ToT Tutorial and Matches Versus NPCs are 100% Useless

El_Borracho

Right off, I like Tales of Tribute. But the tutorial and matches versus NPCs do absolutely nothing to prepare you to play against other players. Card strategy, patrons, loading your deck for the end, etc. Best strategy to beat NPCs is to get all the patrons. Best strategy to beat other players, build your deck with coin and combos, then dump it all one one turn with the Crows patron.

They should have done something to make the two at least resemble each other. Its not even the same game. Its basically chess versus checkers.

Tuonra2

It really is a world apart.

I don't mind, maybe they put some dev time into the AI, but imo it's not worth it. The founders are a joke, if they started with 20 prestige then maybe it would be a cool puzzle to beat em.

As for pvp, no offense but crow patron is the top of the iceberg as far as strats go. As you rank up you will see players with much better crow discipline, and you will get rushed down before completing a pressure turn as crow.
That said, drawing your deck as crow is one of the most fun ways to play ToT imo, just not that consistent.

KefkaGestahl

The fact that you think the best way to win is coins and crow shows you are wrong with your entire premise.

Thyenn

Yes. Crow isn't nearly as op as some people think. You'll start to see it as you play the other patrons more, especially those that are harder to unlock.

Now to the actual topic, yes, the NPC games are totally useless. They're boring, have weak rewards, and you almost always win. But then again, the NPC games were never the point. The PVP is the point of the game.

PrinceShroob

I found the Novice NPCs to be very easy to beat, but the Proficient and Expert NPCs were a suitable challenge--not quite as good as a player, but not as simple to predict.

The AI still has some obvious flaws (notably, its insistence of using the Treasury for the first few turns, though the Expert AI avoids this), but it replicates human behavior remarkably well sometimes--it even knows to Orgnum spam!

The game cycling through your deck every few turns avoids the problem Legends' AI had, where the AI would play as many cards in a turn as possible, often resulting in it topdecking a few turns in.

El_Borracho

KefkaGestahl wrote: »

The fact that you think the best way to win is coins and crow shows you are wrong with your entire premise.

Fair enough, but by pointing out that Crow is the novice/entry level strategy for PVP only proves my point that the tutorial/NPC games bear no resemblance to games against other players. Which was my premise. But thanks!

Heartrage

Npcs matches can be done within 3 minutes and are a great farm for mats, maps and rare furnishing.

spartaxoxo

El_Borracho wrote: »

KefkaGestahl wrote: »

The fact that you think the best way to win is coins and crow shows you are wrong with your entire premise.

Fair enough, but by pointing out that Crow is the novice/entry level strategy for PVP only proves my point that the tutorial/NPC games bear no resemblance to games against other players. Which was my premise. But thanks!

I'm not really sure how that proves that? Just because a novice player would spam crows, doesn't mean that's like the only strategy a novice would use.

Regardless, I think the difficulty level of the AI is supposed to reflect the difficulty level needed to train a player of that level. So, novice AI assumes you don't know how to play at all. Which is good, imo. ToT was initially seemed a bit overwhelming but once I played some rounds against the AI, I learned the basics of the game. Afterwards, I started playing against real people.

FrancisCrawford

I'm playing a lot of NPC matches, and using them to train myself out of dumb mistakes.

I still end the turn way too often rather than hitting the Treasury patron for Writ of Coin, but I'll get there ...

SeaGtGruff

PrinceShroob wrote: »

I found the Novice NPCs to be very easy to beat, but the Proficient and Expert NPCs were a suitable challenge--not quite as good as a player, but not as simple to predict.

The AI still has some obvious flaws (notably, its insistence of using the Treasury for the first few turns, though the Expert AI avoids this), but it replicates human behavior remarkably well sometimes--it even knows to Orgnum spam!

The game cycling through your deck every few turns avoids the problem Legends' AI had, where the AI would play as many cards in a turn as possible, often resulting in it topdecking a few turns in.

Agreed with regard to the NPCs. I haven't played against any players yet-- too nervous, I suppose-- but the AI for the Expert NPCs can be unpredictable, whereas the Novice NPCs are very predictable, and the Proficient NPCs are somewhere between the other two in terms of predictability.

Despite how much more unpredictable the Expert NPCs are, I still find them to be very easy to beat, although I don't always win; I think it might be something like 95% of the time.

As far as playing against other players, I've watched a few PvP matches that ESO streamers were playing, and as one would expect there's a much greater variation in strategy between one player and the next.