Week 12 - Platforms

These past few weeks, I've been looking at other Mahjong platforms. Of course, you can only get Houou on Tenhou, so this is more of a relaxing vacation from the Tenhou grind. I'll talk about how I feel about the ones I've tried.

First of all, let's remember where we came from. Tenhou has two widely played modes: Regular Hanchan, which has time controls of 5+10, and Fast Tonpu, which has time controls of 3+5. X+Y means you have X seconds each turn, and Y extra seconds to draw on per round. Most of the time, you're more incentivised to avoid fourth than to fight for first, and placement is all that matters.

The other popular English client is Mahjong Soul. The time controls on Mahjong Soul are 5+20 in both Hanchan and Tonpu, but the animations of discarding the tiles and the character cut-ins adds a second or two to each action, giving you more time.

The ranking system takes into account your points in the game, so a 50k first will give more points than a 40k first, which is kind of nice. Even if you can't escape fourth in All Last, you can still staunch the bleeding by a few points. Placement is still the largest factor, though.

I have a fondness for gacha games, so I did enjoy chasing Yui in the gacha, and then collection all the materials to marry her. And using the emotes is pretty fun. But, the opponents make me sad, so I haven't played it that much.

A similar game to Mahjong Soul is Janhime, which doesn't have an English release. Like Mahjong Soul, it has a gacha mechanic, and also appears to have a battle pass system for unlocking cosmetics through play. The time controls are 5+15, and it has animations similar to Mahjong Soul, though a bit more varied.

Both Mahjong Soul and Janhime feel pretty slow to me. The animations really add up, and I find it hard to concentrate.

Final Fantasy XIV has a Mahjong minigame. You can play it on the free trial, which has no time limit, so you could use it as a free client. The time controls are 15+0 in the lowest room, and 10+0 in the advanced room, which is a ton of time. It has all the character creation you'd expect from an MMO, so you can make your avatar look however you want. However, I really can't bear the turn timers.

So, let's move on to the client I've been spending the most time on. Sega Net Mahjong. This is a very unique client, compared to the above ones, and is primarily a Tonpu client. First, the time controls. At the lower ranks (below 5-dan), the time controls are 3+40, but you can only spend 10 of your extra seconds on any turn. At higher ranks, the time controls are 1.6+30, but you can only spend 5 of your extra seconds on any turn.

One point six seconds per turn is an insanely quick pace to play Mahjong at. The game does a lot to help you, though. You can see all the tedashis/tsumogiris in-game (tsumogiris are faded out in the discards), so you don't have to waste time watching for those. It also displays your shanten at all times, so you don't have to think about that.

On top of that, there are commentators in the game. They'll call out your shanten ("The player has a fast ryanshanten hand!"), what your opponents are doing ("Cutting a pair from the hand, huh," or "He didn't call kan! Why didn't he call kan?"), or the value of your tenpai ("IT'S A YAKUMAN TENPAI!"), along with other various things that I don't understand due to not speaking Japanese. They add a lot of excitement.

In the Free Play mode, if you get a total score of +50 or higher in eight consecutive games, you get a bonus of 200 chips, twice a month. This adds a great incentive to play for first! You'd need to average a score of around +7 per game to get the bonus, so you want to win and win big. As you near the end of the eight games, you start getting more of an idea of how you need to play. If you're at +70 or something, you really want to avoid fourth, so you might play more defensive than usual. If you're closer to +/- 0, you really need some firsts, so you might play more aggressive than usual. I find it interesting to play towards my meta situation in addition to the situation present in the game.

It was fun to float around and try playing Mahjong in these new places. I'd like to try a client that is aka nashi or kuitan nashi, but I'm not currently aware of any. The queues for those are always dead on Tenhou. But, for the next month, I'll probably go back to Tenhou. It was good to have some fun for mental health, but I want to get back to the climb.