Further Development for Tales of Tribute Confirmed for the Upcoming Year

Personofsecrets

Is TOT evergreen?

With the changes that happened with the last update, do we really want further updates?

spartaxoxo

I'm glad for new TOT updates. Ohhh yeah

MidniteOwl1913

I hope it isn't more decks. More is sometimes less...

Personofsecrets

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

I hope it isn't more decks. More is sometimes less...

And less, sometimes more.

BahometZ

More decks is just going to make it even less likely for people to get into it. Honestly, ToT may as well not exist, for the presence it has in this game. The percentage of eso players who play ToT is on par with a statistical error.
Whenever I hear it brought up by others outside the forums it's never positive, either they forgot it existed or simply don't like it.
Unfortunate, but not all experiments are bangers.

Necrotech_Master

im fine with them continuing development on it, i like more deck options, even if i dont like/use all the decks, it adds variety to the NPC games

while i enjoy tribute, its not something i want to spend all day playing, i usually just do 1 full npc daily and thats about it for me on that lol

i dont enjoy playing against other players either

sharquez

Why not? I'm glad it has continuing updates. More unique brain-twisty mechanics to figure out, more fun.

LunaFlora

i can't wait to see what kind of decks we get this year

Largomets

sharquez wrote: »

Why not? I'm glad it has continuing updates. More unique brain-twisty mechanics to figure out, more fun.

Because their addon decks weren't "weird brain twisty mechanics," they were even worse RNG farms than pelin and crow used to be. Druid and Mora have all but ruined this game, and not only do they refuse to nerf these disgustingly broken RNG farm decks, but the community is hemorrhaging skilled players increasing the per-capita of people who need RNG to carry them and crave every game being a coin toss where luck is more important than skill.

Their unwillingness to nerf druid and mora tells me that whatever they have next in store for this game will NOT be fair, balanced, or require skill. It will be the worst RNG farm yet and the only people left playing will be gambling addicts.

Personofsecrets

The designers have revealed their intent toward design direction quite clearly. It is away from balance and toward casualization. They do hear feedback, but then treat fundamental game mechanic issues as though such misgivings are just player preference issues that can be relieved via band-aid fixes.

spartaxoxo

I actually don't think Druid is that big of a deal. But, Mora definitely needs a nerf.

Regardless, I think that new content is something to look forward to. I still enjoy ToT and I look forward to more decks.

Largomets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I actually don't think Druid is that big of a deal. But, Mora definitely needs a nerf.

Regardless, I think that new content is something to look forward to. I still enjoy ToT and I look forward to more decks.

Bad players complain about crow snowballs because "hurr durr buy all the crow cards and get snowball" but that's a super easy thing for an advanced player to mitigate. You can always tell when an advanced player is playing because they pass on the crow card and prioritize deck control.

Druid on the other hand has the ability to snowball off itself, in a single turn. There is a 2 gold card that allows you to generate unlimited power when paired with several other decks, including off contract cards. There is a contract agent that does the same. You can literally get a 5 power taunt card that also gives you prestige and then once you have one (not that hard if you chase it), it can create more of itself in perpetuity. Any game with psijic is immediately ruined with druid in play because it's now an RNG farm to see who gets vestments and/or wraith first. You need to completely change your strategy with druid to chase the parlor trick, because if you don't and your opponent gets lucky, you are *** beyond recovery over the course of as little as a single turn. Over half the decks combos to god-tier status so that you can easily get 20-30+ gold in a single turn, even fairly early game, and now you have total control over anything you want to buy and/or keep from your opponent.

The only reason druid spammers aren't AS bad as mora spammers, is because just like crow spammers, they can't actually play the game, so they usually over-buy and poison their own deck, further making the game an RNG farm where I need to hope their draw RNG is bad since they over purchased, but there's always the chance that instead they actually DO get the combos they need and snowball even more.

There was a time ranked had 2k+ people on the LB per season consistently. Then eventually down to 1k. As of my writing this, there are 800 people doing ranked. The skilled players are leaving because they don't have fun playing against people who just pick mora and/or druid all day. It's not fun when the most weighted component to a game is pure dumb luck. Any card game will have luck, but a SMALL amount of luck which a skilled player can give themselves a light advantage that another skilled player can later undo makes a good game. As it stands, most games are just "lets see who can get to steamroller status in a few turns and then the game is over most likely."

I'll probably quit after this season, as I am sure many other ranked players will, and then the devs will have exactly what they clearly want: an un-fun, poorly balanced, "casual friendly" monstrosity that like, 400 people in the world play so they can get coffers while hating it and looking forward to the day that they get their shinies and don't need to play anymore.

spartaxoxo

Largomets wrote: »

Druid on the other hand has the ability to snowball off itself, in a single turn.

It does but it's not common. You can also counteract it by using the patron and Psijic deck to get rid of cards that enable that card or buy them away from your opponent.

Most of the time what Druid does is allow deck control and coin generation. And I'd rather deck control decks be more powerful because it takes more skill than power spam. I also prefer them to opponent control decks, although those are also more skillful than power spam.

I'll take playing against Druid, Psijic, Hlallu, and Red Eagle over Mora, Pelin, Rahjiin, or Almalexia any day.

Largomets

Psijic is deck control. Rajhin is deck and opponent control. Druid is RNG spam where no-talent nobodies pollute an otherwise fun game by literally making the game and RNG farm. Any deck that combos off itself where a single hand can change the balance of a game irreversibly is poorly balanced and in need of nerfing. Those decks are Druid, Mora, and to a lesser extent Hlaalu, although that is at least mostly balanced.

spartaxoxo

Largomets wrote: »

Psijic is deck control. Rajhin is deck and opponent control. Druid is RNG spam where no-talent nobodies pollute an otherwise fun game by literally making the game and RNG farm. Any deck that combos off itself where a single hand can change the balance of a game irreversibly is poorly balanced and in need of nerfing. Those decks are Druid, Mora, and to a lesser extent Hlaalu, although that is at least mostly balanced.

Comboing off itself is a standard part of the game. The most powerful Druid combo requires two decks, Psijic and Druid. And you need the scrying cards in particular to make that work. Deny Dreaming Cove and the Agent in particular, and you've already defeated a lot of the potential power.

Personofsecrets

Largomets wrote: »

Psijic is deck control. Rajhin is deck and opponent control. Druid is RNG spam where no-talent nobodies pollute an otherwise fun game by literally making the game and RNG farm. Any deck that combos off itself where a single hand can change the balance of a game irreversibly is poorly balanced and in need of nerfing. Those decks are Druid, Mora, and to a lesser extent Hlaalu, although that is at least mostly balanced.

Perhaps that is a fine criteria, but Psijic/Cephora Insight and Pounce/Grand fall firmly into the category of cards that single handedly and irreversibly effect games in far too strong of a way because of their poor balance.

Balance should first look at cards alone, then classes, then strategies.

Largomets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Largomets wrote: »

Psijic is deck control. Rajhin is deck and opponent control. Druid is RNG spam where no-talent nobodies pollute an otherwise fun game by literally making the game and RNG farm. Any deck that combos off itself where a single hand can change the balance of a game irreversibly is poorly balanced and in need of nerfing. Those decks are Druid, Mora, and to a lesser extent Hlaalu, although that is at least mostly balanced.

Comboing off itself is a standard part of the game. The most powerful Druid combo requires two decks, Psijic and Druid. And you need the scrying cards in particular to make that work. Deny Dreaming Cove and the Agent in particular, and you've already defeated a lot of the potential power.

No, I don't think you understand. There is a difference between a deck comboing off itself (all of them), comboing off itself with many cards requiring good tavern and draw RNG (rahjin, psijic, hunding, pelin etc), comboing off of itself requiring good tavern and draw RNG over smaller numbers of hands (hlaalu, orgnum, crow, red eagle, alma) and then the insanity that is Druid and Mora where on a single hand, a player can go from nothing to un-stoppable on pure RNG.

With Druid, early game, I can get vestments for 2 gold which now gives me power and currency domination early game, and power domination the entire game. 2 gold. That's all it takes to have the scales tipped to me. For Pelin, you need a minimum of 4 gold to get a much-less-powerful start. Even getting armory turn 1 as player 2 is not as strong. Crow requires multiple crow cards, so there isn't really a single "high value" crow card round 1 unless you get 2 back to back AND they combo. Sure it's an RNG farm, but there's still several mechanics. Cephora's insight is certainly a REALLY strong starting card, because you get deck control and an early bank advantage, and the chance of a combo for power, but only the most advanced players will use psijic to be a dominate deck, and it's still possible to mitigate as the opponent in a variety of ways. Every deck as a "clutch starter" that you could luck into, but only Druid and Mora have cards where the game is possibly over on turn 1 if a player "lucks out." Even really, really strong starting advantage cards like pounce, cephora's, and luxury export don't give me the "unstoppable" advantage that some druid and mora cards can in early game.

But lets also now consider "2 color cards + tavern contract" to see what some "single deck only" stacking can look like.

With crow, if I get 2 crow cards + law of sovereign roost, I can now get a nice little currency advantage early game and give my opponent a negative 1 penalty for 1 turn, but this is really annoying more than anything. 1 turn later and I can start working to mitigate my opponent. Anytime crow is in play I should have a counter-deck to it, probably rahjin, and I can just start breaking up their luck, making their deck more and more RNG based while I capitalize on a deck-control strategy like psijic, hunding, etc. Plus,

With Rahjin, lets go for a really powerful 2 cards + tavern. Lets say I got S-tier RNG and got 2 grand larceny cards early. Now I use them with a rings guile to stick with my pattern. I have now removed prestige for my opponent, penalized them with -2 cards, and got a good run at the tavern. Again, very powerful, very annoying, but any good player has been a victim of this before and still won. In fact, early game, this might even be stupid, because punishing your opponent with -2 won't actually hurt them badly since they have low bank anyhow, and now maybe you passed on a good tavern purchase that they might have a chance at. Annoying, powerful, but not a game changer.

Now let's look at a druid example of 2 green cards + a contract card. If I have 2 wispheart tokens, just the 2 of them alone procing off each other is nuts. I can use 4 gold to buy a forest wraith which now re-procs them bringing the total to 12 gold on just those 2 cards alone, and now every new card I buy gets me power. Since druid cards are so cheap, I can gobble up any 2 or 3 gold cards in the tavern and generate power. Now I can turn the patron so druid favors me, so I have deck control, lots of currency, a game-breaking agent my opponent MUST deal with next turn instead of whatever else they were going to do, and I'm 1 green card away from making a chimera. Literally having the 1 gold starter card also in my hand is all it takes to give me a chimera, and if whisper of the grove pops up, I can buy it for 2 tavern control slots since it pays for itself at this point giving me 2 new items to possibly purchase AND I now have a chimera. So in a single turn, I have given myself a massive buying advantage, greatly increased the chances of snowballing more chimeras, got a chimera, have the most powerful agent in the game for my opponent to deal with, and I got to leave the tavern looking how I wanted it to look, which won't be good for my opponent on several fronts. And that's not even getting into the fact that druid cards let you generate coin, power, and prestige on your opponents turn, so you can actually lose on your own turn if they have agents up that force the win check if you remove them, making it so that you literally cannot avoid a win in some situations, even though the opponent did not instigate a win check.

That deck is broken beyond belief, and it is my firm believe that the only people who defend it either aren't advanced enough at this game to understand how broken it is, or they are not advanced enough to win without RNG farming and would rather unfair steam-roll games that they occasionally win to stick around because then they can win without having to actually practice and get better.

spartaxoxo

Largomets wrote: »

With Druid, early game, I can get vestments for 2 gold which now gives me power and currency domination early game, and power domination the entire game.

Except it doesn't. That's just not accurate. 2 coins is no more currency than any other currency focused card. And unless you get very lucky to buy multiple 2 coin cards, you get 1-2 power by itself. And then you don't get any again until it cycles back around. This is on par with other cards of a similar value.

Where Druid Vestments gets overpowered is when you get other cards to combo with it. For example, a Psijic card that lets you send a bunch of cards to your cooldown. Buying a lot of cards also self-counters vestments, because it lowers the odds of being able to combo vestments effectively.

On it's own, Vestments is not a big deal. It's when it combos with cards (and its strongest combos are NOT part of the Druid deck) that it's power becomes busted RNG nonsense.

I agree that Druid needs a nerf (Vestments and the agent are both too cheap) but it's not nowhere near as badly designed as Mora. None of the decks are.

Personofsecrets

Druid King Vestments is always an extremly good card to buy.

If Psijic is even so much a patron, it will be a game defining and more than likely game winning card.

If Almalexia is a patron, it will have added potential.

If the above decks are not part of the game, Vestments is stil VERY good, but not as good as some of the other power cards such as the Insights or Pounce/Grand.

The card having such wild power level in some matches is the definition of imbalanced.But the designers seem to have a more casual idea regarding the importance of card balance if we judge them by their many tell-tale actions.

spartaxoxo

Personofsecrets wrote: »

If the above decks are not part of the game, Vestments is stil VERY good, but not as good as some of the other power cards such as the Insights or Pounce/Grand.

Yup. I don't know how they could change it though. The biggest issue with Vestments comes from it's combination with other decks. Perhaps make it so it only works with agents or something IDK.

Personofsecrets

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

If the above decks are not part of the game, Vestments is stil VERY good, but not as good as some of the other power cards such as the Insights or Pounce/Grand.

Yup. I don't know how they could change it though. The biggest issue with Vestments comes from it's combination with other decks. Perhaps make it so it only works with agents or something IDK.

That is what the unmorphed version already does.

One thing that I didn't mention that is toward what Largo is saying is that the card only costing 2 is very relevant. It often means that one can make an early writ the same turn that they buy Vestments. So that already makes plays like an early Currency Exchange or purchase of a 5 cost agent plus making of a writ in the same turn much more likely. Maybe an additional fix to the power generation, whatever it hypothetically could be, would be a cost increase to the card. That said, the unmorphed version doesn't really deserve that...

spartaxoxo

Personofsecrets wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

If the above decks are not part of the game, Vestments is stil VERY good, but not as good as some of the other power cards such as the Insights or Pounce/Grand.

Yup. I don't know how they could change it though. The biggest issue with Vestments comes from it's combination with other decks. Perhaps make it so it only works with agents or something IDK.

That is what the unmorphed version already does.

One thing that I didn't mention that is toward what Largo is saying is that the card only costing 2 is very relevant. It often means that one can make an early writ the same turn that they buy Vestments. So that already makes plays like an early Currency Exchange or purchase of a 5 cost agent plus making of a writ in the same turn much more likely. Maybe an additional fix to the power generation, whatever it hypothetically could be, would be a cost increase to the card. That said, the unmorphed version doesn't really deserve that...

That's what I said I agree Vestments and the Agent cost too little. I'd make Vestments cost 4 coin, the other card can stay 2. I'd also make the agent cost 5 coins.

Grendalism

I don’t think Mora cards need nerfing.

If anything, some of the penalties might need upping…giving your opponent “1 power” isn’t a big deal, but the additional cards and gold are!

One thing of note though, the AI for the NPCs might need adjusting, as the NPCs favour the Mora cards over all other decks, so it makes it predictable and easy playing a NPC.

RetPing

I really don't get why they are still wasting resource on this thing when barely no one plays it.
Please just don't add achievment to this thing that has nothing to do with ESO MMO rpg to force people to play it.

gvgisdi

More decks!

JustLovely

I tried Tales of Tribute for the first time a couple days ago. It seemed more like a phone app than something that belongs in an MMO.

spartaxoxo

JustLovely wrote: »

I tried Tales of Tribute for the first time a couple days ago. It seemed more like a phone app than something that belongs in an MMO.

And yet many MMOs have mini games, just as this one does.

Seraphayel

Honestly hoping we’re getting at least one deck per year going forward. I love ToT and I think it’s the best evergreen content they’ve brought to the game. Yes I know not many players play ToT (which is a shame), but it’s my favorite thing to do in ESO that’s not combat related. I hope for an Ithelia deck in Gold Road with a cool new mechanic (like foreshadowing or undoing a previous action, or a random action taking place like drawing a card, getting one might or coin or loosing one prestige, so it’s kind of a gamble what happens).

Northwold

Honestly, despite what others say, I still, think crow is a problem. I really think the crow deck should not have power at all. Otherwise rng really does come into play and it becomes stupidly annoying.

The decks I think are the best designed are those that, by themselves or with only a little help from anything else, are unlikely to have all the elements necessary to win a game against a player who knows what they're doing. But they add something to the play style.

Rahjin is such a deck. Almalexia arguably is such a deck (although seriously annoying also). Even Pelin would count since you can't generate much coin using Pelin alone and there aren't many wildcards with extra features like Rally, or Red Eagle, which can do great things but only in conjunction with something else.

Crow's card pulling mechanic is so extreme that it defeats the limitations of the deck in terms of coin, and the "low" power amounts per card can stack up rapidly because the pulling can go on for aeons. In many games, it forces you to play one way.

Daoin

i think its great to have ingame for those that enjoy it, however although i did enjoy it at first burst play when released i will never play again no matter the update unless im forced again like the lead hidden behind the game and the fact i had too for the lead just made my mind up for me. to be honest most days i log in now i dont even remember ToT is there

Faulgor

Largomets wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I actually don't think Druid is that big of a deal. But, Mora definitely needs a nerf.

Regardless, I think that new content is something to look forward to. I still enjoy ToT and I look forward to more decks.

Bad players complain about crow snowballs because "hurr durr buy all the crow cards and get snowball" but that's a super easy thing for an advanced player to mitigate. You can always tell when an advanced player is playing because they pass on the crow card and prioritize deck control.

But how?

Me, an advanced player, passing on crow cards and prioritzing deck control:
My "bad" opponent, buying all the crow cards and crowing off each turn regardless of what I do: