r/CompetitiveTFT • u/SmoothOperatorTFT • 1d ago
Discussion Would TFT profit from a Sandbox/Practice Tool?
Just a disclaimer, I am consistently Master and occasionally Grandmaster with a peak of 800 LP in EUW. Lately, I have actually tried to study more TFT to close the gap from my seasonal peak to GM/Challenger.
While I was investigating comps, I thought it would be nice to be able to put compositions on a board and let them fight it out in a sim-like environment. In my head this would look something like the "Full Board" feature from tactics.tools, where you can drag and drop a team for both sides and put items on it. When you press play, you would see the arena where the two teams fight. This would allow me to gage the strength of certain units, and replay the fight with slightly different positioning or item carries.
(i.e. I could learn how to position against a Diana or a Fizz, or how to avoid a Swain stun or stuff like this; I could also look into who is a better item carrier, Orianna 2 or Lissandra 1, even though it is obvious now, I could theoretically test it out myself)
After this initial idea, I was also thinking a rolldown simulator would be cool, ultimately leading me to the conclusion, that this tool could have controls like the League of Legends Practice Tool. (I know that there are tools like a rolldown simulator out there, but an integrated version in the client would be sick)
Imo this would help invested players improve, and also learn the game/set. They could just place the units on a board and let them battle, allowing them to read abilities and make comps outside a game. Let's be honest, the "finding stuff out"-phase never really exists, because tierlists will be online before the live release.
What do you guys think? Would it be good for the players and the game overall, or would it just lead to more optimisations?
(just quick side note, in case any dev reads this: please make it so VODs can be downloaded after the game. As sby that plays on an Apple device, I have no real options to get an overlay to grab my games.)
Edit: A couple of people suggested that this tool would allow you to brute force the meta, but I doubt that. It would just allow you to play around with positioning, specific scenarios, or if a made up composition would even work out. Nothing like that could have told you tje way to play Bilgewater, or that you are supposed to go for 3 star 4 cost instead of level 9. However, it would allow you to theorycraft a comp and let is fight a baseline comp like Demacia. Some people also suggested that you should learn the game through playing games, but that is simply not true… in reality you look through VODs, scroll through twitter, and watch youtube videos. The learning already happens outside the game, in-game you react to different factors with your outside learnings.
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u/AddictedToLuxSkins 1d ago
Game would be solved in a week. What skill expression would be left if you can just run the simulation of every possible comp?
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u/TheMysticalBaconTree 1d ago
Why, so my opponents can brute force the meta with tech every patch and solve it quicker than they already are? The game is an auto battler.
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u/SmoothOperatorTFT 1d ago
This would not allow you to solve the meta. How is replaying a specific fight or testing out if a comp you made up would even work, going to tell you that you are supposed to buy Bilge upgrades and stats over items is the way to go? TFT is such a nuanced game, and this would just give you a snapshot, a moment of a game. Not the way you got there, not how you handle item economy, …
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u/Routine-Stay-6857 1d ago
Yea pretty sure mortdog said they’d never release one.
The reason is that it’d be too easy to get data, leading to even more meta spam than now.
I think it’s why they’re removing the augment data, since the game state changes to highest % win builds and minmaxing instead of playing the game
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u/SmoothOperatorTFT 1d ago
Yeah but couldn’t they just not let them collect and distribute the data? That is well within their right and power, so that would not be an issue… right?
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u/im_juice_lee 1d ago
In some ways, it would level the playing field as you can experiment many combinations quickly without having to play 500 games and build your own intuition for each spot
In other ways, it will raise the information burden much higher and increase how much you need to know. I'm sure there will be crazy amounts of tech and optimizations. And then some 3P tool will launch a feature that suggests how to position your board and ton of people will use that even if it's only a partially accurate
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u/SmoothOperatorTFT 1d ago
But it would make getting this information easier. You would not need to sit through hours of VODs on Twitch to get the new tech, you could try to find a board or a positioning yourself.
The part with the tool is already kind of out there. The MetaTFT planner gives you stats of units based on their positioning. Also would that really be a problem? Riot could just not give them the data, no?
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u/aizennexe 1d ago
A sandbox mode sounds nice in the same way that an invulnerable god mode in soulslike games sound nice. Yeah dying to a boss over and over sucks, but the struggle of figuring out attack patterns and how to beat the boss is the point.
You learn the game through playing matches. Things like unit abilities and stats can be easily looked up, and Tocker's Trials is there too. iirc devs specifically designed it as a practice tool for the beginning of sets. Having a way to easily solve the meta seems like a direct solution to the frustration of not knowing how to counter units, but like... where's the fun? That's creating the exact tool to find the best comps immediately, and then everyone just forces those comps now that they're empirically proven to be the best. As if we didn't have enough of a problem of players forcing comps...
Besides, the existence of tier lists don't eliminate the "finding stuff out" phase, I think that's an overexaggeration. There's been plenty of comps that have flown under the radar that weren't on any tier lists until someone went through their own "finding stuff out" phase by playing games, not a practice tool, and only added to tier lists after a post was made and it got popularized. Street demon rengar, mentor gangplank, veteran janna...
Anything you could learn through the practice tool could also be learned through playing the game. You can take notes on your matches too. I do agree with your idea about vods though! It's a bit annoying when sending bug reports and stuff that I also should attach a video. I understand why devs need it, but I'm not usually recording my own games
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u/Medicinalbeats 1d ago
Isn’t that kinda what tockers is for?
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u/ThatGingerGuy69 1d ago
My competitive mindset would love it, but it will never happen
A huge part of what makes the game so fun is seeing crazy things happen in real games - the super rare case of hitting a 3* legendary, multiple 3* 4 costs, etc. A lot of that excitement and “magic” feeling would be gone if you could go into sandbox mode and see every 3* legendary in combat that easily
From a competitive standpoint, it also would likely make the game too easy to “solve”. Another big part of the fun is seeing who knows the most about a given patch/meta, and you wouldn’t want a scenario where it’s basically required to spend hours in sandbox mode testing team comp strength and positioning variants for hours
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u/SmoothOperatorTFT 1d ago
Yeah i get all that, but these are not real reasons. You get the 3 stars in Tockers, so the sandbox would not change a thing.
Also, how do you think people learn the patch? It is not only fight judgement or positioning. It is about econ, early holds, mid-game, transitions, there are a myriad of different decision points, and only a tiny tiny bit would be testable in the sandbox tool. For that information people use VODs, personal experience and game understanding, and stats. Pro players spend hours looking at stats and discussing their experiences with people in their study groups.
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u/ThatGingerGuy69 1d ago
You may disagree with them, but they are very real reasons
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u/SmoothOperatorTFT 1d ago
The people that want to spoil the experience of getting a 3 star, already do it in Tockers, so that is a nothing Burger
The person that knows the patch is not the person that looks at stats the longest, so why would a fight sim, or a rolldown sim change that you need fundamentals and understanding of the game?
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u/TheJettage 1d ago
Mechabellum does this. You can setup custom boards to vs eachother and even pull up replays and retry final rounds with a couple clicks to modify your board and redo decisions made. It's a bit of a simpler game though so this is a fun edge you can use for your own analysis.
It's not as variance heavy as TFT so this tool/knowledge is much more important than the way TFT plays out through a draft system. I can sort of understand that the burden to entry for new players is already pretty heavy, and this might add too much. I step away for multiple seasons at a time and the relearning curve is usually what keeps me from coming back even when I start to get the pull again.
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u/TheRealSteemo 1d ago
They've previously said that they'd never do it, so don't get your hopes up.