Dear Yoshi & Team: About Current TT Tournament Model

[Jambalaya]

So I'm on Gilgamesh and there are two people with near perfect scores. This of course wasn't done legitimately, but I want to try to break down the method so the information is out there for people to digest. Keep in mind that this is a working theory and I could be missing some details, but I think I get the gist of how people cheat this terrible system:

There is a set of algorithms that determines what a single TT player is "worth" towards other players. It's not straight wins. I've had a FC member win 34 times against Jonas of the Three Spades and lose his 35th match to me. This nets 105 points total (point shown before match starts was 97)

The top two people on Gilgamesh are currently at 35/35 wins and @ 4,647 and 4,565 points which means on average they are netting 132 points and 130 points per game, respectively. So clearly there is one or more variables at play to make you worth more towards other TT players. I have theories but no means to test them, I would assume that the most valuable players would be people who have played other "real" people and won. You could do the math on the round-robin number of people to get 35 people all with 34 unique wins against other "real" players, but it would probably be unrealistic for a single FC or person to achieve. So instead, what I am assuming is happening is the following:

Someone has a total of 4 accounts, 32 characters @ level 15 (I've heard that this is the minimum level to get to TT, but please confirm.) 31 characters are feeders and 1 person is your main. You can take the first person and have them achieve 30 wins from the other feeders and then finally feed that to your main character. The next person can do the same, only their record would be 30 wins - 1 Loss (from feeding #1). You could repeat this process over and over and I assume you would be somewhere near the average points per game of 130~132.

So really, if someone wants to buy 4 accounts and spend a few hours leveling a bunch of characters to level 15 and getting them all to the golden saucer, I could see this being not too much of a time effort. One of the two people that are currently at those point rankings were there by the time I woke up after the patch was out...yeah, I'm sure those were legitimate. To give a comparison, I will play a random person who has ~65-70 cards as well and win and get about 114~117 points for my win, nowhere near the 130+ required.

So yes, Square Enix, please overhaul TT tournaments, sooner rather than later because right now, it's not a tournament at all, it's who can buy more accounts and feed themselves wins. Not cool.

[RobinRethiel]

Or just tell/order your guild minions to do this for you. Many don't even care about Triple Triad or the tournament.

[Kalandros]

Me and Taru helped each other out on the wins with alts.

You don't need 15 accounts.
Just 2.

I've figured out the new math after a few games so thats why me and him are at the top. Our first few games we couldnt get 130+ but then I found the trick.
So we combined our knowledge (his prior knowledge of the bonuses and me finding the new way it worked) and went to the top, simple as that.

Had we known the trick even faster, then we'd have near 4800 each.

[Jambalaya]

Me and Taru helped each other out on the wins with alts.

You don't need 15 accounts.
Just 2.

I've figured out the new math after a few games so thats why me and him are at the top. Our first few games we couldnt get 130+ but then I found the trick.
So we combined our knowledge (his prior knowledge of the bonuses and me finding the new way it worked) and went to the top, simple as that.

Had we known the trick even faster, then we'd have near 4800 each.

I mean, I'm not even mad. Kudos to figuring it out, I will figure it out soon as well, It's just that the system is bad and easily exploitable, I wouldn't really care if there was a point threshold for obtaining the 4 (now 3) unique cards instead of relative position, but since it's exclusive, it seems crappy that 3 cards are only obtainable through trading wins.

I hope they read this and fix things. You have to admit that the system is not good currently.

[Malakai]

Well the TT tournaments are "Fixed" alright. TT isn't fun anymore unless you are just playing against friends. This tourney crap is pointless the only thing I'm going to play for is the Shantotto card, a few more matches and I'll have it then I'm done with it all together. They added Lightning card to Tataru so I'm sure they'll add Cecil and Firion cards later on to NPC's. So that's fine by me I'd rather earn it the legit way then have to deal with a rigged tourney. The top spot people can't even play the game anyway.

[thendcomes]

I've done no research on the new point system, but a lot of it is abusing the bonus you get from beating someone high up on the leader board. I don't know how big the bonus is for beating first place versus 20th place, but I know the bonus is there. Because of the point structure, the tourney rewards people who gets to the win trading first, since the first players will always end up on the leader boards.

[Malakai]

The thing that irritates me the most is that SE knows that people are exploiting and cheating. Even some of the posts are showing this as well as SE can monitor account activity. But they won't do anything about it, even if shown proof. It's like how they don't do anything about RMTs until they need to show the monthly quota of how many banned accounts and RMT activity they've dealt with. So these people instead of being punished by having their cards rolled back, or the tourney card taken from them, instead are rewarded with it and even more MGP. SE will continue to do nothing about it except promise us it will be "fixed" later in the future.

[ServerCollaps]

The thing that irritates me the most is that SE knows that people are exploiting and cheating. Even some of the posts are showing this as well as SE can monitor account activity. But they won't do anything about it, even if shown proof. It's like how they don't do anything about RMTs until they need to show the monthly quota of how many banned accounts and RMT activity they've dealt with. So these people instead of being punished by having their cards rolled back, or the tourney card taken from them, instead are rewarded with it and even more MGP. SE will continue to do nothing about it except promise us it will be "fixed" later in the future.

what they do isnt against any rule, so noone can blame or ban them

[Parodine]

Regardless about it not being explicitly bannable, it's certainly not in the realm of good sportsmanship.

[Zanarken]

what they do isnt against any rule, so noone can blame or ban them

Is it really necessary for Square Enix to set rules of morality?