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(Tales of Tribute) Unfortunate Bug or Something Else? How my November, 2025 Season Ended.
Personofsecrets
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After seeing that the top players were not pushing score very much, I figured that I could go for the number one Tales of Tribute spot without an exorbitant amount of effort. On November the 24th, I started a win streak in the ranked game mode of 36 games which saw me break the 3000 point threshhold while taking the number one leaderboard position before the leaderboard rollover on today, December 1st.
With just 37 minutes left for the ranked season, the now second rank player had their work cut out for them. Because I believe that they are in a region that is in the early evening during the end of the ladder time, I kept close track of the ladder. After a previous season where I tried to ladder snipe and failed by a single point, my acitons were noticed.
After just one minute of time, I found that my hunch about the other player was correct, they are online and now trying to reclaim the first position
I figured that if I joined the ranked que again, then I would play against them and we could settle the first and second leaderboard positions in a fair way, with a match. Due to the time left in the season, the person who loses would most likely not have a shot at going for first again.
As it turns out, trying to have an exciting play-off like this was a mistake. Yes, I did get matched against this other player, but there was an unintented outcome. The game determined that I had lost before the match began.
Note two things from this happening. There was an MMR change and the game was not recorded with the tracking addon that I use. Regarding the MMR change, there is also a strange happening. The opponent gained more points than I lost.
Now that I have laid out the objective facts of my experience, I do have some speculation that I'd like to go into. I write that there are some speculations below because even though I know Tales of Tribute pretty sell, it is of course impossible to fully understand parts of the game and ranked system.
I will begin with the obvious thing to point out. Within just a couple of minutes, the opponent gained 65 (3030 minus 2965) points from a game, played against me where I lost 90 points (3031 minus 2941), but also gained an additional mysterious 30 points on top of what I gave up to them (3155 minus 3030).
Regarding that first score change of theirs, of 65 points, that is an unusually high number of points to win while already at the high ELO. I would expect that this number of points would be won if they beat a player in the top 20. The only top 20 score change I see after that minute of time was another player losing 47 points. Since 65 is not 47 it is sort of a mystery who they won 65 points against and how that was possible.
Regarding the second score change, where they gain 120 points, I don't understand whatsoever how they can gain 120 points for the match against me that I automatically lost and gave up 90 points for.
The next point that I would like to review is that it is extremly strange for me to have encountered this issue of losing the game, automatically, without even getting to the Patron screen. I was standing in Rawl'kha where I had successfully played my last 4 games from 3:42 EST to 4:12 EST. When I accepted the game, my chacter was standing still. The character was not interacting with anything. I had no menus open. I was not interracting with an addon.
Because of this issue popping up in the way it did, it draws suspicion to the match and if there is a user input by the opponent that could have caused the automatic loss on my side.
I will point out that it has recently been documented by ToT player @ESO_player123 that some strange game states that happen at the start of a ToT game seem reproducable based on the opponent.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/685478/tot-weird-coincidence
I am pretty sure that the issue that ESO_player brings to light in their posting is different compared to the issue that caused my automatic loss game, but maybe there is something going on. It was back during the times of the launch of ToT that players became banned for abusing an exploit that caused opponents to forfeit games.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/609214/tales-of-tribute-exploit-account-bans
It is possible that something like that bug still exists in the game. It isn't unusual for bugs to not fully be fixed or come back to the game in different ways. There could be something inherently wrong with the matchmaking that is still able to be abused.
I would also like to call on @imPDA to review the score information that I've shared here. To me, the score change seems not possible, but it happened. ImPDA is the developer of the Impressive Stats addon that I use for tracking my game data. One of the above screenshots shows the UI from that addon.
Overall, please do not interpret this post as my having declared another player to be cheating. I have no way of knowing what caused the automatic game loss. Although I did write that this occurrence is suspicious, and I think it is, I would like to point out that this other player is certainly a great player.
They have improved quite a bit over the last year. While I used to beat them with more consistency, we now share what is much closer to a 50% win rate against eachother according to my logged data. That is another thing that I have to point out. Although I haven't expereienced this automatic loss issue in a long time, this is the only time that I've experienced the issue against this other player. The timing is strange and unfortunate, but I prefer to stress all of the good games that we have played against eachother at prior times. I congratulate them on their standing and leaderboard consistency throughout this year.
Even though I did not get the play-off game that I wanted, I'm happy that I achieved this rank. I'm also happy that some other players are interested in ToT to the point that they still monitor the leaderboard and do well. What would help resolve issues like the one that I experienced today is greater transparency from development regarding how their ranking systems work. What would also help resolve this type of issue, in my mind, is seeing development further address these types of automatic loss issues. There have been other forum complaints where other players are quite disappointed when they give up their score to the automatic loss issue. My experience is not an isolated event and I have not seen a developer comment on these types of games, why they happen, and why the system processes the event with a ranked leaderboard score change. That is another thing that could help resolve this issue - the leaderboard should not be impacted after automatic loss games.
Thank you for reading my notes here and thank you to all of the ToT players of which 702 made the Rubedite leauge during the November, 2025 season.
P.S. Regarding why this post is here and not in a different forum, the other forums for ToT content do not allow me to upload pictures in line with the text. The pictures are essential evidence of my experience. Additionally, I see some ToT posts in the General forum sometimes, which do not get moved, so I have to think that they are sometimes allowed. I hope that this passage counts as "General" content since it may interest players who generally care about the leaderboards.
Edited by Personofsecrets on December 1, 2025 12:28PM With just 37 minutes left for the ranked season, the now second rank player had their work cut out for them. Because I believe that they are in a region that is in the early evening during the end of the ladder time, I kept close track of the ladder. After a previous season where I tried to ladder snipe and failed by a single point, my acitons were noticed.
After just one minute of time, I found that my hunch about the other player was correct, they are online and now trying to reclaim the first position
I figured that if I joined the ranked que again, then I would play against them and we could settle the first and second leaderboard positions in a fair way, with a match. Due to the time left in the season, the person who loses would most likely not have a shot at going for first again.
As it turns out, trying to have an exciting play-off like this was a mistake. Yes, I did get matched against this other player, but there was an unintented outcome. The game determined that I had lost before the match began.
Note two things from this happening. There was an MMR change and the game was not recorded with the tracking addon that I use. Regarding the MMR change, there is also a strange happening. The opponent gained more points than I lost.
Now that I have laid out the objective facts of my experience, I do have some speculation that I'd like to go into. I write that there are some speculations below because even though I know Tales of Tribute pretty sell, it is of course impossible to fully understand parts of the game and ranked system.
I will begin with the obvious thing to point out. Within just a couple of minutes, the opponent gained 65 (3030 minus 2965) points from a game, played against me where I lost 90 points (3031 minus 2941), but also gained an additional mysterious 30 points on top of what I gave up to them (3155 minus 3030).
Regarding that first score change of theirs, of 65 points, that is an unusually high number of points to win while already at the high ELO. I would expect that this number of points would be won if they beat a player in the top 20. The only top 20 score change I see after that minute of time was another player losing 47 points. Since 65 is not 47 it is sort of a mystery who they won 65 points against and how that was possible.
Regarding the second score change, where they gain 120 points, I don't understand whatsoever how they can gain 120 points for the match against me that I automatically lost and gave up 90 points for.
The next point that I would like to review is that it is extremly strange for me to have encountered this issue of losing the game, automatically, without even getting to the Patron screen. I was standing in Rawl'kha where I had successfully played my last 4 games from 3:42 EST to 4:12 EST. When I accepted the game, my chacter was standing still. The character was not interacting with anything. I had no menus open. I was not interracting with an addon.
Because of this issue popping up in the way it did, it draws suspicion to the match and if there is a user input by the opponent that could have caused the automatic loss on my side.
I will point out that it has recently been documented by ToT player @ESO_player123 that some strange game states that happen at the start of a ToT game seem reproducable based on the opponent.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/685478/tot-weird-coincidence
I am pretty sure that the issue that ESO_player brings to light in their posting is different compared to the issue that caused my automatic loss game, but maybe there is something going on. It was back during the times of the launch of ToT that players became banned for abusing an exploit that caused opponents to forfeit games.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/609214/tales-of-tribute-exploit-account-bans
It is possible that something like that bug still exists in the game. It isn't unusual for bugs to not fully be fixed or come back to the game in different ways. There could be something inherently wrong with the matchmaking that is still able to be abused.
I would also like to call on @imPDA to review the score information that I've shared here. To me, the score change seems not possible, but it happened. ImPDA is the developer of the Impressive Stats addon that I use for tracking my game data. One of the above screenshots shows the UI from that addon.
Overall, please do not interpret this post as my having declared another player to be cheating. I have no way of knowing what caused the automatic game loss. Although I did write that this occurrence is suspicious, and I think it is, I would like to point out that this other player is certainly a great player.
They have improved quite a bit over the last year. While I used to beat them with more consistency, we now share what is much closer to a 50% win rate against eachother according to my logged data. That is another thing that I have to point out. Although I haven't expereienced this automatic loss issue in a long time, this is the only time that I've experienced the issue against this other player. The timing is strange and unfortunate, but I prefer to stress all of the good games that we have played against eachother at prior times. I congratulate them on their standing and leaderboard consistency throughout this year.
Even though I did not get the play-off game that I wanted, I'm happy that I achieved this rank. I'm also happy that some other players are interested in ToT to the point that they still monitor the leaderboard and do well. What would help resolve issues like the one that I experienced today is greater transparency from development regarding how their ranking systems work. What would also help resolve this type of issue, in my mind, is seeing development further address these types of automatic loss issues. There have been other forum complaints where other players are quite disappointed when they give up their score to the automatic loss issue. My experience is not an isolated event and I have not seen a developer comment on these types of games, why they happen, and why the system processes the event with a ranked leaderboard score change. That is another thing that could help resolve this issue - the leaderboard should not be impacted after automatic loss games.
Thank you for reading my notes here and thank you to all of the ToT players of which 702 made the Rubedite leauge during the November, 2025 season.
P.S. Regarding why this post is here and not in a different forum, the other forums for ToT content do not allow me to upload pictures in line with the text. The pictures are essential evidence of my experience. Additionally, I see some ToT posts in the General forum sometimes, which do not get moved, so I have to think that they are sometimes allowed. I hope that this passage counts as "General" content since it may interest players who generally care about the leaderboards.
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imPDA✭✭✭From my observation, you always receive more points than lose. It is not -150 for one and +150 for another, it can be +120 -90. You can try to follow another person's score, for example, when you play with other player from Top-100, you can see their rating on the game start, and after the game, open ladder listing and find this player, compare before and after and points difference.
I have read another post about strange bug. You should report this match and all other strange matches, and logs should be examined by devs. It can be a bug or cheating, one or another it must be cured.
losing the game, automatically, without even getting to the Patron screen
This is probably why score was not recorded by addon, it turns out I have new outcome to consider. I need some time to review the code to say what actually is going on. With lats update I added patron tracking, and it probably crashed as there were no patrons selected
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Personofsecrets✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭From my observation, you always receive more points than lose. It is not -150 for one and +150 for another, it can be +120 -90. You can try to follow another person's score, for example, when you play with other player from Top-100, you can see their rating on the game start, and after the game, open ladder listing and find this player, compare before and after and points difference.
I have read another post about strange bug. You should report this match and all other strange matches, and logs should be examined by devs. It can be a bug or cheating, one or another it must be cured.
losing the game, automatically, without even getting to the Patron screen
This is probably why score was not recorded by addon, it turns out I have new outcome to consider. I need some time to review the code to say what actually is going on. With lats update I added patron tracking, and it probably crashed as there were no patrons selected
Thank you very much @imPDA for the review and information. Usually I can tell why this bug happens such as accepting a match while flying through the air on my mount, or getting into combat, or chatting a NPC at a bad time. In this case I have no idea.
One feedback is that the Alessia Patron uses the wrong Patron icon in the addon menu. It uses the Sorcerer King one instead of Alessia.
Do you still need any matchmaking data?Edited by Personofsecrets on December 1, 2025 3:33PM0 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭Personofsecrets wrote: »I have no way of knowing what caused the automatic game loss.
ToT seems over-sensitive to lag spikes, treating them as disconnects which result in a game loss.
ToT scoring is a mystery, but it's not a 1 to 1. Someone gaining 65 points does not mean the other loses 65.
The way the loss occurred may not be accounted for in the addon, so it doesn't record it.
PC EU
Never get involved in a land war in Asia - it's one of the classic blunders!1 -
Personofsecrets✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Personofsecrets wrote: »I have no way of knowing what caused the automatic game loss.
ToT seems over-sensitive to lag spikes, treating them as disconnects which result in a game loss.
ToT scoring is a mystery, but it's not a 1 to 1. Someone gaining 65 points does not mean the other loses 65.
The way the loss occurred may not be accounted for in the addon, so it doesn't record it.
Perhaps an internet issue was cause. While I haven't had this specific problem in quite some time, I did disconnect from a game last week when TTC started a download.
This morning I turned off many processes as possible as to not have such an issue, but maybe something with the intetnet could have happened.0 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭Personofsecrets wrote: »Personofsecrets wrote: »I have no way of knowing what caused the automatic game loss.
ToT seems over-sensitive to lag spikes, treating them as disconnects which result in a game loss.
ToT scoring is a mystery, but it's not a 1 to 1. Someone gaining 65 points does not mean the other loses 65.
The way the loss occurred may not be accounted for in the addon, so it doesn't record it.
Perhaps an internet issue was cause. While I haven't had this specific problem in quite some time, I did disconnect from a game last week when TTC started a download.
This morning I turned off many processes as possible as to not have such an issue, but maybe something with the intetnet could have happened.
From what I have seen it doesn't have to be a full blown outage, just a prolonged lag spike 10+ seconds.PC EU
Never get involved in a land war in Asia - it's one of the classic blunders!1 -
imPDA✭✭✭Personofsecrets wrote: »Do you still need any matchmaking data?
Actually, yes. I have results from one other player, but never properly reviewed it because there were not enough data, and as it was not a popular topic, I never asked other players to share their data anymore and put it aside. More you play against top-100 players, more data collected (ideally. Practically, it is still hard to get data in some cases as API not tuned for this), so in theory, you should have good chunk to examine 1 -
Personofsecrets✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Personofsecrets wrote: »Personofsecrets wrote: »I have no way of knowing what caused the automatic game loss.
ToT seems over-sensitive to lag spikes, treating them as disconnects which result in a game loss.
ToT scoring is a mystery, but it's not a 1 to 1. Someone gaining 65 points does not mean the other loses 65.
The way the loss occurred may not be accounted for in the addon, so it doesn't record it.
Perhaps an internet issue was cause. While I haven't had this specific problem in quite some time, I did disconnect from a game last week when TTC started a download.
This morning I turned off many processes as possible as to not have such an issue, but maybe something with the intetnet could have happened.
From what I have seen it doesn't have to be a full blown outage, just a prolonged lag spike 10+ seconds.
Yes, the game that I got kicked out for last week even caught back up before booting me.
It's too bad that we cannot reconnect to a ToT match. The Elder Scrolls Legends team developed a way to reconnect to games, but that was a dedicated card game.Edited by Personofsecrets on December 1, 2025 4:25PM1