Mahjong is the most depressing mini game you've added to XIV

[Brightamethyst]

and I've been told by a few of them 'you lose almost all games you play'.

To be fair, all things being equal that's true of any game with more than two players. Unless you're way better than your opponents, the more players the more likely someone else will win.

(Frontlines frustrates me for the same reason. By design you lose twice as often as you win.)

[Bacent]

To be fair, all things being equal that's true of any game with more than two players. Unless you're way better than your opponents, the more players the more likely someone else will win.

(Frontlines frustrates me for the same reason. By design you lose twice as often as you win.)

This is a game that many people have more skill in by default. A lot of cultures have Mahjong in some form in their history, and many players have played it long before XIV attempted to add it into the game. You can already tell this on day one when people have gotten up to the 5th rank or higher (Lower numbers for higher ranks), and when you're stuck against just those people what's actually to keep someone playing?

First and second place get rewarded in this. Third and fourth get points taken away, with fourth getting the heaviest loss.

Why can we ONLY do anything ranked against players, and not attempt anything ranked with NPCs, like how we can in LoV and TT? NPCs have their own skill levels. They have NPCs with their own skill levels too, but in those matches you HAVE to play against 3 NPCs. Can't have any mix besides a 1-3 PC/NPC or a 4-0 PC/NPC ratio.

It'd be better if they could let us rank up somewhat from NPCs and just give people a cut off point score/ranking wise. But nope, the game will soon be populated by only people who know almost all of the ins and outs of the game.

[SturmChurro]

It'd be better if they could let us rank up somewhat from NPCs and just give people a cut off point score/ranking wise. But nope, the game will soon be populated by only people who know almost all of the ins and outs of the game.

I think that was a given. It would be dead within a couple weeks, with only a niche group playing it no matter what.

[CodingSession]

You start at 1500 points, and you slowly gain them if you win, or you lose them pretty damn quickly when you have a loss. The one time I came in second place I gained 9 points. The first time I get 4th place, I lose 29 points. This is beyond depressing if this is just an inkling of what kind of BS I'm gonna have to see just to try to get one damned item.

Isn't it impossible to lose points until your rank is high enough? The official rules said so:


I'm a huge fan of Mahjong, but I understand that the length of the game can be intimidating to new players. You must be very lucky to complete a game in 30 minutes. In my experience, on average, one game lasts about 50-60 minutes. The last game I played was completed in 90 minutes.
I think the solution is to let the players choose between full match and half match. The caveat is playing a half match only gives/takes half the points of a full match.

[Bacent]

Isn't it impossible to lose points until your rank is high enough? The official rules said so:


I'm a huge fan of Mahjong, but I understand that the length of the game can be intimidating to new players. You must be very lucky to complete a game in 30 minutes. In my experience, on average, one game lasts about 50-60 minutes. The last game I played was completed in 90 minutes.
I think the solution is to let the players choose between full match and half match. The caveat is playing a half match only gives/takes half the points of a full match.

I'm talking about the personal player rating, where you start off at 1500. You can start losing points right away. I got second once for 9 points to my rating, then I got third once for -9 points, and then fourth once for -29 points. I got lucky when I got second point, against 3 other people who had a similar level to me skill wise. But those other two games I had people who had 5th/6th ranking.

[MerleSirlos]

I'm talking about the personal player rating, where you start off at 1500. You can start losing points right away. I got second once for 9 points to my rating, then I got third once for -9 points, and then fourth once for -29 points. I got lucky when I got second point, against 3 other people who had a similar level to me skill wise. But those other two games I had people who had 5th/6th ranking.

but that's normal and how personal ratings work. it just came out so everyone start at the same player rating, be it ultra novice, bad players and good players. unless you start as a good player yourself you need to let some time pass so that the good players get to higher personal ratings so you can avoid them until you reach their level.

[Iscah]

but that's normal and how personal ratings work. it just came out so everyone start at the same player rating, be it ultra novice, bad players and good players. unless you start as a good player yourself you need to let some time pass so that the good players get to higher personal ratings so you can avoid them until you reach their level.

Hmm, good point. So right now at the start, everyone is bobbing around 1500, the good players are winning more and adding more +9 / +29 (?) points to their rating. They'll get to 1600 pretty quickly and keep on going.

If you're now better than the other people who are left around 1500, you start to move up yourself.

I think it works out okay, at least in theory, as long as you can persevere with it a bit. But I haven't started playing it myself to see how it goes.

On the other hand it seems like it might be pretty hard work to fight your way back up if you are unlucky and or still learning and your ranking goes down before you can start building it up.

[Bacent]

but that's normal and how personal ratings work. it just came out so everyone start at the same player rating, be it ultra novice, bad players and good players. unless you start as a good player yourself you need to let some time pass so that the good players get to higher personal ratings so you can avoid them until you reach their level.

So are you saying it's perfectly ok for us to be able to lose progress towards achievements for this? These are the FIRST achievements in game that we can get further and further from day by day when we're trying our best. Is that REALLY fair?

This is maybe the only orchestrion roll that I will never get..
Sad.

I'm only missing 11 out of the 264 music rolls, not including seasonal (Have all 15) and 3 from the mog station I was gifted a while back.

personally, and this is an unpopular opinion, No I dont care. The gold saucer is my least favorite content and I get all of my MGP from event giveaways and selling TT cards. Coupled with the fact it took us 60+ minutes to complete a single match, I'm of the opinion "if 4 people are willing to spend that much time on a few thousand MGP, go for it".

It's a piss amount of MGP for long ass games really. I could get more by racing 3-4 times (1009 MGP for first place in max rating).

Lock the orchestration roll behind Rank, NOT rating.

Problem solved.

Just update the achievement to require 1600 rating OR 3rd Kyu Rank.

I don't know if they'd be able to tie one achievement to having optional ways to get to it. But if it were JUST ranking, then it wouldn't bother me, but the fact that you can lose progress is just utter bullshite.

[KageTokage]

While this is some degree of skill involved in mahjong, there's still a rather significant amount of luck involved as there is with most games of its nature.

I think it would be fair to make the rank penalties a bit softer when you frequently have little to no control over your losses even if you're playing as safe as possible.

[MercedesAnnMaria]

This is the stupidest, most asinine game in the Gold Saucer and is a major, major time waster. Why in the world SE put this game in the challenge log for the Gold Saucer is beyond comprehension. Triple Triad would have been a much better choice. I guess they love to irritate people with a game that takes forever to play, is difficult to understand and is so boring.