ToT NPCs excessively difficult

Djennku

I haven't been playing ToT since firesong, but ever since I started back in yesterday, I noticed that NPCs, even the novice ones, have become excessively difficult to the point where it's almost impossible for me to win a match no matter what I do.

Nine times out of ten the novice NPC ends up winning, and gains points like crazy. They are ending up getting much higher scores from out of nowhere, or picking up cards I have no way of obtaining that early on in the game, etc.

I am very frustrated, and it's no longer a fun past time dueling NPCs in ToT. I haven't even been able to get the daily quest done because I have been losing nonstop.

I don't know if anyone else is having as much difficulty as I am, but I wanted to put this out there because it's such a drastic change from a couple patches ago.

BlueRaven

Yup. Many threads on this. And at least from my personal experience they nerfed the rewards a bit too.

Lugaldu

Yes, totally annoying.... hopefully they change it back to how it was before!

MTibbs89

I second this. I remember breezing through ToT when High Isle first released, and while a slight difficulty spike might have been warranted, this is a little ridiculous. Kept meaning to get through the main ToT quest and not getting around to it until today and man did they ramp up difficulty on the tournament NPCs. Even the novice. It's frustrating.

FrancisCrawford

I started playing again after seeing posts like this, and I agree the NPCs seem to play better than they used to. I've been playing mainly expert-level NPCs, and losing perhaps 30% of the time.

That said, the NPCs do still make mistakes humans wouldn't. The most obvious is burning my agents down to one remaining health -- and then not burning that last point of health. That makes a number of Rahjim and Druid King agents unnaturally strong vs. NPCs.

Djennku

The issue seems to be just novice NPCs. I was playing expert ones earlier with no issues, but anytime I'm up against a novice NPC, it's almost impossible for me to win.

Ilsabet

Having played against Expert NPCs today after seeing how buffed up Novice and Proficient NPCs were, I'd put money down that ZOS accidentally applied the buff that was intended for Expert NPCs to Novice NPCs instead. The Expert NPCs still had the same old habits like spamming coin upgrades and largely ignoring patrons. I'm not complaining, since it's nice to get a daily done in less than an hour, but it would make way more sense for the Novice opponents to be the ones you can readily beat.

Susan_Sto

It's been a while since I played a hand of TOT so after seeing these comments I just had to try the novice NPC to see what was going on. I normally just played the expert NPCs just to keep my skills up.

Yes, novice NPC's have definitely been improved and having played a fair amount of PVP TOT games they do feel very much like playing another human player. They are smart enough to keep me on my toes but can be beaten. After collecting a year's worth of player data ZOS has the data to make better AI to play the game. If this is what a novice AI can do it will be interesting to see what an improved expert NPC can do, and kick the ass of even the best human TOT player no doubt.

For those struggling with Patron victories, I find using the Psijic Loremaster Celarus deck helpful. Never player an agent card and it can't be used against you and prevents a Patron win.

If Duke of Crows is in play, let the AI keep the patron unless you have a 'lot' of gold. This will prevent them from spanning it against you.

Spanning Rajhin, the Purring Liar Patron is a tacit but can be a double-edge sword. I cleared the achievement for that deck in a single game when I realised that was what my opponent was doing to me.

Also, the novice doesn't try to go for Ansei Frandar Hunding patron once you have selected it.

This is just some friendly advice from 1 player to another, and you play however you like. I'm sure there are some tips you could give me.

BlueRaven

No fixes in patch 9.0.6.

Either this difficulty is intended, or zos ignores this sub forum and missed the problem.

Either way, I am done with ToT.

Rewards nerfed, npcs over the top difficult.

Hard pass.

(And quite frankly I am getting tired of eso in general these days…)

virtus753

The problem - and the thing that makes it clear to me there *is* a problem - is that Novice and Proficient NPCs will now *never* use the Treasury.

This is a problem because the tutorial teaches players to do exactly that.

So now ZOS has to answer: is it "do as we say, not as we do"? or "do as we do, not as we say"?

Because if NPCs are beating players by avoiding the Treasury, then that teaches something very different than the tutorial. And the point of the tutorial is to teach us how to develop a decent strategy. It doesn't have to teach the *best* strategy, but it must teach a viable one. If NPCs never follow the strats taught in the tutorial, then something is wrong with either the tutorial or the NPCs.

FrancisCrawford

virtus753 wrote: »

The problem - and the thing that makes it clear to me there *is* a problem - is that Novice and Proficient NPCs will now *never* use the Treasury.

This is a problem because the tutorial teaches players to do exactly that.

So now ZOS has to answer: is it "do as we say, not as we do"? or "do as we do, not as we say"?

Because if NPCs are beating players by avoiding the Treasury, then that teaches something very different than the tutorial. And the point of the tutorial is to teach us how to develop a decent strategy. It doesn't have to teach the *best* strategy, but it must teach a viable one. If NPCs never follow the strats taught in the tutorial, then something is wrong with either the tutorial or the NPCs.

Or perhaps something is wrong with the players who fail to beat the NPCs?

Seriously -- one thing I'd have considered if I were at ZoS would have been to create NPC strategies by straightforward machine learning based on human matches. But lower-level NPCs would use training sets in which the humans LOST a bunch of games.

Dr_Con

ToT is supposed to be a game of chance after you master the prerequisite knowledge, losing to Expert level NPCs should be expected.

Copying what the beginner/tutorial NPCs do should result in fewer victories. These are supposed to introduce you to the mechanics of the mini game, not to viable strategies.

hiyde

I welcome smarter NPCs but it would have been nice if the rewards for the increased match durations were adjusted accordingly.

Since finally trying out Tribute a couple months ago, I've found it to be a fun alternative to node farming/daily writs. Not as lucrative, but a nice change of pace.

Now the match durations have increased so much that, when it comes to rewards, it doesn't feel like it's worth the time spent to do a lot of matches.

Side note/pro-tip:
If you want an almost guaranteed NPC win, just make sure Red-Eagle deck is chosen, let them pull 2 or more of the cards that let you delete cards and watch them whittle their deck down to 1 card. Almost every match. lol

Rouz

MTibbs89 wrote: »

I second this. I remember breezing through ToT when High Isle first released, and while a slight difficulty spike might have been warranted, this is a little ridiculous. Kept meaning to get through the main ToT quest and not getting around to it until today and man did they ramp up difficulty on the tournament NPCs. Even the novice. It's frustrating.

I think its because they don't want people farming. It was insanely easy before, at least for me. Most of the time I'd win 3-5 mins on expert NPCs. Maybe even less if you choose the right decks.

The AI changes they made this time around is 1, they focus on patrons more. They're not oblivious to their value. Take this with a grain of salt, but I think the way they think is that the devs assigned a "value" to each card and patron. Then the AI will play what is the greatest value.

Because of this, sometimes the AI will struggle to see the value in combos. Because its seeing singular value levels instead of "ok if I combine x, y, and z; it will result in an amazing combo".

I think most of the issues you are seeing right now is that the old problems of the game are not showing their ugly heads. Something I've complained and whined about a lot. The poor balance combined with the bad tavern RNG results in a poor experience most of the time.

The other side of the coin is that they want to "bridge the gap" between NPCs and players. I wouldn't be surprised if the ranked population in the game has plummeted (in my opinion, because of those issues I mentioned). They may be thinking that its because players are going to vs players and getting stomped hard. While NPCs its a cake walk. So maybe they want to prepare players more when fighting npcs to fight players. Because it definitely feels like NPCs are closer to players now in skill level. Still not near it, but definitely closer.

----

So yeah in short with my ramblings. AI is better. They seem to identify value in more cards and patrons to prevent easy patron wins. However, it has now caused much of the design issues in the game to become more noticeable to those who don't fight players or focus mainly on NPCs.

If you are unhappy, please voice your concern and join the club of players who want better balance and a rework of the RNG.

hiyde

Rouz wrote: »

I think its because they don't want people farming.

Why is that a bad thing? If anyone can make 500k++ an hour stumbling around any map picking flowers/nodes, why is it bad for tribute match rewards to be decent?

Let's assume one could, if they wanted to, breeze through 15 matches an hour before the changes. On PC-NA, in my experience, that would average out to ~200k an hour in loot. Still, far, far less than faceroll activities like daily writs or node farming.

Now, with the changes that ~200k an hour is more like ~75k an hour.

While there are still a lot of facepalm dumb NPC moments, the AI changes have also resulted in some fun/challenging matches. I'll still play, but if I want to make gold, I'm an idiot to choose ToT.

If they're going to continue on this path, I just wish they'd step up rewards incrementally.

For me, personally, nothing they do with NPC matches will make me want to play PvP Tribute (aside from matches w/friends). Just my personal taste - it's not for me. As with all forms of PvP, some can be way too cranky/aggressive lol. I want to relax/have fun.

Djennku

I enjoy playing the PvP side of ToT, and it's generally a very fun experience whether I end up winning or losing. With the new changes to the NPC AI, I keep finding myself seeing the NPCs getting points or bonuses my brain is unable to register, and it does seem like their points (whether power, prestige, or gold) come out of nowhere. Often there's ticks of points at the end of matches that don't add up to what I'd been paying attention to.

Rouz

Djennku wrote: »

I enjoy playing the PvP side of ToT, and it's generally a very fun experience whether I end up winning or losing. With the new changes to the NPC AI, I keep finding myself seeing the NPCs getting points or bonuses my brain is unable to register, and it does seem like their points (whether power, prestige, or gold) come out of nowhere. Often there's ticks of points at the end of matches that don't add up to what I'd been paying attention to.

Hmm I've never seen that happening. Take a video of it if you can, I'd be super interested in seeing this. I'll admit that sometimes it seems like the NPCs get super lucky in terms of what they draw. But I've been using Almalexia's patron ability to dispel that conspiracy theory haha. Never seen points/gold not line up though.

Rouz

hiyde wrote: »

Rouz wrote: »

I think its because they don't want people farming.

Why is that a bad thing? If anyone can make 500k++ an hour stumbling around any map picking flowers/nodes, why is it bad for tribute match rewards to be decent?

Let's assume one could, if they wanted to, breeze through 15 matches an hour before the changes. On PC-NA, in my experience, that would average out to ~200k an hour in loot. Still, far, far less than faceroll activities like daily writs or node farming.

Now, with the changes that ~200k an hour is more like ~75k an hour.

While there are still a lot of facepalm dumb NPC moments, the AI changes have also resulted in some fun/challenging matches. I'll still play, but if I want to make gold, I'm an idiot to choose ToT.

If they're going to continue on this path, I just wish they'd step up rewards incrementally.

For me, personally, nothing they do with NPC matches will make me want to play PvP Tribute (aside from matches w/friends). Just my personal taste - it's not for me. As with all forms of PvP, some can be way too cranky/aggressive lol. I want to relax/have fun.

I'm going on guesses but, maybe they don't want ToT to be *that* good of a farming location? They probably don't want a situation where farming ToT NPCs can keep up with the rest of the game. Can you imagine the complaints about that. "I bought a MMORPG, yet its just as easy/more beneficial to farm a card game than play the actual game!". They probably want people to be out in the world farming nodes rather than sitting solo in a ToT match against NPCs. I know I know, why did they put it in in the first place. Who knows. Maybe they wanted a low risk way of introducing features to an expansion? Low risk as in they can say they're adding more content (ToT patron) but that new content has little to no interaction with the rest of the game.

Main point of playing ToT is just easy transmutation and a few unique recipes/furnishing. Along with just for kicks. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that they don't want farming ToT to be as easy/good as farming the open world or any part of the game.

MidniteOwl1913

Rouz wrote: »

MTibbs89 wrote: »

I second this. I remember breezing through ToT when High Isle first released, and while a slight difficulty spike might have been warranted, this is a little ridiculous. Kept meaning to get through the main ToT quest and not getting around to it until today and man did they ramp up difficulty on the tournament NPCs. Even the novice. It's frustrating.

I think its because they don't want people farming. It was insanely easy before, at least for me. Most of the time I'd win 3-5 mins on expert NPCs. Maybe even less if you choose the right decks.

The AI changes they made this time around is 1, they focus on patrons more. They're not oblivious to their value. Take this with a grain of salt, but I think the way they think is that the devs assigned a "value" to each card and patron. Then the AI will play what is the greatest value.

Because of this, sometimes the AI will struggle to see the value in combos. Because its seeing singular value levels instead of "ok if I combine x, y, and z; it will result in an amazing combo".

I think most of the issues you are seeing right now is that the old problems of the game are not showing their ugly heads. Something I've complained and whined about a lot. The poor balance combined with the bad tavern RNG results in a poor experience most of the time.

The other side of the coin is that they want to "bridge the gap" between NPCs and players. I wouldn't be surprised if the ranked population in the game has plummeted (in my opinion, because of those issues I mentioned). They may be thinking that its because players are going to vs players and getting stomped hard. While NPCs its a cake walk. So maybe they want to prepare players more when fighting npcs to fight players. Because it definitely feels like NPCs are closer to players now in skill level. Still not near it, but definitely closer.

----

So yeah in short with my ramblings. AI is better. They seem to identify value in more cards and patrons to prevent easy patron wins. However, it has now caused much of the design issues in the game to become more noticeable to those who don't fight players or focus mainly on NPCs.

If you are unhappy, please voice your concern and join the club of players who want better balance and a rework of the RNG.

If they were that worried about farming, better to just nerf the rewards. Raising the "novice" to beyond expert is just crazy, and self defeating if trying to get more people interested in ToT is even a goal.

Rouz

Really hard to say. There's a lot with ToT that absolutely makes no sense to me why they do what they do. Could also be cause you had people like me who would win in 2-3 mins. And that irked them and they over corrected.

SeaGtGruff

When I play the Expert NPCs, often they'll start by using the Treasury even though there's a good card they could buy. But that isn't always the case.

I've lost to the Expert NPCs a few times, but lately I've been winning 3 out of 3 again-- which I probably just jinxed by saying that! In any case, I haven't tried the Novice and Proficient NPCs again yet, so I can't comment on their updated strategies.

The rewards still seem okay to me, although they do vary a good bit depending on RNG luck. Tonight I even got a master lead to a Telvanni Peninsula antiquity, so that was unexpected and nice.

drakhan2002_ESO

I recently have come back to ToT after a hugely long break only for the Necom music box lead. I had not read that they buffed the novice NPCs, but I too noticed they were harder to beat. While I haven't lost any matches against them, it definitely takes longer to beat them. Perhaps I'll try the Expert NPCs for a faster experience.

Luke_Flamesword

I don't know why there are not better rewards for higher difficulties - there should be at least blue box for expert winning or additional green boxes.

TybaltKaine

I've been playing ToT off and on since it released, and today I went to start a new character on the journey, just to get the quest done (That annoying barker drives me up the wall). I COULD NOT defeat the first Novice opponent to finish the quest chain.

I played 8 games against the novices in the Gonfalon hall and lost all of them. 8 straight losses is insane, and I can tell you that the NPC players never once used the Treasury. They would endlessly spam the Duke of Crows (which lead to them gaining upwards of 8 or 9 prestige a turn) and I had to turn it just to keep up, which of course allowed them to turn the Duke again on the next turn.

I saw NPC's using Ragpicker to get rid of single coin cards instead of using the treasury.

If an NPC gets the Dreaming Cave you may as well concede the match, they magically have the best RNG to ensure that they only draw powerful cards, oftentimes leading to Dreaming Cave combos that rack up double digit prestige and power.

Having higher end cards unlocked doesn't help either, as I end up having super powerful cards in the mix way too early now.

I had one match climb into the 80's before I finally couldn't match the NPC and lost.

They are ridiculously over tuned now, and I really hope that someone takes a look at this. ( @ZOS_Kevin please pass this on)

MidniteOwl1913

An NPC for novices should be balanced so a novice can beat it. Maybe not easily, but at least 50% of the time. Having a seriously OP NCP will only hurt the game.

Really that should have been obvious.

valenwood_vegan

Wow, I haven't played ToT in a while (find it boring) and I do agree that the NPC's probably needed to be buffed a bit... I completed the whole questline when ToT was new, and I actually never lost a game against a NPC, ever.

But this is wild, they feel way overtuned - especially novice. I'm winning about 50% tbh, about 20% of games against proficient ones (which actually seem a bit easier than novice - another issue that may need some tuning)... and I understand how the game works and am able to recognize what the NPC is doing and develop strategies... new players coming out of the tutorial are going to be so lost.

Just feels like not a well thought-out change if the goal is to get more people playing ToT (which it seems to be, with a lead put behind it). I get that there should be a difficult NPC for players who understand and LIKE ToT and are really into it... but making new players and those who don't enjoy the game spend an inordinate amount of time banging their head against the wall with even the novice NPC... is not going to endear people to the game at all. I personally can't wait to get my lead and never play it again. Such a frustrating time-sink now for generally poor rewards.

SeaGtGruff

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

An NPC for novices should be balanced so a novice can beat it. Maybe not easily, but at least 50% of the time. Having a seriously OP NCP will only hurt the game.

Really that should have been obvious.

I think the NPCs of each rank should be good enough to beat players of that rank at least part of the time, and they should use strategies which-- when studied and mimicked by the players-- can help the players win more often.

But they should also make the kinds of occasional mistakes which players of that rank might make.

valenwood_vegan

Took me seven games to win one for the daily this time. Trying to get this lead against the new AI is already absolutely hands down the worst experience I've ever had in ESO.

It was more fun to grind Bad Man's Hallows for 5ish hours back when young, naive-me thought that was a frustrating lead. And to pick flowers for the kilt. At least those were things you could go try your luck at every so often while actually playing ESO.

Asking people to play a different game inside ESO and to WIN IT... while also suddenly making it way more difficult... is maybe a bit much. I get that ZoS is maybe looking to try and get more people to play ToT, but this is going to make a lot of people really hate it. I'm sorry, I know they put a lot of work into it... and I know that some people enjoy it and that's totally awesome that it was added to the game for them... and there absolutely should be a true "expert" NPC for them to play... but there should be a true novice NPC for those of us who aren't experts / are new / aren't really that interested to play. Nerf the rewards (and increase them for higher difficulty) if they're worried about people farming it!

On a funnier note, Azandar got annoyed at me for playing ToT... smart guy. I'm guessing he must have tried playing the new AI too. I should probably take his advice and just stop.

SeaGtGruff

I finally played a Novice NPC tonight after winning 3 matches against Expert NPCs for the daily.

Wow, I see what you all mean! I won the first 2 matches, but both of them were close. I lost the third match because the NPC kept using the Hlaalu patron to get way ahead and I couldn't catch up. In all 3 matches he started out by trying to get a patron victory, so that meant I had to work to stop him from winning that way while also trying to keep up with his spamming of the Hlaalu patron. It was unreal.

valenwood_vegan

Not to keep beating the same horse here, but I tried on expert like some have suggested... and it absolutely still has the old behavior. I would agree with whoever said that ZoS accidentally switched the difficulty levels and updated novice with the intended new AI for expert.

Luke_Flamesword

It's obvious mistake and it's shame that we have to wait god knows how many weeks to fix it...