Let's Discuss the TOT Ranked Play Metagame

Personofsecrets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E6LeoiQchw

ESO_player123

Is this a play against an actual person? The title says ranked so I assume it's a person. Why would anyone stay and endure this? Concede and be done with it.

Personofsecrets

ESO_player123 wrote: »

Is this a play against an actual person? The title says ranked so I assume it's a person. Why would anyone stay and endure this? Concede and be done with it.

Everyone has their final straw. For this player it was having their last coin confined. They were doing okay at first too. Something like BriarHeart Ritual into buying Midnight Raid on their 1st/2nd turn. Got up to around 17 prestige, but couldn't advance further after having trouble dealing with the agents and making the mistake of not using the Psijic Loremaster patron button enough.

In other news, I'm fairly certain that I was the player responsible for the official bewilderment statistic from way back when the game came out. It was toxic back then and is still toxic today. Mostly thanks to powerful gold generating lines that can be bought up by the first player. First player get's two chances to polute the opponents deck before the first shuffle.

Personofsecrets

Just did another game to sort of drive home the point. The opponent oppened their first 2 turns with a pool of shadows and 2 writs of coin.

I was comfortable leaving the Pool (crow card) for them to buy up, despite the Writs, because I had the chance to buy Prophecy on turn one and gimp them with Bewilderment on turn 2. The rest was history. Bery long tedious history. I don't know if many people play Rajhiin that aggressively, but I find that most people can't play out of the situation and get stuck with a subpar deck. What's worse is the people who obviously press the button back out of spite. Worst thing that they could do in the bast majority of cases from a strategic perspective.

spartaxoxo

I actually avoid using the Rahjiin deck (and Rahjiin players) specifically because of this issue, even in casual queue where it feels less likely I'd run into spam. I also don't really spam other players, even if I know I could, because this mechanic feels bad in a way that even Orgnum doesn't for me. At least other problematic balance issues tend to end a match quickly. People spamming Rahjiin makes it so the opponent can't win but it doesn't make the player using it win either. So matches can be very slow and tedious.

In general, I think when it comes to effects that deny the opponent the ability to play, it should be....

Cheap, spammable, permanent

Pick 2.

gvgisdi

Can spamming Orgnum counter Rahjijn spam? Don’t the bewilderment cards count towards total deck cards?

Personofsecrets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I actually avoid using the Rahjiin deck (and Rahjiin players) specifically because of this issue, even in casual queue where it feels less likely I'd run into spam. I also don't really spam other players, even if I know I could, because this mechanic feels bad in a way that even Orgnum doesn't for me. At least other problematic balance issues tend to end a match quickly. People spamming Rahjiin makes it so the opponent can't win but it doesn't make the player using it win either. So matches can be very slow and tedious.

In general, I think when it comes to effects that deny the opponent the ability to play, it should be....

Cheap, spammable, permanent

Pick 2.

On the other side, I would rather play against Rajhiin spam than Sorcerer King spam. I've been annoyed by Rajhiin spam, but only a couple of times to the point where I felt like it won the opponent the game. To the contrary, there has been a number of games where I felt like the opponent wasn't making good choices, but they won anyhow because of how Sorcerer King spam creates inevitibility. In the past few days I just barely won 2 different games where the opponent pressed the Sorcerer King button every single turn after their first purchase. In one case it was a Customs Seizure and the other case it was Siege Weapon Volley. Neither player deserved to be anywhere close to a victory in my opinion...

Definitely agree though that the button needs tuning. That said, Rajhiin has another problem that the designers refuse to fix so we can probably keep wishing.

gvgisdi wrote: »

Can spamming Orgnum counter Rahjijn spam? Don’t the bewilderment cards count towards total deck cards?

It's generally not good to press the Rahjiin button when Sorcerer King is in the lineup. I believe that you are correct that bewilderments add to the number of cards that the Sorcerer King patron checks when calculating the power that it generates. More importantly is that it's just better to be actively using gold to buy prestige generators or flipping back the Sorcerer King button. Both of those things mean that the Rajhiin button can't really be pressed to great effect.

SeaGtGruff

Being able to spam Rahjiin shouldn't be a thing, IMO. Once the patron favors you, you shouldn't be able to use it again, like the way Crow works, IMO. That would avoid it being used in the toxic fashion that it's currently being used in.

spartaxoxo

Personofsecrets wrote: »

To the contrary, there has been a number of games where I felt like the opponent wasn't making good choices, but they won anyhow because of how Sorcerer King spam creates inevitibility.

True. I think they both are two of the biggest offenders in that regard. I just know if I'm going to inevitably lose, I'd rather lose in 10 minutes than 20. But I don't like either of these decks and I can definitely feel and agree with you on this point.

I have also met players of both patrons that refuse to spam them on principle. And I think that anytime players are trying to balance a game by limiting themselves in such a way, it's often (but not always) an indicator that a game mechanic is toxic.

rbfrgsp

There's one player on pceu who is known for this. Their only tactic is to spam rajhin until their opponent quits. I never quit and regularly play 45min matches against this person. Most recent time this happened, they got into chat afterwards and whined at me(!) for taking so long and saying that they are a top 2% player. Like they are deserving of an easy concede and not a cheap exploiter.

My concern is that if a player can get to the top 2% each month by (i) only using the same deck over and over, and (ii) using that deck not to play the game but to induce opponent concedes, then you have a fundamentally exploitable game.

@SeaGtGruff suggestion would work, but may be a bit heavy handed. I'd also look at bewilderments no longer autoplaying out of hand, so that they can be used for Discards by the Almalexia deck. They already count towards total cards for Orgnum patron, so why are they counted as legitimate hand cards for one patron, but not for another?

LukosCreyden

64 coin earned in a single turn?
Those are rookie numbers.

Personofsecrets

rbfrgsp wrote: »

There's one player on pceu who is known for this. Their only tactic is to spam rajhin until their opponent quits. I never quit and regularly play 45min matches against this person. Most recent time this happened, they got into chat afterwards and whined at me(!) for taking so long and saying that they are a top 2% player. Like they are deserving of an easy concede and not a cheap exploiter.

My concern is that if a player can get to the top 2% each month by (i) only using the same deck over and over, and (ii) using that deck not to play the game but to induce opponent concedes, then you have a fundamentally exploitable game.

@SeaGtGruff suggestion would work, but may be a bit heavy handed. I'd also look at bewilderments no longer autoplaying out of hand, so that they can be used for Discards by the Almalexia deck. They already count towards total cards for Orgnum patron, so why are they counted as legitimate hand cards for one patron, but not for another?

And we know from how some of the Rajhiin effects with a force discard work that Bewilderments can work as discard targets. Sort of funny how the turn structuring works.

One of the designer articles mentioned Rajhiin as a counter to Almalexia because of the Bewilderments, so I'm not so sure if a change which would make Almalexia a counter to Rajhiin would be so likely. The designers are way too comfortable with toxic play patterns.

Personofsecrets

LukosCreyden wrote: »

64 coin earned in a single turn?
Those are rookie numbers.

I'll try to get a higher number that will make everyones numbers look like rookie numbers soon. In the meantime, keep in mind that the picture that I posted was from the first month of the TOT release. It's the only time that designers have shared data about the game as far as I know because they are apparently too busy.

rbfrgsp

What's interesting to me is how Rajhin patron highlights the failure of ToT to mimic a tabletop game so perfectly.

The meta usage detailed in this thread is something not possible in a true TT game, for the very basic reason that you would never get a deck expansion with infinite cards.

In-game, you can spam forever, creating bewilderments out of thin air.

Deck designers for TT games have the natural limitations of physical media/box sizes to inform their gameplay choices. They will select a subtle, non intrusive rule to prevent endless spam. Ie: nothing clumsy like "you can only ever create 5 bewilderments ". More like "patron cost on favoured increases to five gold". It makes it realistically impossible/suboptimal to want to generate more cards than are available in the box.

You would also have a worst-case-scenario clarifier that would state "once all bewilderments in the deck have been used, you cannot generate any more until an existing one has been destroyed and removed from the game, at which point it can be returned into play on the normal way".

Physical media has an inbuilt limitation on card spam. Video games do not. Therefore, designers must find a novel solution which creates one.

WitchyKiki

Rahjin spam is my favorite game mechanic, and I actively play to achieve it. Its just fun, thats all. I'm only here for the funsies.