Let's talk Triple Triad and how pointless it now is.

I'll keep this short since I don't wanna go on a huge rant. Why SE, did you decide to remove any and all fun from TT? Remember how people hated the Swift and Rowena NPC fights and you changed it? Why then did you go and put a whole expansion full of NPCs with similarly RNG based rules that basically removed any "strategy" required?

Of the new NPCs only 3 I could find did not have either Random, Chaos, or heaven forbid, BOTH. Same and Plus are basically up to the mercy of Roulette. The drop rate seems to be lower for even the new 1 and 2 star cards, which should be common. The dungeon drops are all super rare and the 90 card achievement does not increase your deck strength like the previous 2... See what I'm getting at here?

Remember when mini-games could be fun, on the side things, and not frustrating RNG affairs? What happened to that?

Just...why?

How the dev meeting probably went: "Hmm, players are having too much fun with Triple Triad, let's change that".

But yeah, they turned a fun mini-game into the mess that it is now. All the bad points got exacerbated. RNG in almost every NPC (From Random, Roulette or Chaos). Nearly non-existent drop rates. etc

I don't even mind chaos too much, since it also negatively affects the NPC's from time to time. It's Random that really makes me want to punch whoever decided to add it. It is such a cheating, cheap way of adding difficulty. It punishes you for collecting more cards (Which should technically make you stronger), since the 1 and 2 stars outnumber the higher ones. It's not really "Random", since you are still gated behind the Star-rule (So you can get five 1-star cards, but never five 5-star cards). In lieu of this, it makes 4-star cards worse, since getting one means you wont get your one allowed 5-star card. And on top of this, the NPC's aren't negatively affected by this at all; since their deck is typically made of two 5-stars and five 4-stars.

And ON TOP of all of this, since all the "high level" NPC's sport random... there is no point in deck building anymore. I made an amazing deck the other night and made myself sad when I realized all the NPC's I still needed cards from had random.

I hate Random rule.

In FF8 I would follow TT guides to avoid it spreading. It's to a point now where if I see someone having random rule I will just leave. Not worth my time.

I have to agree, SE completely sucked the fun out of this. Random, especially is way way way overused, and I don't even understand why. It is the least fun rule of all. Its like they were purposely trying to make it un-fun.

It might just be me wearing a tin foil hat, but it seems that everytime someone complains about something in the game, they add MORE stuff with the mechanic everyone is complaning. Remember FATES? A lot of people hated those, few patches later, they add ATMAS and a bunch of seasonal events that forced you to do FATES. Rowena and Swift too hard? Let's add Tataru, and a few more NPC with that mechanic you hate in the expansion.

They might be trolling us all! :P

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Originally Posted by Quesse

I have to agree, SE completely sucked the fun out of this. Random, especially is way way way overused, and I don't even understand why. It is the least fun rule of all. Its like they were purposely trying to make it un-fun.

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Aye, I was mostly okay with Rowena and Swift prenerf because it was only really those 2 that sucked so much. There was the Odin guy too but he was mostly tolerable with a decent deck. But now they all have random, and like full 5/4 star decks so you're pretty much screwed before you even start. I really wish random worked the same for them as it does us. That would solve so many of my complaints. If they had like 15 1* 2* etc. cards to pull randomly then it would at least give us a snowball's chance at winning.

I really don't get why the 90card achievement doesn't bump your deck up to 4* too, as it stands now 4* cards are completely pointless. That woulda helped a little, plus make these new NPCs less horrible.

I mean it's not like they have to worry about keeping it fair for tournaments, since those are a lost cause of win-trading and cheating. Now they have to make the NPC fights also completely suck. If SE plans to continue TT past what it is now and not just abandon it, it needs a LOT of attention looked it's way. I had so much fun too. :( Oh well.

Random is the one rule that killed TT in FF8 for me and as such did so here, because its a lie. The random trait is not put there as a rule for the table cus if you asked us to toss our cards on the table and pick 5 at random, the NPC will drop 6 while we drops 20/30/40+ cards on the table.

Hey now, we wouldn't want your decks being too powerful against those NPC tournament opponents. You might have an easy time earning ZERO platinum packs that way.

I sometimes feel like there is a guy from the 1.0 team that snuck back into the office through the air vent, and he moves around the building adding horrible ideas to one department at a time. Can we get someone from security to pass through the room with the gold saucer crew?

Random is about thinking on your feet. Or else people would be bored at how easy it is. The difficulty can't be there if players just spam their best cards, by making it random the chances of winning are skewed because you can't prepare ahead of time of how to deal with x NPC because each rotation of rules will change your strategy and you wont' exactly fall into a situation where you can use the same strat over and over and win.

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Originally Posted by Airget

Random is about thinking on your feet.

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On my feet, I THINK matching a random 1 star deck against an unobtainable 4-5 star deck is garbage. And those times you win a really unfair match-up? Actually watch your computer opponents' decision making process. They place powerful cards in terrible positions, essentially throwing the game. Second to last turn, score is 6-4, opponent places a card in a position where it flips NO cards, instead of placing it where it would flip 3 cards.

The big problem is the star limitation on the player hand, preventing you from getting hands even via random that can compete with your opponent. 4 out of 5 cards in my hand are randomly chosen from my 1-3 star collection, and only one card is chosen from my 1-5 star collection. It sets you up for terrible hands, while your opponent is guaranteed their normal rotation of cards. If there isn't a clever rule such as plus or same in effect, you're only going to win if the computer throws the match.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Airget

Random is about thinking on your feet. Or else people would be bored at how easy it is. The difficulty can't be there if players just spam their best cards, by making it random the chances of winning are skewed because you can't prepare ahead of time of how to deal with x NPC because each rotation of rules will change your strategy and you wont' exactly fall into a situation where you can use the same strat over and over and win.

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There's nothing strategic, fun, or challenging about continually being given a hand full of 1 star cards against an opponent who always has the same hand full of legendaries. It's just frustrating.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gunspec

I sometimes feel like there is a guy from the 1.0 team that snuck back into the office through the air vent, and he moves around the building adding horrible ideas to one department at a time. Can we get someone from security to pass through the room with the gold saucer crew?

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Hands down, best logic on the forums.

Why did this make me think of Cloud climbing through the air vents, dressed as a female and talking on a Codec? "Yeah Reese, it seems Eorzea can't get enough of FATEs! It should go over real well if we add relic steps into them!!" *beep beep*


**evil laughter**

Random wouldn't be so bad if I didn't draw four 1 star cards and a single 3 star card out of my roster of like 85 cards versus the NPCs two 5 star, one 4 star and two 3 star deck. There's literally no way you can think on your feet and win when you have an absurdly large pool to draw randomly from and the NPC simply doesn't. Hands are usually stacked to an unbeatable degree. I don't understand why nobody in the dev department hasn't thought about tossing 20 random cards into each NPCs deck just to make it a bit more random.

Also tournaments suck now, aren't worth doing at all unless you ask friends to play you or have an alt account to piggyback off of.

Seriously why are 1 and 2 star cards so rare right now? Holy crap.

Timed NPC play windows. Some are ok, but not all of them.

And even if random was a more fair ruleset, why do ALL of the new NPCs have it? That's just lazy.



All in all since Heavensward launched I went from loving TT to not really even bothering with it over the course of like 2 weeks.

I'm honestly not bothered by low drop rate goods in most cases. The card drop rates in FFXIV are something that I think is fine for the most part. The problem to me is the approach to obtain them. The unfair advantage that NPCs have by a default is a deterrent, but one that can obviously be overcome with better cards, better rules (obviously inapplicable for higher tiers), and luck... and we all know how ridiculous RNG can be in this game. Still a deterrent though. The fact that several high profile cards are only obtainable through dungeons/raids and the tournament is a mild deterrent, but definitely not that bad in theory. The tournament seeming to be the more appropriate of the two.

This however leads to one of the biggest deterrents, and that being the Dev ACCEPTED practice of win-trading the tournaments. They may not allow it outright, but they're clearly condoning it and not going to stop people until they decide to make some kind of stance on the matter lol (i.e. never). I mean, win-trading was directly addressed by Yoshi-P shortly after Wolves Den was released and had literally stated that they will not punish the players for doing it, in light of hoping people will accept the spirit of competition lol. That is one of the worst things you can do with anything involving people you don't know, and yet they never learn. This was honestly a huge hit to the perspective of fun of Triple Triad, alongside the need to give so many high profile NPCs (thus their cards) Random/Chaos/etc rules. Mind you, those rules are fine... but not when you see them over and over again from other NPCs that break the rules you are forced to abide by. The unfair advantage about them cheating (having multiple 4-star or higher cards) was at least understandable to an extent due to possible limitations of AI. Even if you never participated in the tournament, you're likely well aware of the problems concerning it. It has a negative perspective inherently, at that point.

Now, the fact also remains that its just not as investing of your time compared to the FFVIII version, due to the ability to convert cards and such. Not to mention the fact that we will just lose interest as time goes on. Those are variables that will always have some part in the lasting power of TT. It just doesn't help when some rather noteworthy deterrents continue to exist. Nearly the entire player base is well aware of the cheating that goes on, and the frustrations behind annoying rules like Random, so it is already well past a simple fix to make players invested again. Many of us just don't feel like sitting through 20 more pre-nerf Rowena or Swift type NPCs or dealing with a tournament that is rampant with players cheating their way to guaranteed reward while everyone else ends up with 3x Shiva or Ultima cards (was fine the first time or if you needed the card that first time).