Please keep the discussion civil. I still have immense respect for the team and still very much love TFT, but I personally have just had a very negative experience with the set and wanted to provide feedback/context that would hopefully provide some level of insight as to why I feel this way (and why I will not be doing anymore set 11 content outside of costreams on Twitch because competitive TFT is always a joy to watch) One thing I forgot to note at 18:06, is that when the gap widens too much, it becomes harder and harder to close it, and you feel increasingly less in control of the variance to squeeze out a top 4. This just increases the frustration while playing the set. I'm not saying the set is complete RNG, (clearly not just look at the ranked ladder), but the player experience (competitively) IS incredibly frustrating.
Mortdog's explanation would be correct if power in TFT scaled linearly. However, it scales multiplicatively. This is because comps and items scale out of each other. A clear example of this is IE and Last Whisper, as each one individually isn't as strong as they combined, as the way they interact makes the pair stronger than each part individually (assuming no other variables, such as passive armor pen). As such, the high-roll players benefit more from resources given by encounters because they have the correct resources lined up to scale on top of each other. An extra item would be stronger on the player that has a natural two-star four cost. Extra gold would be stronger on a player who has more gold because he hit a strong board without needing to spend as much gold rolling. And since there is always a certain degree of luck involved in high-rolling (IE. getting the correct units on your shop without needing to roll too much), this decreases player agency. Yes, TFT has a built-in element of luck. But adding another random/semi-random variable factor of luck (encounters) increases how much it can affect the game. There is a sliding scale between chess and coin flips, which is a well-established factor of game design. And the recent changes in TFT lean more towards the luck side of things.
While simultaneously removing the things that allowed you to “play through your low roll RNG.” Being able to slam zephyr or shroud and then USE THEM CONSISTENTLY to abuse positioning of people who aren’t looking at all. … positioning used to actually really really matter… now? Not nearly as much.
The bag size changes greatly effects the luck aspect as well. Which is why high rolling just steamrolls lobbies so much and the lows are so low. Back before the bag size changes even if someone high rolled. If you understood basic TFT mechanics you were able to claw up to a top 4. Now it's just a race to who can hit 8 first and not waste gold hitting their champs/comp.
Just one simple example could be someone dropping a 3cost champion at stage 1-2 and someone getting 3 gold. Yes gold value is the same but if 2-1 encounters an recombobulator and that player with 3 cost champion suddenly becomes a 4 cost champion whereas no one else in the lobby could’ve match the gap if they get dropped the gold. I still don’t understand how the balancing team thinks 3gold equals to 3cost champion. Yes gold value wise yes but not in power curve and encounters just make all the power curve deviating more and making such a terrible experience for players who happened to low roll at the start of the game and just get multiply by the unbalancing encounters.
Not to mention if someone tried to lose streak and when they need to spike their board Becoz they are low in HP, roll down and hit what they want in 3-6 let’s just say, hitting syndra two and stuff. And at 4-1 there’s an encounter of lowering the cost of rerolling and boom that lose streak guy is just dead becoz all those kinda healthy players can just do the normal 4-1 roll down and have double the odds of hitting their desire comp.
I think part of the encounters problem and something I have found harder to enjoy about TFT is that it feels like there is an increasing amount of 'EXODIA' lines that you need to know how to play for and optimise to win lobbies. So for someone who is probably more competetive, but with a 'casual' timeframe (working 9-5, being married) to climb in, not only do you need to be familiar with all the common comps, you now need to know all the specific augment lines that can cap out really high (Fine Vintage, Built Diff, Two Healthy), how to play the Hero Augs, the lines to take in the weird off-shoot encounters (Zoe, Kayn), Busted Emblem lines, and now all these artifact/support combos that can make a Top 4 more likely too. It's just exhausting and feels like you have to know so many lines and combos these days.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having higher capped lines. That’s actually a good thing because it increases skill expression. My issue with the crazy amount of overpowered edge case comps (relative to more standard comps like reroll, 4 costs) is that with every patch and B patch it swings the meta so much that you have to learn new comps again. And in set 11 some of the comps don’t even really make sense (like why would fated dryad be stronger than 5 cost exodia)
Nothing better than to force a lvl9 for example, to get an encounter on the next round that lowers the xp cost. It's hard to play strategically in the set. Also the balance is really bad now. 3Fated players every lobby today.
Honestly the three fated isn’t the problem. It has a rough start and if you don’t get fated spat or sett you bleed out. Three fated every lobby just means you have to out cap the higher roller. That is two less players to worry about. I never see two fated players after mid game fighting for first. There is definitely still more fine tuning needed for certain units and traits that they keep missing, but other than that it really is the encounters that is unbalanced this set.
I loved set 10 of course its a bias as I got Master that set and it was the first set I truly played a lot of of. This set though I tried to play it a lot, tried to know all the lines and etc. but just having B patches that constantly change the meta a week into fully knowing the current meta is too much. Also the balance of reroll and higher level comps is off. I love reroll its where I feel comfortable but I can play 8/9 boards (I did play Disco and Fast 9 HS a lot last set) but it feels different this set. Its like you are forced to go 9 and even if you hit you lose. I had a game where I was 6 Porcelain, 6 Duelist with the emblems on Voli and Lee Sin and still lost (this was pre Titan nerf). TLDR I feel lost this set. I love last set and when I lose I feel frustrated but I know its mostly my fault why I lost and I know where I messed up but this set is just different.
Im gonna rant here abit after playing a full day in challenger lobbies after the patch today. The thing that I hate the most is the fact that there are 3-4 syndra players in the lobby and in a perfect world, when there are 3-4 players playing the same comp, they should do poorly because their units are contested and therefore do not hit the important 2 stars later in the game. The problem is, however, 3 out of the 4 players or 2 out of the 3 players all top 4 because the comp is so broken, they can stabilize with syndra 1 and some decent frontline. Yes they may not be winning every fight but they are stable enough that they can econ up and have another 40-50 gold rolldown or push 9 (if you preserve enough hp early game which is most likely the case if u have a fated opener). As a player that enjoys playing flexibly, I would never play a comp that is even 2 way contested most of the time unless i have the better spot. When I see that there are 4 syndra players and I have AD opener, I should be able to at least have a same chance of top 4ing with ashe or kaisa. This is not the case because you only have the same combat power once you hit galio 2, sylas 2, kaisa 2, against their thresh 2, syndra 1. If they hit syndra 2, ornn 2, you can never win a fight. I feel like a a huge skill set that divides players is the ability to play flexibly but this patch especially feels like you get punished for playing flexible and not playing syndra every game. THERE SHOULD BE MORE THAN 8 PLAYABLE COMPS IN THE META SO THAT EVERYONE IS NOT PLAYING THE SAME THING EVERY GAME AND YOU DONT GET PUNISHED FOR TRYING TO PLAY UNCONTESTED COMPS.
Agreed. If we get a preview look of wt we will encounter at the start of the game(eg the list on the right hand side shows every encounter) this would definitely make the game a bit more enjoyable, at least there won’t be so much of regret for making a wrong decision becoz of the encounter
I hit 760 lp Challenger this season and I honestly regret it. This set feels so much more frustrating than the past. I think encounters would be fine if you knew from the beginning what you are going to deal with. For example, I don't mind starting with encounters, because at least you know from the start what's going to happen (Kayn, Lillia, etc). But, let's say you're playing Kog Reroll and then after you're hard committed, you get hit the "buff 2-3-4 costs" encounter...Sure, you can still buff your Neeko, your Lillia, etc. but we all know other comps will definitely more than you who's now stuck behind on levels and powerups just because...you decided to play something and lowrolled. I like the randomness and the need of playing around what you get, but the encounters can basically screw your game at any point and it feels so bad. I feel powerless most of the times and it's not fun at all. One game of highrolling doesn't balance the other nine games of lowrolling and getting punished for trying to play your game. And on top of all this I think the set is very difficult to balance because of all the changes made to demolish 3-costs and promote the 4-cost lottery on Stage 4. Not hitting your 4 costs on 4-2 or 4-5 when uncontested feels so bad and you're just forced to stare at your screen while the encounters bring you even more down. Too much of a headache, again, not worth it in my opinion. They probably have a different point of view as mentioned since the casual playerbase seems to enjoy this formula. My advice would be to stick to the random encounters and portals start that give you a direction (sort of like what was with Galaxies some sets ago) and remove the mid-game encounters or at least find a way to spoil what will happen during the stages (i.e Treasure Dragon).
This video is 100% raw truth. I also want to add something, that to me is seriously the worst encounter side effect of all. The fact that a perfectly executed game, clear win condition ahead and you end up 4th or 5th, because of an encounter that ends you before you spike. This is too much to handle mentally if you playing competitively. Set 10 was indeed many times better.
Agree with you on the high roll part. You normally play for top 2-4 because there always is at least one player who is high rolling out of their minds in every lobby. Of course, sometimes it's yourself but for me it doesn't fill the gap in enjoyment to all the other times you get your whole game destroyed cause you face the omega high roller at the wrong time even though you did "everything right", or you just can't top 1 cause the dif in board strength is just to huge.
Feel like augments and portals have a very similar purpose to what Mortdog intended with encounters. However, the difference would seem to be that they, unlike encounters, allow for player choice and thus the ability for the augments to relatively increase the power level of each player a similar amount. The random nature, the disproportionate benefits, and the timing of the encounters gives the feeling of loss of player control and makes strategizing around encounters at best a gamble. This is in contrary to the portals and augments that lack most of these issues but still provide lobby-wide power boosts that feel fun to have.
gm this set, playing in this range since set 1, really feel like i need a massively long break from the game. more than the lowroll gap for me, a lot of my wins just don't feel earned. i am probably the exact type of player mortdog is describing and i feel any attempts to get more competitive are undermined by the constant churn of balance every other week, too much new information to sit on every 4 months, and a grueling tournament format. i respect the team a lot and i wish success for the game but i just don't really want to invest so much more time in a game that i can go from loving to hating in a month, and one that doesn't want to cater any further to my audience. i think the team has exceeded the cap on the amount of "sprinkles" they can add onto the standard experience and its just taxing to queue now.
This set from my experience is. Imagine getting reroll augments, aiming for a 2/3 cost reroll then Kha Zix wants you to evolve (3 gold for exp) you are now behind a lot. Imagine getting Xp augments, aiming for a fast 9 but they give you a reroll encounter. You then are behind.
yeah i think that the encounters could benefit from being more generally beneficial, with the item/gold ones being the standard example where everyone benefits in an equal way id be pretty content with specific comp encounters like khaz being removed
12:40 completely agree, i think that for example augments do keep the gap between highroll/lowroll with standard game (excluding some exemptions), but the encounters just dont do that. You cant roll them, you cant predict which will it be. Lets say you are 4-1 wanted to go 8 and roll but you see encounter on 4-3/4-5 and have much hp - if u roll, you lost chance to fastest 11 on earth, if u dont roll and dont hit like kha or sth you just lost around 50 health. Or you are winstreaking into encounter that gives some crazy things on carousel (2star 3 cost etc.), you just lose tempo bcs you have to pick some random shit that was left. The worst part is - the competetive might get fcked because of some random encounters. Basic on my experience i even scammed some tournament places coz of some crazy ass highroll. But to be fair we cant just say its all luck - best players are still getting ahead with their skill, but set 11 is just frustrating to play.
My only problem with riots definition of fun casual experience...why is being rewarded for braindeadly highrolling supposed to be more fun than rewarding a good play. Being engaged in the game is what fun should be about...if you want to appeal to more casuals, then provide them enjoyable learning experience
im more in the middle when it comes to casual/competitive. I usually try to get low diamond but my opinion is that encounters could definitely be toned down. At least two less encounters overall, maybe with an emphasis on one major encounter and one minor encounter per game. Also get rid of xp khazix, i dont like having to play around it. Playing around a potential augment isnt fun. It usually pops up after i want to level to 8/9
I feel the same way. People didn't seem to like set 10, but I felt there were so many comps I could play and potentially win with. A big issue I see is just the absolute insanity in people getting good augments while you're stuck with absolute trash. The power gap is too large. Then, add that maybe they are also hitting on everything and building out the most OP comp. There is ZERO chance you can win. How is that competitive at all? On the other hand, we all also benefit from it at times, but to me.. more teams and augments should allow a person to win if they play well.
I've stopped playing for the past two sets despite playing to master every set prior. For me, the crucial problem is the bag size changes. I fully understand why the bag size had to be halved in set10 as Chosen made 3star 4costs very common, but I already had my misgivings to that change as set4's Chosen was one of my least liked mechanics in tft history. Yet after the removal of the chosen mechanic, bag sizes did not get reverted. Now it feels terrible on every lv8 rolldown, as the mere prescense of 1 or 2 people holding 1 copy of the 4cost carry you're rolling for drastically reduces your ability to hit your carry. Makes the game insanely difficult to not tilt, as IMO this set lowrolling is 50x more punished then last set given how brutally you get stomped out.
I agree that encounters create a much wider gap in almost every situation, it is just an increased variable that can cause a highroll and lowroll, if you lowroll the standard part of a game and one of the big encounters is in effect and you do not benefit from it like other players in the lobby you will be much weaker
@kai.watanabe I think my biggest complaint about the encounters isn't even the wideness of the gap but it's the insane swings/bailouts that the encounters can bring players at random stages throughout the game. I'm not saying swing/comeback mechanics are bad for the game, but it definitely FEELS bad when they are things you can't play around without completely changing your playstyle. For example if I'm playing versus a fortune player who is lose streaking from the beginning of the game and I decide to try to tempo beat him down before stage 4 cash out, I know that I'm taking a gamble where if it fails he swings and can win out. But if Ahri shows up and kisses him when he honestly should have died and he wins out 1st, then that just completely negates any interaction between the two playstyles. Or take a smaller example: playing win streak early game and getting punished by a radiant/artifact carousel at stage 3. Playing an econ game against tempo rerollers and seeing a heavy reroll encounter after you pivot/stabilize that gets them their 3star board and destablizes you because the previously capped boards playing for top 4 suddenly have a larger cap
I think things only feel worse once you combine the current balance state of the game. At one point the fluidity of viable comps made any swings that come from encounters somewhat evenly balanced with enough good play, but in the current meta where the lines are so rigid and game almost feels determined by who hits their 4-2 roll down or who is rng blessed by the encounters after not hitting, it just feels awful. If each game was like Kayn and advertised the encounter and players could adapt and play around it, that would be amazing. Like I know a lot of people aren't a fan of Kayn games because of just how much it warps the game, but that honestly seems like the intentions of encounters from the get-go. The only difference between Kayn and the rest of the game warpers is that he gives you the courtesy of letting you know exactly how you should play from the jump rather than hiding it inside a loot orb and making you hope you don't hit your 5th chain of the game.
I think the reason most people go crab rave/scuttle puddle is because we like more gold and more components. Gold and items are the only thing I think that keep this game fair and balanced as long as everyone gets it because the fast 9 players can push levels sooner and the reroll players can roll more for their 3 stars. As well as slamming items for better board strength and direction as to what to play late if you're undecided. It's the super niche "You Get 8 Free Rerolls This Round!" that lets the Shen Ethereal Blades player hit his 3 star so much faster so now he's 70 HP with a Shen 3 instead of being 35 HP with a Shen 3 skews the game so much. The recombulator encounter when someone hits two 2% 4-Cost unit odds and gets an Udyr and Sett at an early discount is insane. I just want more gold and more items. I would play TFT everyday if every game was just that but all these encounters like omg this carousel now has 2 star 3 costs big bro at first place just scored an Amumu 3 for free...like that shit makes me FERAL.
i got master in set 10 in soloq AND in double up last set after not playing since set 6.5 where i also got master. i learn fast and i LOVE tft. i can assure you that both gamemodes are trash right now with doubleup being 10x worse. When i play double up, EVERY GAME in EMERALD there are AT LEAST i mean literally AT LEAST TWO *** 3star 4 cost. like im not even playing against master+ players where they know how to econ?? people just donkeyroll and either they dont hit and go bot 4 or they hit and get top 4. sure i consistently get winning placements but most of my games the champ pool is just depleted for my comp by the time i roll and i end up playing random bs. if i wait to 9 to get legendaries some people already got the 4-5 cost that i need and i lose but if i roll at 8 and dont hit its instant 7-8th. IDK feels so rng and 3 costs feel terrible. alune 2 vs alune 3 ? barely any diff. yone 2 = afk, yone 3 = old yone 2. you can play uncontested yone and hit nothing, its actually why i think alune is the best reroll comp rn because you roll for so many units at 8, yone + yorick+ alune+sett+sylas just play whatever you upgrade and you top 4. other comps like bard have to roll on 7 since they dont get anything extra on 8 and feels terrible unless you get really lucky and hit everything. i feel like theyre forcing us to play flex but like... everything always ends up being the same end board. wow how original wukong rakan diana +5 other random 4 cost champions omg! hmm lets go irelia lee sin hmm how original ! how about ornn + azir ! wow ! original ! idk... last set was the most fun ive had. it was so fun i didnt even get challenger in league of legends for the first time in a while and instead was spending 6h a day playing tft with my girlfriend. riot gave us insane expectations with this set and dropped the ball completely. the traits dont do shit except umbral its all about champions themselves. you can literally play a comp of random 4 cost 2 stars and it would be a guaranteed top 4. oh hes playing yone reroll ? aight bet ima go nautilus annie ornn lee sin damn i got 0 synergies i guess ill add wukong azir irelia diana janna GG!! lOL !! idk everytime something is good like senna reroll, janna reroll, aphelios reroll, they nerf it in 10 ways instead of just slightly tuning it down and tuning up other comps. did they REALLY have to nerf champ + odds + trait all at the same time? its terrible. champion duplicators are worth SO MUCH, fortune 7 is instant win, early hwei/lissandra guarantees top 4 (at least the last patch where lissandra had like 10 abilities in 1 champion who thought about single target nuke+stun+knockback+aoe damage+ruins pathing was a good idea all in 1 champ, at least qiyana was melee last patch but now lissandra does the same thing 10x better and is RANGED). RIDICULOUS BALANCING idc what mortdog says "its hard to balance the game" bro you made the same champion as last patch only with 5 more effects but not only that, you made it ranged and also gave it good traits. 4 costs should be carries not TANKS. or at least make more of them carries so that you can make comps around them instead of this stupid stck 4 costs comps and win
also other encouters i hate that you didnt mention : the irelia encounter with 6 rolls with 1 of each cost. WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS OKAY? if you hit a 2 star 5 cost = top 4 if you dont = bot 4. so many encounters do this RNG type of thing. its so ridiculous. or the ornn encounter that gives you 6 random artifacts for a round. some guy gets 5 gold generating artifact and immediately gets +8 gold off 1 round for 0 reason and hits econ thresholds earlier than others. IDK so much random bs that you cant play around. mort likes to say there is a lot of choice but 99% of encounters are already figured out. wow i wonder what champion tier i will buff in this encounter! (i am playing 2 cost reroll i have to chose buff 2 costs, same for 3 costs, etc). wow i am playing trickshot i have to give my team more ad. there are "choices". some guy is playing fortune and gets ahri hp encounters welp i guess he is first! there isnt any choice it just makes some people highroll more than others and like you said, the gap between highrolling and playing normal gets bigger and bigger. play against the 2 giga highroll guys and you just lost 30 hp. some games are so dumb and frustrating. OBVIOUSLY you can get better and climb but i feel like before it was 10x easier to just outskill opponents but now you have to play for top 4 more often than top 2 since it feels like the top 2 is already decided without your control most of the time. them buffing dryad when it was already S tier proves how little future proofing they think about.
Same for me, there are a lot of games where some fortune players get boiled out by Ahri Encounter. Or just basic carousels encounter where the people who lose streak just get their ideal 4 cost or Ornn/sup Items and you get hard cucked for playing strongest board and win streak
I think one change encounters could benefit from is a tool tip that shows what the encounter will be. Knowing what the encounter is several rounds beforehand would make decision-making more linear than abrupt. Like for example, knowing an Ornn encounter or Radiant items encounter is coming would mean having to decide with ample time if you level or roll for pairs well before the encounter happens so you could keep your winstreak. Rather than being an APM check, e.g. slamming the correct items to correct holders, rolling and/or leveling in the same round, you get to choose what strategy you'd need to implement and execute it rather than being punished for one random round that has a ton of variance. Knowing a reroll, gold, item, treasure armory, or carousel encounter is coming removes the randomness but allows for varying strategies to be viable and be implemented across the stages.
Agree with your sentiment. I had high hopes for this set at the beginning, even grinding close to 500-600 games pretty early on and hitting top 200 on NA ladder. Was having a ton of fun but the egregious balancing just ruined it. Comps going from OP to unplayable. Reroll Dominating the first patch or two, then being completely gutted and unplayable into the 4 cost meta. Then 4 cost odds being changed making it even MORE of a lottery. Ashe dominating for weeks on end. Set 12 waiting room I guess. I feel like I've heard them saying they won't "balance thrash" since like, 6 sets ago, but here we are.
I don’t feel like reroll was gutted. Kogmaw yes but gnar has been good the entire set senna was strong up until this patch lux was good for a patch. Do you mean specifically one cost reroll?
@wbthorpe34 the meta was literally 3 cost reroll on launch. Yone, bard, aphelios, duelists. 4 costs were bad. Right now, according to tactics.tools there is 1 reroll comp in the top 6 best comps, kogmaw. Thats what I mean, lol
@@ik9363 I know all I’m saying is that there have been reroll comps that have been viable throughout the entire set obviously it has changed it started as 3 cost reroll for the first few patches and since has transitioned to 2 cost reroll comps and 4 cost comps. It would be awesome if every unit and every comp was viable but that’s never gonna happen. If you like playing reroll there are still reroll comps you can win with. I also think they over nerfed three cost comps but at the same time they kind of had to because back then everyone was bitching about 4 costs sucking ass and 3 costs being too strong.
@@ik9363 I’m just confused should they have just left the game as is after the first patch and let 3 costs dominate the entire set? The set isn’t even halfway over yet they may have over nerfed 3 costs but they will come back into the meta eventually.
@wbthorpe34 no, but in an ideal world every unit cost should be viable to play around, like kai said. 1 cost rr, 2 cost rr, 3 cost rr, fast 8 4 costs, and fast 9 legendaries. We haven't even been close to having all these viable at once. Its either been 3 cost rr meta, or 4 cost meta. At least to me, the game feels awful to play when the game is just 6 people contesting ashe/Lilia or dryad syndra every game.
personally appealing to the casuals makes so much more sense tft is a game that is all about randomness so ranked can only really appeal to a small number of people who have the time to invest as it takes such a long time to average positive rp
I think appealing to casuals makes sense too, but personally, I don't agree with how heavily they're trying to appeal to the casual audience this set. I made a video a while back during the Bebe drama going more in-depth with my thought process on general game direction, but my TLDR opinion is that as long as the game doesn't deviate its core too heavily away from its most dedicated members, then innovate by all means. But if you ignore your most dedicated/core audience (which in TFT is usually the competitive players), the game will not do as well in the long run and can even fall off despites shorter-term success By no means am I trying to say TFT is going to fall off or anything like that, that's an extremity (if anything it's doing better than ever). I am also not a game designer. Just sharing my opinion from what I've seen from other gaming communities (specifically with OSRS and its revival post EOC).
@@kai.watanabetbh set 10 felt like the ideal balance- the casuals loved it via themes and different builds that you could do and pros liked it cuz of balance and depth feels like the best set ever in terms of player enjoyment from both camps- almost everyone loved it, both bronze players that just wanted funny music and challenger players that wanted to prove themselves
@@kai.watanabe Im going to have to disagree with this as well. The 'core' for the VAST majority of players, is creative wacky fun. I think yall lose sight of just how tiny your bubble is of people who are posting on reddit about metas and watching video essays like this. Dont get me wrong, it feels bad to get dickrolled by an encounter that doesnt suit your choices... my personal criticisms of the set come down to theme and just most units in general not being too fun to play or experiment with.... but I really do think that trying something wacky and random is far from the sets biggest issue. As an example, I have tried to get many friends into TFt and have failed every time. This game is INSANELY fucking complicated for the average person, and the barrier for entry is already MASSIVE. Even at the lower levels, the amount of knowledge you need to even field boards that dont go 8th is high. Not summoners rift game high, but high. Im just saying... I would consider myself on the edge of comp/casual. I hit around diamond, but mostly just playing for fun and blowing off some steam seeing what weird shit i can make work. But I and especially those above me are not who the devs should be taking into account here. Higher ranking players are like less than 10% of the playerbase, and just because yall stream and post about this for similarly non-casual players.... yall (and I as well) really dont matter as much to the game as we think. I like that they tried something wacky, random, and different. The same hardcore groups and streamers ragged on legends to all hell, but even at plat there was a lot of diversity in legends that were played and everyone and below was really enjoying the unique feeling of agency. IMO hardcore/esports focus ruins the hell out of games. Streaming 24/7 ruins the hell out of games. These games are for fun and nothing else. You can play to win above all else, but dont expect anyone else to have to. Set 11 is mid imo, but encounters are not the issue detracting from the fun. If the lack of balance or competitive equality is whats ruining the fun for you... fine and fair I can be a sweat sometimes too... but you are not who they should be designing this game around.
Not being able to anticipate and play around encounters in advance on top of everything you mentioned makes encounters extremely frustrating. Ramkev had a tweet about it and I actually agree with the whole thing, including things like 1-1 kayn encounter being a good thing (at least relative to other encounters). I also think portals such as stillwater hold aren't even that bad because there's sort of a separate mini-metagame that develops that tests your understanding of the game. Encounters however very rarely feel like they are testing your understanding of the game and just kinda pop up to add extra RNG, so the competitive defense is nearly nonexistent imo. Now you could argue "oh if you see there's an encounter you should wait on doing/deciding on xyz to play around it and see" but that's just not realistic and not an option a lot of the time. Despite all of this, I've been managing to have fun with the game this set, so I will continue playing, it's just that encounters are kinda dumb imo and even from the first teaser I already didn't like the sound of it and my opinion on the whole thing has not changed since (maybe for the worse if anything). Balance issues are kind of a separate thing that aren't inherently related to a set in the sense that something similar could have just as easily happened to another set so I won't fault them too hard on that even if it makes the game less fun.
I definitely agree. This is the worst set I’ve played and I’m only playing for fun. I usually grind ranked but I can’t this set. Really missing set 10 TBH
I think Encounters aren't necessarily an issue if they are made with compeitive in mind. E.g. having something like Kayn or Zoe is actually a pretty nice thing to play around for competitive, because it forces you to be more flexible by changing the lobby meta. Stuff like HP, components and gold are also not much different to neutral drops. In fact, I think it could even be a really nice way to enable high-risk gameplay without making them too consistent (e.g. gambling on getting HP in some encounter to lose some more rounds for Fortune). So that's imo refreshing and enhances skill expression because you likely can't just force 2 comps every single game. But for that, there need to be some conditions fulfilled. First, Encounters should be determined at game start. Not the specific type, but when they will happen. That allows everyone to play around that information. Whether that means that one player is gambling on some bonus HP to go hard on gambling, or whether that's just waiting with slams for the next encounter to get best items possible. In general, all such timings should be defined at game start, so that you can work with the info as a player. And second, Encounters should not affect individual tempo. And with that I mean stuff like changing roll odds, changing leveling costs aso. Those have vastly different values depending on the comp you are playing. If you play reroll, leveling cost is stupid af because if you didn't hit yet, chances are that you can't use the encounter. And vice versa, if you go for fast9, then leveling cost encounter just catapults you multiple rounds ahead of everyone else.
Encounters could be "kind of fixed" if they gave each one of them some equivalent choices to cover all playstyles. Like, if someone is pushing levels or rerolling, they shouldn't be punished for a encounter that favors the other.
Or simply make the encounter visible at the start of the game. Then you won’t have people getting an 8th becoz of playing a reroll comp and encountered yorick at stage 4-3 where everyone just hit their 4cost champion and u have no gold to play with
Mortdog was right about making everyone moving the power curve up ONLY if everyone was playing the same kind of stuff(all playing 4-2 roll down at lv8 finding 4 cost) which is contradict to his point of not building the game for holders but innovators.
1000% agree with you about encounters, causing the gap to becoming even wider between the low rollers and high rollers. I don’t understand how mort misses this, even in his example when he mentions recombo, obviously this isn’t equal amongst all players. Getting a couple of 3 costs vs getting a couple of 4 costs early is a big difference. And it gets exponentially worse if they’re 2 star units. I actually don’t like most of the portals that do the same thing, like the sentinel portals are just not fun - someone hits an amazing combo and you hit something shit, or you’re contesting with other people. + being told what I’m playing from the start of the game isn’t fun or interesting either. I actually notice in my lobbies (I’m master so not exactly amazing), most players don’t pick any of the higher variance portals because it just doesn’t feel good to play a game where luck drives most of the experience. Yeah we can just “get good” but we’re not all dishsoap, we just wanna play a game after work and have some fun while it still being somewhat competitive. I still play the game, i love it, i bought the $200 skins (lol), and i still get enjoyment from it. But there are those games where it just feels bad and you just gotta take it on the chin and move on.
@kai do you think if before/start of the game in the encounter tab, they listed the potential encounters that would occur not in order (or in order idk) during that game. It would solve some potential issues like busted carousels or khazix etc . I can see it being less variance and less rng/ guessing. Idk just my take to tackle this encounter issue .
This is definitely on point. Games now only half the lobby makes it to late game. Play ten games and pay attention to player health during stage 4. You can tell something is very wrong with encounters
I think you encapsulated my issues with this set perfectly, and I'm not even a truly good/competitive player, if anything I'm pretty bad (gold-plat every set since s8, playing since s1). I just wanna go back to the more simple days 😭
10:00 I 100% agree with Kai here. As a player who loves to approach TFT competitively, I don't mind games that are accelerated via prismatics, etc. What I DON'T like (and the reason I'm not playing this set) is when the factors influencing a game's outcome are too random and too many. This makes the game extremely difficult to optimize, and to balance. I just want to play TFT in a setting where I can make intelligent decisions about lines I'm going to take (and flexing between lines--shoutout to set 10!) without having to play 1000 games so I can recognize every niche exodia line.
Random encounters could be treated similar to how the exalted trait works. Having it completely random makes it so the graph can drastically change. A potential solution would be to have all the encounters be chosen at the start of the game (and changing every game) but varying what order they appear would allow players to plan for and accept the randomness.
this is the first time ive dropped the set after pbe, i thouht it was more so work life balance personally. But thats not really true, a damn good set of tft always gets me playing in my freetime. been playing since set 1 too...
This was just never meant to be a competitive game. I started playing actual chess a couple of months ago and I regret all of the time I wasted playing this slot machine game.
One thing the patch cycle has done that i really dont like is that only one style is viable. At the beginning it was only reroll and now its only 4 cost comps. So the encounters can have more impact because some of them disproportionately help certain strats more than others leading to a widening of the gap between high/low rollers.
The problem for me is not the gap between highroll, neutral and lowroll. The issue comes from how certain encounters benefit certain players way more than others. Taking the recomb as the most obvious example: some players would not pick the recomb because X reason and that only provide you gold, while the risk of picking it can result in a huge value increase not only by the units itself but the potential “gold to roll” that you saved for that decision. Many encounters that provide a yes/no situation don’t really equal in power. Encounters isnt a bad mechanic but ee are witnessing the first iteration of it and, in the future, there is a potential that they could come back with a more refined flavor
I just feel there's too much going on nowadays. As someone who actually enjoyed the pre-augment sets quite a bit, through various means I've seen how this game has over time shifted further away from the game I started with on a fundamental level. Well, it's fine, if Riot want to go after a different audience it's their right, I'll just play less. But it seems now pretty much everyone with a deeper interest in the game is getting shafted to chase casual money. Which is also Riot's right, but it sucks to see passion in the community drain from this game. However it seems like Riot is wanting to have their cake and eat it too; either you cater to casuals and get good numbers, or to your pre-existing playerbase and get happy voices. You cannot just ask for both to work.
I understand the encounters because someone had wandering trainer opener with fortune spat from 2-1 augment. Then within stage 2 there was the aatrox encounter at 2-2 so he chose health, then got the ahri increase health at 2-6 then on top of that at 3-2 he gets tiny titans. it was so bad that people started to quit the game because they thought that the game was a waste of time due to that, this happened in a masters lobby and if it wasn't because it was my rank up to masters i would've quit too and moved onto the next game. So the gap the encounters play is just too much.
Set 10 was amazing and it sucks that because casual players cant force comps with headliner that it'll never be regarded as positively as it deserves. Almost all my friends that are under masters hated set 10 but everyone ik that made masters or gm w me also LOVED that set
awesome video. i quit this set early on. grinded set 10 barely hitting master, then was going to take set 11 more serious. but ended up quitting. i thought i was weird for not liking it, but this video definitely explains why this set is so bad. the amount of “b” patches shows us how gross this set has been. really disappointed in the tft team. hoping set 12 is better.
I think the problem is not knowing what the encounters will be because theres no agency, Im 1000% sure there wouldnt be so much opposition to encounters if on game start they disclosed which encounters the game had. If you know theres a K6 encounter and you still lvl before that, then thats on you, but if you dont know it just sucks.
Encounters are fundamentally flawed in that they either 1) give everyone the same meaningless effect (working out with Sett, sivir speed encounter, etc), or 2) give specific comps/lines an unfair advantage because of how the encounter bonus interacts with the comp or line. Mort’s understanding on how encounters impact power levels seems wrong. The only way to maintain constant variance is if the added bonus has absolutely no interaction effects with any comps, in which case why are you even adding encounters to the game. Even something like giving everyone 20gold is going to benefit some spots more than others
This is the 2nd time in the past 6 months that Mort said something that really makes me think differently. Condemning criticism on social platforms is akin to trying to silence criticism. I believe that mort is really just looking out for his team, but you can't just say it's bad to criticize games. That being said I feel like their recent patches have been super tone deaf. They constantly will patch good units because they want them to be "better carries" or nerf units like 6 times when they're a little too strong. There is a lot of valid criticism right now and to say we shoudln't be talking bad about the game makes me think differently of mort, a lot differently.
Maybe irrelevant but speaking of balancing changes and playable comps, this set feels like even they are trying to cater to more casual players but the result isn't ideal. More casual players want to play some simple comps/rerolls without thinking too much about flex between X units. Then they changed the bag size to make it much harder to hit. Casual players actually want a more stable meta so they don't need to relearn the game every 2 weeks. The patches of this set are such a mess with dramatic balancing swings, even for more competitive players it's already hard enough to follow. Not to mention every patch there are only a handful of comps on a much higher power level so again you'll see that 3 comps being 2-3 ways contested every single lobby. Definitely not what you want if the intention is to make people play more flexibly. They think giving more resources would make casual players happier, however it makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. How could it be fun for any level of player to experience someone's giga highrolling with 80+ HP left stage 5, holding all upgrades and leaving you with an unupgraded board and 1 life left? Oh speaking of encounters... how can anybody remember all these possible combinations and plan accordingly? I can't maybe just a skill issue I guess. In short I feel this set has taken a lot of player agency away in the name of encouraging people to play more flexibly, but in reality it feels even more restricted than any of those previous sets I've played.
Can very much agree that the idea of encounters is cool but in practice kinda sucks. From my personal experience it's things like rolling down only to get the Yorick encounter later that makes reroll cost 1 gold, or leveling right before Khazix. Sure you can play around it to an extent (i.e. you see there's an encounter on 3-3 so you avoid leveling/rolling/stabilising on 3-2 just in case) but then if you're wrong, you fall even more behind for attempting to play around chance. Though personally I always feel attacked anytime there's a good spot for me to play Kogmaw reroll only for the Alune encounter to appear that buffs anything except 1 costs lol.
Encounters in the middle of the game don't do anything but widen that gap. An encounter like trist giving gold on stage 2 will definitely equally move the curve up. But not on stage 4
My Problem with encounters is also that the set was advertised with like 100 encounters. I’ve played like 200 games and feel like I only encountered half of them. I understand that the more swingy portals like Kayn have to be rare, but especially on 1-1 to get the lillia or Bard encounter almost every game is a bit “disappointing” when you know what cooler encounters could come up.
I feel the same, not hating on anyone or saying "i hate this set" just to be a troll online- I literally just stopped having fun and moved on to different games. I just come back every patch to see if its changed lool
As a more casual player in emerald, I have still been enjoying the set... some frustrations when an encounter comes up right after you roll or level. I wonder if simply knowing what your encounters would be ahead of time would change things, or being able to see what the encounter(s) was going to be when you start a stage. I feel like the balance shifts have been more frustrating and more limiting in what I can look to play each game
not the biggest fan of encounters either. some are whatever, some are boring, some are balanced, and there’s always the encounter that ruins the experience for some players. eg today i was playing my strongest board, streaking from post carousel stage 2 to stage 3 carousel which was the orn artifact encounter. of course, being last pick, I was stuck between the choice of fucking fishbones and vamp scepter. felt like I got punished for playing my best
changing the max level to 10, then the changes they made to 3-cost chances a few patches ago... this felt the worst to me in terms of comp variety. also, the 3* 4-cost meta was a direct result of this, and now they changed it again and i feel like it's still not in a great spot. sometimes i want to reroll and sometimes i want to play more standard. i hate when i feel forced to play only a handful of comps (and if you don't hit -- too bad!). i played enough to finish the pass i paid for and haven't really played since. :(
My favourite example for the gap widening on the grap is early recombob. U low rolled opener so u don’t have 3 costs and 2* on your board on stage 2, because you sold for econ. Recombob hits half the lobby has 4 costs and removers and you got what ? Money ? You already had that, great ff ?
I only started playing in set 9 so im bad enough to not really feel the variance for the most part lol. Its easy to not get tilted at encounters when im making 10 other mistakes that are probably more impactful.
As a casual, it doesn't really feel that appealing right now. The number of comps based around augments is kind of wild, and not knowing those seems to really fuck with things. I've only been playing since about set 7, but didn't actually put time into learning more until set 9 (I loved the theme). This season just seems to punishing if I don't pick the right augments and setup around it.
I feel like the only way this is an issue is if you’re too locked in to forcing comps. I’ve really enjoyed this set and achieved my highest rank yet, playing since set 1.
In my experience encounters are bad but for a different reason. Those are borring. I feel like spikes should exist in the game. Power spikes are intresting. The new artefacts are first fun thing this set and I would like more stuff like this, allowing me to experiment and create crazy comps.
I was diamond last set and got stuck emerald this one (emerald one 82LP into full loss streak twice, rip) and take the game seriously to try to progress. Personally, I think encounters are mostly fine and some are great. Each game is a bit different. The real deal for me and why I stopped playing is the meta. Imo it's been an awful set, if you want to climb, you need to play the 2 or 3 comps viable which are hyper contested. Basically, I felt like I was playing always the same lines, and pretty often not hitting (even tho I'm sometime uncontested which feels even worse and happened so much throughout this set compared to usual). The only positive thing was the patch that brought the Ornn Items which made me try goofy lines, but I went back to playing like usuals pretty quick. Anyway enough rant for now, see y'all in set 12 !
I get your point, but that’s just any competitive game. You play the meta or you play to counter the meta. That’s your only option, it’s called “the meta” for a reason 😅. But I get how you feel, especially rolling down uncontested and hitting nothing and just trying to salvage a top 4. I really liked the ornn items, i feel like in the reroll meta those would have been really fun and we could have gotten some really funky comps with them.
I'm honestly surprised Mort thinks this way. Even if you look at just one example, like the Khazix encounter, the line widens immensly for people who levelled on 4-2 and those who didn't. I personally like encounters btw, even tho cases like this are frustrating, but I definitely didn't think Mort would think this way. The power scaling would be equal if every encounter gave u an item anvil or something, but the effects they have are just vastly different depending on your current gamestate.
I get masters every set out of habit. This set frustrated me the most. Honestly if the balance team got it right then this set would be fine. But the balance has been so atrocious it completely discourages more skill elements of the game that i thought used to exist in previous sets.
Just make TFT normalized with no augments, portals, or an encounters so competitors can only blame themselves for losing. No matter what mechanic the devs add to the game it’ll never make these “pros” happy.
i enjoy encounters (ussaly) but somegames its just forced 8th had a prismatic game i had all awful augments 0 tempo into kayn encounter and 5 people have build a buddy or starter kit other having good aggresive augments ik its a 1 example but theres not much i can do besdies highroll to play for top 4 that game
Isn’t competitive TFT and climbing ladder all about playing skillfully in order to reducing the impact of variance? Everyone is subject to the encounters
set 9 was the last "fun" casual type set for me with lots of degenerate gameplay styles, they kinda nerfed hard forcing/sacing and econ in general during set 10 and 11 so no real way to have casual fun anymore
My biggest gripe with encounters are the encounters at the very start of the game I hate Kayn, lillia bard like I would just rather play a portal I think all of the starting encounters are so boring.
I dont agree that you have to provide a solution when you are giving your criticism. its different if you are just talking shit. thats just being an ass. but your tweet is perfectly fine. This set is just a bit boring. the same happened last set too, it was great then balance didnt get solved fast enough (the game didnt get touched for over an entire month during christmas period and then got the smallest balance change possible) and the mid set didnt change anything. this set has fallen into that same pattern but its weird because this time they actually changed so much and introduced so many items and all that. but the set is just boring. why is it boring? how do I explain that? how do you explain that? is it a core problem with tft? is it the traits? is it the severe lack of expression possible in this set? is it the fact that content creators all make tierlists and everyone defaults to hard meta? is it that the balance team doesnt just kill off comps because that is too aggressive? why does this set feel so boring compared to everyone before it?
Im a tft noob and i find it funny that i dont vote scuttle puddle or the high variance portals, my friends bully me for this all the time lol. I just think high variance in a game that rewards analysis foresight and playing your odds is weird. Imagine playing poker and instead of seeing a turn card or even a river kayn comes in and says fuck it we are just playing with the flop. Gg if you had intentions of playing your loss streak because you low rolled and were trying to save enough gold to atleast have a chance on the 4-1 rolldown. just go next stupid.
No encounter feels good enough and yet the times that an encounter screws over my game plan is too much times. This set would actually be better without them… Also I miss headliners 😅
for me tft is already game of gamble ( not only skill needed but also luck ), with this encounter you just add another variable to luck. i prefer last set tho with headliner system, but lot of ppl disagree with that, i mean with hl system u can stabilize or very flexible with the comps, tft become an easier game. well no doubt why they disagree with that ,when i look their peak rank lmao.
and it takes how many patches to fix lilia targeting even tho mortdog playing the game on twitch. how can he not be aware of the game and not fix it asap, what a downfall and i know he needs to do a discussion with his team but yeah its just too long
Every time you say gap it sounds like you're saying Gyap and its funny. On a more relevant note I can't really say if you or mortdog are correct. I worked as a video game designer for 3 years and I can tell you that Mort is probably working with a ton of info that pros don't have. THAT BEING SAID I stopped playing this set after a month and never even considered coming back so...
I'm just a diamond player so I probably won't understand fully but atleast it's better than that godawful legends system. That one was the legit worst.
The thing is, on paper, Legends are actually super cool. Having your own unique identity/playstyle, etc. is amazing. The issue is obviously balancing, considering there was pretty much always 1 OP legend that 7/8 of the lobby played. First it was TF zekes spam, Draven meta, Ornn meta, Urf meta, etc. etc.
Lets just be real. Everyone at riot is literally bronze. Bag size combined with meta. No point in going any emblem at 2-1. Anyone going ethereal shen? Im gonna go ghostly and dog roll for all of it. Literal noobs
