Triad tournament reward structure is insane and should change

The current reward system for the Triple Triad tournament is insane, and needs to be changed. The tournament rules are also insane, but other posts have covered that more than adequately, so I'm just going to focus on the rewards.

1. Including functional rewards as card tournament rewards is a terrible idea.

Having functional, usable rewards for a card tournament means that the winners of previous tournaments will have an advantage over other players, making them more likely to win in the future. While the stats on Lightning, for example, are not great, presumably there will be some future collection size where unlimited 4-star decks are unlocked, and tournament winners (especially multiple card winners) will have an advantage reaching that tier.

In CCG tournaments, cards with unique functionality are virtually never given as tournament rewards. If cards with unique functionality at the top power tier in Magic: the Gathering were given out as tournament rewards, there would be a massive outcry from the player base, and the player base for Triple Triad should react the same way.

2. The Lightning card, and other tournament top three reward cards, are far too rare.

I'm fine with rare cards and hard-to-get cards. Raubahn was a chore, but satisfying to finally get. Cloud and the Sultana are - as other threads in this forum have covered - overpriced, but at least they have an obvious "progress meter". I haven't gotten lucky yet on Bartz or Terra. But ultimately, all of these rare, hard-to-get cards seem fine to me.

On the other hand, the Lightning card is currently so rare that it's actually quite possibly the most exclusive single item in the entire game at the moment. And that's completely unreasonable for a minigame-exclusive reward. Here are some comparisons:

Here's some napkin math from Reddit regarding turn 13 clears: http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...entage_of_the/. The math in that thread estimates 14-24,000 players have cleared T13 as of about a month ago. Obviously there are a lot of assumptions, but that number feels like it's at least in the ballpark.

On the other hand, there are 62 FFXIV servers, so we know the exact number of Lightning cards in existence: 186. This means that a random FFXIV player is probably at least 100 times more likely to have beaten the hardest boss in the entire game than to have Lightning.

The website xivsoul.com is doing automated scraping of Lodestone for statistical purposes. According to that site, over 7000 players own a fat cat, one of the most exclusive minions - and that only shows what the site has been able to scrape so far. A random FFXIV player is at least 30 times more likely to have a fat cat than to have Lightning.

Finally, for a throwback, here is some info on FFXI relic weapons in 2006: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Us...Stage_5_Relics. A FFXI player was about as likely to have a fully completed relic weapon in 2006 as a FFXIV player is to have a Lightning card.

As I said above, I'm fine with relatively rare, hard to get cards, but this is just ridiculous. When a card for a minigame - which was presumably added just to be a diversion - is rarer than all other content in the entire game, that is a design problem.

3. Concrete suggestions.

First, obviously, remove Lightning from the tournament top 3 rewards. The huge MGP payout is enough motivation for the tournament on its own. If you really need to have some special item as a carrot for the tournament, add something strictly cosmetic like the Cactpot top prize has. Personally, I'd like a top hat. :D

If you still want the cards to be attained through the tournament, there are a lot of options that are far less insane than the status quo. They could be participation rewards. They could be achievement rewards for participating in "The Manderville cup 5 times", or something similar. They could be rewards for finishing the tournament with a 15/15 record. There are a lot of options here that don't lead to these cards being rarer than 99.99% of all content in all MMOs ever.

Finally: In case this post comes off sounding like sour grapes, in my specific case it's not, unless it's sour grapes on behalf of my friends and fellow players, as I actually have Lightning. The fact is that the requirements for getting Lightning - and for getting Cecil, and presumably also Firion and Tidus - are crazy as hell, unfair to the huge majority of players, and should change.

The reward structure is perfectly fine. Paying gil to acquire said rewards is not.

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According to that site, over 7000 players own a fat cat, one of the most exclusive minions

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Fat Cat is not at all one of the most exclusive, I don't know what you were thinking when using that example. Pleased it.

Puff of Darkness - WoD Drop, roll against, usually, 23 other players.
Assassin Fry - Desynth a big fish to hope to get one
Nutkin - for some it was a first unhidden map drop, for me, it never dropped with over 150 maps done, I ended up buying one on the market board
Fledgeling Apkallu - just over half as many as the Fat Cat, own this Apkallu, because lets be honest, the sightseeing log is a pain to complete, I've done it and I will do the one we'll most likely get in Heavensward, but I wouldnt do it a second time on another character, god no.


But I would think those 4 are much rarer than the Fat Cat

Sure, not everyone has a FSH Retainer to get the Fat Cat, but I've gotten 2 so far.

That site doesn't track Puff yet, so I couldn't use it for the example. But I did check first, and I would have preferred to use Puff if stats for it were available. Same with Onion Knight and nutkin. I don't think it's unfair to say fat cat is in the top 10 rare non-promo minions either way.

In any case, I was just trying to come up with a few examples to give an idea of how hideously, unreasonably rare Lightning and friends are relative to essentially all other content in the game. I don't think the specific examples are that important, since Lightning beats all of them.

I agree with Shinun. To be clear, I'm not speaking out against players that are paying gil to get others to throw tournament matches. I instead strongly encourage developers to change the way tournament PvP matches work to use Duty Finder or something that prevents you from personally selecting your human opponent.

I agree wholeheartedly with OP. Making the reward a functionally unique item was a pretty amateur move.

To Shinun and others who think the tournament rules need to change, I totally agree. They definitely do need to change.

What I'm trying to point out in this thread is that even if those rules change, Lightning's ridiculous rarity and the fact that it is a functional card reward are still problems.

I would have assumed Square had a method to spread out the tournament wins, either through rule changes, or not allowing people to get duplicates, but this is the team that baffingly thought the TT tournament structure they gave us was ready for consumer use, so I suppose I will agree with OP. It should be too early to determine how they will handle it, but I think expecting something lackluster, and only through fan feedback becoming good months later, is going to be the end result.

Although perhaps it is secretly brilliant. By making it so only cheaters get this card, if you're attempting to be a card completionist, you will need to network shady deals with other players, and suddenly the Triple Triad community is booming with communication between players, more than any other group in FFXIV. Truly visionary.

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Originally Posted by Aenea

To Shinun and others who think the tournament rules need to change, I totally agree. They definitely do need to change.

What I'm trying to point out in this thread is that even if those rules change, Lightning's ridiculous rarity and the fact that it is a functional card reward are still problems.

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It's not a problem. Having Tournament only cards is a very good thing. Their functionality isn't that much with how many 5 star cards their are. Until they release an achievement for raising the deck customization that demands you have these tournament cards it's not a problem. Having them ease the grind for your next achievement buffer is fine. Now, if a Tourny card is OP then ya it's a problem. But as it is their just flavor cards more wanted by collectors then their actual playability. Which is why they need to fix the way the tournaments are structured then the rewards.

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Originally Posted by Shinun

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I don't really disagree with you much. Yes, if the rules were fixed and the rewards were distributed fairly, I wouldn't feel as bad about it as I do now.

I think one of the things for me is that the Lightning card is part of a collection. There are 80 possible cards to collect—a set, even number that everyone passionate about TT should be able to achieve. It just irks me that I may forever have 4 blank spots in my card binder. Even if those cards are not game-changers in terms of their power (although with the random rule they very well could be), they are unique items I would like to use in my decks and play around with.

Of course, we don't know what SE will do in the future. They may make these cards available through MGP in future patches, once more cards are added. Still, right now, especially considering the recent fiasco, I am displeased.

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Originally Posted by Ultimasamune

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Oh i'm a huge collector myself 72/80 atm. I am pissed with how this last tournament ended with people either paying or FC/ALT bumping themself to the top. I want all 80 cards. But with the way tournaments are collectors have to place to get them. So atm your looking at 76/80 cards viable if you don't get tournament cards. These tournaments are going to more then likely keep recycling. Also I can agree that when more cards come into play who knows they may make past tournament cards new mgp cards that you have to pay for like Cloud/Nanamo.

Still having Tournament Cards is huge for TT enthusiasts, because it gives something to strive for instead of after awhile only being npc farming minigame. That being said the problem is still the tournament not the rewards.

If the tournament schedule is as it appears to be right now, we will have 4 cycling tournaments, scheduled for every other week, for an 8 week cycle. That means each tournament card will be available to 3 * (52/8) = either 18 or 21 people at the maximum, per year. Assuming no repeat victors.

I don't think having a reward for a minigame be that much more exclusive than any other content in the game is reasonable. Obviously you disagree, but I really don't understand why. Collectors of gear, mounts, and minions are not punished anywhere near this harshly.

As I said in another tournament thread.

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Originally Posted by Snugglebutt

Here is what I would do...first and foremost remove the ability for players to choose their own opponents. That is the only way to stop the win buying going on which should not be happening in any tournaments, whether you do that through a roulette system or whatever I don't care as long as you remove the option for players to pick their own opponents. I would also make it two tournaments per week, every two weeks is too long and too far apart especially when consider you only need 15 matches to finish the tournament so two times a week is easily done.

I would make the tiers something like this...

Tier 1 (The 60+ card category)

First prize for top 3 is the legendary/collector cards + 150,000MGP, second prize for top 4-10 being 10 gold card packs + 100,000MGP, third prize for top 11-20 being 10 silver card packs + 50,000MGP followed by fourth prize for ranked 21-50 which is 10 bronze pack cards + 10,000MGP, the rest get 1000MGP perhaps for taking part provided play all 15 matches in a tournament.

Tier 2 (The 30 to 59 card category)

First prize for top 3 is 100,000MGP, second prize for top 4-10 being 10 gold card packs + 50,000MGP, third prize for top 11-20 being 10 silver card packs + 25,000MGP followed by fourth prize for ranked 21-50 which is 10 bronze pack cards + 5,000MGP, the rest get 1000MGP perhaps for taking part provided play all 15 matches in a tournament.

Tier 3 (The 1 to 29 card category)

First prize for top 3 is 50,000MGP, second prize for top 4-10 being 10 gold card packs + 25,000MGP, third prize for top 11-20 being 10 silver card packs + 15,000MGP followed by fourth prize for ranked 21-50 which is 10 bronze pack cards + 3,000MGP, the rest get 1000MGP perhaps for taking part provided play all 15 matches in a tournament.

The main reason I did not put every tier getting the legendary/collector card in all three tiers is to stop people abusing the system by making quick and easy lvl 15 alts (which takes only a couple hours to do) and spamming the tournament over and over in the lowest tier for the legendary/collector card. There would be no point fixing the buying wins problem if replace that problem with another kind of problem which is the making alt quick characters spamming the lowest tier for the same level of reward as the highest tier top prize gets.

By keeping it MGP+card pack related for the lower tiers that would help them build up a nice size deck through buying and winning of the B/S/G packs so that in the next tournament they would be closer to the top tier and by proxy their chances of the legendary/collector cards through hard work and not through abusing the system whether that is from buying wins or making many quick lvl 15 alts and spamming the lowest tier for the highest tier top prize.

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Originally Posted by Aenea

If the tournament schedule is as it appears to be right now, we will have 4 cycling tournaments, scheduled for every other week, for an 8 week cycle. That means each tournament card will be available to 3 * (52/8) = either 18 or 21 people at the maximum, per year. Assuming no repeat victors.

I don't think having a reward for a minigame be that much more exclusive than any other content in the game is reasonable. Obviously you disagree, but I really don't understand why. Collectors of gear, mounts, and minions are not punished anywhere near this harshly.

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(S)he either hasn't thought about it, or just wants to argue for the sake of it. The tourney is whack on every level. Unlike many, I don't think it should have been canceled. However, if they stay the course on either the way it's run or the reward structure, SE should be ashamed of themselves.

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Originally Posted by Aenea

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TCG Tournaments always have card prizes. Usually card prizes you can't get anywhere else well unless Ebay if you want to pay thousands. Their needs to be something special given for tournament winners that's only gotten from it, be it cards as a whole only gotten from those tournaments, or special art. If you have Lightning congrats on doing what you had to do to get it i guess, but the cards are what makes the tournament special. I'll say it again... They need to fix the tournament not the rewards.

TCG tournaments always have card prizes, yes, but they are never functionally exclusive. They're foil-stamped versions of existing cards, or alternate art versions of existing cards, or just packs of existing cards in general.

They're not cards that are only ever available via winning the tournament, which is what we currently have.

This was posted by the second place winner of the contest on my server. This must stop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptm5FF9WRVI

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Originally Posted by kyuven

This was posted by the second place winner of the contest on my server. This must stop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptm5FF9WRVI

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Holy Cow! That's awesome and Terrible at the same time!

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Originally Posted by AryaSpark

Holy Cow! That's awesome and Terrible at the same time!

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No it was just plain awesome.
They really need to fix the tournaments, and also release the tournament reward cards for acquisition in an alternate way. Maybe give Lightning to King Elmer or something.