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A rant about riichi mahjong
2026-03-22 01:39 pmSo last night I was in a discord call with some friends and one of them was asking why i've been cagey with my Steam info. It's because I don't want to deal with refunds. I hate surprises. Get me something I've asked for or we've discussed. Also, some of you have me as a steam friend anyways, but you "forgor". Anyways, one of these friends decided to grab me a cheap indie game for the spring Steam sale and I had a visceral knee jerk reaction to the object.
Mahjong is a card game. It doesn't require RPG tactics like HP or mana. If your complaint is the online clients are too erotic, that's a skill issue. Touhou has cloned everything under the sun. There are also clients that have no avatars at all. Mahjong doesn't need an arcade story mode, and least of all one where all the characters are queer first and people second. I respect the furries keeping the internet running but I personally don't find trans sapphic furry visuals the selling point to get my money. This game lacks a pvp, and all its fundamental mechanics are about cheating your way to the top with "mario party-esque" mechanics. There is no reason to spend any money on a desktop only, vs Computer only, riichi mahjong client when there are free to play versions with online coop and online pvp. It's honestly just sad.
But it gets worse. According to Clear Rain's Atelier (クリアレインのアトリエ) on Youtube, the odds of a draw in any game of mahjong are around 14%. According to an America mahjong-centric blog, the odds of you winning any given game increase by 10% if you are the East player. Assuming both of these are true, then let us crunch some numbers:
A 14% chance of a draw gives any given player in a 4 player match a 21.5% chance of winning. A 10% boost by being Player 1 gives East a 23.65% chance of winning, and everyone else is 20.78%, which is still about 1 in 5 odds of winning any hand.
Mahjong is a game of both luck and skill, and ultimately pattern recognition.
What I have noticed in the English sphere of riichi mahjong players is that the drive for egocentrism--that anything worth doing is only worth being the best at--has resulted in a serious deficit in good sportsmanship etiquette. Players are trying to improve their game so numbers go up, so they can one and done a specific achievement in a Yakuza minigame, then move on to the next item on the laundry list. This results in very low frustration tolerance for a game with a high bar of entry. There is so much asian hate on reddit that I can attribute to SKILL ISSUE and low frustration tolerance. And I find that really inhospitable. It's gotten to a point that whenever I poke my head into the Mahjong Soul official discord I have hidden all the English channels. Those people have grace. They're playing for the shared companionship that the game provides, and the challenge you get from real human strategy, which is a lot less predictable than merely playing against the AI. After a few dozen games, the CPU gets really predictable.
English speaking mahjong players need to soul search a little.
If you're flipping a table (ノಠ益ಠ) ノ彡 ┻━┻ every time someone calls ron on your discard, you have a problem.
Give them a "good game" ( ＾◡＾)っ ♡ instead.
Mahjong is a card game. It doesn't require RPG tactics like HP or mana. If your complaint is the online clients are too erotic, that's a skill issue. Touhou has cloned everything under the sun. There are also clients that have no avatars at all. Mahjong doesn't need an arcade story mode, and least of all one where all the characters are queer first and people second. I respect the furries keeping the internet running but I personally don't find trans sapphic furry visuals the selling point to get my money. This game lacks a pvp, and all its fundamental mechanics are about cheating your way to the top with "mario party-esque" mechanics. There is no reason to spend any money on a desktop only, vs Computer only, riichi mahjong client when there are free to play versions with online coop and online pvp. It's honestly just sad.
But it gets worse. According to Clear Rain's Atelier (クリアレインのアトリエ) on Youtube, the odds of a draw in any game of mahjong are around 14%. According to an America mahjong-centric blog, the odds of you winning any given game increase by 10% if you are the East player. Assuming both of these are true, then let us crunch some numbers:
A 14% chance of a draw gives any given player in a 4 player match a 21.5% chance of winning. A 10% boost by being Player 1 gives East a 23.65% chance of winning, and everyone else is 20.78%, which is still about 1 in 5 odds of winning any hand.
Mahjong is a game of both luck and skill, and ultimately pattern recognition.
What I have noticed in the English sphere of riichi mahjong players is that the drive for egocentrism--that anything worth doing is only worth being the best at--has resulted in a serious deficit in good sportsmanship etiquette. Players are trying to improve their game so numbers go up, so they can one and done a specific achievement in a Yakuza minigame, then move on to the next item on the laundry list. This results in very low frustration tolerance for a game with a high bar of entry. There is so much asian hate on reddit that I can attribute to SKILL ISSUE and low frustration tolerance. And I find that really inhospitable. It's gotten to a point that whenever I poke my head into the Mahjong Soul official discord I have hidden all the English channels. Those people have grace. They're playing for the shared companionship that the game provides, and the challenge you get from real human strategy, which is a lot less predictable than merely playing against the AI. After a few dozen games, the CPU gets really predictable.
English speaking mahjong players need to soul search a little.
If you're flipping a table (ノಠ益ಠ) ノ彡 ┻━┻ every time someone calls ron on your discard, you have a problem.
Give them a "good game" ( ＾◡＾)っ ♡ instead.
