PTS Update 34 - Feedback Thread for Tales of Tribute

ZOS_GinaBruno · April 2022

This is the official feedback thread for Tales of Tribute. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

What are your thoughts in general regarding the gameplay and quest components?
What is your level of experience with competitive card games?
Approximately how long did it take for you to grasp the concept of Tribute? How long, or how many games, did you end up playing?
What took the most time for you to understand?
Was anything confusing or unclear while you were playing?
Did you mainly play against NPCs or other players?
Were you able to easily find the Roister Club and the tutorial quest?
What was your favorite and least favorite deck, and why?
Did you feel any cards were too strong or not strong enough?
How did the Patrons feel? Did you find they fit into the game and general flow with their related decks?
What did you think of the rewards you received?
Do you have any other general feedback?

honglatongla · April 2022

Just some general feedback i guess. Played two games - the tutorial and one against another player. Nothing was really confusing, if you've ever played a deck building game, they're all pretty much the same, with their own quirks of course. Hence it took 5 minutes of watching the stream to grasp the concept of it.

Gameplay is very slow, caused by slow animations and such. On the other hand, there is not enough time to complete a turn sometimes, at least when you're new to it and actually need to read what the cards do.

Rewards for the games were very bad and not worth it. Maybe they get better later on? Perhaps rng but probably not.

Remove the option to queue when you have no decks/not done the tutorial, was kinda dumb to queue like that. (it's a bug)
Make animations waaaaaaaaay faster.
Add play all cards button (I know you can tick for auto play, that's not the same).

K9002 · April 2022

honglatongla wrote: »

On the other hand, there is not enough time to complete a turn sometimes, at least when you're new to it and actually need to read what the cards do.

How long are the turns? I've ragequit Legends because of people who deliberately waited for the full minute before making every move, just to drag out the game and irritate their opponent.

honglatongla · April 2022

Can't say really, just one turn I took some time to read the cards and suddenly my turn ended. Mostly it's enough time if you read the available cards during your opponent's turn, which they kinda tell you to do anyway I guess.

tomofhyrule · April 2022

This tutorial is a bit obscure. Honestly if I hadn't watched the ESO Live, I'd be a bit lost.

There are a lot of times the tutorial guy (who should be a Reachman and not a Bosmer based on his name and accent) will try to talk you through something, but only after he gets through his dialogue does the highlight show up. You don't know where to look until he's finished talking. For Example, he mentions "Now look over here," when he introduces Patrons and absolutely nothing's highlighted. Then he talks about how to gain favor with them, but I'd still be wondering where I'm supposed to look until he finally highlights one of them after he says to buy their favor.

Also right at the beginning, I don't even put my gold down and he's telling me what I can buy. Of course the card he tells me to buy isn't highlighted until I put my cards down, which is well after he finished talking.

He also talks about how we need 40 Prestige, and then he comes in after a few turns with "Welp, based on your Prestige, we're almost done!" and I'm like "I only have 4..." Only then does he tell me we're playing an abbreviated game for lower prestige (but not telling me we're going to 10, so I have no idea what the limit is). That also leads to more confusion, since that implies that we could make custom games with different amounts of Prestige as the win condition...

ZOS_Kevin · April 2022

PTS Known Issue: There is a known issue where you can queue for a Tales of Tribute match without completing the tutorial, resulting in an auto-forfeit. Please complete the Tales of Tribute tutorial before queuing for a match in the Activity Finder.

If you didn't finish the tutorial or didn't start it, you can pick the quest up again from the same NPC and start again. We strongly encourage completing the tutorial as that is how you get all of the starter decks.

We have identified the issue and this will be fixed in next week's PTS patch.

Rex-Umbra · April 2022

I agree Elder Scrolls needs non combat social activities to make the world feel more alive.

Tales of Tribute feels slow tedious not exciting but somehow manages to be stressful and confusing as well.

I did the tutorial which felt like it took forever but after that it only gets longer and more boring gave up after 10 minutes against a novice NPS as it was taking forever and going nowhere.

This game needs a complete re thought cause right now I can't see myself participating in this system.

Smaxx · April 2022

What are your thoughts in general regarding the gameplay and quest components?
So far I only played the first tutorial quest and the PvE daily (3 wins). Overall, feels good, but at times it was really hard to follow the AI opponent's actions, since cards moved rather quickly, sometimes possibly even out of sync. I like the more realistic "paper only" approach (i.e. no fancy animations/effects), but I get the feeling like it would be nice to have a play history for the last turn or so – unless there's one and I missed it.

What is your level of experience with competitive card games?
I've played TES Legends for quite a few years, including ranked.

Approximately how long did it take for you to grasp the concept of Tribute? How long, or how many games, did you end up playing?
The preview stream was enough for me to understand the rough promise, then the first tutorial was enough to understand most of the game, minus a few details (like I'm still not 100% sure about combo interactions). I think 6 games or so so far.

What took the most time for you to understand?
Combo interactions and how agents are handled.

Was anything confusing or unclear while you were playing?
Active agents need some better way to show they're activated. Right now it's hard to differentiate between the card activating and the game getting stuck. Maybe "tap" the cards akin to MTG? Sometimes it's also hard to track status changes (gold/power gains and the like) since numbers change instantly without huge effects.

Did you mainly play against NPCs or other players?
Only NPCs so far.

Were you able to easily find the Roister Club and the tutorial quest?
Kind of, but I used the template character starting in front of it.

What was your favorite and least favorite deck, and why?
Not sure yet. I really like the interactions of Duke of Crows and both Saint Pelin and Grandmaster Hlaalu so far. I'm not a fan of Celarus' deck as it feels like it's just there to cycle your other cards, something other cards with "draw a card" basically do, too (and often better).

Did you feel any cards were too strong or not strong enough?
The Black Sacrament feels potentially a bit too cheap, considering it can instantly negate agents of any costs.

How did the Patrons feel? Did you find they fit into the game and general flow with their related decks?
I like their idea, although I think they should never have a state of "no interaction". For example, the Duke of Crows no longer offering anything once they favor you feels odd and doesn't really fit their character either: They received a tribute. Why would the Blackfeather Court deny getting even more tithes? There should definitely be diminishing returns of some sorts, but cutting the interaction compeltely feels wrong and makes one not use them until one can finish the opponent with it.

What did you think of the rewards you received?
I have to agree with some of the other sentinment: Getting plans, more expensive crafting materials, etc. is nice, but I don't think I need even more daily quests stuffing my inventory with white food and drinks I'll never use anyway – especially considering the time required to play at least 3 games.

Do you have any other general feedback?
I'm enjoying the game so far. Long term this should definitely feature its own standalone game client (with an optionally connected ESO account) so one can play it mobile and/or without having to install and run the full game. Doesn't have to be free, offer a free intro, then ask people to pay like 5-10€ for the full game, unless they have an ESO account with High Isle connected or so.

Leogon · April 2022

Add an auto-decline option like we have for duels.

Gnaeuspompeius · April 2022

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Approximately how long did it take for you to grasp the concept of Tribute? How long, or how many games, did you end up playing?

Figuring out how to play was fairly straightforward. The most confusing bit at first were how exactly agents work. The NPC doing the intro was sometimes hard to understand, and since Esc forfeits the game there was no way to turn on subtitles during that segment.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

What was your favorite and least favorite deck, and why?

Duke of Crows was my favorite because the card-drawing combo-chaining was fun.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

How did the Patrons feel? Did you find they fit into the game and general flow with their related decks?

They fit fine with the flow, but don't feel like a viable way to win because you can use only one per turn by default, and some are simply impossible to trigger based on opponent (e.g. needs an active agent in play, but agents rarely show up).

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

What are your thoughts in general regarding the gameplay and quest components?

The deck building / combo execution parts are fun to play, at least for a couple of games so far. However, it does not feel like your opponent meaningfully influences the game. Agents hardly ever come into play, and disappear quickly again if they do. That only leaves that the opponent occasionally buys a card you might have wanted. You can barely tell what happens in their turn, but that's mostly fine since it doesn't really impact my own turn anyway.

Due to that it feels like a singleplayer card game, with each player playing their own separate game, the opponent serving mostly as a time-intensive way of limiting the number of turns you have left to get to 40 points. This does not really motivate me to play against humans, as it means longer waits between turns with nothing interesting to observe inbetween.

An incremental way to address this may be to have agents be more common, and have them interact more with the opponent's agents.

CyberOnEso · April 2022

What are your thoughts in general regarding the gameplay and quest components?
The game is fantastic, I just had a game where it all seemed lost until the last couple of turns where I managed to claw it back from ~25 - 38 and win 45 - 41 and that felt really satisfying.

What is your level of experience with competitive card games?
Little

Approximately how long did it take for you to grasp the concept of Tribute? How long, or how many games, did you end up playing?
I thought I grasped it okay after the tutorial, I think I don't understand the power of some patrons but that may come.

What took the most time for you to understand?
The agents.

Was anything confusing or unclear while you were playing?
Not really, I think it could be clearer which cards the enemy is playing and which patrons they are activating.

Also I spent a lot of my time counting up how much gold I could get on the next turn, a UI element showing how many resources starter cards would give could be useful?

Did you mainly play against NPCs or other players?
10-15 matches against NPC's, ~20 against players.

Were you able to easily find the Roister Club and the tutorial quest?
Yes

What was your favorite and least favorite deck, and why?
Favourite, Hlallu with the sacrifice feels really interesting and their cards seem interesting with being able to take from the table.

Least favourite, Psijic Loremaster Celarus. I think this may be because I don't grasp the potential of discarding unwanted cards from the draw pile but his ability requiring an opponent to have an agent up seems flawed, as you can easily prevent a patron victory by never playing an agent card. This patron was also the one which was never used in any of my matches so far.

Did you feel any cards were too strong or not strong enough?
I don't think I am qualified to comment on this yet.

How did the Patrons feel? Did you find they fit into the game and general flow with their related decks?
They felt good, yeah.

What did you think of the rewards you received?
Crafting materials were nice, it would be really useful to have a guarenteed reward, like X transmutes or something and display that on the group finder screen, to further educate players on the rewards from play.

Do you have any other general feedback?
Really excited to try more and for ranked play to become available.

Please lessen the cooldown between card interactions. You can only use one card every second or so and it feel too slow. You need to wait for things to complete their animations before starting the next action. I should be able to click each card as fast as I can and the game can play the animations later.

BlossomDead · April 2022

Leogon wrote: »

Add an auto-decline option like we have for duels.

Yes, please.

Kingdomkeepers69_ESO · April 2022

Deck themes/Leaders

Pelinal Whitestrake Deck acquired via Midyear

Sheogorath Deck, acquired via april fools

Sithis Deck via DB DLC completion.

Theme deck based on each player class.

tomofhyrule · April 2022

I'm still not really getting Agents. They didn't come up in the ESOLive stream and the tutorial didn't talk about them, and none of the help text talks about them.

Like, is their 'health' countering the 'power' of the opponent? I notice every so often one gets discarded like they were killed, but I don't see anything coming out to get them and the NPC isn't using Celarus' ability. And since the NPCs aren't playing them, I can't see it from that angle. Do you spend power to kill an agent? Or just have more power than their health?

Also the constant mails with rewards full of trash are obnoxious. We don't need our inboxes clogged with mail with white quality food.

The daily quests are also not awarding the achievements - at least the NPC one didn't for me.

Also not seeing where or how to get the other quests after the tutorial quest is done. Ah, ok I found it. I just have to challenge other NPCs to rank up. Pity the 'rank progress' bar isn't visible in the skills menu or somewhere... unless it is and I missed it.

Tornaad · April 2022

Bug report for controller mode.

1. Occasionally, the game stops responding to the controller and the only way to get it to respond again is to power the controller off and then back on.
2. On several occasions when I went to activate a patron it thought I was trying to end my turn.
3. For a brief period of time I would not let me end my turn at all with the controller.

Tornaad · April 2022

When given the option to remove up to two cards from the tavern, I cannot figure out how to select or remove the second card.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · April 2022

I cannot seem to even learn how to play the game, second time the game has been rolled back during the tutorial match.

alberichtano · April 2022

K9002 wrote: »

honglatongla wrote: »

On the other hand, there is not enough time to complete a turn sometimes, at least when you're new to it and actually need to read what the cards do.

How long are the turns? I've ragequit Legends because of people who deliberately waited for the full minute before making every move, just to drag out the game and irritate their opponent.

90 seconds per turn.

BerylBones · April 2022

What are your thoughts in general regarding the gameplay and quest components?
Overall I'm enjoying it so far! The tutorial game is useless right now, but overall gameplay and quests seem good so far.
What is your level of experience with competitive card games?
Moderate.
Approximately how long did it take for you to grasp the concept of Tribute? How long, or how many games, did you end up playing?
I'd grasped the basics by the time I finished the intro quest. I've played about 10 games so far and planning for many more.
What took the most time for you to understand?
The patrons.
Was anything confusing or unclear while you were playing?
The tutorial game not having subtitles made it hard to follow, and there were no indications on the screen to what Bragas was talking about.
Also, cards where you can remove a number of cards from the tavern - it's difficult to see the highlighted cards to know what you've selected.
Did you mainly play against NPCs or other players?
Mainly NPC so far with a couple of player games.
Were you able to easily find the Roister Club and the tutorial quest?
No. When you go to interact with the door it's not called the Roister Club, and there's no indication on the map where it is. I managed to stumble upon the flyer posted at the end of the bridge which pointed me in the right direction.
How did the Patrons feel? Did you find they fit into the game and general flow with their related decks?
The Duke of Crows not having an action for when you're favored seems odd. Seems that the current neutral action makes more sense for favored, or to have something similar for favored.
What did you think of the rewards you received?
I'm pretty happy with most of the rewards I've seen so far. The gold reward is laughably low though. Only 61g for winning a match from the queue, from the purple coffer? It also seems odd that all the potions are level 1 'sip of ____' instead of matched to my level. Could do without the food and potion rewards, really, but they're not a dealbreaker.
Do you have any other general feedback?
It's a little bit annoying when it says that you can begin your turn but you can't actually do anything until your opponent's hand has finished it's full animation of moving cards back to the draw deck, shuffling, and redrawing. It's also confusing when you hit 40 prestige and are still playing. My understanding was that the first person to hit 40 prestige won, but I've played a few games where someone hits 40 and the game goes for another round or two.

MashmalloMan · April 2022

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I'm still not really getting Agents. They didn't come up in the ESOLive stream and the tutorial didn't talk about them, and none of the help text talks about them.

Like, is their 'health' countering the 'power' of the opponent? I notice every so often one gets discarded like they were killed, but I don't see anything coming out to get them and the NPC isn't using Celarus' ability. And since the NPCs aren't playing them, I can't see it from that angle. Do you spend power to kill an agent? Or just have more power than their health?

Also the constant mails with rewards full of trash are obnoxious. We don't need our inboxes clogged with mail with while quality food.

The daily quests are also not awarding the achievements - at least the NPC one didn't for me.

Also not seeing where or how to get the other quests after the tutorial quest is done.

Agents are basically action cards that stay on the field. Every turn (if they remain alive) you can activate their playing effect to get the bonus again. Like if the effect of the card when played is "earn 2 power". On your next turn if they're alive, press the card and you will get 2 power as if you played it the first time.

This also means agents help with "combos" each turn. If you press a black card and you have a black card agent on the field that you press, you've technically pressed that suit twice, so you get any related combo's too.

Agents have health, your oponent can choose to click the agent on their turn using their power to take out as much of the agents health as possible. Your enemy (if smart) should want to kill the agent as soon as possible so you don't continue to benefit from them each turn.

Some agents have a taunt ability on them which forces them to take any damage from the oponents power, instead of them allowing to choose when to take them out or if at all. Taunt basically prevents them from cashing in their power.

I have no idea why this stuff wasn't properly explained in the livestream or tutorial, it took a few games to understand what was going on.

MashmalloMan · April 2022

alberichtano wrote: »

K9002 wrote: »

honglatongla wrote: »

On the other hand, there is not enough time to complete a turn sometimes, at least when you're new to it and actually need to read what the cards do.

How long are the turns? I've ragequit Legends because of people who deliberately waited for the full minute before making every move, just to drag out the game and irritate their opponent.

90 seconds per turn.

That is suppose to be for npc's only, they said in the livestream that it's much less when fighting real people.

Unfortunately there is no timer in game to confirm, but it feels like about 40-50 seconds if I were to guess.

Edit: Timed it, it's about 45s before the hourglass flips to tell you you're running out of time, then another 20s before it expires. So about 60-65 seconds or so.

LonePirate · April 2022

Played the tutorial and a novice match. I have no idea what an agent is or how to move a patron or how to trigger a combo. Other than playing all five of my cards at once to max out the card I can purchase, I have no idea how to play. Needless to say, the tutorial and instructions need to be completely overhauled as all of this should have been explained in the tutorial. I think only the patron was mentioned and I still didn’t grasp it because it made no sense to me.

The stack of 200 purple crafting mats I received in one reward box was excessive but it was better than the single level 2 Sip of Health potion my CP 160 fully maxed Alchemy skill line character received in one box.

RaddlemanNumber7 · April 2022

If we could play this game during the new, extra-long loading screens, that might be useful.

LadyHeloise · April 2022

I have never played a card game like this. In the tutorial when you are being told what to do the music can be a bit loud to hear instructions clearly. I have no real clue what I am doing, apart from spending gold by using all five cards at once to buy more cards. Some of the indications of which cards to choose are not clear, the hourglass I only realsied did anything by clicking randomly on screen when it wasn't clear what to do, and I still don't know what agents are, how you get them, what you do with them etc.

I am not incentivised to find out anymore about the game to be honest, which is a shame as I wanted to like this.

Edit:just played vs. an npc and it is a bit clearer, though still doing things randomly and have no clue about agents. The learning curve seems longer than I can be bothered with to be honest; upgrading explanations in the tutorial would really help.

notyuu · April 2022

Skipped the questions I can't answer

EDIT: Updated feedback

"What are your thoughts in general regarding the gameplay and quest componets?"
The gameplay is extremely slow and drawn out due to the long animations, the fact that the game announces "your turn" but leaves you unable to do anything while the oppents drawing animation finishes is extremely fustrating.
The quest componet feels a bit tacked on, found that the reward for a gold tier daily just being 3 normal reward boxes to be a letdown

"What is your level of experience with competitive card games?"
Used to play an ungodly amount of yugioh and pokemon back when I was a kid, but that's pushing on 20 years ago now

"Approximately how long did it take for you to grasp the concent of Tales of Tribute?"
12 matches

"How many games did you end up playing?"
Fifty to thoughly test it

"What took the most time for you to understand?"
That you have to actually click on the patrons that favour you to get their effects, it's not explained anywhere, nor is the fact that you can only interact with one patron per turn
Also how agents and their "HP" system works

"was anything confusing or unclear while you were playing?"
Yeah, what the oppent was doing due to the fact that stuff just happened without showing/explaining the effects the cards they were playing had

"Did you mainly play againts NPCs or other players?"
17 npc matchs 32 player matches

"were you able to easily find the roister club and tutorial quest?"
I used the character template for it so I can't really comment

"what did you think of the rewards you recived?"
The number of goods in the reward boxes seem to be all over the place ranging from literal junk to massive stacks of materials and while having stacks of 200 upgrade or furnshing mats just dumped on people might be a bug, I personally hope it isn't as it would actually allow for combatting the insane guild-store price inflation for such goods ingame

"do you have any other general feedback?"
The entire system seems a bit too heavily dependant on the luck of the draw for the cards in your hand and in your part of the deck, which has resulted in a vast majorty of the matches being outright steamrolls one way or the other, even when both parties use the same decks, with the most typical example being one player having 8 -3 prestige by turn 4 while the other usually has 0-3 with the gap only getting bigger as the game goes on.

ectoplasmicninja · April 2022

Instructions in the tutorial should be subtitled. I often play without audio and with NPC subtitles on, and this thread has just informed me that apparently Bragas was actually telling me what to do. I just guessed my way through the tutorial with no guidance whatsoever, so that was unsatisfying and also unhelpful. I understand that playing with audio is the standard, but I'm sure there are other folks like me, as well as deaf players, who would appreciate readable instructions.

CyberOnEso · April 2022

I think there should be a more prominant indicator of whos turn it is.
I am often not 100% sure who's turn it is if I lose focus for a moment and look back.

SantieClaws · April 2022

This one tried the tutorial and still had no clue what to do.

She progressed by randomly clicking on various bits of the screen until something happened.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Cheyenne · April 2022

SantieClaws wrote: »

This one tried the tutorial and still had no clue what to do.

She progressed by randomly clicking on various bits of the screen until something happened.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Thank goodness. This is exactly what I did and felt pretty dumb because I couldn't figure out what to do DURING A TUTORIAL. LOL. Geez.

CyberOnEso · April 2022

Would it be possible for increased keybind options for Keyboard and Mouse?

Since you can only have 5 cards in your hand and 5 in the tavern you could bind 1-5 for use card 1-5 in your hand which would make playing feeling much smoother.

Additionally when the tavern/ additional UI window is focussed 1-5 could activate/ buy that card.

Ladtly, a keybind to end turn or activate patrons would be really appreciated!

CyberOnEso · April 2022

The rewards feel 'interesting' but very random.

I have no desire to get prophets gear or low level pots from the game to clog up my inventory.

I think a more streamlined but better telegraphed reward structure would be better. Why not say what you can get if you hover over the crate in the UI window.

No matter how good the rewards are if noone knows what they really are it's hard to use that as a motivation.

You need to be able to telegraph to the player the upcoming rewards, not just for this but for all group finder activites.