Improved Witch Doctor

Please I'm prove Witch Doctor as he is the most frustrating troup in this game, how come insted of going to help and revive a large group of gunners he's going for one lonely gunner in the corner of the map? thanks

 

He cannot tell the difference between a group or a single unit, due to the limitations of supporting old hardware. It takes too many computing resources to determine a group. Each unit in that group is just another single unit as far as he's concerned.

Since you could theoretically have 9 witch doctors at a time (4 in tavern and 5 on gs), each picking where to go with up to 53 other troops spread out across the map, multiple times a second, all of the processing needed to find the closest group, weighting group size vs distance, while also dealing with things like prioritizing normal troops over resurrecting skeletons, and trying to avoid multiple WD picking the same target, gets computationally expensive very fast.

It can be done, but I'm almost positive the reason it isn't being done is because of the need to support very old devices (the 5 year old iPhone 4S being a notable example). If you realize that he thinks of every unit in a large group as just another single unit, it helps predict his AI a lot better.


Suppose hypothetically we had infinite processing power though. Say there are three gunners that the WD would have to walk 4 tiles to get to, or 2 gunners the WD would have to walk 3 tiles to get to, or 10 gunners it would have to walk 6 tiles to get to. All of those are groups, with bigger ones being further away - how would you expect them to decide the tradeoff between size and distance? If it goes for the closest one, regardless of size, then a 1 unit group (single target) would always have precedence. If it always goes for the largest group, regardless of distance, you could drop him on one side of the island with 5 gunners, and have 6 clearing the ship on the other side, and he'd run away across the island to get to those 6. So either it has to take the simplest case (closest unit irrespective of size), or you have to start deciding what trade off each extra tile walked is worth, which starts leading to even buggier behavior, especially as troops start to die and group sizes change. And even then, different people will have different opinions on how far it should walk to protect one additional unit.

There are probably ways to solve the problem, probably even ones that could technically be optimized to perform on the older hardware (although the AI of other units and defenses and all the graphics rendering needed leaves you with very little processing time left to work with), but its an incredibly difficult design challenge that would probably lead to a bunch of worse bugs and take more time to accomplish than its worth - it might take them a month to code test and implement a new algorithm that performs well enough to use and has few enough bugs to work, and would put hold on other critical features.

This is not as simple a task as "pick a group". And "just go protect the closest unit" is extremely easy to implement and work with, takes very little computation, and users can still work around it. I'll readily admit there are tons of other issues with his behavior, like when sometimes two pick the same unit, or he runs off for a unit that is further away (I believe in general this is because for optimization reasons the battlefield is being broken down into 4x4 tile blocks to calculate waypoints/distances, and that causes all sorts of random weird behavior when units look close, but are on either edge of the boundary of these 4x4 blocks).

But in general, if you understand he's just going to pick the closest unit and follow it until it dies, you can release him with your group, when one of them is certainly going to be the closest unit, and most of the time he will stay with them until they start to split up or die off. I'd much rather them focus their limited development time on refining that so he ALWAYS picks the closest unit, since that behavior can be predicted and used, and when he fails you'd understand why.

 

+1.We need smart WD.This one sucks

 

I disagree the iphone 4s theory, as the iphone 4s is still a damn good phone, I mean there are tons of more computing demanding stuff in PP than Witch Doctor choising between a large group or a single troup,, there are samsung phones that suport PP and run PP way worse than iPhone 4s (ofcourse the iphone is better optimised).

so the iphone 4s can process 60 troups at once,, each having diferent targets and ability and cant compute the Witch Doctor?

 

Wow.... I just dislike the idea of sacrificing the entire market of newer devices for a low end device such as iPhone 4s... I find it even ridiculous (make a separate server for them if they are really worth that much! ).

This game has an immense potential, but I think it's losing huge amounts of revenue due to holding onto those old devices (thus keeping the game in a low-quality state).

Btw, I would like to see a straw-poll about the WD change... I can't believe that many people love the Witch doctor that follows lone gunners and let the rest of the Pirates die by themselves... to the point it got reverted.

Just my thoughts about the topic...

 

There were dozens of topics created about it, because after the change, he would run straight for a high hp unit like a jugg despite it being further away. I was pretty much the only one arguing for the change, almost everyone else wanted it back how it was - I guess they didn't remember him running off as often. I'm sure @850arrr will be able to confirm as well, as he even had his avatar changed to a WD reading "fix me" until it got reverted.

Also Lynsey, you do know you can have 9 WD not 8, since the GS isn't restricted by tavern limits, you could technically have 5 donated to you
(Time to find a 4s and see if 9 wd will break it!)

 

Hmmm... Apparently I wasn't very active by that time...I don't even remember the previous WD (the one that followed tanks) being that of a big deal to receive such hate, unlike the stinky one we have right now. Thanks for the insights!

 

Well, I'm truly glad to see Lynsey gave an explaination, her answare seems legit for a company with low budget, I don't blame the developers of the game who did and do a great job on this game as is the first game on mobile that got me addicted and is unique because of the 3D, but I still have few quiestions..

How long will iphone 4 be supported? Forever? Not even apple will support iphone 4s forever as 4 I think its already no longer supported by apple.

And why there isn't enough publicity about this game. My friends who played clash of clands wore amaized by PP,, here in spain I see adverts on tv about clash of clans,, candy crush and others but never saw an PP advert, make the world know about this game.

1 advice I have for Midoki,, do NOT incline the game totally towards kids, the game need more strategy in it, more time consuming minigames like explorer map, SOE discontinued FreeRealms game because they inclined towards kids with tons of in game purchase, so many players left that they discontinued the game forever,, I don't want to see that happening to PP.

 

I believe it was you and Rap that were the only ones that liked 1.9
I did have a custom avatar like you said as I couldn't stand the jugg hugging AI of 1.9 as did almost everyone else. It was THE reason why I joined here so I could voice my hate for 1.9 and how bad of a change it was. I can remember a new thread popping up daily about how people hated 1.9. Now it did take some time for the 1.9 to go away and don't forget the invincible stint he had too, so people got used to 1.9 and then going back to the original made people have to change yet again on their play strategy causing grief and such. That being said, i feel the current WD AI isn't perfect by any means but it works for me and it works really well. Yes he does at time wander off but 95% of the time I only need one of him on my ship and I can get him well into a base and usually at that time I can resurrect a crap ton of skellys to finish off the base. Back during 1.9 I had to bring up to 4 WD's to win a stupid battle and it was just so dumb, I had to stop using juggs and brutes and switch to more skellys....but dear god watch out for that shark trap cause GOLP!

 

@Lynsey [Midoki] forgive me if I'm wrong but I believe current witch doctor AI currently works approximately:

1. 'Look' for the furthest unit from centre of island and go protect them.
2. Stay/move with them until they die
3. Repeat step 1.

This would explain why he sticks with LPs (highest HP - lasts longest). It explains why he sticks with Sadie - she is (almost) always most distant pirate. It also explains why he occasionally goes charging after lone gunners clearing outlying buildings.

When the AI was previously changed (to 'Look' for the highest HP unit) ppl complained because this meant he always protected juggs & brutes (we didn't have LPs back then) - even if it meant racing from one side of the island to the other to get to one (often dying before he got there).


At that time a number of ppl (myself included) requested that he 'Look' for the closest troop to his current position (since most of us drop him with the troops we want him to protect).

If the above description is approximately accurate (I accept it's a big if) is there any possibility that this alternative AI could be considered?

 

I have no trouble dropping troops late in a battle, the WD (for me) stays where he's at, usually by this time he's well into the base next to a HG and gunners hopefully leveling the place to bits.

With LP's, he ignores them for me. Though I usually use, Mac, Romeo, Black Beard and Annabel.

But yes, I would like a little clarity from Lynsey cause I always like her insight

 

After hearing from you guys I think WD are fine now,, I admit not all the time goes wild but he might get some improvements like never stick with only 1 troup as long as a large group is in need and nearby,, or he should also go to troups that need to be resurected as long as hes ability is not on cooldown,, idk is just my opinion,, but unless there is truly a good way of updating hes AI he shouldnt be changed in a bad way..

 

Well my witch dr still runs to the lone gunner in the middle of nowhere after I drop him inside a group of pirates all taking damage.. Extremely frustrating and a waste of over 100k worth of grog. It happens every single attack. And honestly, by now, if someone doesn't have something better than an iPhone 4 they should find a different game to play. If anything it would probably force a lot of players with old devices to purchase new phones and you can have a link on the app for a discounted new device through apple or Samsung where you guys can take a percentage of new device sales lol. Than send the doctor back to school and out of special ed so he won't be riding the short bus to school anymore and we all win!

 

That is roughly he only thing to keep in mind with the current Ai. I used to drop a brute later in the game to divert mortars. The general effect is-was that the Wd would cross the island for my brute.

I adjusted my "late in game dropping" of units and it now seems to work fine. Bit wobbly in centre of island during attack. Moving from one to another as they drop but Appart from that few complaints.