So... Triple Triad

[DoH]

I love Triple Triad. It was my favorite part of FFVIII, and it is one of my favorite pastimes in FFXIV. Having said that, I think that the game is in dire need of some fundamental changes in order to keep it relevant.

Rules
As any of you who play Triple Triad are aware, your deck is currently limited by the following rules:

• If you own less than 30 cards, your deck can contain four 1 star cards and one 1-5 stars card.
• If you own between 30 and 59 cards, your deck can contain four 1-2 stars cards and one 1-5 stars card.
• If you own more than 60 cards, your deck can contain four 1-3 stars cards and one 1-5 stars card.

These rules are extremely limiting in terms of the number of possible decks that players can create, which is in turn causing players to use the same decks (with some slight variations). Most of the decks currently involve four of the 8/8/1/4 cards and one 5-star card (the 5-star card is where you see the most variance, but the most common ones are corner A/A cards followed by Therion, Cloud, and Ardbert). For same/plus rules, I occasionally also see sets with the four lords cards (7/7/7/1) and Brute Justice (7/7/7/7).

The current deck limitations are effectively making 4-star cards worthless for the most part. There will occasionally be a situation (usually Ascension rules) where it makes sense to include them in your deck, but - for the most part - the only point of collecting these cards is for the sake of completion.

Accordingly, it would be nice if the limitations were changed to look at the sum of the number of stars in your deck instead of the number of {X}-star cards in your deck. For example:

• If you own less than 30 cards, your deck can contain cards with an aggregate total of up to 9 stars.
• If you own between 30 and 59 cards, your deck can contain cards with an aggregate total of up to 13 stars.
• If you own more than 60 cards, your deck can contain cards with an aggregate total of up to 17 stars.

Even just making the above changes would probably be enough to fix the current situation, but to make it even better, it would be nice to see an additional condition such as follows:

• If you own more than 200 cards, your deck can contain cards with an aggregate total of up to 21 stars.

It doesn't necessarily even need to be 21 - I just used that number because all of the other bumps increased the number of stars you can have by 4. Even if the current limitations were to be retained, something such as the following could even work (this would not allow for as much variation as the above but would still be better than the current situation):

• If you own more than 200 cards, your deck can contain three 1-3 stars cards, one 1-4 star card, and one 1-5 stars card.

[DoH]

I had to break this up into 2 posts due to length; here is the last part:

Incentives
Another issue with Triple Triad is that, after a very low threshold, the only reward for collecting more cards is more cards. There is the "Duelist" title (which you get from winning 100 Triple Triad tournament matches), "The Trinity" title (which you get from winning 1,000 Triple Triad roulette matches), and "Deck Hoarder" (which you get from obtaining 60 unique Triple Triad cards). However, the reward for obtaining any number of cards beyond 60 is just more cards. It would be nice if there was some sort of additional higher-end title, minion, mount, glamour, orchestrion roll, or something associated with Triple Triad like there is with Chocobo Racing, Lord of Verminion, and Mahjong. Having more cards is cool, but I don't think I will really ever use any of these given the current deck limitations and how that is causing people to play in tournaments. (I've come in 1st place in many of the tournaments that I've participated in and am saying this is someone who is disappointed by / getting bored with the Triple Triad scene as a result of these restrictions causing the PvP scene in particular to be too predictable.)


I'm sure someone else has probably raised this before, but I think it is worth raising again and worth revisiting in any event.

[MarniDawg]

Man I hate that 4 star cards are basically useless. Would be nice to have 3 3 stars, 1 4 star and 1 5 star allowed in your deck at some point just to have a use for them.

[kaynide]

I don’t think it necessarily needs to allow “stronger” decks, but just more cards gives more options, otherwise it just boils down to most cards likely gets the win.

Rather I would like to see more rules introduced on how to play.. More variation or even multi deck battles vs an opponent (say 3 decks back to back, with no duplicates across all 3 decks)...but then again it’s a super simple card game...so can’t go all magic the gathering with it.

[DoH]

I don’t think it necessarily needs to allow “stronger” decks, but just more cards gives more options, otherwise it just boils down to most cards likely gets the win.

If that is truly a concern that SE has, perhaps they don't need to implement the "If you own more than 200 cards, ..." thing I suggested above (as that would indeed make your deck stronger); however, I do think that they should at least implement something like the baseline change that I proposed, which was:

• If you own less than 30 cards, your deck can contain cards with an aggregate total of up to 9 stars.
• If you own between 30 and 59 cards, your deck can contain cards with an aggregate total of up to 13 stars.
• If you own more than 60 cards, your deck can contain cards with an aggregate total of up to 17 stars.

This would give players the same number of aggregate stars to work with as the current rules, but it would allow for more flexibility. For example, with 17 stars total, you could have one 5-star card, one 4-star card, two 3-star cards and one 2-star card; you could even have three 5-star cards and two 1-star cards if that's how you wanted to play it. If this would create imbalance issues, they could limit the number of 5-star and 4-star cards you have. In any event, something really needs to be done to create situations where it actually makes sense to use a 4-star card. Otherwise they're just sitting there collecting dust because, under the current rules, you have to use a 4-star card instead of a 5-star card, which (in most situations) is an unfavorable trade-off.

[Sauteed]

they're just sitting there collecting dust because,

A perfect suggestion ruined by this 1 line! It's digital nothing collects dust!

*silliness aside*


Man, I'd love these changes. To be real, I just started trying triple triad and played a few rounds, now completely turned off from it. The rules in place now stifle any creativity, it is boring, and I don't enjoy it. I also don't like that I can acquire extremely powerful cards that I'll probably never use from a raid, the acquisition method probably is only there to get someone interested in the Triple Triad content as it is. If I want to play cards of any kind I'll be sure to do it else where tho. FFXIV triple triad about as exciting as remembering utility payment is due.

[Kaliesto]

Yeah I don't see the point in 4-star cards, I never use them in any situation because the 5-star cards completely outclass the 4 star cards in every way possible.

The only time 5-star cards are useless if you have to use low-stat cards to win certain types of card battles.

It would be nice if they removed the silly restriction on 4-star cards and allow us the use of one 4-star card.

[Jin-]

All i can hope is that the AI would not cheat so much xD

[Genz]

You're not the first to suggest this, and it's a really good suggestion since, not only it makes the 4-stars cards usable, it also adds a much needed depth to TT (it would also be possible to just allow 3+3+3+4+5, so we can use 4-stars, but we wouldn't earn anything gameplay-wise)
Sadly the devs don't care much about older content.

Importing TT nearly "as is" from FF8 was a pretty dumb move in the first place, because it's not that interesting but it was cool 20 years ago since it was "new", and its short-comings could be cancelled by the godly power of reloading a game saved just before playing.
(for example the "combo" from plus/same rules makes the game feel random)
The only accomplishment with FF14 TT is they found a way to make it even worse with dumb rule like Chaos.

[Gothicshark]

I support the OP, we need more Updates to Triple Triad, because it's an excellent minigame.