 | I'll just start this by saying that a few days ago I reached 10th Dan and my current rating is 2281, which is one of the highest in the world, if I'm not mistaken. The promotion match. I needed 15 points to rank up, and second place got me there. 9 months ago, when I returned to the Mahjong grind, I had a 1700 rating from back in 2022, my first year playing Riichi Mahjong. I wasn't too sure what was going on, but I followed the tips, tried to understand why the tip was telling me to do a certain thing, and clicked it. Initially I was just doing it for the Mahjong Enthusiast title (1800 MMR), which I thought was cool. Maybe 2000 MMR (Mahjong Master) wouldn't be possible for me, but Enthusiast would be fine. I like luck-based games and this seemed more interesting than the other ones I had tried before. A poker deck has 52 cards. Mahjong has 136 tiles, and a winning hand is 14 tiles. Right away I knew the game would have more longevity. Earliest screenshot I have of playing in queue, from November 2022. So, late last year there wasn't much going on in FFXIV other than the side-quests and alternative stuff like fishing. I never got into fishing, but something I read about Mahjong completely hooked me to it: playing defensively in this game is one of the best things about it and there are many ways to do so. You can even do offense and defense at the same time for a couple of turns, until you decide that the offensive approach isn't worth it and fold completely. The punishment for a 3rd place is usually soft, so my goal became to not give anyone a winning hand, and hope that someone else on the table was gonna be worse than me. From 2023 when I was on my way to master. By the way, the chat in this client is one my favorite things about it. I prefer this over the emoticons and presets in PVP that they implemented to avoid toxicity. When people have emotional reactions to their wins or losses, especially in a luck game, it feels more like I'm playing another human being and not an NPC. I was very lucky at the start and I'm not gonna lie. If I had dealt constantly into a pon wait or a single tile edge wait, while doing a "safe" suji discard, I'm not sure I would have stuck around for so long. Winning feels good, and I was on a roll. A closed half flush riichi and I draw into a three concealed pon. I have two 2m on my hand, and people know I need manzu, so they're not gonna discard them. The odds of completing this hand with tsumo are almost a miracle. But don't they say that Riichi Mahjong is all about tsumo? Once I realized that almost everyone was playing with tips, then I started wondering. What are the downsides of following the same AI? And is there any way to play around it, to gain a consistent advantage over it?
Analyzing the AI of this game is what helped me get better at Mahjong. I later realized that this is basically a tile efficiency trainer, or a WWYD book, but you get to grind towards your achievements at the same time. I initially had no interest in Mahjong Soul (which I'm into nowadays) and less Tenhou which is like the Dwarf Fortress of Mahjong. Lots of good players there but, for people who like a little visual stimulation, it's all substance and no style. Once you end up in last and lose the rank you've been working on, what are you gonna do over there? Get your jobs up to 100? Do the new raid tier? I like that there is a game here to play when you're done with Mahjong. https://preview.redd.it/3kf226rhxvh...bp&s=626476495631abb5e5636428d604e006a8b257c9 Having reached Mahjong Master, my main goal was accomplished, but I didn't feel like stopping. I was having too much fun and did a couple of casuals with a few regulars of Chaos. The grind to 10th Dan was going to be an insane amount of games, so I wasn't even considering it at this point, and I focused on how to make this client more interesting with casual games. I had been inviting everyone I played with (except novices) to my Mahjong linkshell in order to queue up faster. You can send out a message like "2/4 quick match" and hope two from the linkshell join in. Over 9 months, I've filled up two CWLS with 128 players on Chaos who are mostly active, as I've played each one of them more than a few times. There's also a few who rejected my invitation, so trust me when I say this: the Mahjong community is larger than it seems (people just don't believe me when I say this, but I proved it filling up linkshells, plus all the others that couldn't join due to them being full or rejecting the invite). If we're talking casuals, there was potential to bring more people into the fold by making gil parties. This got me in trouble with the GMs, and I went to jail for gambling with gil. The objective was to lure in people with gil and grow the Mahjong community on Chaos; I couldn't care less if I won the games, the gil or whatnot. I've 5000 hours in this game. I don't need gil anymore. The idea was to have something at stake other than rank, and bring more people into our community that otherwise wouldn't bother joining. Once I was warned however, I stopped doing all of that. I was informed that even offering prizes with gil in Mahjong is against TOS. https://preview.redd.it/trv3ctrg0wh...bp&s=26bf8d79dc3f1c59bad0694e5d3207ebca05f356 \"Gambling activity with the Mahjong content\" was something I never expected have on my inbox So, since this mode of gameplay is prohibited, I went back to queue. There was one last thing left to do in FFXIV that was Mahjong related, and that is achieve the insane grind that is getting to 10th Dan. This means hundreds of games of up and down. I have played Mahjong in FFXIV almost every day of this year, and when the queue wouldn't pop, often poked people from my linkshell to jump into the queue. Shoutout to Doran, Sice, Koko, Maru, Pon Nya, Alvi, Drip, Leveran, Corvia, Rukami, Blanche, Somnia, Vale, Roy, and so many others I can't name off the top of my head now. They didn't go easy on me. In fact I'm pretty sure I got owned several times and had to go get a drink after losing -100 points towards the next Dan. Kazoe-yakumaned I agree with the statement in chat Not enough dora 0 points. A chip and a chair. Been there before. This is gonna be a long grind... In FFXIV there's an interesting rule that you can't triple ron someone. That's considered a draw. In Mahjong Soul, you can definitely triple ron some guy. Getting closer... And finally, refer to the first screenshot. I have way more in my folder. Actually, most of my screenshots from FFXIV are Mahjong related, but this is probably enough for this sub. I am a 10th Dan, have had over 2300 rating and built two linkshells for Mahjong in Chaos where they previously didn't exist. Now, there's like an empty void in my daily routine... Which must be filled with Mahjong Soul and touching grass more regularly. I'm getting closer to master in MJS, and I feel like that's becoming my main goal. But the gold room in MJS is tough and I just did this huge grind, so I'm taking it easy from now on. If you're aiming for the same goal as me, pay special attention to how the AI behaves (the observations I wrote here are a good start), read some Mahjong literature (print it out if you can; I sometimes would drive out somewhere quiet and do some reading there, rather than at my house where I'm tempted to queue). Don't queue when you're tired, but when playing casuals, having a couple of brewskis is a lot of fun too. Good reads: https://repo.riichi.moe/library.html#resources-strategy Mahjong of Light Discord: https://discord.gg/FMunuFuQ Addendum: I was so into it that I bought an automatic table of my own submitted by /u/azure783 [link] [comments] |
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