This may have been going on for the last two years and I just never noticed, but I’m finding that match damage when multiple matches are made seems to not be calculating correctly.
Specifically, when a match is made and the tiles fall into a second match the second match seems to be doing only a percentage of the damage that should be doing.
I will upload some screenshots to show what I’m talking about, but wanted to just throw this out there in case it’s already known and I could save the trouble.
It can actually be important sometimes when you’re making a swap that makes two matches. Whichever match you swap into will be scored first, so you want to match the higher value color first for more overall damage, or sometimes the other way if you don’t want to overkill a target.
It also explains why strike tiles are so incredibly powerful. Since they have no diminishing returns on damage, cascades with strikes can destroy in a way that cascades without strikes cannot.
Worth pointing out also that it’s not just match damage that decays with cascades, but AP gain as well. But yeah without this system cascades would be even more devastating than they are right now.
As in normally if you match 3 of a colour, you gain 3 AP of that colour. But when a cascade get long enough, a match 3 would get 2 AP instead, and then eventually 1 and down to no AP at all. It’s not as obvious as damage decay as it doesn’t drop straight away. A long time ago I remember seeing on the forum where someone worked out the number of cascade lengths required for that to happen.
Well, I never tested it myself so I can’t defend it, but I’m pretty sure I read it here a long time ago. It seemed to make sense so I always just accepted it as fact, but it doesn’t really matter much either way. The conditions for it are pretty rare.