The problem with mini-games

[Zantetsuken]

We've long wondered why Triple Triad requests seem to be ignored and Yoshi~P keeps saying that he's looking for the perfect mini (or Card) game.

Well, Yoshi's recent interview with RPGsite shows us his concerns about a card/mini game in FFXIV.

Yoshida: The problem with Card games and things like that is what you really need is - it can't be something you do by yourself, it has to be player battles. If that's the case, do you just play to play? What about rewards?

Chocobos are only for travel - not racing - for now.
Those people want to play for rewards - a lot of people will be like, 'Why should I spend my time playing this mini-game when I can go into this dungeon and get some sweet gear?'

But then, on the other hand, if there's rewards and there's two players - one might lose on purpose so the other can win and get the rewards, which is obviously cheating... so, how do you cover these type of problems?

Conceiving and building a system that covers these kinds of bases is what is taking a long time with creating mini-games - as well as coming up with something perfect.

He brings up some very good points that need to be addressed by those of us who would like to see Triple Triad or a similar game in FFXIV. The cheating aspect is the most interesting part of this discussion and it explains many of the decisions made about Chocobo racing in FFXI.

Anti-cheating measures such as the inability to manually race your own chocobo, as well as a track minimum of at least 3 high-powered NPC chocobos - meant that there was no real way to fix the races. Sadly, these decisions led to chocobo racing being convoluted and boring. As a result, it was abandoned by the players and ended up as a waste of dev time and resources.

So people, how do we do it? How do we make a card game that solves the following problems to Yoshi~P's satisfaction?

1) How do you keep the game interesting so that people don't abandon it after a the novelty wears off?

2) Create a reward system for a card/mini game that a) cannot be exploited by players, and b) doesn't run afoul of national gambling laws*?

(*FFVIII's system of winning a card from your opponent might violate gambling laws in some countries, so lets consider it off the table for now.)