CPU Cheating is going INSANE

[FurryLover42]

Image
http://ekoff.zapto.org/estevaok/cheating_cpu.jpg

After 5 moves, this is the setup. Be aware that the CPU already made 3 unstopable Crashes = + 18 greens.
Total colors for the computer in 5 moves = 87.
The free colors from the non-heros isnt enough, the CPU has to cheat 87 matches in 5 moves. Thats 17 colors EACH ROUND ! As the non-cpu, the stupid user, gets ONE SINGLE 3 match cascade, that was made by the user, and not earned through "magic" from outside the screen.

Its not a one time thing, I tried this like 5 times, and all the time this non-sense insane unstopable cascades ONLY for the computer.

That sums up the "incredible magic luck" that ONLY the CPU have:
5 moves
CPU made at least 3 cascades EACH MOVE, making 87 colors, with the free colors from non-hero chars.
User, 1 single, and simple 3 match cascade, not a magic one, made by the user = 15 colors.

Diff = 72 Colors pro CPU.

Nice cheating code, but going a little insane, tune it down a bit.

[NOID4U]

it has been nuts lately, they keeping getting four and five matches while i cant even seem to get anything to cascade

[FinishingTouch]

basically i have come to accept that I get 1 match (sometimes I get an extra match every two or three turns) and the computer gets 4 - 5 matches mixed with free turns every turn.

[Vyn]

The screenshot posted by the OP is a battle against a boosted Juggernaut who is being fed green power from two goons. This is a unique and very challenging matchup in game since Juggernaut has an extremely fast board shake that only costs 6 green power, while the two goons can feed him 4 green per turn without any matching: that's 20 green over 5 turns, more than enough for 3 Unstoppable Crashes without a single green match. If one is not careful, it very easy for Juggernaut to start very long cascades by chaining board shakes together.

Fighting a team like this requires the player to bring some combination of power steal, stuns, retaliation abilities, and fast attack characters to kill off the goons. Avoiding the use of special tiles that can be easily cleared by Juggernaut can be helpful as well. Without knowing the OP's roster, it's hard to say if he deployed the best team for this situation. Thor is a good choice for spending all the green power that will be picked up, but Hulk can end up giving more green to Juggernaut too, and Daredevil's traps and countdown tiles are also vulnerable to Juggernaut's board shake. At the very least however, the health bars indicate that damage was being focused on Juggernaut instead of the goons, which is usually a mistake since it just gives Juggernaut more board shakes.

Overall, it looks like the OP just experienced some bad luck or did not play optimally. The AI does not cheat in game. If anything, it is crippled by its simplistic routines (match 4 > match color for an active power > match highest damage color) in order to make battles less difficult for players. The AI will never generate a cascade on purpose, and is in fact prohibited from making any match 5's on purpose too.

[Fatamorgana]

Actually AI makes only match 5's if they are in a nice row or vertically. They never match L or T shaped 5's except if there is a match 4 in it. The AI's "cheating" is imo pretty small in MPQ, sometimes insane stuff happens but there are worse games where the game seriously cheats and magically makes more stuff appear etc.

[Vyn]

The AI not making match 5's in an L or T shape is a consequence of it being programmed to ignore match 5's. That it would match 5 in a line is simply a result of it trying to match 4's, thus accidentally matching 5.

[FurryLover42]

Messaggio originale di Vyn:

The screenshot posted by the OP is a battle against a boosted Juggernaut who is being fed green power from two goons. This is a unique and very challenging matchup in game since Juggernaut has an extremely fast board shake that only costs 6 green power, while the two goons can feed him 4 green per turn without any matching: that's 20 green over 5 turns, more than enough for 3 Unstoppable Crashes without a single green match. If one is not careful, it very easy for Juggernaut to start very long cascades by chaining board shakes together.

Fighting a team like this requires the player to bring some combination of power steal, stuns, retaliation abilities, and fast attack characters to kill off the goons. Avoiding the use of special tiles that can be easily cleared by Juggernaut can be helpful as well. Without knowing the OP's roster, it's hard to say if he deployed the best team for this situation. Thor is a good choice for spending all the green power that will be picked up, but Hulk can end up giving more green to Juggernaut too, and Daredevil's traps and countdown tiles are also vulnerable to Juggernaut's board shake. At the very least however, the health bars indicate that damage was being focused on Juggernaut instead of the goons, which is usually a mistake since it just gives Juggernaut more board shakes.

Overall, it looks like the OP just experienced some bad luck or did not play optimally. The AI does not cheat in game. If anything, it is crippled by its simplistic routines (match 4 > match color for an active power > match highest damage color) in order to make battles less difficult for players. The AI will never generate a cascade on purpose, and is in fact prohibited from making any match 5's on purpose too.

You are stating the obvious.
But "The AI will never generate a cascade on purpose, and is in fact prohibited from making any match 5's on purpose too"
What ? Im not playng the same game as you...AI does 5 matches all the time, just in one way, a single row, its does not do Ls, and Ts, or stars.

Im not complaining about that matchup being hard, I know it is, im complaining about the
ridiculously unfair array of unending cascades, that only one side of the board gets from outside the screen.
Its hard to believe when, the AI is making 72 colors, and you cant even get half of that, not even close to get a single special move, in UNDER 5 MOVES !

But surprinsingly, I NEVER get those kind of cascades, unless I make them happen with the tiles on the board, and still never at the same rate of the AI. I NEVER got a 5 tiles match magically drop done from outside the screen, and the computer does that in a regular basis. In fact, I often get a dead board, and the games becomes a "Simons says" game, when there is only one possible move to make, and I get stuck doing the only match possible, but ok I get that this can happen sometimes, but even in these situations, the AI still magically drops free tiles, while im stuck in the board.

In the posted SS:
That team that I used, was my last 3 heros that were alive.
That scene happened three times before I decided to take a SS.
And I tried again later, lost all matches, a couple of them were fair I have to admit, but the magic cascades happens WAY too often to not be extremelly frustraded by the cheating.

Obviously the AI cheats, it must cheat to become a match for the humans. Thats basic AI for any game, not just this one.
But I think its a little over the top in this game, it must be tuned down a bit.

[FurryLover42]

Just to complete the thought:
The AI cheats, thats a fact, any AI cheats.
AI cant think, so to match a human playing it cheats a bit, for our fun, for a challenge. Otherwise any game becomes boring after a couple of minutes.

In this game, the AI does not think, obviously, it cant make complex shapes and moves, it cant think ahead like we do.
So it cheats on a simple way, the tiles offscreen fall in a such a fashion thats favours the CPU, and against the player.
Its simple cheating.

You never noticed when, one of your characters dies, and (for example) he was the single one with the green color, and suddenly, when that char dies, the board starts dropping a lot more greens ? That happens every game, its progammed to do that, maybe you never noticed.

[Vyn]

You are suffering from a classic case of negativity bias[en.wikipedia.org]. The AI does not cheat, and players will always be able to get more cascades than the rigid AI simply by looking one or two matches ahead. Just now I opened a match and earned 46 AP on the first turn, and occurrences like this are hardly a rarity.

There are indeed games where the AI needs to cheat in order to provide human players with a suitable challenge, but these are typically strategy games with mechanics that are too complicated for an AI to handle, so they may be programmed with various of bonuses to even the playing field.

Marvel Puzzle Quest is not a deep strategy game. The matching portion of the game in particular has such simple mechanics that it would be trivial to program an AI to always play optimally and maximize cascades without any need to cheat. The current AI is not programmed in this manner however, because the designers know very well that such an optimal AI would just frustrate players to no end. This is why the current AI is not only incapable of cheating, it has in fact been crippled in numerous ways to make the game easier for players.

Cascades will always have a chance of happening for either team in a fair match-3 game. The chance of triggering a cascade is greatly increased by board shake abilities. You were facing an opponent that was designed to maximize cascades through board shakes, and you got owned by either bad luck or poor skill. That is just how the game works, and it's all fair and square. Shrug it off and move on; it's not as if you lost more than a few respawning health packs.

Edit: Fixed typo.

[feistynena21]

I get what Morredor is saying but im with Vyn on this one. I too have had some of that bad luck you speak of but I wouldnt have used the characters you did. Based on the reasons Vyn stated above. Just keep at it. It happens, just have fun with it.

[FurryLover42]

You clearly do not know how AI works. It does cheat, thats a fact, just accept it, every AI does. Its a common thing, its basic AI for games, for ALL games. The computer is no match for a human brain (yet), so it does cheat a bit, not too much, to make a challenge for us, and thats a good thing.

Im complaining the cheating its a little over the top, they should tune it down a bit.

You are confusing your idea of cheating, with the cheating that the computer is able to do, with a simple coding. The AI with Ares commit suicide using the yellow color, its stupid, because AI is stupid. It does not process things as we do, it does not think.

This cheating that you believe in, does not exist, the CPU does not think like us. Of course it doesnt, and its not capable of, not with the most advanced coding and everything. No matter how good developers make the AI, it will never think like a human, it will never make a move thinking ahead like a human, its not capable of doing, it will never be a match for a human.

So, I think your standard of AI cheating is not correct, its impossible.

It works like this:
So to match things a bit, the developers made the CPU cheat a bit, but they cant say that to the players, and this cheating is progammed in EVERY GAME YOU HAVE EVER PLAYED.

Without the cheating, any AI is ridiculously beaten 100% of the time by a human brain.

You never played a game on the HARD setting ? Games all the time have enemies programmed to do stuff that the player cant do, like take a millions hits, have speed that the player cant match, thats all cheating...soft cheating, to make the game more interesting, challenging.

Believe me on this one, im a game developer myself.

Maybe im using the word "cheating" too harshly, and you think "cheating" is something way overpowered that you cant match...but the truth is all game AI cheats, in every game.

[Vyn]

You're just spewing nonsense now. Do you think Deep Blue cheated against Kasparov too?

[FurryLover42]

Thats exactly the point, its impossible to cheat in chess, thats why it was a valid "test" of an AI.

Deep Blue never made a single thought, it was just math and statistics, combined with previous data.
The world of computer programming can be quite hard to comprehend.

[Vyn]

Well... I did not expect that to work. You understand that you just refuted your own argument, right?

[FurryLover42]

Now you are not making any sense, or u didnt read my text properly, or I failed to express in the right way.

Deep Blue could not cheat, because you cant cheat in chess. The only cheat possible is to no follow the rules, which is not permited, so...the comparison is not adequate.

In a computer game, all AI cheats, thats common practice, it happens in every game, but not in a bad way, in a good way, to make a good challenge for humans. Thats why games have a hard setting, because the developers bend the rules a little bit in favor of the computer, to make the game more challenging.

Or maybe im using the wrong word for this.

[Vyn]

You claim that all computer game AI cheat, and I am trying to point out what an absurd position that is. By your logic, if IBM gave Deep Blue a pretty interface and called it a game, then asked Kasparov to play it on a monitor instead of having a human relay Deep Blue's moves to a physical chess board, it would suddenly constitute cheating? Your position is plainly untenable.