Zenimax, please, change Sorcerer-King Orgnum patron

DinoZavr

As for now, the game when the Sorcerer-King Orgnum desk is selected turns into very boring spamming the patron competition from move one.
Normally none of the players have enough gold to buy anything (except maybe 2g cards) from the Tavern.
The only viable counterplay when your opponent spams Sorcerer-King Orgnum patron each move - is to spam it yourself,
otherwise you simple do not have enough time to build a desk with reasonable power generation and combos (and in many cases Tavern's choices deserve better).
How on Earth this refers to the "desk building"?
Using this desk patron does not focus on desk building, which simply contradicts the very idea of the game.
Dear @ZOS, please, make some serious corrections to the Sorcerer-King Orgnum patron, at this moment it is simply unbearable.

One of Rich's interviews mention 12 different desks were in development. Replace the entire desk, maybe?
Or, at the very least, please, correct the patron action to slow down prestige generation, it is way too fast, from my humble point of view.

P.S. i realize this is debatable, but i am still looking for the strategy to effectively counter Orgnum patron spam, but without a good set of Ansei cards you return from the cooldown pile, this seems too hard, and with current power gaining speed, provided by the said spam, you don't have enough time to build a desk, capable to resist this one-button spam brute-force playstyle.

Casdha

Did you see this thread?

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/609440/sorcer-king-orgnum-counter-strategies

DinoZavr

@Casdha, thank you.
Now - i did. The explanations by @dmnqwk are good, but, in my concern, not enough.

The issue is that you are not fighting "just" Orgnum, but, normally you face Orgnum + St.Pelin (as there are cheap cards your opponent is still able to buy on the change remaining after spending 3 gold on clicking Orgnum patron. These cards just add power (and in lucky combos cases - even the extra coins. Also the Orgnum desk itself provides cheap cards to raise prestige), so during the race your opponents' number of cards (and, thus, amount of power, generated by the patron spam) grows faster than in @dmnqwk math. This, certainly depends on luck, but not much, as your opponent buys any cheap non-contract cards available to add weight to theirs desk.
And this does not depend on luck. They get guaranteed rapid power generation no matter what the Tavern offers, as they buy only the cheap cards to increase theirs desk cards numbers. And what do you do if the Tavern does not offer you Crows?
I tried Crows+Hlaalu to counter that with the idea to sacrifice played cards to Hlaalu patron, but, again, this is quite slow (compared to your foe's power gaining speed) and very dependent on luck (cards offered by the Tavern).

TL/DR; the second desk to be used together with Orgnum is St.Pelin, and this combo, in my opinion, provides efficient and fast power generation - very difficult to counter and very dependent on luck.

Hawkeye

Cmon. why is it the minute someone wins or they think another has some sort of advantage we cry nerf. Learn to combat it. It is not unbeatable.

DinoZavr

@Hawkeye, i got level 8, and, obviously, i got the desk, so in many cases that one that wins is me.
I am not only seeking the strategy to counter Orgnum, but observing what other players do to counter the issue in question.
I spam patron and just watch. Yet had not seen effective countermeasures. Most of games with Orgnum result in both players just spam that patron favor button.
That results in the very boring games.

Casdha

I gave my strategy and I win more than I loose those matches, why because I know how to ignore the bait.

If you start chasing it before you're ready you will never have enough coins to buy needed cards and they will get them all because they were ready. That or it is a bluff play to get you to start early. If it was a bluff play they will quit in a few turns because they don't have the cards to sustain it. (edit: watch out for the bluff play it may mean they are playing for patrons and trying to distract you kind of like an early Duke turn)

I also don't choose it unless someone chooses Duke or Pelin first because I need to learn more strategy for other deck mixtures. My favorite matches now are with Hlaalu, Red Eagle, Rajhin and Celarus because there are so many strategies and few point cards. That is the mix I need to get better at so I play it as much as I can and I still loose a ton to that mix.

Hawkeye

Casdha wrote: »

I gave my strategy and I win more than I loose those matches, why because I know how to ignore the bait.

If you start chasing it before you're ready you will never have enough coins to buy needed cards and they will get them all because they were ready. That or it is a bluff play to get you to start early. If it was a bluff play they will quit in a few turns because they don't have the cards to sustain it. (edit: watch out for the bluff play it may mean they are playing for patrons and trying to distract you kind of like an early Duke turn)

I also don't choose it unless someone chooses Duke or Pelin first because I need to learn more strategy for other deck mixtures. My favorite matches now are with Hlaalu, Red Eagle, Rajhin and Celarus because there are so many strategies and few point cards. That is the mix I need to get better at so I play it as much as I can and I still loose a ton to that mix.

Totally agree. Rajhin is one of my favs now. At first I hated it.

dmnqwk

I mean, I fully agree that Sorc-King Orgnum is poorly designed, specifically the favoured power.

I find it strange how the Crow patron is unusable on favoured, but the Sorc King is encouraged to be spammed non-stop, punishing a player who doesn't use it because of just how powerful it is (if the first use is on 12 cards, it's 3 coins for 3 power... an insane level that gets better after 4 uses).

Since the power level of the Sorc King cards is high (2 prestige on basic cheap cards... yikes!) to also have such a powerful Patron ability is a sure sign that the game developers made a mistake in creating a deck to tempt us to grind out completion.

If Sorc King does not get tempered in a meaningful way (that is to say, change the game from a battle over this one patron) it will cause people to play it less, reducing further resources being devoted to it... and end up with it as a failure that harms future sales. (Any time someone comes into this MMO there will be a chance they look at the card game as indication whether to play it... if the game failed, they might view the MMO as a whole as a failure and avoid it... which wouldn't exactly be fair)

DinoZavr

@Casdha, as we are just discussing.
What do i do when i decide to spam Orgnum:
The first patron i select is Celarus. Then whatever my opponent does - my next pick is Orgnum
Celarus has several cheap gold-producing cards, and, as it is, basically anti-Rajhin desk - it does not allow my opponent to win solely relying on Celarus alone. Also i am guaranteed against my opponents patrons victory as i would never buy an agent.
If my opponent selects Orgnum, well, that is even better - i go for Rajhin, as using this patron only benefits Orgnum spam.
If my opponent selects first (and theirs choice is not Orgnum), my choice is clear: Orgnum + Celarus or Rajhin + Celarus if my foe has chosen Orgnum at theirs first pick.
Even the very desk selection predecides if we ll have a patron spam race.
And "not-a-bluff" indicator is also quite clear: just watch if your opponent is not removing cards from theirs desk.

Ginge

I think Orgnum gives an interesting game. Yes, it dominates that game, but becomes a very interesting strategic battle giving some very close games

Casdha

DinoZavr wrote: »

@Casdha, as we are just discussing.
What do i do when i decide to spam Orgnum:
The first patron i select is Celarus. Then whatever my opponent does - my next pick is Orgnum
Celarus has several cheap gold-producing cards, and, as it is, basically anti-Rajhin desk - it does not allow my opponent to win solely relying on Celarus alone. Also i am guaranteed against my opponents patrons victory as i would never buy an agent.
If my opponent selects Orgnum, well, that is even better - i go for Rajhin, as using this patron only benefits Orgnum spam.
If my opponent selects first (and theirs choice is not Orgnum), my choice is clear: Orgnum + Celarus or Rajhin + Celarus if my foe has chosen Orgnum at theirs first pick.
Even the very desk selection predecides if we ll have a patron spam race.
And "not-a-bluff" indicator is also quite clear: just watch if your opponent is not removing cards from theirs desk.

Sound about right to me except I only start spamming if I'm ready. The only reason I choose it when I do in deck selection is to show that Duke, Palin can be beat, it is not a meta. With the exception of extremely bad draws.

NeKryXe

The Sorcerer-King Orgnum is absolutely pathetic. Every time I get some loser picking it I already know that it'll be a ridiculous race in two turns to start all the stupidity of clicking the patron forever. I've been playing many card games for ages and this is by far the worst game design I ever saw. Whoever designed should be thinking of retirement by now. Sorry, but that's a really hideous game design.

Anyway, by now everybody knows how awful and boring it is and I'm pretty sure that it's only selected by players who have no idea what to do without it and just play purely by luck.

I still have some hope in ToT, and because of that I never select that deck.

Removing the Sorcerer-King Orgnum would be the best update to ToT.

Casdha

NeKryXe wrote: »

The Sorcerer-King Orgnum is absolutely pathetic. Every time I get some loser picking it I already know that it'll be a ridiculous race in two turns to start all the stupidity of clicking the patron forever. I've been playing many card games for ages and this is by far the worst game design I ever saw. Whoever designed should be thinking of retirement by now. Sorry, but that's a really hideous game design.

Anyway, by now everybody knows how awful and boring it is and I'm pretty sure that it's only selected by players who have no idea what to do without it and just play purely by luck.

I still have some hope in ToT, and because of that I never select that deck.

Removing the Sorcerer-King Orgnum would be the best update to ToT.

Look at the bright side, it is about the easiest Achievement to get in ToT, hit the Patron 10 times, done and maybe even in one match.

Rouz

NeKryXe wrote: »

The Sorcerer-King Orgnum is absolutely pathetic. Every time I get some loser picking it I already know that it'll be a ridiculous race in two turns to start all the stupidity of clicking the patron forever. I've been playing many card games for ages and this is by far the worst game design I ever saw. Whoever designed should be thinking of retirement by now. Sorry, but that's a really hideous game design.

Anyway, by now everybody knows how awful and boring it is and I'm pretty sure that it's only selected by players who have no idea what to do without it and just play purely by luck.

I still have some hope in ToT, and because of that I never select that deck.

Removing the Sorcerer-King Orgnum would be the best update to ToT.

I've come to appreciate it. In a game where its RNG that decides the matches and you've got a small selection of cards that carry entire games on their own, I'd rather get it over with quick. Instead of spending 15-30 minutes losing or winning (depending on who get the good cards first), it only takes 3-6 minutes. Get 4 games done in the time frame it takes to do 1. Maybe if they ever make this game more dependent on skill I'd care. But with a leaderboard of absent players. Where you'll have people who are rank 200+ fighting people in the top 30. The lack of balance. The poor tavern design. A single win/loss = 30-50 positions on the leaderboard. It's pretty clear the competitive scene is not in a good spot.

NeKryXe

Rouz wrote: »

NeKryXe wrote: »

The Sorcerer-King Orgnum is absolutely pathetic. Every time I get some loser picking it I already know that it'll be a ridiculous race in two turns to start all the stupidity of clicking the patron forever. I've been playing many card games for ages and this is by far the worst game design I ever saw. Whoever designed should be thinking of retirement by now. Sorry, but that's a really hideous game design.

Anyway, by now everybody knows how awful and boring it is and I'm pretty sure that it's only selected by players who have no idea what to do without it and just play purely by luck.

I still have some hope in ToT, and because of that I never select that deck.

Removing the Sorcerer-King Orgnum would be the best update to ToT.

I've come to appreciate it. In a game where its RNG that decides the matches and you've got a small selection of cards that carry entire games on their own, I'd rather get it over with quick. Instead of spending 15-30 minutes losing or winning (depending on who get the good cards first), it only takes 3-6 minutes. Get 4 games done in the time frame it takes to do 1. Maybe if they ever make this game more dependent on skill I'd care. But with a leaderboard of absent players. Where you'll have people who are rank 200+ fighting people in the top 30. The lack of balance. The poor tavern design. A single win/loss = 30-50 positions on the leaderboard. It's pretty clear the competitive scene is not in a good spot.

That I understand. Picking the Sorcerer-King Orgnum is just a way to speed up the game and let the pure luck decide the winner in 5 minutes. But basically isn't playing, it's just a slot machine. But I enjoy playing cards and I prefer to lose in a good 15 minutes game than winning by spamming a patron of a badly designed card deck.

Rouz

NeKryXe wrote: »

..

Yeah I agree. But I could tired of playing all these matches where it felt like there wasn't a good way for me to come back. Don't get me wrong, there we close games. But only 1/5 games I felt like were situations where both sides had proper time to enact some kind of strategy. And with the Tavern system having many situatiosn where most of the cards on the table were useless, and buying them meant risking giving the other side another good card...it just produced boring games to me after awhile. I mean I've been playing since they released it practically every day. That's probably why I've grown tired of the current meta. I'd much prefer a situation where I had proper chance of to enact a strategy. But many games either that didn't happen for me or the person I was beating.

Personally, I think this huge reliance on RNG is why so many of those on the LB stay away from ranked. There's so many nights when I go to unranked and I'm fighting all these rank 30+ players in unranked. Because they're not playing ranked. Afraid to lose their spot, as they know they can easily lose no matter how good they are. One bad hand and boom, 30 positions down.

When I was playing yesterday, I fought like 3 people in the top 50 when I wasn't even in the top 150. Something I noticed is that I think 2 of them used orgnum. So I started spamming it too. I found it quicker to recover from bad RNG than any other mode of play which is probably why they kept using them.

If they balance the game, making it more satisfying to play, and tune the tavern system; I may start caring again. But for now I'm just sticking with orgnum in ranked until the season is over.

DinoZavr

Thank you for your clever opinions, my friends.

Basically, we result in some conclusions, which are common among other threads.
- 1. RNG factor is too strong, and in many cases the player, who gets first good card win. because of the next factor
- 2. Stale Tavern - in many cases it offers quite useless cards or cards you can not afford at the beginning, so you, basically pay your gold to see the next card, but if it appears good - you are left without coins and your opponent happily buys that card
- 3. Orgnum patron contradicts the idea of thinning out your desk and choosing the better combos. It is quite the opposite - brute-force, which is hard to counter, because of factors 1 & 2

What can be done? Well.. i am not that smart, but i'd suggest to mix Tavern not with 3 copies of each desk, but with two, which (i may be wrong here, but still..) may increase Tavern choices diversity.
Reduce the number of Neutral cards, again to fight factor 2
Rethink Orgnum patron favors to make power gaining speed slower and equalize "favored" and "neutral" states.

What do you think?

kevkj

Maybe the tavern should completely refresh if it is completely untouched for 2 turns (1 turn from each player). Maybe 2 is too few? 4 turns? This isn't specifically about Orgnum, but just something to combat tavern inactivity that develops in some games.

Not sure how to change Orgnum patron. It feels too strong, but I still have not played as many games with it compared to the other decks.

DinoZavr

Thank you, @kevkj

I was also about to offer a "FLUID TAVERN" idea, which suggests not a complete refresh, but slight changes over the inactivity time. This could be easily implemented with just removing the rightmost Tavern card, shifting the remaining 4 cards right, and adding a new card to the leftmost position. Shift may happen after the ODD number of no buys from the Tavern.

Like that:
Move 1: Player A - BUYS, Player B - PASS
Move 2: Player A - PASS, Player B - PASS
Move 3: new card is offered and Player 1, who made the last purchase, sees the a card

Move 1: Player A - PASS, Player B - BUYS
Move 2: Player A - PASS, Player B - PASS
Move 3: Player A - PASS, Tavern shifts and Player B, who made the last purchase, sees a new card

I seriously doubt @ZOS even reads all of these passionate discussions, but i strongly hope they do.
Dear @ZOS, there are hundreds of good suggestions here on this Forum, as the game is good, but requires quite a lot of balancing, debugging and improvements. I strongly hope you are interested in these too!

As for Orgnum patron - i am not good at math for a Poisson point process, but what makes me mad is that the played, who got the patron Favor first gets 1.5x advantage in power generation, as they get 1 Power for every 4 cards, while their competitor moving the Patron into the neutral state gets 1 Power for every 6 cards.
This turns the race into a sack race, when one player is Usain Bolt, and theirs competitor has to run in sack!
Also the pace of power generation with Orgnum patron spam is too high to counter it with witty alternative strategy.

kevkj

Sounds interesting, I suppose 1 new card instead of a complete tavern refresh might be more reasonable. Your suggestion also rewards the player that is interacting with the tavern, so that is definitely a positive point. If they were to implement something like this, cards should also shuffle over to the right on purchase/removal (new card always appears in the left most position). This way it's consistent that the right most card is the one that's always up next to be refreshed.

I think the problem with ZOS reading this forum is that initially it was dominated by posts about bugs and confusion about quests/ranks/tiers/points etc etc. Of course these were valid posts, the game was/is buggy and the metagame is not very well explained in-game. Balance discussions or suggestions tend not to get much traction (or the comments are people just insisting Crow OP and refusing to offer anything more constructive).

DinoZavr

Thank you, @kevkj. My only hope is that developers are still passionate about improving the card game. As it is good. But not yet refined. We will see. It might take some time. But i am patient. Just like Molag Bal.
(oh and my initial idea was that Orgnum patron spam s OP, just because i faced it from both sides and still concerned it really is)

jle30303

Not only is it overpowered, but it massively favours the first person to get in on it. Because if you're Unfavoured (i.e. opponent is Favoured), you get only 2 power from it, whereas if you're Neutral, you probably get a good deal more depending on the number of cards in your hand.

So whoever gets in on it first, every turn, they get to spam it at Neutral (and move to Favoured), whereas the other player is stuck with replying with it at Unfavoured (and moving to Neutral), and thus constantly gains less prestige per turn than the one who started.

If you *didn't* reply for a couple of turns, then the player at Favoured gets to spam it and gain a whole lot of extra prestige - AND fill his hands up with cards that each give him 2 more prestige when played. (And are extra cards in the hand, to count towards the number used in the calculation for how much you gain from spamming the Orgnum patron). The fact that the cards have no gold value, so if you gain and draw too many of them in one turn you don't gain enough gold to use the patron, is neither here nor there, because long before you get to that point, the game is decided.

Ardan147

Whoever designed that patron should be fired and not permitted to ever work in game development again.

Casdha

After further review and some more experience with this as it is being played now I change my assessment.

If a person who gets a power card first of anything especially a couple of cheap ones on round 1 there is nothing that can be done with it unless your extremely lucky with a 2 point tithe card and enough coins to hit it twice. I was not aware of the difference in point generation depending on position. You can still ignore them for a round or two in the beginning and hope for a Tithe card or leave something as bait for them to grab and hope you have enough to swing it when they miss because they spent to much coin that round to keep it going.

The only thing I do at this point is either try and beat them to it or play as slow as I can since they are hitting cards faster than I can click my mouse button. Heck if they are gonna annoy me the least I can do is repay the favor.

Edit: IMHO I think it would be fine if the only extra boon you got was and extra card if you kept it in your favor through the round and have any position change generate the same amount of points like 1 point for every 4 cards regardless of position.

NeKryXe

It would be nice to have an option to not accept games with the Sorcerer-King Orgnum deck (at least on non-ranked games) I'd prefer to wait hours for a game without that idiotic deck than to waste a lot of time clicking on a stupid patron button after the luck on the first rounds decided the winner. ToT is fairly nice, I enjoy playing it, but most people now are using the hateful Sorcerer-King Orgnum deck and it's absolutely impossible to have a nice game. The more I play the more I'm convinced that the Sorcerer-King Orgnum is making ToT the worst card game I ever played.

They should have ported Elder Scrolls Legend to ESO.

NeKryXe

Ardan147 wrote: »

Whoever designed that patron should be fired and not permitted to ever work in game development again.

I couldn't agree more. This trash is worst than bingo.

The_one_i_seek

this is trash

kevkj

In general, I agree. The "favoured" effect of the Orgnum patron is just too bloated. Prestige per 4 cards + 2 prestige card and it's unlimited use? A little crazy to imagine how this made it to release. One of the effects needs to be removed.

Unlimited use prestige per 4 cards for 3 gold is already strong. Even with 12 cards, paying 3 gold for 3 prestige will be the best play in some situations. I suspect games will still devolve into constant Orgnum spam after the first few turns, but at least players will be forced to buy from the tavern to grow their deck.

Unlimited use Boarding Party for 3 gold? I think this is a bigger nerf since the card on its own doesn't scale up a deck's power/prestige potential as some other options. However, this also gives one player another option to NOT use the tavern, which I think is the last thing this game needs.

On a related note, the Rajhin patron ability is also annoying. In my experience it ends up being spammed to prolong a game rather than meaningfully affect the outcome. Giving players an unlimited, cheap alternative to buying cards is not good for the game.

Casdha

I played around with this some today with NPCs and there are several things I'm not certain about. I played several games keeping card count between hands and this is what it looks like to me and I have some observations and questions.

1. It seems that single coin treasure cards don't count for total card count but it seems the ones you change into two cards do
2. It seems like single coin patron cards do count.
3. I played one game where I got a single power card and took initial control of Orgnum and never got more than 1 point from the patron yet the NPC had 2 bought cards and always got 2 points turning it back to neutral. how is this possible? I had 11 cards and they had 12 (including starting cards).
4. If 1 and 2 are true then the question is do players always have an even number of treasury and patron cards to start with or can someone start with more treasure than patron cards?

on a side note: why will Peck not trigger the second card draw on Plunder with Duke when War Song will trigger the second power on Midnight Raid with Red Eagle?

Naomi_K

@Casdha

1,2 - Single coin, treasury cards and patron cards both count.

3 - The amount of power you get depends on how many cards you have. If you have 12 cards and turn it from neutral to favoured, you will get 2 power. If you have 11 cards, you will get only one power. If you turn if from unfavoured to neutral you always get 2 power regardless of how many cards you have.

Favoured - 1 power for every 4 cards.
Neutral - 1 power for every 6 cards
Unfavoured - always 2 power, whether you have 1 card or 100 cards.

4 - Both players start with the same 10 cards. One for each patron and the rest single coin cards.

In my experience Peck always triggers the second card draw on Plunder.

AnduinTryggva

dmnqwk wrote: »

I mean, I fully agree that Sorc-King Orgnum is poorly designed, specifically the favoured power.

I find it strange how the Crow patron is unusable on favoured, but the Sorc King is encouraged to be spammed non-stop, punishing a player who doesn't use it because of just how powerful it is (if the first use is on 12 cards, it's 3 coins for 3 power... an insane level that gets better after 4 uses).

Since the power level of the Sorc King cards is high (2 prestige on basic cheap cards... yikes!) to also have such a powerful Patron ability is a sure sign that the game developers made a mistake in creating a deck to tempt us to grind out completion.

If Sorc King does not get tempered in a meaningful way (that is to say, change the game from a battle over this one patron) it will cause people to play it less, reducing further resources being devoted to it... and end up with it as a failure that harms future sales. (Any time someone comes into this MMO there will be a chance they look at the card game as indication whether to play it... if the game failed, they might view the MMO as a whole as a failure and avoid it... which wouldn't exactly be fair)

To be honest I sometimes think the threshold for re-activating a favoring patron should be increased the more often it is activated. I've seen Orgnum spams and Rajin spams and it is just stupid. Spamming should come at a cost. Maybe raise the costs after third spam.