Dear Yoshi & Team: About Current TT Tournament Model

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Originally Posted by Devils_Lawyer

Cactuar.

2nd and 3rd place: 19 wins out of 20 matches with roughly 1900 points.

1st place: 9 wins out of 20 matches and 2000 points..

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Don't worry. None of these guys will win

thats nice i suppose but still getting that much points with so few wins clearly shows how broken the system it :/

dont forget that draws also give ~90 pts

even a person with 0 wins and 20 draws can reach 1800 pts

if you beat 20 players with some wins you can get up to 2.8k or more

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

2. Since this tournament uses a system that follows a set rotation schedule, if we were to stop a tournament midway through, it wouldn't be possible to obtain the rare cards that are available from the current tournament until much later, and this would disappoint many players who were looking forward to trying to obtain those cards.

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Yeah, 99.9% of the players aren't already disappointed about having no chance at those cards unless they game the system... /eyeroll

Yea, its a ridiculous response to give.

"Well for the few players currently exploiting this terrible system we made, it wouldn't be fair"

COME ON, why don't you also promote botting while you're at it.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

this would disappoint many players who were looking forward to trying to obtain those cards.

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As opposed to the thousands of players amongst all servers that are left disappointed because there is no legitimate way they can win without match fixing/cheating for the second tournament in a row? I know your just the messenger Grekumah, so forgive my irritation but this has been a disaster. If this was raid content, it would be hotfixed within hours. This is the equivalent of the New Alexander raid coming out, first static to enter circumvents encounter & acquires exclusive loot that no one else on the server can obtain. Then are permitted to keep said loot. For many TT is an endgame in itself. There are people who are playing FFXIV right now solely for the GS update & addition of TT.

Cant you all think of the cheaters. soo disresptful! they want the cards more than you and are doing everything they can to achieve it. Square aims to not disappoint those that abuse the system!

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

1. If we were to make adjustments to the active tournament it would affect the development of Patch 2.55 and Heavensward.

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What about the useless hotfixes for dyes ? Please.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

2. Since this tournament uses a system that follows a set rotation schedule, if we were to stop a tournament midway through, it wouldn't be possible to obtain the rare cards that are available from the current tournament until much later, and this would disappoint many players who were looking forward to trying to obtain those cards.

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Is that a joke ? Please, tell me that's a joke...

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Originally Posted by Zanarken

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Nothing wrong with virtually shooting the messenger when the excuse he brings is the higher-ups pooping is his hands....'hey yeah guys, so this is the plan...we're going to leave the easily exploitable system in place so that we don't disappoint those that are going to expolit the system..." Cowards.

See where all your brilliant suggestions went, SnuggleButt?

Well with the random rule in this tournament I managed to get 10 victories, 7 draws and 3 losses all legit matches vs players and Elmer but with the random rule and no plus you can get f**ed up real bad by RNG like vs Rowena or that guy in South Shroud.
Ended up last night 5th in the top20; this morming when I checked before coming to my job I was 13 already, when I get home tonight I won't even be in the top20 ¬_¬


Edit: no, never shoot the messenger; good messengers are hard to come by.

Is it already April 1st? *Looks at calendar* Nope... it's just SE.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

2. Since this tournament uses a system that follows a set rotation schedule, if we were to stop a tournament midway through, it wouldn't be possible to obtain the rare cards that are available from the current tournament until much later, and this would disappoint many players who were looking forward to trying to obtain those cards.

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WHAT?!?!

The only players currently looking forward to "trying to obtain those cards" are the scummy win-traders who have nothing better to do with their time. Extremely poor reasoning. The tournament rewards should have been removed the moment mass win-trading became common in TT - aka straight away. Rewarding cheaters is the worse thing you can do.

I'll probably be ripped apart for this, but here I go.

In discussion on point #2. Right now, there are a good amount of people who are working their asses off to abuse the system. But, it's not against the rules that the developer team put in place for the tournament, so they are earning these cards. It may not be by being good at triple triad, but they are putting a lot of work to one up other people who are trying to work the system as well. And while that work to the majority of the people who have a passion for the game(myself included), may seem disgusting and vile - it's still not against the rules. For the developers to completely void the efforts of the players who honestly believe they are working within the limits they were given, I can imagine that SE doesn't believe that's the right thing to do.

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Originally Posted by FrostyTV

I'll probably be ripped apart for this, but here I go.

In discussion on point #2. Right now, there are a good amount of people who are working their asses off to abuse the system. But, it's not against the rules that the developer team put in place for the tournament, so they are earning these cards. It may not be by being good at triple triad, but they are putting a lot of work to one up other people who are trying to work the system as well. And while that work to the majority of the people who have a passion for the game(myself included), may seem disgusting and vile - it's still not against the rules. For the developers to completely void the efforts of the players who honestly believe they are working within the limits they were given, I can imagine that SE doesn't believe that's the right thing to do.

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Absolutely this.

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Originally Posted by FrostyTV

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Yes, we know it's not against the rules, and personally, I don't blame players for win buying/trading. But SE not doing anything when they've had two weeks and then saying they 'don't want to disappoint players that are trying to win cards (AKA the ppl that are gaming the system)' when they'll already let down 99% of the players already is laughable.

Remove pvp tournament matches and only have player vs npc, everyone has a fair chance then.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

1. If we were to make adjustments to the active tournament it would affect the development of Patch 2.55 and Heavensward.

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fair enough

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

2. Since this tournament uses a system that follows a set rotation schedule, if we were to stop a tournament midway through, it wouldn't be possible to obtain the rare cards that are available from the current tournament until much later, and this would disappoint many players who were looking forward to trying to obtain those cards.

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for real? you mean all those players putting in effort aka. cheating? Just stop it altogether, no warning no nothing, just. stop. it. then restart the cycle with the changes done in 2.55, those that want the cards legitimately can surely wait another 2-3 weeks for another try to get lightning and then after 4-5 weeks the other tournaments start. at least dont let those cheating guys get the card and the TON (!!) of MGP. even if win trading is not against any rules set up by the game and thus the devs at this point its still a cheap way to win, this is by no means a tournament but a competition by those that have enough time on their hands getting htose others 15 players with 14 wins that will let them win the last game to get max credits. i think this falls into the same category as players using an unintended mechanic in a raid to win it, you punished those and put a stop to it. I dont want you to punish ppl that "worked" their way up the last tournament, but at least make it stop.

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Originally Posted by Siyron

Absolutely this.

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Sometimes, on rare occasions...I feel these forums could do with a downvote option.

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Originally Posted by FrostyTV

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Ah hell, I'll get ripped apart with you.

I agree. I actually think expending time/gil to work the system should be rewarded instead winning 20 games under the random rule. The first takes passion and effort. The second is more about luck than anything. At least last week under Plus/Same, there was some strategy to the games. People just assume win-trading or buying wins is something you can just do without any effort. Yet, they don't want to spend the same amount of effort to work the tournament system despite the fact that the last tournament showed us that's what it takes to win. Everyone is given the same opportunity to "abuse" the system.

Calling the people who are winning based on the current game rules cheaters is counterproductive. The rules are clear and they're not breaking them. How many of you use the slope in T5 despite the devs saying that wasn't intended?

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

Sometimes, on rare occasions...I feel these forums could do with a downvote option.

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Go for it, better yet, put it in the suggestion area. Here you go, have a like as well.

Hello, everyone. Producer and Director Yoshida here. Thank you all for your feedback on the Triple Triad tournaments!

Let me start with an apology for the lack of adjustments thus far, and also for the delay in communicating our plans for upcoming changes. The team is currently neck-deep in development for Heavensward, even as they look to finalize content for Patch 2.55, and the timing has not been ideal for testing and implementing major fixes. So to keep the development schedule running smoothly, we’ve decided to implement adjustments for the Triple Triad tournaments over the course of several minor patches, beginning with Patch 2.55. We also considered putting the tournaments on hold until all the necessary changes had been made...but as there are no other means of acquiring certain rare cards, the competitions will continue as usual.

That said, I’d like to discuss some of the pressing issues and popular requests and explain how we plan on addressing them.

Issue: The effort required to build a competitive tournament deck

Acquiring Triple Triad cards is a demanding task, and this in turn discourages players from participating in tournaments─without at least thirty cards, it’s difficult to build effective decks. So to improve this situation, we will be looking into reducing the match difficulty for NPCs who reward cards, thus making it easier to reach that thirty-card threshold. (To be addressed in Patch 2.55)

Issue:　Loss of motivation to continue playing when there is little chance of placing in the top ranks

Participants often lose the desire to keep playing tournament matches once a place in the top ranks is no longer within reach. In response to this problem, we will be introducing a new feature wherein players are rewarded with a generous amount of MGP based on their final tournament score (regardless of rank). We intend to make other similar adjustments to provide greater incentives for participants to play through to the end of a tournament.

In a similar fashion, players who accumulate a certain number of tournament points (again, regardless of rank) will be rewarded with a platinum Triad card─which has the possibility of yielding a rare card. By offering a means to earn rare cards other than placing in the higher ranks, we hope to encourage more players to take part in Triple Triad tournaments.

We are, however, still debating whether or not these adjustments can be squeezed into Patch 2.55, and if their introduction is deemed too risky, we will delay implementation until a later patch (Patch 2.56 etc.).

Requests: Eliminating unfair collusion between players/Making it possible to challenge players without the need for discussion

As measures such as those previously described are implemented, we anticipate a significant drop in unsuitable tournament conduct (i.e. using multiple accounts to ensure victory, or throwing matches for payment). Naturally, we don’t believe that these unfair practices will be eliminated completely─unless the system is changed so that tournament rankings are strictly based on victories won through random matching, there will always be a way to cheat regardless of the measures we introduce. But supposing we did change the system to rely solely upon random matching, we would then run the risk of alienating all but the most dedicated Triple Triad players.

Taking these points into consideration, we have two main goals around which future adjustments and additions will be planned. The first goal is to build upon those measures already discussed, and develop a tournament system that is both fun and rewarding for all participants. The second goal─implementing more strictly run tournaments─will require more time to achieve.

I understand that many players are in favor of being able to use the Duty Finder to set up Triple Triad matches. Unfortunately, however, the Duty Finder does not support one-on-one matching at this time. Should such a feature be integrated into the current system, it will also require us to introduce measures to combat a host of related issues such as increased server load, mid-match AFKing, and dropped connections. As you can imagine, this all takes time to test and perfect.

But our players have spoken, and we are looking into designing an improved tournament system (more tightly run competitions based upon match victories) that will make use of this matching feature. We plan to have something concrete ready not too long after the release of Heavensward, and so once more I ask for your understanding and patience.

These are our current goals, and, moving forward, we will continue to rely heavily upon player feedback when considering any changes that need to be made to the Triple Triad tournament system, rules, and rewards. This process of trial and error may continue for a while, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions on how we can make the game even better!

The idea of Platinum card just reignited my passion for the game. Thank you!

I totally gave up on tournaments after day 1, even though to be honest, I've been telling everyone in the world that I know that I've been waiting for triple triad for 10 years or so. While it was truly a dream come true, I loved the collecting aspect and soon realized I'm not that good at the game (yeah, git gud comments incoming), managed to gather 60 cards in 3 days but after that I'm losing pretty bad in the tournaments. Now I play against Elmer a few times and call it for the tournament. The NPCs aren't that difficult to be honest, but you do need to be lucky for the drops (which I thoroughly enjoyed)

In my opinion though, a strictly double roulette tournament would've been fun. This way, the people winning each week would truly vary.

Even though it's cheating for the current tournament, however it does require massive effort to have 20 alts that has OK score. So I think people who spent the effort have earned it. But would it be possible to have some sort of lockout after you win a rare card so that you're banned from that tournament for the next 3 times the card is featured as a prize, for example?

Would there be ever an option to play cards in player housing? That would be incredible!

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

[Good things...]

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Just knowing that serious thought is being put into the issues that arised around the tournaments to date is enough to restore faith that things will get better for those of who want to enjoy the game and not feel pressured to look for exploits in order to win.

The addition of platinum card packs as a reward for participants is a good step towards this. All that coming first will then do is give those who do win (via whatever means) a guaranteed card, but at least we all have some chance even if we don't come top 3.

Thanks for taking the time to address these issues and relay the current development plans and thoughts on this.

Platinum pack !....more RNG missile incoming...take cover !!!!

serious note: Alternative route to archive a goal or do something is always welcome. This will reduce the uniqueness of certain thing, in this case is the collection cards (platinum card), but in return every player have a chance to get them.

So, in short terms, people now have even more reasons to cheat in order to get, at least, the Platinium Pack and the MGP bonus.
"You gotta secure these tournament victories to have your pack yo'!"

Also, Tournament 5* cards are still rewarded to cheaters only and it will remain that way until Heavensward comes out (maybe even 3.1).

Great.

Thank you, Yoshi!

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Originally Posted by Fyce

So, in short terms, people now have even more reasons to cheat in order to get, at least, the Platinium Pack and the MGP bonus.
"You gotta secure these tournament victories to have your pack yo'!"

Also, Tournament 5* cards are still rewarded to cheaters only and it will remain that way until Heavensward comes out (maybe even 3.1).

Great.

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Review the post.

I don't doubt there will be some win selling for "hit your minimum points for the rewards", but to be honest depending on how they tune that value, the objective is to get it so that you can win legitimately. Right now the only realistic option to win anything is to exploit the system, and there's no incentive to actually participate normally. If people can realistically win something, the necessity for exploitation is reduced.

Also the Platinum pack is likely going to reward the 5* victor cards (rarely). Even if not outright 100% confirmed it seems reasonable that this is what Yoshida is referring to as the contents of that pack.

Make it so you have to challenge 15 different npc's or players.... You cannot play a tournament match against a specific opponent more than once....


solved.


あなたは15種類のNPCのか、選手に挑戦する持っているので、あなたが何度も特定の相手とトーナメントの試合を再生することはできません....それを作る....

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

I don't doubt there will be some win selling for "hit your minimum points for the rewards", but to be honest depending on how they tune that value, the objective is to get it so that you can win legitimately. Right now the only realistic option to win is to exploit the system, and there's no incentive to actually participate normally. If people can win normally, guess who stops cheating?

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Not everyone was cheating. In fact, only the people trying to get to the 1 to 10 place had an incentive to cheat their way up.
Now, everyone will need to "secure" some victory points to get at least the Platinium pack, and some bonus MGP.

We don't know how many point will be needed to get a Platinium pack. But since you need a certain number of points, you can't just go full on random mode and take the risk to lose too many games.

Even if you don't want to cheat, if you start losing some games, you'll say to yourself "damn, if I don't secure some wins, I won't have my Platinium pack this week", and you'll probably want to get a few wintrades with someone in the same situation, even if you didn't want to cheat in the first place.

So, yes, I do agree that there will be a new incentive to play legit'. But people will also want to secure their Platinium pack, and they'll do that with easy win-trading (or win-selling).

"/shout Anyone with enough points for their Platinium pack with a few games left? I need a few wins to get mine."
This will be a thing.

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

Also the Platinum pack is likely going to reward the 5* victor cards rarely.

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There is no confirmation that these packs will contain a Tournament cards, such as Lighning or Cecil. Yoshida just said "rare cards".

Oh, it's not ideal, and like I said it'll still happen, and they're aware it'll still happen. But this is still a drastic improvement over "exploit the system or go home".

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Originally Posted by Fyce

There is no confirmation that these packs will contain a Tournament card, such as Lighning or Cecil. Yoshida just said "rare cards".

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To pull this part specifically, his wording is

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By offering a means to earn rare cards other than placing in the higher ranks, we hope to encourage more players to take part in Triple Triad tournaments.

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You can already earn rare cards through other means that high placements in tournaments. What cards, however, are currently purely locked to lead placements in tournaments? Exactly. It's entirely possible that it'll be a different set of cards specific to the Platinum Packs or something, but I feel it's a reasonable bet.

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Originally Posted by Fyce

So, in short terms, people now have even more reasons to cheat in order to get, at least, the Platinium Pack and the MGP bonus.
"You gotta secure these tournament victories to have your pack yo'!"

Also, Tournament 5* cards are still rewarded to cheaters only and it will remain that way until Heavensward comes out (maybe even 3.1).

Great.

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who cares what cheaters do with there stuff... they will throw away the achievement just as fast as they got it because they didn't put ACTUAL work into it. you know the same as someone who actually achieved top tier PVP level and get that armor, they will wear it for months before replacing... but someone who win trades in a day will glamor over it in a week. All of this does not lessen what you have accomplished.

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

Oh, it's not ideal, and like I said it'll still happen, and they're aware it'll still happen. But this is still a drastic improvement over "exploit the system or go home".

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My point is that it will bring casual cheating to the "tournament". Currently, it's either "cheat very hard or just get 1k MPG", you are right.
But with these new things, it's now "cheat very hard or cheat a bit to secure your pack".

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

To pull this part specifically, his wording is

You can already earn rare cards through other means that high placements in tournaments. What cards, however, are currently purely locked to lead placements in tournaments? Exactly. It's entirely possible that it'll be a different set of cards specific to the Platinum Packs or something, but I feel it's a reasonable bet.

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I didn't read it like that at first glance, you are probably right. Tournament cards will probably be available in Platinium packs.

So... if that's true, people will definitly want to secure their Platinium pack by win-trading, at least to have enough points to get it.

The reality is the only way to reduce win trading dramatically is through the game matching up players and not the players picking their own opponents, while it would still be possible to /tell the person your playing against through random match up that you will pay them gil to let you win, at least through random matching the cheaters wont be guaranteed wins from each person they play against because many would refuse to be paid off.

Even though it is nice that they acknowledge the system is broken right now and people are cheating their way to the top in the tournaments, it still doesn't make me feel good about either the current state of the tournaments, the cheating going on or how long I will have to wait for them to even try addressing the issue. The suggestions mention by Yoshi will not reduce win trading or cheating of the system very much, what is especially annoying is the actual attempted fix for the tournament wont happen for many months if not going to happen till after the expansion...this leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth metaphorically speaking because it means between now and then unless I cheat I will not stand any chance of getting in the top 3 of any tournament during all those between now and then.

They are not even going to implement the MGP increase for a long time so I may as well not care much at all about tournaments until 3-4 months from now. Despite acknowledging that they have a lot on their plate right now with 2.55 and 3.0, all the testing and finding ways to stop people cheating should of been done before it was even introduced. It feels like they never bothered thinking it through prior to release. On the platinum pack aspect, until I see it in game and how many points are required, the % chance for rare cards from them plus what rare cards would be gained...I have no intention to jump for joy.

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Originally Posted by Anesjka

Make it so you have to challenge 15 different npc's or players.... You cannot play a tournament match against a specific opponent more than once....


solved.


あなたは15種類のNPCのか、選手に挑戦する持っているので、あなたが何度も特定の相手とトーナメントの試合を再生することはできません....それを作る....

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You really don't know how the current tournament work, do you?

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

In a similar fashion, players who accumulate a certain number of tournament points (again, regardless of rank) will be rewarded with a platinum Triad card─which has the possibility of yielding a rare card. By offering a means to earn rare cards other than placing in the higher ranks, we hope to encourage more players to take part in Triple Triad tournaments.

This process of trial and error may continue for a while, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions on how we can make the game even better!

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To: Yoshi P and Dev Team,

First off "Thank You!" for these adjustments. :) It's a good start to alleviating some of the issues with the Triple Triad Tournament.

* Platinum Triad Card - Please make sure that *all* Rare Tournament Reward Cards are added to the Platinum grouping.

As long as that is the case, then I think it gives *all* Players hope that even if they can't place in the Top of the Tournament, that they can earn these Rare Cards one day.

Also, I know you want rarity, but learn from your mistakes: Don't set the Percentage % Drop Rate (RNG) of the Platinum Rare to be too low (look at the lack of motivation from your Original Nightmare Mount drop from Garuda / Titan / Ifrit... it was so low it was just a joke, and no one bothered until you started raising the Drop Rate).

Thanks!

The cheaters will always cheat because they can't play the game well enough to beat even the NPCs in the field (hence why you had to nerf the NPCs when they weren't "hard" in the first place) they just want cards w/out any effort. May as well throw the tourney winning cards up on the cash shop for them. Then you'll really see who the devoted TT players are because they will play for the enjoyment of winning and playing versus other people. Throwing up exclusive prizes to make everyone play without enforcing some strict rules is catering towards making people cheat to get the win. On top of it all if the tournament cards aren't part of the platinum booster pack there's no point in playing for the majority, regardless of how much MGP you add to the winnings. And if people find out per say you need to be on the top 20 board in order to get the booster pack then all people will do is continue to buy wins.

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Originally Posted by Kiara

* Platinum Triad Card - Please make sure that *all* Rare Tournament Reward Cards are added to the Platinum grouping.

As long as that is the case, then I think it gives *all* Players hope that even if they can't place in the Top of the Tournament, that they can earn these Rare Cards one day.

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not only that but all the cards in the plat pack should have an equal chance at dropping like if it drops 4 cards each is 25%. If you if really want to push it have those 4 rotate to like 70% for 1 and 10% for the other 3, but certainly none of these .000006 drops rates we have been seeing.

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Originally Posted by Pterois

not only that but all the cards in the plat pack should have an equal chance at dropping like if it drops 4 cards each is 25%. If you if really want to push it have those 4 rotate to like 70% for 1 and 10% for the other 3, but certainly none of these .000006 drops rates we have been seeing.

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From what I've experienced, the drop rate of cards from packs corresponds to their relative drop rates from all other sources. Meaning, if a 5* card has 1/20th the chance of dropping compared to a 2* card when playing an NPC, and a pack can hold both a 2* card and a 5* card, you'll see ~20 of a specific 2* card from the pack for every one of the 5* you get. I kinda wish they were more even odds, but they're not. I've only obtained 2*s from all ~6 gold packs I've opened (almost entirely dupes), and I've never obtained a Lahabrea or Behemoth from the Silver or Bronze packs. Because of these odds, I've given up on getting the cards exclusive to the packs, and am spending my MGP on things that are actually interesting. Spending 2,000 MGP and getting nothing but 10 MGP from it is just depressing.

I would expect Platinum packs to be similar. But, a chance is better than nothing!

I really like Yoshi-P, but it is important to remember what his job is and scrutinize his communication.

The tournament was a poor design. It might have been rushed in last minute or a key analyst was on vacation. It happens. The solutions proposed are mitigation tools. Why not something more? There isn't enough time.

The language he used deflected from a match finding solution not because he thinks it's a bad idea. In fact, I actually see where a queue system would engage more players as DF does for dungeon participation.

Bottom line, a broken design was released. There is no short term fix. Yoshi-P and the FFXIV team are not happy about it, but there isn't much they can do. I wasn't personally waiting excitedly for TT. I feel for those of you who were. Hopefully this experience will be educational and drive better design at the level we've come to expect for blitzball. ;)

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

AMENO

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This is Great also good to see Holy Inquision acting.

YES

so your solution to the absolutely rigged win trading system in tournaments is to... reward them more when they win trade?

this reminds me of much of the systems in FFXIV, looks good on paper but implemented poorly