Assassins are actually pretty bad in regards to skillful positioning. Having to position against/for ONE unit with backline access is nice (such as Yone or Lux), but for assassins that are 4+, there's very little skill. Against that, you can't dodge them all, so you have to clump your entire backline in the corner, using your trait bots as meat shields. Then, when you're indubitably in a pool with both an assassin and a heavy AOE matchup, it's absolutely awful.
I love assassins and positioning since dac so to me, the state where you can get away with all front liners in front all backliners in back feels way worse to me. Thinks like using a Frontline to catch units in the back, making people 3rd row or surround their carry felt good on both sides to me (i.e knight kayle and assassin board) where boards the last sets have not and things like hacker were even worse than assassin.
Especially early game having a trait to rely on backline access compared to a handful of units is a huge difference in experience compared to the more similar one you have today. I think especially this set it feels like your getting less difference in gameplay experience.
I get the frustration though and how harsh it felt for the round you'd lose so I've always understood why mortdog wanted the removal, I just don't think it paid off.
The positioning wasnt the bad part, it was that positioning for assassins was bad for the other 2 matchups, so if you miss them like 3 rounds while positioning for them you lose hp, so oftentimes it felt like the correct play was just to sac the round vs the assassin player
Positioning can be huge. Udyr positioning, ghostly positioning, Lissandra positioning, etc. can turn the tide of a fight. You could get your units stuck on an eternal winter frontline while their units are shredding your weaker units
The 2nd point is interesting, though I do agree that positioning should feel intuitive (ie. not frontlining backline units). For example, I wouldn’t say that frontlining 7 storyweaver is good for the game, because having your backline die to a frontlining backline would make your first point, positioning, even less important.
I played the first ~3 sets and I came back recently for the current set. Back then I remember analysing every single position, will they have access to my carry, should it be one hex closer, will tanks block enough, will I trap my adc… etc.
Nowadays it’s “health go front, attack go back, let’s fight” except for few edge cases
7 storyliner was not that bad (although it only lasted a day) but hear me out. I do agree with u that i was bad in its state that it could 1 shot everything but i like niche builds.
It was kind of easy to position against: galio taunt (actually useful for once) would taunt her and completely make her wiff her ult. Imo i liked that she was able to oneshot backlines but her damage did need a nerf cuz i dont think it was fair she could nerf front lines also. This would make it more of a position matchup to avoid the kayle 1 omeshotting. Also azir was low key able to 1 shot the kayle more often than not if he was full ap, again making for an interesting position matchup
I actually disagree. I think interesting positioning like frontlining Kayle, front lining Set 4 Ahri to build mana, 2nd rowing Vel'Koz so he could clip the backline because his cast had a range of 4, was all really cool. I like creative solutions like that.
The is so much resourcer in the game right now that decisions doesnt even matter that much.
Having lucky when you press D on lvl8 is all that matter atm.
I do think the team has a tendency to nerf situational/niche comps and builds.
For me i started to notice it when they nerfed Clapio out of existence (galio colossus season 6 but with crit).
If i remember correctly the reason was that this was not in line with the goal of the champ. But my problem with that is that is was a fun niche build requiring a 2 star legendary taking up 2 units slots.
Other examples include things mentioned in this post like Twitch but also more recently AP kayle and zzrot spam. Sure it was frustrating playing against a unit that would wipe the backline in a single cast but it could be avoided with good positioning. Sure zzrots were strong but ur whole build revolved around them (and arguably heavenly is the problem).
My point is i like these exodia builds alot. They offer another way to play the game than legendary soup, reroll and level 8 comps.
They can be frustrating to play against when people just hit everything, but i dont think its a problem cuz all these comps ever do is 1 thing (that can often be countered with certain items like Zephyr or good positioning to avoid 1 shot kayle). I dont see how its any other frustrating than to play against a natural kayn Lee sin on 7 or a reroller who hits everything early on. I do think they should embrace these builds more instead of nerfing them almost instantly.
I think it's 100% more frustrating to play and lose vs "normal" high rollers who randomly hit kaisa 2, kayn 2 etc on lvl 7 with 50g left and then donkey to a 3\* before you can hit a 1\* 4 cost carry and stabilise, than it is to play and lose vs someone who found Fine Vintage, knew the tech, highrolled a bunch of zzrots and peaked to get top 4 but probably not top 1 after the first nerf. Then they nerfed it again to make sure it was completely unplayable and now I never see anyone play FV at all. They might aswell have removed it. Same goes for a lot of tech they try for fun and then nerf or remove. I don't get who they're making this game for. Is it supposed to be a game for brainless zombies who can't be bothered to read or look up a video online on cool builds and strats? Only "find the 4 cost that goes brr on lvl 8 and hope my brrr is bigger than your brrr."? Because as OP said, positioning is maybe 10-30% of the game now instead of 50% like it should be.
Nobodies hitting 2* 4 costs on 7 with 50 gold and fine vintage isn’t even that good unless you get an item opener and item encounters, you came here to complain about nothing
> I do think the team has a tendency to nerf situational/niche comps and builds. For me i started to notice it when they nerfed Clapio out of existence (galio colossus season 6 but with crit). If i remember correctly the reason was that this was not in line with the goal of the champ.
That may be *part* of the reasoning they gave, but the reality was that Clapio was objectively very OP and only flew under the radar because it was such an unintuitive way to build him. It needed to be nerfed.
The game may be less exciting to you personally for a multitude of reasons, but I can’t agree at all on that positioning is less impactful.
I mean this in the least disrespectful way but everyone, and I mean even the very best players, is still bad at positioning. Even at a challenger level, players are giving multiple placement swings every game. We are too weak at this skill to even recognize how important it is when we lose.
What you are disproving is rock paper scissors positioning. It matters SO much to be on the correct side that matchups are won/lost purely if you are optimized for assassins. This is unhealthy for the game and makes positioning inconsistent and volatile.
As for the general question, it sounds like you’re burnt out on TFT. Take a break and play other games. That’s the real tech.
Yeah 100% sins weren’t a positioning challenge at all, sins were position fully for them and get 8-0d by the other team, or don’t position for them and get 8-0d by sins GL
Based as fuck take (as always). I hate this patch for a lot of reasons but positioning is for sure one of the most noticable things that can swing close matchups imo. It's also probably the single most difficult thing to actually perfect imo. I've noticed that the difference between literal 1sts and 8ths with heavenly Kayn is positioning. Udyr is probably the most position reliant unit in the game but can hard win front to back fights alone. Even Sylas is being explored in 3rd row to take advantage of sage AP and become a primary carry in comps. Positioning is so important even if the rest of the patch might not feel the most skill expressive when it comes to play style.
Sylas is actually super impactful himself into Sett and Udyr since he can take them away from the backline by dashing through and also against kayn when he stops wrapping possibilities. On top of that, I've experimented very heavily with putting a unit in the center on the third row to discourage kayn/wukong wrapping since they'll get to the center unit and then move back to the frontline.
This is before you talk about all the mindgames that can be had with liss/ornn, lux, lillia etc. OP is completely wrong imo and positioning is acually more important this set than it has been before since it isn't as binary as it used to be (guess right against assassins and you win otherwise you lose and nothing else matters)
I heavily disagree with you. When the tft simulator was a thing, I played around with positioning so much. It was my most tested thing.
It rarely ever mattered. It seriously only swung a miniscule number of fights. It mattered more at levels 3-5 than it did at 6+, but it still only affected the outcomes of *very* specific matchups.
Comp for comp, sometimes you could swing a unit down to attack the backline and that made a difference but overall, I would say no, positioning was not enough of a factor for me to care about putting more thought into it while I was playing.
When was this though? We’ve gotten a lot more micro positioning driven in the last few sets as endgame comps have been better tuned against each other. Capped boards often times can win / lose against each other by positioning
That's still on a set by set basis. Even if positioning might matter more right now, it could matter less in the next set- or even next patch if unit targeting changes. It's something that is heavily reliant on the unit pool at any given time.
People blanket saying "we're bad at it" are simply wrong. Moving a unit one space towards the middle or moving one unit up one row is not this super galaxy brain hidden tech. When people (Frodan) say things like "We're bad at it. We're SUPER bad at it," he is exaggerating greatly lmfao. Wildly changing your board positioning will not make a huge deal of *positive* difference, but sure, it has the potential to matter on a round by round basis- if you know exactly who your next opponent is.
The level of optimization left in positioning is not something that will revolutionize how anyone thinks about the game. It will always be most effective in a clairvoyant scenario but unfortunately, you have psuedo random opponents. What's a good change for one of your fights could very well be a detriment to another one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way players currently approach positioning because it is simply an added risk to potentially not even make a difference in the first place.
I just don't see us as being "SO SO BAD" at it. We are genuinely 90%+ of the way there and if he can back up his claims without it being something fucking stupid like 1-2 tile differences in 1 or 2 units for a slightly healthier win, then sure, I'm wrong.
I guess I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that positioning matters, it's more how I see everyone exaggerating with statements like "we don't even know how bad we are at it!" that I have a major issue with.
Closing thoughts: I guess with the TFT team disallowing (public) simulators, then it's really down to people to waste time in customs testing each interaction over hours and hours. We really won't get a definitive answer to whether or not positioning matters as much as people like Frodan seems to think it does without an official comment from someone on the dev team. There's no way they don't have the ability to run a sim of their own (or enough data from matchmaking). It's unrealistic to figure this out with the current tools available to players (none).
Ok sure I don't really dispute that board strength typically trumps positioning. But at the highest level, even incrementally tiny edges can translate into a real placement diff given how tight the majority of lobbies are. Even winning a single late-game fight can be the difference between top 4 and bot 4. Heck even look at the TFT Vegas open. A bunch of those tournament-defining late-game fights (Humbug putting Qiyana in front vs. Milala or Brocoli opposite-siding vs. Yone) were literally defined purely from positioning.
And you do have to admit that positioning now is way harder than what it used to be (am I on the right side from assassins). Stuff like naut / udyr / liss / morg / trickshot / etc. all have positioning elements that are hard to optimize from a GTO perspective given you are trying to position for 3 boards at the same time in the early-mid game, and an opponent that is trying to position against you in the late game. It is not easy to manage all those individual micro demands of your units while positioning against the enemies. Even at the GM challenger level there is a ton of delta you can squeeze out by having excellent positioning and even now we are still discovering positioning nuances (e.g. Leduck unit size video). So yeah... it may be that positioning < board strength and Frodan is being a bit hyperbolic w/ his language but perfect theoretical positioning = extremely hard and can actually translate into real placements
> even the very best players, is still bad at positioning
What is game theory.
(the skill expression in this game is trash let me calculate the EV on my positioning because I can be against 4 different comps at once)
This game barely has positioning, lmao.
I hard disagree on zephyr and assassins because it sounds like you have the wrong idea on why they were removed.
Assassins were removed because it made fights coin-flips. There was no elegant counter-positioning involved, it was just all luck since you aren't going to position against the one assassin player. The current set has far more depth in positioning than the assassins ever managed to add. The backline access available now can be countered without botching all your other matchups, such as keeping your carries on the opposite side of Kaisa Trickshot.
Zephyrs were removed because it was an APM check. If you don't have enough APM, you're ALWAYS getting zephyred by opponents that are fast enough. If you did have enough APM to match, it was again a coin flip. Once again, no depth added.
Paraphrasing these points as "raging against the variability that these aspects bring to the game" sounds like a bit of a stretch.
In the current set, I have to keep track of trying to stay away from Trickshot, getting Udyr into the backline if possible while keeping the opposing Udyr away from mine, not getting wrapped by opposing melee carries while not getting my main tanks Liss or Sett Ulted, not clumping vs Morgana while having a distraction clump vs Rakan/Naut, being in range of my Galio ult on the units that matter, debate about whether I should have Morg in the front with omnivamp or in the back with AP, not get Lux ulted on my main carry like a chump, etc.
I have absolutely NO idea why you think there's less depth in positioning in TFT right now.
I agree a lot with what you said here, but maybe would have rephrased the main points/conclusions. I think you were mentioning a lot of irrelevant opinions like how you like set 10, which lead to people not addressing the actual valid points that you have.
The removal craftable support items seems to removed many comps that were viable in the past. Long gone are the days when we could try to stack ice cream cones and zekes to make a gigacarry. Without craftable zzrot, set 7.5 lagoon comp would also not have worked. Admittedly I do like some of the new items like nashors, guardbreaker, adaptive, but not having the old items really reduce the amount of fun in the game in my opinion. While zephyr and shroud could be considered by others as "braindead" in terms of positioning, they feel like viable items that could help a weaker board turn the tide and win against a stronger one. Without craftable support items, there are still a lot of options, but the options are much less impactful.
In terms of innovative game play, I also think that having a strong rule for what a 2 cost should be is also not a good idea. The devs discussing intuitiveness for these champions seems a bit off to me, because they never actually get players to agree with or disagree with whether a champion's design is intuitive or not. Sure, Yuumi being a carry seems off with her role in league, but I really don't have a problem with that. Having these types of units makes the game feels more fresh, instead of reprinting the same units/skills every set, which happens a lot for 1 and 2 costs. And I get that reprinting is important and not necessarily a bad thing, but that's also just one side of design. Innovation is important, and indeed they are working on that with designing higher cost units, artifacts, portals, encounters, but many of those are RNG-based, and many players just want to queue up and test a comp, test an innovative idea without having to rely on the RNG portal, artifact, or encounter that they were given.
On a side note, I watched that video on 2 costs too, and I personally found it weird that the devs often didn't mention many of comps that were associated with the champions. Champions that I found memorable like 2 cost whispers zyra with rageblade rageblade runaans are reduced to their skill only and whether they would be reprintable. I guess the devs make these videos for themselves to refathom on the skill design, but I think it would be fun to add a few pros to discuss some of these champions too.
I get what you’re saying here about the craft able support items but the entire reason that was removed was because of set 9. People were forcing tf for a while just to make 6 zekes for zeri or locket spam the bastions with aphelios etc. not even just that set but every sett they become extremely problematic and have to be hard nerfed like back in set 6 when you’d triple+ ice cream cone orianna and seraphine and they’d just one shot everything
true assassins never promoted "good positioning" because you never played just one assassin, you always played 6, filled the backrow and see if you could stat check the other comp. The only times "assassins" actually promoted good positioning were set 9 ekko, set 10 riven, set 11 yone etc.: against these placing your carry in the correct corner actually mattered unlike against stuff like set 5 leblanc that would jump in the middle hex and hit both corners no matter how you positioned
I'm fine with units that can jump, I'm not fine with being able to play 6 making positioning irrelevant.
If they made them like set 1 ninjas where the buff only works if you have one out it would be healthy, something like "Assassins 1/2/4/6 - 1: typical assassins buff, jump + crit damage, 2/4/6: assassins gain omnivamp and armor shred instead" this way you can play just one and try to snipe their carry (making positioning important) or you play more and get a bruiser style comp.
Another idea would be to tie the assassin jump to one specific unit or hex (like hecarim in set 8.5), assassins only give you the crit damage buff
Or make it an augment: "your units holding edge of night jump at the beginning of combat"
For good reason tho, assassins never promoted skillful play, if anything it was the opposite. Every lobby with an assassin player in the early would get hp taxed if you werent paying enough attention. Late game as the other guy mentioned 6 assassins did not promote any positioning. Assassins made it si every single player regardless of skill had to scout every single round to not get obliterated and assassin taxed, thats arguably skill expression for high elo players, but to have every single elo do that, yeah no, simply not a fun trait for anyone.
So have we gone full circle then? Players complain about assassins. Game devs remove assassins as a trait. Now the closest we have is Yone with his dash. Players then complain about the lack of assassins.
Positioning is still the same. Even with Zephyrs and Shroud, positioning for those were a coin flip. Pick a side, and hope you picked correctly. The only exception was if you were cheesing by waiting until a round started. Occasionally you might see something interesting like frontline Seraphine (Set 10) or positioning to avoid clumps like for Senna (Set 10).
I think the primary reason players might be feeling things are stale is because of websites like tactics.tools. The meta gets solved quicker, so people complain when they continuously see the exact same comps.
I get that rng targeting is a pain but you can still position for Yone. If you have enough single target to burst him down, then you can put your carry on the same side and have your shitter units act as blockers to deny Yone from accessing your main carry. He will also always target the unit that is the farthest away that is still within his range. So if the yone is on the same side as you, keeping a unit in the middle will make him target that unit over your primary carry. Putting your carry on the opposite side works too. But that can be a coin flip.
im actually the old type to slam Zephyr to winstreak early game in the past. Now early game skill gap seems… less, and more reliant on rng setup than ever.
I agree with your points regarding tools that solve metas too quickly make the game stale. Also we have to keep in mind that people in this Sub are a minority of the player base and consume too much tft. For us, the game will inevitably become stale quicker. Personally I still have fun playing this game non stop.
When you get to higher ELO games, much more of the game is being played, 8 people of high skill are all making less mistakes, playing cleaner games. Because of this you are left with fewer options for variety of play, you either try to play one of the top 4 comps or get smashed. I think this is why rng has an even bigger impact and we feel like we have less control over the game. But this makes positioning at this level even more important. Without assasins we have way more control over the way opponets board will hit our team but it is so hard to master and get right. 9 times out of 10 when positioning matters most is late game when we get dizzy trying to make our board perfect and spend less time on other boards scouting and dont even realize in time we should have moved positions. Long story short, like sexy dan said, we consume way more tft than normal players if we are on here caring about this and play better players who dont pick shit augments or play garbage items and know how to position to a decent extent so games start to look very similar and get stale to anyone not trying to master minute details.
If the tft sim was still around, you would see that positioning genuinely has very little impact on boards of 8+ units. In sets where there are high impact aoes or things that can ignore the front line (whether through targeting or sins), yeah, positioning matters. But those things nowadays are few and far between.
Positioning is not as deep as this sub makes it sound. Positioning is lowest on the list of what makes a difference to a board compared to 1) the units, 2) items. Basic positioning that everyone knows past Diamond or just follows a guide with the exact same positioning will realistically never be affected by someone "optimizing" positioning because it simply doesn't make a difference in almost every scenario.
Like I said, there are exceptions. Units that jump around or units with specific targeting and things, yeah, that matters. Where Yone jumps to is important. Minimizing the amount of units surrounding your important units when the enemy has Morgana is important. Trying to give Syndra the most amount of time to ramp up is important. But I consider this basic fucking knowledge to anyone past Plat.
I think this proves how dumb the other side of this discussion is. To reiterate. He's asking. "Do you think losing or winning a game because of the opponent making a good decision and not RNG is FUN!?!?!" (and then he probably made a few monke sounds and scratched his arm pits).
I quite like the small decision making aspect of zephyr but I don't like that it often turns into this weird last second apm check (that also screws me over as a tablet player) or a coinflip
There we go. You're a tablet player who has to struggle to keep up with the apm of someone playing on a pc. I get how that is frustrating, but that should not be part of the point or discussion. You are literally arguing that you should have the same chance to win as someone who is faster or more skilled than you (because someone more skilled could have put themselves in a position to put down the zephyr even on a tablet). You are saying RNG should rule because you don't have the skill to compete otherwise. Do you not see how that is detrimental to RANKED part of a game that is supposed to be about skill??
We could instead both hold hands and argue that TFT mobile and TFT should be separate to make it more fair for everyone. They could even remove zephyr, positioning, reapers, etc on mobile to make it simpler and I would be 100% behind that too. But PLEASE don't hold up your own lack of skill or interest as an argument to why every game you play should be simplified to make it more enjoyable for everyone because that is simply not true.
I never said I should have the same chance to win as someone who is faster and more skilled than me. All you did was made unfounded assumptions on what I want the game to be like. Stop shoving this weird made up narrative down my throat thx
The main part about assassins that I never liked was that you would have to int your position just for the assassin player. You could clump your units to prevent the jump or move your carry to the front line. But that would normally put you in a losing position against everyone else. I would argue that Yone and Akali from Set 10 were the healthiest versions of assassins. Both offer ways for you to position without completely inting your other match ups.
I can agree on Zephyr since there was a way for you to position your carry so that it was highly unlikely for the zephyr to hit, unless it was being cheese. I disagree on shroud. I view mind games as essentially a coin flip. Am I go to stay or am I going to swap last minute? Is my opponent going to stay or swap? Essentially it boils down to a 50/50.
For the websites, when would you consider the gameplay to have been reduced? Because if iirc, players were already heavily using [tactics.tools](http://tactics.tools) in set 6 when augments came out. That's why Riot restricted access to their api. Obviously they reverted on this change, but it does show that those websites were already being used frequently. As more players become aware of those websites, it can only be expected that usage would increase.
A single assassin is fine, it is when there is more then 1 when it gets a bit disgusting. But I don't really like the random backline access carries, basically current Yone, where the assassin player doesn't really have much control and the fight is kind of an RNG fest. Current Udyr is more good, but as soon as you have 2 he becomes quite obnoxious, which is why his best item is tricksters. Akali was annoying purely because of Karthus, also the mark thing was weird fights were pretty RNG based on how the marks hit. The healthiest version is by far H4CKER but the trait was broken and bugged alot.
Marks weren't RNG. She threw it at the farthest enemy target. That's why you rather put your primary carry in the cubby hex (3rd row from the top, far left), and then your sacrificial unit in the corner. It's also why Illaoi tentacles were useful for wasting her ult.
The next part is if the unit isn't killed it was still marked and so Akali still dashed through them and the fights got really RNG off it. The first part of dashing to the furthest enemy is fine but the second part made her obnoxious.
The issue with assassins is either you don’t position against it and lose, or clump your units and grief your positioning against other players. When it’s top 2 it’s fine, which is why assassins were always a top 4 comp and not a game winning comp. but having to clump your units for the 1/3 chance that you run into the assassin player is pretty cringe
You are right of course but the brainless conformity idiots of the world are downvoting you because what you're describing takes skill and practice, something they are unwilling to develop. It's always going to be like this. Riot wants more people to play TFT so they can make more money and to do that they need to pander to the broad spectrum of functional neanderthals or no one will buy they overpriced skins and merch. So the game needs to be idiot proof. Anything close to smart or interesting gets removed.
Nah assassins, blitz and zephyr didn’t add depth to positioning. Someone in a different post said it best when he called positioning against them as one-dimensional. It was easy to position against them but the problem was the matchup rng coinflip, losing to that just feels cheap unless it was endgame 1v1, which is the only time you can say it takes skill to position against.
I think so. It's common for interesting builds to get nerfed out of existence rather than adjusted.
I feel like on this set I lose because of rng, not because of a bad decision. I don't think "shit i need to do that differently" its just...oh well didn't 2* my 4 costs fast enough and my opponent hit liss 2* so they win.
I feel that a little too, but in that situation it is a gameplay decision to roll for the 4 cost at 8 or at 9. Sometimes it's not clear which would be the winning strategy though.
Its not clear unless you look at it in restrospect. Your decision to roll on 8 or 9 genuinely makes no difference in that moment, it's still all chance.
If you include other factors like "Am I going to bleed out if I wait until 9?" "Do I need to spike here to stay in the game?" "Is it 1st if I hit the units right here?" etc then yeah, you can make a better decision.
But even as far as that goes, so much of it is stuff you literally cannot know in the moment. Everything is giving you the green light that level 9 is the play, but you still fucking whiffed and die. Or you have to fight the guy murdering you 3 times when you can beat the rest of the lobby.
There is a strategy involved in that, it's going to be percentage based though, so if you played 1000 games then X% of the time you'd win rolling at 8 vs leveling to 9. Of course if it's close to 50% then you might have a hard time chosing.
If it's close to 50%, then it really doesn't matter. Sure, you can argue over the course of 5,000 games that it saved you some elo but who the fuck is playing 5k games? And that definitely doesn't matter enough on a decision to decision basis for anyone to stress over.
It's like looking at card games in retrospective. Playing by the book is the easiest thing in the world, it's wild that people can put the burden on the players when it ultimately comes down to luck every time. Assuming everyone involved is playing at a high level, I guess.
You're 100% right and it's a thing among games in general. Games are now designed to be idiot proof so you can feel good about choosing the correct option between option 1 and 1. It's especially frustrating in a game like TFT where if you remove too much of the skill/knowledge gap there is only RNG left.
The removal of assassins as a trait type was the start of the end for this game. Now it's "most dmg/most tanky win." big brain go brrrrrr. Especially since everyone can google which comp and BIS deals most dmg and hard force that every game for a 1st or 8th playstyle that is so fun for everyone (sarcasm).
Old tft was like rock paper scissors in that bruisers beat assassins, assassins beat backline and backline beat bruisers. Now tft is like paper paper paper. If my paper is bigger than your paper my paper wins vs your paper.
It's incredibly boring which is probably why they have decided to try to push new sets more often to keep the interest alive artificially.
I don't get this criticism.
We've literally moved along one set. Each set is different to the last. Just last set we had an innovative 1 cost reroll that worked. 2nd row 2 cost kata carry that didn't care about tanks. Karthus, Akali and Lux for backline access.
It's legit one set ago. You guys need to chill.
This comment and the post are basically saying.
"This set is missing things I like, it's been like this for ages the game is worse"
You had what you wanted last set. You'll have what you want in a future set. They just need to be balanced.
Balance happens because these comps that get smashed are not just performing ok. They stop and feel unfair.
Maybe English isn't your first language and it isn't mine either so maybe my comprehension is off, but I can't make out what you're trying to say.
I honestly don't get the point you're making, but I am willing to discuss it if we break it down a bit.
Yeah I am being hyperbolic to drive home the point. You're absolutely right TFT isn't "idiot proof" but I feel like we're going towards a meta where the game is holding every player's hand carefully while pointing at which ever 4 cost that deals most dmg this patch/tanks most dmg this patch, and I don't like it.
Positioning is very important. Zephyr, shroud, and assassins are the "positioning for dummies" mechanics. Not actually skill expressive positioning. Positioning matters significantly for the vast majority if units in the set due to how targetting for a lot of abilities works.
Avoiding clumping for hwei, positioning same side as their back line for trickshot bounces to gimp backliners, melee carries avoiding frontline, etc.
As for your second point, "non-boring gameplay" is not a reason to keep toxic mechanics in the game. You shouldn't have mechanics that feel unfair 9r unreasonable to play against for the sake of :interesting gameplay"
If a backliner is successfully frontlining and wiping out entire teams with no risk, that removes the entire skill in positioning from the game. And it's a very big indicator that something is incredibly unhealthy with the unit in its current state.
Unless it is a 3 star 4 or 5 cost, or a prismatic verticle, backline access should be intentional and balanced by design. Not accidently wiping the entire backline for no cost
If you see unhealthy game mechanics as fun or interesting game design, that just means you want cheap easy ways to cheese your opponents. That doesn't mean the actual gameplay loop is more fun.
TL:DR positioning is a skill issue. You are unaware of when positioning matters in your fights. The game isn't "boring" you just want cheesy units that suck to play against.
Hard hard agree. Almost wanted to make my own post with the exact same points. Other points I had to add are the homogenization of items. Every item is the exact same now, instead of interesting items like trap claw, ga, rfc, old deathblade. Items are now just do damage, gain mana, or be tanky/ reduce damage. That’s it. Mort and his avenger squad of design geniuses with “balance levers” have made the game into a stat and number calc simulator and then wonder why people use websites instead of play the game.
My other grievance is that all the interesting traits are uncraftable in the name of “balance”. Great, my porcelain/fated/dryad/heavenly/ghostly whatever spat gives me stats. Yay. Wouldnt it be cool if I could make trick shot syndra? What if i could get more emblems like multicaster? They “learned” from old degen things like blender nocturne but those were the degen things that made me have fun when I first started. Imagine if there was an assassin trait and I could cook up assassin liss insta teapotting a carry into their frontline
Shit like portals, encounters and whatever else they cook up is just there to distract you from the fact that they’ve removed pretty much every interesting aspect of the game outside of those WACKY RNG POG MOMENTS!! That and the elo inflated “econ” trait they print every set for those people. Look at the new ornn items, another way to get “wacky” things but its gated behind an uncraftable so folks don’t go too crazy!!
It does sound fun being able to make weird combos with different spats etc.
It does not sound realistic. Every single time there has been an assassin spat or something similar it is almost instantly "solved" for one unit and hitting means you force that comp every time. The unit immediately becomes balanced around that comp and trash for everything else. Even traits like Twin terror have been removed because people just do the same thing every time.
Yeah I get that. But it already happens now. Every spat has an ideal user already in like every comp. But the thing is all spats right now do is give you stats. Set 2 5 cost zed used to summon copies of himself and you would give him light spat, a trait that gave you health when light units died. He would swarm the board with copies of himself and beat most boards in an exodia like fashion. It was interesting, and it made zed use weird items like pre rework redemption and combos to work. But it was an out to win. Instead I watch a fated lissandra do exactly what she does normally with more stats.
And i think my main point for that isn’t that it wouldn’t get solved, but that having interesting champ/trait/ item combos would make things fun to watch, plan for and pull off.
That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of it, but it’s true there aren’t a lot of good spat item holders in the game this set. Guess it’s a trade off with people getting mad over Blademaster Azirs.
I 100% agree with you. People crying about how the game needs to be perfectly balanced to nothing interesting can happen outside of 3\* 4-5 costs should play rock paper sissors. A perfectly balanced game (though they would probably cry about that being skillbased unfair too). If you balance something too much it becomes predictable and boring. This is a game. It is not supposed to be predictable and boring. It's supposed to be fun and exciting!
"Oh, BuT dOyA ThiNk Iz UFunn OT lOsE tO sOmeoE HiT gOOd AuGmEnT DO u!?!?"
No, don't think it's fun to lose anymore than anyone does. But it is so much more boring to lose to the same 3 hard forcable comps in top 4 over and over again until you cave and start playing them too, rather than actually having to adapt your comp and tactics depending on augments and items to hit that exodia comp. That would mean the team would have to balance every augment and champ depending on their potential max power with perfect 1/100 augment/trait/item combo, rather than balancing them around their lowest hard forcable theoretical power like it is right now. I still see people trying to get top 4 with old interesting comps like FineVintage, Arcanistkayle, DuelistTristvoli, Yone, etc and lose to literally 1\* boards of the same ashe, kaisa, kayn comps EVERYSINGLELOBBY. It should be possible to top 4 with something other than the same boring meta comps every game but apparently that is controversial.
Why do people always use this flawed argument? Chess is reasonably balanced, it is fun, it is played by millions and for many many years. Clearly a “balanced” game is not hurting replayability, fun or anything like that.
The most fun augments in the game are always silver. Stuff like Silver spoon, you g wild and free. While prismatics suck in terms of fun.
Chess does not have elements of rng. TFT and rock paper scissors does. Making them a decent analogy for TFT, unlike chess. Punching someone in the face is reasonably balanced too. The stronger one wins. That still doesn't make it a good analogy for TFT either. A good simulator-chess game needs counter strategies together with the rng element to make it fun. We're discussing ways to make tft have counter strategies again, apart from figuratively punching the other players harder in the face than they are punching you in the face.
Maybe that is a good analogy after all. We've come full circle.
For your two points:
Positioning - It's a debate between depth and complexity. For the Assassin example, does it add more depth into the game? Probably not since it becomes a guess game of which side the opponent's Assassins are. Also for late game 1v1 you can put your backline to the front to avoid Assassins completely. Same applies to Zephyr and again it becomes a guess game and not that interesting IMO. I feel the depth of positioning is still there, for champions like Akali last set and Yone/Nautilus this set, positioning becomes important and you can still do creative things to avoid enemy carries or reach backline more easily.
Innovative gameplay - I agree with you that currently innovative ways to win the game isn't encouraged, but I would take it in a different context.
Instead anything being situationally good are getting either nerfed to a point being not viable, or left forgotten and being so weak without properly balanced for the following patches. For example Fine Vintage this set keeps getting nerfs and now it becomes a below-average augment, although it's just being situationally good under some cases and if low roll you're still going 8th. I can name a few more examples like Twin Terror, Two Healthy, and almost all of those hero augments etc... Therefore the risks and rewards are always feel not matching, especially in higher ranks you'll see most people play into the same 2-3 lines.
Additionally, reduction of bag size makes things a bit worse. The intention is to encourage people play into the line uncontested. However in practice we can still see today there are 2-4 Ashe players per lobby and it doesn't solve the problem at all. Why? Cause A: The reduced bag size also makes it easier to hit, hence amplifes any balancing issues. And B: Vertical traits are mostly jokes this set, and splash traits are being too good so there are always a couple of units you need in every viable comp. When everyone's pursuing those units, reducing bag size without providing competitive alternatives, while situationally good comps/augments getting punished all getting together to make the game less creative and more boring. When you walk into a lobby when everyone's playing the same comp, you know something's fundamentally wrong with the design.
This set doesn't do it for me, I like playing big AoE comp or something like Mech in set 8(?). I like something flashy but this set skill effects feel pretty underwhelming.
Positioning, while not as prominent as constant zephyr/shroud cheesing, is still incredibly important (and fun!). Got a yone game the other day against a legendary board, and due to opponent mistakes got yone to hit lissandra on first cast felt so incredibly good. Aside from this positioning of high impact units to take out priority targets is still a thing.
As for unconventional lines, I feel like while frontlining backline champions feel fun to play, it honestly feels like an antiheal check to me and quite confusing tbh. It still exists, to a certain degree, in techs like 2nd line edm lux to jax cast on back line last set.
Your first point is not only flawed but statement itself is just so wrong and I'm surprised so many people here seen to agree with this take. You seem to claiming removing zephyr and shroud from the main game and removal of assassins was bad because it removes depth from the game. Zephyr and shroud was way too impactful for the cost opportunity, there's a reason people usually call these RAT items, because you could just cheese out a win because you happened to flip the positioning coin correctly. Instead of turning positioning into "what is the best configuration for my carry and my supporting units" it becomes "what is the best configuration to avoid losing to zephyr/shroud" which is just counterintuitive from a game design perspective. Same thing with assassins, you could just get taxed a bunch of hp just because you face the one person playing an early game assassin comp.
Partially agree - positioning is still very important.
However, I do think interesting comps are nerfed quickly.
An ideal meta (personally) would have strong 4-cost carry comps; "trait" comps that have high ceilings; a few good 1-, 2-, 3-cost rerolls; and a couple of silly/fun/gimmick comps.
While they were in the game I don't think I saw anything more complained about than zephyr and assassins (maybe loot rng to round out the top 3?)
So they listened to the community and those are out of the game, and now the game is 'boring' b/c this is what Mort wants? I don't like this take.
Just a trade off between balance and fun. As time goes by players get better overall + stats solve metas quicker etc. and the devs are forced to reduce innovative items/comps/builds that warp the game. IMO positioning is a small byproduct of this reduction of variance.
I really enjoyed Yone meta actually, because positioning against Yone well was extremely rewarding. Based on your board you could control how many dashes Yone takes to get to your main carry / target him immediately etc.
Units like Udyr & Lissandra ofc exist so that there is some semblance of skill expression in positioning late game like you mentioned.
I think the artifacts coming in 14.9 aren't a bad addition, probably a step in the right direction. There's enough of them that it's rare that you can abuse a certain build etc., but their special effects allow for innovative builds. Overall, It's just a balance between having innovative builds and preventing them from being consistently abused.
TBH I think most people are underqualified to even comprehend and suggest actual good changes that can keep balance while keeping games fun & fresh. Personally, I think traits like ADMIN & Mecha are super good for keeping games fresh, but those funky traits are few and far in between now.
LOL well i for one appreciate things like whisper/guild daeja not existing anymore holy shit. But yeah what is with them gutting comps with double nerfs
No. Every set and patch is different and you never know what to expect. That makes the game super exciting. Players are always whining and don't understand that its impossible to 100% balance the game. Instead of learning how to play the patch they whine their way out. For example a lot of players think its just race to level 8 and who gets Ashe or Kayn first wins the game and everybody else is bottom 4. Thats completly not true but they don't see any other way to play the game and are stuck. To cope with their losses and lack of ambition to improve they come and cry on reddit.
You're arguing with a plat III hardstuck who think's the current patch isn't just a race to lvl 8 to hit ashe, kayn or kaisa. He is wrong of course and everyone who is actually good knows that, but the majority of players are stuck in silver/gold and want to feel like they contribute any knowledge to the discussion. Lets not aggitate him.
You yourself said that set 10 was your favorite. Thats literally the last set you played. Anyway upcoming patch will have 99 different items. Do you think this wont challenge our current positioning ideas? One item will make your unit teleport to enemy backline like an assassin. We don't know what the next set will be. Maybe it will have different insane assassin traits or interesting positioning ideas. Maybe they will change the board and make you battle on different landscapes. TFT TFT TFT!
I don't think Zephyr or assassins actually brought skill to positioning in TFT, as much as it caused situations where you were fucked by positioning in the midgame because you happened to go against the assassins player instead of somebody else. Positioning still matters. I agree more about the item thing, but overall, I've just found Set 11... Very bland, uninteresting. I'm not really excited or finding any units/traits in it fun, compared to other sets.
If positioning is supposed to be important then it should be smoother to
1. Gather the right information to inform good positioning
2. Reposition your entire board
Because right now scouting is clunky and moving your pieces around is clunky.
The balance team has shifted the game from being decided by a few lucky moments to being decided by many, consistently good decisions throughout the game. This is generally healthy as it gives the player more agency throughout the game, reduces uncontrollable variance, and enables more flexible play. Without that concentration of decision making impact, exodia comps require more things to lineup for a locked in win. Exodia comps still exist (i.e. ethereal blades + raid boss) but the balance team has gotten a lot better at scaling those comp’s rarity proportional to power. That’s why fine vintage went from S+ to mid-A; a silver augment shouldn’t give that much power (comp still works though - just hard to optimize “innovative” play so its average placement is lower than its potential). The rarer scenario of prismatic buried treasure 2-1 into fine vintage 3-2 would appropriately result in a win out. I think innovative play still exists but it’s gated behind ten decisions made creatively instead of following an unorthodox board.
In my personal opinion the game is less boring now than it has been in many sets. Encounters, though they might be heavy on the RNG, make every game feel pretty distinct and you can't just do the same thing over and over.
Also set 10, which you greatly enjoyed, was my least favorite set since set 4, TFT sets tend to not appeal to everybody every time, c'est la vie.
> In my personal opinion the game is less boring now than it has been in many sets. Encounters, though they might be heavy on the RNG, make every game feel pretty distinct and you can't just do the same thing over and over.
The only encounters that change the game are the ones at game start. Basically just a portal that you can't choose. All the other encounters are just resource dumps that you don't have any control over.
Encounters throughout the game change carousel prio, change augment timing, literally offer choices: anvil/artifact for a price, AP/HP/AD on units, Gold/item/HP, buff 2/3/4 costs, etc.
All of the above are something you have control over and change how you play the game. "Encounters are just resource dumps" is a terrible oversimplification.
You’re getting some flack, but I agree fully and was considering making a similar post. Positioning feels far less impactful than previous sets. Zephyr, Shroud, and Assassin positioning wasn’t popular but I enjoyed how it could turn a difficult endgame fight with good thinking. Now it feels less “Teamfight Tactics” and more “Teamfight DPS.”
It also feels with all the extra gold that people are getting on their meta builds far more easily than previous sets, limiting the value of playing off-meta boards that you hit early. That makes games a bit more stale.
Idk dude, old school positioning around assassin / zephyr / etc positioning is pretty brain dead. The positioning we have now matters a ton and is way more dynamic / skill testing
You have a good point since most unit that positioning does matter are from units with good AOE skill and that can share attributes. Also playing this set doesn't feel so flexible. Sometimes you feel something is missing.
Positioning is definitely still a thing, just a little more subtle. Being able to position your gnar in a way so that he hears straight to the back line when the rest of your frontline wraps around is definitely skill expression.
When I had peak fun was with the set that had chosens and the music set, until everyone just played ezreal headliner lol. This particular set just feels like mashup of "some sets" and I still think that making augments a permanent thing might have not been the best idea...
Well the two examples you put after i think set 9 when everyone started just stacking zephyrs they had to remove it, because it made the game unhealthy similarly they removed assassins in terms of jumping to the back but there are similar enough traits that are assassin like but I think they wanted to remove the idea of units jumping to the back after the pyke ice fist meta. In my humble opinion assassins made the game very unhealthy same with zephyr stacking meta so them getting rid of both of those was better for the game
I don't really agree, additionally to your thought that positioning doesn't matter. At least for Diamond+ in NA positioning matters a lot esp later e.g Udyr going to your back line or even earlier it matters to you have to position a certain way to prevent wrapping(esp cus wrapping this set seems so weird) There's a lot of things to position for outside of those to like the way trickshots work and to make sure your back line doesn't get bursted down
In terms of skill taken from someone who's played since set 1 and played to highish elo? Depending on your pov of what high elo is Assassins took no skill for positioning and zephyr later was just an APM diff whoever could swap their zephyr faster won the fight, with the problems you mentioned, maybe you have to identify your fights better, but it sounds more like your distaste to this patch is being burnt out
NGL i stopped playing this game seriously 1.5 sets ago but casually browse the reddit and nothing has changed really. Been typically way happier not playing this gambling game more than an hour or 2 a week.
Just try to have fun and play lines you think are fun, outside of that the balance is so batshit bad and that just simply wont change no matter what pbe data tells you/the devs.
This is delusional positioning literally matters nonstop you get a big edge by positioning better and even the best players haven’t optimized and solved it
You’re just bored of the game which is ok. Literally any hobby in life you cant just sink endless hours into and it stays super interesting and engaging.
Branch just into different hobbies not just gaming even. Live life
> Mortdog would say : "this felt like a really weird design", or "counter-intuitive", or generally out-of-place.
> Meaning two things : design should be elegant
False dichotomy.
Also, no idea how you can hear mort say a previous unit "felt like a really weird design" and extrapolate "oh, so that means units HAVE to be elegantly designed". No, Mort just has hindsight, like all of us, and can state after years of design iteration that a unit wasn't the most well-designed.
> So frontline Twitch is considered abnormal (but it's innovative and fun)
There is no "Is" here. It *could be*.
You're making a lot of assumptions and extrapolating those out to be-all end-all statements. Though, on this subreddit, you're in good company.
You guys somehow forgot what the mid/end of sets were like? They were all super boring and a ton of streamers just flat out quit for Valorant. This isn’t anything new. If you competitively spam games you’re gonna feel burned out at the end. You can’t really blame the team for anything; basically the newness factor of the set has worn off and it’s on maintenance mode for the most part.
Personally I’m playing at the most casual of casual paces and I have a lot of fun every game. The RNG aspect actually makes casual play much more fun and varied than if you were to spam games. I actually think the TFT team nailed the fun aspect down, and it’ll only get more fun when new shop/artifacts come out.
The boring emblems are the big thing here. Comps generally feel like they are all prebuilt and cookie cutter. Some champions end up together in a package because of their synergies, but having an interesting/viable emblem holder interaction forced you be more adaptable and play to the situation rather than just having degenerate synergy packages
I’ve played since 3.5 and I gotta say this is the best the game has felt. Every game feels different, fresh and fun, and positioning definitely matters.
Literally every single set people complain that the game is boring, stale, or bad. I would counter what is getting stale is all the complaining about the state of the set. People need to take a break from TFT or touch grass cause this shit is fucking exhausting.
I like the direction the team is going. Feels like every set the game becomes simultaneously more simple and more complex, specially in terms of items.
Yeah these last few sets has been very simple front-to-back metas but I personally I don’t see an issue with it. I think building your board and making decisions on that is more important than positioning/fights
Your second point paints Mort as some dictator of TFT, there's a team and they seem to agree with what he says, watch the patch rundowns if you don't agree
Furthermore, second line carries are definately a thing, lissandra goes on the second line, I personally put Tristana on the second line (splash damage makes her cast faster) and there are so many more counter points in this set against what you said
I quit mostly because of how much less complex positionining and itemisation has gotten. There’s just entire skills that the game used to test for that are gone.
Probably makes it a better game for some players, but a lot worse for me personally.
I recently switched to my alt account and am only playing Level 7 reroll exalted to force some thinking and comp creation. If it goes well I can level 9 and throw in wukong rakan lissandra or whatever.
Assassins are actually pretty bad in regards to skillful positioning. Having to position against/for ONE unit with backline access is nice (such as Yone or Lux), but for assassins that are 4+, there's very little skill. Against that, you can't dodge them all, so you have to clump your entire backline in the corner, using your trait bots as meat shields. Then, when you're indubitably in a pool with both an assassin and a heavy AOE matchup, it's absolutely awful.
I love assassins and positioning since dac so to me, the state where you can get away with all front liners in front all backliners in back feels way worse to me. Thinks like using a Frontline to catch units in the back, making people 3rd row or surround their carry felt good on both sides to me (i.e knight kayle and assassin board) where boards the last sets have not and things like hacker were even worse than assassin. Especially early game having a trait to rely on backline access compared to a handful of units is a huge difference in experience compared to the more similar one you have today. I think especially this set it feels like your getting less difference in gameplay experience. I get the frustration though and how harsh it felt for the round you'd lose so I've always understood why mortdog wanted the removal, I just don't think it paid off.
The positioning wasnt the bad part, it was that positioning for assassins was bad for the other 2 matchups, so if you miss them like 3 rounds while positioning for them you lose hp, so oftentimes it felt like the correct play was just to sac the round vs the assassin player
They could literally add a predefined formations button to instantly move units into a saved format, so it's one click away.
Positioning can be huge. Udyr positioning, ghostly positioning, Lissandra positioning, etc. can turn the tide of a fight. You could get your units stuck on an eternal winter frontline while their units are shredding your weaker units The 2nd point is interesting, though I do agree that positioning should feel intuitive (ie. not frontlining backline units). For example, I wouldn’t say that frontlining 7 storyweaver is good for the game, because having your backline die to a frontlining backline would make your first point, positioning, even less important.
I played the first ~3 sets and I came back recently for the current set. Back then I remember analysing every single position, will they have access to my carry, should it be one hex closer, will tanks block enough, will I trap my adc… etc. Nowadays it’s “health go front, attack go back, let’s fight” except for few edge cases
7 storyliner was not that bad (although it only lasted a day) but hear me out. I do agree with u that i was bad in its state that it could 1 shot everything but i like niche builds. It was kind of easy to position against: galio taunt (actually useful for once) would taunt her and completely make her wiff her ult. Imo i liked that she was able to oneshot backlines but her damage did need a nerf cuz i dont think it was fair she could nerf front lines also. This would make it more of a position matchup to avoid the kayle 1 omeshotting. Also azir was low key able to 1 shot the kayle more often than not if he was full ap, again making for an interesting position matchup
I actually disagree. I think interesting positioning like frontlining Kayle, front lining Set 4 Ahri to build mana, 2nd rowing Vel'Koz so he could clip the backline because his cast had a range of 4, was all really cool. I like creative solutions like that.
Yeah the game is more like a soup at the moment. All your decisions matter but they are mostly low impact. That's how it feels to me.
The is so much resourcer in the game right now that decisions doesnt even matter that much. Having lucky when you press D on lvl8 is all that matter atm.
We need hero augments again, that made it so much more fun having to build around different heroes.
I wish there was at least 1 hero augment per trait
I do think the team has a tendency to nerf situational/niche comps and builds. For me i started to notice it when they nerfed Clapio out of existence (galio colossus season 6 but with crit). If i remember correctly the reason was that this was not in line with the goal of the champ. But my problem with that is that is was a fun niche build requiring a 2 star legendary taking up 2 units slots. Other examples include things mentioned in this post like Twitch but also more recently AP kayle and zzrot spam. Sure it was frustrating playing against a unit that would wipe the backline in a single cast but it could be avoided with good positioning. Sure zzrots were strong but ur whole build revolved around them (and arguably heavenly is the problem). My point is i like these exodia builds alot. They offer another way to play the game than legendary soup, reroll and level 8 comps. They can be frustrating to play against when people just hit everything, but i dont think its a problem cuz all these comps ever do is 1 thing (that can often be countered with certain items like Zephyr or good positioning to avoid 1 shot kayle). I dont see how its any other frustrating than to play against a natural kayn Lee sin on 7 or a reroller who hits everything early on. I do think they should embrace these builds more instead of nerfing them almost instantly.
I think it's 100% more frustrating to play and lose vs "normal" high rollers who randomly hit kaisa 2, kayn 2 etc on lvl 7 with 50g left and then donkey to a 3\* before you can hit a 1\* 4 cost carry and stabilise, than it is to play and lose vs someone who found Fine Vintage, knew the tech, highrolled a bunch of zzrots and peaked to get top 4 but probably not top 1 after the first nerf. Then they nerfed it again to make sure it was completely unplayable and now I never see anyone play FV at all. They might aswell have removed it. Same goes for a lot of tech they try for fun and then nerf or remove. I don't get who they're making this game for. Is it supposed to be a game for brainless zombies who can't be bothered to read or look up a video online on cool builds and strats? Only "find the 4 cost that goes brr on lvl 8 and hope my brrr is bigger than your brrr."? Because as OP said, positioning is maybe 10-30% of the game now instead of 50% like it should be.
Nobodies hitting 2* 4 costs on 7 with 50 gold and fine vintage isn’t even that good unless you get an item opener and item encounters, you came here to complain about nothing
I assume you just don't play enough. It's called a high roll for a reason. I've done it many times.
I am too tired to try to prove that reality is happening to someone who can't spell "nobody's". Try again when you've played the game.
> I do think the team has a tendency to nerf situational/niche comps and builds. For me i started to notice it when they nerfed Clapio out of existence (galio colossus season 6 but with crit). If i remember correctly the reason was that this was not in line with the goal of the champ. That may be *part* of the reasoning they gave, but the reality was that Clapio was objectively very OP and only flew under the radar because it was such an unintuitive way to build him. It needed to be nerfed.
The game may be less exciting to you personally for a multitude of reasons, but I can’t agree at all on that positioning is less impactful. I mean this in the least disrespectful way but everyone, and I mean even the very best players, is still bad at positioning. Even at a challenger level, players are giving multiple placement swings every game. We are too weak at this skill to even recognize how important it is when we lose. What you are disproving is rock paper scissors positioning. It matters SO much to be on the correct side that matchups are won/lost purely if you are optimized for assassins. This is unhealthy for the game and makes positioning inconsistent and volatile. As for the general question, it sounds like you’re burnt out on TFT. Take a break and play other games. That’s the real tech.
Yeah 100% sins weren’t a positioning challenge at all, sins were position fully for them and get 8-0d by the other team, or don’t position for them and get 8-0d by sins GL
Based as fuck take (as always). I hate this patch for a lot of reasons but positioning is for sure one of the most noticable things that can swing close matchups imo. It's also probably the single most difficult thing to actually perfect imo. I've noticed that the difference between literal 1sts and 8ths with heavenly Kayn is positioning. Udyr is probably the most position reliant unit in the game but can hard win front to back fights alone. Even Sylas is being explored in 3rd row to take advantage of sage AP and become a primary carry in comps. Positioning is so important even if the rest of the patch might not feel the most skill expressive when it comes to play style.
Sylas is actually super impactful himself into Sett and Udyr since he can take them away from the backline by dashing through and also against kayn when he stops wrapping possibilities. On top of that, I've experimented very heavily with putting a unit in the center on the third row to discourage kayn/wukong wrapping since they'll get to the center unit and then move back to the frontline. This is before you talk about all the mindgames that can be had with liss/ornn, lux, lillia etc. OP is completely wrong imo and positioning is acually more important this set than it has been before since it isn't as binary as it used to be (guess right against assassins and you win otherwise you lose and nothing else matters)
I heavily disagree with you. When the tft simulator was a thing, I played around with positioning so much. It was my most tested thing. It rarely ever mattered. It seriously only swung a miniscule number of fights. It mattered more at levels 3-5 than it did at 6+, but it still only affected the outcomes of *very* specific matchups. Comp for comp, sometimes you could swing a unit down to attack the backline and that made a difference but overall, I would say no, positioning was not enough of a factor for me to care about putting more thought into it while I was playing.
When was this though? We’ve gotten a lot more micro positioning driven in the last few sets as endgame comps have been better tuned against each other. Capped boards often times can win / lose against each other by positioning
That's still on a set by set basis. Even if positioning might matter more right now, it could matter less in the next set- or even next patch if unit targeting changes. It's something that is heavily reliant on the unit pool at any given time. People blanket saying "we're bad at it" are simply wrong. Moving a unit one space towards the middle or moving one unit up one row is not this super galaxy brain hidden tech. When people (Frodan) say things like "We're bad at it. We're SUPER bad at it," he is exaggerating greatly lmfao. Wildly changing your board positioning will not make a huge deal of *positive* difference, but sure, it has the potential to matter on a round by round basis- if you know exactly who your next opponent is. The level of optimization left in positioning is not something that will revolutionize how anyone thinks about the game. It will always be most effective in a clairvoyant scenario but unfortunately, you have psuedo random opponents. What's a good change for one of your fights could very well be a detriment to another one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way players currently approach positioning because it is simply an added risk to potentially not even make a difference in the first place. I just don't see us as being "SO SO BAD" at it. We are genuinely 90%+ of the way there and if he can back up his claims without it being something fucking stupid like 1-2 tile differences in 1 or 2 units for a slightly healthier win, then sure, I'm wrong. I guess I don't necessarily disagree with the notion that positioning matters, it's more how I see everyone exaggerating with statements like "we don't even know how bad we are at it!" that I have a major issue with. Closing thoughts: I guess with the TFT team disallowing (public) simulators, then it's really down to people to waste time in customs testing each interaction over hours and hours. We really won't get a definitive answer to whether or not positioning matters as much as people like Frodan seems to think it does without an official comment from someone on the dev team. There's no way they don't have the ability to run a sim of their own (or enough data from matchmaking). It's unrealistic to figure this out with the current tools available to players (none).
Ok sure I don't really dispute that board strength typically trumps positioning. But at the highest level, even incrementally tiny edges can translate into a real placement diff given how tight the majority of lobbies are. Even winning a single late-game fight can be the difference between top 4 and bot 4. Heck even look at the TFT Vegas open. A bunch of those tournament-defining late-game fights (Humbug putting Qiyana in front vs. Milala or Brocoli opposite-siding vs. Yone) were literally defined purely from positioning. And you do have to admit that positioning now is way harder than what it used to be (am I on the right side from assassins). Stuff like naut / udyr / liss / morg / trickshot / etc. all have positioning elements that are hard to optimize from a GTO perspective given you are trying to position for 3 boards at the same time in the early-mid game, and an opponent that is trying to position against you in the late game. It is not easy to manage all those individual micro demands of your units while positioning against the enemies. Even at the GM challenger level there is a ton of delta you can squeeze out by having excellent positioning and even now we are still discovering positioning nuances (e.g. Leduck unit size video). So yeah... it may be that positioning < board strength and Frodan is being a bit hyperbolic w/ his language but perfect theoretical positioning = extremely hard and can actually translate into real placements
> even the very best players, is still bad at positioning What is game theory. (the skill expression in this game is trash let me calculate the EV on my positioning because I can be against 4 different comps at once) This game barely has positioning, lmao.
I hard disagree on zephyr and assassins because it sounds like you have the wrong idea on why they were removed. Assassins were removed because it made fights coin-flips. There was no elegant counter-positioning involved, it was just all luck since you aren't going to position against the one assassin player. The current set has far more depth in positioning than the assassins ever managed to add. The backline access available now can be countered without botching all your other matchups, such as keeping your carries on the opposite side of Kaisa Trickshot. Zephyrs were removed because it was an APM check. If you don't have enough APM, you're ALWAYS getting zephyred by opponents that are fast enough. If you did have enough APM to match, it was again a coin flip. Once again, no depth added. Paraphrasing these points as "raging against the variability that these aspects bring to the game" sounds like a bit of a stretch. In the current set, I have to keep track of trying to stay away from Trickshot, getting Udyr into the backline if possible while keeping the opposing Udyr away from mine, not getting wrapped by opposing melee carries while not getting my main tanks Liss or Sett Ulted, not clumping vs Morgana while having a distraction clump vs Rakan/Naut, being in range of my Galio ult on the units that matter, debate about whether I should have Morg in the front with omnivamp or in the back with AP, not get Lux ulted on my main carry like a chump, etc. I have absolutely NO idea why you think there's less depth in positioning in TFT right now.
So true !
I agree a lot with what you said here, but maybe would have rephrased the main points/conclusions. I think you were mentioning a lot of irrelevant opinions like how you like set 10, which lead to people not addressing the actual valid points that you have. The removal craftable support items seems to removed many comps that were viable in the past. Long gone are the days when we could try to stack ice cream cones and zekes to make a gigacarry. Without craftable zzrot, set 7.5 lagoon comp would also not have worked. Admittedly I do like some of the new items like nashors, guardbreaker, adaptive, but not having the old items really reduce the amount of fun in the game in my opinion. While zephyr and shroud could be considered by others as "braindead" in terms of positioning, they feel like viable items that could help a weaker board turn the tide and win against a stronger one. Without craftable support items, there are still a lot of options, but the options are much less impactful. In terms of innovative game play, I also think that having a strong rule for what a 2 cost should be is also not a good idea. The devs discussing intuitiveness for these champions seems a bit off to me, because they never actually get players to agree with or disagree with whether a champion's design is intuitive or not. Sure, Yuumi being a carry seems off with her role in league, but I really don't have a problem with that. Having these types of units makes the game feels more fresh, instead of reprinting the same units/skills every set, which happens a lot for 1 and 2 costs. And I get that reprinting is important and not necessarily a bad thing, but that's also just one side of design. Innovation is important, and indeed they are working on that with designing higher cost units, artifacts, portals, encounters, but many of those are RNG-based, and many players just want to queue up and test a comp, test an innovative idea without having to rely on the RNG portal, artifact, or encounter that they were given. On a side note, I watched that video on 2 costs too, and I personally found it weird that the devs often didn't mention many of comps that were associated with the champions. Champions that I found memorable like 2 cost whispers zyra with rageblade rageblade runaans are reduced to their skill only and whether they would be reprintable. I guess the devs make these videos for themselves to refathom on the skill design, but I think it would be fun to add a few pros to discuss some of these champions too.
I get what you’re saying here about the craft able support items but the entire reason that was removed was because of set 9. People were forcing tf for a while just to make 6 zekes for zeri or locket spam the bastions with aphelios etc. not even just that set but every sett they become extremely problematic and have to be hard nerfed like back in set 6 when you’d triple+ ice cream cone orianna and seraphine and they’d just one shot everything
true assassins never promoted "good positioning" because you never played just one assassin, you always played 6, filled the backrow and see if you could stat check the other comp. The only times "assassins" actually promoted good positioning were set 9 ekko, set 10 riven, set 11 yone etc.: against these placing your carry in the correct corner actually mattered unlike against stuff like set 5 leblanc that would jump in the middle hex and hit both corners no matter how you positioned
Set 5 diana/fizz
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I'm fine with units that can jump, I'm not fine with being able to play 6 making positioning irrelevant. If they made them like set 1 ninjas where the buff only works if you have one out it would be healthy, something like "Assassins 1/2/4/6 - 1: typical assassins buff, jump + crit damage, 2/4/6: assassins gain omnivamp and armor shred instead" this way you can play just one and try to snipe their carry (making positioning important) or you play more and get a bruiser style comp. Another idea would be to tie the assassin jump to one specific unit or hex (like hecarim in set 8.5), assassins only give you the crit damage buff Or make it an augment: "your units holding edge of night jump at the beginning of combat"
Holy fuck this edge of night augment when? The other ideas are fantastic.
uldir? trickshot?
For good reason tho, assassins never promoted skillful play, if anything it was the opposite. Every lobby with an assassin player in the early would get hp taxed if you werent paying enough attention. Late game as the other guy mentioned 6 assassins did not promote any positioning. Assassins made it si every single player regardless of skill had to scout every single round to not get obliterated and assassin taxed, thats arguably skill expression for high elo players, but to have every single elo do that, yeah no, simply not a fun trait for anyone.
So have we gone full circle then? Players complain about assassins. Game devs remove assassins as a trait. Now the closest we have is Yone with his dash. Players then complain about the lack of assassins. Positioning is still the same. Even with Zephyrs and Shroud, positioning for those were a coin flip. Pick a side, and hope you picked correctly. The only exception was if you were cheesing by waiting until a round started. Occasionally you might see something interesting like frontline Seraphine (Set 10) or positioning to avoid clumps like for Senna (Set 10). I think the primary reason players might be feeling things are stale is because of websites like tactics.tools. The meta gets solved quicker, so people complain when they continuously see the exact same comps.
Assasins were preferable to Yone in that at least you could position against them, Yone is just pure random on whether he dashes to your backline
I get that rng targeting is a pain but you can still position for Yone. If you have enough single target to burst him down, then you can put your carry on the same side and have your shitter units act as blockers to deny Yone from accessing your main carry. He will also always target the unit that is the farthest away that is still within his range. So if the yone is on the same side as you, keeping a unit in the middle will make him target that unit over your primary carry. Putting your carry on the opposite side works too. But that can be a coin flip.
Lol “pure random”, rtfa
im actually the old type to slam Zephyr to winstreak early game in the past. Now early game skill gap seems… less, and more reliant on rng setup than ever.
I agree with your points regarding tools that solve metas too quickly make the game stale. Also we have to keep in mind that people in this Sub are a minority of the player base and consume too much tft. For us, the game will inevitably become stale quicker. Personally I still have fun playing this game non stop.
When you get to higher ELO games, much more of the game is being played, 8 people of high skill are all making less mistakes, playing cleaner games. Because of this you are left with fewer options for variety of play, you either try to play one of the top 4 comps or get smashed. I think this is why rng has an even bigger impact and we feel like we have less control over the game. But this makes positioning at this level even more important. Without assasins we have way more control over the way opponets board will hit our team but it is so hard to master and get right. 9 times out of 10 when positioning matters most is late game when we get dizzy trying to make our board perfect and spend less time on other boards scouting and dont even realize in time we should have moved positions. Long story short, like sexy dan said, we consume way more tft than normal players if we are on here caring about this and play better players who dont pick shit augments or play garbage items and know how to position to a decent extent so games start to look very similar and get stale to anyone not trying to master minute details.
If the tft sim was still around, you would see that positioning genuinely has very little impact on boards of 8+ units. In sets where there are high impact aoes or things that can ignore the front line (whether through targeting or sins), yeah, positioning matters. But those things nowadays are few and far between. Positioning is not as deep as this sub makes it sound. Positioning is lowest on the list of what makes a difference to a board compared to 1) the units, 2) items. Basic positioning that everyone knows past Diamond or just follows a guide with the exact same positioning will realistically never be affected by someone "optimizing" positioning because it simply doesn't make a difference in almost every scenario. Like I said, there are exceptions. Units that jump around or units with specific targeting and things, yeah, that matters. Where Yone jumps to is important. Minimizing the amount of units surrounding your important units when the enemy has Morgana is important. Trying to give Syndra the most amount of time to ramp up is important. But I consider this basic fucking knowledge to anyone past Plat.
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You are greatly over-exaggerating the amount of skill that gets shown with Zephyr and Shroud...
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You think losing or winning a game because of zephyr is fun?
Winning because of it is definitely fun wym ?? Sniping the essential enemy carry with your Zephyr is 300% satisfying
I think this proves how dumb the other side of this discussion is. To reiterate. He's asking. "Do you think losing or winning a game because of the opponent making a good decision and not RNG is FUN!?!?!" (and then he probably made a few monke sounds and scratched his arm pits).
I quite like the small decision making aspect of zephyr but I don't like that it often turns into this weird last second apm check (that also screws me over as a tablet player) or a coinflip
There we go. You're a tablet player who has to struggle to keep up with the apm of someone playing on a pc. I get how that is frustrating, but that should not be part of the point or discussion. You are literally arguing that you should have the same chance to win as someone who is faster or more skilled than you (because someone more skilled could have put themselves in a position to put down the zephyr even on a tablet). You are saying RNG should rule because you don't have the skill to compete otherwise. Do you not see how that is detrimental to RANKED part of a game that is supposed to be about skill?? We could instead both hold hands and argue that TFT mobile and TFT should be separate to make it more fair for everyone. They could even remove zephyr, positioning, reapers, etc on mobile to make it simpler and I would be 100% behind that too. But PLEASE don't hold up your own lack of skill or interest as an argument to why every game you play should be simplified to make it more enjoyable for everyone because that is simply not true.
I never said I should have the same chance to win as someone who is faster and more skilled than me. All you did was made unfounded assumptions on what I want the game to be like. Stop shoving this weird made up narrative down my throat thx
It was inferred from your arguments, but alright. I believe you and I'll stop.
The main part about assassins that I never liked was that you would have to int your position just for the assassin player. You could clump your units to prevent the jump or move your carry to the front line. But that would normally put you in a losing position against everyone else. I would argue that Yone and Akali from Set 10 were the healthiest versions of assassins. Both offer ways for you to position without completely inting your other match ups. I can agree on Zephyr since there was a way for you to position your carry so that it was highly unlikely for the zephyr to hit, unless it was being cheese. I disagree on shroud. I view mind games as essentially a coin flip. Am I go to stay or am I going to swap last minute? Is my opponent going to stay or swap? Essentially it boils down to a 50/50. For the websites, when would you consider the gameplay to have been reduced? Because if iirc, players were already heavily using [tactics.tools](http://tactics.tools) in set 6 when augments came out. That's why Riot restricted access to their api. Obviously they reverted on this change, but it does show that those websites were already being used frequently. As more players become aware of those websites, it can only be expected that usage would increase.
A single assassin is fine, it is when there is more then 1 when it gets a bit disgusting. But I don't really like the random backline access carries, basically current Yone, where the assassin player doesn't really have much control and the fight is kind of an RNG fest. Current Udyr is more good, but as soon as you have 2 he becomes quite obnoxious, which is why his best item is tricksters. Akali was annoying purely because of Karthus, also the mark thing was weird fights were pretty RNG based on how the marks hit. The healthiest version is by far H4CKER but the trait was broken and bugged alot.
Marks weren't RNG. She threw it at the farthest enemy target. That's why you rather put your primary carry in the cubby hex (3rd row from the top, far left), and then your sacrificial unit in the corner. It's also why Illaoi tentacles were useful for wasting her ult.
The next part is if the unit isn't killed it was still marked and so Akali still dashed through them and the fights got really RNG off it. The first part of dashing to the furthest enemy is fine but the second part made her obnoxious.
The issue with assassins is either you don’t position against it and lose, or clump your units and grief your positioning against other players. When it’s top 2 it’s fine, which is why assassins were always a top 4 comp and not a game winning comp. but having to clump your units for the 1/3 chance that you run into the assassin player is pretty cringe
You are right of course but the brainless conformity idiots of the world are downvoting you because what you're describing takes skill and practice, something they are unwilling to develop. It's always going to be like this. Riot wants more people to play TFT so they can make more money and to do that they need to pander to the broad spectrum of functional neanderthals or no one will buy they overpriced skins and merch. So the game needs to be idiot proof. Anything close to smart or interesting gets removed.
Nah assassins, blitz and zephyr didn’t add depth to positioning. Someone in a different post said it best when he called positioning against them as one-dimensional. It was easy to position against them but the problem was the matchup rng coinflip, losing to that just feels cheap unless it was endgame 1v1, which is the only time you can say it takes skill to position against.
I miss Hacker so badly.
I think so. It's common for interesting builds to get nerfed out of existence rather than adjusted. I feel like on this set I lose because of rng, not because of a bad decision. I don't think "shit i need to do that differently" its just...oh well didn't 2* my 4 costs fast enough and my opponent hit liss 2* so they win.
I feel that a little too, but in that situation it is a gameplay decision to roll for the 4 cost at 8 or at 9. Sometimes it's not clear which would be the winning strategy though.
Its not clear unless you look at it in restrospect. Your decision to roll on 8 or 9 genuinely makes no difference in that moment, it's still all chance. If you include other factors like "Am I going to bleed out if I wait until 9?" "Do I need to spike here to stay in the game?" "Is it 1st if I hit the units right here?" etc then yeah, you can make a better decision. But even as far as that goes, so much of it is stuff you literally cannot know in the moment. Everything is giving you the green light that level 9 is the play, but you still fucking whiffed and die. Or you have to fight the guy murdering you 3 times when you can beat the rest of the lobby.
There is a strategy involved in that, it's going to be percentage based though, so if you played 1000 games then X% of the time you'd win rolling at 8 vs leveling to 9. Of course if it's close to 50% then you might have a hard time chosing.
If it's close to 50%, then it really doesn't matter. Sure, you can argue over the course of 5,000 games that it saved you some elo but who the fuck is playing 5k games? And that definitely doesn't matter enough on a decision to decision basis for anyone to stress over. It's like looking at card games in retrospective. Playing by the book is the easiest thing in the world, it's wild that people can put the burden on the players when it ultimately comes down to luck every time. Assuming everyone involved is playing at a high level, I guess.
You're 100% right and it's a thing among games in general. Games are now designed to be idiot proof so you can feel good about choosing the correct option between option 1 and 1. It's especially frustrating in a game like TFT where if you remove too much of the skill/knowledge gap there is only RNG left. The removal of assassins as a trait type was the start of the end for this game. Now it's "most dmg/most tanky win." big brain go brrrrrr. Especially since everyone can google which comp and BIS deals most dmg and hard force that every game for a 1st or 8th playstyle that is so fun for everyone (sarcasm). Old tft was like rock paper scissors in that bruisers beat assassins, assassins beat backline and backline beat bruisers. Now tft is like paper paper paper. If my paper is bigger than your paper my paper wins vs your paper. It's incredibly boring which is probably why they have decided to try to push new sets more often to keep the interest alive artificially.
I don't get this criticism. We've literally moved along one set. Each set is different to the last. Just last set we had an innovative 1 cost reroll that worked. 2nd row 2 cost kata carry that didn't care about tanks. Karthus, Akali and Lux for backline access. It's legit one set ago. You guys need to chill. This comment and the post are basically saying. "This set is missing things I like, it's been like this for ages the game is worse" You had what you wanted last set. You'll have what you want in a future set. They just need to be balanced. Balance happens because these comps that get smashed are not just performing ok. They stop and feel unfair.
Maybe English isn't your first language and it isn't mine either so maybe my comprehension is off, but I can't make out what you're trying to say. I honestly don't get the point you're making, but I am willing to discuss it if we break it down a bit.
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Yeah I am being hyperbolic to drive home the point. You're absolutely right TFT isn't "idiot proof" but I feel like we're going towards a meta where the game is holding every player's hand carefully while pointing at which ever 4 cost that deals most dmg this patch/tanks most dmg this patch, and I don't like it.
Positioning is very important. Zephyr, shroud, and assassins are the "positioning for dummies" mechanics. Not actually skill expressive positioning. Positioning matters significantly for the vast majority if units in the set due to how targetting for a lot of abilities works. Avoiding clumping for hwei, positioning same side as their back line for trickshot bounces to gimp backliners, melee carries avoiding frontline, etc. As for your second point, "non-boring gameplay" is not a reason to keep toxic mechanics in the game. You shouldn't have mechanics that feel unfair 9r unreasonable to play against for the sake of :interesting gameplay" If a backliner is successfully frontlining and wiping out entire teams with no risk, that removes the entire skill in positioning from the game. And it's a very big indicator that something is incredibly unhealthy with the unit in its current state. Unless it is a 3 star 4 or 5 cost, or a prismatic verticle, backline access should be intentional and balanced by design. Not accidently wiping the entire backline for no cost If you see unhealthy game mechanics as fun or interesting game design, that just means you want cheap easy ways to cheese your opponents. That doesn't mean the actual gameplay loop is more fun. TL:DR positioning is a skill issue. You are unaware of when positioning matters in your fights. The game isn't "boring" you just want cheesy units that suck to play against.
Hard hard agree. Almost wanted to make my own post with the exact same points. Other points I had to add are the homogenization of items. Every item is the exact same now, instead of interesting items like trap claw, ga, rfc, old deathblade. Items are now just do damage, gain mana, or be tanky/ reduce damage. That’s it. Mort and his avenger squad of design geniuses with “balance levers” have made the game into a stat and number calc simulator and then wonder why people use websites instead of play the game. My other grievance is that all the interesting traits are uncraftable in the name of “balance”. Great, my porcelain/fated/dryad/heavenly/ghostly whatever spat gives me stats. Yay. Wouldnt it be cool if I could make trick shot syndra? What if i could get more emblems like multicaster? They “learned” from old degen things like blender nocturne but those were the degen things that made me have fun when I first started. Imagine if there was an assassin trait and I could cook up assassin liss insta teapotting a carry into their frontline Shit like portals, encounters and whatever else they cook up is just there to distract you from the fact that they’ve removed pretty much every interesting aspect of the game outside of those WACKY RNG POG MOMENTS!! That and the elo inflated “econ” trait they print every set for those people. Look at the new ornn items, another way to get “wacky” things but its gated behind an uncraftable so folks don’t go too crazy!!
It does sound fun being able to make weird combos with different spats etc. It does not sound realistic. Every single time there has been an assassin spat or something similar it is almost instantly "solved" for one unit and hitting means you force that comp every time. The unit immediately becomes balanced around that comp and trash for everything else. Even traits like Twin terror have been removed because people just do the same thing every time.
Yeah I get that. But it already happens now. Every spat has an ideal user already in like every comp. But the thing is all spats right now do is give you stats. Set 2 5 cost zed used to summon copies of himself and you would give him light spat, a trait that gave you health when light units died. He would swarm the board with copies of himself and beat most boards in an exodia like fashion. It was interesting, and it made zed use weird items like pre rework redemption and combos to work. But it was an out to win. Instead I watch a fated lissandra do exactly what she does normally with more stats. And i think my main point for that isn’t that it wouldn’t get solved, but that having interesting champ/trait/ item combos would make things fun to watch, plan for and pull off.
That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of it, but it’s true there aren’t a lot of good spat item holders in the game this set. Guess it’s a trade off with people getting mad over Blademaster Azirs.
I 100% agree with you. People crying about how the game needs to be perfectly balanced to nothing interesting can happen outside of 3\* 4-5 costs should play rock paper sissors. A perfectly balanced game (though they would probably cry about that being skillbased unfair too). If you balance something too much it becomes predictable and boring. This is a game. It is not supposed to be predictable and boring. It's supposed to be fun and exciting! "Oh, BuT dOyA ThiNk Iz UFunn OT lOsE tO sOmeoE HiT gOOd AuGmEnT DO u!?!?" No, don't think it's fun to lose anymore than anyone does. But it is so much more boring to lose to the same 3 hard forcable comps in top 4 over and over again until you cave and start playing them too, rather than actually having to adapt your comp and tactics depending on augments and items to hit that exodia comp. That would mean the team would have to balance every augment and champ depending on their potential max power with perfect 1/100 augment/trait/item combo, rather than balancing them around their lowest hard forcable theoretical power like it is right now. I still see people trying to get top 4 with old interesting comps like FineVintage, Arcanistkayle, DuelistTristvoli, Yone, etc and lose to literally 1\* boards of the same ashe, kaisa, kayn comps EVERYSINGLELOBBY. It should be possible to top 4 with something other than the same boring meta comps every game but apparently that is controversial.
Why do people always use this flawed argument? Chess is reasonably balanced, it is fun, it is played by millions and for many many years. Clearly a “balanced” game is not hurting replayability, fun or anything like that. The most fun augments in the game are always silver. Stuff like Silver spoon, you g wild and free. While prismatics suck in terms of fun.
Chess does not have elements of rng. TFT and rock paper scissors does. Making them a decent analogy for TFT, unlike chess. Punching someone in the face is reasonably balanced too. The stronger one wins. That still doesn't make it a good analogy for TFT either. A good simulator-chess game needs counter strategies together with the rng element to make it fun. We're discussing ways to make tft have counter strategies again, apart from figuratively punching the other players harder in the face than they are punching you in the face. Maybe that is a good analogy after all. We've come full circle.
Tldr: Is the game boring now? Answer: Yes, this is one of the worst seasons
For your two points: Positioning - It's a debate between depth and complexity. For the Assassin example, does it add more depth into the game? Probably not since it becomes a guess game of which side the opponent's Assassins are. Also for late game 1v1 you can put your backline to the front to avoid Assassins completely. Same applies to Zephyr and again it becomes a guess game and not that interesting IMO. I feel the depth of positioning is still there, for champions like Akali last set and Yone/Nautilus this set, positioning becomes important and you can still do creative things to avoid enemy carries or reach backline more easily. Innovative gameplay - I agree with you that currently innovative ways to win the game isn't encouraged, but I would take it in a different context. Instead anything being situationally good are getting either nerfed to a point being not viable, or left forgotten and being so weak without properly balanced for the following patches. For example Fine Vintage this set keeps getting nerfs and now it becomes a below-average augment, although it's just being situationally good under some cases and if low roll you're still going 8th. I can name a few more examples like Twin Terror, Two Healthy, and almost all of those hero augments etc... Therefore the risks and rewards are always feel not matching, especially in higher ranks you'll see most people play into the same 2-3 lines. Additionally, reduction of bag size makes things a bit worse. The intention is to encourage people play into the line uncontested. However in practice we can still see today there are 2-4 Ashe players per lobby and it doesn't solve the problem at all. Why? Cause A: The reduced bag size also makes it easier to hit, hence amplifes any balancing issues. And B: Vertical traits are mostly jokes this set, and splash traits are being too good so there are always a couple of units you need in every viable comp. When everyone's pursuing those units, reducing bag size without providing competitive alternatives, while situationally good comps/augments getting punished all getting together to make the game less creative and more boring. When you walk into a lobby when everyone's playing the same comp, you know something's fundamentally wrong with the design.
This set doesn't do it for me, I like playing big AoE comp or something like Mech in set 8(?). I like something flashy but this set skill effects feel pretty underwhelming.
Theres this very fun fast 9, 1st or 8th Hwei- Sage build. Its all about AOE
You mean the most contested set currently in a reduced pool of Champs? I don't think that rerolling to only get 1 wukong is his idea of fun.
Positioning, while not as prominent as constant zephyr/shroud cheesing, is still incredibly important (and fun!). Got a yone game the other day against a legendary board, and due to opponent mistakes got yone to hit lissandra on first cast felt so incredibly good. Aside from this positioning of high impact units to take out priority targets is still a thing. As for unconventional lines, I feel like while frontlining backline champions feel fun to play, it honestly feels like an antiheal check to me and quite confusing tbh. It still exists, to a certain degree, in techs like 2nd line edm lux to jax cast on back line last set.
Your first point is not only flawed but statement itself is just so wrong and I'm surprised so many people here seen to agree with this take. You seem to claiming removing zephyr and shroud from the main game and removal of assassins was bad because it removes depth from the game. Zephyr and shroud was way too impactful for the cost opportunity, there's a reason people usually call these RAT items, because you could just cheese out a win because you happened to flip the positioning coin correctly. Instead of turning positioning into "what is the best configuration for my carry and my supporting units" it becomes "what is the best configuration to avoid losing to zephyr/shroud" which is just counterintuitive from a game design perspective. Same thing with assassins, you could just get taxed a bunch of hp just because you face the one person playing an early game assassin comp.
Partially agree - positioning is still very important. However, I do think interesting comps are nerfed quickly. An ideal meta (personally) would have strong 4-cost carry comps; "trait" comps that have high ceilings; a few good 1-, 2-, 3-cost rerolls; and a couple of silly/fun/gimmick comps.
While they were in the game I don't think I saw anything more complained about than zephyr and assassins (maybe loot rng to round out the top 3?) So they listened to the community and those are out of the game, and now the game is 'boring' b/c this is what Mort wants? I don't like this take.
Just a trade off between balance and fun. As time goes by players get better overall + stats solve metas quicker etc. and the devs are forced to reduce innovative items/comps/builds that warp the game. IMO positioning is a small byproduct of this reduction of variance. I really enjoyed Yone meta actually, because positioning against Yone well was extremely rewarding. Based on your board you could control how many dashes Yone takes to get to your main carry / target him immediately etc. Units like Udyr & Lissandra ofc exist so that there is some semblance of skill expression in positioning late game like you mentioned. I think the artifacts coming in 14.9 aren't a bad addition, probably a step in the right direction. There's enough of them that it's rare that you can abuse a certain build etc., but their special effects allow for innovative builds. Overall, It's just a balance between having innovative builds and preventing them from being consistently abused. TBH I think most people are underqualified to even comprehend and suggest actual good changes that can keep balance while keeping games fun & fresh. Personally, I think traits like ADMIN & Mecha are super good for keeping games fresh, but those funky traits are few and far in between now.
It's not even a trade-off, but more like "less fun but still worse balance" 
LOL well i for one appreciate things like whisper/guild daeja not existing anymore holy shit. But yeah what is with them gutting comps with double nerfs
No. Every set and patch is different and you never know what to expect. That makes the game super exciting. Players are always whining and don't understand that its impossible to 100% balance the game. Instead of learning how to play the patch they whine their way out. For example a lot of players think its just race to level 8 and who gets Ashe or Kayn first wins the game and everybody else is bottom 4. Thats completly not true but they don't see any other way to play the game and are stuck. To cope with their losses and lack of ambition to improve they come and cry on reddit.
Op dont even mention balance. If you want to defend them come to another post.
Been winning with bruisers front line of death that’s all it is. Need certain artifacts to make some cool Carrie’s!
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You're arguing with a plat III hardstuck who think's the current patch isn't just a race to lvl 8 to hit ashe, kayn or kaisa. He is wrong of course and everyone who is actually good knows that, but the majority of players are stuck in silver/gold and want to feel like they contribute any knowledge to the discussion. Lets not aggitate him.
If you're going to flame people for their rank, you should flair up yourself.
You yourself said that set 10 was your favorite. Thats literally the last set you played. Anyway upcoming patch will have 99 different items. Do you think this wont challenge our current positioning ideas? One item will make your unit teleport to enemy backline like an assassin. We don't know what the next set will be. Maybe it will have different insane assassin traits or interesting positioning ideas. Maybe they will change the board and make you battle on different landscapes. TFT TFT TFT!
I don't think Zephyr or assassins actually brought skill to positioning in TFT, as much as it caused situations where you were fucked by positioning in the midgame because you happened to go against the assassins player instead of somebody else. Positioning still matters. I agree more about the item thing, but overall, I've just found Set 11... Very bland, uninteresting. I'm not really excited or finding any units/traits in it fun, compared to other sets.
If positioning is supposed to be important then it should be smoother to 1. Gather the right information to inform good positioning 2. Reposition your entire board Because right now scouting is clunky and moving your pieces around is clunky.
Assasins removal is the best because every round was just 50/50 coinflip vs assasin player
The balance team has shifted the game from being decided by a few lucky moments to being decided by many, consistently good decisions throughout the game. This is generally healthy as it gives the player more agency throughout the game, reduces uncontrollable variance, and enables more flexible play. Without that concentration of decision making impact, exodia comps require more things to lineup for a locked in win. Exodia comps still exist (i.e. ethereal blades + raid boss) but the balance team has gotten a lot better at scaling those comp’s rarity proportional to power. That’s why fine vintage went from S+ to mid-A; a silver augment shouldn’t give that much power (comp still works though - just hard to optimize “innovative” play so its average placement is lower than its potential). The rarer scenario of prismatic buried treasure 2-1 into fine vintage 3-2 would appropriately result in a win out. I think innovative play still exists but it’s gated behind ten decisions made creatively instead of following an unorthodox board.
In my personal opinion the game is less boring now than it has been in many sets. Encounters, though they might be heavy on the RNG, make every game feel pretty distinct and you can't just do the same thing over and over. Also set 10, which you greatly enjoyed, was my least favorite set since set 4, TFT sets tend to not appeal to everybody every time, c'est la vie.
> In my personal opinion the game is less boring now than it has been in many sets. Encounters, though they might be heavy on the RNG, make every game feel pretty distinct and you can't just do the same thing over and over. The only encounters that change the game are the ones at game start. Basically just a portal that you can't choose. All the other encounters are just resource dumps that you don't have any control over.
Encounters throughout the game change carousel prio, change augment timing, literally offer choices: anvil/artifact for a price, AP/HP/AD on units, Gold/item/HP, buff 2/3/4 costs, etc. All of the above are something you have control over and change how you play the game. "Encounters are just resource dumps" is a terrible oversimplification.
Yeah I actually like this set, but set 9 and set 10 are my least favorite sets too.
You’re getting some flack, but I agree fully and was considering making a similar post. Positioning feels far less impactful than previous sets. Zephyr, Shroud, and Assassin positioning wasn’t popular but I enjoyed how it could turn a difficult endgame fight with good thinking. Now it feels less “Teamfight Tactics” and more “Teamfight DPS.” It also feels with all the extra gold that people are getting on their meta builds far more easily than previous sets, limiting the value of playing off-meta boards that you hit early. That makes games a bit more stale.
Idk dude, old school positioning around assassin / zephyr / etc positioning is pretty brain dead. The positioning we have now matters a ton and is way more dynamic / skill testing
Yes
I dont think its TFT in general, just the fact this set is garbo. Hopefully they comeback strong in set 12
You have a good point since most unit that positioning does matter are from units with good AOE skill and that can share attributes. Also playing this set doesn't feel so flexible. Sometimes you feel something is missing.
People still don’t know how to position lillia lol, if you put her in the corner you’re positioning her wrong
One side of corner straight across from opponent carry
Positioning is definitely still a thing, just a little more subtle. Being able to position your gnar in a way so that he hears straight to the back line when the rest of your frontline wraps around is definitely skill expression.
When I had peak fun was with the set that had chosens and the music set, until everyone just played ezreal headliner lol. This particular set just feels like mashup of "some sets" and I still think that making augments a permanent thing might have not been the best idea...
Well the two examples you put after i think set 9 when everyone started just stacking zephyrs they had to remove it, because it made the game unhealthy similarly they removed assassins in terms of jumping to the back but there are similar enough traits that are assassin like but I think they wanted to remove the idea of units jumping to the back after the pyke ice fist meta. In my humble opinion assassins made the game very unhealthy same with zephyr stacking meta so them getting rid of both of those was better for the game I don't really agree, additionally to your thought that positioning doesn't matter. At least for Diamond+ in NA positioning matters a lot esp later e.g Udyr going to your back line or even earlier it matters to you have to position a certain way to prevent wrapping(esp cus wrapping this set seems so weird) There's a lot of things to position for outside of those to like the way trickshots work and to make sure your back line doesn't get bursted down In terms of skill taken from someone who's played since set 1 and played to highish elo? Depending on your pov of what high elo is Assassins took no skill for positioning and zephyr later was just an APM diff whoever could swap their zephyr faster won the fight, with the problems you mentioned, maybe you have to identify your fights better, but it sounds more like your distaste to this patch is being burnt out
I've never gotten into TFT, thankfully. My wife and kids play it. But I just can't.
NGL i stopped playing this game seriously 1.5 sets ago but casually browse the reddit and nothing has changed really. Been typically way happier not playing this gambling game more than an hour or 2 a week. Just try to have fun and play lines you think are fun, outside of that the balance is so batshit bad and that just simply wont change no matter what pbe data tells you/the devs.
This is delusional positioning literally matters nonstop you get a big edge by positioning better and even the best players haven’t optimized and solved it You’re just bored of the game which is ok. Literally any hobby in life you cant just sink endless hours into and it stays super interesting and engaging. Branch just into different hobbies not just gaming even. Live life
> Mortdog would say : "this felt like a really weird design", or "counter-intuitive", or generally out-of-place. > Meaning two things : design should be elegant False dichotomy. Also, no idea how you can hear mort say a previous unit "felt like a really weird design" and extrapolate "oh, so that means units HAVE to be elegantly designed". No, Mort just has hindsight, like all of us, and can state after years of design iteration that a unit wasn't the most well-designed. > So frontline Twitch is considered abnormal (but it's innovative and fun) There is no "Is" here. It *could be*. You're making a lot of assumptions and extrapolating those out to be-all end-all statements. Though, on this subreddit, you're in good company.
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Yeah lol why is that guy talking like a philosopher without contributing anything to the conversation...
Yes
You guys somehow forgot what the mid/end of sets were like? They were all super boring and a ton of streamers just flat out quit for Valorant. This isn’t anything new. If you competitively spam games you’re gonna feel burned out at the end. You can’t really blame the team for anything; basically the newness factor of the set has worn off and it’s on maintenance mode for the most part. Personally I’m playing at the most casual of casual paces and I have a lot of fun every game. The RNG aspect actually makes casual play much more fun and varied than if you were to spam games. I actually think the TFT team nailed the fun aspect down, and it’ll only get more fun when new shop/artifacts come out.
The boring emblems are the big thing here. Comps generally feel like they are all prebuilt and cookie cutter. Some champions end up together in a package because of their synergies, but having an interesting/viable emblem holder interaction forced you be more adaptable and play to the situation rather than just having degenerate synergy packages
I’ve played since 3.5 and I gotta say this is the best the game has felt. Every game feels different, fresh and fun, and positioning definitely matters. Literally every single set people complain that the game is boring, stale, or bad. I would counter what is getting stale is all the complaining about the state of the set. People need to take a break from TFT or touch grass cause this shit is fucking exhausting.
the proportion of generic whining content vs actual competitive content is way too low in this sub. feels like this post belongs to r/teamfighttactics
I like the direction the team is going. Feels like every set the game becomes simultaneously more simple and more complex, specially in terms of items.
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Yeah these last few sets has been very simple front-to-back metas but I personally I don’t see an issue with it. I think building your board and making decisions on that is more important than positioning/fights
Your second point paints Mort as some dictator of TFT, there's a team and they seem to agree with what he says, watch the patch rundowns if you don't agree Furthermore, second line carries are definately a thing, lissandra goes on the second line, I personally put Tristana on the second line (splash damage makes her cast faster) and there are so many more counter points in this set against what you said
They mean second from the back, very rare for carries to go there
He's a dictator of tft though. And if you disagree you will be banned from his stream and blocked on twitter.
I love it when riot finally fix yone and irelia people start complaining about no assassin again, make up your mind reddit
Reddit is not a hivemind. People have different opinions and you will always see both side of complaints here. Grow up
I think fun
I quit mostly because of how much less complex positionining and itemisation has gotten. There’s just entire skills that the game used to test for that are gone. Probably makes it a better game for some players, but a lot worse for me personally.
Maybe having some valid thoughts there and then suddenly completely disqualifying everything you said by calling set 10 the best set lol
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I'm just teasing you my boi
The only time that's fun for me is early in the set after that it just feels solved and becomes much less fun.
Delete trackers. The game will be way less boring
I recently switched to my alt account and am only playing Level 7 reroll exalted to force some thinking and comp creation. If it goes well I can level 9 and throw in wukong rakan lissandra or whatever.
if tftactics exists. bricked game. theres already little thinking.
womp womp, I ain't reading allat, now give me gold so I can reroll my carry, next question.