Mahjong Fix

There are many things about Doman Mahjong that should be fixed. I want to list them and tell how they possibly could be fixed.

1. Orchestrion roll and weekly challenge log.
- I think a lot of people want to get an orchestrion roll for collection. It should be possible to get the roll for playing even against NPC. Just win a few times in any game mode, so people wouldn't need to master playing this game. This way anyone who wants to get the scroll, will be able to do that without suffering for too long.
- Weekly challenge log for mahjong should be removed...
...This is quite important because we have a lot of players that join ranked games for challenge log or orchestrion roll. They want to leave immediately after learning how long this game will take. It breaks fun for all the people on the table who have to deal with unmotivated or leaving players.

2. Ranked Matches.
In ranked matches, it should be important how good a player is. That's why any kind of hint should be disabled. It's called ranked for a reason. It shouldn't be possible to win with only luck and clicking hints. Playing with hints is no different than installing bot playing instead of a player. Ranked matches should be free from it as this is the place where people show their ability to play.

3. Queues.
There should be three queues, not two. Ranked, Advanced Ranked, and normal. Some people would like to play without all the ranking stuff.
- Normal queue should have hints on it. As its not that competitive game.
- Ranked queue should be left as it is. Hints off. Dangerous tile could be still left on.
- Advanced ranked queue should have "open hand tanyao" turned off. As it is not very "advanced" yaku. Also hints and dangerous tiles off.

4. MGP for games.
Currently playing mahjong give no reward at all. Besides the weekly challenge log. It should award at least a little bit of MGP for any game. Just like any other gold saucer activity. I don't know how much, but it takes 30-60 minutes to play a single match. So it should be rewarded accordingly.

5. Emotes used by players should be visible on the avatars during the match.

6. Add a tutorial teaching new players to play step-by-step.

7. Upgrade interface to show common assists:
- highlighting tile copies on mouseover,
- wait previews,
- furiten warnings before discarding a tile

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raionek

4. Dora Kan
It should be impossible to get kan in dora. Any dora and ura dora tile is normally taken from the pile of all tiles. For example, if a red dragon is in dora, there should be only 3 red dragons left in game. Normally that's how it works because it is physically impossible to just get an additional tile to represent dora without picking it from the table. Same with Ura Dora.

---

This sounds like a problem you can only have with the dora indicator set to Doman. The difference between Traditional/Doman dora indicator is that Traditional dora indicators mean "the next tile in the sequence after the indicator is the dora" (for example, red dragon would be the actual dora because the indicator is green dragon, making a dora kan possible,) while the Doman dora indicator moves that one step ahead in the sequence for you. This is why dora kans are possible. For a more detailed example:

1. Dora indicator is flipped, revealing 3-sou (bamboo.)
2. Using the Traditional indicator, you count 1 step ahead in the sequence, arriving at 4-sou.
3. 4-sou is the actual dora. A kan of 3-sou is not possible, as one of the tiles is out of the game, but a kan of 4-sou is possible (unless it's also in the dead wall, either as a kandora or uradora.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raionek

5. Last tile claim for tenpai.
Sometimes there is a situation when the player could claim the last thrown tile as chi or pon to earn tenpai in the end. Not win, but just tenpai. The game automatically ends because no one called ron on that last tile. But still, some players should be able to call chi or pon and get tenpai points.

---

And you would want to set yourself up for a potential houtei because...?

I seem to misunderstand how dora is indicated here. Thanks for the explanation. I'll remove 4th point from the list.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naizakane

And you would want to set yourself up for a potential houtei because...?

---

Because that's how should it work normally. Player still should be able to make a call for the last tile even if it's not a ron. It seems to be a bug that ends the game immediately not allowing player to do that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raionek

Because that's how should it work normally. Player still should be able to make a call for the last tile even if it's not a ron. It seems to be a bug that ends the game immediately not allowing player to do that.

---

I have played riichi mahjong on four clients including FFXIV. Not a single one of them lets players call the last tile for anything that isn't ron. Tile calls on the last tile are limited to ron only. From riichi.wiki: "Finally, the last discard cannot be claimed for any open calls, even if needed to attain tenpai. The call on the last discard is limited for winning hands, by which houtei raoyui is rewarded."

Given this, the hand ending once the last tile is discarded, even if it's a tile you could call via pon/chi to attain tenpai, is not a bug, but intentional. Again, why would you want to set yourself up to be hit with houtei?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naizakane

I have played riichi mahjong on four clients including FFXIV. Not a single one of them lets players call the last tile for anything that isn't ron. Tile calls on the last tile are limited to ron only. From riichi.wiki: "Finally, the last discard cannot be claimed for any open calls, even if needed to attain tenpai. The call on the last discard is limited for winning hands, by which houtei raoyui is rewarded."

Given this, the hand ending once the last tile is discarded, even if it's a tile you could call via pon/chi to attain tenpai, is not a bug, but intentional. Again, why would you want to set yourself up to be hit with houtei?

---

Players without tenpai have to pay out points to players with tenpai when the game ends in a draw, that's why. Houtei is a risk but that's their own decision to make. I'm not saying it should be changed if that goes against every other ruleset; but it's not hard to see the motivation behind wanting to do so

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GwynUnlucky

Players without tenpai have to pay out points to players with tenpai when the game ends in a draw, that's why. Houtei is a risk but that's their own decision to make. I'm not saying it should be changed if that goes against every other ruleset; but it's not hard to see the motivation behind wanting to do so

---

Dealing in via houtei usually costs more points than noten payout and carries the risk of giving the opponent's hand a considerable upgrade, for example a hand worth 5 han before houtei being upgraded to haneman by houtei, making you pay between 12-18k. Compare that to noten payouts being either 1k, 1.5k or 3k, and it removes any motivation to call pon/chi on the last tile. I'd definitely take noten over a houtei deal-in.

Good points!

I'd agree and support removing hints from ranked matches. It really does feel like playing against auto-pilot bots sometimes, and ranked play should be more focused on player skill than mindlessly clicking through whatever hints are given for each play.

Also agree about giving some MGP for each game played. It's very strange that a Gold Saucer game doesn't give MGP.

I'd like to see different levels of ranked matches as you suggest, but on the other hand, I'd be very afraid to see what would happen to queue times. I'm sure they're different from server to server, but queue times can be horrible on some servers and additional match settings could make things worse.

The best solution to this would be for the dev team to find more ways to get players interested in mahjong and providing a better way for newbies to learn the gameplay and mechanics. I find the in-game tutorial guides in XIV akin to reading an encyclopedia and I can't imagine most new players gain much from them. The XIV team could take a cue from other popular mahjong games like MajSoul and make a more interesting and easy to understand tutorial and introduction for new players. I think this would be the biggest "fix" we could get for XIV mahjong.

I'd agree that hints should be removed but for the opposite reason. It makes people play worse as the bot is only meant to teach you the very basics. Average skilled person will generally always come out ahead over people relying on the hints.

But I think the overall problem with mahjong in ff14 as it stands is that there is literally no reason to play it besides acquiring the roll / mahjong master title.

Once I acquired mahjong master I saw and still see no reason to play mahjong in ff14 when I can queue up on mahjong soul or tenhou for instant queues with proper matchmaking at any time of the day.

Basically, the ff14 client is completely inferior to the popular mahjong clients of today and square needs to throw in some glams/rewards/mgp that isn't gated behind ranking points to get ff14 players to actually try it out and play.

I also think the suggestion for removing open hand tanyao from "advanced play" is extremely ridiculous. Keep it optional like Tenhou if you want. I prefer it ON (as do many pros) as it heavily reduces the amount of ryuukyoku and allows you to play more aggressively which is more fun in general.

I keep going back and forth on hints. It seems weird that XIV is missing a lot of common assists—highlighting tile copies on mouseover, wait previews, furiten warnings that appear before you own yourself—but will still occasionally allow a Novice to queue up with absolutely no clue what's going on, match hints for 4 hands, and win. (This has happened to me more than once: not often enough that it's really worth getting upset over, but a room full of 3dans losing to a player who "queued for this on accident" is as funny as it is frustrating.)

Clubhouse Games has a really nice assist feature where it recommends yaku based on your current hand shape—it's kinda dumb and wants players to force honitsu a weird amount of the time, and even with polishing it'll probably never be perfect advice, but features like that are a better fit for XIV, IMO.

Thank You everyone for your answers.
Now I also understand rules a little better than I understood them before.
So I've removed the things that I wrote out of my misunderstanding.
And I've added points 6 and 7.

Glad to have your arguments that agree or disagree with me.
I hope devs will look at this thread sometime and think about what is a good idea and what's not. If they can change anything, would be nice.

I used to be really against the hint systems, until I was able to learn its algorithms and decision-making processes and used that advantage to trap people. All the way to 10th Dan.

I think other than "Mahjong master" it shall also reward player who are 2000 at rating a mahjong mount just like TT card mount. Just imagine riding on a mahjong piece.

My replies to the OP post:

Quote:

---

- There should be three queues, not two. Ranked, Advanced Ranked, and normal. Some people would like to play without all the ranking stuff.

---

It's already somewhat of a struggle to find players in some more unpopular hours even with basically only one queue (Novice Quick). Casual players can simply play without paying mind to the MMR system it they would like. Ranked players who wish to play in a more "troll"-ish way have other platforms for that.

Quote:

---

- Ranked queue should be left as it is. Hints off. Dangerous tile could be still left on.

---

I honestly can get behind this, but Advanced games are unicorns already compared to Novice queues, so I support simply disabling tips and danger tiles for all.

Quote:

---

- Advanced ranked queue should have "open hand tanyao" turned off. As it is not very "advanced" yaku. Also hints and dangerous tiles off.

---

Where do you draw the line? Is "my only yaku is riichi" advanced? Is yakuhai advanced enough? Is all pons, even if it is harder to attain than "open hand 1 han hand lol"? Because it's really simply to understand all pons.

Is it because tanyao is the most played yaku? Because it isn't. According to tenhou, Riichi is.

https://i.imgur.com/L4S5VyY.png

Second, open hand tanyao is a strategy. Yes, it's frustrating to see someone rushing it mindlessly, be it either a novice who does not know any better or someone interrupting your riichi on purpose. But that's exactly the point. Open hand tanyao is only a tool in your box. It sacrifices all scores for speed. Do you want to keep your score above your peers and end this game quickly? Open hand tanyao. Are you a dealer? Open hand tanyao. Is a player with an absurdly high rank the dealer? Open hand tanyao. Do you think someone's riichi has a bad wait? Open hand tanyao. Do you want to prevent Ippatsu? Chi/pon at your earliest convenience, and then maybe open hand tanyao.

About the novices? They don't know how to score any better. On one of my games last week I saw a little guy, 3000 points under me, calling ron on my discard when there were 40 tiles left on pile. I was a dealer, he had an open hand yakuhai, and the game ended with still me on first place and he on second. He then complained when he saw that the game ended and I was still above him in the scoreboard. I found him in the next game and gently lectured on "if you had waited only a bit to get 2 han, you would have won."

As well, you'll interrupt pretty quickly a table of novices mindlessly 1-han ron'ing when you do a similarly fast but better built hand.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GhibliTheSW

I used to be really against the hint systems, until I was able to learn its algorithms and decision-making processes and used that advantage to trap people. All the way to 10th Dan.

---

I noticed as much when I played against you. At first I was stunned. "10th Dan? Who reaches that? Either a mastermind, a bot or..." And then I realized in horror that the most likely alternative was "someone who knows how to exploit the bot and suji-trap people."

To anyone interested in knowing what the hint system prioritizes, here are some writings I found. Credit to Sirocco (the person I'm replying to) herself.

Quote:

---

The hint system does not simply follow a pure probability approach, but with a priority system. My speculation of the priority is: Nomi tenpai < Yakuhai < Pinfu < Tanyao < Sanshoku Doujun < Toitoi < Chiitoi < Chanta < Honitsu < everything else, even if there is only 1 tile left to complete such Yaku. It appears to disregard anything else besides the aforementioned Yaku. On several occasions it told me to discard my slightly less advantageous Yaku dora pons, discard my tenpai Suuankou, discard my Iishanten Kokushi Musou. It also disapproves of Jigoku even though in many occasions the Jigoku tanki wait would work and have worked extremely well.

---

Quote:

---

The dangerous tiles indicating system strictly follows a "live tiles/furiten/suji" code. It (...) Gives advantages to veterans who know how to exploit it when they know their opponents are blindly following the hints. By committing kanchan/penchan/jigoku tanki/suji trap, they easily trick such players to deal into their hands.

---

Since you mentioned kanchan, can I assume that the bot won't consider if something is a riichi tile or not when doing the danger tile calculation when human players normally would (i.e. to allow ryankan)?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpiderLily

It's already somewhat of a struggle to find players in some more unpopular hours even with basically only one queue (Novice Quick) [...]

---

But why force new players who don't know the rules of the game to play ranked matches? Just so they can be crushed by people who actually know the game well?
It makes no sense unless you want to have some free points.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpiderLily

I support simply disabling tips and danger tiles for all.

---

I quite agree with your statement as for me these hints are also annoying from the very beginning.
But some people probably enjoy playing with tips. I wouldn't want to take the fun from them. After all, having fun in the game is what matters the most.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SpiderLily

Where do you draw the line? Is "my only yaku is riichi" advanced? Is yakuhai advanced enough? Is all pons, even if it is harder to attain than "open hand 1 han hand lol"? Because it's really simply to understand all pons p,[...]

---

My reasoning for removing open-hand tanyao from advanced matches is quite simple.
It's not because it's the most used yaku, but it is the most used open-hand yaku.
It does grant the fastest win for players. Often I see games in mahjong here that ends before anyone even attains 30000 points, because there is all the time ongoing 1han.

If you remove only open-hand tanyao, the whole gameplay changes. People are more cautious in throwing away terminals and honors. There is more time to build actually good hands. The game starts to be more interesting as its not rushing fastest thing anymore.

Besides, I said that this rule should be in only advanced matches (which aren't much played anyway as you pointed out). But maybe disabling tanyao would finally make more people join the advanced matches.

Sometimes (outside of the final fantasy) there are tournaments that remove the open-hand tanyao or give some other rules that make the game a little bit different.
Even now you can disable open-hand tanyao in custom matches because it's something that is normally considered in Mahjong world. It's not something special that I just made up myself. I don't draw a line on which things we should remove or leave to be. I just take a hint from something that other people already do for reasons.

Just blindly rushing the fastest hand isn't high level play.
Kuitan nashi in advanced would rather make even less people play advanced. You'd be removing one of the tools someone has to shut down a potenially big hand — as a better player you will be able to read the signs — making it even more luck based since the only other tool would be getting Yakuhai and hoping the one with the big hand doesn't just draw the tile themselves.

I'd rather remove kuitan from novice games for force people to go for different yaku.

The option I'd like to have is actually akanashi — no red 5.

I met some cheaters in mahjong boosting their rating with addons and secondary characters (basically bots).
I researched how the addon for mahjong works and it just clicks on tiles shown by in-game hints. It doesn't read what tiles are on the table.

Now I want SE to remove hints from ranked matches even more than before. So people wouldn't use the addon to play the game for them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raionek

I met some cheaters in mahjong boosting their rating with addons and secondary characters (basically bots).
I researched how the addon for mahjong works and it just clicks on tiles shown by in-game hints. It doesn't read what tiles are on the table.

Now I want SE to remove hints from ranked matches even more than before. So people wouldn't use the addon to play the game for them.

---

I'm sorry, but this just sounds absurd. For every plugin controversy that happens, you can use google to find what it is they're using to cheat. It even acts like outrage marketing, the number of people who started cheating in Fall Guys skyrocketed after the video was posted on Reddit.
The developers of the ACRs that are a scourge on high-end content and market board don't have a Mahjong module. The two relevant githubs you find when you look up "FFXIV Mahjong Github" are a pre-alpha plugin that's completely incapable of doing anything due to modloader updates, and a datamine that has nothing to do with plugins.
Even the devs of the zoomhack and aoe marker hack haven't bothered to touch Mahjong because no-one cares about it.

Would you mind making some information on this supposed addon public? Because it sounds like you call everything you don't like a bot and are extrapolating the fact that most unranked players just press the ingame hint because Riichi is the hardest version of Mahjong for a newbie to pick up and FFXIV doesn't have a good tutorial other than the trial through fire of "just play against the NPC board here lol"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Astrahime

Would you mind making some information on this supposed addon public?

---

Of course not. I don't want to promote it in any way. If you couldn't find it yourself I am glad it's not that easy to find.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Astrahime

it sounds like you call everything you don't like a bot and are extrapolating the fact that most unranked players just press the ingame hint because Riichi is the hardest version of Mahjong for a newbie to pick up and FFXIV doesn't have a good tutorial other than the trial through fire

---

Lack of good tutorial is one thing, hints are another thing and cheaters are completely different thing.

About the tutorial you're right. That is one of the reasons this thread even started. We asked SE to put a good tutorial in the game because the current one is just a wall of text. You can learn from it (as I did), but it takes more time than learning from a good tutorial. And the current tutorial is just not fun.

About unranked players playing with hints. I see no problem with it. Learning from hints may be good. But playing with them in ranked matches is totally no good. If a machine plays for you in a ranked match, how can you call it a ranked match? It's plain stupid to give players something like "ranks" and the option to let the computer play for them. It's like they would add an auto-play on pvp. It just makes no sense to do that.

And finally about cheaters. Today I found a second cheater. I even made them admit that they've cheated. They controlled 3 different characters in a single match and had them on auto-play.
If you want to spot a cheater I recommend queueing on all types of matches in the middle of the night. Usually, they queue to full ranked match in hours when there are almost no players online. (Though in most cases they just gonna "decline" the moment they realise that not all of their characters are in the game.)
Two different cheaters I've met used the same tactic. Logged on 4 characters. Queued on all of them. Their main character had the addon set on playing as hints show and other characters tried to lose. (In one case the low lv characters left the game to speed it up.)
The losing characters were low lv alts that barely could enter Gold Saucer (they had exactly lv18, I checked on lodestone).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raionek

Of course not. I don't want to promote it in any way. If you couldn't find it yourself I am glad it's not that easy to find.

---

Rule 32 of the internet: pics or it isn't real.
Crop and censor the screenshot as much as you want. But without any actual proof you just sound like a crazy person. Who queues for Mahjong in the middle of the night on a non-JP data center and expects a serious match? Consider joining a FFXIV Mahjong discord (like https://discord.gg/TFwvpPC) and asking people in the LFG channel to play with you.

Quote:

---

I think a lot of people want to get an orchestrion roll for collection. It should be possible to get the roll for playing even against NPC.

---

I'd only consider lowering the orchestrion roll requirements if they remove hints. Maybe not even then. R1600 is very achievable considering the fact that you can reset to R1500 as many times as you like.

Quote:

---

Weekly challenge log for mahjong should be removed

---

I haven't encountered many people who queue up just to AFK for the challenge log, but I have seen some. Most seem to realize even the time spent AFKing isn't worth the reward. I'm in favor of removing it, if only because it's practically useless whether or not you intend to play.

...as a tangent though, I think they should revise the thinking timer to a more standard system of 5s per move + an extra 15-20s per hand. Games in FFXIV move very, very slowly when even one person maxes the timer on every move.

Quote:

---

In ranked matches, it should be important how good a player is. That's why any kind of hint should be disabled.

---

100% agree. The fun of mahjong is playing with people. When I play mahjong in FFXIV I can't tell where the person ends and the bot begins. I'm fine if they leave the hint system in unranked games, but it has no place in ranked. (And as Sirocco said, you can climb consistently off exploiting the bot's weaknesses. Your rating is more a reflection of how good you are at beating the bot than other players.)

Quote:

---

There should be three queues, not two. Ranked, Advanced Ranked, and normal. Some people would like to play without all the ranking stuff.
- Normal queue should have hints on it. As its not that competitive game.
- Ranked queue should be left as it is. Hints off. Dangerous tile could be still left on.
- Advanced ranked queue should have "open hand tanyao" turned off. As it is not very "advanced" yaku. Also hints and dangerous tiles off.

---

The problem with adding a casual queue feature is that the ranked population is already too low; dividing players further would kill it. PvP currently faces this issue as well at higher levels, as casual Crystalline Conflict queue is very popular, but it siphons people out of the ranked queue. I would propose two alternatives:

1. Allow bots in private games. Allow players to queue into private games with 1-4 players, then populate the rest of the seats with bots.
2. Add an option to hide ranks. If you want to play games without worrying about rank, toggle off all rank display and notifications. Rank will still change per game and the player will still be eligible for achievements, but that information will be hidden unless the player wants to toggle it back on again.

(cont'd)

As for the other points, all hints/AI should be disabled outside of private games. And I disagree with removing kuitan in ranked matches, I think adding a 30000 point minimum to end the game would be better. Open tanyao is incentivized because it's all you need to win if few points change hands and the game ends fast. Having a minimum score would encourage people to attempt bigger hands than rinky-dink 1000 point tanyao nomis.

I should note here that the queue system seems to prioritize Novice over Advanced. (i.e. if 4 players queue for Novice and Advanced at the same time, they will be placed in a novice game.) Ideally, this could be fixed by disabling Novice queue for players above 1 dan. This would also make it slightly more difficult to win-trade games, as you wouldn't be able to farm rank off fresh alts past a certain point.

Quote:

---

Currently playing mahjong give no reward at all. Besides the weekly challenge log. It should award at least a little bit of MGP for any game. Just like any other gold saucer activity.

---

While I agree on principle, in practice, this will give people an additional incentive to AFK. Unless AFKers are exempted from rewards somehow, this has the potential to do more harm than good.

Quote:

---

5. Emotes used by players should be visible on the avatars during the match.

6. Add a tutorial teaching new players to play step-by-step.

7. Upgrade interface to show common assists:
- highlighting tile copies on mouseover,
- wait previews,
- furiten warnings before discarding a tile

---

I fully agree with all of these.

Thanks for making this topic! I know CBU3 hasn't touched mahjong since launch, but I'd love for it to become a proper place to play the game. As it stands, I can't recommend FFXIV to any mahjong players, but with a few small system changes I think the latent potential of XIV mahjong could be realized.