Mahjong is the most depressing mini game you've added to XIV

I actually got up to 1836 at one point and now I'm down to 1581. The rating system penalties for losing are way too steep when this game is heavily luck based

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

You can probably see why she thought this was a discussion on the most depressing minigame added to XIV, however. Since you went so far as to make your thread title a claim that Mahjong has that very title.

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Yeah, totally agreed. Not fair at all to compare something that takes an hour+ of your time for one single game, with the only MGP rewards being from the challenge log once a week, compared to always making it out of the mini cactpot with MORE THAN YOU TRIED IT WITH EVERY SINGLE TIME.

At least mini cactpot doesn't have achievements that other players can keep you from never getting.

I find it very confusing and takes up way to much time.

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Originally Posted by Bacent

At least mini cactpot doesn't have achievements that other players can keep you from never getting.

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You could uh, learn the rules and beat other people to increase your rank to get the roll? Honestly I don't mind the slow burn that comes with playing Mahjong, and yes it's a time-investment, almost like that's kind of what an MMO is like right there. I'm not going to pretend I'm the cream of the crop when it comes to mahjong, but considering how it was something I had no real idea how prior to its release in XIV, it took some time to feel out and get a half-way decent understanding of it.

At the end of the day, you want the roll that badly? Learn to play the game.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/blog/002749.html

With the upcoming changes for mahjong it should be much more obtainable to get the 1600 achievement. Instead of digging yourself in a hole you can't recover from, you now have the ability to reset to 1500 which only puts you a few wins away from the music roll. As for the other achievements, I don't think it's unfair to lock the titles behind a rating system since it's something for mahjong enthusiasts to work towards.

Give us Snowboards race!!

As far as I can tell, the only way to get the scrolls and achivements is to get enough people from your FC to go in with you, and throw matches until one of you wins, then everybody resets and the other 3 throw matches for oen of the others.

You can't actually do this with a normal amount of skill.

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Originally Posted by TateBro

You could uh, learn the rules and beat other people to increase your rank to get the roll? Honestly I don't mind the slow burn that comes with playing Mahjong, and yes it's a time-investment, almost like that's kind of what an MMO is like right there. I'm not going to pretend I'm the cream of the crop when it comes to mahjong, but considering how it was something I had no real idea how prior to its release in XIV, it took some time to feel out and get a half-way decent understanding of it.

At the end of the day, you want the roll that badly? Learn to play the game.

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There's learning to play the game, and then there's not having a chance against people who are better at a MINI GAME than you are. I invested time into trying to learn how to play the game, having to go to sites that were not made by SE because of their poor descriptions for a good potion of it.

What's the point of punishing people trying to learn a game? Is there REALLY any point in pushing away new people by pushing them away from achievements just because they don't remember all the rules?

I don't care if it took me a long time to get the roll, but when you lose more matches than you win, you're not making any progress. Hell, you can win more matches than you lose but STILL be on a downward slope because of how second place is a 'win', ans third/fourth places are losses, with 4th losing around 30 points, and second only awarding around 9-10 points.

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Originally Posted by Eleken

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/pr/blog/002749.html

With the upcoming changes for mahjong it should be much more obtainable to get the 1600 achievement. Instead of digging yourself in a hole you can't recover from, you now have the ability to reset to 1500 which only puts you a few wins away from the music roll.

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Yeah, I'm not touching the minigame until they add this. Then there's at the least SOME possible fun knowing you won't be digging a hole so deep you'll never see the light.

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Originally Posted by Fellgon

Give us Snowboards race!!

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Go read the rest of this thread. This isn't asking about adding another game, don't try to hijack it.

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Originally Posted by ICountFrom0

You can't actually do this with a normal amount of skill.

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https://i.imgur.com/9qTrJbh.png

I'll take that as a compliment, then.

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Originally Posted by Kietsu

https://i.imgur.com/9qTrJbh.png

I'll take that as a compliment, then.

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That is straight up the coldest troll I ever seen. But seriously congrats I played Mahjong once and went nope I'd rather drill and cap my teeth by hand with a black and decker industrial and molten lead.

I've done it and so have a few of my friends. If you enjoy playing mahjong and avoid getting 4th it's not that unreasonable to get.

I'd be seriously disappointed if people started cheating to get a title normally reserved for avid players.

Mahjong is really fun, you just need to invest a bit of time learning the Yaku, how to play defensive, WHEN to play defensive, when to push for a hand, the pain of getting greedy and dealing into someone, the bliss of rejecting easy wins for more expensive hands and paying off.

It's a shame it's not popular in western culture, our queues are dead. :(

This is what I think about when I imagine Mahjong:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20140213005539

But I was disappointed.

Saki why you do this too me?

This is the stupidest, most asinine game in the Gold Saucer and is a major, major time waster. Why in the world SE put this game in the challenge log for the Gold Saucer is beyond comprehension. Triple Triad would have been a much better choice. I guess they love to irritate people with a game that takes forever to play, is difficult to understand and is so boring.

Why does so many Americans watch baseball?
It is the most boring thing I've ever seen and half the time nothing is happening and the other half someone is walking slowly from A to B.
If you don't understand a game and have no relation to it, then it is just normal to not like it.

Mahjong is a Asian game played and loved by a lot of Japanese people.
The devs had the chance to place something in the game they liked and know about, so it was Mahjong.

Stop complaining about it, no one is forces anyone to play it.

I mean there is a reason why it's called achievement. And I don't understand what you expect SE to do. Have the items in question be something you can buy on top of being an achievement reward? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?

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Originally Posted by MercedesAnnMaria

This is the stupidest, most asinine game in the Gold Saucer and is a major, major time waster. Why in the world SE put this game in the challenge log for the Gold Saucer is beyond comprehension. Triple Triad would have been a much better choice. I guess they love to irritate people with a game that takes forever to play, is difficult to understand and is so boring.

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I mean don't play it?? Its a game from the East. Its not for everyone and that is ok.

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Originally Posted by MercedesAnnMaria

This is the stupidest, most asinine game in the Gold Saucer and is a major, major time waster. Why in the world SE put this game in the challenge log for the Gold Saucer is beyond comprehension. Triple Triad would have been a much better choice. I guess they love to irritate people with a game that takes forever to play, is difficult to understand and is so boring.

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IMHO Triple Triad is total BS. NPCs keeps winning by some random rules. The rules make no sense.
I prefer Mahjong.

We need something for us dumb Americans. Texas Hold'em, Domino, Blackjack. Hell I'll settle for Uno.

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Originally Posted by Curisu

Why does so many Americans watch baseball?
It is the most boring thing I've ever seen and half the time nothing is happening and the other half someone is walking slowly from A to B.
If you don't understand a game and have no relation to it, then it is just normal to not like it.

Mahjong is a Asian game played and loved by a lot of Japanese people.
The devs had the chance to place something in the game they liked and know about, so it was Mahjong.

Stop complaining about it, no one is forces anyone to play it.

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This. 10000x this. It's all about scope of vision and the understanding that - ahem - a major portion of the humans on this Earth absolutely love Mahjong.

So, instead of saying "...omg (rant) I hate this boring, silly game, how could anyone ever like this garbage..."

How about actually getting into it (it's really no harder than gin rummy to start; how deep you can learn the strategy is down to your personal motivation and capacity), or if you cannot, which is entirely possible, then say, "whelp, it's not for me, but it's dope that they have a game like this for the hundreds and hundreds of millions of people that enjoy it."

To the completionists: Completionism is difficult. In order to be a completionist, you need to be the best of the best. At everything. Lock a mount behind PVP? Gotta do it. That minion is only from Mahjong? Gotta do it. This hairstyle comes from doing a dungeon I hate 100 times? Gotta do it.

You wanna be a completionist, you gotta be hardcore, versatile, willing to learn skills you wouldn't normally learn, and then excel at those skills.

Completionism isn't for the feint of heart. So, there's the Mahjong wall. Attack it, destroy it. Complete whatever it is.

Or don't, up to you.

Moaning about it does very little, though. You're up against the national pasttime of China, and the most popular table game in Japan.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

We need something for us dumb Americans. Texas Hold'em, Domino, Blackjack. Hell I'll settle for Uno.

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LMAO =) True, true. But, I think our American intellects are more suited for the Finer Miner and stuff like that. See button. Hit button. Win.

I kid, I kid. TBH it'd be really cool if there was a poker table in the Gold Saucer as well. I'd really dig that, even though I am getting into Mahjong.

Poker, Blackjack... those are far too close to gambling. I think they outright cant do these because of japanese law, which they as a japanese company need to keep in mind. Uno is copyright territory. Dominos... i have no early idea if that would be doable or not. Though i do know that the main reason we have Mahjong is that one of the developers basically made it from scratch in their freetime. If none of them are that passionate about dominos than the odds would be lower.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

We need something for us dumb Americans. Texas Hold'em, Domino, Blackjack. Hell I'll settle for Uno.

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lol i would actually love UNO

A quick fix would be putting the orchestrion roll into the MGP store, or for playing X amount of games (like 5 or 10).

Instead of the roll, reward a title for people who reached a ranking of 1600.

They also need to give MGP for playing it, since the matches take a considerable amount of time. Give better rewards for the two top spots, but still a good amount to the last two spots.

Relatively simple fix and potentially gets more people to play it, depending on how much MGP it rewards.

I personally stay away from Mahjong because i have somewhat of a better understanding of how it actually works in real life, and it's a game that on average.. is quite long, like, really long.

In real life a Mahjong session lasts at the very least 2 hours. So 45 minutes to 1 hour feels generous to me.

I just started playing Mahjong this weekend when I entered the Gold Saucer for the first time and I have to admit, I feel the same as many of you. While the game itself is fun and the profiles and layout are beautiful, the achievements are unreasonably difficult to achieve. They felt the need to give us a reset button back to 1500 so the orchestration roll would still be in view. Did it occur to them that the achievements "Tile and Error II" and "Tile and Error III" might also be unreasonably hard to achieve?

The problem is that rating can diminish if you come in 3rd or 4th. If you lose a chocobo race, it doesn't cancel out a win. Same with triple triad and all the other games. Only Mahjong is like this. Furthermore, you gain rank as you play. Rank is actually a detriment because, if you outrank your opponents, you stand to gain less rating for a win and lose more rating for a loss. The only thing rating does is give you access to the "Advanced Table", which does not award any additional rating per win. The wait on the advanced table is always much longer than on the novice table, so even 1st Dan players will play at the novice table.

If the goal was to introduce westerners to mahjong, you have made a terrible error. A great many MMO players are completionists. We want to do everything, experience everything, achieve everything that the MMO has to offer and we know it will take years to do that. Having a near impossible set of achievements ruins the experience. We can't even collect all the orchestration rolls because one is behind "that broken thing over there". Everyone online refers to Mahjong as "stressful" and "causes anxiety". If I bring it up in a conversation people say "can we talk about something more pleasant, like my father's funeral?"

Maybe we could make all the Tile and Error achievements rank based instead of rating based? Or make it so you don't lose rating for a loss? You have a 15 page thread going back to 2019. People are not happy. We aren't asking for a massive change, just adjust the rating mechanics and/or the achievement criteria. Players want things to be reasonably achievable. It's a game after all.

I don't think it's too unreasonable to get the orchestrion roll. The "Mahjong Master" title is pretty daunting but if you're good at playing defensively it's absolutely feasible.

i wonder if op is still complaining about an item being locked behind an achievement, and having to actually invest an "unreasonable" amount of time/effort in order to receive the reward

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Originally Posted by bonzibuddy64

I don't think it's too unreasonable to get the orchestrion roll. The "Mahjong Master" title is pretty daunting but if you're good at playing defensively it's absolutely feasible.

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No, it is absolutely not feasible.

I play defensively. I have not been hit with a ron in the last 50 matches I have played. The problem is, others do not play defensively. My opponents always continue trying to build their hand even after someone has declared riichi. My thinking is, what are the odds I will get the 2-3 tiles I need in less time than it takes him to get the 1 tile he needs? I'm not afraid to break open my melds and scuttle my hand in order to throw the lowest risk tile each turn. There is always that guy who gets ronned. Sometimes a second person gets ronned, sometimes their risky behavior pays off. It usually plays out that I cycle between 2nd and 3rd place and find myself spinning my wheels in terms of rating. The only alternative is to play more risky myself, which opens me up to getting kicked in the teeth with ron and coming in 4th.

Even professional books on riichi mahjong acknoledge that Mahjong depends "moderately on luck". A professional poker player isn't expected to win 20 games in a row, because that is also a game that depends heavily on luck. With knowledge and skill you can min/max your chances, but its still a game of luck.

Using a rating system for a game of luck is senseless. Using a rating system for something that isn't luck dependent makes sense, like getting good grades in school or performing well at your irl job. But in a luck based game it generates nothing but stress and anxiety. There is a reason why mahjong is so unpopular on NA servers, and it isn't the game itself. The world is full when I try to log in more often than not. I can get a dungeon run in under 10 seconds. It can take upwards of 20 minutes to get a mahjong match sometimes. What does that tell you?

Ultimately, posts like yours are not helpful because they detract from the point. The whole point of this thread is to make SE aware of the problem. Ideally, they would realize their mistake and change it to "X games won" like in chocobo racing, triple triad, and everything else.

I am absolutely too dumb for this game. I have tried to learn it, but it just makes little sense to me. Even tried watching videos to explain it, but it goes over my head. I thought you just matched tiles and worked on clearing the board. I don’t know what the heck this version of the game is.

I had high hopes knowing nothing about the game, having collected a few pets, and going to see the vermillion thing.
My expectations were actually high, thinking oh cool it's gonna be a wow pet battle, but in a classic FF sidescroller battle style, maybe even get them fight 3 v 3 at once.
But then it was this 1990's command & conquer clone. Made me shiver in disgust.

About the mahjong, yeah pretty much same reaction. I don't have time to read a 500 page guide book. No fun.
They could have easily created a FF version of chess, like one we see in the millenium falcon, round board, add monsters as pawns from the FFxiv universe.
But no. Totally wasted potential on both fields, mahjong and pet battles.

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Originally Posted by Elemenz

They could have easily created a FF version of chess

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Perhaps we will see Doman Shogi with 6.0.

Mahjong is mostly RNG and anyone who believes it's not is delusional. Hell, poker has much more skill involved than mahjong. The rules are overly complicated and it's usually a pretty big red flag that the game isn't that good.

There is a decent number of (mostly Japanese) who downloaded the free trial of FFXIV and did just enough of the game to unlock the Gold Saucer... just to play Mahjong. Apparently the free trial FFXIV is one of the best free Mahjong clients you can get.

Wow, a lot of people complaining about a game they don't understand. It's a *game* It has rules. Just like learning a new role, or how to take on a big raid boss, once you learn how it works, it becomes easier.

The AI hints favor not losing your hand over winning your hand, which is something that took me a little bit to find out. So I don't always listen to it, for just that reason. But it would be nice if there were accurate information about how it prioritizes things.

The orchestrion roll requirements should be toned down, sure. Just have players play a few matches.

But the title? Learn the game and get good. Why call yourself a Mahjong Master if you are unworthy?

Titles should be earned.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

There is a decent number of (mostly Japanese) who downloaded the free trial of FFXIV and did just enough of the game to unlock the Gold Saucer... just to play Mahjong. Apparently the free trial FFXIV is one of the best free Mahjong clients you can get.

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Imagine how much money they could make if they made it so you had to subscribe to play Mahjong lol

I feel you. Played Mahjong a lot and still feel like the guy with the eyepatch in the video below lol.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yY5dEtENKjA

I tried to get into mahjong myself, just cause I like completing the gold saucer challenge log weekly, however, after 2 - 3 weeks I gave up. Takes a VERY long time to get into a match, and I honestly don't understand the game at all.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Kayos

I tried to get into mahjong myself, just cause I like completing the gold saucer challenge log weekly, however, after 2 - 3 weeks I gave up. Takes a VERY long time to get into a match, and I honestly don't understand the game at all.

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I'm with you there. I like collecting and almost had all 403 music rolls before 6.0 came out. Finally decided to sit down and try Mahjong, but couldn't even get a match much less deal with the anxiety of how long a match can be.