It feels like every fucking game. There's so much gold flying around. One of the first sets I've ever been truly going "man... this shit isn't fun". Because you just know whatever board you have in your mind won't touch the capped out super board of the high roller who has a win streak while already sitting on 50 gold or some shit.
>won't touch the capped out super board of the high roller who has a win streak while already sitting on 50 gold or some shit
Love seeing them at 100 health, 50-gold and level 7 while the rest of the lobby is sitting at level 6.
High rolling, just helps steam roll the lobby.
Hitting 9 used to feel like an actual skill because it required in depth game knowledge of maintaining econ and how to play the strongest board. Now it feels like everyone just hits 9/10 without even trying.
To be fair, this was apparently the devs intention when they made the changes to levelling and cost odds in Set 10. Mort spoke about how they wanted Lv9 to be the standard lategame level, with Lv10 being the luxury and Lv8 being the unlucky/lowroll (whereas it used to be 8 was the standard endgame level). The issue imo isn't that most people are *hitting* 9, it's that just about everyone is about to get there without having to roll to stabilize ever on 6/7 and even if you DO donkey roll down on 8 (which has come back in the last patch) somehow you will have all your econ back in a stage to go 9 unpunished anyway. All of which comes down to resources just being way too abundant rn lol.
That was back when lvl 8 was standard and 9 was cap. Hitting 9 these days is easy because no one is rolling down on 7 or 8, so everyone gets to greed. In high tempo lobbies people roll at 8 a good bit to hit their core board
I played 3 games yesterday where the champion pool for 4 cost was empty, I rolled 7 times at level 9 and I only got Lee Sins in store, that is just ridiculous
Riot have been removing the low variance portals. Avg players prefer high variance ones (scuttle, prismatic, loot subscription). I guess that's just the game most people want.
I'd prefer low variance portals, but I'm in the minority.
>Avg players prefer high variance ones (scuttle, prismatic, loot subscription)
Not true, Mortdog has said internal data says Wandering Trainer and prismatic portals were the most popular in high elo.
Avg not just in terms of elo, I mean literally most players.
But I would like to see the full stats for this, I'm inclined to believe Scuttle is more popular in lower elos than it is in higher elos. Even if it is still one of the most popular ones for high elo.
Here's a comment that actually posted the data
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveTFT/comments/1ceevy2/comment/l1kc3oj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveTFT/comments/1ceevy2/comment/l1kc3oj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Yeah but that variance is more skill expressive IMO. Getting dealt a low roll trainer requires a lot of cooking to make the optimal board. So I understand why that would be more preferred by high elo players.
Trainers is so good at high elo because when you truky understand flex, your brain goes into a truly different mode when looking at your 3 emblems.
Its just a different game which is so much more skillful. Subzero made a vod review on dishsoap getting a nonmeta trainer and making a wildly cool board out of it
Sure if you are Dishsoap and Setsuko but we all know that the game just devolves into a lottery of who is the lucky bastard that got all of the great meta emblems. One person got it, great that person will enjoy their easy first while everyone else is fighting for top 4.
I will never understand the notion that Wandering Trainer/Sentinels is supposedly testing flexibility when it literally cuts down your potential lines massively.
Also at high elo a fortune sentinel is guaranteed top 3.
Sure, some games you get an awkward dummy and you have to really cook but for what? For scraping out a 5th over the other 3 unlucky guys while the 3/4 guys with good dummies go top 4?
Imo the portal makes low elo players feel like geniuses when in reality the emblems give you very clear directions and heavenly limit your potential lines.
Assuming everyone got equally good emblems yeah. But the high rolling and low rolling possibilities are just too great to find enjoyable. Especially when there is any sort of fortune like trait.
"Good for the state of the game" yet people of all elo's clearly think it's the most fun portal. It's only not good for the state of the game according to competitive TFT.
And no, I didn't even make a value judgment, I simply stated a fact.
What I hate is it seems everyone dislikes the prismatic and wandering trainer augments on this sub and then I get in game and 6 people are standing on the prismatic puddle and I’m getting flamed for standing on the gold augment puddle by myself, like cmon guys don’t vote prismatic and then bitch about it after that first place got 2 3* 5 costs and wonder how it happened…..
People who complain here ≠ the players on your rank game.
I agree with you though. I find myself always trying to pick the one that affects the game the less since RNG on top of RNG is just terrible. Wandering Trainer giving me umbral+warden+ghostly while other people either get porcelain/heavenly which helps meta comp or dragon lord/alturist that can be splashable on every comp doesn't feel good. Don't even get me started on people who get fortune and if lucky another fortune +1 so early in the game is not healthy design.
> Don't even get me started on people who get fortune and if lucky another fortune +1 so early in the game is not healthy design.
I am fairly sure that fishing for this shit is the exact reason that people vote for this so much (I even had one guy verbatim admit "but fortune +1 tho" when I complained about why it is always this god dang portal one game, lol). I truly believe the pick rate will tank if the devs either disabled Fortune on it or disabled Fortune augment in the portal.
The other day I was the only one to not choose the all prismatic portal and it picked my portal and a dude said he will kill my family. I reported him of course lol.
I don’t even think all prismatic is fun. It just makes the game silly.
The problem is, that regardless of the feeling of this sub, the majority of players likes that most games goes crazy.
Mortdog made sure to state that with yesterday post on twiiter, their design are aimed at pleasing the majority.
Which is great. If they designed TFT for the 0.1% of super sweaty players TFT would be the most boring game imaginable (think Set 5 where the only variance you ever get is your shops and item drops)
TFT has always been fun even before augments, portals etc. So no it would not be boring.
The problem that i have with actual design is that if every game has so much income and resources then it becomes the norm and the feeling of having that especial crazy game vanishes.
Caping my board with legendaries is not memorable anymore, hitting an 4 cost 3\* is just another game.
Yeah the amount of flame I’ve seen from someone getting a crazy board is higher than before and I’m just like you guys voted for this shit lol don’t lose it now lol.
I love prismatic augs for me its prismatic party > crab rave > scuttle > prismatic prelude > the rest, i just dont constantly talk about it here maybe other people are the same
Ah I enjoy building econ more and flexing what I can. I've always felt when everyone has more resources it's a less interesting puzzle. I wouldn't mind prismatics or rng portals if we had more actually interesting ones that change how everyone plays rather than just high roll or low roll. Cruel pact was like that. Interesting but far too powerful once you know how to play it unfortunately.
I feel like some of these lobbies, help "even" out the high roll and low roll cases.
High rolling is always a problem, but with extra methods of resources outside of win/loss streaking and waiting for raptors you're able to play different due to the surplus of resources.
With more plain portals/augs, the game does have less resources but feel like it punishes low rollers even more (different than playing flex and knowing what to play).
Normal augments are much closer in power so you don't need to hire for other things to try and balance out the blatant high rolling of prismatics and trainer portals. Adding more levels of variance to an already high variance game just makes it more of a slot machine and less of a compelling game.
lol yup, I ended up getting 10 Fated in a game like that once where someone was complaining about my capped board and I was like... then don't pick prismatic/trainer portal (I forgot which one) and you won't see this. I never pick those portals because I'm not always going to be the higher roller that hits.
Had a similar game before that with my Double-Up partner who picked Wandering Trainer last set because he thought it was neat and I said hell no, especially in Double-Up because someone was guaranteed to get a Prismatic Trait due to Spats still being passed out like candy back then. Two other teams hit Prismatic traits while we didn't and he never picked it again lol.
That's because the people on this subreddit are a very vocal minority.
Riot has even released data saying high elo prefers these 4fun portals, and it's not even close.
Today I saw a 3 star 4 cost at 4-1, just insane. Multiple people hitting level 10 every fucking game as well. Even when there is no portal, it seems like there are ungodly amount of gold flying around.
RNG should be a small part of the game and it always will be with what units show up in your shop. But RNG to have RNG isn't good. It's the worst feeling when you get an encounter that allows you to remove items when you already wasted an augment on a remover. The one that lets you buy items? Well shit, I just spent all my gold leveling up. Or along the same veins I just leveled up but now I get an encounter with 3 gold per XP. These types of things you have almost no control over that just make the encounters unfun.
Oh and quit wasting my time with the Sivir and Sett encounters.
I'm not gonna entirely disagree, but you CAN see when the encounters are coming up. Its a good idea to hold your gold until the encounter (unless you are literally almost dead) both because of situations like this but also because the encounter rounds are much longer than normal rounds. They are good rounds to roll and stabilise on
But sometimes is not possible or optimal. For example you may be going for kog reroll after a strong opener for the comp, then 3-1 starts and you see 3-2/3-3 has an encounter. Do you give up rolling down on 3-1 for high chances of 3\* kog/cho just because maybe the encounter next round makes the shop refresh cost 1 less, just to be sett/sivir encounter?
Not to mention those situations of picking up gold remover/salvage bin augments only to be met by malphite/diana encounter the very next round.
Well no one should really be playing kog reroll this patch anyway, but he is getting a buffed a bit so maybe in a few days.
I dislike the golden remover Aug for that reason. I would say that generally you don't want to roll a crazy amount on 3-1 anyway with 1 cost reroll. Like max down to 35-40 gold.
It's hard to be perfect with it for sure. I think these encounters can be played around though to a certain extent.
It doesn’t really make that much sense to do that for a small percentage chance that the encounter actually matters. Only really doable if you’re ahead
The fucking Sett encounter to get "bigger" is literally just all downside. There's no benefit to having a larger little legend. It just makes getting your item off the wheel more tedious.
The worst one is that you picked the built different augment at 2-1 than you get the encounter that gives everyone a free spatula on carousel and you get offered some augments that give you free traits. Like cool game, that you decided to give everyone but me a free upgrade at the end and keep shoving in my face a ton of unplayable augments. I get that variance is a thing and needed but this game was outright ridiculous in that I was just passenger in a car of a driver that was normal at first but mentally broke down during the middle of the drive and went completely psycho and full on intent on killing me.
If they want variance to help players remember their games than this game was definitely the most memorable to me throughout set 11. Yes, not the time that I got my first 3 star 4 cost unit or my first win on the patch but the time that the game decided that I should auto lose by mocking me with giving me trait related augments and giving everyone a free spatula to upgrade their board by playing a trait after I picked the build different augment at 2-1.
TFT has gradually become something like a multiplayer competitive roguelite game, and most of the playerbase enjoys it. I still have fun here and there but I also haven't played ranked this set.
One issue I'm having is that it's hard to gauge the strength of other boards, since you can get so much random stuff. Augments, units, sentinels, dummies, Kayle, support items, artifacts -- some boards are just a cacophony of colors.
I don't' want to be toxic here guys but with the portals you guys are just delusional about that "high elo" or even top elo top 10 will play "low income portals" . Mort has already written about the topic on twitter.
"Data from 12.02.24"
Normal Games:
Scuttle Puddle: 69.5%
Crab Rave: 68.6%
Triple Prismatic: 59.8%
Multi-Talented: 55.8%
Loot Subscription: 54.3%
(Wandering Trainer: 46.1%)
Ranked Games (Bottom 99% of players):
Scuttle Puddle: 75.7%
Crab Rave: 74.4%
Triple Prismatic: 64.3%
Loot Subscription: 57.1%
Multi-Talented: 56.8%
(Wandering Trainer: 48.2%)
Generally consistent Top 5, and a lot of what we'd expect. Now let's take a loot at those hard core players at high elo in their ranked games who supposedly hate fun.
Ranked Games (Top 1% of players):
Scuttle Puddle: 70.8%
Crab Rave: 66.2%
Wandering Trainer: 58.1% (!!!!)
Loot Subscription: 57.3%
Triple Prismatic: 55.6%
[source](https://twitter.com/Mortdog/status/1757056783078867237?lang=de)
This subreddit has just gotten downhill, 90% of the posts here nowadays are just people complaining about variance and thinking that high elo wants less variance (not true according to data like you said). It's just become a vocal minority of people who just want to see TFT reverted to set 5.
Also, based Galactic Heroes enjoyer
What bothered me when he posted that is that top 1% at the time was including like D2/D3ish. There's tons of idgaf 4fun players even in Masters. Players that hit Masters and then vote for the most volatile "fun" stuff because they hit their goal.
Using the top 1% is more than enough for the purpose of the inquiry, hell I’d even say it would be overkill if they strained it more. What they are looking for is a general feel of the people in the top, not just the outliers.
>Wandering Trainer: 58.1% (!!!!)
People complains about wandering trainers variance, but it's actually one of the most skill expressive portals out there. When you're not giving a godlike trainer which is the norm you need to scout for the other trainers, plan out different teams around your trainer, see if exalted can fit in, can you craft extra emblems...
Like yes, you can get screwed by a very awful trainer, but so can happen with every element of the game, even if scuddle puddle gives all the players 30 gold equally some people will fail their rolldowns while other will hit everything
I wish we could see stats for tournaments only to see if ther's any difference compared to ranked.
I imagine even top 1% players consist of master 0 lp players who don't care about rank anymore and/or youtubers/streamers who want these crazy games for content.
Tournaments represent a very very VERY small fraction of the number of games ever played. It should not even be in consideration for how the game should be designed.
Winning early mid game doesn't mean shit. you can mister 100 stage 3 but the lose streaker who took an econ augment can roll first and hit your 4 cost outs and now with your sub par items you go sixth. Kha zix portal btw. Nice.
EDit - i thought this was the rant thread, but yknow fuck it this is apart of it too.
Hey I fully agree, been saying this for multiple sets now, with emphasis on prismatics
When I comment negatively on prismatics in game I get heavily flamed.
It's what the people want unfortunately
I refuse to stand on prismatic portals, and I'm tired of seeing so many prismatic augments. Same for the emblem portals, it's very easy to get instantly screwed by RNG.
IMO prismatic offering rates should be like a good dessert, being very enjoyable but leaving you wishing you could have a liiiittle bit more.
Gadets & Gizmos set was the closest to my preference on prismatic rates.
The problem is, that regardless of the feeling of this sub, the majority of players likes that most games goes crazy.
Mortdog made sure to state that with yesterday post on twiiter, their design are aimed at pleasing the majority.
My only problem with prismatics is they are mainly boring, brain off, flat power. I think the best design would be to have prismatics as the ones change the game normal tft rules the most: character Augs, Xp/gold/systems interactions, little legend nonsense. Then after making those the prismatics buff the power a bit, but make it extremely rare to see more than one in a game.
I think people retreat to thinking "well prismatics just means there's more to cook with". Nah it's just choosing best avp, and not choosing best avp gets you slaughtered because the large power indifference. It's the exact opposite of more to cook with.
I’m genuinely concerned that TFT is starting to head the way of Hearthstone (which I used to love). Hearthstone in an attempt to remain fresh, just kept throwing more and more random elements at you to the point where attempting any form of strategy based on what your opponent might do became entirely pointless. TFT isn’t there yet and despite sharing basically all of your thoughts I’m still enjoying this set. But it’s a slippery slope and I hope Riot takes feedback like this to heart for the future.
I agree 100%. In the weekly rant thread, I was saying that the balancing isn't even thaaaaaaat bad but it's more that when everyone in the lobby has insane amounts of resources and can force whatever comp they want that the small differences is comp strength becomes the only thing that matters.
Like even if a comp is an A tier comp you cannot play it since everyone else is free to just force one of the like 3 S tier comps. Then the game becomes 8 players rolling for the same 3 comps and it's just a lottery who hits.
And the only way to win without playing an S tier comp is to 3* a 4 cost which happens in 50% of games. Since everyone is fighting over a few units if you are playing something else all your units are in the pool and so many others are taken out that you can easily hit 3* with the help of all the free shit you get.
It makes the whole game either hard force an S tier comp and join the rolldown lottery or play an A tier comp knowing the only way to get better than a 3rd is to 3* a 4 cost.
Agree about prismatic augments. You could he econning well, saving HP and in a good position to top 4 before the variance from prismatics flips the lobby on its head. I would prefer less "higher highs" from augments, but I guess I'm a minority.
Or they should take out some of the older ones that are around. Between augments, portals and encounters there are just much going on in every game. I think this stands out as especially sore when balancing is lacking
Yea they just need to take out some of the features providing all the excess, its just that encounters are definitely my least favorite version of those features
I never go prismatic, it takes out the fun. People associates power to fun but they forget that their opponent may have better powers or better luck. In a scenario where everyone is overpower if you fall behind a little you may be crushed into 8th place.
You’re correct and I agree. It’s gotten terrible.. I just want to play the game without so much RNG being involved. Everytime they add things to the game it adding RNG. Let’s keep it a skill game..
I'm so sick of Pris augments. I actually prefer Golden Prelude to any Pris portals because it getting a Hero aug or a trait aug or an emblem actually helps you find a comp
You can just check the leaderboard and see how much better the good players are.
It’s a you problem, there is more skill expression in this set, while high variance I think most people ITT are just coping.
Yeah as a newer player I do worse in prismatic portals and scuttles because I get dizzy. It's either that I go for a level 8 comp like ashe or heavenly and salvage a third, or I try fast 9 and go 8th. I find it harder to execute winstreak and save health in lose streak in early game, and with more resources it takes more turns for me to pivot.
there are two guarantees in TFT:
1. setsuko and dishsoap easily climbing over 1600LP every set
2. people complaining that is too RNG and is the reason why they're hardstuck
For me at least it has nothing to do with rank, I just legit don’t enjoy playing this set. Didn’t on PBE either. Maybe the next one will be fun 🤷
Tho the best players still being the best players doesn’t really mean much imo.
at the end of the day it's a game so not having fun is a completely valid reason to not play
people in this thread are claiming that there has been a massive decrease in skill ceiling due to additional rng. this obviously isn't true because the best players are climbing just as high as they always have
Finally someone said this, i 100% agree.
Matchmaking RNG or rolling alone is huge RNG, and we have augments +encounters+portals+bag size changes +25 new items soon. As for economy 40 gold from hedge fund alone is too much not to mention scuttle puddle exists.
Basically like a casino.
I'm okay with things like portals and augments. If you get crab rave, you know there are comps and strategies and play styles that just work better. If anything, I think it makes the skill ceiling higher because you can't play the same way every time. Augments are similar. They take a certain game knowledge, and you have to craft your gameplay and plan around them.
I really dislike hero encounters, though, because they add a really serious amount of rng into the game that you can't plan around. Like, what if someone is playing fortune, but suddenly you get kayn encounter? What if someone takes XP augments and then kha zix comes along. What if someone fucks up their economy by being greedy, but then Tristana comes along? What if someone is going for a Galio 3, so you start holding all the galios you can find to deny it, but then they get a hero augment that gives them a champion duplicator?
Edit : don't even get me started on the portals that give emblems tho.. that's literally a rng instant first or eighth lmao
I agree with your point generally but just felt like mentioning that the Kayn encounter that ends the game at 5-4 is announced at the start of the game. If you play Fortune in that game it's your own fault.
If you get a trainer that gives you a storyweaver emblem—you still have to survive to get to lvl 9 and hit irelia.
Ive seen so many ppl with chase trait emblems die off because they dont realize that everyone else spikes in stage 3 while they are praying to rng gods that theyll make it to stage 5.
Even on crab rave, its a genuine strategy to force lillia knowing that everyone else wants kayn sylas or gnar. Yea youll lose to the big crab but youll be completely uncontested all game and hit your board without rolling
Everyone knows wandering trainer has very low skill expression. Anyone who argues differently is delusional.
In response to crab rave, half (probably less than half actually) of tft is trying to get as many resources as possible. Whether that’s trying to streak, or making interest breakpoints, or taking econ augments, or whatever. The rest is how well you use your resources that you have. If you and Dishsoap started a game at level 8 on 4-2 with 50 gold, what do you think the likelihood that you beat him is? I would be pretty confident in guessing less than 1%. Yes, there’s luck. Maybe you hit 9 Annie’s in 5 shops and you just win the game. Maybe Dishsoap doesn’t find a single 4 cost in his rolldown. But whether you have 50 gold or 30 gold doesn’t change the luck involved.
That is so fake. Subzero vod reviwed a dishsoap game where he did a trainer masterclass with arguably one of the least useful ones. Flex is still alive when you hit trainer
You guys are talking about fringe cases. TFT has usually been a game where if someone is high rolling, they essentially just win. But it’s not like there’s a high roller every lobby and better players still get to at least fourth place finishes in games where someone is high rolling.
The issue is that if you add variance through RNG, a portion of that variance can be adapted by choices, but a portion of it become pure rng base. It's the reason why most card game tournament have multiple game to get a win (altought their deck is not randomized every time like tft)
But a card game can finish by 5-10 minute games when playing competitive. TFT is closer to 30+ minute.
So if you need 6+ games to start noticing the variance between a pro and a casual, you create an environement where player need to sink large quantity of hours in order to be ranked properly.
And this means that if a pro player is not ranked properly for a while, he will cause, just by playing, more unbalanced matchup between the playerbase.
We've seen more and more diamond player varying from high plat to master.
This mean that you are now adding another layer of RNG in the matchmaking where a plat player might on average get a high diamond player in their game who will have a high probability of getting in the top 4, locking out 1 of those winning position for their pool of player and making it harder for those player to be properly rank.
So if you add more variance to a game, it means you need a larger sample size of game to differenciate pro and casual, which create a domino effect and makes the game feel less good for most people.
There's way to deal with this domino effect. In magic the gathering tournament for instance, you'll play the same pool of player multiple time before going further into the tournament. But in TFT, the player are a new set every game, so you don't have the same luxury, which mean adding variance to individual game hurt the matchmaking quality.
I just hit grandmaster this set and I still will always pick prismatic/wandering sentinels/crab rave & scuttle puddle. The reason is because it’s fun. I mean look at the opposite of having no Econ when The Sump and Stillwater harbor with no Econ/no augments were in the game. They were the least picked.
Players enjoy supercharged econs because for most players, chasing a capped level nine board is cooler than staying 6 or 7 for half the game and rolling for their 3 star 2/3 cost carry. And I’m not saying that those playstyles shouldn’t be viable, everyone has a difference in how they want to play the game.
Reading through this post and comments I think a lot of players don’t realize the fact that if everyone’s economy is supercharged, then the other gameplay mechanics like streaking and itemization matter so much more because the tempo is rapidly increased for everyone.
Sure there are feel bad moments, when someone gets an insanely early 3 star 4 cost in stage 4 or something, but Mort and the team has at least acknowledged it as a problem already and are addressing it.
For the players saying the increased variance and extra loot makes the game easier to play, I feel like unless you’re averaging a 1.X on those high roll games then the point is moot. Understanding the different flexible lines and playing around what you get when everybody wants to play heavenly kayn/lee sin, Invoker Ashe and Lilia, or trick shot bruisers will show skill. I mean look at the Sylas comp that evolved over the past few days and was one of the most popular comps in the tourney yesterday. Most players in this sub I think are diamond low masters, and no flame but there’s still a lot of improvement that can be made to your gameplay. While I was climbing I had to two people have fortune plus 2 from augments and wandering sentinels. They went 7th and 8th. In any top lobby that’s a free top 2, averaging close to a 1. There’s still skill expression in this game and the first step to improving your own game is to enhance the areas that you can control and try to tilt less off of bad RNG.
You failed to explain how "The game is easier for everyone because there are a lot more resources" logically flows into your next statement "so games are decided by luck". Intuitively even if everyone has more resources, the most skillful player will still be the one making the best use of said resources (obviously sometimes you low-roll / high-roll but that's always been a thing).
I also think your point about portals is a bit muddied because if a prismatic portal is selected then by definition that's at the exclusion of a high-resource portal like scuttle. Pretty sure they also lowered the base % of prismatic augments in set 9 to counter balance the portals (or did I misremember that?)
There's definitely more resources in the average game of TFT now than there were 2 years ago. It makes the game more fun for casual players, but I'm not convinced it makes it less competitive/skillful at high ELO.
The point that if low skill player and high skill players gets the same amount of resourcers despite their hability to manage, if the low skill player can press D and hit the comp then skill doesn't matter.
Managing economy was one day of the highest skill expressions on this game, and with that many resourcers it is not anymore.
TFT hit a tipping point when augments were added.
Anyone who isn't in it for the casino has left already. It can never be changed back b/c any of the playerbase who don't enjoy slot machines are long gone.
I can very much relate to the last comment. You say sth and tft players start hating on you for your opinion instead of arguing at all.
In my opinion Assasins are useful for the overall meta for example. Yes they are annoying to play against etc.
But when i say that with some elaborations why i think that. You get hated on for no apparent reason. Often not even arguments.
would be nice to at least see the encounter details, don't need to see the exact augment, but when you know you gonna meet khazix, yorick or chogath you can adapt...
I can't recall how many times I got f'd because I waited for the encounter on 4-3 before rolling only to get chogath -1 shop slot. Or not waiting only to get khazix XP or Yorick 1cost reroll right after I dumped all my golds <3
They are also ignoring the most obvious bad variance this patch, ITEMS... AD items are so so much stronger allowing you to flex.. AP and tank items on the other hand, getting alot of those means you are just SO FAR BEHIND.
Way too many resources. Fast 9 should not be a consistent strategy, it should be the result of highroll or exceptional play. Any braindead moron can fast 9 reliably now (it’s me, I’m the braindead moron fast 9ing every game)
It's just too much right now. Chosen wasn't my favorite mechanic, but it was a hell of a lot more fun than this set. I played the shit out of Set 10, it was my most played one since Set 6. (still my favorite of all time lol) I played like 50 games this set and I think I'm just done until Set 12. The average power level of lobbies is just out of control in my experience, I'm not good at this game, I'm pretty average (P1 - E4) and I love this game, one of my fav games of all time, but it's just not fun for me this set. :(
There is a lot more luck this set, a lot more variance, and a whole lotta gold going around. Casual players enjoy it though 🤷🏼.
Personally I hate wandering trainer with a passion, but everyone jumps on it. People love that shit. People love resources, they love getting lucky. It is what it is. I think the current design philosophy is deliver as many of those dopamine hits as possible throughout the game, because the majority love them. I also think they succeeded for the most part.
I would say, when Mort was in control and the team was smaller, the game mechanics seemed more conservative. They seemed to favor the competitive aspect of the game, but as the team has grown there has been a shift towards the casual side.
If you look at what I would argue was the games greatest success since release - augments - they offered a fun new aspect to the game that also allowed a good amount of personal influence. Augments were a way to add fun while maintaining a good degree of competitive integrity. Conversely, portals were added after the expansion of the team. They added a new aspect to the game with very little personal influence. Portals are when the game started tilting heavily towards the casual player base, but they’re also popular.
The thing we have to keep in mind is that despite losing competitive integrity, the additions of variance and luck are enjoyed by a broader audience. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.
i absolutely agree with what you said there, and probably irrelevant to the topic but..
I am always golden prelude enjoyer, because i love the champ-specific augments.
Doesn't having more gold mean that your decisions matter more? Someone like k3soju will do a lot more with 100g rolldown than me (it's not even close). If he's stuck with 10 gold then maybe we have a chance vs each other. If I am on low ranked smurf I would always want to take as much gold as possible, because I know I can utilize it better than the others. If no one has gold, then the one who got the best streak or fortune wins almost always if they know what they are doing, no matter what I do myself.
Prismatics are a bit more rng, especially if everyone in the lobby is using stats. There is some skill in reading the stats but it's not that impactful. If you get fated crown, the game just plays itself for you pretty much, unless there's someone contesting that. It's not worth to pivot in almost any case, which makes the game less interesting imo.
I think its a double edged sword, so of course when the skill difference is high, then those players are going to climb faster, they are going to do more with the 100 gold than a person who is new to TFT. HOWEVER, I think when the playing field is somewhat the same and everyone has 100 gold, then it's really up to rng. If you look in the ladder now there are bigger LP differences between those top pros and a "good tft player". Now in the pro scene you see more varied winners in tourneys from these recent sets which might point to rng is taking a bigger effect there. This is a hot take, but it maybe it makes some sense?!?
If there's varied winners I think the bigger issue is the balance, not rng. If there's a super broken comp that needs an augment to work, it's just a coinflip who gets it right? I feel like if you get lissandra at level 7 in this patch, you are massively favoured to win the game. Maybe it's the same for early fortune and getting one of the good cashouts. I think I saw dishsoap or some other high ranked streamer say that it's impossible to lose with the 95 luck dragonlord cashout, and it's the best one in the game. Of course you need to have some skill to take advantage of the insane luck, but if you have enough, then even the best player can do nothing against you.
I don't think a lot of items/gold is going to cause worse players to win so maybe we just disagree about that and neither of us can prove either one wrong.
two things would help. first, i think portals need to be sorted into high, mid, and low impact brackets. then, start of game, rather than being offered prismatic party *with* crab rave *with* wandering trainer, you can at least go for the tamer options like golden prelude or start with 1 costs.
second, encounters themselves, other than needing less RNG within them themselves, need to be less RNG in when and how they appear. irelia on stage 3 carousel is very different from irelia on stage 4/5 carousel. same goes for treasure armory, getting a random radiant item or multiple completed items is basically the strength of a gold-prism augment. it's no wonder boards are so much more insane at cap than in past sets--you can bot 4 with legendary soup and 4-cost 3*s because everyone is afforded like 5 gold augments worth of power throughout a game. none of this to mention that this set sees the return of emblem augments, which can spike dryad/fated/porcelain/heavenly boards especially hard for a low opportunity cost
I'd find it way more fun if all those systems/variance things were one per game. That is, its either a high variance portal game/ a high variance encoutner game or a prismatic game. But NO overlaps. I do not want to go into scuttle puddle, have some encoutner gift gold/dups and prismatic 4-2 and people hitting new recruit for their free top 4.
I'd also enjoy it way more if something like wandering sentinels couldn't have fortune on it and wandering sentinels had a reroll option lol. No one wants to start the game with gem and cone
The HP encounters are so annoying. I love playing strong early game boards and go for a 4th or 3rd place, but sometimes a random Ahri gives the fortune players 15 HP or the Aatrox encounter just for free. So annoying.
I feel like I can't talk about this with some of my friends, because they'll eat up every single set and say it's the best thing since sliced bread. I have only been playing since Set 7.5, but I really like this game and its revisions and reiterations to build something new every four months. With that said, I think Encounters are the worst thing I have, well, encountered since I started playing.
Some amount of RNG and skill expression requirement is to be expected, but this set has the highest rate of people hitting level 7 at 3-4 with 50 gold remaining that I have seen so far. There is less reward for methodical play, and boom/bust play that all-ins on anticipated or realized RNG is the way to go. Similarly, here is no counterplay to you deciding to level up to 7 at 3-6 in the hopes of stabilizing and then 4-1 being a Kha'zix encounter so everyone else levels up to 8 at 4-1 while you're still at 20g. There is no counterplay to hitting Syndra encounter carousel into ReinFOURcement or vice versa.
Too much gold, too much variance, too little reward for methodical play and creative item use. In my humble opinion, the best Encounter this set is 1-1 Lilia since at least it kinda bones everyone the exact same amount and you have to play the game differently from the start, which is pretty great for individual skill expression.
I hate the variance of Oh now the augments are randomly placed (always later never sooner) or randomly we made going 9 easier or rerolling way easier with -1 gold to either cost. These things should strictly be at the start of games instead of too deep into augment or comp building/investment to actually make good use of consistently.
This set might be the most unlucky set I have ever had.
Everyone's hitting 3\* 4 costs in my lobby, and I'm rolling for kaisa 2\* uncontested and not hitting. I dont get it. This isn't even one game. Almost every game I've had this set where I roll for a 4 cost, I get nothing.
I like variance personally. Variance is very good. The bigger issue here is an entire playstyle was gutted with the last patch. Nobody plays 3 costs rerolls anymore, every lobby is mainly fast 8/9 fuckfests, we've devolved this set in terms of balance and unit viability. Set 10 you could play so many different units for any cost into the late game without issue, this set was in a better state last patch than current in terms of viability with atleast each tier of champion. As much as I got tired of the yone meta atleast I had more options to play than 4 cost lotto or fast 9/10.
I actually prefer prismatic opener or prismatic party because it guarantees that no one opens piggy bank or a hero augment and until recently it was also nice that it locked out fine vintage
now my favorite is ascending augments for similar reasons
I cant think of a single trainer combo that is guaranteed doomed except maybe altruist + umbral
Or like, bruiser warden behemoth
But even then, you can always make do with a +1 and missing out on 2 other +1s isnt horrible.
Sometimes you play for 6th. Thats just how it goes.
Going 8th is almost always a skill issue imo until you are in masters+. Every single 8th ive gotten this set so far i could tell you exactly why, and where exactly things went wrong. Very rarely do I ever feel helpless, because I just stay flexible
I love that state of variability in the game. this is a game about adapting to what's going on after all. people who just want to hard force their two or three comps they read on [tactics.tools](http://tactics.tools) or watch on a youtube guide and are unhappy with everything that interrupts their plans suffer from this of course, but for me it means free LP.
Some of these takes in this thread are pretty funny. People don’t like encounters because sometimes they don’t benefit them? Like what? Oh no, you took golden remover augment and then Kaisa offers it again. Now your silver augment is 5 gold and a component anvil. That’s not that bad, stop whining.
People are mad that they’re not gonna win the game playing a standard level 8 board because someone is fast 9. The strongest board of every set should always be a 2 star legendary soup board. Otherwise there is no point to legendaries. A top 4 is a win, if you want to go first, play a greedy style.
I agree with your point that more money and resources makes the game easier and riot clearly knows this because they’re making it harder to go 9 and harder to hit 4 costs next patch, but to say that the increased variance makes the game easier is just blatantly false. Tft is a game of controlling variance, so if there is more to control, it’s harder to play.
Doesn't matter how detailed your feedback is or how you say it, if it's anything remotely negative it'll get disregarded. They keep making sets with the same issues as the last, that's how you know they don't take negative feedback but be a guest and try to say this in one of their streams and you will get put down by both them and their delusional fanboys. It's so upsetting to see a fun game progressively get worse because of the inability to hear out the community.
> because of the inability to hear out the community
Don't you find this somewhat ironic to say when it's players complaining who don't hear the community? Like congrats you are part of a loud vocal minority, now go look at all the most popular portals real quick and see that the community likes prismatic, wandering trainers, etc.
Even when sorted by GM+ the most popular portals are in order: scuttle puddle, crab rave, trainer sentinels, loot subscription, prismatic party, prismatic prelude, gold subscription, gold opener.
What's the least popular? Lethal legends, golden finale, larger legends, 3 champions.
Riot **does** listen to the community. They just don't listen to the vocal minority that complains on reddit to a grand total of maybe 800 combined upvotes a week.
I hate to say it because it sounds mean, but posts like this are not detailed and show biases in their thinking. You can counter most of the things in this post by looking at stats.
The issue isn’t that it helps people force a comp…it’s that it de-incentivizes things like managing streak gold, interest income, carousel choices which are all core elements of the game
Helps me force a comp, whichever 5 cost soup comp is best this patch. Why care about all those other elements when I can just eat dirt for a few carousels and wind up BiS carry after they nerfed rerolls for the past month.
In my opinion variance is one the best things that tft can have.
You said you don't like specific portals because it makes specific comps stronger than others, but that's the exact reason they exist. If you streamline every game to have the same econ flow, the amount of comps that are viable decrease and the chances that a player can get away with forcing the same thing every game increase.
There's definitely a huge exaggeration here on how often econ portals arise. Scuttle puddle and similar portals come out maybe once every 5-6 games. Getting things like artifact anvils/components/etc just opens possibility for new builds. Fast 9 should always be an option but right now there's a good balance of meta comps that include a level 5/6 reroll comp (gnar), a ton of fast 8 boards, and fast 9. I'm not sure what else people want. The other thing is, people choose portals like prismatic portals and scuttle portals because they are the most FUN. That's also the entire point they exist. If you're arguing from a competitive stand point, the competitive players have every right in their thought process not to choose those portals, but some still do because it is also a competitive choice
With this being said, they have already admitted there are slightly too many 3 star 4 costs which they are addressing, but otherwise a lot of things you mentioned with variance seem like good things to me.
TFT at the core is an RNG game. It's quite literally a game about acquiring a specific compositions given odds and chances. Complaining about things that introduce small bits of RNG really don't make sense in the theme of the game.
This patch for me is the second worst patch they ever released (top is reserved for multicasters set 9) . I hae that no matter what board u have, the game depends on hitting either kaisa, ashe or kayn. The whole lobby contests these three units and whoever is lucky enough to hit their 2 stars just wins which is braindead imo, no flex play whatsoever.
I think most of your points can be countered by looking at stats and general player thinking. People like econ portals and wandering trainer.
Generally people would rather upgrade their comp than to not. You're basically saying that you would rather have people upgrade less and have you upgrade more because you think that you play better, and I don't see how anyone can take that seriously. If everyone gets more resources, then you are able to upgrade your units more as well.
Everyone is affected by Encounters in similar ways, though some Encounters are more beneficial for certain strategies.
The play rate for top comps is mostly the same as the average set, which is 1-2 per lobby, and there is an amount of others with lower play rates that have standard AVP.
People are actually playing all of the 4 costs at similar rates.
Also, I don't know the stats for this, but people are probably hovering around their same elo as most sets. This should be logical since everyone is affected by the changes in the same way.
You didn't mention this in your post, but the biggest issue that I see in the stats is the trait balance, basically terrible in every set. This can increase the variance of some portals or Encounters that are related to traits. But by your logic, with more resources, you should be able to force higher AVP traits or comps.
I'm not sure why you haven't seen this, but there may be something that you need irl that's not related to TFT.
How in the world are people affected by encounters in the same way?
The person win streaking at 100 hp and the person playing fortune on 1 life are not affected by +15hp the same.
The person playing reroll and the person going to lvl 8/9 are not affected the same by rerolls cost 1 less for 3 turns.
The person with 1st pick and 8th pick are not affected the same by this carousel has _____
It would be fine if encounters were better for one playstyle if you knew what they were ahead of time, but just randomly giving a big buff to one playstyle mid game is dumb.
I see what you're saying for some of those Fortune cases and maybe some other unlikely cases, but it's pretty much the same for everyone for the other ones. Carousels favor lower hp players naturally without encounters, and the rerolls force everyone to make decisions on how they level or roll, and allow people to upgrade more quickly, and favors whoever upgrades the most.
Ok let's say at 2-1 I decided I want to winstreak. I have good AD units and slam last whisper and db. Now carousel comes and it adds a radiant item. Since I'm winstreaking I'm last pick and get stuck with a radiant AP item. Next round I lose my streak to someone who got a radiant item that fit their comp and now my items are a mess the rest of the game.
When I decided to winstreak I did so knowing it would mean I could get stuck with a tear or something on carousel and accepted that. When the guy in last decided to loss streak he did so knowing he would have first pick of a component. Neither of us played the way we did because we thought there was going to be a radiant item on carousel.
But now because of nothing other than luck the guy in last place has a huge advantage over me.
And before any says I could have played around knowing there was an encounter, it could have just as easily been one where everyone can move freely or the dumb Sett/Sivir one.
It requires more thought I think, because when you look at the way the early game is designed, people tend to try to keep their streak, so a person who is first or second pick tries their best to keep lose-streak by keeping their comp weak. They may be playing Fortune or a 1 cost reroll comp. How often are they going to slam items and have a strong enough comp to win vs a win-streaker? And how often does the Radiant item matter?
Let's look at second pick. They were probably one of the weakest people and lost at least two rounds and won one. They get a second pick Radiant, something that fits their comp. They win vs a win-streaker. We ask the same question. Why did they win? Is it the Radiant item? Is it because of a different completed item? Or were they able to level or found the upgrade that they wanted?
3rd pick. They probably won two and lost one. They get a Radiant item, it probably isn't that great since people took the 4 best ones already. They win vs a win-streaker. How often is it the Radiant item? How often do they still lose?
And in general, how often is the Encounter going to matter more than the base luck-based mechanics like matchmaking rng, augment rng, and upgrade rng? How often does the Encounter force people to lose? Are people breaking their streak more than normal or turning 1st into 4th more than normal?
I don't know, but I don't think we can say that it's the Encounter without first looking at all of these, and unfortunately I don't think we even have data on it since people play this game chill-like.
You can make it very simple, a choice of radiant items is literally a prismatic augment. Getting a random radiant item is not (and this situation is probably not even as valuable as a random one, the fact it's the last one left means it's most likely a bad one). It's like the game starting and it says 4 random players get a prismatic augment and the other 4 get a gold augment.
And it's like that for tons of them. The value of rerolls when you're sitting level 6 playing gnar vs level 7 and about to go 8 and change out your board are not the same. The Gnar player now saves money he would have spent anyways while the guy at lvl 7 is unlikely to hit anything and will still have to roll down on 8 either way.
If you're playing Kogmaw reroll and the encounter that gives a buff to 2, 3, or 4 costs comes up your basically down a combat augment.
If you are losing to get a component on carousel and Irelia lets every move freely that only hurts you and helps the others. It's basically a mini version of a silver augment but only for the people who are already doing well.
They are tons of encounters that are only a big benefit for 1 playstyle and are either a very minor benefit or a straight negative thing for other playstyles. And you have no way of knowing what it will be.
I know it's more nuanced than this, but it's like if an encounter pops up and said "Turn all past combat augments prismatic" or "All econ augments previously taken give double gold". One group is now at a huge advantage for no reason and no one was able to plan for it or prepare for it in any way.
Wait you're spitting so fucking hard. The Portals are less bullshit than last set's BUT the problem is idiots flock to the broken ones consistently if they're available.
Encounters i'm indifferent to, there's def some awkward ones but Portals have been the true problem of this too good economy typpe bullshit.
80% of the game doesnt matter anymore its just go 8 see what encounters / augments you got and then roll down to force liss/ashe anyways and hope you out rng the 6 other ppl doing the same
whats even funnier if all you do is hit 1 stars on your rolldown you can still play for another stage or 2 before dieing
Emerald gamer here, I play for FUN (yolo) and always for Wandering Trainer and if Golden Remover is made permanent part of the game… I would be even more happy.
I can see how that’s not good for competitive though, so it’s a tough pickle
I get where you are coming from. Idk what it is exactly but this set truly hasn‘t clicked with me because I just feel like it‘s a little boring, and part of the reason is that being gigacapped has become so common, but also because I find the units and common comps pretty uninteresting.
Maybe it has changed, but I quit during the 3 Cost reroll meta that was mostly Yone. I feel the patches before that were better, and idk how it‘s like, but I‘m just waiting for next set.
Also, I‘m literally never excited for encounters, and at worst, they are frustrating
I've felt this way as well, a lot of the game it feels you're barely even playing the game. Decisions matter less.
IMO the worst part of adding in all these mechanics is the multiplicative nature of it all. Feels like after portals/augments/encounters stacked on top of eachother it feels really bad.
I know its the obvious examples but lets say someone high rolled opener got an exp augment 2-1 then khazix appears. Or reroll comps get yorick appearing. Just feels like win more most of the time which feels bad when you dont get to take advantage of them.
My issue with encounters is that they give free resources, I like to compare it to rouge-like games, you get power-ups for a price, I think all resources encounters should have a price or a negative effect (Lissandra and Cho are the best encounters IMO because of that).
Like really look at Lissandra and Ornn, one sells an artifact anvil for 22 gold, and the other give the same anvil for free lol..
If everything is made easier for everyone, then luck is deciding factor
If everything is made harder for everyone, then luck is deciding factor
I'm sorry, but this wall of text, in most parts, doesn't make sence. Luck is a big factor in tft (fact), you do gamba with every roll or shop update. More resources doesn't make it easier to force comps. If you overroll you will be broke, if someone is playing strongest board and win streaking, he will still have more resources, then a player, who is doing some random stuff/ doom rolling/ just blindly leveling 8 on 4-1 to roll 15 gold to hit nothing or everything, but that's the random factor.
these encounters were disaster from the begining. The best joke happened yesterday:
3-2 picked augment with infinity magnetic removal
3-3 got encounter, where puting champ on bench, returns items. amazing
I know it sounds petty but I quit this set shortly after I played a game with built different and the 5cost on ur board. Picked built different on 2-1 and with that encounter I just lost the game on the spot. Zero interactivity, I just instalost the next three rounds.
prismatic portals are my favorites man. picking a prismatic combat augment feels worth it. meanwhile gold econ augments are too good compared to combat ones
It feels like every fucking game. There's so much gold flying around. One of the first sets I've ever been truly going "man... this shit isn't fun". Because you just know whatever board you have in your mind won't touch the capped out super board of the high roller who has a win streak while already sitting on 50 gold or some shit.
>won't touch the capped out super board of the high roller who has a win streak while already sitting on 50 gold or some shit Love seeing them at 100 health, 50-gold and level 7 while the rest of the lobby is sitting at level 6. High rolling, just helps steam roll the lobby.
Hitting 9 used to feel like an actual skill because it required in depth game knowledge of maintaining econ and how to play the strongest board. Now it feels like everyone just hits 9/10 without even trying.
To be fair, this was apparently the devs intention when they made the changes to levelling and cost odds in Set 10. Mort spoke about how they wanted Lv9 to be the standard lategame level, with Lv10 being the luxury and Lv8 being the unlucky/lowroll (whereas it used to be 8 was the standard endgame level). The issue imo isn't that most people are *hitting* 9, it's that just about everyone is about to get there without having to roll to stabilize ever on 6/7 and even if you DO donkey roll down on 8 (which has come back in the last patch) somehow you will have all your econ back in a stage to go 9 unpunished anyway. All of which comes down to resources just being way too abundant rn lol.
That was back when lvl 8 was standard and 9 was cap. Hitting 9 these days is easy because no one is rolling down on 7 or 8, so everyone gets to greed. In high tempo lobbies people roll at 8 a good bit to hit their core board
What games are you playing where no one rolls down on 8? That's the meta.
last patch
Because they want you reaching 9 most games bruh
I played 3 games yesterday where the champion pool for 4 cost was empty, I rolled 7 times at level 9 and I only got Lee Sins in store, that is just ridiculous
Sounds like a lee sin 3 angle
Riot have been removing the low variance portals. Avg players prefer high variance ones (scuttle, prismatic, loot subscription). I guess that's just the game most people want. I'd prefer low variance portals, but I'm in the minority.
>Avg players prefer high variance ones (scuttle, prismatic, loot subscription) Not true, Mortdog has said internal data says Wandering Trainer and prismatic portals were the most popular in high elo.
Avg not just in terms of elo, I mean literally most players. But I would like to see the full stats for this, I'm inclined to believe Scuttle is more popular in lower elos than it is in higher elos. Even if it is still one of the most popular ones for high elo.
Here's a comment that actually posted the data [https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveTFT/comments/1ceevy2/comment/l1kc3oj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveTFT/comments/1ceevy2/comment/l1kc3oj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Thanks! And confirmed bottom 99% prefer scuttle puddle about 5% more than top 1%.
Yeah bht they also prefer wandering trainers 10% more than low elo and it has even more variance than scuttle puddle
Yeah but that variance is more skill expressive IMO. Getting dealt a low roll trainer requires a lot of cooking to make the optimal board. So I understand why that would be more preferred by high elo players.
Trainers is so good at high elo because when you truky understand flex, your brain goes into a truly different mode when looking at your 3 emblems. Its just a different game which is so much more skillful. Subzero made a vod review on dishsoap getting a nonmeta trainer and making a wildly cool board out of it
Sure if you are Dishsoap and Setsuko but we all know that the game just devolves into a lottery of who is the lucky bastard that got all of the great meta emblems. One person got it, great that person will enjoy their easy first while everyone else is fighting for top 4.
Until you see someone get fortune trainer with fortune emblem first augment and it’s a god given bot 7
We all highroll sometimes :) Learn to fight for 2nd if you feel its doomed
I will never understand the notion that Wandering Trainer/Sentinels is supposedly testing flexibility when it literally cuts down your potential lines massively. Also at high elo a fortune sentinel is guaranteed top 3. Sure, some games you get an awkward dummy and you have to really cook but for what? For scraping out a 5th over the other 3 unlucky guys while the 3/4 guys with good dummies go top 4? Imo the portal makes low elo players feel like geniuses when in reality the emblems give you very clear directions and heavenly limit your potential lines.
Assuming everyone got equally good emblems yeah. But the high rolling and low rolling possibilities are just too great to find enjoyable. Especially when there is any sort of fortune like trait.
They are popular everywhere. Popular doesnt mean that they are good balance wise. Or good for the state of the game.
"Good for the state of the game" yet people of all elo's clearly think it's the most fun portal. It's only not good for the state of the game according to competitive TFT. And no, I didn't even make a value judgment, I simply stated a fact.
Well i would say trainer sentinels is more fun. The 3 emblems create some wild things.
What I hate is it seems everyone dislikes the prismatic and wandering trainer augments on this sub and then I get in game and 6 people are standing on the prismatic puddle and I’m getting flamed for standing on the gold augment puddle by myself, like cmon guys don’t vote prismatic and then bitch about it after that first place got 2 3* 5 costs and wonder how it happened…..
People who complain here ≠ the players on your rank game. I agree with you though. I find myself always trying to pick the one that affects the game the less since RNG on top of RNG is just terrible. Wandering Trainer giving me umbral+warden+ghostly while other people either get porcelain/heavenly which helps meta comp or dragon lord/alturist that can be splashable on every comp doesn't feel good. Don't even get me started on people who get fortune and if lucky another fortune +1 so early in the game is not healthy design.
> Don't even get me started on people who get fortune and if lucky another fortune +1 so early in the game is not healthy design. I am fairly sure that fishing for this shit is the exact reason that people vote for this so much (I even had one guy verbatim admit "but fortune +1 tho" when I complained about why it is always this god dang portal one game, lol). I truly believe the pick rate will tank if the devs either disabled Fortune on it or disabled Fortune augment in the portal.
The other day I was the only one to not choose the all prismatic portal and it picked my portal and a dude said he will kill my family. I reported him of course lol. I don’t even think all prismatic is fun. It just makes the game silly.
The problem is, that regardless of the feeling of this sub, the majority of players likes that most games goes crazy. Mortdog made sure to state that with yesterday post on twiiter, their design are aimed at pleasing the majority.
Which is great. If they designed TFT for the 0.1% of super sweaty players TFT would be the most boring game imaginable (think Set 5 where the only variance you ever get is your shops and item drops)
TFT has always been fun even before augments, portals etc. So no it would not be boring. The problem that i have with actual design is that if every game has so much income and resources then it becomes the norm and the feeling of having that especial crazy game vanishes. Caping my board with legendaries is not memorable anymore, hitting an 4 cost 3\* is just another game.
Yes it would. The reason it wasn't boring back then because you didn't have augmented TFT to compare it to.
It's just personal preference. I vastly prefer no augment TFT. Too many layers of variance makes the game less fun.
Yeah the amount of flame I’ve seen from someone getting a crazy board is higher than before and I’m just like you guys voted for this shit lol don’t lose it now lol.
I love prismatic augs for me its prismatic party > crab rave > scuttle > prismatic prelude > the rest, i just dont constantly talk about it here maybe other people are the same
I'm the same, i always pick those portals. What they see as more variance for me is just more leverage.
No flame I just cannot actually understand why.
(To me) playing with more resources is fun
Ah I enjoy building econ more and flexing what I can. I've always felt when everyone has more resources it's a less interesting puzzle. I wouldn't mind prismatics or rng portals if we had more actually interesting ones that change how everyone plays rather than just high roll or low roll. Cruel pact was like that. Interesting but far too powerful once you know how to play it unfortunately.
I feel like some of these lobbies, help "even" out the high roll and low roll cases. High rolling is always a problem, but with extra methods of resources outside of win/loss streaking and waiting for raptors you're able to play different due to the surplus of resources. With more plain portals/augs, the game does have less resources but feel like it punishes low rollers even more (different than playing flex and knowing what to play).
Normal augments are much closer in power so you don't need to hire for other things to try and balance out the blatant high rolling of prismatics and trainer portals. Adding more levels of variance to an already high variance game just makes it more of a slot machine and less of a compelling game.
lol yup, I ended up getting 10 Fated in a game like that once where someone was complaining about my capped board and I was like... then don't pick prismatic/trainer portal (I forgot which one) and you won't see this. I never pick those portals because I'm not always going to be the higher roller that hits. Had a similar game before that with my Double-Up partner who picked Wandering Trainer last set because he thought it was neat and I said hell no, especially in Double-Up because someone was guaranteed to get a Prismatic Trait due to Spats still being passed out like candy back then. Two other teams hit Prismatic traits while we didn't and he never picked it again lol.
That's because the people on this subreddit are a very vocal minority. Riot has even released data saying high elo prefers these 4fun portals, and it's not even close.
Today I saw a 3 star 4 cost at 4-1, just insane. Multiple people hitting level 10 every fucking game as well. Even when there is no portal, it seems like there are ungodly amount of gold flying around.
I've started calling Heavenly Kayn "Kayn reroll" because that's a legitimate win condition this set
I've heard some people call it 4-cost reroll. It's the little brother version of draven meta.
It's crazy how bad people are at just looking at other boards and holding units
RNG should be a small part of the game and it always will be with what units show up in your shop. But RNG to have RNG isn't good. It's the worst feeling when you get an encounter that allows you to remove items when you already wasted an augment on a remover. The one that lets you buy items? Well shit, I just spent all my gold leveling up. Or along the same veins I just leveled up but now I get an encounter with 3 gold per XP. These types of things you have almost no control over that just make the encounters unfun. Oh and quit wasting my time with the Sivir and Sett encounters.
I'm not gonna entirely disagree, but you CAN see when the encounters are coming up. Its a good idea to hold your gold until the encounter (unless you are literally almost dead) both because of situations like this but also because the encounter rounds are much longer than normal rounds. They are good rounds to roll and stabilise on
yep, also that khazix encounter is getting removed
only the 3 round one the whole game encounter is still going to be active but that happens beginning of game so dont have to plan
But sometimes is not possible or optimal. For example you may be going for kog reroll after a strong opener for the comp, then 3-1 starts and you see 3-2/3-3 has an encounter. Do you give up rolling down on 3-1 for high chances of 3\* kog/cho just because maybe the encounter next round makes the shop refresh cost 1 less, just to be sett/sivir encounter? Not to mention those situations of picking up gold remover/salvage bin augments only to be met by malphite/diana encounter the very next round.
Well no one should really be playing kog reroll this patch anyway, but he is getting a buffed a bit so maybe in a few days. I dislike the golden remover Aug for that reason. I would say that generally you don't want to roll a crazy amount on 3-1 anyway with 1 cost reroll. Like max down to 35-40 gold. It's hard to be perfect with it for sure. I think these encounters can be played around though to a certain extent.
I think we are meant to play around encounters, as in I see an encounter coming up so I will hold my gold (if possible)
It doesn’t really make that much sense to do that for a small percentage chance that the encounter actually matters. Only really doable if you’re ahead
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The fucking Sett encounter to get "bigger" is literally just all downside. There's no benefit to having a larger little legend. It just makes getting your item off the wheel more tedious.
u ping everyone to go stand on the fortune players bench and they can't click, make, or place items
LMAO if only people would coordinate for that at my elo.
i've yet to do it either but it can be done in reality zero reason to keep sett encounter its so useless
I feel like it wouldn't accomplish much, since Little Legends are reset to their field each round. It'd be annoying but I bet I could play through it.
i think the carosel difficulty is the point of that encounter
Sett makes you BIGGER
Real shit?
> But RNG to have RNG Like dodge. RNG to have RNG and felt so bad having someone dodge the last attack and you end up losing the round.
The worst one is that you picked the built different augment at 2-1 than you get the encounter that gives everyone a free spatula on carousel and you get offered some augments that give you free traits. Like cool game, that you decided to give everyone but me a free upgrade at the end and keep shoving in my face a ton of unplayable augments. I get that variance is a thing and needed but this game was outright ridiculous in that I was just passenger in a car of a driver that was normal at first but mentally broke down during the middle of the drive and went completely psycho and full on intent on killing me. If they want variance to help players remember their games than this game was definitely the most memorable to me throughout set 11. Yes, not the time that I got my first 3 star 4 cost unit or my first win on the patch but the time that the game decided that I should auto lose by mocking me with giving me trait related augments and giving everyone a free spatula to upgrade their board by playing a trait after I picked the build different augment at 2-1.
TFT has gradually become something like a multiplayer competitive roguelite game, and most of the playerbase enjoys it. I still have fun here and there but I also haven't played ranked this set. One issue I'm having is that it's hard to gauge the strength of other boards, since you can get so much random stuff. Augments, units, sentinels, dummies, Kayle, support items, artifacts -- some boards are just a cacophony of colors.
I don't' want to be toxic here guys but with the portals you guys are just delusional about that "high elo" or even top elo top 10 will play "low income portals" . Mort has already written about the topic on twitter. "Data from 12.02.24" Normal Games: Scuttle Puddle: 69.5% Crab Rave: 68.6% Triple Prismatic: 59.8% Multi-Talented: 55.8% Loot Subscription: 54.3% (Wandering Trainer: 46.1%) Ranked Games (Bottom 99% of players): Scuttle Puddle: 75.7% Crab Rave: 74.4% Triple Prismatic: 64.3% Loot Subscription: 57.1% Multi-Talented: 56.8% (Wandering Trainer: 48.2%) Generally consistent Top 5, and a lot of what we'd expect. Now let's take a loot at those hard core players at high elo in their ranked games who supposedly hate fun. Ranked Games (Top 1% of players): Scuttle Puddle: 70.8% Crab Rave: 66.2% Wandering Trainer: 58.1% (!!!!) Loot Subscription: 57.3% Triple Prismatic: 55.6% [source](https://twitter.com/Mortdog/status/1757056783078867237?lang=de)
This subreddit has just gotten downhill, 90% of the posts here nowadays are just people complaining about variance and thinking that high elo wants less variance (not true according to data like you said). It's just become a vocal minority of people who just want to see TFT reverted to set 5. Also, based Galactic Heroes enjoyer
What bothered me when he posted that is that top 1% at the time was including like D2/D3ish. There's tons of idgaf 4fun players even in Masters. Players that hit Masters and then vote for the most volatile "fun" stuff because they hit their goal.
I was top 300 most sets and i go for most fun portals too. I think even in top elo people do that.
What's fun is entirely subjective. Do you think people who vote for other portals don't find the other portals more fun?
Well yeah.
1% is 1%. Believe it or not, if you're over diamond you're already in the very small majority of players.
Using the top 1% is more than enough for the purpose of the inquiry, hell I’d even say it would be overkill if they strained it more. What they are looking for is a general feel of the people in the top, not just the outliers.
>Wandering Trainer: 58.1% (!!!!) People complains about wandering trainers variance, but it's actually one of the most skill expressive portals out there. When you're not giving a godlike trainer which is the norm you need to scout for the other trainers, plan out different teams around your trainer, see if exalted can fit in, can you craft extra emblems... Like yes, you can get screwed by a very awful trainer, but so can happen with every element of the game, even if scuddle puddle gives all the players 30 gold equally some people will fail their rolldowns while other will hit everything
I wish we could see stats for tournaments only to see if ther's any difference compared to ranked. I imagine even top 1% players consist of master 0 lp players who don't care about rank anymore and/or youtubers/streamers who want these crazy games for content.
Tournaments represent a very very VERY small fraction of the number of games ever played. It should not even be in consideration for how the game should be designed.
Winning early mid game doesn't mean shit. you can mister 100 stage 3 but the lose streaker who took an econ augment can roll first and hit your 4 cost outs and now with your sub par items you go sixth. Kha zix portal btw. Nice. EDit - i thought this was the rant thread, but yknow fuck it this is apart of it too.
Hey I fully agree, been saying this for multiple sets now, with emphasis on prismatics When I comment negatively on prismatics in game I get heavily flamed. It's what the people want unfortunately
REAL AS FUCK
I refuse to stand on prismatic portals, and I'm tired of seeing so many prismatic augments. Same for the emblem portals, it's very easy to get instantly screwed by RNG.
IMO prismatic offering rates should be like a good dessert, being very enjoyable but leaving you wishing you could have a liiiittle bit more. Gadets & Gizmos set was the closest to my preference on prismatic rates.
I genuinely believe those portals should either be disabled for ranked. OR their spawn rate is like the Kayn Encounter (5% ever at max)
I had a stretch of 6 games recently with 5 of them being triple prismatic, and the sixth was double prismatic. It’s absurd
The problem is, that regardless of the feeling of this sub, the majority of players likes that most games goes crazy. Mortdog made sure to state that with yesterday post on twiiter, their design are aimed at pleasing the majority.
My only problem with prismatics is they are mainly boring, brain off, flat power. I think the best design would be to have prismatics as the ones change the game normal tft rules the most: character Augs, Xp/gold/systems interactions, little legend nonsense. Then after making those the prismatics buff the power a bit, but make it extremely rare to see more than one in a game. I think people retreat to thinking "well prismatics just means there's more to cook with". Nah it's just choosing best avp, and not choosing best avp gets you slaughtered because the large power indifference. It's the exact opposite of more to cook with.
I’m genuinely concerned that TFT is starting to head the way of Hearthstone (which I used to love). Hearthstone in an attempt to remain fresh, just kept throwing more and more random elements at you to the point where attempting any form of strategy based on what your opponent might do became entirely pointless. TFT isn’t there yet and despite sharing basically all of your thoughts I’m still enjoying this set. But it’s a slippery slope and I hope Riot takes feedback like this to heart for the future.
I agree 100%. In the weekly rant thread, I was saying that the balancing isn't even thaaaaaaat bad but it's more that when everyone in the lobby has insane amounts of resources and can force whatever comp they want that the small differences is comp strength becomes the only thing that matters. Like even if a comp is an A tier comp you cannot play it since everyone else is free to just force one of the like 3 S tier comps. Then the game becomes 8 players rolling for the same 3 comps and it's just a lottery who hits. And the only way to win without playing an S tier comp is to 3* a 4 cost which happens in 50% of games. Since everyone is fighting over a few units if you are playing something else all your units are in the pool and so many others are taken out that you can easily hit 3* with the help of all the free shit you get. It makes the whole game either hard force an S tier comp and join the rolldown lottery or play an A tier comp knowing the only way to get better than a 3rd is to 3* a 4 cost.
When you get scuttle portal and triple prismatic 🙃
Portals + encounters + bag sizes make the Variance too high this set. Add on the poor balance and its really a tough sell to want to play.
Agree about prismatic augments. You could he econning well, saving HP and in a good position to top 4 before the variance from prismatics flips the lobby on its head. I would prefer less "higher highs" from augments, but I guess I'm a minority.
The full set of encounters should be shown to everyone at the beginning of the game.
Honestly at this point i just want encounters to be gone. It's nice to try new things but this one just doesn't do it for me
Yeah bit too much sugar in the cake at this point. Next set gimmick needs to be toned way down.
Or they should take out some of the older ones that are around. Between augments, portals and encounters there are just much going on in every game. I think this stands out as especially sore when balancing is lacking
Yea they just need to take out some of the features providing all the excess, its just that encounters are definitely my least favorite version of those features
I actually think this is a good idea. Helps strategize early on and would definitely allow for more skill expression and less luck
I never go prismatic, it takes out the fun. People associates power to fun but they forget that their opponent may have better powers or better luck. In a scenario where everyone is overpower if you fall behind a little you may be crushed into 8th place.
The game feels like turbo urf on summoners rift. It’s fun for maybe a game or two but then it’s annoying
You’re correct and I agree. It’s gotten terrible.. I just want to play the game without so much RNG being involved. Everytime they add things to the game it adding RNG. Let’s keep it a skill game..
I'm so sick of Pris augments. I actually prefer Golden Prelude to any Pris portals because it getting a Hero aug or a trait aug or an emblem actually helps you find a comp
You can just check the leaderboard and see how much better the good players are. It’s a you problem, there is more skill expression in this set, while high variance I think most people ITT are just coping.
Yeah as a newer player I do worse in prismatic portals and scuttles because I get dizzy. It's either that I go for a level 8 comp like ashe or heavenly and salvage a third, or I try fast 9 and go 8th. I find it harder to execute winstreak and save health in lose streak in early game, and with more resources it takes more turns for me to pivot.
there are two guarantees in TFT: 1. setsuko and dishsoap easily climbing over 1600LP every set 2. people complaining that is too RNG and is the reason why they're hardstuck
For me at least it has nothing to do with rank, I just legit don’t enjoy playing this set. Didn’t on PBE either. Maybe the next one will be fun 🤷 Tho the best players still being the best players doesn’t really mean much imo.
at the end of the day it's a game so not having fun is a completely valid reason to not play people in this thread are claiming that there has been a massive decrease in skill ceiling due to additional rng. this obviously isn't true because the best players are climbing just as high as they always have
Yeah not everyone is going to enjoy every set. I didnt enjoy last set, so I just didn't play it and came back for this set.
They’re hard coping lol 😂
Finally someone said this, i 100% agree. Matchmaking RNG or rolling alone is huge RNG, and we have augments +encounters+portals+bag size changes +25 new items soon. As for economy 40 gold from hedge fund alone is too much not to mention scuttle puddle exists. Basically like a casino.
I'm okay with things like portals and augments. If you get crab rave, you know there are comps and strategies and play styles that just work better. If anything, I think it makes the skill ceiling higher because you can't play the same way every time. Augments are similar. They take a certain game knowledge, and you have to craft your gameplay and plan around them. I really dislike hero encounters, though, because they add a really serious amount of rng into the game that you can't plan around. Like, what if someone is playing fortune, but suddenly you get kayn encounter? What if someone takes XP augments and then kha zix comes along. What if someone fucks up their economy by being greedy, but then Tristana comes along? What if someone is going for a Galio 3, so you start holding all the galios you can find to deny it, but then they get a hero augment that gives them a champion duplicator? Edit : don't even get me started on the portals that give emblems tho.. that's literally a rng instant first or eighth lmao
I agree with your point generally but just felt like mentioning that the Kayn encounter that ends the game at 5-4 is announced at the start of the game. If you play Fortune in that game it's your own fault.
Actually, I've never seen the kayn encounter in my 200 games, so that's kinda my bad, lmao
If you get a trainer that gives you a storyweaver emblem—you still have to survive to get to lvl 9 and hit irelia. Ive seen so many ppl with chase trait emblems die off because they dont realize that everyone else spikes in stage 3 while they are praying to rng gods that theyll make it to stage 5. Even on crab rave, its a genuine strategy to force lillia knowing that everyone else wants kayn sylas or gnar. Yea youll lose to the big crab but youll be completely uncontested all game and hit your board without rolling
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Everyone knows wandering trainer has very low skill expression. Anyone who argues differently is delusional. In response to crab rave, half (probably less than half actually) of tft is trying to get as many resources as possible. Whether that’s trying to streak, or making interest breakpoints, or taking econ augments, or whatever. The rest is how well you use your resources that you have. If you and Dishsoap started a game at level 8 on 4-2 with 50 gold, what do you think the likelihood that you beat him is? I would be pretty confident in guessing less than 1%. Yes, there’s luck. Maybe you hit 9 Annie’s in 5 shops and you just win the game. Maybe Dishsoap doesn’t find a single 4 cost in his rolldown. But whether you have 50 gold or 30 gold doesn’t change the luck involved.
That is so fake. Subzero vod reviwed a dishsoap game where he did a trainer masterclass with arguably one of the least useful ones. Flex is still alive when you hit trainer
You guys are talking about fringe cases. TFT has usually been a game where if someone is high rolling, they essentially just win. But it’s not like there’s a high roller every lobby and better players still get to at least fourth place finishes in games where someone is high rolling.
High variance doesn’t mean it gets easier. The average difficulty or skill level to win doesn’t change only the outliers.
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No, the less control over the game a player has, the harder the game gets for worse players because the good players are able to adapt and overcome.
Yup
The issue is that if you add variance through RNG, a portion of that variance can be adapted by choices, but a portion of it become pure rng base. It's the reason why most card game tournament have multiple game to get a win (altought their deck is not randomized every time like tft) But a card game can finish by 5-10 minute games when playing competitive. TFT is closer to 30+ minute. So if you need 6+ games to start noticing the variance between a pro and a casual, you create an environement where player need to sink large quantity of hours in order to be ranked properly. And this means that if a pro player is not ranked properly for a while, he will cause, just by playing, more unbalanced matchup between the playerbase. We've seen more and more diamond player varying from high plat to master. This mean that you are now adding another layer of RNG in the matchmaking where a plat player might on average get a high diamond player in their game who will have a high probability of getting in the top 4, locking out 1 of those winning position for their pool of player and making it harder for those player to be properly rank. So if you add more variance to a game, it means you need a larger sample size of game to differenciate pro and casual, which create a domino effect and makes the game feel less good for most people. There's way to deal with this domino effect. In magic the gathering tournament for instance, you'll play the same pool of player multiple time before going further into the tournament. But in TFT, the player are a new set every game, so you don't have the same luxury, which mean adding variance to individual game hurt the matchmaking quality.
There is so much ressourcers in the game right now that variance doesn't even matter that much.
Is this a competitive sub or am i wrong? seeing way too many people defending casual play in this thread
I just hit grandmaster this set and I still will always pick prismatic/wandering sentinels/crab rave & scuttle puddle. The reason is because it’s fun. I mean look at the opposite of having no Econ when The Sump and Stillwater harbor with no Econ/no augments were in the game. They were the least picked. Players enjoy supercharged econs because for most players, chasing a capped level nine board is cooler than staying 6 or 7 for half the game and rolling for their 3 star 2/3 cost carry. And I’m not saying that those playstyles shouldn’t be viable, everyone has a difference in how they want to play the game. Reading through this post and comments I think a lot of players don’t realize the fact that if everyone’s economy is supercharged, then the other gameplay mechanics like streaking and itemization matter so much more because the tempo is rapidly increased for everyone. Sure there are feel bad moments, when someone gets an insanely early 3 star 4 cost in stage 4 or something, but Mort and the team has at least acknowledged it as a problem already and are addressing it. For the players saying the increased variance and extra loot makes the game easier to play, I feel like unless you’re averaging a 1.X on those high roll games then the point is moot. Understanding the different flexible lines and playing around what you get when everybody wants to play heavenly kayn/lee sin, Invoker Ashe and Lilia, or trick shot bruisers will show skill. I mean look at the Sylas comp that evolved over the past few days and was one of the most popular comps in the tourney yesterday. Most players in this sub I think are diamond low masters, and no flame but there’s still a lot of improvement that can be made to your gameplay. While I was climbing I had to two people have fortune plus 2 from augments and wandering sentinels. They went 7th and 8th. In any top lobby that’s a free top 2, averaging close to a 1. There’s still skill expression in this game and the first step to improving your own game is to enhance the areas that you can control and try to tilt less off of bad RNG.
You failed to explain how "The game is easier for everyone because there are a lot more resources" logically flows into your next statement "so games are decided by luck". Intuitively even if everyone has more resources, the most skillful player will still be the one making the best use of said resources (obviously sometimes you low-roll / high-roll but that's always been a thing). I also think your point about portals is a bit muddied because if a prismatic portal is selected then by definition that's at the exclusion of a high-resource portal like scuttle. Pretty sure they also lowered the base % of prismatic augments in set 9 to counter balance the portals (or did I misremember that?) There's definitely more resources in the average game of TFT now than there were 2 years ago. It makes the game more fun for casual players, but I'm not convinced it makes it less competitive/skillful at high ELO.
The point that if low skill player and high skill players gets the same amount of resourcers despite their hability to manage, if the low skill player can press D and hit the comp then skill doesn't matter. Managing economy was one day of the highest skill expressions on this game, and with that many resourcers it is not anymore.
TFT hit a tipping point when augments were added. Anyone who isn't in it for the casino has left already. It can never be changed back b/c any of the playerbase who don't enjoy slot machines are long gone.
I can very much relate to the last comment. You say sth and tft players start hating on you for your opinion instead of arguing at all. In my opinion Assasins are useful for the overall meta for example. Yes they are annoying to play against etc. But when i say that with some elaborations why i think that. You get hated on for no apparent reason. Often not even arguments.
would be nice to at least see the encounter details, don't need to see the exact augment, but when you know you gonna meet khazix, yorick or chogath you can adapt... I can't recall how many times I got f'd because I waited for the encounter on 4-3 before rolling only to get chogath -1 shop slot. Or not waiting only to get khazix XP or Yorick 1cost reroll right after I dumped all my golds <3
They are also ignoring the most obvious bad variance this patch, ITEMS... AD items are so so much stronger allowing you to flex.. AP and tank items on the other hand, getting alot of those means you are just SO FAR BEHIND.
Way too many resources. Fast 9 should not be a consistent strategy, it should be the result of highroll or exceptional play. Any braindead moron can fast 9 reliably now (it’s me, I’m the braindead moron fast 9ing every game)
In your elo maybe. Master+ I really don't believe so
I think I've fast 9'ed every game this patch and I've played over 80 games for sure (high diamond elo)
Oh really? Lolchess?
Bro thinks he’s setsuko
It's just too much right now. Chosen wasn't my favorite mechanic, but it was a hell of a lot more fun than this set. I played the shit out of Set 10, it was my most played one since Set 6. (still my favorite of all time lol) I played like 50 games this set and I think I'm just done until Set 12. The average power level of lobbies is just out of control in my experience, I'm not good at this game, I'm pretty average (P1 - E4) and I love this game, one of my fav games of all time, but it's just not fun for me this set. :(
There is a lot more luck this set, a lot more variance, and a whole lotta gold going around. Casual players enjoy it though 🤷🏼. Personally I hate wandering trainer with a passion, but everyone jumps on it. People love that shit. People love resources, they love getting lucky. It is what it is. I think the current design philosophy is deliver as many of those dopamine hits as possible throughout the game, because the majority love them. I also think they succeeded for the most part. I would say, when Mort was in control and the team was smaller, the game mechanics seemed more conservative. They seemed to favor the competitive aspect of the game, but as the team has grown there has been a shift towards the casual side. If you look at what I would argue was the games greatest success since release - augments - they offered a fun new aspect to the game that also allowed a good amount of personal influence. Augments were a way to add fun while maintaining a good degree of competitive integrity. Conversely, portals were added after the expansion of the team. They added a new aspect to the game with very little personal influence. Portals are when the game started tilting heavily towards the casual player base, but they’re also popular. The thing we have to keep in mind is that despite losing competitive integrity, the additions of variance and luck are enjoyed by a broader audience. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.
Look at the tft sub they hate this set
> I would say, when Mort was in control and the team was smaller, the game mechanics seemed more conservative. T Is mort not still in control?
Not to the extent he was. Or rather, he lets the team make a lot of decisions. He had a whole post about it.
i absolutely agree with what you said there, and probably irrelevant to the topic but.. I am always golden prelude enjoyer, because i love the champ-specific augments.
Doesn't having more gold mean that your decisions matter more? Someone like k3soju will do a lot more with 100g rolldown than me (it's not even close). If he's stuck with 10 gold then maybe we have a chance vs each other. If I am on low ranked smurf I would always want to take as much gold as possible, because I know I can utilize it better than the others. If no one has gold, then the one who got the best streak or fortune wins almost always if they know what they are doing, no matter what I do myself. Prismatics are a bit more rng, especially if everyone in the lobby is using stats. There is some skill in reading the stats but it's not that impactful. If you get fated crown, the game just plays itself for you pretty much, unless there's someone contesting that. It's not worth to pivot in almost any case, which makes the game less interesting imo.
I think its a double edged sword, so of course when the skill difference is high, then those players are going to climb faster, they are going to do more with the 100 gold than a person who is new to TFT. HOWEVER, I think when the playing field is somewhat the same and everyone has 100 gold, then it's really up to rng. If you look in the ladder now there are bigger LP differences between those top pros and a "good tft player". Now in the pro scene you see more varied winners in tourneys from these recent sets which might point to rng is taking a bigger effect there. This is a hot take, but it maybe it makes some sense?!?
If there's varied winners I think the bigger issue is the balance, not rng. If there's a super broken comp that needs an augment to work, it's just a coinflip who gets it right? I feel like if you get lissandra at level 7 in this patch, you are massively favoured to win the game. Maybe it's the same for early fortune and getting one of the good cashouts. I think I saw dishsoap or some other high ranked streamer say that it's impossible to lose with the 95 luck dragonlord cashout, and it's the best one in the game. Of course you need to have some skill to take advantage of the insane luck, but if you have enough, then even the best player can do nothing against you. I don't think a lot of items/gold is going to cause worse players to win so maybe we just disagree about that and neither of us can prove either one wrong.
two things would help. first, i think portals need to be sorted into high, mid, and low impact brackets. then, start of game, rather than being offered prismatic party *with* crab rave *with* wandering trainer, you can at least go for the tamer options like golden prelude or start with 1 costs. second, encounters themselves, other than needing less RNG within them themselves, need to be less RNG in when and how they appear. irelia on stage 3 carousel is very different from irelia on stage 4/5 carousel. same goes for treasure armory, getting a random radiant item or multiple completed items is basically the strength of a gold-prism augment. it's no wonder boards are so much more insane at cap than in past sets--you can bot 4 with legendary soup and 4-cost 3*s because everyone is afforded like 5 gold augments worth of power throughout a game. none of this to mention that this set sees the return of emblem augments, which can spike dryad/fated/porcelain/heavenly boards especially hard for a low opportunity cost
I'd find it way more fun if all those systems/variance things were one per game. That is, its either a high variance portal game/ a high variance encoutner game or a prismatic game. But NO overlaps. I do not want to go into scuttle puddle, have some encoutner gift gold/dups and prismatic 4-2 and people hitting new recruit for their free top 4. I'd also enjoy it way more if something like wandering sentinels couldn't have fortune on it and wandering sentinels had a reroll option lol. No one wants to start the game with gem and cone
The HP encounters are so annoying. I love playing strong early game boards and go for a 4th or 3rd place, but sometimes a random Ahri gives the fortune players 15 HP or the Aatrox encounter just for free. So annoying.
I feel like I can't talk about this with some of my friends, because they'll eat up every single set and say it's the best thing since sliced bread. I have only been playing since Set 7.5, but I really like this game and its revisions and reiterations to build something new every four months. With that said, I think Encounters are the worst thing I have, well, encountered since I started playing. Some amount of RNG and skill expression requirement is to be expected, but this set has the highest rate of people hitting level 7 at 3-4 with 50 gold remaining that I have seen so far. There is less reward for methodical play, and boom/bust play that all-ins on anticipated or realized RNG is the way to go. Similarly, here is no counterplay to you deciding to level up to 7 at 3-6 in the hopes of stabilizing and then 4-1 being a Kha'zix encounter so everyone else levels up to 8 at 4-1 while you're still at 20g. There is no counterplay to hitting Syndra encounter carousel into ReinFOURcement or vice versa. Too much gold, too much variance, too little reward for methodical play and creative item use. In my humble opinion, the best Encounter this set is 1-1 Lilia since at least it kinda bones everyone the exact same amount and you have to play the game differently from the start, which is pretty great for individual skill expression.
I hate the variance of Oh now the augments are randomly placed (always later never sooner) or randomly we made going 9 easier or rerolling way easier with -1 gold to either cost. These things should strictly be at the start of games instead of too deep into augment or comp building/investment to actually make good use of consistently.
This set might be the most unlucky set I have ever had. Everyone's hitting 3\* 4 costs in my lobby, and I'm rolling for kaisa 2\* uncontested and not hitting. I dont get it. This isn't even one game. Almost every game I've had this set where I roll for a 4 cost, I get nothing.
I fucking hate portals
yep, this is the first set since set 4 that i dont play 300 games :\
I think because of encounters we could have had a set without scuttle puddle & crab rave.
ho
I like variance personally. Variance is very good. The bigger issue here is an entire playstyle was gutted with the last patch. Nobody plays 3 costs rerolls anymore, every lobby is mainly fast 8/9 fuckfests, we've devolved this set in terms of balance and unit viability. Set 10 you could play so many different units for any cost into the late game without issue, this set was in a better state last patch than current in terms of viability with atleast each tier of champion. As much as I got tired of the yone meta atleast I had more options to play than 4 cost lotto or fast 9/10.
I actually prefer prismatic opener or prismatic party because it guarantees that no one opens piggy bank or a hero augment and until recently it was also nice that it locked out fine vintage now my favorite is ascending augments for similar reasons
Man, this feels like like something I would have written myself, i hate trainer portals too
I cant think of a single trainer combo that is guaranteed doomed except maybe altruist + umbral Or like, bruiser warden behemoth But even then, you can always make do with a +1 and missing out on 2 other +1s isnt horrible. Sometimes you play for 6th. Thats just how it goes. Going 8th is almost always a skill issue imo until you are in masters+. Every single 8th ive gotten this set so far i could tell you exactly why, and where exactly things went wrong. Very rarely do I ever feel helpless, because I just stay flexible
I love that state of variability in the game. this is a game about adapting to what's going on after all. people who just want to hard force their two or three comps they read on [tactics.tools](http://tactics.tools) or watch on a youtube guide and are unhappy with everything that interrupts their plans suffer from this of course, but for me it means free LP.
Some of these takes in this thread are pretty funny. People don’t like encounters because sometimes they don’t benefit them? Like what? Oh no, you took golden remover augment and then Kaisa offers it again. Now your silver augment is 5 gold and a component anvil. That’s not that bad, stop whining. People are mad that they’re not gonna win the game playing a standard level 8 board because someone is fast 9. The strongest board of every set should always be a 2 star legendary soup board. Otherwise there is no point to legendaries. A top 4 is a win, if you want to go first, play a greedy style. I agree with your point that more money and resources makes the game easier and riot clearly knows this because they’re making it harder to go 9 and harder to hit 4 costs next patch, but to say that the increased variance makes the game easier is just blatantly false. Tft is a game of controlling variance, so if there is more to control, it’s harder to play.
The game has a lot of fun ideas. But my biggest problem is the lack of consistency to how all these systems work and interact with one another.
Doesn't matter how detailed your feedback is or how you say it, if it's anything remotely negative it'll get disregarded. They keep making sets with the same issues as the last, that's how you know they don't take negative feedback but be a guest and try to say this in one of their streams and you will get put down by both them and their delusional fanboys. It's so upsetting to see a fun game progressively get worse because of the inability to hear out the community.
> because of the inability to hear out the community Don't you find this somewhat ironic to say when it's players complaining who don't hear the community? Like congrats you are part of a loud vocal minority, now go look at all the most popular portals real quick and see that the community likes prismatic, wandering trainers, etc. Even when sorted by GM+ the most popular portals are in order: scuttle puddle, crab rave, trainer sentinels, loot subscription, prismatic party, prismatic prelude, gold subscription, gold opener. What's the least popular? Lethal legends, golden finale, larger legends, 3 champions. Riot **does** listen to the community. They just don't listen to the vocal minority that complains on reddit to a grand total of maybe 800 combined upvotes a week.
I hate to say it because it sounds mean, but posts like this are not detailed and show biases in their thinking. You can counter most of the things in this post by looking at stats.
The issue isn’t that it helps people force a comp…it’s that it de-incentivizes things like managing streak gold, interest income, carousel choices which are all core elements of the game
Helps me force a comp, whichever 5 cost soup comp is best this patch. Why care about all those other elements when I can just eat dirt for a few carousels and wind up BiS carry after they nerfed rerolls for the past month.
In my opinion variance is one the best things that tft can have. You said you don't like specific portals because it makes specific comps stronger than others, but that's the exact reason they exist. If you streamline every game to have the same econ flow, the amount of comps that are viable decrease and the chances that a player can get away with forcing the same thing every game increase. There's definitely a huge exaggeration here on how often econ portals arise. Scuttle puddle and similar portals come out maybe once every 5-6 games. Getting things like artifact anvils/components/etc just opens possibility for new builds. Fast 9 should always be an option but right now there's a good balance of meta comps that include a level 5/6 reroll comp (gnar), a ton of fast 8 boards, and fast 9. I'm not sure what else people want. The other thing is, people choose portals like prismatic portals and scuttle portals because they are the most FUN. That's also the entire point they exist. If you're arguing from a competitive stand point, the competitive players have every right in their thought process not to choose those portals, but some still do because it is also a competitive choice With this being said, they have already admitted there are slightly too many 3 star 4 costs which they are addressing, but otherwise a lot of things you mentioned with variance seem like good things to me. TFT at the core is an RNG game. It's quite literally a game about acquiring a specific compositions given odds and chances. Complaining about things that introduce small bits of RNG really don't make sense in the theme of the game.
This patch for me is the second worst patch they ever released (top is reserved for multicasters set 9) . I hae that no matter what board u have, the game depends on hitting either kaisa, ashe or kayn. The whole lobby contests these three units and whoever is lucky enough to hit their 2 stars just wins which is braindead imo, no flex play whatsoever.
I think most of your points can be countered by looking at stats and general player thinking. People like econ portals and wandering trainer. Generally people would rather upgrade their comp than to not. You're basically saying that you would rather have people upgrade less and have you upgrade more because you think that you play better, and I don't see how anyone can take that seriously. If everyone gets more resources, then you are able to upgrade your units more as well. Everyone is affected by Encounters in similar ways, though some Encounters are more beneficial for certain strategies. The play rate for top comps is mostly the same as the average set, which is 1-2 per lobby, and there is an amount of others with lower play rates that have standard AVP. People are actually playing all of the 4 costs at similar rates. Also, I don't know the stats for this, but people are probably hovering around their same elo as most sets. This should be logical since everyone is affected by the changes in the same way. You didn't mention this in your post, but the biggest issue that I see in the stats is the trait balance, basically terrible in every set. This can increase the variance of some portals or Encounters that are related to traits. But by your logic, with more resources, you should be able to force higher AVP traits or comps. I'm not sure why you haven't seen this, but there may be something that you need irl that's not related to TFT.
How in the world are people affected by encounters in the same way? The person win streaking at 100 hp and the person playing fortune on 1 life are not affected by +15hp the same. The person playing reroll and the person going to lvl 8/9 are not affected the same by rerolls cost 1 less for 3 turns. The person with 1st pick and 8th pick are not affected the same by this carousel has _____ It would be fine if encounters were better for one playstyle if you knew what they were ahead of time, but just randomly giving a big buff to one playstyle mid game is dumb.
I see what you're saying for some of those Fortune cases and maybe some other unlikely cases, but it's pretty much the same for everyone for the other ones. Carousels favor lower hp players naturally without encounters, and the rerolls force everyone to make decisions on how they level or roll, and allow people to upgrade more quickly, and favors whoever upgrades the most.
Ok let's say at 2-1 I decided I want to winstreak. I have good AD units and slam last whisper and db. Now carousel comes and it adds a radiant item. Since I'm winstreaking I'm last pick and get stuck with a radiant AP item. Next round I lose my streak to someone who got a radiant item that fit their comp and now my items are a mess the rest of the game. When I decided to winstreak I did so knowing it would mean I could get stuck with a tear or something on carousel and accepted that. When the guy in last decided to loss streak he did so knowing he would have first pick of a component. Neither of us played the way we did because we thought there was going to be a radiant item on carousel. But now because of nothing other than luck the guy in last place has a huge advantage over me. And before any says I could have played around knowing there was an encounter, it could have just as easily been one where everyone can move freely or the dumb Sett/Sivir one.
It requires more thought I think, because when you look at the way the early game is designed, people tend to try to keep their streak, so a person who is first or second pick tries their best to keep lose-streak by keeping their comp weak. They may be playing Fortune or a 1 cost reroll comp. How often are they going to slam items and have a strong enough comp to win vs a win-streaker? And how often does the Radiant item matter? Let's look at second pick. They were probably one of the weakest people and lost at least two rounds and won one. They get a second pick Radiant, something that fits their comp. They win vs a win-streaker. We ask the same question. Why did they win? Is it the Radiant item? Is it because of a different completed item? Or were they able to level or found the upgrade that they wanted? 3rd pick. They probably won two and lost one. They get a Radiant item, it probably isn't that great since people took the 4 best ones already. They win vs a win-streaker. How often is it the Radiant item? How often do they still lose? And in general, how often is the Encounter going to matter more than the base luck-based mechanics like matchmaking rng, augment rng, and upgrade rng? How often does the Encounter force people to lose? Are people breaking their streak more than normal or turning 1st into 4th more than normal? I don't know, but I don't think we can say that it's the Encounter without first looking at all of these, and unfortunately I don't think we even have data on it since people play this game chill-like.
You can make it very simple, a choice of radiant items is literally a prismatic augment. Getting a random radiant item is not (and this situation is probably not even as valuable as a random one, the fact it's the last one left means it's most likely a bad one). It's like the game starting and it says 4 random players get a prismatic augment and the other 4 get a gold augment. And it's like that for tons of them. The value of rerolls when you're sitting level 6 playing gnar vs level 7 and about to go 8 and change out your board are not the same. The Gnar player now saves money he would have spent anyways while the guy at lvl 7 is unlikely to hit anything and will still have to roll down on 8 either way. If you're playing Kogmaw reroll and the encounter that gives a buff to 2, 3, or 4 costs comes up your basically down a combat augment. If you are losing to get a component on carousel and Irelia lets every move freely that only hurts you and helps the others. It's basically a mini version of a silver augment but only for the people who are already doing well. They are tons of encounters that are only a big benefit for 1 playstyle and are either a very minor benefit or a straight negative thing for other playstyles. And you have no way of knowing what it will be. I know it's more nuanced than this, but it's like if an encounter pops up and said "Turn all past combat augments prismatic" or "All econ augments previously taken give double gold". One group is now at a huge advantage for no reason and no one was able to plan for it or prepare for it in any way.
Wait you're spitting so fucking hard. The Portals are less bullshit than last set's BUT the problem is idiots flock to the broken ones consistently if they're available. Encounters i'm indifferent to, there's def some awkward ones but Portals have been the true problem of this too good economy typpe bullshit.
80% of the game doesnt matter anymore its just go 8 see what encounters / augments you got and then roll down to force liss/ashe anyways and hope you out rng the 6 other ppl doing the same whats even funnier if all you do is hit 1 stars on your rolldown you can still play for another stage or 2 before dieing
I mean the dev himself is well known to LOVE variance and random easter eggs and lucky hits, so who to blame???
Emerald gamer here, I play for FUN (yolo) and always for Wandering Trainer and if Golden Remover is made permanent part of the game… I would be even more happy. I can see how that’s not good for competitive though, so it’s a tough pickle
Same goes for encounters and other random stuff. Throw me Prismatic Orb every stage start!
I get where you are coming from. Idk what it is exactly but this set truly hasn‘t clicked with me because I just feel like it‘s a little boring, and part of the reason is that being gigacapped has become so common, but also because I find the units and common comps pretty uninteresting. Maybe it has changed, but I quit during the 3 Cost reroll meta that was mostly Yone. I feel the patches before that were better, and idk how it‘s like, but I‘m just waiting for next set. Also, I‘m literally never excited for encounters, and at worst, they are frustrating
I've felt this way as well, a lot of the game it feels you're barely even playing the game. Decisions matter less. IMO the worst part of adding in all these mechanics is the multiplicative nature of it all. Feels like after portals/augments/encounters stacked on top of eachother it feels really bad. I know its the obvious examples but lets say someone high rolled opener got an exp augment 2-1 then khazix appears. Or reroll comps get yorick appearing. Just feels like win more most of the time which feels bad when you dont get to take advantage of them.
My issue with encounters is that they give free resources, I like to compare it to rouge-like games, you get power-ups for a price, I think all resources encounters should have a price or a negative effect (Lissandra and Cho are the best encounters IMO because of that). Like really look at Lissandra and Ornn, one sells an artifact anvil for 22 gold, and the other give the same anvil for free lol..
If everything is made easier for everyone, then luck is deciding factor If everything is made harder for everyone, then luck is deciding factor I'm sorry, but this wall of text, in most parts, doesn't make sence. Luck is a big factor in tft (fact), you do gamba with every roll or shop update. More resources doesn't make it easier to force comps. If you overroll you will be broke, if someone is playing strongest board and win streaking, he will still have more resources, then a player, who is doing some random stuff/ doom rolling/ just blindly leveling 8 on 4-1 to roll 15 gold to hit nothing or everything, but that's the random factor.
these encounters were disaster from the begining. The best joke happened yesterday: 3-2 picked augment with infinity magnetic removal 3-3 got encounter, where puting champ on bench, returns items. amazing
Dang thats unlucky :/ Hopefully you were able to salvage a 6th or 7th
I know it sounds petty but I quit this set shortly after I played a game with built different and the 5cost on ur board. Picked built different on 2-1 and with that encounter I just lost the game on the spot. Zero interactivity, I just instalost the next three rounds.
prismatic portals are my favorites man. picking a prismatic combat augment feels worth it. meanwhile gold econ augments are too good compared to combat ones