Im just not understanding Tales of Tribute

Weesacs

Ive just began the High Isle chapter and began playing Tales of Tribute however the truth is, I dont know what im doing lol. I dont play card games in real life so this is all new to me. Ive watched quite a few videos - over 2 hours of tutorials but im just not understanding the game.

I feel like I need some interactive tuition to understand the game i.e. play along side someone over voice comms so I can ask questions as the game is going on.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can learn this game? It seems really complex to me.

Cheers

zaria

They made the pve play against novice npc way to hard as I see it it was easy back at launch. Also the npc moves way to slow, yes an player need to think for some time, but not the npc, speed it up so its more fun.

old_scopie1945

It seems like 20% skill, 80% RNG to me.

agelonestar

It is an awful game that I avoid like the plague.

Honestly the worst addition to ESO.

spartaxoxo

I love Tales of Tribute. I wish it had it's own standalone app. What server are you on?

icapital

you just need 40 prestige lol

Grec1a

Jakeclips on YouTube has some great beginner guides.

Weesacs

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I love Tales of Tribute. I wish it had it's own standalone app. What server are you on?

Im on Playstation EU.

Im in two active guilds - one is with my friends and one is a trader. Ive asked in both if someone would help me but they all kinda lol'd and said they dont play it so im kinda in limbo on how to progress with this.

As I said, Id love someone to come on voice comms to help me so I can ask questions ... however I feel like I shouldnt need to go to those lengths for what is supposed to be a fun addition to the game.

Tales of tribute is way more complex than snap and black jack haha (card games I used to play years ago).

Weesacs

icapital wrote: »

you just need 40 prestige lol

Played a few novice NPCs in the tavern, havent won a game yet, cause I havent a clue what im doing lol so getting to 40 prestige isnt as easy as you say.

Daimonion82

I've tried to like it multiple times, but no. It's overcomplicated without reason and definitely not fun for me. I'm occasionally playing cards irl, my favourite game was always canasta;-) A bit of bridge too from time to time. But ToT is unplayable - they've could just implement Elder Scrolls Legend into the game and it would be better.
I think the best games in general aren't too complicated. Take chess for example - basic rules are really easy but the game is very complex and impossible to win if you play with professional. ToT is more like fizzbin (card game from Star Trek Original Series invented by captain Kirk to confuse villains) than chess...

Pevey

Daimonion82 wrote: »

I've tried to like it multiple times, but no. It's overcomplicated without reason and definitely not fun for me. I'm occasionally playing cards irl, my favourite game was always canasta;-) A bit of bridge too from time to time. But ToT is unplayable - they've could just implement Elder Scrolls Legend into the game and it would be better.
I think the best games in general aren't too complicated. Take chess for example - basic rules are really easy but the game is very complex and impossible to win if you play with professional. ToT is more like fizzbin (card game from Star Trek Original Series invented by captain Kirk to confuse villains) than chess...

I agree with this completely. I really liked the idea of a tavern game in ESO, with collectible cards. I loved Gwent in the Witcher and even played the standalone Gwent game for a while. But ToT just completely missed the mark for me. Some people seem to enjoy it, but I think it's way too complicated for me to ease into. The most popular card games are deceptively simple, where there is a very low bar for getting started because the basic concept is very easy to understand. But you can get more strategic about things if you wish, and improve your odds greatly. I'm not sure if I somehow did it long ago and have zero recollection of it, but I don't even have any sort of in-game tutorial about ToT. Just an available quest line, where you start playing novice NPCs. With no idea what to even do. Select patrons, select cards, but what do they even mean? What is the goal? Who knows. I refuse to take a class to play this game with a clunky interface and slow pace. Even if you're clicking quickly, the interface just seems non-responsive at times. A big miss for me.

Weesacs

I managed to win 1 game (just by clicking cards lol). Moved onto the daily in Glenumbra, now the board is talking about agent cards etc. Never seen them before, dont know what they are for or what they do. I also dont know when the patrons can be moved?? Seems to be random when you can select them. Lost 2 games so far here.

As the guy said above:

The most popular card games are deceptively simple, where there is a very low bar for getting started because the basic concept is very easy to understand

Seems like a fail so far

Daimonion82

@Pevey - Oh, yes, Gwent! When I first heard about implementing some card game into the Witcher 3, I wasn't happy at all. I was sure it won't be any good. But damn, it was addictive:-) "We have a bounty on a mons..." "Shut up, I want to play cards with you!" Good times!

Weesacs

Lost another game. Willing to pay gold to someone to win this daily for me? lol

Diebesgut

...I played for 8 hours against the "easiest" NPCs until I finally won a game by chance.
All for Zereth's benefit - I will definitely never play it again, I'm glad it's over
🤢

JeroenB

On PC I'd ask whether you'd tried hovering your mouse over all the game components, as that pops up information about what they do, e.g. the Patrons, or the sepecial actions on cards. No idea how you'd do that on a console though, and the game would indeed be unintelligible if you can't access that information.

Try collecting cards from just one or two decks, and see what happens as you play cards of the same deck in combination. The icons on the left-hand side of each card activate if you play only that card from a deck. The icons on the right-hand side of each card activate as you play more than one card from a deck, requiring either two, three, or four from the same deck to be played during that round, in any order, at any point during the round. This is the most important mechanism of the game to understand, I would say.

Regular cards ("action" cards) return to your stack to draw your hand from after a round. "Agent" cards are the ones that pin in place above your hand across rounds until dismissed (usually by your opponent). They feature a red-backed or black-backed number at the base of the card, which indicated the amount of "power" (red diamond points) the opponent needs to spend to dismiss them. (Black-backed numbers are 'shields' that need to be dismissed before the red-backed ones.)

There are also "contract" cards, ephemeral versions of both types that only last once, so until the end of the round for a "contract action" card or until dismissed for a "contract agent" card. These cards are identifiable by their purchase price being displayed in a grey scroll rather than a gold circle.

You can click the patrons once each round (some cards grant more goes), if you have the appropriate resource for a given patron available, typically power points, gold, or a card from your hand. The cost and the effect of a given patron can very depending on whether they are pointing towards you, away from you, or are in the centre position.

The neutral white circle patron lets you pay two gold to convert a card into a card that pays two gold -- this lets you convert the one-gold cards you start with, or the cards that only pay one power point if you don't want those, into a more useful two-gold paying card.

There are many more details of course, but that might help you understand what's going on a bit better. There's four types of card -- action, agent, and the contract version of each -- and you want to collect a set of cards from one or two decks so you are likely to trigger combos during each round.

old_scopie1945

Weesacs wrote: »

icapital wrote: »

you just need 40 prestige lol

Played a few novice NPCs in the tavern, havent won a game yet, cause I havent a clue what im doing lol so getting to 40 prestige isnt as easy as you say.

That's par to the course I'm afraid, your just fighting against horrendous RNG all the time. That's the problem with levelling up rapport for Zerith-var , TOT. It is nothing but a chore when the cards aren't dropping.

JeroenB

One simple approach to try:

• Try to purchase only: cards from the purple (Duke of Crows) and light-blue (Psijic Loremaster Celarus) patrons that cost four gold or more (plus the three gold contract action cards). (Prioritise cards that draw new cards. Avoid the purple four-gold contract card early in the game.)
• If you can't buy one of those, upgrade a one-gold-coin card or that 'irritating' one-red-power starting card to a two-gold-coin card using the neutral treasury patron. (This costs two gold.)
• In each round, use the "toss" re-ordering feature on any cards that have it to get as many cards with the "draw 1 card" feature in a row in your draw pile as you can, or failing that other purple cards, and to move any one-gold-coin cards (and later two-gold-coin cards) out of your draw pile.

That should gradually get you lots of gold to buy more cards for longer combos and more gold, and a string of red power points incidentally along the way.

You can look up the individual cards and their effects on eso-hub.com, for example.

EDIT: Trying it out with Kishka's daily on the Novice opponents, I forgot to mention what to do when you can't buy or upgrade any cards, and I forgot to cover the Treasury's utility cards. Expanding the approach:

If you can't do the above:

• Buy cards of any Patron type that provide at least two gold on the left side, and 'melt' them using the yellow Patron function when they next turn up in your hand.
• If you build up a huge amount of gold in a round (over twenty gold say), you can consider using the purple patron to convert that into red power points (at the cost of one). Especially if this would put you over the forty points total. (Note that when this Patron is pointing in your direction, you cannot use this feature again until your opponent uses it!)

White "Treasury" cards to consider when they come up:

• Ragpicker: Permanently remove a card from your hand -- use this to get rid of the one-gold- and later two-gold-coin cards.
• Harvest season: Draw one card.
• Barterer: Lets you replace one other card in the tavern, revealing two new cards for one gold spent (or deny cards to your opponent).
• Black sacrament & Ambush: Dismiss one or two of your opponent's agent cards, respectively, or buy to prevent your opponent from dismissing yours.
• Tithe: Lets you use an additional Patron action that round -- if that's of any use to you and you have the resources!
• Three- and five-red power point cards -- inefficient but better than losing the gold.

Dipping into other sets:

• Saint Pelin (red) shield agent cards, seven gold & nine gold for four and five red power point shields respectively.
• Grandmaster Delmene Hlaalu (yellow) kwama egg mine cards: cost three gold but return two, so reveals a new card for one gold. It combos with any two other yellow cards to provide more gold. Sometimes you're lucky enough to be able to buy two, combined with a yellow starting card, for a lot of gold that round.
• (One I didn't use in these games:) Buy yellow (Grandmaster Delmene Hlaalu) cards worth six to eight gold, and 'melt' those later in the game. In the meantime they will provide a lot of gold per round and some will let you take additional cards from the tavern.

I just ran through Kishka's daily on two characters, using the above 'rules', and attempting to apply them 'strictly' even when I would normally choose something else, including making obviously-to-me 'bad' choices. I ended up winning six out of eight Novice games. While applying the rules blindly undoubtedly won't be equally successful, hopefully it won't take someone eight hours to win one game again .

Weesacs

@JeroenB Thanks very much for the information. You have at least provided some insight into what is going on lol. I did eventually manage to complete the daily in Glenumbra - obviously luck. But as someone said above, there seems to be a high level of RNG involved as Im not entirely sure how I won lol.

Anyway, I wont be playing it again any time soon as I find it quite boring and not very engaging, which is a shame as it was something I was looking forward to.

ImmortalCX

Pevey wrote: »

Daimonion82 wrote: »

I've tried to like it multiple times, but no. It's overcomplicated without reason and definitely not fun for me. I'm occasionally playing cards irl, my favourite game was always canasta;-) A bit of bridge too from time to time. But ToT is unplayable - they've could just implement Elder Scrolls Legend into the game and it would be better.
I think the best games in general aren't too complicated. Take chess for example - basic rules are really easy but the game is very complex and impossible to win if you play with professional. ToT is more like fizzbin (card game from Star Trek Original Series invented by captain Kirk to confuse villains) than chess...

I agree with this completely. I really liked the idea of a tavern game in ESO, with collectible cards. I loved Gwent in the Witcher and even played the standalone Gwent game for a while. But ToT just completely missed the mark for me. Some people seem to enjoy it, but I think it's way too complicated for me to ease into. The most popular card games are deceptively simple, where there is a very low bar for getting started because the basic concept is very easy to understand. But you can get more strategic about things if you wish, and improve your odds greatly. I'm not sure if I somehow did it long ago and have zero recollection of it, but I don't even have any sort of in-game tutorial about ToT. Just an available quest line, where you start playing novice NPCs. With no idea what to even do. Select patrons, select cards, but what do they even mean? What is the goal? Who knows. I refuse to take a class to play this game with a clunky interface and slow pace. Even if you're clicking quickly, the interface just seems non-responsive at times. A big miss for me.

IDK.

MTG and similar games are very complicated.

Haven't played TOT but there are examples of complicated card games that are successful.

Solvar

My main problem is how long it takes to play a game. I played (and won) some games against NPCs, but my recollection is that the game took 15+ minutes to play. I didn't find it super complicated, but I've also played deck building games in real life, and that is basically what it is, and randomness has a big play.

In terms of play time, if I could do a game in 5 minutes, I'd probably play more as I'm finishing up for the evening and don't want to start a quest or something that is going to take longer than that (I often do some fishing or gathering in that situation). But if I have 15 minutes, that is almost certainly going to be long enough to do a quest, delve, or whatever, so I really haven't touched tales of tribute for a while.

MorallyBipolar

The creation of ToT convinced me that ZOS is totally out of touch with what the bulk of the ESO players are looking for from the game.

My advice is to not spend too much time learning the game. Focus on the parts of the game that are fun.

valenwood_vegan

Solvar wrote: »

My main problem is how long it takes to play a game. I played (and won) some games against NPCs, but my recollection is that the game took 15+ minutes to play. I didn't find it super complicated, but I've also played deck building games in real life, and that is basically what it is, and randomness has a big play.

In terms of play time, if I could do a game in 5 minutes, I'd probably play more as I'm finishing up for the evening and don't want to start a quest or something that is going to take longer than that (I often do some fishing or gathering in that situation). But if I have 15 minutes, that is almost certainly going to be long enough to do a quest, delve, or whatever, so I really haven't touched tales of tribute for a while.

Yeah, you know I kind of enjoyed ToT at first when the novice AI wasn't very good and it was just the original decks, which were pretty straightforward; but they've added new, more complicated decks, and have made the novice level NPC better than it was originally. Matches against real players often take way too long, or can very very toxic.

Overall it just takes too long for a side activity - I know some people like ToT and I'm glad it exists for them, but a lot of us log in to play ESO, not a completely unrelated game. I do wish there was some simplified / quick version of it that could really be done as a side activity while waiting for friends to be ready, etc., but as it stands I just avoid it now.

spartaxoxo

Weesacs wrote: »

I managed to win 1 game (just by clicking cards lol). Moved onto the daily in Glenumbra, now the board is talking about agent cards etc. Never seen them before, dont know what they are for or what they do. I also dont know when the patrons can be moved?? Seems to be random when you can select them. Lost 2 games so far here.

As the guy said above:

The most popular card games are deceptively simple, where there is a very low bar for getting started because the basic concept is very easy to understand

Seems like a fail so far

Turn your 1 coin cards into 2 coin cards at the end of your turn, if you don't have a better move. These help you afford better cards. Coin is how you buy cards to add to your deck.

Patrons all have different use conditions. Just read them and you'll get the hang of it.

Prestige is the points you need to win. Power turns to prestige at the end of your turns.

Agents are cards that don't go away at the end of your turn. Sometimes they have a powerful effect called Taunt. It prevents your opponent from attacking your other agents or turning their power into prestige points at the end of their turn.

Try to gather cards of the same color so you can combo them.

Those are the main things you need to know. There's way more to it than that but these things will help you get past the NPCs easily and also help you learn the basics. More advanced tips can be learned later.

Vonnegut2506

Weesacs wrote: »

@JeroenB Thanks very much for the information. You have at least provided some insight into what is going on lol. I did eventually manage to complete the daily in Glenumbra - obviously luck. But as someone said above, there seems to be a high level of RNG involved as Im not entirely sure how I won lol.

Anyway, I wont be playing it again any time soon as I find it quite boring and not very engaging, which is a shame as it was something I was looking forward to.

Reading your last sentence, it appears you understand Tales of Tribute perfectly.

AvalonRanger

Witcher3 "gwent" UI.
We can easily understand buff-debuff mech and range concept.



ZOS game planners are really not good at visual communication with players.
10 years later from 2014, they're still rookies as game designer.

Warhawke_80

I think folks find it too convoluted...I mean it's obvious the developer of ToT was very proud of his creation...but think it would have been much more popular if they had given us a streamlined Card game like Hearthstone or DuelMasters...

But even so there is no guarantee it would have taken off....heck just look at the Everquest/SWG card game it was fast easy to learn and fun...but it never took off.


Card games by and large are hard to make successful.

icapital

AvalonRanger wrote: »

Witcher3 "gwent" UI.
We can easily understand buff-debuff mech and range concept.



ZOS game planners are really not good at visual communication with players.
10 years later from 2014, they're still rookies as game designer.

Gwent was so boring...only thing good was the music.

I still prefer Hearthstone out of all of these card games if I had to pick one. There is a simplicity to it that complicates itself as much as you want it to. But the fundamentals remain the same.

ToT is complicated from the get go and Gwent is just a Total War simulator with no real depth.

Stx

I really want the Patrons Gold dye, but I can’t bring myself to start such an activity.

Scaletho

Weesacs wrote: »

Ive just began the High Isle chapter and began playing Tales of Tribute however the truth is, I dont know what im doing lol. I dont play card games in real life so this is all new to me. Ive watched quite a few videos - over 2 hours of tutorials but im just not understanding the game.

I feel like I need some interactive tuition to understand the game i.e. play along side someone over voice comms so I can ask questions as the game is going on.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can learn this game? It seems really complex to me.

Cheers

Is there still someone playing this? How many? 10? lol

ESO_player123

Scaletho wrote: »

Weesacs wrote: »

Ive just began the High Isle chapter and began playing Tales of Tribute however the truth is, I dont know what im doing lol. I dont play card games in real life so this is all new to me. Ive watched quite a few videos - over 2 hours of tutorials but im just not understanding the game.

I feel like I need some interactive tuition to understand the game i.e. play along side someone over voice comms so I can ask questions as the game is going on.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can learn this game? It seems really complex to me.

Cheers

Is there still someone playing this? How many? 10? lol

Yes, we are still playing. All 10 of us.