Mahjong Fix

[GhibliTheSW]

I used to be really against the hint systems, until I was able to learn its algorithms and decision-making processes and used that advantage to trap people. All the way to 10th Dan.

[1Uncle1Chen3]

I think other than "Mahjong master" it shall also reward player who are 2000 at rating a mahjong mount just like TT card mount. Just imagine riding on a mahjong piece.

[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.

[SpiderLily]

I used to be really against the hint systems, until I was able to learn its algorithms and decision-making processes and used that advantage to trap people. All the way to 10th Dan.

I noticed as much when I played against you. At first I was stunned. "10th Dan? Who reaches that? Either a mastermind, a bot or..." And then I realized in horror that the most likely alternative was "someone who knows how to exploit the bot and suji-trap people."

To anyone interested in knowing what the hint system prioritizes, here are some writings I found. Credit to Sirocco (the person I'm replying to) herself.

The hint system does not simply follow a pure probability approach, but with a priority system. My speculation of the priority is: Nomi tenpai < Yakuhai < Pinfu < Tanyao < Sanshoku Doujun < Toitoi < Chiitoi < Chanta < Honitsu < everything else, even if there is only 1 tile left to complete such Yaku. It appears to disregard anything else besides the aforementioned Yaku. On several occasions it told me to discard my slightly less advantageous Yaku dora pons, discard my tenpai Suuankou, discard my Iishanten Kokushi Musou. It also disapproves of Jigoku even though in many occasions the Jigoku tanki wait would work and have worked extremely well.

The dangerous tiles indicating system strictly follows a "live tiles/furiten/suji" code. It (...) Gives advantages to veterans who know how to exploit it when they know their opponents are blindly following the hints. By committing kanchan/penchan/jigoku tanki/suji trap, they easily trick such players to deal into their hands.

Since you mentioned kanchan, can I assume that the bot won't consider if something is a riichi tile or not when doing the danger tile calculation when human players normally would (i.e. to allow ryankan)?

[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.

[Raionek]

I met some cheaters in mahjong boosting their rating with addons and secondary characters (basically bots).
I researched how the addon for mahjong works and it just clicks on tiles shown by in-game hints. It doesn't read what tiles are on the table.

Now I want SE to remove hints from ranked matches even more than before. So people wouldn't use the addon to play the game for them.

[Astrahime]

I met some cheaters in mahjong boosting their rating with addons and secondary characters (basically bots).
I researched how the addon for mahjong works and it just clicks on tiles shown by in-game hints. It doesn't read what tiles are on the table.

Now I want SE to remove hints from ranked matches even more than before. So people wouldn't use the addon to play the game for them.

I'm sorry, but this just sounds absurd. For every plugin controversy that happens, you can use google to find what it is they're using to cheat. It even acts like outrage marketing, the number of people who started cheating in Fall Guys skyrocketed after the video was posted on Reddit.
The developers of the ACRs that are a scourge on high-end content and market board don't have a Mahjong module. The two relevant githubs you find when you look up "FFXIV Mahjong Github" are a pre-alpha plugin that's completely incapable of doing anything due to modloader updates, and a datamine that has nothing to do with plugins.
Even the devs of the zoomhack and aoe marker hack haven't bothered to touch Mahjong because no-one cares about it.

Would you mind making some information on this supposed addon public? Because it sounds like you call everything you don't like a bot and are extrapolating the fact that most unranked players just press the ingame hint because Riichi is the hardest version of Mahjong for a newbie to pick up and FFXIV doesn't have a good tutorial other than the trial through fire of "just play against the NPC board here lol"

[Raionek]

Would you mind making some information on this supposed addon public?

Of course not. I don't want to promote it in any way. If you couldn't find it yourself I am glad it's not that easy to find.

it sounds like you call everything you don't like a bot and are extrapolating the fact that most unranked players just press the ingame hint because Riichi is the hardest version of Mahjong for a newbie to pick up and FFXIV doesn't have a good tutorial other than the trial through fire

Lack of good tutorial is one thing, hints are another thing and cheaters are completely different thing.

About the tutorial you're right. That is one of the reasons this thread even started. We asked SE to put a good tutorial in the game because the current one is just a wall of text. You can learn from it (as I did), but it takes more time than learning from a good tutorial. And the current tutorial is just not fun.

About unranked players playing with hints. I see no problem with it. Learning from hints may be good. But playing with them in ranked matches is totally no good. If a machine plays for you in a ranked match, how can you call it a ranked match? It's plain stupid to give players something like "ranks" and the option to let the computer play for them. It's like they would add an auto-play on pvp. It just makes no sense to do that.

And finally about cheaters. Today I found a second cheater. I even made them admit that they've cheated. They controlled 3 different characters in a single match and had them on auto-play.
If you want to spot a cheater I recommend queueing on all types of matches in the middle of the night. Usually, they queue to full ranked match in hours when there are almost no players online. (Though in most cases they just gonna "decline" the moment they realise that not all of their characters are in the game.)
Two different cheaters I've met used the same tactic. Logged on 4 characters. Queued on all of them. Their main character had the addon set on playing as hints show and other characters tried to lose. (In one case the low lv characters left the game to speed it up.)
The losing characters were low lv alts that barely could enter Gold Saucer (they had exactly lv18, I checked on lodestone).

[Astrahime]

Of course not. I don't want to promote it in any way. If you couldn't find it yourself I am glad it's not that easy to find.

Rule 32 of the internet: pics or it isn't real.
Crop and censor the screenshot as much as you want. But without any actual proof you just sound like a crazy person. Who queues for Mahjong in the middle of the night on a non-JP data center and expects a serious match? Consider joining a FFXIV Mahjong discord (like https://discord.gg/TFwvpPC) and asking people in the LFG channel to play with you.