It baffles me that we've got this Toad who's not launching a single special while I'm doing everything I can to bait it out, then on other days I'll be fighting champs who will actively throw specials into my block, or throw melee distance special intercepts while I'm dashing in.
The other SOS style fights have all had a discernable rhythm/speed, this one is so variable it's insane.
You should use a champ with intimidate debuff, he will throw an SP right away.
I can promise you the investigations are absolutely not "lets make it harder." You may not believe me, but the reality is a lot more boring, simply that game design and software design is a long and complicated process made significantly more so by being a live product. It has been hard to nail down certain issues and other ones turn into larger conversations about design, balance, intent, etc etc that take a while and get mixed in in between and delayed by other work to keep designing new Champions, events, and experiences. I 100% hear your frustration, share some of it and have heard it and more from other members of the community and game team, so I'm happy to take this feedback and pass it along to the rest of the team and see if there's ways to make things feel better, but with anything subjective that's a tricky target to hit cause what feels right for one person might not for another. What is less tricky is acknowledging that 100% the ai has been a persistent issue lately, I believe for that very reason that how it feels is very subjective. That said folks continue to be frustrated by the performance of the ai so we are absolutely keeping the conversation going and will continue to pass along feedback. But, again, there's nothing malicious afoot, I can promise that.
Thanks Pinwheel but besides telling us "we are working on it", what exactly are you guys working on to fix the AI? Will there ever be an update that is focused on fixing AI?
I think that's a fair ask. I'm looking into seeing if we can put together a more comprehensive statement than just my quick forum post. Can't promise anything yet as I just asked so don't have any approvals or anything, but fingers crossed can write out something a little more comprehensive for you. In what form that'll be or when I obviously can't yet say, but I think you're right to ask for more specificity.
Would it be fair to ask that if the AI issues are dodging you guys on the backend as much as they're dodging us on the front end, can we at least get beefier rewards?? The AI situation is daunting from a programmer's standpoint, and it's equally as daunting from a player's standpoint. In the meantime, between all the feedback reading and closed-door meetings, chuck out some beefier rewards since we have to deal with beefier AI...
Or, at the very least, compensation, since all involved knows beyond a reasonable doubt that this isn't the intended AI performance that anybody expects.
Malicious isn’t the word I would use. But I find it hard to believe there isn’t at least some level of intentionality.
I’m fine having to roll the dice over and over to get a reasonably compliant AI—that is part of the current state of the game AI. It consumes more of what is perhaps my most precious resource (time), and it can become aggravating, but a certain level of aggravation is intrinsic to this type of content.
Subjectively, though, I can say that having to bait a single special out for nearly a minute against a 1.2M health pool opponent might tip the scale toward “aggravation overload” for a significant number of players who likely consider themselves the target audience for this kind of fight.
Dr. Zola
If I understood you correctly, this is where I find myself with a fight design like this. Having to bait a single special for nearly two minutes, sometimes more, is really frustrating and doesn’t in anyway constitute challenging players. Personally, I find it more of an insult how our time is viewed. I’m a family man, working man, and I also do charity work helping families in a disadvantage position and I play mcoc. Yes, we have 2 weeks to complete this challenge but we have other things in the game we tackle as well, some of which have daily and weekly objectives. My point is: we don’t have to spend over a minute baiting a single special attack. I have video ready to post on YT, 2 minutes, Toad won’t throw his special attack.
This is not the first SOP challenge. The previous ones weren’t this contentious. Clearly, Kabam is on the inside and may have some knowledge as to what may cause the AI to behave a certain way or not. I don’t know anything but maybe a certain node combo can result in a certain behavior. If that’s the case, choose another route.
But more importantly, aren’t these fight tested enough to know that this AI is behaving abnormally and thus warrant some adjustments? If the intent is not malicious, I’m not saying the intent is, but if it’s not, then noticing this through testing might warrant some updates or changes out of consideration to the playerbase.
But, again, there's nothing malicious afoot, I can promise that.
Really? You guys say that the AI is a rolling dice, but it's funny how the AI is reacting and being EXTREMELY passive when it suits the node to the point where we need to bait a special 1 for over a minute and sometimes 2, and this is purely by chance?
I don't remember the photon doing that, neither moleman or destroyer, but then again there wasn't a node that would justify the AI doing such an odd behavior.
Why you guys keep the same speech? Jax already admited a long time ago that the AI have some unique profiles for different characters, like chavez throwing heavies a mile way from you, if doom sees a shock on you he will slap even your phone, etc....so the same thing can and do happen in this type of fights, this AI profile is clearly designed to do that.
I wish you guys could be more transparent about it, cause the AI holding sp1 that much is not a coincidence, so at the end of the day we could say it is malicious.
But, again, there's nothing malicious afoot, I can promise that.
Really? You guys say that the AI is a rolling dice, but it's funny how the AI is reacting and being EXTREMELY passive when it suits the node to the point where we need to bait a special 1 for over a minute and sometimes 2, and this is purely by chance?
I don't remember the photon doing that, neither moleman or destroyer, but then again there wasn't a node that would justify the AI doing such an odd behavior.
Why you guys keep the same speech? Jax already admited a long time ago that the AI have some unique profiles for different characters, like chavez throwing heavies a mile way from you, if doom sees a shock on you he will slap even your phone, etc....so the same thing can and do happen in this type of fights, this AI profile is clearly designed to do that.
I wish you guys could be more transparent about it, cause the AI holding sp1 that much is not a coincidence, so at the end of the day we could say it is malicious.
To be honest AI is holding special for a long time and is not only in this fight , I lost several ez fights because of that on bgs and is so random that is impossible to be something malicious sometimes they throw it when ur holding block and others they just hold it for dear life , anyway it does affect the gameplay and can cost you a lot, all we can do is hope kabam can find a way to fix that soon cause it does takes the fun away from the game
Would have preferred the fight be longer and fun rather than annoying.
It's not even that hard it's just frustrating. Imo if the fight was like 3 mil or something and he didn't have some AI no sp1 coding behind the scenes it would have been fun.
Like the content where u have to find some sort of rhythm or pattern type thing. Where u have to concentrate. This one quickly lost interest when it's a 5 minute fight of mostly trying to bait out the opponent.
I can tell you what's happening (I think). Toad is programmed to be defensive so that he backs into his own corner. The fight is based on him gaining prowess and being cornered is how he gains prowess so I can see why that was a design decision here. Unfortunately that defensive nature also led him to hold his specials way too much causing frustration for everyone. I hope it can be fixed in a reasonable manner
Malicious isn’t the word I would use. But I find it hard to believe there isn’t at least some level of intentionality.
I’m fine having to roll the dice over and over to get a reasonably compliant AI—that is part of the current state of the game AI. It consumes more of what is perhaps my most precious resource (time), and it can become aggravating, but a certain level of aggravation is intrinsic to this type of content.
Subjectively, though, I can say that having to bait a single special out for nearly a minute against a 1.2M health pool opponent might tip the scale toward “aggravation overload” for a significant number of players who likely consider themselves the target audience for this kind of fight.
Dr. Zola
If I understood you correctly, this is where I find myself with a fight design like this. Having to bait a single special for nearly two minutes, sometimes more, is really frustrating and doesn’t in anyway constitute challenging players. Personally, I find it more of an insult how our time is viewed. I’m a family man, working man, and I also do charity work helping families in a disadvantage position and I play mcoc. Yes, we have 2 weeks to complete this challenge but we have other things in the game we tackle as well, some of which have daily and weekly objectives. My point is: we don’t have to spend over a minute baiting a single special attack. I have video ready to post on YT, 2 minutes, Toad won’t throw his special attack.
This is not the first SOP challenge. The previous ones weren’t this contentious. Clearly, Kabam is on the inside and may have some knowledge as to what may cause the AI to behave a certain way or not. I don’t know anything but maybe a certain node combo can result in a certain behavior. If that’s the case, choose another route.
But more importantly, aren’t these fight tested enough to know that this AI is behaving abnormally and thus warrant some adjustments? If the intent is not malicious, I’m not saying the intent is, but if it’s not, then noticing this through testing might warrant some updates or changes out of consideration to the playerbase.
Yes—you and I are on the same page.
I too have limited windows of time to play MCoC. I don’t have a channel where I post fights. For me, it’s great to get a solo or near-solo, but fights that strike me as “need to run it dozens of times just to get the right AI profile” are aggravations I often simply brute force with a few revives. Time, after all, is infinitely precious.
That’s not a ton of fun, and it’s what I would call aggravation overload.
As for testing, I don’t know, but years of playing MCoC suggest there’s limited amount of opportunity to test things before they go live. That’s not necessarily a knock on the game team, but rather a reality of pushing content out as quickly as we demand it.
"It's not malicious" I think the only people that believe this are forum guardians. Even CCP members calling cap.
I’m aligned with Dr. Zola, I dunno about malicious but there is definitely intentionality to it. The adaptivity of the AI or the weighting of certain actions is definitely at play throughout the AI profiles. And it’s clear that there are two nodes not being advertised in this fight:
Special 2 bias - without an unblockable toad defaults to this Unblockable special aggression - as soon as he gets that he’s more likely to drop an sp1
And because intercepts are rewarded the AI is stingy with opportunities.
What is more frustrating is AI behavior like this speaks to a level of AI understanding and control the team claims to not have when addressing persistent in fight bugs and I’m not sure both things can be true in this instance.
"It's not malicious" I think the only people that believe this are forum guardians. Even CCP members calling cap.
I’m aligned with Dr. Zola, I dunno about malicious but there is definitely intentionality to it. The adaptivity of the AI or the weighting of certain actions is definitely at play throughout the AI profiles. And it’s clear that there are two nodes not being advertised in this fight:
Special 2 bias - without an unblockable toad defaults to this Unblockable special aggression - as soon as he gets that he’s more likely to drop an sp1
And because intercepts are rewarded the AI is stingy with opportunities.
What is more frustrating is AI behavior like this speaks to a level of AI understanding and control the team claims to not have when addressing persistent in fight bugs and I’m not sure both things can be true in this instance.
I call what you describe malicious (maybe incompetent at best).
"It's not malicious" I think the only people that believe this are forum guardians. Even CCP members calling cap.
I’m aligned with Dr. Zola, I dunno about malicious but there is definitely intentionality to it. The adaptivity of the AI or the weighting of certain actions is definitely at play throughout the AI profiles. And it’s clear that there are two nodes not being advertised in this fight:
Special 2 bias - without an unblockable toad defaults to this Unblockable special aggression - as soon as he gets that he’s more likely to drop an sp1
And because intercepts are rewarded the AI is stingy with opportunities.
What is more frustrating is AI behavior like this speaks to a level of AI understanding and control the team claims to not have when addressing persistent in fight bugs and I’m not sure both things can be true in this instance.
I call what you describe malicious (maybe incompetent at best).
Fair nuff. Potato, po-they don’t wanna fix the AI they jack up
This AI is absolutely awful. Never throws a special, continuous moments of dropped/not registering inputs ( either stuck in block while trying to dex or standing still and eating combos), and the AI has perfect timing to throw a special right when I'm mid strike. So I eat the special and instant KO. I'm terrible at inverted controls to begin with, but even then I still manage to somehow get clipped by a special when I'm successfully dexing too. This fight is absolutely trash due to the AI.
"It's not malicious" I think the only people that believe this are forum guardians. Even CCP members calling cap.
I’m aligned with Dr. Zola, I dunno about malicious but there is definitely intentionality to it. The adaptivity of the AI or the weighting of certain actions is definitely at play throughout the AI profiles. And it’s clear that there are two nodes not being advertised in this fight:
Special 2 bias - without an unblockable toad defaults to this Unblockable special aggression - as soon as he gets that he’s more likely to drop an sp1
And because intercepts are rewarded the AI is stingy with opportunities.
What is more frustrating is AI behavior like this speaks to a level of AI understanding and control the team claims to not have when addressing persistent in fight bugs and I’m not sure both things can be true in this instance.
I call what you describe malicious (maybe incompetent at best).
Fair nuff. Potato, po-they don’t wanna fix the AI they jack up
I swear I'm playing a different game to y'all sometimes, or you're all just wildly exaggerating. 3 or 4 dexs to bait maybe, but 1 or 2 minutes? Cmon now surely we're being facetious. Not only that, but if you're heavying him or knocking him against the way he threw it immediately 90% of the time. And especially with dvision, who took much longer, u could always push to 2 or 3 bars and drain with sp2, and that ALSO makes him throw immediately 90% of the time
I swear I'm playing a different game to y'all sometimes, or you're all just wildly exaggerating. 3 or 4 dexs to bait maybe, but 1 or 2 minutes? Cmon now surely we're being facetious. Not only that, but if you're heavying him or knocking him against the way he threw it immediately 90% of the time. And especially with dvision, who took much longer, u could always push to 2 or 3 bars and drain with sp2, and that ALSO makes him throw immediately 90% of the time
edit to this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWf_NPZQs70 . maybe this is just lucky, maybe im not seeing what youre seeing, but the level of baiting required didnt seem that bad. I even did multiple attempts back to back to show its not just one run with super lucky ai
I swear I'm playing a different game to y'all sometimes, or you're all just wildly exaggerating. 3 or 4 dexs to bait maybe, but 1 or 2 minutes? Cmon now surely we're being facetious. Not only that, but if you're heavying him or knocking him against the way he threw it immediately 90% of the time. And especially with dvision, who took much longer, u could always push to 2 or 3 bars and drain with sp2, and that ALSO makes him throw immediately 90% of the time
edit to this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWf_NPZQs70 . maybe this is just lucky, maybe im not seeing what youre seeing, but the level of baiting required didnt seem that bad. I even did multiple attempts back to back to show its not just one run with super lucky ai
I didnt have bad ai either, I had perfect ai, but other people actually have it BAD
I've checked the nodes multiple times to see if there is a node that he's more likely to throw sp2 while in root phase. I'm still sure something like that is in the design of the ai in this fight.
it is questionable and very annoying that since the game has started, the ai is still as confusing and unpredictable as it as always and now worst of all, is very inconsistent.
the fact that entering any fight is just about hoping the ai will cooperate to throw specials else the fight can be immediately lost like that is annoying and we haven't gotten any concrete rules on how the ai should function and is expected to function is an excuse constantly used by the devs to defend this inconsistency.
why can't we have an inbuilt sp1 and sp2 bias on all defenders or is that just too game breaking
I’m not sure if this would help anyone. Could be a placebo effect but i noticed that when i hit toads block with a two hit combo rather then a single hit he is 80% more likely to throw a special, 10% likely to throw a heavy and the other 10% likely to do nothing. But that was my experience from one run and could just be a coincidence.
Never mind did another run and he is just not throwing it anymore lol.
I’m not sure if this would help anyone. Could be a placebo effect but i noticed that when i hit toads block with a two hit combo rather then a single hit he is 80% more likely to throw a special, 10% likely to throw a heavy and the other 10% likely to do nothing. But that was my experience from one run and could just be a coincidence.
Never mind did another run and he is just not throwing it anymore lol.
it's never consistent, some character do throw it when you hit thier block but so far toad hasn't played ball when hitting block for me
I am wondering at this point if they changed something. When trying to blast through it with Juggs within a few hours of launch … I was baiting all the way back to my corner from one end of the screen to another. CMM same thing.
When I did it with Viv several hours ago - he was throwing specials with ease. I wasn’t keeping him in the corner either- I was in the middle of stage to weave in intercepts and heavies- and the specials just flowed.
Same with deathless vision. Class advantage puts on a powerful taunt we don’t see? Or did they tweak it due to complaints?
I am wondering at this point if they changed something. When trying to blast through it with Juggs within a few hours of launch … I was baiting all the way back to my corner from one end of the screen to another. CMM same thing.
When I did it with Viv several hours ago - he was throwing specials with ease. I wasn’t keeping him in the corner either- I was in the middle of stage to weave in intercepts and heavies- and the specials just flowed.
Same with deathless vision. Class advantage puts on a powerful taunt we don’t see? Or did they tweak it due to complaints?
I did Viv and DV as my last 2 objectives Wednesday night, and I noticed the special usage was through the roof compared to Hulkling and Juggs.
Anyone feel like when using Dv, the AI throws specials easily without any fuzz, and although he like to block a lot, at times toad actually cooperates for intercepts. Basically he is much more managable with vision.
I don't think this is class advantage like @Chuck_Finley said. Cuz I used shocker and still had trouble. Could it be something to do with vision (He may have some hidden taunt)
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Or, at the very least, compensation, since all involved knows beyond a reasonable doubt that this isn't the intended AI performance that anybody expects.
This is not the first SOP challenge. The previous ones weren’t this contentious. Clearly, Kabam is on the inside and may have some knowledge as to what may cause the AI to behave a certain way or not. I don’t know anything but maybe a certain node combo can result in a certain behavior. If that’s the case, choose another route.
But more importantly, aren’t these fight tested enough to know that this AI is behaving abnormally and thus warrant some adjustments? If the intent is not malicious, I’m not saying the intent is, but if it’s not, then noticing this through testing might warrant some updates or changes out of consideration to the playerbase.
I don't remember the photon doing that, neither moleman or destroyer, but then again there wasn't a node that would justify the AI doing such an odd behavior.
Why you guys keep the same speech? Jax already admited a long time ago that the AI have some unique profiles for different characters, like chavez throwing heavies a mile way from you, if doom sees a shock on you he will slap even your phone, etc....so the same thing can and do happen in this type of fights, this AI profile is clearly designed to do that.
I wish you guys could be more transparent about it, cause the AI holding sp1 that much is not a coincidence, so at the end of the day we could say it is malicious.
It's not even that hard it's just frustrating. Imo if the fight was like 3 mil or something and he didn't have some AI no sp1 coding behind the scenes it would have been fun.
Like the content where u have to find some sort of rhythm or pattern type thing. Where u have to concentrate. This one quickly lost interest when it's a 5 minute fight of mostly trying to bait out the opponent.
I too have limited windows of time to play MCoC. I don’t have a channel where I post fights. For me, it’s great to get a solo or near-solo, but fights that strike me as “need to run it dozens of times just to get the right AI profile” are aggravations I often simply brute force with a few revives. Time, after all, is infinitely precious.
That’s not a ton of fun, and it’s what I would call aggravation overload.
As for testing, I don’t know, but years of playing MCoC suggest there’s limited amount of opportunity to test things before they go live. That’s not necessarily a knock on the game team, but rather a reality of pushing content out as quickly as we demand it.
Dr. Zola
Special 2 bias - without an unblockable toad defaults to this
Unblockable special aggression - as soon as he gets that he’s more likely to drop an sp1
And because intercepts are rewarded the AI is stingy with opportunities.
What is more frustrating is AI behavior like this speaks to a level of AI understanding and control the team claims to not have when addressing persistent in fight bugs and I’m not sure both things can be true in this instance.
I'm still sure something like that is in the design of the ai in this fight.
the fact that entering any fight is just about hoping the ai will cooperate to throw specials else the fight can be immediately lost like that is annoying and we haven't gotten any concrete rules on how the ai should function and is expected to function is an excuse constantly used by the devs to defend this inconsistency.
why can't we have an inbuilt sp1 and sp2 bias on all defenders or is that just too game breaking
Never mind did another run and he is just not throwing it anymore lol.
When I did it with Viv several hours ago - he was throwing specials with ease. I wasn’t keeping him in the corner either- I was in the middle of stage to weave in intercepts and heavies- and the specials just flowed.
Same with deathless vision. Class advantage puts on a powerful taunt we don’t see? Or did they tweak it due to complaints?
I don't think this is class advantage like @Chuck_Finley said. Cuz I used shocker and still had trouble. Could it be something to do with vision (He may have some hidden taunt)