Tales of Tribute - Am I too stupid for the game?

Adremal

SilverBride wrote: »

I started playing when ToT was first introduced and there were only 4 decks. It took me quite awhile of playing before something finally clicked and I got it. Now there are 11 decks and I have no idea how anyone new to the game will ever figure all these out and understand how to play.

Too many decks now and the ranking system are why I no longer play.

I agree that it's overwhelming. I came back after a two years break, and I got some decks other than the starting ones, did some matches... it's kind of like diving back into MTG after years of not playing it, though the rules on MTG are less convoluted. I would've rather had something simpler (and faster) such as, I dunno, Arcomage. RIP 3DO, I so do miss those games.

FlopsyPrince

jaws343 wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Things that seem obvious to some , or that some pick up readily by doing through repetition, will nonetheless remain confusing and frustrating for others. That isn't just for ToT or other ESO activities, but life in general. Yet if you have something that significant numbers of players feel is 1) confusing, 2) boring, 3) too long, or 4) insufficiently rewarding (or some combination of those), it is in fact a developer/design issue.

However, none of us know what percentage of people play at all, or regularly, or at what level. We can infer though from years of comments and feedback that it, broadly speaking, didn't make the best of impressions for a chapter feature.

There is nothing wrong with finding ToT obvious, or easily picked up, etc. Or something that required lots of practice to finally understand. There is nothing wrong with finding it overly complicated and confusing. In fact, such terms can mean many things, such as "I've played lots of trading/strategy card games and have experience that helps me get this faster" or "The type of logic or strategy involved is something that doesn't come naturally to me, and trying to learn by trial and error is frustrating and confusing."

Personally I very, very rarely play it and when I do it's the most obvious moves vs the most inept NPCs I can find. I see no high level strategy that I can appreciate or work towards, just, "Here are some cards, OK, this is the best I know what to do with them this turn. Maybe some better cards will show up soon." I would prefer something that wasn't about needing a strategy but rather short terms moves with a focus on more immediate decisions with high stakes, but that is not what ToT is nor what it will ever be. I have been in the "I don't really 'get this' camp" since its release, but if there are those who enjoy it, good for them. I hope it provides them a fun or rewarding experience.

edited for typo

Plenty of people find Chess: Confusing, boring, too long, and insufficiently rewarding.

That doesn't mean that there is a problem with Chess or the design of Chess. Those are terrible metrics to judge a game by, especially the developer of the game, since they are all subjective metrics. The same could be said for any board game. How many people avoid Risk and Monopoly due to length of play or any of the countless games with a larger barrier to entry for being too confusing.

But I doubt anyone would want chess inside ESO or any other MMO. Figuring out the rules in an MMO would require using MANY outside resources and thus not ideal.

Narvuntien wrote: »

I have years of experience in card games including star realms and Dominion and its really quite good. I don't play more because I don't want the rewards Inventory and mail limitations make that j ust annoying and if I want to play a card game I play a card game not a card game inside an MMO.

It is much more complicated than Dominion. I only played Star Realms once and it is a bit more to figure out.

LannStone

Adremal wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I dunno, Arcomage. RIP 3DO, I so do miss those games.

I just had to respond to this. I don't know how many times I've played through the Might and Magic games. It proves that a game doesn't have to have great graphics to have atmosphere.

barney2525

Frogmother wrote: »

The game feel way to complicated with too many factors/resources and effects which are not explained to the player. I gave it several tries but I have no idea what I am doing.
I read a guidance on how to play it, but there are still mechanics and effects which I dont understand.

I've played complex card games. I have won Magic tournaments. I've won Highlander tournaments.

I looked at the rules for this game.

And then I went out to farm some Antiquities.

Lord_Graas

[whispers] ARCOMAGE – this is the type of card game that any players would understand and even want to play.

Seraphayel

barney2525 wrote: »

Frogmother wrote: »

The game feel way to complicated with too many factors/resources and effects which are not explained to the player. I gave it several tries but I have no idea what I am doing.
I read a guidance on how to play it, but there are still mechanics and effects which I dont understand.

I've played complex card games. I have won Magic tournaments. I've won Highlander tournaments.

I looked at the rules for this game.

And then I went out to farm some Antiquities.

But why? ToT is easy. You just have to learn the patrons and that’s it. Way easier to play than any card game that releases hundreds of new cards per year. We get one, sometimes two new patrons in a year, that’s really not much. And it‘s not like every patron has dozens of cards you need to learn. There are what, twelve cards and you just gotta remember the core mechanics of the patron. That’s it. Not very complicated and easy to learn by practice.

JeroenB

Quite interesting really. Generalising very broadly from the many comments, it would appear that at one end we have a group of people who can't figure out enough of the game to play it at all, at the other end we have a group of people familiar with other card games who find this one too convoluted to enjoy strategising for, and inbetween we have a group of people who understand it just enough to play reactively and can enjoy playing casually at that level.

SeaGtGruff

Seraphayel wrote: »

Elrond87 wrote: »

Enemy-of-Coldharbour wrote: »

You are not alone. I still can't beat the intro game, and you can't do dailies unless you beat the intro game. The whole thing seems based off of pure luck and nothing else. WORST GAME EVER!

i dont think it is luck based, otherwise how does one person stay number one on the leaderboard everysingle month without fail in eu

ToT is incredibly rng and luck based, but good players know how to handle a disadvantageous situation better. If the tavern plays against you, there's nothing you can do. The biggest factor that decides if you win or lose is the tavern rng.

I think that's true of any card game where a deck is shuffled and then cards are dealt from it. Let's face it, that's what shuffling is-- putting something into a random order.

The main tactic for handling "the luck of the draw" is to be cautious and careful about how you spend your coin in the tavern.

For example, if you've got 8 gold and have a chance to buy cards that cost 2, 3, 4, 5, snd 8, which do you buy (if any), and in which order? Those two decisions can affect how many cards will be drawn to replace the ones you've bought, and whether you'll be able to buy a nice card that gets drawn as a replacement.

Did you buy the 8 card? Then only one card will be drawn to replace it, which decreases the risk of a really nice one being drawn as a replacement-- but if a nice one does get drawn, you won't be able to buy it and your opponent might buy it.

Did you buy the 5 card, followed by the 3 or 2 card? Then two cards will be drawn, which increases the risk that at least one of them will be a nice one.

But more importantly, if the first replacement card drawn is a nice one that costs more than 3, you won't be able to buy it because you'll have only 3 gold left after buying the 5 card.

So if you're thinking of buying the 5 along with either the 2 or 3, it would be better to buy the 2 or 3 first so you can see what gets drawn to replace it, and if it's better than the 5 card you might still have enough gold to buy it instead.

Likewise with buying the 4 card with either the 2 or 3-- it's usually better to buy the cheaper card first.

Of course, if the 4 or 5 are really good, you might want to go ahead and buy them first-- especially the 4, since the replacement might be another really good 4 card.

Those sorts of decisions can affect the way the tavern's RNG affects the game, because even though the cards in the deck will still be in whatever order they were shuffled into, the "rhythm" of which cards are drawn on whose turns will be affected.

The cards or patrons that let you remove cards from the tavern can also play a major role in affecting the rhythm of how the shuffled cards get drawn. You can't really do anything to stop your opponent from using a patron that lets them remove cards from the tavern, but you can try to reduce their chances of using cards to do that by either buying or removing those cards from the tavern instead of leaving them there for your opponent to use.

silky_soft

It's terribly slow animations, unnecessarly drags the game time out. I don't even think the game is pure luck. It feels like it has a troll bias.

spartaxoxo

JeroenB wrote: »

Quite interesting really. Generalising very broadly from the many comments, it would appear that at one end we have a group of people who can't figure out enough of the game to play it at all, at the other end we have a group of people familiar with other card games who find this one too convoluted to enjoy strategising for, and inbetween we have a group of people who understand it just enough to play reactively and can enjoy playing casually at that level.

I understand it fairly well. Although there are definitely players much better than I am. I have come back from bad early taverns against people not as skilled as me plenty of times with a long game strategy that I play towards. There are people in this thread with high winrates.

It's a card game so obviously there's RNG involved. But a lot of people pick decks that are more reliant on it than others, or favor a few cards and if they don't get them cannot recover, and then chalk up the entire game to RNG. And thus the general perception of RNG is greater than it's actual impact IMO.

This game is complicated. Even the basics are more complicated than some other card games. It can take some time to click but once it does, it can be pretty fun and have a surprising amount of depth.

tinythinker

jaws343 wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Things that seem obvious to some , or that some pick up readily by doing through repetition, will nonetheless remain confusing and frustrating for others. That isn't just for ToT or other ESO activities, but life in general. Yet if you have something that significant numbers of players feel is 1) confusing, 2) boring, 3) too long, or 4) insufficiently rewarding (or some combination of those), it is in fact a developer/design issue.

However, none of us know what percentage of people play at all, or regularly, or at what level. We can infer though from years of comments and feedback that it, broadly speaking, didn't make the best of impressions for a chapter feature.

There is nothing wrong with finding ToT obvious, or easily picked up, etc. Or something that required lots of practice to finally understand. There is nothing wrong with finding it overly complicated and confusing. In fact, such terms can mean many things, such as "I've played lots of trading/strategy card games and have experience that helps me get this faster" or "The type of logic or strategy involved is something that doesn't come naturally to me, and trying to learn by trial and error is frustrating and confusing."

Personally I very, very rarely play it and when I do it's the most obvious moves vs the most inept NPCs I can find. I see no high level strategy that I can appreciate or work towards, just, "Here are some cards, OK, this is the best I know what to do with them this turn. Maybe some better cards will show up soon." I would prefer something that wasn't about needing a strategy but rather short terms moves with a focus on more immediate decisions with high stakes, but that is not what ToT is nor what it will ever be. I have been in the "I don't really 'get this' camp" since its release, but if there are those who enjoy it, good for them. I hope it provides them a fun or rewarding experience.

edited for typo

Plenty of people find Chess: Confusing, boring, too long, and insufficiently rewarding.

That doesn't mean that there is a problem with Chess or the design of Chess. Those are terrible metrics to judge a game by, especially the developer of the game, since they are all subjective metrics. The same could be said for any board game. How many people avoid Risk and Monopoly due to length of play or any of the countless games with a larger barrier to entry for being too confusing.

Since you want to focus on that one specific issue, I will reply only to that as I don't see the relevance of your examples. I'm curious, so I will expand on that one sentence in case that clarifies something for you. Maybe, maybe not

You brought up chess - would you see chess as a good thing to add to an MMO? Would any board game be a good fit for placement in an MMO? (<- rhetorical) Isn't that subjective as as well? Most things are subjective, but in business numbers matter. It doesn't matter how good someone thinks a product or service is if it doesn't sell well or gain traction. Collective subjectivity of the marketplace wins. Perception, as unfair and biased (and even ill-informed) as it often is, wins.

Tribute was made specifically to go into an MMO, it's not an ancient board game like Go or Chess that was crammed into one. Any new feature in an MMO is judged by overall player response. If it is meant to be ultra-challenging and only be cleared by the top 2-5% of players, then a smaller part of the player-base actively engaging with it may be viewed as acceptable and a success. If it's hoped to be widely loved and played, then only 2-5% actively engaging with it is horrible. [Note: I'm not saying Tribute is only played by 2-5% of ESO players, lest anyone try to infer that. I hope that it's more like 20-50% or more of players regularly engage with ToT given the work that went into it, but we don't know]. I mention in fact that we just don't know the numbers, only anecdotal evidence about the perception of Tribute, particularly its debut and reviews of the subsequent in-game tutorial.

In other words, if enough players have an issue with a feature then yes, then that feature being to short or long, easy or hard, or any variety of boring and/or unrewarding is, in fact, an issue for the developers to note and discuss. A developer issue. If enough players think a dungeon is "confusing, boring, too long, or insufficiently rewarding" (or more than one of those), would we compare that to chess as well? Perhaps a triathlon comparison for a trifecta achievement? Or might some wonder instead why Finn and crew missed the mark this time? Why would it be different for Tribute? Some people love solo arenas, others find them confusing, boring, too hard, too long, etc. However, if enough people start to feel that such content is unfun for any reason and participation wasn't hitting sufficient numbers, why would developers ignore that? [Note: Again, I'm not suggesting that ToT numbers or declining or pointing evidence of it, merely showing why subjective player opinions are, in fact, a developer issue].

I captured this simply as, "Yet if you have something that significant numbers of players feel is 1) confusing, 2) boring, 3) too long, or 4) insufficiently rewarding (or some combination of those), it is in fact a developer/design issue."

I stand by it. I see no issue with it. It isn't about ToT in particular, just a statement about game design. I fail to see why it's controversial. You can take it out of my post and the thrust of the post doesn't change.

[Final note: I'm not anti-Tribute, and wish I'd had a better experience with it or more time to give it a second chance. Maybe one day?]

OhDios

I Love it, the way it is im just expecting the next deck!!

Lugaldu

I lost interest in ToT a long time ago. At the beginning I thought I was too stupid to learn it, then I had fun with the first 8 decks in the first year, but now the game is just annoying. Reasons for this: increasingly poor rewards, a round lasts forever, Antiquity Leads tied to ToT (plus extremely bad RNG), new decks make it more and more confusing and, above all, it's annoying that the novice NPCs play way too hard.

VoidCommander

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Remember those 2 Argonians in Murkmire trying to explain to a foreigner the rules of Teeba-Hastei ? They might as well trying to explain the rules of Tales of Tribute. The rules are simply far too complicated. Like why for example there are multiple winning/losing conditions ? Usually there is only one - you win when your opponent HP goes to 0 & lose if your HP goes to 0. They really overcomplicated it. If it was plain & simple, like the old Arcomage for example then it would be imho a success. Arcomage despite being old & stupidly simple has this "I will play one more game" syndrome. This is what they should have aimed for. They missed the mark by a mile.

Instead of one win condition, they have TWO? Truly is remarkable how ZoS expected anyone to keep up....

Prophet_of_Malacath

Czeri wrote: »

I'm currently trying to wrap my head around Mora's deck. I don't get why anyone would willingly play any of the cards, considering they benefit your opponent, often much more than they benefit you. I mean, there's an agent card that gives like 1 power to the player and 3 gold to the opponent. The NPC I was playing actually bought and used it, and I was very careful not to knock it out...

Mora's deck builds power FAST when it combos. It only feels weak when you have low-value or isolated cards. It's more like the Druid & Crow decks, which usually suck in isolation but combo to ridiculous effect.

For comparison, a single Psijic or Rajin or Hunding card all do what they need to do very effectively.

So Mora's deck is more for gamblers. Maybe combo with Crow (for card-draw) or Reachfolk (to eliminate non-Mora cards).

Ironically, I LIKE Mora, but either with Hlaalu (so I can sell those cards to the patron) or Rahjin (to spam garbage at them and deny them combos). I like the idea of using the Mora patron to give the enemy card-trash.

FlopsyPrince

So which antiquity leads will I miss by not playing ToT?

Seraphayel

VoidCommander wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Remember those 2 Argonians in Murkmire trying to explain to a foreigner the rules of Teeba-Hastei ? They might as well trying to explain the rules of Tales of Tribute. The rules are simply far too complicated. Like why for example there are multiple winning/losing conditions ? Usually there is only one - you win when your opponent HP goes to 0 & lose if your HP goes to 0. They really overcomplicated it. If it was plain & simple, like the old Arcomage for example then it would be imho a success. Arcomage despite being old & stupidly simple has this "I will play one more game" syndrome. This is what they should have aimed for. They missed the mark by a mile.

Instead of one win condition, they have TWO? Truly is remarkable how ZoS expected anyone to keep up....

This is basically described in the tutorial, no idea why this would be problematic at all.

VoidCommander

Seraphayel wrote: »

VoidCommander wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Remember those 2 Argonians in Murkmire trying to explain to a foreigner the rules of Teeba-Hastei ? They might as well trying to explain the rules of Tales of Tribute. The rules are simply far too complicated. Like why for example there are multiple winning/losing conditions ? Usually there is only one - you win when your opponent HP goes to 0 & lose if your HP goes to 0. They really overcomplicated it. If it was plain & simple, like the old Arcomage for example then it would be imho a success. Arcomage despite being old & stupidly simple has this "I will play one more game" syndrome. This is what they should have aimed for. They missed the mark by a mile.

Instead of one win condition, they have TWO? Truly is remarkable how ZoS expected anyone to keep up....

This is basically described in the tutorial, no idea why this would be problematic at all.

I agree. I was being sarcastic. I was among the top 10 in the first month of ToT release. This game is not hard to grasp after a few games in my opinion. Even when new decks come out, its not too hard to see how they are meant to be played. Worst case is you see someone steamroll you with a deck strategy so you learn and copy that strategy (when relevant) for next time.

Seraphayel

VoidCommander wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

VoidCommander wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Remember those 2 Argonians in Murkmire trying to explain to a foreigner the rules of Teeba-Hastei ? They might as well trying to explain the rules of Tales of Tribute. The rules are simply far too complicated. Like why for example there are multiple winning/losing conditions ? Usually there is only one - you win when your opponent HP goes to 0 & lose if your HP goes to 0. They really overcomplicated it. If it was plain & simple, like the old Arcomage for example then it would be imho a success. Arcomage despite being old & stupidly simple has this "I will play one more game" syndrome. This is what they should have aimed for. They missed the mark by a mile.

Instead of one win condition, they have TWO? Truly is remarkable how ZoS expected anyone to keep up....

This is basically described in the tutorial, no idea why this would be problematic at all.

I agree. I was being sarcastic. I was among the top 10 in the first month of ToT release. This game is not hard to grasp after a few games in my opinion. Even when new decks come out, its not too hard to see how they are meant to be played. Worst case is you see someone steamroll you with a deck strategy so you learn and copy that strategy (when relevant) for next time.

Ah, sorry, by some responses in this thread here I really can’t tell if people are joking or dead serious.

Exactly, even with two new decks per year you basically have 6 months to learn one… it‘s really not that difficult.

FlopsyPrince

Just because it is easy and perhaps enjoyable for you does not mean it is for everyone else.

Yet it was a key part of the release.

Lugaldu

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

So which antiquity leads will I miss by not playing ToT?

The Necrom music-box. Except you can get the lead meanwhile also somewhere else, but I have not yet heard about that.

FlopsyPrince

Lugaldu wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

So which antiquity leads will I miss by not playing ToT?

The Necrom music-box. Except you can get the lead meanwhile also somewhere else, but I have not yet heard about that.

Thanks for the clarification. Nothing I really care about, fortunately for me!