Has anyone else just virtually stopped playing against other players because of RNG?

Neonisys · July 2023

Seriously, I'm nowhere near a top player but 13 losses on the bounce unranked is a bit much, it needs levelling out. It just isn't fun to constantly lose because no matter what you pick they get much better drops in place every single time.

LunaFlora · July 2023

yea it's frustrating

AnduinTryggva · July 2023

Yeah, I am about to abandon that game for good. Waste of time. Who on Earth spends 15 min and more on coin flipping against one opponent?

DragonRacer · July 2023

I quit for months because of how ridiculous my RNG got. Only just now easing back in for new achievements and leads, really.

AnduinTryggva · July 2023

I too observe that tavern luck is terribly skewed.

But not only tavern luck. Also the luck that one has to get the cards in your hand each time.

I have streaks of bad luck that is not explainable by rng.

If so I should have similar streaks luck to my advantage. Which is not the case.

Crow spam matches are a good example to that. My opponent has much more often the right cards in his hand in a turn (meaning 3 crow cards) than me when your respective deck is still full. And no, I observe this too when there is no red eagle or psijic in the game.

I now have to play 4 matches to win 1. Since the darn threshold for golden box is so excessively high it means that on average I have to play 12 matches for the golden box. If I cound optimistically 10 min per match it takes me 2h for that reward not counting the waiting time that I have to spend for match searching.

During this time I don't quest or do anything else. It is such a waste of time. And you even cannot concede without stupid time penalty.

Actually how ToT, the ranking system, the time penalty and reward system is design could in the future be taught to students as the golden way how to turn off players from a game that is in itself ok.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

i dont play pvp tribute because of timers, the RNG doesnt matter to me, its part of the game, its not the whole game but most games have a random element in them

Seraphayel · July 2023

I am almost at this point. I’ve lost so many matches yesterday and today, I dropped from ranking place 14 to somewhere in the 200s. It‘s just infuriating when the game basically tells you to f* off with the horrible RNG.

I’ve had so many rounds where I either couldn’t buy a tavern card in the first round due to only being crap there, 5 or 6 cards being the cheapest or just outright other crap nobody needs in the first round. It happened so often in the last 10-15 matches, I have no idea how that’s even possible.

And if I buy something that‘s not good but at least not complete crap, the next tavern card will be the top pick and the opponent gets to take it in his next round. And I’m stuck with something I didn’t want but still took because it was better than all the other options.

How is it that someone with two tanks in his deck always gets them when he needs them? And I’m stuck pulling crap cards that can’t get over his tanks thanks to RNG. And when the deck is reshuffled out of all the cards the tank or power card is back again, leaving me unable to do anything, again.

I mean there is RNG and bad luck, but sometimes it‘s such a string of bad everything that it just feels wrong and fabricated. I really love ToT, but yesterday and today put a huge dent in that love on how silly and unfair some matches have been.

I‘m not saying I didn’t make any mistakes, I for sure did. But when the tavern and your own hand only throws you crap cards, even the best strategist can’t do anything against someone who gets the Arsenal or two Luxury Goods in round 1.

RCubed1967 · July 2023

I agree with @Seraphayel, but I am going to twist the interpretation slightly.

The RNG of the card drops is not what is making me consider dropping the game, but RNG is part of the issue. Where I see the bigger problem is in the ranking system. This is highly related to some aspects of RNG, but not all.

Theoretically, the cards available in the tavern should be reasonably distributed, so each player should have similar draws available over time. That is where strategy overcomes the RNG...but takes multiple games against the same opponent to show itself. But there are RNG factors skewing the results.

Like @Seraphayel, I had a drop last month from 8 to 800 due to a losing streak. It isn't just the losing streak, but also the mechanisms that affect our scores/ranking. Losing streaks happen, but cannot be simply assigned to making mistakes. We must consider the following:

The huge imbalance between first and second pick (20-30% win rate difference). This imbalance must be improved given the next point.
The RNG of who goes first is broken, so RNG losses can stack up from that. I've had a ten and an eleven string of second picks this month already, which demonstrates that the coin flip is broken. This plays into the third point.
The RNG of the cards available on the table and the natural combos of your hand may be related to this coin flip RNG. @Seraphayel alludes to this issue.

All that said, the RNG is frustrating, but is not what is driving me out of the game. What is driving me out are the following two things:

The ranking system is broken (i.e., does not represent a game with RNG) and is exploitable (e.g., quitting with high scores, buying/manipulating games). Single losses should never have the huge effect they do (In one ten game run this month, I had with wins and two losses...AND I LOST POINTS OVERALL).
ZOS is not even acknowledging these issues. Just tell us that you recognize the problem and that you expect a fix in x weeks is something!

Tracking my games as I do makes me extremely frustrated with the ranking system. Even so, I continue to do it as I believe that providing this data is the only way we, as players, can demonstrate what the issues are and what ZOS needs to fix.

ZOS - acknowledge us!

DragonRacer · July 2023

If they didn't hide new deck upgrade fragments and cosmetics behind ToT, I'd be close to overall quitting again.

Finally hit Rubedite and then a brick wall of poopy tavern after poopy tavern. Get fed up, queue up for a Casual match, get someone who really ought to be playing Ranked because it was just disgusting how I got mopped. That's not casual, man. I just wanna play people of my skill level and at least have a 50/50 chance.

Seraphayel · July 2023

Five games today, five losses in a row. Dropped from rank 31 to 2xx due to horrible tavern RNG and bad luck. Nice.

SeaGtGruff · July 2023

I quit playing against other players shortly after ToT was released-- truthfully, I did little more than did dip my toes into PvP for a week or two. My decision to stop playing against other players had more to do with my overall lack of familiarity with the game at that time, such that I needed to sit there looking at the available cards before deciding what to do instead of just instantly snatching up specific cards without hesitation the way my opponents were doing, coupled with the fact that most of them were far better at the game than I was. I'm not going to blame it on RNG when I know it was really just me.

Now that I'm much more familiar with the game, I may eventually resume daily PvP matches-- although from watching other players' streams and videos, I'm well aware that I'm still less skilled at tactics than some of the other players out there.

Edited for typo.

NoSoup · July 2023

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying into the RNG argument. I personally believe the skill gap is just getting greater between the pool of players. There are players where if I face them, regardless of the play order I know I have a 90-99% chance of losing and other players where I've played multiple times and never lose.

If RNG was as big of a factor as many of the forums posts suggest, then this simply wouldn't happen.

SeaGtGruff · July 2023

NoSoup wrote: »

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying into the RNG argument. I personally believe the skill gap is just getting greater between the pool of players. There are players where if I face them, regardless of the play order I know I have a 90-99% chance of losing and other players where I've played multiple times and never lose.

If RNG was as big of a factor as many of the forums posts suggest, then this simply wouldn't happen.

The thing is, none of us want to think we stink at something. That's why I much prefer playing against NPCs-- it's easier to pretend that I'm Totally Awesome.

Seraphayel · July 2023

NoSoup wrote: »

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying into the RNG argument. I personally believe the skill gap is just getting greater between the pool of players. There are players where if I face them, regardless of the play order I know I have a 90-99% chance of losing and other players where I've played multiple times and never lose.

If RNG was as big of a factor as many of the forums posts suggest, then this simply wouldn't happen.

When you don’t / can’t get cards, you lose. There’s no skill issue behind this simple fact.

SeaGtGruff · July 2023

Seraphayel wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying into the RNG argument. I personally believe the skill gap is just getting greater between the pool of players. There are players where if I face them, regardless of the play order I know I have a 90-99% chance of losing and other players where I've played multiple times and never lose.

If RNG was as big of a factor as many of the forums posts suggest, then this simply wouldn't happen.

When you don’t / can’t get cards, you lose. There’s no skill issue behind this simple fact.

Last night I won a game against an Expert NPC that I should have lost-- but it kept making bad decisions despite having some much better cards than I did.

Skill may not win the game if you don't have good cards, but lack of skill can lose the game even if you have great cards.

AnduinTryggva · July 2023

NoSoup wrote: »

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying into the RNG argument. I personally believe the skill gap is just getting greater between the pool of players. There are players where if I face them, regardless of the play order I know I have a 90-99% chance of losing and other players where I've played multiple times and never lose.

If RNG was as big of a factor as many of the forums posts suggest, then this simply wouldn't happen.

Of course skill is involved. No one denies it.

But in this game RNG has a much larger impact on the outcome than in may other card games as ToT is very snowballish meaning that an advantage gives additional advantages.

A good early coin card is an advantage at every round that it gets into your hand as it allows buying further advantageous cards adding to your advantage. These newly bought cards will provide you with further advantage each time it gets into your hand allowing buying more advantage or getting power. And with more advantageous cards the probability that it drops into your hand at a turn increases.

This is what people call the strong RNG component because if you can buy a good card early on depends on quite some RNG.

Of course you need to recognize where's the advantage for you and act accordingly when the occasion is there. This is the (small) skill part in ToT.

ShadowPaladin · July 2023

I stopped playing ToT-PvP a few weeks after it was released, because the whole Ranking-System is way to *** up

.

It doesn't matter if you win or loose or against which player you will be put up against, the bottom line is always you gaining no points or loosing more points than you have gained

. The whole point system is intransparent and so complex that no one knows how it works.

Same goes for the match-making. Most of the time you will get a player which is way better than you (eg. you got a win/loss count of 5 wins to 20 loses and your opponent got 24 wins : 1 loss). Thats not what I would call a *balanced* match-making. I would call it *fed to a lion* instead.

As long as ZOS won't overhaul this mess, I won't be playing ToT-PvP anymore. I will only be playing ToT-PvE and that only to level ToT and get some rewards (which also were screwed up by ZOS

).

If I want to play a TCG game for PvP, I will play Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links

. There I do know how the match-making and the Ranking-Systems are working. Thats way more fun than this messed up stuff

.

MindOfTheSwarm · July 2023

It’s birds. They are completely broken and anyone who says otherwise is a troll or doesn’t know how to play them.

They need to either:

remove many of the “draw” combos from these cards.

Or

Introduce a new patron that has a passive effect like this:

“Every time your opponent plays a card with a ‘draw card’ effect, you gain 2 Prestige.

birdmann1230 · September 2023

I’d love to see a blocker on turning all the patrons before someone reaches 20 points. Admittedly sometimes I don’t catch the patrons being turned so fast so early but if the total score of the game is still less than 10 a player shouldn’t be able to east win a ranked match that way.

I too have noticed the tavern RNG. I also wish the patron selection would alternate instead of how it is.

But I haven’t played against players since July 1 because my game just now got fixed after that stupid glitch they refused to acknowlege.

SilverBride · September 2023

I stopped playing a long time ago because of the ranking system. A win should be a win and a loss a loss regardless of who is playing who. Better players will win more and rise up the ranks naturally. But the way it is now is not worth the frustration it causes.

bulbousb16_ESO · September 2023

I got smoked a few times last night. Sometimes, you can just tell that you're cooked, when the opponent gets a Crow card in their first turn, then there is nothing useful you can get on your turn but you buy something anyway, then it gets replaced by another Crow card for your opponent. Also, if they go second and get something like Armory.

Necrotech_Master · September 2023

bulbousb16_ESO wrote: »

I got smoked a few times last night. Sometimes, you can just tell that you're cooked, when the opponent gets a Crow card in their first turn, then there is nothing useful you can get on your turn but you buy something anyway, then it gets replaced by another Crow card for your opponent. Also, if they go second and get something like Armory.

if theres nothing good in the tavern, you could opt to buy nothing

or play some patron (such as rahjin, which is my go to, if the tavern has nothing i want to buy ill just patrons)

bulbousb16_ESO · September 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if theres nothing good in the tavern, you could opt to buy nothing or play some patron (such as rahjin, which is my go to, if the tavern has nothing i want to buy ill just patrons)

Well, I think on my very first turn I would prefer to buy a card and then hit the Treasury. If I get six to spend, that is usally a good start. If I get five, that usually leads me to spend 2 or 3 and then upgrade. So, here's what I mean:

Game 1
Opponent buys Scratch
I buy something like Blackmail because that's all there is, then hit the Treasury.
Opponent gets Murder of Crows.

Game 2
I can't afford any cards (they all cost 6) and hit the Treasury.
Opponent buys Armory.

Those kinds of starts are hard to get out from behind.