Tales of Tribute - game is TERRIBLE for new players. What is even going on?

Gabriel_H · November 15

Dahveed wrote: »

You typed this as I was writing my latest paragraph about this: Yes you can barely see it, but IMO it needs to be way more obvious than a tiny flash of a tiny icon that anyone (even veterans) might miss if they look down at their phone for one fifth of a second.

I do agree that it is a little stupid that I can go grab a drink from my fridge in the middle of a boss fight without issue, but taking my eyes of a ToT game for 1 second can cause issues.

SeaGtGruff · November 16

Taril wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I'm actually inclined to wish that ZOS would remove certain information, such as the ability to see your opponent's cards, or see which cards you've got in your draw pile, because to me that kind of ability in a card game seems an awful lot like cheating.)

For a regular CCG/TCG, yes. That would be the case.

But for a deckbuilding card game like ToT, it's not cheating. It's literally information you'd have anyway by using your eyes.

You know what both players starting decks are. You know what cards each player buys. You know what cards each player plays (Or tosses, because graveyards/cooldown piles are freely available for anyone to look at - As is standard because it's necessary to avoid cheating). Ergo, you know what cards are remaining in each players decks.

The only thing you don't know, is the order of the cards. Which is where things like Psijic cards "Toss" ability comes in, to let you scry the next few cards.

Yes, I already understand that logic. But I think it's akin to counting cards in Blackjack, which as far as I know casinos do not like. Not everyone has the memory and know-how needed to count cards effectively, but giving players the ability to look at the cards in their opponents' decks is basically giving them instant access to a card-counting ability, which I think is akin to cheating. When I see streamers playing Tales of Tribute, most of them spend more time looking at the cards in their decks and in their opponents' decks, and even in the draw pile for the Tavern, than they spend looking at the cards in play.

I get that players really like that ability and would probably riot if it were ever taken away, but I still think it smells like blatant cheating. Just my opinion, and no one else's opinions about it are going to change mine.

Taril · November 16

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Yes, I already understand that logic. But I think it's akin to counting cards in Blackjack, which as far as I know casinos do not like.

Except it's not like that at all.

In Blackjack, they specifically don't give you access to the knowledge of what's in the deck. That's why they use specificly tailored decks that aren't standard 52 card decks and why they periodically provide new decks to dealers.

In Blackjack "Card Counting" isn't literally counting cards, but rather using systems to evaluate the value of known cards (I.e. Your hand and the dealers face up card)

In a deckbuilding card game, you LITERALLY do have all the information. You know everything already. You can literally see what cards the opponent buys to put into their deck.

It's not cheating because it's not providing you with anything that you don't ALREADY have so long as you're actually playing the game.

Saying it's cheating is like saying "Oh it's cheating to see where the opposing players are in a football game" or "It's cheating to see the dart board when playing darts"

Hamish999 · November 16

"Tales of Tribute - game is TERRIBLE"

You could have left the whole first comment as just that.

agelonestar · November 16

It’s a dreadful game - overly complex, totally out of context with the main game, and as boring as watching paint dry.

Anything locked behind this total waste of time = I’m just not doing it.

ChuckyPayne · November 16

This feature is not me. Too complex, like this game, if want to be a good dps a good helaer or tank, need to learn lots of thing always and again and again. This is not a job for me, just a caual game. Thus I just skip this game mode. The rewards the progress is nothing, no motivation to do. IA I do it 3-4 times a week only act 1, but there is reward, there are motivation, and some progress. In this card game nothing.

pklemming · November 16

It is pretty terrible for those that took the time to learn how to play it. It is worse, they locked some stuff behind it.

Renato90085 · November 16

because zerith-var quest
i try do tot
i only12.5% win rate for newplayer npc...

o_Primate_o · November 16

cyberjanet wrote: »

After doing the tutorial on every single one of my nine characters across two servers, I have only the vaguest idea of what's happening.

The tutorials suck. Get on coms with a friend or guildie who knows the game and have them explain why they choose each card the buy. I've done that for ppl. It's about trying to set up your deck for best combos and agents. I dislike the use of patrons BTW so I use them sparingly.

HatchetHaro · November 22

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

In ToT, you are either paying attention or your not.

I won't discourage the idea of additional features that offer more information. At the same time, knowing exactly what happened to your Bankorai Sentry probably wasn't going to help you. It died. It became a sunk cost. At that point, you can easily evaluate the information that you do have at your fingertips, such as the contents of both players decks, and move on.

I'm actually inclined to wish that ZOS would remove certain information, such as the ability to see your opponent's cards, or see which cards you've got in your draw pile, because to me that kind of ability in a card game seems an awful lot like cheating. But I know that a lot of ToT players use that ability constantly, and would riot if it were removed. It's just that it feels "dirty" to me.

Players start with all the same cards, and the cards being played and acquired are also clearly visible. All the information is already there anyways, but without that feature, it would be locked behind an unfun memorization minigame, available to only the most diehard of players at levels of card-counting nigh unheard of.

Peeking at opponent cards is a very valid strategy. Top players employ it all the time in regular play to prioritize and deny cards from the shop and also to set up surprise prestige wins that the opponent cannot counter.

Personofsecrets · November 22

It used to be that I had to count my deck in order to know how many cards to dump with Psijic scrying.

Now I have times where I forget to count the deck before playing the Psijic scrying cards and just correctly intuit how many cards have to be dumped to have an empty deck at the end of the turn. I guess, after one does it enough, the brain just makes a shortcut...

As someone who plays in such a way, I see zero value added to the game by disabling the peek at the deck features. It's one of the things that digital card games can do, but often don't, but TOT has been designed to do quite well.

It makes TOT unique and has the potential to help players make optimal plays by giving them better information.

I personally don't want to play against blind opponents. I want players to play as well as possible. Peeking helps that.

If we are going to make up, from thin air, things that are cheating, then I think it's cheating when the opponent picks Mora. I don't like Mora. I don't like what the deck does. I perceive it as giving players who have low chances of beating me another 1% or 2% odds. It's cheating and obviously shouldn't be allowed.

SeaGtGruff · November 22

Personofsecrets wrote: »

If we are going to make up, from thin air, things that are cheating, then I think it's cheating when the opponent picks Mora. I don't like Mora. I don't like what the deck does. I perceive it as giving players who have low chances of beating me another 1% or 2% odds. It's cheating and obviously shouldn't be allowed.

I did not say it was cheating, I said it smells like cheating to me. I even use it, myself-- but I do so very rarely, because I prefer to focus on the game and not sit there using the "look at cards" feature to look at my cards, look at their cards, look at my cards, look at their cards, look at my cards, look at their cards, over and over and over again, constantly, spending 99.9% of my time doing that, the way I see other players doing when they're playing ToT while streaming.

As for what you call cheating, anyone who reads the ToT forum is probably familiar with your frequent criticisms of certain patrons and some of their cards. This needs to be nerfed, that needs to be buffed, lower the cost of this card, increase the cost of that card, etc. I get that you really enjoy this card game (so do I), and that you enjoy sharing your thoughts sometimes (so do I), but sometimes this forum reads like the PvP forum where players frequently complain about certain classes and their skills, or demand that the devs balance PvP separately from PvE, etc.

My point being, if you want to feel free to gripe about certain patrons and their decks without other forum members griping at you for expressing your opinions, then what's wrong with me expressing my opinions? If other players want to spend 99.9% of their ToT matches going back and forth between peeking at their cards and then at their opponent's cards-- oh, and peeking at the Tavern's draw pile, I forgot to include that-- then great for them, they're playing the card game the way they want. But FOR ME and the way I enjoy playing, it's something I want to fall back on only about 5% of the time, partly because I prefer to focus on the board and not psyche myself out trying to over-analyze what my opponent MIGHT be able to do this turn or the next or the next after that, and partly because TO ME it smells like cheating, similar to counting cards or looking at your opponent's cards in the mirror or whatever. I get that it technically is NOT cheating, but I think the players I see streaming ToT overuse it instead of just playing the dang game and reacting to what the other player actually does instead of fretting about what they might do. But I don't hop into their stream chat to accuse them of cheating or ask them to stop peeking at the cards, because they are free to play the game how they wish.

Ingenon · November 22

I have played through Tales of Tribute tutorial multiple times, and I still don't understand this card game.

Eventually, I will need to complete any ToT daily quest if I want to unlock Zartith-var passive account wide. Not sure if the unlock will ever happen ...

HatchetHaro · November 23

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

If we are going to make up, from thin air, things that are cheating, then I think it's cheating when the opponent picks Mora. I don't like Mora. I don't like what the deck does. I perceive it as giving players who have low chances of beating me another 1% or 2% odds. It's cheating and obviously shouldn't be allowed.

I did not say it was cheating, I said it smells like cheating to me. I even use it, myself-- but I do so very rarely, because I prefer to focus on the game and not sit there using the "look at cards" feature to look at my cards, look at their cards, look at my cards, look at their cards, look at my cards, look at their cards, over and over and over again, constantly, spending 99.9% of my time doing that, the way I see other players doing when they're playing ToT while streaming.

Your examples of people spending their time card peeking only shows that those players are simply learning how to peek at cards and strategize, and are doing so only on their owns turns.

Any top player will be card peeking when it is the opponent's turn, and when their turn comes around, they slam their cards down, signal next turn, then go back to peeking and strategizing while waiting for their opponent.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

As for what you call cheating, anyone who reads the ToT forum is probably familiar with your frequent criticisms of certain patrons and some of their cards. This needs to be nerfed, that needs to be buffed, lower the cost of this card, increase the cost of that card, etc. I get that you really enjoy this card game (so do I), and that you enjoy sharing your thoughts sometimes (so do I), but sometimes this forum reads like the PvP forum where players frequently complain about certain classes and their skills, or demand that the devs balance PvP separately from PvE, etc.

My point being, if you want to feel free to gripe about certain patrons and their decks without other forum members griping at you for expressing your opinions, then what's wrong with me expressing my opinions?

There will always be game mechanics and strategies that feel unfair to play against; of course people can, will, and are allowed to complain about those. But to allege that performing an in-game mechanic or using a common strategy is "cheating" is simply absurd.

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If other players want to spend 99.9% of their ToT matches going back and forth between peeking at their cards and then at their opponent's cards-- oh, and peeking at the Tavern's draw pile, I forgot to include that-- then great for them, they're playing the card game the way they want. But FOR ME and the way I enjoy playing, it's something I want to fall back on only about 5% of the time, partly because I prefer to focus on the board and not psyche myself out trying to over-analyze what my opponent MIGHT be able to do this turn or the next or the next after that, and partly because TO ME it smells like cheating, similar to counting cards or looking at your opponent's cards in the mirror or whatever. I get that it technically is NOT cheating, but I think the players I see streaming ToT overuse it instead of just playing the dang game and reacting to what the other player actually does instead of fretting about what they might do. But I don't hop into their stream chat to accuse them of cheating or ask them to stop peeking at the cards, because they are free to play the game how they wish.

Well, unlike you, many people play to win. It's kind of the whole point of zero-sum games like Tales of Tribute.

To put it simply, Tales of Tribute is a game of optimizing outcomes. It is about developing strategies for possible upcoming draws or increasing the chances of you getting a good draw in your upcoming turns. It's about risk versus reward, and then minimizing risk to attain that same reward.

It's all mathematics, and I'm Asian.

P.S. Counting cards is not cheating. Casinos ban it because it is a skill that flips the house odds and that hurts their income. It is also irrelevant to the conversation at hand because Tales of Tribute is not blackjack.

Diebesgut · November 23

... 2 years ago i managed to solve the first ToT quest, just to avoid this ToT screaming NPC.
Now i had to win a daily game against another "easy" NPC player (seems to me they made them more difficult)

took me 8 hours to win a game, i had to learn the basics, lost 20 games and won 1 game per coincidence.

for german players maybe this video helps to understand the basics

https://youtu.be/m0NA-Hep8A4?si=nOAwSCzjUK4P-Jju

The Khajiit is save now for all Characters but it was a long and tough road 🤮🤮🤮

I hope i must NEVER touch this bad card game again.

Djennku · November 23

The best thing to do is take initiative and learn what the cards, patrons, etc. do, and understand how the game works, which things like watching tutorials, getting a friend to play with/teach you, and even reading what the cards do in the collections UI.

I remember when High Isle came out, and I had zero clue how to do things. It was frustrating, and I lost more games than won any, but like anything new, it takes time, patience, and practice to get good at.

Most of the time having outside info helped me get a grasp on the basics, and playing a specific deck multiple times even when losing alot taught me how to utilize it fully. The devks also have specific 'gimmicks' and themes that make each unique, and once you understand how each plays, you can find other decks to combo with a few chosen favorites, and which ones are better to choose to counter what your opponnent picks.

Again, this, like learning and mastering anything else in the game (looking at you dungeon and trial savvy people), and I'd recommend patience when working it out for the first time.

You'll end up either loving it or finding it's not your style, and honestly, you aren't obligated to love everythibg ESO has to offer.

Thoriorz · November 23

DigiAngel wrote: »

Heh....glad I never bothered with it...looked like a complete waste of time.

Unfortunately, if you want Lead for the music box, you have to play ToT.
Currently around 3 months of doing NPC daily (3 wins vs NPC) and no Lead (for 2/3 codex), this is just a pain when you have to play something you don't like and every day I hope for Lead drop and every day just disappointment...
Really great design..

MindOfTheSwarm · November 23

I think patron bonuses need nerfs. Delmene Hlaalu and Red Eagle need the Crow treatment: or at least give Red Eagle a higher cost. I would take a closer look at Rahjin too. I don’t mind the curse cards but they are abusable. Perhaps increase cost or change the Favored to something else, maybe a 4 Gold for a 3 Break.

SeaGtGruff · November 23

HatchetHaro wrote: »

But to allege that performing an in-game mechanic or using a common strategy is "cheating" is simply absurd.

I knew my opinion would be an unpopular one, but I'll repeat again that I did NOT say it IS cheating, I said it SMELLS LIKE cheating to me. Perhaps the nuances of my wording are too subtle, so I'll try to phrase it differently.

Perhaps you've heard some streamer playing a game for the first time and talking about some mechanic in the game, and saying something along the lines of "Wow, this mechanic is so broken that using it is almost like cheating!" Well, I certainly have heard streamers say that. And THAT is what I mean. Being able to freely peek at your opponent's cards is such a broken mechanic that using it is almost like cheating-- or as I had put it, it "smells like" cheating.

It might be a legitimate mechanic that's built into the game, and it might not give you any information you wouldn't already be able to know anyway if you were keeping careful notes about what cards make up each patron's deck-- which, by the way, can vary depending on which cards have been upgraded, so technically you shouldn't know ahead of time which versions of those cards are in your opponent's deck, should you?-- as well as which cards your opponent starts with and which cards they had bought from the Tavern, but it is such a "broken" mechanic that it's almost like cheating.

If you disagree (which I expect you do), then I ask you to ask yourself these questions:

If the information you get from peeking at your opponent's cards is something you should already know anyway, then why is the mechanic needed? Shouldn't you already know the information anyway?

If you do already know the information but are peeking because it's so much more convenient than having to keep things straight in your own mind, then isn't it sort of like a crutch to rely on it constantly instead of just keeping things straight in your own mind in the first place?

I don't care what your answers are, so I'm not asking for a reply; I'm just giving you something to think about.

I would also challenge you to try to play matches without peeking at all. If you feel that you are unable to play as effectively and win as often without peeking, then I submit to you that perhaps the peeking mechanic is "SO BROKEN" that it is almost like an unfair advantage to use it against someone who isn't using it. After all, it isn't telling you anything you shouldn't already be aware of, so using it or not using it SHOULD be equivalent to each other-- and if they aren't, then it's "broken."

I'll try to clarify my feelings by giving a different example about a different game. One of the activities I enjoy several times a week is playing Kakuro-- like a crossword puzzle, but with digits instead of letters, and you must figure out the digits based on how they add up horizontally and vertically. I have a Kakuro app on my iPad that I play, and as is commonplace with such apps it has features provided to help you, such as "pencilling in" each square with all the digits that are potentially correct, or listing all possible digit combinations which add up to that field's sum.

When you use those two options together, it makes solving the puzzle so much easier that the puzzle practically solves itself. And that actually sucks the fun and challenge out of doing the puzzles. But those options can also be a godsend if you get stuck and need help.

So for me, it boils down to this question-- Why am I doing these puzzles in the first place?

It's because I enjoy the challenge of trying to work out the solutions. Having the app do most of the work isn't as challenging, which sort of defeats the very reason I'm doing the puzzle in the first place. That doesn't mean I want the options removed from the app, or that I never use them myself, but I do try to keep their use to a minimum, otherwise I'm CHEATING MYSELF out of the fun and challenge of solving the puzzles on my own.

Getting back to ToT and this peeking mechanism which so many players use so often, I personally think it would have been better if there had been limits built into the mechanic, such as you can peek only a certain number of times per turn, or maybe you can peek only for a certain number of seconds each time, or both. Maybe then all of the "top players" wouldn't sit there flipping back and forth, back and forth, between their cards and their opponent's card, almost as if they're doing it like a bad habit (such as shaking ones leg) done without self-awareness out of sheer boredom or nervousness or whatever. But there were no limits built into it, and adding limits now would go over like a lead balloon.

I know my opinion is unpopular, but it's my opinion and you aren't going to change it by telling me you think it's absurd, any more than I'm likely to change your opinion by explaining why I think it's a broken mechanic and a crutch to rely heavily on it. So you go and keep doing you while I keep doing me,

AzuraFan · November 23

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I knew my opinion would be an unpopular one, but I'll repeat again that I did NOT say it IS cheating, I said it SMELLS LIKE cheating to me.

I've only played once against a human, but I didn't even know you could peek at the other player's cards. It would have never occurred to me to do so, because yeah, in any serious card game, it would be cheating.

In card games, you usually have to rely on your memory if you want to keep track of what an opponent has played or discarded. It's part of the challenge of the game. But that's the problem. It's a challenge. So in ToT, the game lets you peek. Often in digital games, these types of easy mode features are present to make the game more accessible, which is understandable.

Another reason it might be there for ToT is that the interface is just so bad that it would be difficult to keep track of what's being played and discarded - as the subject of this thread states. So even if you were up to the challenge, you wouldn't be able to do it because stuff just flashes by too quickly.

So I'd just go with the flow and peek, even though it will feel wrong. It's not wrong for ToT - just easy.

Taril · November 23

AzuraFan wrote: »

In card games, you usually have to rely on your memory if you want to keep track of what an opponent has played or discarded.

No you don't.

Card games always have rules where you're literally allowed to look at the opponents cards and look through their graveyard (Or other zones where cards that have been played/discarded have gone). The only exception are cards that are specifically played face down.

Even for cards that let you look at the opponent's hand, the rules allow you to keep looking while you write down the cards they have.

With the only restriction being that you're not doing such things explicitly to waste time (Due to the way that tournaments function, there are often time limits for games where some people can abuse the rules that are in place for time outs - I.e. Highest health/lifepoints wins thus wasting time will cause a auto game loss)

Such things are in play to ensure that people have all the information that they are allowed to have, as well as to prevent cheating (As if the opponent can't see your discards, it's easy to cheat by putting things in that shouldn't be there or swapping a card that should be discarded with one in hand to keep an important card in hand)

Along with other things that also promote fair play like being able to ask a player how many cards they have in hand or ask them about statistics (Like how much health/lifepoints they have, or what game phase they are in, who has priority etc) - Again, so long as such requests are considered reasonable and not viewed as trying to waste time or simply be annoying.

The only difference ToT has over other games, is the ability to look at a list of cards in deck/hand. Which is not possible in paper versions of deckbuilders. Though the ability is not unfounded, given you can simply write down cards bought and removed and thus cross reference full decklists against visible cards to see what remains which provides the same effect, just with a little bit of manual effort involved.

AzuraFan · November 23

Taril wrote: »

Card games always have rules where you're literally allowed to look at the opponents cards and look through their graveyard (Or other zones where cards that have been played/discarded have gone).

I've never played a card game that has a rule that lets you look at your opponent's cards/graveyard/whatever. So it's not true that card games always have that rule. I'll take your word for it that some do.

As far as ToT goes, since it's allowed, it's not cheating.

Getting back to the topic of the thread, I do think the game could do with a much better tutorial and a recap of each turn. Like I said, I didn't even know you could look at your opponent's cards until I read it in this thread. It's difficult to learn from what a more skilled opponent is doing when I can't even see what it is they're doing/done because everything happens so quickly on-screen, not that I'm all that interested in playing ToT. Too much RNG in the mix for me.

TheImperfect · November 23

Tales of Tribute is a learning process for all players and everyone who comes to it fresh. Players who have been here a while still had to start it in exactly the same way. It's a game where you learn by doing it, better to keep practicing on npc's if you don't like the group mode. It all becomes clear after some games and each deck becomes learnt.