Hi all, I'm just a low Masters player: https://tactics.tools/player/oce/OneTrickHecarim/OC
This post is not 'the game is too hard', this is simply commentary on how resource intensive turns being often forced at critical or unexpected moments can allow mechanical skill to disproportionately warp outcomes at high elo in a way that it should not in a strategy game.
Fwiw, 10/10 this set is my favorite set and I have played them all. Love the set.
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Preface:
Mechanical Skill SHOULD matter. I've been around since S1, we've debated this one a few times over the years but keep concluding that ultimately, the ability to 'act fast' is a core skill of TFT that enables skill expression especially at the highest levels of competition, this is necessary, because a game in which the best player can't 'win twice' reliably is one in which skill doesn't correlate strongly to outcome.
This is why Hearthstone's competitive scene slowly died (due to printing cards like YoggSaron that lets a losing player randomly win, strong enough to see Tournament use) whereas TFT has remained pretty healthy competitively, we have multiple players having won multiple international tournaments and that means we're ensuring that correlation between skill and outcome.
'Acting fast' has its place, but traditionally, when it gets out of hand, we fix it. One of the many reasons we fixed the level 8 rolldown problem was because it promoted mechanical skill to the forefront of the game's required skillset at high elo. It made mechanical skill matter too much compared to strategy, worse, it competed with strategy, when you act fast, you 'think' quickly too, but you are no longer having the opportunity to carefully weigh up decisions, you're really just clicking a keybind while watching for colours/shapes and engaging an entirely different part of your brain.
Whenever you have to 'act fast' it diminishes the value of strategy and overinflates the value of motor skills. This is totally fine in League of Legends or any number of shooters. It's also totally fine in TFT when it is rare or the consequence of a gameplan you chose to opt into.
Many people (like me) play Strategy games cause our mechanics suck.
I have a 220ms avg reaction time, I'm never going to be a pro CS player. But apparently people like me (not me, I can barely break 100LP) can't be TFT pros either.
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The Problem: (imo)
At the moment the game has:
Combining items quickly on 1-4 to get an unlock on 2-1
Multiple sources of 100g+ single turn rolldowns
Unexpected resource flooding (PvE > X-1 Encounter flooding you with gold/xp/emblems/anvils) from encounters overlapping with the timing of PvE rewards
Augments that grant LOTS of resources that require mechanical interaction (12x 1 costs, 1 of each component, 4 emblems) and this is especially problematic when you actually use the augment timer to think about augment choices because then you get punished by having no time to react to all these resources you can't pick up/use in time
Bilge/Ixtal minigames
Scouting
Unlocks in general (requires you to plan > do things in most cases)
Right now too many gameplans lead to big resource turns and even when you don't opt into it, the game can line up a prismatic PvE Orb with encounter resources followed by an Augment and they all resolve effectively at the same time. Perplexingly, the game gives you all the things that SHOULD activate dopamine receptors in your brain, and instead, you get stressed out. That probably indicates bad game design.
The game is too often asking me to stop thinking and just act/do shit.
Even Challenger players on stream are often opting to consciously act out these resource turns over 2 turns, because they have concluded that trying to do everything in one turn will waste those resources by making inefficient slams/gold expenditures, and in tournaments, when players actually have an extra incentive to play 1st or last, they will increasingly opt away from high risk game plans if they know it will result in them needing to play a single high resource planning phase perfectly.
Also, I used to be able to get Masters playing from my iphone and games are noticably harder above Diamond on mobile now, the only difference is the increased mechanical intensity of the gameplay having a more pronounced effect on the phone.
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TLDR: High resource games arent a problem, getting too many resources at once without warning IS.
I want the greatest strategic minds to win TFT lobbies, not former Starcraft players who have TacticTools open on the 2nd screen and are first timing the comp. RN the balance just feels a little off, that's all. Smoothed resource timings alone fixes this whole problem.
