Triple Triad Thread

[Stef]

196 people would need to be involved. 14 players would need to win against 14 others and then each throw their last game against you. Even then you have a chance to lose against someone outside of those 14, especially if any of the ones you play against have wins against NPCs. The coordination required to rig this would be far beyond what anyone could conceivably want to try, especially given the risk that someone who doesn't even attempt to exploit the system can still beat you if they just play against the highest ranked players in the tournament at any given time.

[Seravi Edalborez]

You don't have to rig it that concretely. I would think literally half that much effort would suffice for rigging.

[Stef]

Well, you get points based on the current tournament rank of your opponent. So you get the most points for playing against people who are already ranked highly in the tournament standings. This has a cascading effect that discourages people from playing against anyone who hasn't already racked up enough points. In other words, the worst thing you can do is play against NPCs or players that have just entered the tournament. This means that people should try to space out their tournament games throughout the week. Those who attempt to do all 15 at once will have a score that hovers around 1500 while the ones that wait until later in the week will get much higher scores if they play against the right people.

So someone who seeks out high-ranked opponents and wins 15 games against them will get the most points. But in order for those opponents to have ranked highly in the first place they themselves must have done the same. It all comes down to your ability to find the currently highest ranking opponents which discourages exploitation because rigging it becomes inherently self-defeating.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Those who attempt to do all 15 at once will have a score that hovers around 1500 while the ones that wait until later in the week will get much higher scores if they play against the right people.

How much is "much higher" though?

[Stef]

That remains to be seen, but there are reports of people that have 1700+ points already before they've even completed their 15 matches. I think this first tournament will be pretty random as people try to figure out what strategy works best. Next tournament we'll start seeing a clear hierarchy and people being more picky about who they play against.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Depends though how much "higher deck level" matters vs "number of wins". Because I can imagine if "wins" is significant enough, you could just use alts. I have 7 with gold saucer access and it wouldn't be a problem to have them all throw games to someone if it's a significant thing, and then beat that person a few times. I can't imagine it tracks both (number of wins -of a certain ranked opponent-) at the same time.

But yeah, we'll see as the week goes on I suppose. How are people who managed to get 60 cards feeling about the tournament? I only got up to 55

[Stef]

On reddit there are a few numbers we can go by at the moment. There's one person who says they got 257 points after 2 matches. This means 128 and 129 per match. Another person said he got 86 points for a win.

For the sake of argument, lets say that the amount of points you get for a win can fluctuate between 50 and 150 (likely a soft floor/cap given the possible combinations of players and their current tournament rank). This means that if one of your alts wins 14 matches against someone else who has 0 wins so far that alt will get about 700 points. If a real player wins 14 matches against other players that have a balance of wins and losses then that player might rack up 1400 points. Playing against the real player now becomes much more worthwhile. One match against the 1400 point player will likely grant me over 100 points as opposed to something under 100 points for playing against the alt.

What this in effect means is that you're going to have to carefully choose your matches in order to maximize the points you get for a win. But because everyone else is doing the same you might have a difficult time finding people willing to take the risk of playing against you. Your best bet is to use the tournament rankings to find opponents and play against people that are of a similar rank to yourself. Alts will never be able to keep up in this system if all they are used for is deliberately losing games.

[BerenTebogo]

Beating King 15x yields more points than most of these scenarios.

We have 7 days. I'm sitting on my matches for a few days to see what develops.

Edit: and with only 3 prizes and the rules currently as they are it really doesn't seem worth trying to get top. Just get as many points as possible for MGP.

If they stand strong on the only 3 rewards that just means they're going to release them elsewhere later, let's be honest.

[Seravi Edalborez]

I meant more to the effect of (if it matters): having your alts throw a game to someone(s), then have that person throw some games to you. If win quantity matters but win quality does not, it would be a minor way to game the system. Not as good as the cherrypicking obviously.

Really poor example but

Alt A is beaten by Alpha 10 times.
I beat Alpha 5 times.
Alt B is beaten by Beta 10 times.
I beat Beta 5 times.
etc, make dividends however you like

However if it's based on how many points that person has and NOT just explicitly wins then disregard completely.

[Kirbyprime]

Yeah, I'm just stalling for a while until info becomes clearer. If SE makes it so that there's no other way of getting lightning card, I'm going to be pissed off big time.

[Bigsyke]

And so it begins

[Kirbyprime]

Depends on his score, if it's 100+ I'd pay.

[Kaslo]

So any idea what roulette matches are?

[Seravi Edalborez]

So any idea what roulette matches are?

PvP only. You set a rule slot as Roulette and it will pop a random rule in the actual match. You can set it in both slots and have 2 random rules. I dunno if it counts twice for achievement, or if it still counts if you do Roulette and a set rule together.

A few random things:
-Burned an alt up to Gold Saucer access, you can buy cards and obtain from trials/dungeons without ever using the 5 initial cards, but you can't fight anyone until you go through the tutorial (maybe can do tutorial after getting the 30 cards so you don't have to open the first 5?)

That's what I was thinking.

[tenkiki]

A few random things:
-Burned an alt up to Gold Saucer access, you can buy cards and obtain from trials/dungeons without ever using the 5 initial cards, but you can't fight anyone until you go through the tutorial (maybe can do tutorial after getting the 30 cards so you don't have to open the first 5?)

-Already someone on Ultros with 15 wins, but they're only in second place, and yeah, 15 Kings should yield a handsome 1710 pts, but good luck not losing to a random plus combo (although I've won some games where I placed my last card thinking I lost and regained the entire board)

-I eagerly await the week where we get random as the base rule and all hell breaks loose

Edit: When doing roulette matches for the achievement, set the 2nd rule as sudden death so games don't end in unexpected draws if you're boosting with a friend.

[Kirbyprime]

Seravi! Get your alts to 100~ points and let me buy for wins!

[BerenTebogo]

I'm most likely going for my 15 wins from gridania ascension dude.

[tenkiki]

I'm pretty sure you're limited to the 5 people at the Gold Saucer, tried to go to the redolent imperial and he gave no tournament option, also if that were possible, they would only have all open and plus rule instead of ascension.

[Kirbyprime]

Will probably go around to all the NPCs to check just in case. Some of those NPCs are supposed to be hard ( thus more points ) but easy to exploit. But yeah, I don't think SE thought this over much. Unless tournaments are a weekly occurrence you'll easily have people win-trading / buying.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Will probably go around to all the NPCs to check just in case. Some of those NPCs are supposed to be hard ( thus more points ) but easy to exploit. But yeah, I don't think SE thought this over much. Unless tournaments are a weekly occurrence you'll easily have people win-trading / buying.

I'm assuming the 4 tournaments for Lightning / Firion / Cecil / Tidus will just cycle every week.