Bug #531 , "routinely misuses is FUD" and AI priorities
Posted: 30 Oct 2016, 15:49
Ok, so after checking out the responses to my reports today I was irked by the contrast between two things - the nonchalant accusation of my "consistent misuse" reports as "marketing FUD", which I take to mean as nebulous/unfounded/slanderous/lying , and at the same time "can't be reproduced" on a bug which seems to affect cretures with both soulshift and sacrifice abilities (I reproduced it in a matter of minutes and resubmitted a ticket with all but a video of it).
Sure, I did submit a bunch of things on the off chance that some routine misuse might be easily fixed, but there are too many things wrong with the dismissive attitude towards something like "Diminish is routinely misused". Just put the damned card in a deck, give it to the AI and you'll see it cast on 1/1 creatures, and generally cast at anything at all at the first opportunity. It's completely unusable.
Now, this wouldn't bother me if at the same time there weren't cards which aren't in the pool because "the AI would be bad with them". What's Diminish doing in the pool then? If I took some time to find a screen recorder which worked with XP I could just tape endless hours of cards which shouldn't be in the pool on those same grounds. Yeah, maintenance on certain cards that don't work right would be a pain in the ass, but there's not that much maintanance done on cards that don't work for the AI but are in the pool.
I don't even personally care that this or that isn't in the pool, what gets on my nerves is inconsistency and what gets on my nerves even more is that there's a semi nebulous (on the user/tester end) bug #531 everything gets pinned on.
I don't understand bug #531 and from what I've read about it neither does Korath. But my reports can get labeled as bulls**t , and I can give you video proof that they aren't , while just about anything labeled as "due to untraceable and unfixable bug" can actually be anything from "someone messed up the AI card evaluation system either when originally coding it or later" to "AI is using a ridicuolus system for card draw which messess up card draw" or or as the ticket on that bug itself says "If I'm wrong, I've probably just made the combat AI even worse."
What if you have? What if your card drawing system (or the original one if that one's still there) is behind systemic AI incompetence with almost anything related to card draw? Because it actually looks that way. What if your (or original) exclusive decisions on element evaluation schemes for the AI are behind most or at least some of the many systemic nebulous misplays? Because last time around something like that was exactly the thing, everything was set to be played after combat which made a huge number of things set to always not work.
How about we clear that up? Because I or anyone else, will just keep running into things which warrant reporting, and we will not be telling bullshit, but it'll just get shrugged away. This isn't about any concrete report or complaint, it's about honesty and nor being asshats.
What is the Bug #531, exactly?
I've noticed a consisten pattern of the AI using (some?) sacrifice outlets, specifically Homarid Spawning Bed and Stitcher's Apprentice , wrong. The AI sacrifices things to them in it's own turn, most often during combat before damage is dealt, meaning it routinely wastes damage , opportunity and god knows what else.
In short it attacks and then sacrifices the attacker mid-attack before blockers are even declared. Will 3 seconds of thought be given to how to fix these cards or will it be handwaved away with nonsense?
Because I can handwave it with nonsense myself - bug #531 hur desync dur sacrificing and tokens and combat oh my. But it doesn't have to be that, when creatures have summoning sickness it tends to sacrifice them before combat. It's just trigger happy with sacrificing when it's proffitable + the ability is likely set to be usable before blockers in order to facilitate chump-block-into-sacrifice but the AI doesn't know it's only supposed to do that on the other guy's turn and only sacrifice it's stuff post combat in it's own turn. Way more likely than boogey-bugs.
How do I report this in a way which might result in it getting fixed? I report a bug I've seen a 100 times (literally, I have 3 decks with soulshift in the rotating pool at the moment), piss-easy to reproduce, happens to affect a number of creatures - "can't be reproduced". Not even "give a decklist if you want me to check it out". Another report later "all his routine misuse reports are just for bug #531".
No they're not. They might be clumsy and unhelpfully phrased or even stupid, but they're legit reports for legit problems. And if they are all by some miracle connected to some bogus desync or bug or whatever, then that damned bug is causing pages of reports. If you can't be bothered with or don't have the time to fix it you probably know someone who could be persuaded to do it. Let's put some money together and hire a guy to fix that thing.
Sure, I did submit a bunch of things on the off chance that some routine misuse might be easily fixed, but there are too many things wrong with the dismissive attitude towards something like "Diminish is routinely misused". Just put the damned card in a deck, give it to the AI and you'll see it cast on 1/1 creatures, and generally cast at anything at all at the first opportunity. It's completely unusable.
Now, this wouldn't bother me if at the same time there weren't cards which aren't in the pool because "the AI would be bad with them". What's Diminish doing in the pool then? If I took some time to find a screen recorder which worked with XP I could just tape endless hours of cards which shouldn't be in the pool on those same grounds. Yeah, maintenance on certain cards that don't work right would be a pain in the ass, but there's not that much maintanance done on cards that don't work for the AI but are in the pool.
I don't even personally care that this or that isn't in the pool, what gets on my nerves is inconsistency and what gets on my nerves even more is that there's a semi nebulous (on the user/tester end) bug #531 everything gets pinned on.
I don't understand bug #531 and from what I've read about it neither does Korath. But my reports can get labeled as bulls**t , and I can give you video proof that they aren't , while just about anything labeled as "due to untraceable and unfixable bug" can actually be anything from "someone messed up the AI card evaluation system either when originally coding it or later" to "AI is using a ridicuolus system for card draw which messess up card draw" or or as the ticket on that bug itself says "If I'm wrong, I've probably just made the combat AI even worse."
What if you have? What if your card drawing system (or the original one if that one's still there) is behind systemic AI incompetence with almost anything related to card draw? Because it actually looks that way. What if your (or original) exclusive decisions on element evaluation schemes for the AI are behind most or at least some of the many systemic nebulous misplays? Because last time around something like that was exactly the thing, everything was set to be played after combat which made a huge number of things set to always not work.
How about we clear that up? Because I or anyone else, will just keep running into things which warrant reporting, and we will not be telling bullshit, but it'll just get shrugged away. This isn't about any concrete report or complaint, it's about honesty and nor being asshats.
What is the Bug #531, exactly?
I've noticed a consisten pattern of the AI using (some?) sacrifice outlets, specifically Homarid Spawning Bed and Stitcher's Apprentice , wrong. The AI sacrifices things to them in it's own turn, most often during combat before damage is dealt, meaning it routinely wastes damage , opportunity and god knows what else.
In short it attacks and then sacrifices the attacker mid-attack before blockers are even declared. Will 3 seconds of thought be given to how to fix these cards or will it be handwaved away with nonsense?
Because I can handwave it with nonsense myself - bug #531 hur desync dur sacrificing and tokens and combat oh my. But it doesn't have to be that, when creatures have summoning sickness it tends to sacrifice them before combat. It's just trigger happy with sacrificing when it's proffitable + the ability is likely set to be usable before blockers in order to facilitate chump-block-into-sacrifice but the AI doesn't know it's only supposed to do that on the other guy's turn and only sacrifice it's stuff post combat in it's own turn. Way more likely than boogey-bugs.
How do I report this in a way which might result in it getting fixed? I report a bug I've seen a 100 times (literally, I have 3 decks with soulshift in the rotating pool at the moment), piss-easy to reproduce, happens to affect a number of creatures - "can't be reproduced". Not even "give a decklist if you want me to check it out". Another report later "all his routine misuse reports are just for bug #531".
No they're not. They might be clumsy and unhelpfully phrased or even stupid, but they're legit reports for legit problems. And if they are all by some miracle connected to some bogus desync or bug or whatever, then that damned bug is causing pages of reports. If you can't be bothered with or don't have the time to fix it you probably know someone who could be persuaded to do it. Let's put some money together and hire a guy to fix that thing.