Why another complex minigame that will probably die in 2 weeks?

[Azurymber]

Much like Lord of Verminion, Mahjong is too complicated for casual players to learn.
And much like Lord of Verminion, it will probably be dead in 2 weeks.

1. The game is too complex.
This could have easily been fixed by starting novice matches with limited rules, and adding complexity at each tier. With challenges & incentives (rewards), people might at least be willing to invest time into learning the game.

2. No tutorial.
Why wouldn't there at least be a tutorial that holds your hand and explains the game? The text descriptions in-game are beyond confusing and unclear. Which is why multiple people have created online documents to explain the game.

3. Innate unfairness
New players are unlikely to ever beat players who have a lifetime of experience. And with a high-stakes point-based ranking system, new players are just going to get wrecked over and over and over again

4. Time
Hour+ long multiplayer matches are insane. And the payoff isn't amazing.

5. Bad automated suggestions
The automatic suggestions kind of screw up the entire game. Because instead of playing and learning the game, people just begin to rely on suggestions. And then second guess themselves when they feel like making a move different from the suggestions.

Why does every major minigame in the gold saucer have to have convoluted rules, or pointless time investments. Triple Triad is full of complicated rules that aren't necessarily easily picked up. Chocobo racing has an entire breeding system behind it. Lord of Verminion requires a bunch of strategy. And Mahjong is Mahjong....

Why can't we just have a minigame that anyone can pick up in seconds. That is fun. And that people actually want to play on a regular basis for the sake of playing it? I would bet if they added multiplayer pong, more people would be playing it that any of the existing games.

[KaivaC]

So don't play it?

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I mean, to be fair, Mahjong does have a decent popularity worldwide.

[Azurymber]

So don't play it?

The issue isn't about whether or not I like it.
It's about whether it's going to even be possible to play 2-weeks from now when everyone has given up on it.

I enjoy verminion and choco racing, but they both share the same issue with Mahjong, which is that people who are good at the game will always wreck people who aren't. And there is no incentive to become good at the game because rewards aren't high enough. So even if you have a few players who love the game, they will eventually get tired of 30min+ queues or playing alone, and just quit as well.

That's why even when the gold saucer is FULL of people for the MGP bonus in the summer, verminion queues are still 30+min and you almost always end up doing solo choco races, or occasionally face 1 other person.

On the other hand if they made a game anyone can pick up, without needing to invest time into it, then people might actually play on a regular basis

[KaivaC]

On the other hand if they made a game anyone can pick up, without needing to invest time into it, then people might actually play on a regular basis

Fair enough - games such as what, though? They can't exactly put in games that have a huge gambling stigma attached to it, like typical casino games. I'd imagine that if they had added Blitzball as Yoshi had hinted at finding a hard time implementing, that would be a significant time sink as well. Maybe we need to throw some suggestions on feasible future GS options and see what catches up with others?

[Azurymber]

Fair enough - games such as what, though? They can't exactly put in games that have a huge gambling stigma attached to it, like typical casino games. I'd imagine that if they had added Blitzball as Yoshi had hinted at finding a hard time implementing, that would be a significant time sink as well. Maybe we need to throw some suggestions on feasible future GS options and see what catches up with others?

Multiplayer FF7-esque magitek motorcycle racing (with swords). Think mario kart (add powerups and stuff so part of winning is random luck)
Multiplayer FF7-esque snowboarding (it was so popular it spawned a standalone game)
Multiplayer BlitzBall (not blitzball manager 2019)
Mario-Party-Esque boardgame with gold-saucer-based minigames (e.g. short jumping minigame, flying plane minigame, basketball hoops minigame, etc)

Im sure there are 100s of unique possibilities they could think up.
The key being none of them have a level system, or special gear, etc. You just queue up and your on equal ground with everyone else. And have fun.

[Kurando]

Why can't we just have a minigame that anyone can pick up in seconds. That is fun. And that people actually want to play on a regular basis for the sake of playing it? I would bet if they added multiplayer pong, more people would be playing it that any of the existing games.

The thing is we do already have plenty of minigames that players can do, it's not like the isn't any there at all. Mahjong is one of those things that you either have an interest in or you don't, it's not a requirement that it needs to be accessible to every single player and that's a good thing. It's a bit like the Ultimate raids, it's not for everyone but it did satisfy a small base of players and brought something completely different to what we usually get in the game.

Mahjong could very well be dead on certain worlds, but come on now the game isn't just made for the Western market, and this has no doubt made a group of players very happy to see it being introduced after all this time. Could we do with more minigames, yes most probably, but only time will tell what the future holds.

[Jojoya]

I think you underestimate how big a game Mahjong is in other parts of the world. Even if you're not interested in it, other players are... and they already know the general rules. They don't have to try to learn it outside of the minor changes.

[KaivaC]

Multiplayer FF7-esque magitek motorcycle racing (with swords). Think mario kart (add powerups and stuff so part of winning is random luck)
Multiplayer FF7-esque snowboarding (it was so popular it spawned a standalone game)
Multiplayer BlitzBall (not blitzball manager 2019)
Mario-Party-Esque boardgame with gold-saucer-based minigames (e.g. short jumping minigame, flying plane minigame, basketball hoops minigame, etc)

Im sure there are 100s of unique possibilities they could think up.
The key being none of them have a level system, or special gear, etc. You just queue up and your on equal ground with everyone else. And have fun.

I don't disagree with those suggestions - especially motorcycle, Blitzball, and Mario Party. But I worry that the latter two may be time sinks in and of themselves. I'd imagine Mahjong might have slightly longer staying power because, of course, it is rather popular (there were a good number of people who wanted the Mahjong board on the Live Letter stream where it was revealed).

[Arya_Leviathan]

The thing is we do already have plenty of minigames that players can do, it's not like the isn't any there at all. Mahjong is one of those things that you either have an interest in or you don't, it's not a requirement that it needs to be accessible to every single player and that's a good thing. It's a bit like the Ultimate raids, it's not for everyone but it did satisfy a small base of players and brought something completely different to what we usually get in the game.

Mahjong could very well be dead on certain worlds, but come on now the game isn't just made for the Western market, and this has no doubt made a group of players very happy to see it being introduced after all this time. Could we do with more minigames, yes most probably, but only time will tell what the future holds.

Mahjong is actually decently popular here in the west also (although an American variant), the Mahjongg League has around 500k members. Though it's probably mostly made up of old generation vets and doesn't see much of the younger generations. Mahjong is also very popular in eastern countries (of some different variants of course). And riichi is actually probably even more popular than the American and European variants due to anime/manga culture.

So to OP I actually think while it may die off eventually on NA/EU just like with most other minigames I'm fairly certain it'll remain fairly popular on JP, and on NA there will probably still be a small group of a devoted playerbase as it's a good alternative to the popular tenhou for english speaking players (you can play Mahjong on free trial). Mahjong was also added as a side hobby for the devs, and who knows since it will be a popular GS minigame for JP it might give the devs a lee way to get ideas to start adding more larger minigames into FFXIV than just GATEs here and there.

[Alien_Gamer]

I enjoy verminion and choco racing, but they both share the same issue with Mahjong, which is that people who are good at the game will always wreck people who aren't.

You just described every competitive game in existence.

All of your examples apply to this as well, those with more skill will do better. Games without skill are called games of chance and there's plenty of those already. If the game is determined by getting an arbitrary number, why bother wasting time with other players? Just go play minicacpot each day and collect your rewards. People do that because its a free currency generator and takes 30 seconds, not because its any fun.

I also don't believe Mahjong or any of the other games you mentioned are too difficult to learn. The game is horrid at telling you the rules and how to use the game but Mahjong itself isn't hard, neither is triple triad or chocobo racing, or any others.

About the only thing I do agree with is the time investment for a full game is more than I want to put into it. But thats also because I don't really care about Mahjong; if they were to put in Go, I could spend hours playing that though.