Captain Kaleen and Tales of RNG

dcrush · April 10

It took me almost 900 gold Tales of Tribute boxes and ten months of playing to collect all ten fragments for the Captain Kaleen houseguest. And keep in mind, that’s only counting the pvp games I won and the bonus from the daily quest that I handed in every three days to get a gold box.

During this time, I have really come to despise the rng involved with ToT and the drops in the gold boxes. And as an extension of that, ToT itself.

The last 80 games I played, I only went first 21 times.

The terrible drop rate and other rng issues have been called out many times but ZOS chooses not to do anything about it. So, instead, I’ll try to help out fellow players. I have no interest in playing ToT anymore so from now on I’ll queue for a game a few times a day and immediately concede once the game starts. That way, other players will at least have faster wins.

Lugaldu · April 10

Thats the reason why I dont have Captain Kaleen houseguest and also never will have...

emilyhyoyeon · April 10

I saw Captain Kaleen in someone's house once when I was looking through house tours and it was like I saw god. I couldn't believe it.

IMO if the devs (since they have the inside stats of achievement completion %s game-wide) will nerf things like DLC dungeon bosses based on the average player's success, why not do the same for something like the ToT Captain Kaleen fragment achievement? That one must be rarer than every dungeon and trial trifecta, emp, etc...

If she's meant to be a super rare ''trophy furnishing,'' then I wish the devs would choose less ''mundane'' things for that. A rare trophy furnishing should be, like, a giant confetti exploding Hermaeous Mora. Then I wouldn't care about getting it and I wouldn't have to worry about seeing it anyway because it'd be so rare

tomofhyrule · April 10

I really stopped going for those.

I think I have one fragment for the emote and two for the houseguest since they started dropping. I'd like to get that emote, but I really really can't be bothered to grind Tribute when the drop rate for these things is basically nonexistent.

I definitely think those drop rates need to be looked at.

DeathandDebauchery · April 10

I have successfully completed both Keenan and Card shuffler achievements. I am a top 50 ToT player. It took me 3 months of doing both daily quests (PC vs and NPC vs) on 3 characters. 6 gold boxes per day x 90 days. 540 boxes - or for the average player, both quests, everyday, for a year.

IMHO it's not any different then the "1 million gold fenced" achievement, but it is PARTICULARLY brutal.

tomofhyrule · April 10

DeathandDebauchery wrote: »

I have successfully completed both Keenan and Card shuffler achievements. I am a top 50 ToT player. It took me 3 months of doing both daily quests (PC vs and NPC vs) on 3 characters. 6 gold boxes per day x 90 days. 540 boxes - or for the average player, both quests, everyday, for a year.

IMHO it's not any different then the "1 million gold fenced" achievement, but it is PARTICULARLY brutal.

There is a massive difference between the "1 million gold fenced" and this.

Namely, the gold fencing 1) had a progress bar, so you could gauge how long it would take to get there and 2) any contribution would count towards that goal. If you had one day where you didn't get much to sell, you still were making progress.
The way that these achievements would be the same would be to say "you need to collect 1 million scraps to make them, but every Tribute box is guaranteed to have one." And if it were like that, then I would feel better about it.

The achievement that this is most like is the monster trophy ones, since you are not guaranteed to get them no matter how much you grind. And how many people on this forum love the way those were implemented?

dcrush · April 10

DeathandDebauchery wrote: »

I have successfully completed both Keenan and Card shuffler achievements. I am a top 50 ToT player. It took me 3 months of doing both daily quests (PC vs and NPC vs) on 3 characters. 6 gold boxes per day x 90 days. 540 boxes - or for the average player, both quests, everyday, for a year.

IMHO it's not any different then the "1 million gold fenced" achievement, but it is PARTICULARLY brutal.

Did you do this right after the achievements were added to the game? Because I’ve seen several people mention they felt like the drop rate got nerfed later on. The reason is ask is because you opened 540 boxes for 20 fragments… I opened almost 900 for 10 fragments.

spartaxoxo · April 10

They like double or triple nerfed how the regular drops work in those because people were defeating the novice NPCs too fast and farming way too many boxes.

Then they fixed the novice NPCs to be a little less easy to instantaneously defeat.

They did not go back to fix the drop rates on the boxes though. They just kept adding drops that were rarer than the other rare items in there.

The end result is that Tales became the one of the most unrewarding and frustrating to farm activities in the game. This lead to resentment of the card game itself and massive amounts of people dropping it, including by people who initially enjoyed it.

The resulting longer queue times and more matches against the best of the best only compounded the issues.

ZOS killed Tales before it really even got a chance with the way they handled the drops. It was always going to be niche. But they really added a lot of resentment that didn't need to be there with the way they handled the drops. Also by making it the only major feature instead of a player experience improvement for inns but that's another matter and giving it a poorly explained tutorial but those are other matters.

Tales is a lot of fun once you have the "aha!" breakthrough but it's still not worth doing all that often because the drops are terrible.

Lugaldu · April 10

I was never a huge fan of ToT, but in the first year I did enjoy it sometimes, and it was a nice way to pass the time. But after they made the novice players so difficult that beating them in every match is questionable, making it impossible to even complete the dailies, and it became an extreme timesink (or rather waste), I don't play it at all anymore. In the end, I didn't even try the latest decks, and linking ToT to rare drops like leads and fragments just makes the whole thing even more frustrating.

Displaced_Salad · April 10

The RNG tables used in this game have always been horrendous and are only getting worse with time and disrepair.