More thoughts on the Alessia Patron

Personofsecrets

After release, I wrote about my initial thoughts regarding the Alessia Patron. This was after trying to create my own Alessia deck, get a grasp of TOT design, and review the cards once I saw them for the first time. Link below.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/659699/my-initial-impressions-of-patch-10-0-5-tales-of-tribute-along-the-gold-road#latest

There are a few things that I approached in an incorrect way.

For example, although I don't find a ton of thematic synergy between Alessian cards with something like an inter-Alessian strategy, there really doesn't need to be thematic play and nor does there need to be inter-deck synergies for cards to be well designed or have a strong role in the game. For the purposes of this passage, I'll refer to non-synergy related deck building to be an a la carte strategy.

I actually prefer a la carte deck building. My background is building decks for Yu-Gi-Oh! from scratch. Sometimes I would review powerful lists and combine their aspects to make my own deck list. Yu-Gi-Oh! used to be about a la carte selections which would work in a deck as a complete whole by either being outright strong on their own merits or by having a bunch of smaller "synergistic" interactions between each other despite the game pieces not necessarily being designed to have that synergy inherently. Allow me to further describe this distinction that I am trying to relate with card examples below.

Yu-Gi-Oh! has a card called Pitch-Black Power Stone. When it comes into play, 3 "Spell Counters" are put onto the card and then a player may remove those Spell Counters, gradually, and put them onto other cards that can accept and utilize those Spell Counters. This was a terrible card. The entire Spell Counter thing wasn't very strong. Nobody every played it from what I saw. A "Spell Counter" deck was never a thing.

At the same time, there were a bunch of great decks in Yu-Gi-Oh! that were based around just doing strong things and they didn't really care about the name of cards or way that said cards were themed. For example, one may use Apprentice Magician as a way to search their deck for an Old Vindictive Magician. Apprentice Magician "cared" about "Spellcasters" thematically, but the player did not. They would just get their Old Vindictive Magician, destroy an opponents monster with it, and then sacrifice it for Thestalos, the Firestorm Monarch. And if Apprentice Magician was too slow, then a player could use Soul Exchange to get their Thestalos out. Soul Exchange was just another powerful enabler of that line of play despite not being thematic support. And some decks played Breaker the Magical Warrior which could be used in a bunch of ways. You see, when it comes into play it get's a Spell Counter which can be used up to destroy a Spell or Trap in play. So someone could play Breaker for it's effects, break a Spell or Trap, and now that Breaker has had it's effect used up, they could then feel comfortable sacrificing it in order to summon Thestalos. Or if they had Apprentice Magician, they could even use Apprentice Magicians other effect to put a another spell counter on Breaker and destroy another Spell or Trap. Or maybe they would keep the spell counter on Breaker as it made the card have more attack power. By now, you should see what I'm getting at. And the true beauty of all of that is that players developed this style of deck without being hand-held by the design team. They figured out that a strong way to play Yu-Gi-Oh! was based on principles of card advantage and wearing down opponents via effects that would generate incremental advantages on their own, but create game winning advantages when they all came together and, again, that was all despite the cards not really being meant to work with each other at the wholistic level.

Eventually, Yu-Gi-Oh! became more about having ones entire deck be about "themes" which were designed to work together from the most basic level. There were "Wind-Ups" and "Inzekts". Eventually entire decks made up out of "Spellbooks" and "Dragon Rulers." Maybe you can tell that I think the thematic approach to design to be less-elevated when it comes to making a good game where players are able to best channel their skills. Even Thestalos, the Firestorm monarch eventually got "support" and this elevated way of playing from past times was sullied. Suddenly, players could play Monarchs again as if that would again mean anything at all. Monarchs even became a great deck for a short time, but only because the designers spoonfed powerful cards to that archetype.

Back to the topic of what I was inaccurate about regarding Alessia, first I will bring up the Ayleid. Although I don't really see how it fits into inter-Alessian strategy, in the past I failed to mention how an Alessian card using player could pick that card up from the Tavern and add to their bored in a significant way. Although I do still find the card to be an unnecessary blow-out and am critical of it being able to appear in some scenarios, out of nowhere, and destroying someones board, it can be a good card for anyone who picks it because of how strong drawing a card may be.

Although I criticized how the cards didn't seem to work together as an army. As it turns out, they don't really need to. Priestess of the Eight can be good in all kinds of situations. If someone is building the Alessian army, then their deck tends to become bloated and they could use the card selection that Priestess offers. And Priestess happens to be great with other strategies too. For example, if someone cares about combos or getting to their power cards faster, then she can be a great card. Card selection, especially card draw, is a gold standard of TOT.

Morihaus is also interesting as he adds a layer of complexity to situations where someone wants to wipe an opposing Agent stack. So he can really work well for an Alessian army using player. He also does well at combating other armies by dealing with agent problems on his own and making the Alessian Patron flip not to be such an awful economic loss. Finally, when combined with with Alessia's Wrath, Morihause can become a complex combo type of card.

Back to the Yu-Gi-Oh! comparison, I'm sort of reminded of the utility of Call of the Haunted. Call of the Haunted brings back a monster from the graveyard and when Call is destroyed, the monster is destroyed. Sometimes, people used Call to just make an extra attacker. In a similar vein, it could be used in the battle phase to bring back a threat that was already destroyed during that same battle phase - it had the utility to add redundancy. It also served as a card advantage generator. If someone tried to destroy Call before it was activated, then it could sometimes be used in response, as part of the chain, to create incremental advantages by getting back Sangan. You see, even though Call would be destroyed and Sangan sent back to the graveyard, Sangan get's a mandatory effect when it goes to the Graveyard from play. So Call being destroyed could be a good thing. Another popular target was Jinzo. Jinzo would negate the effects of traps once it was in play. So if someone tried to destroy Call, but Call, a trap card, was used to get Jinzo, Jinzo's effect would then be applied to Call of the Haunted and Call being destroyed wouldn't end up causing Jinzo to be destroyed because Jinzo would be negating that effect of Call.

By explaining the above, I hope to convey what I think a form of elevated gameplay is. It's waiting to use high utility cards that are neither advantageous or disadvantageous on their own during situations in which they happen to be able to create a small incremental advantage via their synergies or interactions with non-related cards that themselves are also neither too advantageous or disadvantageous on their own merits.

In Yu-Gi-Oh!, people didn't even limit themselves to using strong or average cards. Sometimes, people would use cards with somewhat weak effects, but to strong results. The use of Book of Moon is one of these types of examples. All it does is make a monster become shifted to face-down defense position. That is a really marginal effect. But the cards high utility, as a quickplay spell, has made it one of the most enjoyed cards in the Goat Format and it's alternate foil version commands one of the highest premiums. Book can be used to stop an attack, it can allow one a good attack into a monster that otherwise has too much attack to defeat in battle, it can prevent monsters from being destroyed by Call of the Haunted's leaving play effect, it can turn off Jinzo's trap negation effect, it can prevent a monster from being destroyed by Ring of Destruction, it can reset the effect of Flip-Effect monsters, it can prevent a monster from being taken by Thousand-Eyes Restrict, it can reset Thousand-Eyes restrict effect thus allowing it to be used again, it can prevent a monster from being taken by Snatch Steal, it can prevent a monster from being returned to it's original owner if Snatch Steal is to become destroyed, and the list goes on.

By now, you'll notice that some of the points that I'm making and examples that I'm bringing up are reoccurring. This is on purpose to convey the breadth of way that synergies can be made from nothing. Back to Alessia's Wrath. It has been pleasant to find it's synergy with other cards that place cads on top of the deck. Of course, this can work with intra-Alessian strategy via use of Whitestrake who too can recover cards to the top of the draw pile, but Wrath also has strong applications with Ansei Frandar Hunding cards such as Hira's End and Shehai Summoning. One game, I had a record number of turns, perhaps it was 5 or more, where I didn't draw new cards from my deck. I was only ever drawing cards that had been refreshed there by Alessia's Wrath and Hira/Shehai. The opponent was doing something similar and that was all a fun position to try and break.

Priestess of the Eight can pair well with some Almalexia strategies. Grim Firesong Haruspex, similar to Morihaus, can add redundancy to the value generating Agent play. Stonelore Rockseer gives much to think about since it let's Alessian agents have the possibility of being played in a way such that both gold and power is generated simultaneously. Even agents from the Red Eagle class can be quite interesting in conjunction with the Alessian army. Not only are their effects valuable for drawing into the army more often, but by having more than 1 health, they create situations where the opponent must pick and choose which agents to assign power against in priority. It's not a simply as just putting 1 power on everything and calling it a day. And the Witches even have 3 health! Can you believe that they used to have 4 health? Given all of the above, please know that I think that the cards for the Alessia patron are in line with a la carte game systems which care about generating incremental advantage.

So does Alessia do something less than good? And why do I keep mentioning the concept of incremental advantage?

As it turns out, there was a developer interview regarding the Alessia patron. There has been an interview which discusses all of the newly released Patrons, though Druid King is discussed primarily in an article featuring the Almalexia release. The first 3 deck additions had an aspect which dealt with improving a game problem. For examples, read below.

"John: Ultimately, each deck players pick for a game of Tribute only contributes 1/5th of the total cards seen in game. Previously with the Druid King, we wanted to give players a consistent way to see more cards in the Tavern during a game. With Almalexia, we felt players needed more interaction with the cards their opponent purchased so they can tip the scales of randomness in their favor."

"John: When we examined the game state of recent Tales of Tribute releases, we knew it was time to add a deck that focused on fast games and raw power instead of calculated action sequences."

When we look at what is written for the Alessia Patron, it seems like a game issue isn't really trying to be remedied with her. And that is perfectly fine. Quotes below.

"John: With Alessia, players should look forward to piloting a deck composed almost entirely of agents with “Choice” abilities. This should result in a strategic play experience with lots of incremental advantages."

"John: We wanted to provide players with more varieties of agent cards that weren’t “KO-on-sight" level threats. Many agents from other patron decks must be removed the turn they are played to prevent falling behind."

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/66047

And although Alessia seems to part with previous design philosophy by not trying to solve a common game problem, she can come under scrutiny for not necessarily meeting the developers own standards in a couple of important ways.

One could say that the concept of "incremental advantages" is one of my triggers. I would love nothing more than for Alessia to deal in that currency. I do not find this aspect of Alessia to be that compelling. The reason that I don't feel this way is because what the patron ability does is way too asymetrical.



The above game was against a player that is often a poor sport, that said, I don't blame them for quitting the game early on. I can feel how a finger on the monkey's paw curled due to my complaining about power-generating starter cards so much. The designers decided to make something that can be even worse than a power generating starter cards. The opponent was artificially held back from purchasing Dreaming Cave due to drawing the agent starter card and, as a result, they found the game hopeless.

Sure anything could happen, but I'm certainly not going to reveal cards in the Tavern for the opponent. I'm also not going to stop pressing the Alessia button. This is where Alessia being about incremental advantages is way off. Being able to press the button first in this type of scenario was a tremendous advantage. There was nothing incremental about the position that it naturally leads to at all. As it turns out, the Alessian cards not working that well together is a extremly minor point compared the brutal assymetry of the Patron button.

And there certainly are games that are interesting because of the tension around purchasing a good card in the tavern versus pressing her button. That said, games where pressing the button first matters in a big way aren't small in number. They are way too common.

I have made such button pressing plays against players who make every correct move and they still can't overcome the huge advantage gained by pressing the button first. I've also lost games that make me look like a complete novice against players with far less understanding of the game simply because they went first in a bad/dead tavern situation and pressed the button. Of course I have room to grow, but I don't have so much room to grow that I should be stamped out like a cigarette just because I went second in a game or disadvantageously drew non-gold generating starter cards.

It's also the case that some players here and myself identify the advantages gained by Alessia as being something other than incremental. We may call the advantages incremental and they sometimes seem incremental, but many games with agent play feel more like an on-land breathing competition. Who is going to miss a breath first? Well, nobody. So we twiddle our thumbs back and forth and the incremental advantages gained in such cases are so unnoticeable that they pale in comparison to what a dose of tavern luck might do.

Another place where designers were mistaken is their thinking that players wouldn't have to be removing Alessian agents just like they remove Agents from any class. It's extremly disadvantageous to not remove agents ever. This is a false choice. It's easier to remove Alessian agents. That said, missing removing most agents will still lead to quite a disadvantage.

I really would like to see more incremental advantage type games that are decided based on a many different decisions rather than blowout cards. I would also like to see Agents in a good spot rather than where they are now which includes many games that are Agent defined. That all said, Alessia doesn't end up hitting the spot for me. As noted above, there could be some interesting things done with the individual Alessian cards in terms of a-la-carte strategy and deck building. But it is too risky to try and have one of those games due ot the prominence of games where the Patron button is too strong and can be spammed by one player too much and to the effect of granting them too big of an advantage.

All of the Patrons that can be spammed in such a way should be reviewed by the design team. All of them. And Alessia should have even a greater review due to the Assymetry that it causes for no good reason.

sayswhoto

ToT seems to be the polar opposite of incremental advantage. As an example, these deck combo's aim to aggressively lock the opponent out of the game and heavily favor the first turn player:

• Orgnum + Pelin
• Alessia + Hlaalu
• Crow + Red Eagle/Hlaalu

Personofsecrets wrote: »

I've also lost games that make me look like a complete novice against players with far less understanding of the game simply because they went first in a bad/dead tavern situation and pressed the button. Of course I have room to grow, but I don't have so much room to grow that I should be stamped out like a cigarette just because I went second in a game or disadvantageously drew non-gold generating starter cards.

This is what limits ToT as a competitive game.

I also want to note that the developer comments don't appear to represent the reality of what is happening in-game.

"John: Ultimately, each deck players pick for a game of Tribute only contributes 1/5th of the total cards seen in game. Previously with the Druid King, we wanted to give players a consistent way to see more cards in the Tavern during a game. With Almalexia, we felt players needed more interaction with the cards their opponent purchased so they can tip the scales of randomness in their favor."

• Druid patron power is more often than not used to remove powerful cards from the tavern after running out of gold. In effect, people want to see less cards. This is a major problem with the game that the risk of purchasing or revealing cards can be so incredibly detrimental.
• Almalexia patron power might deny a few good cards at the start but usually becomes more situational as the game progresses. The Confine mechanic is not that reliable as agents are heavily targeted. Continued use of the patron power often puts the player at a disadvantage by being overly defensive.

"John: When we examined the game state of recent Tales of Tribute releases, we knew it was time to add a deck that focused on fast games and raw power instead of calculated action sequences."

This quote should be referring to the Mora deck if I remember correctly. Games were already fast due to the accelerating advantage in ToT and there were already raw power options. The fastest Mora games can end somewhere around 4 to 5 turns, so I'm not sure how fast they wanted games to be.

I wouldn't describe most gameplay as "calculated action sequences". Most of the time it's clear what cards need to be bought and what needs to be played.

"John: With Alessia, players should look forward to piloting a deck composed almost entirely of agents with “Choice” abilities. This should result in a strategic play experience with lots of incremental advantages."

It's only strategic if there are cards in the tavern that are worth buying. Otherwise, the Alessia patron power dominates. There are some patron choices that could be considered somewhat of a counter though. I don't agree the advantages are really that incremental, especially when Alessia is paired with Hlaalu. The prestige generation of Alessia can be slower, which doesn't necessarily translate to incremental advantage.

"John: We wanted to provide players with more varieties of agent cards that weren’t “KO-on-sight" level threats. Many agents from other patron decks must be removed the turn they are played to prevent falling behind."

Alessia agents are still removed the turn they are played if possible. What's ironic is that the starter Alessia card is sometimes removed almost immediately by turning it into a Writ of Coin by the person who played it.

Personofsecrets

sayswhoto wrote: »

"John: With Alessia, players should look forward to piloting a deck composed almost entirely of agents with “Choice” abilities. This should result in a strategic play experience with lots of incremental advantages."

It's only strategic if there are cards in the tavern that are worth buying. Otherwise, the Alessia patron power dominates. There are some patron choices that could be considered somewhat of a counter though. I don't agree the advantages are really that incremental, especially when Alessia is paired with Hlaalu. The prestige generation of Alessia can be slower, which doesn't necessarily translate to incremental advantage.

Something that I should have better conveyed in the original post is related to the idea that you express.

I do like a number of the Alessian cards. I don't think that I sufficiently discussed how they are cool because they are situational. So the choice aspect really is present in them.

It seemed like the designers were afraid of players having cards that wouldn't do enough, so I was surprised to get cool cards like Wrath which have a possibility of doing little to nothing during a turn. Anyhow, I think that situational cards can lend themselves to incremental advantage type gameplay.

But, as we have both mentioned, the Alessia Patron itself overshadows everything else going on and can even dominate a game. So yea, the experience of incremental advantage when looking at things from the Patron perspective isn't there enough.

Largomets

The patron itself is broken beyond repair, and gives player 1 a next-to-guaranteed advantage, to the point that I consider the deck currently broken beyond repair if you're player 2.

If I'm player 1 and there's no good cards in the tavern, I can turn the dial and build my deck without needing to purchase. If I'm player 2, I need to either take a hit in the tavern, roll the dice and bank a coin/1 power card, or turn the dial back but NOT build my deck. Player 1 can continue to build their deck while ignoring the toxic tavern, and player 2 DOES NOT build their deck in the process. Within a few turns, player 2 is in a near-unrecoverable disadvantage.

If there IS a good card in the tavern, player 1 gets it. If player 1 can't afford it, they can turn the patron and force player 2 to decide between the good card and letting player 1 ramp just like the other scenario.

If there is a good card in the tavern and player 1 can afford it, they now have the advantage over player 2.

The only scenario where player 2 stands a chance is if they also get a good card and neither player is using the patron and both players get a good tavern draw. Otherwise, every play that player 2 makes is an advantage to player 1.

This deck is a no-brainer for people to pick if player 1, because the odds of winning as player 1 are astronomical compared to any other deck. We haven't seen the player 1 advantage this bad since the game released when player 1 could buy armory turn 1.

sayswhoto

After playing a few more games using Alessia, I do agree the deck itself has some unique cards that can make for interesting games in line with incremental advantage. However, I still have a difficult time understanding why they chose to effectively throw that out the window by introducing the spammable patron power that can lock out games on its own.

My guess is their focus is not on the top ~10% of completive players that make each other miserable with high win rate strategies, but more geared toward casual or general play. A lot of problems are waived away if one just claims, "I'm making this for casual play, so I don't need to care about X, Y, and Z issues. Those issues are not relevant to casuals".

Overall, I think Alessia fits their design philosophy very well. Not trying to say that in a passive aggressive manner. It can be a fun deck even if unfair at times. Again, it's probably only the competitive players that will exploit the advantages to the fullest, and the majority of ToT players will likely see it as a new and refreshing playstyle compared to the other decks.

Personofsecrets

The hypothetical that I sometimes think of is that the designers probably have some data that shows Patron spam strategies to not necessarily win more than other strategies.

It's not unusual for "data" to be the enemy of what is good and otherwise correct. It's also not uncommon for the cartoon version of "balance" to be utilized which I see as balance being declared, regardless of all other game piece aspects, so long as those using the game piece in question don't win a statistically significant amount of time compared to adversaries.

The problem with cartoon balance is that such statistics don't necessarily take into account individual player skill. They also don't necessarily care about how toxic games are.

So even if Alessia Patron spammers only win some average number of games, how they get to that point, which is extremely important when determining how skill based and fun a game is, can end up ignored.

Obviously, I don't know if cartoon balance is used in TOT, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case since some of the card balance choices are quite bad.

Largomets

sayswhoto wrote: »

After playing a few more games using Alessia, I do agree the deck itself has some unique cards that can make for interesting games in line with incremental advantage. However, I still have a difficult time understanding why they chose to effectively throw that out the window by introducing the spammable patron power that can lock out games on its own.

My guess is their focus is not on the top ~10% of completive players that make each other miserable with high win rate strategies, but more geared toward casual or general play. A lot of problems are waived away if one just claims, "I'm making this for casual play, so I don't need to care about X, Y, and Z issues. Those issues are not relevant to casuals".

Overall, I think Alessia fits their design philosophy very well. Not trying to say that in a passive aggressive manner. It can be a fun deck even if unfair at times. Again, it's probably only the competitive players that will exploit the advantages to the fullest, and the majority of ToT players will likely see it as a new and refreshing playstyle compared to the other decks.

You just summarized the dev team in every aspect of the game. "I don't need to make it good, I just need to make it digestible to the lowest common denominator" has been their MO since 2017. It's also why this game has been on life support since 2017. They fail to court a dedicated base of high-performing players, because they intentionally do not want to make content for dedicated players. They also fail to court the next generation of players as a result of that too.

Normally an MMO would put out a lot of content for the masses, but make sure their end game content and end game community get the most attention. These are the content creators who are drawing 10s of thousands of views or more on their streams as they play games, which drives up awareness and excitement around a game. It also gives the most passionate gamers a reason to log into ESO over other games.

ZOS has repeatedly shown they do not like end game players, and does not care that their top streamers have maybe a few hundred people in their room at a given time compared to the thousands and thousands other games have. They do not and clearly will not ever make meaningful content to people who prefer being good to people who prefer being coddled.

sayswhoto

A bit off topic, but I wanted to add that I think I've been punished someway somehow, either from what I wrote on the forums or someone I played on the ladder. Now every time I choose Alessia it has been an auto loss for me. Nothing will work for me and the RNG appears completely stacked against me. Probably close to 10 games now I lost if I choose this patron.

I'll risk getting flagged for conspiracy theory on this. It is absurd how it's almost a guaranteed loss now for me now. It's like a night and day change all of the sudden.

Maybe this is the cartoon balance. Someone needs to balance the stat sheet on the Alessia win rates.

Personofsecrets

I highly doubt that anyone would care enough to update your seed. Although, it is possible for someone to feel slighted by the ideas posted here, there is little reason to think that the design team are anything but professional. I also question that those behind the scenes would even be aware of what seeds are good versus bad. Such details are not only complex, but also highly context dependant - it's not clear how they could choose such a seed.

It could be that you have a bad seed informing your games which happens to interrupt the game plans that you deploy.

One user reported here that when looking at their chances of going first or second, it seemed as though those chances changed from some months to others. I believe that is correct...

If you are going first or second too much, then maybe that is impacting your Alessia games. I also happen to believe that Alessia leads to high variance gameplay. Even I have lost 4 games in a row against high variance strategies. It's just bound to happen. It's also probably bound to happen even if seeding happens to be perfectly well and good.

sayswhoto

High variance could be it, but the RNG seems so intentional sometimes. After losing about 10 times with the Alessia patron, the next day I went around 15-1 (win - loss). I have never had that high win rate, or win streak, before. I'm historically around ~65% (higher if I go first more often). Some of those games were not with Alessia just due to what the opponent picked but I believe most should've been.

This seems strange, and the Alessia patron has not had this roller coaster win/loss rate for me in the past. If it really is high variance, then maybe it' will happen at one point or another. With all the odd RNG occurrences or seeding issues, it just makes me doubt the integrity of the system. And weird "mystery agent" bugs like this don't help either: