TOT is still not worth it !

Dimorphos · November 2023

As the title says, it just is not worth the time consumed and this is only because the game is like 99% stupid rng and many decks are in need of total nerf/change.

Most of the time it goes like this for me: out of 10 games I win one and lose all the rest because rng is not on my side and there is literally nothing I can do to counter that. On a rare good days I have been able to get among the 6% top and then it starts again, really bad rng streak and losing like 10-15 games in a row and it only takes few lost games to drop from top6% far out of the ranking list. I am quite sure at this point, that people who can stay in the top and get the season rewards, cheat and play against friends in quiet hours and take turns who will get the wins that time.

Then about the stupid decks that really need a change: sorcerer king orgnum is still total --pain, if whoever gets to start gains even a small advantage and starts playing the stupid sorcerer king patron turning game, if you do not turn it too, you will most likely loose. If that advantage your opponent got in the start was enough, you will loose no matter what. It is ridiculous. I just played a game when my opponent got to start, bought prestige gain card and made sorcerer king patron turn, I did not follow but made a gold coin to get precious 6 gold card. My opponent kept on turning the sorcerer king and that was it. Game over for me, as the game went on and I had to start clicking the sorcerer king patron too it was not enough because opponent already had so big lead. So no matter what I did,I lost game already in the first turn. Zenimax really should re-design that deck completely or make the cost for sorcerer king patron turn way higher. The change that they made that it now costs 1gold to turn from opponent favored back to neutral did not have any effect. Then the purple crow deck: It is most stupid that a deck offers you great amount of both gold and prestige even with 2-3 cards combo without any setback, literally all you need for a win is to get few of those cards and have rng on your side to get them on same turn. Same goes for almalexia: There are few cards in that deck that gives you way too many withdraw card/draw a card turns. You only need like 2 of them and you can always go through your whole deck every turn. That is just so stupid I have no words for it that I could write here without getting moderators attention.

And while I really do not care about the ranking list, because it is a stupid rng card game, I would mind to get that daily golden reward. But to get that you need to que for pvp match. And too many times I face really, really bad rng luck and can many days have like 10-15 games in a row that there is no possibility for a win since opponents gets to buy best cards and get always their combo cards on same turn and always gets just the right cards to appear in the tavern on their turn.. people who have played enough know what I am talking about. That the outcome is totally out of your hands. So I would suggest that we could get the daily golden reward after a win or 3 played games, so we don't need face the frustration of stupid rng.

I know it is optional feature and you don't have to play the card game, but why introduce something so stupid that most of the feedback players give is negative. Fix it. Listen to what we are saying because we who play the game know how it is. daily rewards should never be so hard or based on rng to get done. Why not let everyone who played a full game to have the daily reward?

I know and zenimax knows and everyone knows that the feedback concerning TOT is mostly negative and for a pretty good reason. Too much rng and stupid deck designs.

Aranax1914 · November 2023

I'm pretty sure the RNG you're talking about is just a skill issue friend. Sure there's rng but the game is actually very controlled compared to the average card game. and even if you claim the RNG is egregious, there are plenty of skillful games based on luck like poker. Also if the game is truly RNG like you say it is you wouldnt be losing 9/10 games that makes no sense.

Disclaimer i am also hot garbage at ToT but i've played card games before and know what im lacking.

spartaxoxo · November 2023

Dimorphos wrote: »

Most of the time it goes like this for me: out of 10 games I win one and lose all the rest because rng is not on my side and there is literally nothing I can do to counter that.

A 10% win rate is pretty low. If you'd like to learn a bit more, I'm sure someone would be happy to help review your gameplay for you.

Personofsecrets · November 2023

Yes, Sorcerer King games are one of the poorest and most unfun experiences that TOT has to offer. Unfortunately, the designers have made some changes too that deck which make 1st player even more favored.

kmfdm · November 2023

The RNG is super low in this deckbuilder, my win rate is about 80%, and I'm constantly ahead of the main leaderboard by several hundreds points, and while there are some bad luck situations, you have many tools to mitigate several of them - even in a row. Otherwise, you wouldn't see the same people at the top every season.

Naturally, some patrons are more RNG than others. For instance, I noticed that majority of players play Duke and Eagle, which is the most RNG combination. If your entire strategy is built around thinning your deck and waiting for all the Duke cards, you might see it as bad luck if your opponent gets more of them. This game is about being able to adopt to the situation on the board, and even change your strategy several times mid-game. And, you are so wrong about Orgnum, it's much more tactical, and if my opponent starts spamming it too early or unprepared, they usually lose badly.

kmfdm · November 2023

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Yes, Sorcerer King games are one of the poorest and most unfun experiences that TOT has to offer. Unfortunately, the designers have made some changes too that deck which make 1st player even more favored.

That's not true. I'm keeping statistics of my every match, and after about 4500 games, my win rate is 80.4% and 82.5% as 1st and 2nd player respectively.

Personofsecrets · November 2023

kmfdm wrote: »

The RNG is super low in this deckbuilder, my win rate is about 80%, and I'm constantly ahead of the main leaderboard by several hundreds points, and while there are some bad luck situations, you have many tools to mitigate several of them - even in a row. Otherwise, you wouldn't see the same people at the top every season.

Naturally, some patrons are more RNG than others. For instance, I noticed that majority of players play Duke and Eagle, which is the most RNG combination. If your entire strategy is built around thinning your deck and waiting for all the Duke cards, you might see it as bad luck if your opponent gets more of them. This game is about being able to adopt to the situation on the board, and even change your strategy several times mid-game. And, you are so wrong about Orgnum, it's much more tactical, and if my opponent starts spamming it too early or unprepared, they usually lose badly.

You are simply not playing against players of your skill level. I too have a 80% (79.7 today) win rate in ranked and 90% (88.1 today) win rate in unranked. Some individual players beat me more than 20% of the time, but it doesn't matter since I don't play those players or players of my skill level (whatever it may be) most of the time.

We would expect luck to matter more in a match as the skill of the players in that match converges. Win rate is a red herring when looking at how important luck is because win rate alone isn't a hollistic picture.

kmfdm wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Yes, Sorcerer King games are one of the poorest and most unfun experiences that TOT has to offer. Unfortunately, the designers have made some changes too that deck which make 1st player even more favored.

That's not true. I'm keeping statistics of my every match, and after about 4500 games, my win rate is 80.4% and 82.5% as 1st and 2nd player respectively.

And what are your results for matches that specificially have Sorcerer King? What are your results specifically since balance changes have impacted the 5 cost agents to make them more strong? That more specific information would help to disprove (or prove) what I wrote, not what you said. And again, the skill level of the players that you are playing against matters for this. At a certain skill differential, chance isn't going to matter as much.

kmfdm · November 2023

Personofsecrets wrote: »

You are simply not playing against players of your skill level. I too have a 80% (79.7 today) win rate in ranked and 90% (88.1 today) win rate in unranked. Some individual players beat me more than 20% of the time, but it doesn't matter since I don't play those players or players of my skill level (whatever it may be) most of the time.

We would expect luck to matter more in a match as the skill of the players in that match converges. Win rate is a red herring when looking at how important luck is because win rate alone isn't a hollistic picture.

That is absolutely right, but it also applies to esport card games like Magic the Gathering, which are also quite low on RNG and high on skill, but if the two players are fairly evenly skilled, it might come down to a few lucky draws as well. Card games inherently have some RNG. But in ToT, I still feel like I have a huge control over the game (some patrons with more control than others obviously) with enough tools to mitigate some degree of bad luck.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

And what are your results for matches that specificially have Sorcerer King? What are your results specifically since balance changes have impacted the 5 cost agents to make them more strong? That more specific information would help to disprove (or prove) what I wrote, not what you said. And again, the skill level of the players that you are playing against matters for this. At a certain skill differential, chance isn't going to matter as much.

I agree, my stats are historical over the year, and they might not capture the recent changes all that well. I also often feel like being first is an advantage, and I'm always somewhat relieved when I see my name first as the game starts, but my data just doesn't back that up, and with Orgnum, it is even more surprising, because my winning rate with Orgnum is 77.2% and 86.9% as 1st/2nd player respectively. I think this is due to the fact that most of the Orgnum 2-4 cost cards don't give any substantial advantage to the first player - less than some other patrons, since the only reasonably strong card is Serpentguard Rider, and that is 5-cost card, and since almost every game has at least 1 power card--Eagle is the most popular patron among my opponents--there's a 50:50 chance that the power card will be in the top 5 cards of the first player's deck, i.e. both players will have about the same chance to get a 5-cost card in the first round (sure, first player have a slight edge because even if they start with 4 gold, there might be a Barterer to remove that 5-cost card), but I think that most other patrons provide much better selection of 2-4 cost cards for the first player, so I don't think that Orgnum is that good option for the 1st player.

kmfdm · November 2023

Personofsecrets wrote: »

You are simply not playing against players of your skill level. I too have a 80% (79.7 today) win rate in ranked and 90% (88.1 today) win rate in unranked.

These stats are ranked only, I do not record unranked games, and I almost never play them. 80% in ranked is enough to end in top 3 at the end of the season, usually within a small group of a couple of players that are a few hundred points ahead of the main 'peloton'.

Personofsecrets · November 2023

@kmfdm , Yes, and TOT has a number of cards that are balanced well, but there could still be improvements. You mentioned Crow having some issues earlier and I would agree that it has some minor problems. Maybe something like costing Tolls at 5 so that it's harder to buy an economy crow card and make a writ in the same turn could help make luck even less of a factor.

An issue with the most recent update that I have is that cards which were already good were made to be a little too good. That includes the Psijic cards as well as Customs Seizure. There also have been some ongoing changes with Sorcerer King and I think that goes to show that the class wasn't particularly well designed from the perspective of not just the cards that it offers, but also regarding how it fit's into TOT as a whole. (Side Note: Pellin has also had a large number of changes which too goes to show the problematic nature of more narrow focused power generating strategies)

But anyhow, let's talk about Sorcerer King because that's what I'm getting to. I have recent anecdote that goes to show that I'm open to what you are writing. There is a NA player that exclusively uses Sorcerer King. When we play, they go first around 70% of games and have a pretty good record against me. Another high ranking players I was talking with reported that the Sorcerer King enthusiast goes first against them around 80% of games, but their win rate is closer to even.

So that is a huge difference in experience between myself and this other high ranked player. What's interesting is that though they do way better than I do in the environment of playing Sorcerer King games while going second, I have a generally better win rate than they do by 10% in both ranked and casual play.

And that's where the conversation sort of circles back. I think there is a reason for being relieved when being chosen as first player. It's definitely interesting that your data doesn't justify such feelings. That said, I have seen some other data posted here that seems to indicate balance issues between first and second player. Maybe @esoplayer123 can add to the conversation.

I definitely accept that said balance issue could be partly my play style which makes cards such as Serpentguard Rider problematic. After all, I almost never choose classes that offer power generating starter cards to be part of the game. Therefore, opponents have higher chances of getting 5 cost cards when I play against them. I won't contradict your specific Sorcerer King data (beyond the same commentary that it is data without reference to the skill level of opponents), but will say that another one of my points of view is to want all cards to be generally a little on the weak side as to help keep things as balanced as possible.

And the same questions can be asked at the designer level. What is the context of the data that they are using? How is Serpentguard Rider, Cephora's Insight, or especially the Customs Seizure change improve game balance? What is the concept of balance that they employ for their vision? Can a game which doesn't start with power generating starter cards leading to turn one coin flip scenarios in purchasing power be just a little more elevated?

Anyhow, maybe my speculation about Sorcerer king can be further proved or disproved in the future. I asked ExoY to integrate some more data keeping within the TOT addon. Specifically, I asked to keep details such as opponents and that could go a long way to giving us further insight into what the win rates are telling us.

kmfdm · November 2023

@Personofsecrets . I agree with most of the points you've made. I also prefer when the cards are a little weaker, because it gives me more control over the game and reduces the RNG aspect. I'm coming from Hero/Star Realms, Ascension, and Shards of Infinity, which have much more powerful cards in terms of power/cost or gold/cost ratio (for instance, you have a card in Hero Realms for 1-gold, which gives you 2 power and lets you remove a card from your hand or discard pile, or a card for 4 gold, which deals 7 damage and with 2-combo also destroys target agent), and these games are much more swingy and random, so I appreciate that ToT is a lot slower, and while I'm not saying that ToT has a perfect balance, it is much better than most of other deckbuilders.

I was also somewhat surprised by the recent patch, when they improved Customs/Insight/SG Rider, which were already fine. The most glaring issue now is the striking contrast between Customs Seizure and Hostile Takeover. The former is now a tier S card in my list. The change from free acquiring of 5-gold card to a 6-gold card is a massive upgrade, since almost each patron has a very powerful 6-gold card. On the other hand, Hostile Takeover is probably the worst card in the entire game, since there are only two cards from all patrons that cost 7 gold, and you need to have another Hlaalu card, otherwise its just another +1 power card, which you usually try to get rid of as fast as possible. Out of my thousands of games, I probably witnessed like 5 successful uses of the card to get Currency Exchange or Knights of SP in early rounds (which I assume is the point of the card), but vast majority of games, it was just a 'dead weight' in the deck.

Another slightly problematic aspect is the Duke. There is a reason why the designers of deckbuilders always try to avoid cards that allow you to draw more cards than 1. Draw 1 card is usually fine and can be offset with a higher cost of the card, but cards like Sq Oratory, Plifer, and Plunder, which allows you to draw 2 and 3 cards respectively, no matter how much they cost, are almost always avoided for obvious gameplay reasons.

Regarding my data about 1st/2nd player winning rate. It was a bold design choice to give the 2nd player +1 gold on the first round. In other deckbuilders, they usually try to penalize the first player instead (like drawing only 3 cards). Here, you are able to get 6-gold cards, which are very powerful across all patrons. In those games, where the 2nd player is able to get Oathman, Relicmaster, Armory, Dreaming Cave, Hira's End, Hel Shira Herald, they get a massive advantage right on the first round. But I cant be 100% sure, my data might not be representative, and what you are saying is actually true.

WitchyKiki · November 2023

Pick the right cards at the beginning of the game and it can heavily turn the tide in your favor. Its very hard to come back from some cards.

BahometZ · December 2023

Agree with OP. The ratio of effort to reward is truly abysmal.

BahometZ · December 2023

Addendum: ToT will never be worth it.

jsprague23 · May 24

100% Agree with the post, I have played CCG's for 18 years and the RNG for this game is atrocious. If RNG favors you early game it is very easy game - and visa versa. This game is highly combo based. As being such it is very dependent on favorable RNG for your hand. A common RNG aspect to this game is the cards on the board - you have no idea what card will replace the card on the board. If you have 6 gold on the table and there is a below average 3 cost card on the board what do you do? Do you take it and hope the card under isn't a game changing card for your opponent? Or do you just wait? I have been in the top 2% for this game and it really is just a *** show. Not going to waste my time - the 1 win daily is often not worth it. I would list some improvements for this game mode, but seeing as it has hardly been touched since its inception - most CCG's have frequent quality of life updates, but seeing as the main updates seem to just be add more decks, its a waste of time to provide feedback that no one cares about anyways.

jsprague23 · May 24

Furthermore, the comments about being matched against similarly skilled players are irrelevant as the skill cap for this game is very low. If you are matched against someone with a similar skill level, then you would expect to see around a 50% winrate, maybe a bit higher- really good players would be around 55%. Someone above mentioned an 80% winrate over 4500 games. If someone is having such an inflated winrate, that to me is a clear sign that something is wrong. I would also like to point out that if the daily rewards require a win and you are matched against someone of an equal skill level then it should be fairly common to only have to play 2 games to win. The majority of the time I either win every game over my 8 characters, or I will get stuck on one character playing for over an hour - this isn't really a great feeling or experience especially since the rewards for losing are very lackluster - a small coffer - little to no xp, and no skill leveling - at least when you lose at battlegrounds you get to level your assault and support skill lines, assuming you are participating. Also, if it takes more than 1 game to gain xp I believe that the amount of xp should increase to reflect the amount of effort you have put in to get the daily completed. 40k xp just feels pretty meh after an hour of grinding.

JustLovely · May 25

I'm still miffed that ZOS put dev time and money into something like ToT when so many other aspects of the actual game need attention. Then they have the audacity to claim ToT is PvP when it's just a card game that should be reserved for mobile devices, not gaming devices.

spartaxoxo · May 25

JustLovely wrote: »

I'm still miffed that ZOS put dev time and money into something like ToT when so many other aspects of the actual game need attention. Then they have the audacity to claim ToT is PvP when it's just a card game that should be reserved for mobile devices, not gaming devices.

Board and Card games are the original PvP. They existed long before video games. You wouldn't have PK games without them.

PvP stands for Player vs Player, not PK. PK is player killing. PvP is every type of game where a player's primary opponent is another human being.

It's still so strange to me that some ESO players haven't heard of Gwent, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering, Hearthstone, etc. It's like there's this entire type of game that completely escapes notice. I kind of thought they were more well known than that. 🤷🏿‍♀️

RomanRex · May 25

If PvP matches gave AP, I would consider playing.

Otherwise, never played it and see no reason to start.

SeaGtGruff · May 25

RomanRex wrote: »

If PvP matches gave AP, I would consider playing.

Otherwise, never played it and see no reason to start.

IMO, PvP ToT matches should only reward AP if they're being played in an AW zone against a player from an enemy alliance-- which is something that I think would be pretty awesome to be able to do.

Two enemies encounter each other in Cyrodiil.

One of them says to the other, "You look like you might be able to kill me, but I doubt that you can beat me at ToT."

The other snarls, "Them's fightin' words! I'm the best ToT player in the whole EP!"

"Well, then the EP must have pretty lousy ToT players" scoffs the DC knight.

"I'll show you! Let's play a match right here, right now, in that abandoned house right there!" The EP bravado smiles cruelly. "And the winner gets to kill the loser."

"You've got yourself a deal!" says the DC knight. "By the way, how much gold are you carrying? I've run up a tab in the tavern back at the base, and would like to pay it off. Eh, don't bother answering, I'll find out soon enough."

So the two enemy players set up a rickety table inside the abandoned house and begin playing. The match drags on as each player makes a bit of progress while countering their opponent's progress using Rajhin. Three steps forward and two steps back, up to 40 Prestige and beyond.

And then suddenly, when both players are finally within spitting distance of 80 Prestige, the match abruptly ends-- when a passing AD mage peeks into the abandoned house and incinerates both of them.

RomanRex · May 26

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

RomanRex wrote: »

If PvP matches gave AP, I would consider playing.

Otherwise, never played it and see no reason to start.

IMO, PvP ToT matches should only reward AP if they're being played in an AW zone against a player from an enemy alliance-- which is something that I think would be pretty awesome to be able to do.

Two enemies encounter each other in Cyrodiil.

One of them says to the other, "You look like you might be able to kill me, but I doubt that you can beat me at ToT."

The other snarls, "Them's fightin' words! I'm the best ToT player in the whole EP!"

"Well, then the EP must have pretty lousy ToT players" scoffs the DC knight.

"I'll show you! Let's play a match right here, right now, in that abandoned house right there!" The EP bravado smiles cruelly. "And the winner gets to kill the loser."

"You've got yourself a deal!" says the DC knight. "By the way, how much gold are you carrying? I've run up a tab in the tavern back at the base, and would like to pay it off. Eh, don't bother answering, I'll find out soon enough."

So the two enemy players set up a rickety table inside the abandoned house and begin playing. The match drags on as each player makes a bit of progress while countering their opponent's progress using Rajhin. Three steps forward and two steps back, up to 40 Prestige and beyond.

And then suddenly, when both players are finally within spitting distance of 80 Prestige, the match abruptly ends-- when a passing AD mage peeks into the abandoned house and incinerates both of them.

That’ll never happen. No one goes into Cryodiil looking to play ToT. Honestly, most people don’t do either that much.

This is why no one is ever going to start playing it. Improvements must be built into the queue finder and be easy to access.

jsprague23 · July 1

Alright so a couple of ideas to improve the game -

1. I think the biggest issue with the game is how quickly you can get steamrolled by another player - especially if they get early gold cards - 2,3 or 4 gold cards, or the yellow card that costs 4 to buy and allows you to get a card up to 6 from the shop.
a. Only allow neutral cards to appear on the very first round - yes that seems a little slow, but this would allow a lot of counterplay and more skilled players would know to wait until they had enough gold to risk turning over a card that they might be able to afford.
b. If you played first last game, you cannot play first again - especially if you're playing against the same player. Look, going first is a HUGE advantage. It really can make or a break a game - seen it many times. I understand that this might slow queue times so an alternative might be if you have to queue up and you AND your opponent both went first last game, whoever has gone first the least amount of times in a row would get a higher chance of going first.
a. Have an indicator that shows what color of card will be placed next after another card is picked - a little bit of a handicap perhaps, but could provide interesting strategy choices.

2. For a lot of players, fresh content helps keep the game alive and might even see players who got bored or didn't like a certain mechanic to come back to playing ToT (kind of how I feel with BG's). When a game mode feels untouched by the dev team it can lead people to share this view as well. A couple of ideas to increase player base:

a. Introduce cycling of buffs and nerfs to existing cards on a patch by patch basis. Tweaking a few cards here and there can really bring new life into a game. There are plenty of games that have very rigid playability but because of the amount of change that occurs reguarly through balance changes it really breathes new life into a game.
b. Introduce new cards to existing sets. Why should we only be able to get the same cards for sets that we love? Wouldn't it be cool to see new cards for our favorite sets?
c. Allow players to choose which cards they can bring into a game for a set. Don't like crazy raven draw mayhem? Wouldn't that be neat if you could decide which cards you could use in a set and which ones you didn't like - of course with a minimum number of cards to include (this number could remain the same as it is now if we saw new cards included in sets)

3. General quality of life ideas.
a. Increase rewards as well as xp given. Pretty straightforward, especially if you lose that first game of ToT, making the xp gain higher would make sense imo for a subsequent win.
b. Allow banning of certain decks in matchmaking. We all know that one player who insists on playing the same deck over and over. Being able to select a ban deck at the beginning of the match would really introduce some interesting strategic depth. This could also benefit the game if players feel one deck is a little to overtuned to swing a game to quickly *cough cough* ravens *cough cough*.
c. Introduce events for ToT! Why is there no event love for ToT? Zeal of Zenithar, Jubilee, Whitestrake's Mayhem, New Life, etc. Maybe include bonus loot, or even change a global rule! Never not fun to play something "OP" for a week or so to bring fun and increase the event immersion!

jsprague23 · July 1

Oh and 1 more thing! Please remove the "hack" that higher ranking players use to keep from losing as much ranking when they see they are a losing a game. Instead of playing it out, they forfeit, and they lose less points ( I think?) and the winner gains fewer ranking points. If someone forfeits it should be the same amount of a lose to their rank as if they played the whole game, that is just not fair and is poor sportsmanship.