Elements relations changed? what wins over stone?

[Bambamstad]

Likely they didn't consider it a priority because it was an error in the element tutorial's rating message which didn't affect the actual impact of the attacks. If the odds of rolling a Critical Hit remains the same while the tutorial fails to rate an element, it makes no difference to the outcome of the battle.

I keep saying: The element tutorial does NOT score your attack! You only see "strong", "weak" and blanks on FAIL hits. All fail hits deliver the same ineffective range of damage. Players need to get over this illogical need to see "Strong Attack" flashing across the screen. That information is only useful when you're learning the dominance system or trying to figure out changes.

Unfortunately, the glitch in the tutorial (which is occasionally glitchy anyway, just not this consistently) had us wondering whether there WERE in fact changes to the dominance system, and had some of us doing exhaustive testing which turned out to be unnecessary. The absent rating also gave rise to all kinds of speculation, not to mention the doom-and-gloom proclamations that were approching the brink of hysteria. I sure am happy to see those notions evaporate, although they will probably resurface again the next time an opportunity arises to carry on about imagined injustices against certain players.

I think you are perfectly right considering the tournament, in which you can get a critical hit with every attack. Still a lot of people including me have the feeling the chances are bigger with a dominant element. I know this is not true, but sometimes you grasp every straw (dutch expression, probably different in english)

For the battlegrounds, dominant element is important, because there you have the defensive win, and chosing the dominant element matters in my opinion.
Anyway i am glad that nature flashes strong again against earth, meaning my sloth and vinotaur are coming back in the arena a lot of times.

[zenobia42]

I didn't see any near-hysteria here, just concern, and for good reason I might add. But I guess that's just because when a change is worrisome for someone, I choose to empathize rather than judge them as hysterical or stupid or wrong for feeling that way. But that's just my perspective on this and I know there are a lot of perspectives out there.

Really, I'm just glad nature is showing as strong against earth again. Since we can't see the real mechanics coding the battles, the strong and weak messages are all we have to determine if there are any strong or weak relationships between our fighters and the opponents. So saying something has a strong attack to me means confirmation there is a strong relationship between the element chosen to "attack" with, and the target, not that which element was chosen to be used in the attack was significant. But whatever, I do not like to argue semantics. And I'm just glad it's back to nature being confirmed on-screen as strong to earth.

[ninasidstorm8]

Likely they didn't consider it a priority because it was an error in the element tutorial's rating message which didn't affect the actual impact of the attacks. If the odds of rolling a Critical Hit remains the same while the tutorial fails to rate an element, it makes no difference to the outcome of the battle.

I keep saying: The element tutorial does NOT score your attack! You only see "strong", "weak" and blanks on FAIL hits. All fail hits deliver the same ineffective range of damage. Players need to get over this illogical need to see "Strong Attack" flashing across the screen. That information is only useful when you're learning the dominance system or trying to figure out changes.

Unfortunately, the glitch in the tutorial (which is occasionally glitchy anyway, just not this consistently) had us wondering whether there WERE in fact changes to the dominance system, and had some of us doing exhaustive testing which turned out to be unnecessary. The absent rating also gave rise to all kinds of speculation, not to mention the doom-and-gloom proclamations that were approching the brink of hysteria. I sure am happy to see those notions evaporate, although they will probably resurface again the next time an opportunity arises to carry on about imagined injustices against certain players.

I agree with what you are saying, however, I believe that the error was not just in the tutorial. Being a programmer (though not for games), I cannot think a logical way to code this game where the Strong Attack message would not show up for only one type of attack. It should just reflect something else that is going on (relative strength of the animals). This together with the problems a lot of people had with the Water/Earth creatures lead me to believe that the error was in the calculation of the relative strength and not just the display. Of course my own experience of losing to a level 1 Rainguin with a Level 15 Storm Sphinx, level 10 Chameneon and level 14 Aurora Pegasus before beating it on the fourth try with the Aurora Pegasus, may have influenced my opinion. (After the first loss and no message, I was experimenting a little). It just seems more likely to me the problem was deeper than just displaying the message. Fortunately there were only two Water/Earth creatures in the tournament (I beat the level 7 Iciclaw in round 10 on the first try) so it didn't bother me that much.

[SANDSCApe]

I agree with what you are saying, however, I believe that the error was not just in the tutorial. Being a programmer (though not for games), I cannot think a logical way to code this game where the Strong Attack message would not show up for only one type of attack. It should just reflect something else that is going on (relative strength of the animals). This together with the problems a lot of people had with the Water/Earth creatures lead me to believe that the error was in the calculation of the relative strength and not just the display. Of course my own experience of losing to a level 1 Rainguin with a Level 15 Storm Sphinx, level 10 Chameneon and level 14 Aurora Pegasus before beating it on the fourth try with the Aurora Pegasus, may have influenced my opinion. (After the first loss and no message, I was experimenting a little). It just seems more likely to me the problem was deeper than just displaying the message. Fortunately there were only two Water/Earth creatures in the tournament (I beat the level 7 Iciclaw in round 10 on the first try) so it didn't bother me that much.

The tutorial ONLY rates the element. It has absolutely nothing to do with relative strengths of the animals. It does not score the animal; it does not score the attack. It simply rates the element. The message for a particular element against a given element combo is EXACTLY the same every time, regardless of the levels and rarities of the challenger and responder. So THAT is how it is logical to code the tutorial completely separately from the calculation of the battle scores.

You may think it "should reflect something else that's going on" but it doesn't. The tutorial displays are drawing from an isolated static file. In fact, they can easily turn off the entire tutorial and have the battles shown with no element rating whatsoever. It won't change a darn thing about the battle outcomes. That's how battles appear in Dragon Story. Same battle system; just no element tutorial.

The only connection between the static tutorial messages and the dynamic battle scores is this: whenever you opt to roll the dice (by tapping either element button instead of the purple pill), if you don't roll a Critical Hit, the tutorial pops up like an eager chorus on the same old tune. Let me say this again: the element tutorial is NOT scoring your attack.

In tournaments, people's epic animals lose to the arena's wee babies so frequently, it's ridiculous. Tournaments are riddled with lost battles we think we should have won. People would rather grasp at an explanation for losses that involves a presumed glitch. It's somehow more palatable than the lousy luck of the roll. I didn't notice any difference in the actual battle outcomes, and I was diligently logging the tutorial messages from both the tournament and the regular battlegrounds in 3 different forests. I only noticed that the blasted weaklings often insisted on winning even when I was trying to lose so that I could test other elements against the same challenger. LOL

The temporary disappearance of Nature's messages was a valid reason to suspect that strengths may have changed and for that reason it was cause for concern. But it was not conclusive evidence that there was in fact any change.

[SANDSCApe]

I think you are perfectly right considering the tournament, in which you can get a critical hit with every attack. Still a lot of people including me have the feeling the chances are bigger with a dominant element. I know this is not true, but sometimes you grasp every straw (dutch expression, probably different in english)

For the battlegrounds, dominant element is important, because there you have the defensive win, and chosing the dominant element matters in my opinion.
Anyway i am glad that nature flashes strong again against earth, meaning my sloth and vinotaur are coming back in the arena a lot of times.

Update on that. The defensive win is a default give-away that occurs on every regular Battleground level that ends in a 1 or 6. I have found no evidence of it occurring under any other circumstances.
Absurdly enough, it isn't even about choice of fighters. Whenever you are fighting Battleground level 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, etc., it does NOT matter what animal you throw in there. It is GUARANTEED to win; if it doesn't roll a Critical Hit, it will get a fourth attack because the challenger has a built-in handicap and never hits you hard enough.

[ninasidstorm8]

The tutorial ONLY rates the element. It has absolutely nothing to do with relative strengths of the animals. It does not score the animal; it does not score the attack. It simply rates the element. The message for a particular element against a given element combo is EXACTLY the same every time, regardless of the levels and rarities of the challenger and responder. So THAT is how it is logical to code the tutorial completely separately from the calculation of the battle scores.

You may think it "should reflect something else that's going on" but it doesn't. The tutorial displays are drawing from an isolated static file. In fact, they can easily turn off the entire tutorial and have the battles shown with no element rating whatsoever. It won't change a darn thing about the battle outcomes. That's how battles appear in Dragon Story. Same battle system; just no element tutorial.

The only connection between the static tutorial messages and the dynamic battle scores is this: whenever you opt to roll the dice (by tapping either element button instead of the purple pill), if you don't roll a Critical Hit, the tutorial pops up like an eager chorus on the same old tune. Let me say this again: the element tutorial is NOT scoring your attack.

In tournaments, people's epic animals lose to the arena's wee babies so frequently, it's ridiculous. Tournaments are riddled with lost battles we think we should have won. People would rather grasp at an explanation for losses that involves a presumed glitch. It's somehow more palatable than the lousy luck of the roll. I didn't notice any difference in the actual battle outcomes, and I was diligently logging the tutorial messages from both the tournament and the regular battlegrounds in 3 different forests. I only noticed that the blasted weaklings often insisted on winning even when I was trying to lose so that I could test other elements against the same challenger. LOL

The temporary disappearance of Nature's messages was a valid reason to suspect that strengths may have changed and for that reason it was cause for concern. But it was not conclusive evidence that there was in fact any change.

Thank you for sharing your data. I agree that the tutorial has nothing to do with scoring the attack directly and it doesn’t matter which button you push for the attack. I normally will use each button in a battle to verify things are still working as I expect.

I only use one account, so I personally only have data from four battles in two different rounds where I could see the problem. Not much from a statistical viewpoint. In fact, I cannot personally verify the problem has actually been fixed at this point, though I trust the reports of others that it is fixed.

What I was trying to point out is that if I were writing the code for the battles, I would use the same table of relative strengths between creatures to determine the odds of the critical hit and display the messages for the tutorial. I agree that the messages themselves are probably in separate table, which could be changed or turned off at any time, but my thinking is that the table has three messages (maybe a fourth for blank/neutral). Not a set of messages for each element combination. I think there is a separate table of element combinations that indicate the relative strength of the elements. i.e. Nature vs Earth is a plus 1. It’s just speculation on my part.

If the error that we saw was in the common table used to calculate the odds of the Critical Hit and which message to display, it would affect the outcome of the battle as well. I am not sure if I was clear about that in my previous post.

I am only speculating, and I don’t have enough data to verify this. If you are saying that your observations when the problem was occurring indicate that the error did not affect the critical hit calculations I trust your judgment.

Thanks again for sharing. I enjoy the discussion, hopefully, this gives you a better indication of my thinking.

[ninasidstorm8]

Update on that. The defensive win is a default give-away that occurs on every regular Battleground level that ends in a 1 or 6. I have found no evidence of it occurring under any other circumstances.
Absurdly enough, it isn't even about choice of fighters. Whenever you are fighting Battleground level 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, etc., it does NOT matter what animal you throw in there. It is GUARANTEED to win; if it doesn't roll a Critical Hit, it will get a fourth attack because the challenger has a built-in handicap and never hits you hard enough.

That is an interesting observation. I only kept good data from the Terrorier and Thorilla battleground tournaments and it matches your observation. I never lost a round that met your criteria and all defensive wins were in rounds that met that criteria as well. I was wondering why I never had a defensive win in the arena. You have answered that. Well done and thank you.

[kooky panda]

Is the recent change where Nature no longer produces a strong attack against Earth an intentional change or a bug? In previous battles, an Electric/Nature creature would produce a strong attack against a Water/Earth creature when using the Nature attack. That is no longer the case. It appears that Nature is no longer strong against anything and players without an ultra rare cannot generate a strong attack against earth. I hope this is a bug that an be corrected soon, since the Thanksgibbon tournament has already started and there are a few creatures at the start that have Earth elements. Any information related to this would be helpful.

Sorry for the delay in getting confirmation but this was resolved last week. You should now see correct text for Strong/Weak attacks.