As written before, I've been mostly playing within the casual que. I get to play against many players who literally can't beat me. There are some players who immediately quit. Some players do okay. And then there is the penultimate group of players who are the object of my observation for this post.

They are players that are capable of trying to win. So they want to win and try to find a way. For a number of these players the way is to start using one of the following patrons.

Saint Pelin
Ansei Frandar Hunding
Sorcerer-King Orgnum
Hermaeus Mora

And some players, after switching to one of these patrons will finally win a game. They will get a Siege Weapon Volley, they will get an uncontestable Ansei patron flip and buy a Hira's End, they will get a couple of 2 cost Sorcerer-King cards and start jamming their patron's button, they will buy a couple of average Mora cards and then find contracts to close things out.

This is why my perspective is, has always been, and always will be that aggressive or even tempo based strategies are inferior modes of game design from the perspective of finding the best players. Of course, we can have the conversation that the best player also has the quality of being well rounded. For example, Ben Brode has done permanent damage to the game design community through the suggestion that RNG based gameplay is elevated when looking at skill testing. This leads us to some different philosophical territory.

Games that have ways of playing them which are very divergent from each other are not as efficient at skill testing as games that have less divergent play. In simple terms, if a game has many strategies that may be employed which are based on very different principles, then the game will have a harder time at figuring out who is the best. That is because we are forced to ask, "the best at what?" The best at power rushing? The best at biding time? It's apples and oranges and there isn't much sense in comparing those things. The same conclusion can be drawn from RNG based gameplay which I mention not necessarily because of the effect of "luck" on Tales of Tribute, but because the well has been poisoned by the game designers of past (I'm not talking about the Tales of Tribute designers) who want their cake and to eat it too. They want a game that appeals to all kinds of players and still be an e-sport. They want a game that is "fun" because of flashy RNG based effects, but is still taken seriously to the point of meriting the need for future design space via balance changes and creation of counterplay options (job security). Well, the can't have all of those things from the logical perspective. They can trick players into accepting their framework, but that's the limit of what they can do. Ultimately, RNG based gameplay has the same issue as divergent gameplay. It creates too many different paths or ways of playing a game and therefore runs into that same issue of not knowing what skills are actually being tested through a competition.

So what about games that have divergence and luck as parts of their design? Could it be that such games are testing players with a fusion of skill sets? At this point I will mention Chess. I'm not bringing up the game of Chess because it is without chance. In my opinion, chess has the same interplay between chance and skill that all games have. I mention chess because of a chess variant designed by Steve Jackson Games that is known as Knightmare Chess. In Knightmare Chess, players create a deck of cards which they use along with their chess board and chess pieces. The cards effect the game in all kinds of different ways. For example, a card can swap the position of pieces. Swap is the keyword for trading the position of two pieces on the board. And let's say that a player uses the swap effect. They can use some theory to determine the best swap. They can use the fusion of their ability. Really what is happening in these cases are crap shoots. That is, they are a rolling of the dice. There isn't great control over the deck that a player makes. There isn't great control over the cards that they are dealt. There isn't a great perception of how playing some early card instead of another card is the best move. There isn't great telling of how the cards may impact decision trees that haven't yet presented themselves and become known by the players. Sure, over the course of infinity games, it would become known what the best strategies are and the players that are best able to employ such strategy, but we don't have infinity time, so what is the point? What is the point of Knightmare Chess. What is the point of divergent play? What is the point of incorporating more chance into a game?

Well there is no point. A game with such aspects may be pleasurable, enjoyable, and amusing. The games can be fun. But fun isn't the point of a game. The point of a game is to have competition. And if you still think that the point of a game is to have fun, then look no further than any of the many games such as Magic or Yugioh or Pokemon or whatever the newest thing is which eventually hemorrhages players. Why do legacy players leave a game if it's so fun? The cycle of game design relies on designers who continue to sell new product that is consumed regardless of the value that such newly designed game pieces can lend toward competition. It's within the best interest of designers to continue to expand their puzzle and make bad fun games that have loads of different dimensions to them as merely a way to capture the funding of their target. And as has been told by multiple design teams, players are sticky enough that a situation arises where SOME self-respecting players do leave changing games, but enough new interest is drawn in as to continue to draw a profit and justify the means. Anyhow, let's get back to the patrons that I brought up.

I personally think that Tales of Tribute as well as most games are better without rush or tempo options. Although I am inherently not a rush or tempo player, so I don't inherently perform well in such contests, you can trust that I'm being as objective as humanly possible with this thought. I see it in TOT and I've seen it my whole life in different games. The players out there who are just having fun sometimes are given a shiny option that boosts their chances to win by a decent amount. And it is very smart of players to realize that they can win and become amused in such ways. That said, such options diminish the competitive nature of games. A game is made lesser in this way.