Mahjong Fix

[SpiderLily]

My replies to the OP post:

- There should be three queues, not two. Ranked, Advanced Ranked, and normal. Some people would like to play without all the ranking stuff.

It's already somewhat of a struggle to find players in some more unpopular hours even with basically only one queue (Novice Quick). Casual players can simply play without paying mind to the MMR system it they would like. Ranked players who wish to play in a more "troll"-ish way have other platforms for that.

- Ranked queue should be left as it is. Hints off. Dangerous tile could be still left on.

I honestly can get behind this, but Advanced games are unicorns already compared to Novice queues, so I support simply disabling tips and danger tiles for all.

- Advanced ranked queue should have "open hand tanyao" turned off. As it is not very "advanced" yaku. Also hints and dangerous tiles off.

Where do you draw the line? Is "my only yaku is riichi" advanced? Is yakuhai advanced enough? Is all pons, even if it is harder to attain than "open hand 1 han hand lol"? Because it's really simply to understand all pons.

Is it because tanyao is the most played yaku? Because it isn't. According to tenhou, Riichi is.



Second, open hand tanyao is a strategy. Yes, it's frustrating to see someone rushing it mindlessly, be it either a novice who does not know any better or someone interrupting your riichi on purpose. But that's exactly the point. Open hand tanyao is only a tool in your box. It sacrifices all scores for speed. Do you want to keep your score above your peers and end this game quickly? Open hand tanyao. Are you a dealer? Open hand tanyao. Is a player with an absurdly high rank the dealer? Open hand tanyao. Do you think someone's riichi has a bad wait? Open hand tanyao. Do you want to prevent Ippatsu? Chi/pon at your earliest convenience, and then maybe open hand tanyao.

About the novices? They don't know how to score any better. On one of my games last week I saw a little guy, 3000 points under me, calling ron on my discard when there were 40 tiles left on pile. I was a dealer, he had an open hand yakuhai, and the game ended with still me on first place and he on second. He then complained when he saw that the game ended and I was still above him in the scoreboard. I found him in the next game and gently lectured on "if you had waited only a bit to get 2 han, you would have won."

As well, you'll interrupt pretty quickly a table of novices mindlessly 1-han ron'ing when you do a similarly fast but better built hand.

[Raionek]

It's already somewhat of a struggle to find players in some more unpopular hours even with basically only one queue (Novice Quick) [...]

But why force new players who don't know the rules of the game to play ranked matches? Just so they can be crushed by people who actually know the game well?
It makes no sense unless you want to have some free points.

I support simply disabling tips and danger tiles for all.

I quite agree with your statement as for me these hints are also annoying from the very beginning.
But some people probably enjoy playing with tips. I wouldn't want to take the fun from them. After all, having fun in the game is what matters the most.

Where do you draw the line? Is "my only yaku is riichi" advanced? Is yakuhai advanced enough? Is all pons, even if it is harder to attain than "open hand 1 han hand lol"? Because it's really simply to understand all pons p,[...]

My reasoning for removing open-hand tanyao from advanced matches is quite simple.
It's not because it's the most used yaku, but it is the most used open-hand yaku.
It does grant the fastest win for players. Often I see games in mahjong here that ends before anyone even attains 30000 points, because there is all the time ongoing 1han.

If you remove only open-hand tanyao, the whole gameplay changes. People are more cautious in throwing away terminals and honors. There is more time to build actually good hands. The game starts to be more interesting as its not rushing fastest thing anymore.

Besides, I said that this rule should be in only advanced matches (which aren't much played anyway as you pointed out). But maybe disabling tanyao would finally make more people join the advanced matches.

Sometimes (outside of the final fantasy) there are tournaments that remove the open-hand tanyao or give some other rules that make the game a little bit different.
Even now you can disable open-hand tanyao in custom matches because it's something that is normally considered in Mahjong world. It's not something special that I just made up myself. I don't draw a line on which things we should remove or leave to be. I just take a hint from something that other people already do for reasons.

[0xReki]

Just blindly rushing the fastest hand isn't high level play.
Kuitan nashi in advanced would rather make even less people play advanced. You'd be removing one of the tools someone has to shut down a potenially big hand — as a better player you will be able to read the signs — making it even more luck based since the only other tool would be getting Yakuhai and hoping the one with the big hand doesn't just draw the tile themselves.

I'd rather remove kuitan from novice games for force people to go for different yaku.

The option I'd like to have is actually akanashi — no red 5.