Mahjong Fix

[Raionek]

There are many things about Doman Mahjong that should be fixed. I want to list them and tell how they possibly could be fixed.

1. Orchestrion roll and weekly challenge log.
- I think a lot of people want to get an orchestrion roll for collection. It should be possible to get the roll for playing even against NPC. Just win a few times in any game mode, so people wouldn't need to master playing this game. This way anyone who wants to get the scroll, will be able to do that without suffering for too long.
- Weekly challenge log for mahjong should be removed...
...This is quite important because we have a lot of players that join ranked games for challenge log or orchestrion roll. They want to leave immediately after learning how long this game will take. It breaks fun for all the people on the table who have to deal with unmotivated or leaving players.

2. Ranked Matches.
In ranked matches, it should be important how good a player is. That's why any kind of hint should be disabled. It's called ranked for a reason. It shouldn't be possible to win with only luck and clicking hints. Playing with hints is no different than installing bot playing instead of a player. Ranked matches should be free from it as this is the place where people show their ability to play.

3. Queues.
There should be three queues, not two. Ranked, Advanced Ranked, and normal. Some people would like to play without all the ranking stuff.
- Normal queue should have hints on it. As its not that competitive game.
- Ranked queue should be left as it is. Hints off. Dangerous tile could be still left on.
- Advanced ranked queue should have "open hand tanyao" turned off. As it is not very "advanced" yaku. Also hints and dangerous tiles off.

4. MGP for games.
Currently playing mahjong give no reward at all. Besides the weekly challenge log. It should award at least a little bit of MGP for any game. Just like any other gold saucer activity. I don't know how much, but it takes 30-60 minutes to play a single match. So it should be rewarded accordingly.

5. Emotes used by players should be visible on the avatars during the match.

6. Add a tutorial teaching new players to play step-by-step.

7. Upgrade interface to show common assists:
- highlighting tile copies on mouseover,
- wait previews,
- furiten warnings before discarding a tile

[Naizakane]

4. Dora Kan
It should be impossible to get kan in dora. Any dora and ura dora tile is normally taken from the pile of all tiles. For example, if a red dragon is in dora, there should be only 3 red dragons left in game. Normally that's how it works because it is physically impossible to just get an additional tile to represent dora without picking it from the table. Same with Ura Dora.

This sounds like a problem you can only have with the dora indicator set to Doman. The difference between Traditional/Doman dora indicator is that Traditional dora indicators mean "the next tile in the sequence after the indicator is the dora" (for example, red dragon would be the actual dora because the indicator is green dragon, making a dora kan possible,) while the Doman dora indicator moves that one step ahead in the sequence for you. This is why dora kans are possible. For a more detailed example:

1. Dora indicator is flipped, revealing 3-sou (bamboo.)
2. Using the Traditional indicator, you count 1 step ahead in the sequence, arriving at 4-sou.
3. 4-sou is the actual dora. A kan of 3-sou is not possible, as one of the tiles is out of the game, but a kan of 4-sou is possible (unless it's also in the dead wall, either as a kandora or uradora.)

5. Last tile claim for tenpai.
Sometimes there is a situation when the player could claim the last thrown tile as chi or pon to earn tenpai in the end. Not win, but just tenpai. The game automatically ends because no one called ron on that last tile. But still, some players should be able to call chi or pon and get tenpai points.

And you would want to set yourself up for a potential houtei because...?

[Raionek]

I seem to misunderstand how dora is indicated here. Thanks for the explanation. I'll remove 4th point from the list.

And you would want to set yourself up for a potential houtei because...?

Because that's how should it work normally. Player still should be able to make a call for the last tile even if it's not a ron. It seems to be a bug that ends the game immediately not allowing player to do that.

[Naizakane]

Because that's how should it work normally. Player still should be able to make a call for the last tile even if it's not a ron. It seems to be a bug that ends the game immediately not allowing player to do that.

I have played riichi mahjong on four clients including FFXIV. Not a single one of them lets players call the last tile for anything that isn't ron. Tile calls on the last tile are limited to ron only. From riichi.wiki: "Finally, the last discard cannot be claimed for any open calls, even if needed to attain tenpai. The call on the last discard is limited for winning hands, by which houtei raoyui is rewarded."

Given this, the hand ending once the last tile is discarded, even if it's a tile you could call via pon/chi to attain tenpai, is not a bug, but intentional. Again, why would you want to set yourself up to be hit with houtei?

[GwynUnlucky]

I have played riichi mahjong on four clients including FFXIV. Not a single one of them lets players call the last tile for anything that isn't ron. Tile calls on the last tile are limited to ron only. From riichi.wiki: "Finally, the last discard cannot be claimed for any open calls, even if needed to attain tenpai. The call on the last discard is limited for winning hands, by which houtei raoyui is rewarded."

Given this, the hand ending once the last tile is discarded, even if it's a tile you could call via pon/chi to attain tenpai, is not a bug, but intentional. Again, why would you want to set yourself up to be hit with houtei?

Players without tenpai have to pay out points to players with tenpai when the game ends in a draw, that's why. Houtei is a risk but that's their own decision to make. I'm not saying it should be changed if that goes against every other ruleset; but it's not hard to see the motivation behind wanting to do so

[Naizakane]

Players without tenpai have to pay out points to players with tenpai when the game ends in a draw, that's why. Houtei is a risk but that's their own decision to make. I'm not saying it should be changed if that goes against every other ruleset; but it's not hard to see the motivation behind wanting to do so

Dealing in via houtei usually costs more points than noten payout and carries the risk of giving the opponent's hand a considerable upgrade, for example a hand worth 5 han before houtei being upgraded to haneman by houtei, making you pay between 12-18k. Compare that to noten payouts being either 1k, 1.5k or 3k, and it removes any motivation to call pon/chi on the last tile. I'd definitely take noten over a houtei deal-in.

[PikoAliapoh]

Good points!

I'd agree and support removing hints from ranked matches. It really does feel like playing against auto-pilot bots sometimes, and ranked play should be more focused on player skill than mindlessly clicking through whatever hints are given for each play.

Also agree about giving some MGP for each game played. It's very strange that a Gold Saucer game doesn't give MGP.

I'd like to see different levels of ranked matches as you suggest, but on the other hand, I'd be very afraid to see what would happen to queue times. I'm sure they're different from server to server, but queue times can be horrible on some servers and additional match settings could make things worse.

The best solution to this would be for the dev team to find more ways to get players interested in mahjong and providing a better way for newbies to learn the gameplay and mechanics. I find the in-game tutorial guides in XIV akin to reading an encyclopedia and I can't imagine most new players gain much from them. The XIV team could take a cue from other popular mahjong games like MajSoul and make a more interesting and easy to understand tutorial and introduction for new players. I think this would be the biggest "fix" we could get for XIV mahjong.

[kiyou]

I'd agree that hints should be removed but for the opposite reason. It makes people play worse as the bot is only meant to teach you the very basics. Average skilled person will generally always come out ahead over people relying on the hints.

But I think the overall problem with mahjong in ff14 as it stands is that there is literally no reason to play it besides acquiring the roll / mahjong master title.

Once I acquired mahjong master I saw and still see no reason to play mahjong in ff14 when I can queue up on mahjong soul or tenhou for instant queues with proper matchmaking at any time of the day.

Basically, the ff14 client is completely inferior to the popular mahjong clients of today and square needs to throw in some glams/rewards/mgp that isn't gated behind ranking points to get ff14 players to actually try it out and play.

I also think the suggestion for removing open hand tanyao from "advanced play" is extremely ridiculous. Keep it optional like Tenhou if you want. I prefer it ON (as do many pros) as it heavily reduces the amount of ryuukyoku and allows you to play more aggressively which is more fun in general.

[GayRobot]

I keep going back and forth on hints. It seems weird that XIV is missing a lot of common assists—highlighting tile copies on mouseover, wait previews, furiten warnings that appear before you own yourself—but will still occasionally allow a Novice to queue up with absolutely no clue what's going on, match hints for 4 hands, and win. (This has happened to me more than once: not often enough that it's really worth getting upset over, but a room full of 3dans losing to a player who "queued for this on accident" is as funny as it is frustrating.)

Clubhouse Games has a really nice assist feature where it recommends yaku based on your current hand shape—it's kinda dumb and wants players to force honitsu a weird amount of the time, and even with polishing it'll probably never be perfect advice, but features like that are a better fit for XIV, IMO.

[Raionek]

Thank You everyone for your answers.
Now I also understand rules a little better than I understood them before.
So I've removed the things that I wrote out of my misunderstanding.
And I've added points 6 and 7.

Glad to have your arguments that agree or disagree with me.
I hope devs will look at this thread sometime and think about what is a good idea and what's not. If they can change anything, would be nice.