Harder NPC's

The_Conjurer

Could we get harder NPC's to play? I get we can duel players but sometimes I just like the casual play without the blood pressure spike of pvp. The expert NPC's are incredibly easy. I dont even remember the last time I lost to one. I dont like facing the founders because of the variant decks.

SilverBride

I stopped playing NPCs because of how incredibly easy it is to get a quick patron win on them, even the Experts.

SeaGtGruff

I think getting an easy patron win depends on which patrons have been selected, because the Expert NPCs I play against will call on the Red Eagle patron (if they can) as soon as I get 3 of the 4 patrons turned in my favor, and will keep calling on it if I try to turn it back in my favor.

On the other hand, it seems like they never call on the Crow patron anymore, even if it would be a really good move for them, as though the programming which formerly caused them to call on the Crow patron too soon or too often has been corrected too far in the opposite direction.

spartaxoxo

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I think getting an easy patron win depends on which patrons have been selected, because the Expert NPCs I play against will call on the Red Eagle patron (if they can) as soon as I get 3 of the 4 patrons turned in my favor, and will keep calling on it if I try to turn it back in my favor.

On the other hand, it seems like they never call on the Crow patron anymore, even if it would be a really good move for them, as though the programming which formerly caused them to call on the Crow patron too soon or too often has been corrected too far in the opposite direction.

Yeah. I've noticed it will use Red Eagle, Orgnum, and Psijic patrons. But, it does seem to completely ignore the others.

SeaGtGruff

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I think getting an easy patron win depends on which patrons have been selected, because the Expert NPCs I play against will call on the Red Eagle patron (if they can) as soon as I get 3 of the 4 patrons turned in my favor, and will keep calling on it if I try to turn it back in my favor.

On the other hand, it seems like they never call on the Crow patron anymore, even if it would be a really good move for them, as though the programming which formerly caused them to call on the Crow patron too soon or too often has been corrected too far in the opposite direction.

Yeah. I've noticed it will use Red Eagle, Orgnum, and Psijic patrons. But, it does seem to completely ignore the others.

It will also use Hlaalu, sometimes when it would make more sense not to, such as sacrificing a Rajhin agent that could combo with other Rajhin cards to reduce my Prestige, just to get a little bit of Prestige for itself.

spartaxoxo

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I think getting an easy patron win depends on which patrons have been selected, because the Expert NPCs I play against will call on the Red Eagle patron (if they can) as soon as I get 3 of the 4 patrons turned in my favor, and will keep calling on it if I try to turn it back in my favor.

On the other hand, it seems like they never call on the Crow patron anymore, even if it would be a really good move for them, as though the programming which formerly caused them to call on the Crow patron too soon or too often has been corrected too far in the opposite direction.

Yeah. I've noticed it will use Red Eagle, Orgnum, and Psijic patrons. But, it does seem to completely ignore the others.

It will also use Hlaalu, sometimes when it would make more sense not to, such as sacrificing a Rajhin agent that could combo with other Rajhin cards to reduce my Prestige, just to get a little bit of Prestige for itself.

Oh yeah. I forgot it uses Hlaalu sometimes. I actually think it does to its detriment more often than not.

SeaGtGruff

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I think getting an easy patron win depends on which patrons have been selected, because the Expert NPCs I play against will call on the Red Eagle patron (if they can) as soon as I get 3 of the 4 patrons turned in my favor, and will keep calling on it if I try to turn it back in my favor.

On the other hand, it seems like they never call on the Crow patron anymore, even if it would be a really good move for them, as though the programming which formerly caused them to call on the Crow patron too soon or too often has been corrected too far in the opposite direction.

Yeah. I've noticed it will use Red Eagle, Orgnum, and Psijic patrons. But, it does seem to completely ignore the others.

It will also use Hlaalu, sometimes when it would make more sense not to, such as sacrificing a Rajhin agent that could combo with other Rajhin cards to reduce my Prestige, just to get a little bit of Prestige for itself.

Oh yeah. I forgot it uses Hlaalu sometimes. I actually think it does to its detriment more often than not.

Yes, there is clearly still a bit of tweaking they could do to improve the AI.

But it could be worse-- they could incorporate ML (machine learning) to let the AI teach itself which tactics help it to win and which ones contribute to its losing. And then at best we could have NPCs that are potentially as good or better as the best players, and at worst we could end up with Skynet!

One thing I noticed as soon as the Druid deck was added is that the NPCs seem to never call on the Druid patron, almost as if their programming doesn't yet recognize that it exists.

Necrotech_Master

since the last change to the AI i see it very rarely use the hlaalu and pelin patrons, and i also agree it never uses the crow anymore even when it used to hit that very early

one patron i also never seen the AI use is rahjin

SeaGtGruff

I do see the NPCs use Pelin fairly frequently.

But I don't think I've ever seen them use Rahjin.

WitchyKiki

I would love this~ ! Make them smarter, and harder to beat!

SeaGtGruff

I feel like there actually has been some improvement in the NPCs' AI since a few months ago. I still win nearly every match, and they still make some pretty questionable moves. But I've been having a few more matches than usual where the score is a bit more even, including matches where I lose. The other night I was in one match where it turned into a race to get to 80, which the NPC won. That wasn't the first time it's happened, but it does seem like they've been giving me more of a run for my money than they used to.

fall0athboy

I wouldn't mind the Novice NPCs never or rarely using the Patrons since the entire point of them is an entry into the game; the Proficient ones semi-commonly, and the Expert almost always using it when it makes sense.

HalfDragoness

I agree with this. Although I did loose a game recently to an NPC who used the Orgnum patron repeatedly, it turned into a race to 80 and I ended up loosing by one or two points.

In a completely different MMO when the Devs wanted to release hardcore content they gave the groups of evenmies in each area the same builds that players had been perfecting for years. It was really hard content because suddenly all the tricks the players used in their builds to win became challenging to fight against. I think you could do something similar for the NPCs in ToT. Make them use some of the winning strategies that human player use. I would also be very helpful in terms of learning how to counter those builds as you could practise with NPCs.

fall0athboy

HalfDragoness wrote: »

I agree with this. Although I did loose a game recently to an NPC who used the Orgnum patron repeatedly, it turned into a race to 80 and I ended up loosing by one or two points.

In a completely different MMO when the Devs wanted to release hardcore content they gave the groups of evenmies in each area the same builds that players had been perfecting for years. It was really hard content because suddenly all the tricks the players used in their builds to win became challenging to fight against. I think you could do something similar for the NPCs in ToT. Make them use some of the winning strategies that human player use. I would also be very helpful in terms of learning how to counter those builds as you could practise with NPCs.

I've noticed Orgnum is one of the few patrons the NPCs (even Novice/Proficient!) will use.

I also came up with an idea that I don't know how hard it would be to implement. The ability to customize what an NPC does so you can fiddle around with and perfecting a strategy without them countering it so you can then bring it to a real game and see how it works.