The Current State of Triple Triad

I've been a TT fan for years, remembering back when it was in FFVIII. This is probably going to turn into a long post, so just hold onto your seat and get ready for the ride.

The Current State of Triple Triad as a Whole
What's happened to TT in the last few months? Sure, we've had card additions and we've actually attempted a tournament system, but it's died down to just about nothing except a few who are still interested. Sure, it's a fun game to play at times, but only when you have enough cards to even make a 3* deck.

The current way they create those decks is to create balance in PvP by limiting what your deck consists of. This leads to obtaining cards to upgrade your deck. Once you reach a certain amount of cards, you become able to use 2* cards freely. However, this requires a bit of time and dedication to fight each NPC to obtain the card(s) that you need. The drop rate is also a tad abysmal at times, but through perseverance you can get all the cards.

Card Balance
The way that SE balanced the cards is very nicely done. However, there is a situation currently where exclusive cards only found in tournaments can't be found anywhere else. It makes the game a bit more unbalanced when it comes to this, as of current there have been win-traders frequenting the board for 140k MGP and the card. It makes the game a tad bland, and it turns down the incentive for a majority of the player base that used to be interested in TT(myself included) when it came out. Of course, there's no real way to fix this as SE has better things to look at. However, if there was a QoL thing I could improve, it'd be to create a bracket system based on how they do Lord of Verminion: RP. It'd allow things to run smoother and it'd bring people back to TT for actual competition. Creating a DF for the tournament as well can be a nice fix so that you don't meet the same person every time so they can win-trade over and over like people who are on top of the boards do nowadays with no skill.

The other issue is that these tournaments give out rare cards you can't find anywhere else. This can disrupt the card balance due to having a selection of 3* card deck compositions you can have compared to all the other players out there that don't have select tournament card. Unless it is given out by an NPC, this will remain rather unbalanced.

Drop Rate
Now I understand that everyone who is avid about Triple Triad wants all the cards. However, some cards only drop from dungeons and trials. This gives people more incentive to help those who are doing it for the first time for a card in exchange. Some of these cards are rather rare to obtain from a drop(i.e. Nidhogg), and require grinding the same place over and over. What would be a good change is to have the card there be obtained 100% of the time so that people who wish to enjoy TT with all the cards don't have to burnout because of the grind.

Is The Mini-Game Still Fun?
It indeed is. I really don't want to see Triple Triad be degraded down to Win-Trading where it's not even fun anymore, but it's been that way for months. If SE is willing to fix this for us so that our QoL with TT will return to normal like it was, then they'd see more people participating in TT tournaments. Otherwise, it just drives the whole player base away from the mini-game altogether. Lord of Verminion gave people the idea of an RTS, so I was glad it went into that genre at least and gave those people who are interested in RTSes something to do here in Gold Saucer.

Conclusion
If the tournament system isn't fixed, then TT will remain stagnant as it always has been. As for the card decks, there's some balance outside of the tournament win-traders that have access to more combinations. Leave your criticism and thoughts here as well if you like.

For me personally TT was fun and exciting and something to look forward too. However after about a month or two it just lost all it's love. I have the past week tho decided to try for the cards from NPCs. Only have 6 left to acquire cards from, then the rest are only obtained through booster packs, dungeons, or tourney.

NPCs
I find them to be a good challenge. They do not need to be changed at all. The ones with random + chaos rules are just fine the way they are. They require you to think, to play, to make use of your hands. They do not need their decks changed either because this requires players to learn their decks, to know their strengths and weaknesses and think of how to use that to their advantage. The NPCs are good, nothing needs to be changed about them or their difficulty.

Acquiring Cards & Card Values
This drives the fun from the game. TT is supposed to be a side game that is fun to do, but instead it turns into a huge RNG grindfest of time sink. You can literally spend 4 hours a day grinding the same NPC over and over for a junk card you most likely will not use unless you get it in your random pile when that rule applies. The RNG drop rate of the chance to obtain a card after winning is just a huge slap in the face all together. Let's consider that for a moment. Why are TT cards gated behind such a huge RNG grindfest? Can you use more than 1 of the same kind of card? No, you can't. Can you trade/sell the cards to other players? No, you can't. Can you rake in huge MGP from selling cards to the NPC? No, you can't. The cards themselves have little to no value at all. Even the 5 star cards are worthless. So the real question remains, why gate them so harshly behind RNG when they have little to no real value?

You have to not only beat the NPC, which some are easy to win, but others are not so easy. Yet then after winning you have to pray RNG drops a card to you. And not only that, some NPC's have multiple cards to win, so that lowers the chances even more of what card you are after. Then there are the dungeon grinds and you have to burn out on that content in hopes of a card as well, it's not rewarding to grind something 60+ times and obtain no reward, it actually is the opposite, it drives people away from doing both the content and the mini-game. Then there are the RNG booster packs. The value ratio on those are just horrid. Why does it cost 8k MGP for a booster pack for a chance at a 5* card that if you do acquire it will only get you back 600MGP. That's not even half the value of the booster pack and 98% of the time you are going to acquire cards that net you 50 MGP. I don't even think Game Stop rips people off this badly on trade-in values. There is no point in it, in all honesty, to devalue the cards to such a state but make them so hard and annoying to obtain.

The thing that would be nice for a change, keep the booster packs how they are which is fine. However increase the MGP value of the cards, make them worthwhile and rewarding. On top of that on how to acquire them make them 100% or 50/50 chance from dungeons or let us after beating the NPC choose 1 card that we flipped for the taking. That would make people play more because they are actually being rewarded something for their time instead of hating an already heavily used RNG system. By allowing players to choose a card they flipped this also will have them to keep playing certain NPCs for the chance at beating them for cards instead of just grinding away at the NPC for 1 card then leaving never to return.

Card Decks
I'm still at a loss on why we can only use 1 of the many 4* and 5* cards we have. One and only one. Yes I can understand how overpowered a deck can be with all 5* cards but it's kind of pointless to make the players have to choose between one 4* card or a 5* card to use as their 'ultimate card' in their deck. Players should be allowed 2 sets of decks: A deck versus NPCs and a deck versus PC's. The NPC deck make it where players can only use after acquiring x # of cards be able to use both a 4* and a 5* cards. The PC deck allow players to play whichever cards they want to use to play against each other. Don't worry about it affecting the tournament tho because that thing is beyond all hope of saving anyway.

Chaos and Random together serve as nothing more than to stall you and waste time farming MGP and cards, making playing the game overall less fun when you're dealt a lousy deck while knowing your opponent's deck will greatly outclass yours. A mixture of cards of various strengths make an interesting game, but being given weak cards for your hand time and time again is like a LV5 adventurer trying to fight a LV30 Bomb. Foregone conclusions are not fun to endure.

It is a nice surprise when a card drops from battle content but I think all cards should be obtainable through playing cards and MGP. The ones that can currently only be obtained through battle should be added to TT NPCs as an alternative way to acquire them. In particular the primal cards such as Ravana and King Mog have almost no chance to drop in hard modes, so they are mainly found by hardcore players farming extreme difficulty. The people getting them are not necessarily the same people who actually play TT.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Chaos and Random together serve as nothing more than to stall you and waste time farming MGP and cards

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can you imagine that people play triple triad for fun and not for farming mgp or anything?

go to the garlean if you want to farm

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Chaos and Random together serve as nothing more than to stall you and waste time farming MGP and cards, making playing the game overall less fun when you're dealt a lousy deck while knowing your opponent's deck will greatly outclass yours. A mixture of cards of various strengths make an interesting game, but being given weak cards for your hand time and time again is like a LV5 adventurer trying to fight a LV30 Bomb. Foregone conclusions are not fun to endure.

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Agreed. I lost a lot of interest in Triple Triad when I realised that a lot of the challenge is simply artificial. I'm not rewarded for strategy - I'm rewarded for luck and I don't like that. It's a fun game but finding other players to challenge is difficult even on a busy realm...and NPC's are often given nasty combinations of rules. The limit on card types is bizarre too - especially when NPC's can often throw out 2-5 high end cards.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

can you imagine that people play triple triad for fun and not for farming mgp or anything?

go to the garlean if you want to farm

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I point you down below.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Agreed. I lost a lot of interest in Triple Triad when I realised that a lot of the challenge is simply artificial. I'm not rewarded for strategy - I'm rewarded for luck and I don't like that. It's a fun game but finding other players to challenge is difficult even on a busy realm...and NPC's are often given nasty combinations of rules. The limit on card types is bizarre too - especially when NPC's can often throw out 2-5 high end cards.

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The fact that these combination of punishing rules to combat farming is the reason why I don't find said rules fun. Chaos + Random together may as well just be a dice game because it's up to the game to decide whether you can deal with what you have or if you're going to have a bad time. Nothing is "fun" with being dealt with several 1 and 2 star cards while your opponent throws out 4 and 5 stars like it was no big deal. Even something like Random + Same/Plus is more fun because at least you can still strategize and manipulate the rules in your favor. Random with Chaos is just hoping the AI is stupid or unlucky enough for you to take advantage of.


People farm TT matches not just for MGP, but for cards as well if they've exhausted all other options. I had zero fun playing NPCs with absurd rules just to get their cards so that my deck limits could increase.

I think at least all cards should be unique. Seems odd to have cards that have the same values, in the same positions, functionally identical, with the only difference being the picture

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

I think at least all cards should be unique. Seems odd to have cards that have the same values, in the same positions, functionally identical, with the only difference being the picture

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I didn't realize there were any cards with identical stats in the game, which cards are you referring to? Though I don't mind this, there are only so many combinations of numbers (and fewer still when that stats need to fall within certain star ranks). If cards are added to the game over time all of the combinations will eventually be used up.

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Originally Posted by WellFooled

I didn't realize there were any cards with identical stats in the game, which cards are you referring to? Though I don't mind this, there are only so many combinations of numbers (and fewer still when that stats need to fall within certain star ranks). If cards are added to the game over time all of the combinations will eventually be used up.

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Can't remember, but I noticed two the other day when I had the random rule. Think it was Poroggo and vanu vanu? Both are 6373 (clockwise) if I remember correctly. I don't know if there are any others.

Back on topic, I do agree that the tournament is a bit dumb, with win traders being the only people who can win, but none of the cards are actually exclusive to the winners. You can still get all the cards without ever placing in the top 20 of the tournaments

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Originally Posted by randysquirrel

Can't remember, but I noticed two the other day when I had the random rule. Think it was Poroggo and vanu vanu? Both are 6373 (clockwise) if I remember correctly. I don't know if there are any others.

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Yea Gnath card and Poroggo card are identical to each other. Crawler and Chimera card are almost the same as well except the bottom number on crawler card is 3 instead of 2.

I think that what is going to hurt Triple Triad the most in the future is its lack of scalability. PvE content can always be made more difficult by increasing the numbers; bosses hit harder, mechanics do more damage. It has room to grow and expand. But TT cannot scale further than it already has without breaking the fundamentals of the game and allowing for number values higher than 9. This is why HW saw so many "unrewarding" NPCs in 3.0: the only way for the devs to inject challenge into the content was to remove a great deal of guaranteed strategy and forcing players to rely mostly on luck. They relented on the random rule in 3.1, and instead nerfed drop rates hard to keep the timesink.

As a result, for as long as the devs continue to support TT, every patch will see a slew of "new" cards that are objectively useless. Combine this with a lackluster implementation of Tournaments, I've pretty much written off TT unless it gets an overhaul in a future patch.

I'm just sick of the Random Chaos rules. Those are terrible. I'm at 70 cards now and the ones I have left to get are nearly impossible. I must have played Lewena 100 times and not got a single card for my efforts. Not to mention that 8 out of 10 times I play her it's literally impossible to win as I get a hand full of 1* or 2* cards.

There needs to be a DF for TT tournaments.

I think there needs to be some new rules to liven it up a bit more. Like elemental, or some other combos besides Ascension/Plus.
Something else to play around. Or a match rule where certain numbers are 0's.
But for god's sake, get rid of random chaos! The cards should take a while to get. But they shouldn't be nearly impossible to get.

They just need to make it so that the 'random' rule is 'random' for both players and NPC's. It isn't fun or engaging to be handed a deck that cannot possibly win against an NPC's deck.