Spinner's Pull needs to have the swap rule revised or removed (Triple Triad)

[MellowMink]

The card awarded for winning the Spinner's Pull Triple Triad tournament is Cecil Harvey, which remains the only tournament card that I don't yet own; I'm aware that you can apparently get it from platinum triad cards too, but I've never had that happen after what feels like over a hundred platinum triad cards by now.

No matter how good someone is at Triple Triad, the swap rule involves an unfair degree of luck that can objectively make someone's odds of winning a match significantly lower through no fault of their own; this is because the swap rule involves one random card from each player being swapped with the other player, but there's no guarantee that the ranks of the swapped cards end up matching. This means that you can lose your 5-star card in exchange for a 3-star card, which often either costs you the game or makes you work hard just to get a tie when playing against other experienced players; the opposite can also happen, where you end up having a large advantage by pure luck, although this tends to happen less for me because of... well, bad luck.

I'm about to give up on ever winning the Cecil Harvey card naturally because of this luck-based mechanic, and I've seen a lot of yelled frustrations in the tournament room from other players when similar issues happen to them as well. Posting this concern to the forums now in order to raise awareness for a possible future change.

For this tournament to be fair, I feel that one of the following needs to happen:

1. The swap rule needs to guarantee that only the same ranks are swapped. In the unusual event that two decks don't have any identically ranked cards, then there could be an exception behavior where a random card of the lower rank for each player is swapped.
2. Remove the swap rule from the tournament and replace it with a less luck-based rule.

Has anyone else been frustrated by their attempts to get this card? Feel free to share your own concerns in the comments below.

I'm also not sure if there's a suggestion forum where this would be better to post; if there is, then a moderator is welcome to move my thread, and my apologies and sincere thanks in advance if so.

[MellowMink]

I just had another Spinner's Pull tournament pass by where I felt like I had no chance of reaching the top three positions because of this broken rule. Out of twenty matches, a large majority of the times that cards were swapped resulted in me losing a Rank 4 or Rank 5 card in exchange for an inferior Rank 3 card, with only two matches having such an imbalance happen in a way that worked out in my favor; most of my matches were either difficult-to-obtain draws or predetermined losses as a result. It's pretty defeating that you can sometimes just be screwed over through not fault of your own no matter how good you are in other tournaments.

It was really rare throughout that entire tournament that cards of the same rank were swapped, and I still don't know why this hasn't been changed yet from a simple design perspective. Multiple other players in the instance were upset too... Square Enix, can this please be fixed soon? That or increase the drop rate for the Cecil Harvey card from platinum triad cards? I'm about to give up on ever getting this card in my collection.

[ICountFrom0]

There's a reason swap exists.
It's the same reason chaos exists.
(and why in 8 the PURE chaos existed)

It's to give people who are bad, and have bad cards, just a little bit of a chance.
That you don't have this card, and that you view switch as bad, tells me that you are one of the better players.

Be proud of that, and be glad that you don't need this card to get the mount.

[MellowMink]

Be proud of that, and be glad that you don't need this card to get the mount.

I'm aware that it's not needed for the mount, but I still want to earn it for the sake of completion, which I'm not sure I'll ever be able to do purely because of bad luck that I have absolutely no control over...

[ICountFrom0]

Yup. But you read it as bad luck you have no controll over, bad players view it as them having a small chance to actually do well for a change.
This tournament dosen't exist for you, that one is for the bad players with bad cards.

Just like I'll never get lightning from the tournament, that's one where skill shows the most. I'll get it from a platinum pack someday.

[SillyCrow]

Might as well just let people buy Platinum card packs, with the caveat of it being pretty expensive.

[MellowMink]

I’d like to add to this thread that Endwalker introduced a PS5 trophy for getting all but two of the game’s cards, which more practically means all but one since one of the newer cards is awarded via an achievement after getting all but two of the game’s cards. And yes, that includes tournament cards, so Cecil Harvey still being largely locked behind an unbalanced and luck-based tournament is still a notable problem.

[Mandudez]

Might as well just let people buy Platinum card packs, with the caveat of it being pretty expensive.

If they won't give us new mounts they might as well let is sink our extra MGP in to more cards. I wouldn't even care if the packs cost upwards of 100k lol.

[ty_taurus]

Yup. But you read it as bad luck you have no controll over, bad players view it as them having a small chance to actually do well for a change.
This tournament dosen't exist for you, that one is for the bad players with bad cards.

Just like I'll never get lightning from the tournament, that's one where skill shows the most. I'll get it from a platinum pack someday.

I'm not sure I'd agree with this mentality.

First and foremost, getting to 90 cards now to fully unlock your hand restrictions has never been easier now that we have nearly 350, and many of the strongest 3* 4* and 5* cards are really easy to get your hands on. So asking players to have a fairly even hand to play with is not a particularly demanding request. Additionally, if Same and Plus are not options, then the gap between the skill floor and skill ceiling isn't that wide.

Swap really is just a poorly thought-out rule that isn't fun or engaging; it just has a chance to neuter one party's chances of success if a high value card is lost in exchange for a low value one, and that's on both party's chances. In fact, Swap is actively hurting the low-skill player more than the high-skill player since a high skill player would have a better shot at salvaging a weak hand.

I'd argue the Rowena Cup Classic is a far better example of a "random" tournament because the double roulette is more often than not going to shake up the gameplay while still keeping both parties on fair odds (except when swap is pulled).