#nofunallowed

[Alberel]

At the same time, if SE made all of the "fun" stuff too lenient people would burn through it quickly and then still complain that they have nothing to do. This is an unwinnable war from SE's perspective. And while the card grind for TT can be a pain, isn't that exactly how it worked in all the single player FF games that had a card mini-game? You had to fight mobs and do dungeons to earn cards, especially the good ones. That's not an excuse for how frustratingly grindy it is, but it is kind of what people begged for.

The thing is fluff content like these mini-games should be able to be burned through quickly. The point of these sorts of things isn't to have a progression system but simply to offer a fun alternative to normal gameplay. It's something to do to chill out when the grind in other areas is taking its toll.

Take Triple Triad again for example. If they made it so that a player was guaranteed to receive a card when defeating an NPC in a match they would be able to build out their decks quickly and then actually enjoy the game for the gameplay rather than simply grinding for cards. As it is now the majority of players aren't even playing Triple Triad at all because they can't be bothered with the card grind required.

If I recall in FFVIII and FFIX you were actually guaranteed a specific card from most matches. The difficulty in obtaining cards was simply in beating the NPC, not beating them 100 times and hoping RNG favours you. Challenge is fun. Repetitive grind based on RNG is not fun. Having something not fun as part of a fluff 'for fun' piece of side content is defeating the point of even having it.

[ElHeggunte]

The thing is fluff content like these mini-games should be able to be burned through quickly. [...]

That's true, but there needs to be a middle-ground. If it's something that you exhaust almost immediately the first time you do it, you're SOL the next time you want to fall back onto that content. That was my point, I should have worded it better.

Take Triple Triad again for example. If they made it so that a player was guaranteed to receive a card when defeating an NPC in a match they would be able to build out their decks quickly [...]

Yes, I agree it's irritating as piss to fight your way through unfair rules and even if you win, you get nothing to show for it. Especially when you need to obtain 30 cards before you're even allowed to start building good decks. It's a stipulation that's not very conducive to something that's supposed to be a mini-game.

If I recall in FFVIII and FFIX [...]

It's been so long I can't remember either game very well when it comes to match rewards. In IX I believe you were given the option of selecting one of the opponent's cards that you captured during the match. If you managed a clean sweep and captured the entire board, then you earn all of the cards that were in play. Something like that anyway. I don't remember a lick about VIII.

[Alberel]

That's true, but there needs to be a middle-ground. If it's something that you exhaust almost immediately the first time you do it, you're SOL the next time you want to fall back onto that content. That was my point, I should have worded it better.

Oh I agree on that. Some form of progression system and gating can be fun. The trouble right now is that often you can spend hours on something and make no progress at all due to RNG... A balance is indeed needed.