pqmtg- wrote: Also, the AI does see unlikely matches that we dismiss as suboptimal. It doesn't have to be future knowledge. It's just more exhaustive in it's search. Yes that's the point now. They have improved the AI matching algorithm, and I think it has actually caused an imbalance. This isn't about future knowledge, or lucky cascades. This is about the matching algorithm. Since it has been improved, I believe it is able to consistently outpace the player (unless the player is capable of analyzing the board with the speed and preciseness of a computer). My high win rate is likely due to the breadth and depth of my library (I have opened many boxes and packs, in addition to a few direct purchases). I cannot imagine what it would be like for a player without the same selection of cards available. It would seem the OP is expressing frustration as he does not have the same tools at hand.