ToT NPCs are too strong

Scaletho · January 12

1 - Not all players have time to spend days trying to "nerdly" understand a mere game of cards inside the real game (ESO).

2 - In the very beginning, when we are just newbies, there a quest about a TOURNAMENT of a rival ToT house called The Tournament Begins. We need to play (and we need to WIN) against 3 lame and arrogant NPCs. Since ToT NPCs got buffed, to simply win these games is an ORDEAL. Why? Because many players are not ToT experts and in this particular quest we are suppose to be better than NPCs! Because, if not, the quest never ends!

3 - With exception to the best (expert, Grand Tribute Master and Tribute Master), NPCs novice and proficient are not suppose to be so good. Beginner quests' NPCs are also not suppose to be so good. ToT IMHO is, to be delicate, boring. BUT it has some good rewards. Stop making the regular player to grind to much, ZOS. Give ToT a better balance.

Necrotech_Master · January 12

i actually feel that the expert/master NPCs are actually the worst at playing the game lol, especially the master ones since they use the mixed up decks, theres virtually no synergy in them for the NPCs to play with

novice ones only have access to the 4 basic decks, of which all of them can be reasonably strong (though the NPCs are really dumb when it comes to psijic deck)

all of the NPCs operate using an extremely predictable AI, that actually does not vary much between the difficulties

i usually use the rahjin and red eagle decks, rahjin for -prestige and to spam bewilderments, and red eagle because the NPCs are extremely dumb with deck pruning cards

using those methods, ive had the NPC sometimes remove all of their cards from their deck, making it impossible for you to lose unless you outright concede, ive also had an NPC who removed all of the cards except bewilderments so their "hand" was nothing but 5 bewilderments which is effectively the same result

the NPCs will not prioritize removing bewilderments from their deck with deck pruning cards or the treasury

if hlaalu is in play, they will sacrifice every card they get to hlaalu, so you just got to slow them down with bewilderments so they cant buy cards every turn, or only cheap ones, and then rahjin agents for -prestige unless the npc completely stalls out (ive had a game where the npc rushed up to like 25 prestige and i had like 2, but they stalled out once i had enough bewilderments in their deck that they then could barely do anything)

the only time i really lost a lot and thought the game was difficult was the first week high isle release lol, a lot of it is just learning the NPC AI which is incredibly predictable

it is a much different ball game when playing human players though lol

Dagoth_Rac · January 12

The ToT NPC's are very strange. I feel like the different NPC difficulties should correspond to activity in other parts of game. A delve daily is really easy but has meh overland rewards. A veteran DLC hard mode pledge is insanely difficult but has good rewards (both from pledge and dungeon itself). Then there are world boss dailies, random normal pledge, base game pledges, etc. Very wide array of difficulties to cater to both skill and player mood (by mood I mean just because I can do a veteran DLC hard mode doesn't mean I always want to do a veteran DLC hard mode).

There should be ToT NPCs who are the equivalent of overland trash. And ToT NPCs who are the equivalent of Trial hard modes. The current array of ToT NPCs are way too hard right from the start. Imagine if clearing Stros M'Kai or Khenarthi's Roost required the kind of deep game knowledge and skill that ToT NPCs required? It is crazy.

freespirit · January 12

I choose to play proficient NPC's, they rarely pick the Almalexia deck and never the newest deck.

I pretty much go with Rahjiin and Hlaalu decks as I know they will always use the Hlaalu Patron and sell all their good cards!

If one or two of those decks is picked by the NPC then I will choose Orgnum's and/or Hunding's, I like to introduce as much buying power as possible and Orgnum is just easy win spam button if you collect a decent number of cards.

I particularly like the extra patron use cards from Orgnum's at only two gold each, towards the end of the game if combined with certain Hlaalu cards they can produce huge prestige in just one turn(using the Orgnum Patron)!!

I am quite lazy but don't mind ToT so longer games don't bother me, it is quite hard to lose against NPC's imo but it does happen occasionally!

Edit:- Also if you hit them with bewilderment cards they will trash good cards and keep the bewilderment ones.... wth???

Roxxsmom · January 14

I don't find them very good in terms of strategy, though they do seem to get very lucky sometimes--getting just the cards they need when they need them, even though they "should" not have known which cards would show up in the tavern next.

There doesn't seem to be a huge difference strategy wise between the different levels of npc anymore, though maybe the novice and intermediate players tend to use patrons a bit more randomly or erratically or to mindlessly spam them more.

A few things one can count on happening quite often:

They will always buy a card that allows them to play another card at the end of their turn if one is available they can afford, even if it makes more sense to leave a cruddy selection of cards in the tavern for the other player.

Same with using any available ability to purge the tavern at the end of their turn. This makes sense if a really good card is up they wouldn't want me to buy, but they tend to do it for medium good, or even cruddy cards that could easily be replaced by a better one. They will also purge a high point "good" card I won't be able to afford anyway early in the game over a medium point "good" card I definitely could afford early in the game.

They are inordinately fond of the Orgnum patron, and choose it disproportionately often, often choosing it 3 or more times in a row if I keep conceding after they choose it (because I am not in the mood for an Orgnum spamfest). Same for the Hllalu patron. Maybe this is confirmation bias on my part, though, so I am going to start keeping numerical track of this.

When playing Hllalu, they sometimes inexplicably "blow up" good cards to get a 2 pt treasury card instead of using the Hllalu patron to get more points for it. They sometimes blow up good cards for 2 pt treasury cards when they aren't playing the Hllalu patron as well.

If we are near the end of the game, and I am past 40 points, they will sometimes blow their chance of passing me by tapping one of the patrons (like Hunding, Druid King, or St Pelin) that eats two power points, or they might even burn their power points to kill one of my agents, even if it means they lose because they don't pass my total.

They will tap the crow patron early on for maybe 1-2 points, leaving it unavailable to them. Later in the game, if the crow patron becomes available, they tend to turn it only after buying a bunch of cards instead of maximizing victory points. They even do this late in the game, when there is no chance they will get to play the cards they just purchased.

They're not quite as "spammy" with the spammable patrons as they once were, but they still seem to lock onto a particular patron and use that over and over throughout the game.

This tells me they aren't programmed to have a sense of which strategies work at different points in the game or in different situations.

One "clever" thing they seem to consistently do is turn the orgnum patron at the end of their turn if there's a card I am likely to buy in the tavern. Another is that they will always purge the crow cards from the tavern if they can't buy them themselves.

El_Borracho · January 17

I don't see much of a difficulty difference between novice, proficient, and expert NPCs. I tend to play the expert NPCs because they don't take a long time to play each card.

Necrotech_Master · January 17

El_Borracho wrote: »

I don't see much of a difficulty difference between novice, proficient, and expert NPCs. I tend to play the expert NPCs because they don't take a long time to play each card.

i would agree after playing all of them, including the masters, is that the AI is like 98% the same with some slight variances