SE: Please fix Triple Triad

Dear SE:

I’ve posted on here previously about Triple Triad in hopes that you could fix this mini-game so that it isn’t broken. You recently rolled out some updates with Patch 5.4, but unfortunately these have served only to further mess up this mini-game. For the record, I’m saying this as someone who has the Shadowbringer Thancred card and has achieved the "Tournament Leader" title, and I’m making these requests / suggestions as a Triple Triad enthusiast who is frustrated with the current state of the game.

Swap / Chaos:
These rulesets are mind-numbingly stupid. At least make the swap ruleset exchange cards of the same value (e.g., your 3-star card for their 3-star card, your 5-star card for their 5-star card, etc.). Too often do I see a 3-star card swapped for a 5-star card, which - if the person on the receiving end of the 5-star card has any idea how to play the game - is a guaranteed win for that person. I’ve occasionally managed to beat people who have no idea how to play Triple Triad despite such swaps, but in general it takes the fun out of the match as is. Please fix this.

Chaos is similarly “not fun.” I don’t know who thought this ruleset was a good idea to include in the game, but... they were wrong.
This applies both to normal game modes as well as Open Draft.

4-Star Cards:
I was hoping that these might become relevant with 5.4, but (other than Open Draft tournaments) they’re still completely useless. The restrictions on the number of 1- to 3-star cards that you can have in your deck was eliminated, but I don’t think that was generally an issue to begin with. The real complaint from myself and most other Triple Triad enthusiasts I know was that 4-star cards are solely collector’s items because there is no reason to ever use a 4-star card over a 5-star card, and you can currently have only one card that is 4 stars or above in your deck. Possible solutions to this issue were discussed at length in this previous thread.

Open Draft:
This new tournament style had a lot of potential, but its execution was botched. Below is an overview of some of the main issues with this tournament style.

Imbalanced Decks
Firstly, the fact that every person who participates doesn’t get the same set of cards to select from is imbalanced. I think this game type generally makes the sum of the numbers on all of the sides of the cards offered to each player the same, but anyone who plays Triple Triad knows that not all cards are created equal even if the sum of the numbers thereof is the same. This results in some participants being given objectively “better” sets to choose from than others. Why not give everyone the same pool of cards to select from and allow their choices to affect the strength of their deck instead of RNG?

Same & Plus in Open Draft
These rulesets are some of the worst in Open Draft (whether one or both are applied). Without also having “All Open,” you have no idea what cards your opponent has, and so it’s a crapshoot as to whether the entire board is going to get flipped on the last turn. At least with the NPCs that you play against in the open world who have either/both of these rulesets, you know the limited pool of cards that they can draw from and can thus make an educated decision of which cards to place where. However, you’re going in blind in Open Draft and so it is completely down to luck whether you or your opponent are going to have and place cards in a way that’s going to get everything overturned. You could have won 2 of 3 matches and be about to win the 3rd match only to have some random card that you had no way of predicting flip the entire table. It’s poor game design (unless the point of Triple Triad is to be about RNG instead of skill).

Match Making
I’m not sure how to fix this, but it is extremely frustrating when someone gets to play nothing but NPCs while others have to play PCs. There was even one tournament when I had to play against the same PC opponent twice in a row. We ended up tying both times (obviously the second time since we knew exactly which cards we each had after the first match), and an NPC that neither of us had a chance to play ended up winning.

Random Wait Time
Many players are playing in Open Tournaments solely to get the new “Tournament Leader” title. A single loss generally prevents you from winning that tournament. Accordingly, I often see players who go AFK after a single loss and hold up the entire tournament as a result (you can generally tell because once you finish it says what turn they’re on in the post-game leaderboard). Another random annoying wait time is after all matches are completed it has to “calculate” the scores for like 15~20 seconds. Why? It already shows the final scores right there. The random wait time at the end of each tournament makes no sense.

As a PvE player I'd like to add a few of things.

It's annoying how NPCs get to outright cheat with their decks. There's plenty of NPCs who have two five-star cards or a five-star and a four-star. I don't remember for certain if I've seen a 54433 deck or better. Granted the NPCs often aren't that good in the game so I can usually get a decent win rate anyway.

The "recommended" deck seems to be a noob trap and doesn't have anywhere near the best cards. It also doesn't account for rules, particularly reverse, ascension and descension.

The new card list is great for checking how to get missing cards, but it absolutely sucks for checking if I already have a particular card. It doesn't even have a search field. When a card drops in a dungeon or raid I like to check if I already have it and give others a chance if I do, but I also don't want to hold up the loot roll. In fact, why don't you just add something on the item description or icon to indicate whether I already have that card? Same for orchestrion rolls, minions, mounts etc.

I also kinda dislike the roulette rule, but that could be just because I'm too lazy to research what kind of deck works in normal, reverse, fallen ace, ascension and descension - or combinations thereof.

Wouldn't have minded to see them extend the board to be like how it it was in FFIX where it was 4x4.

Personally I'd just like them to fix the E12 drop so I can be 310/310.

Why is everybody always complaining about the 4-star cards, and never about the 2-star cards which have the exact same problem?...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Wouldn't have minded to see them extend the board to be like how it it was in FFIX where it was 4x4.

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That . . . could be an interesting new mode. Just changing the size of the board would have us playing very differently.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Wouldn't have minded to see them extend the board to be like how it it was in FFIX where it was 4x4.

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With Tetra Master, it was honestly a lot easier to enjoy the game. But they had that game with FFXI, and decided to bring Triple Triad from FFVIII instead to XIV

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Garnix

Why is everybody always complaining about the 4-star cards, and never about the 2-star cards which have the exact same problem?...

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1 star and 2 star cards are literally just there until you can get good enough cards for your deck, same for 4 star cards with how good 5 stars are. IT's the fact that NPCs aren't held to the same rules as players and that makes for a super artificial difficult

They're also there to fluff out the collection list, so if you get a card from an NPC you're more likely to get the lesser starred cards sooner.

As someone with over 200 cards, The system isn't bad really. But it would be nice is you could have a max of 1 5 star or higher or a max of 2 4 stars. It would change up things a lot.

1 five star and 2 four stars per deck pls

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Garnix

Why is everybody always complaining about the 4-star cards, and never about the 2-star cards which have the exact same problem?...

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The difference is that you're not forced to have 1-star cards on your deck. You upgrade from 1-star to 2-star and then 2-star to 3-star. But then you can't upgrade most of those 3-star cards to 4-star, and the 4-star cards remain unused even though the majority of the cards in your deck are worse.

I think I've said on occasions but rather than outright remove the restriction I do think it should have been reworked to a rank-based deck. 1x 5* card, and 4x 3* cards come to a rating of 17, so I would like to see this come to fruition, allowing us to potentially use decks such as.. 5, 4, 2, 3, 3.. or 5, 5, 2, 2, 3.. You get the point

I'd like a mode where if I was playing against a friend in a non-tournament match we cloud just bring in a full 5* deck, set a whole bunch of silly rules then try and beat each other.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I think I've said on occasions but rather than outright remove the restriction I do think it should have been reworked to a rank-based deck. 1x 5* card, and 4x 3* cards come to a rating of 17, so I would like to see this come to fruition, allowing us to potentially use decks such as.. 5, 4, 2, 3, 3.. or 5, 5, 2, 2, 3.. You get the point

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Yeah, that is kind of what I advocated for in the thread that I linked in the OP.

In any event, the fact that Open Draft gives different players different cards to build their decks from is beyond stupid. It is infuriating to be given absolutely garbage options (e.g., all your 5-star options are A/7/7/6 cards and the like) to compete against opponents who have been given objectively better options (e.g., corner A/A cards). If they really wanted to do this right, each tournament should start off with each player getting to choose from the same pool of cards, and - instead of the dumb pairings they often force upon you - make everyone choose from one of five 1-star cards, one of five 2-star cards, one of five 3-star cards, one of five 4-star cards, and one of five 5-star cards. That would make the tournaments much more balanced and dependent on each player's ability to understand how each card will work together with their temporary deck (instead of RNG).

Or... have draft actually be like a draft format.
Make "booster packs" of triple triad cards people pass around and everything.
Its just draft in name only and that's a shame.

Draft is somewhat a step in the right direction, but it also has a lot of set backs. I also wish they'd actually allow us one 4 star card along with a 5 star. It would give us better options on some ascension decks then needing to rely on cards that have been in the game since release. I might be in the minority, but I also don't like only having three rounds. I feel at least four would be better.