Goodbye MahjongSoul

This post was originally published on 2019-05-03, refreshed on 2020-06-15 and was refreshed and updated with current information.

MahjongSoul is still around and it's big. In 2019, just like everyone else, I jumped on the hype. At first, it looked nice. Then, I started to dislike it. With each little thing, I liked it less. In 2021, I was still around, since everyone else is still on it… Just like with Facebook. But now, it's 2022 and I have to say, it's gotten so bad, I have to leave. Trigger the ejection seat, I'm not waiting for the next landing. I should have left many eons ago.

The Game

First, let get the basics down: you can log in with a standard account as well as with Google, Twitter and Facebook using OAuth. You might think that's standard in this day and age, but it's not a given. At your first login, you're presented with a tutorial to Riichi Mahjong. If you're good with the rules, you can skip that. After the tutorial, you get directly to the main menu. The interface should be self-explanatory, so I'm not going to cover that. But at the top, we immediately see the 2 types of currency: Coppers and Jade.

A Quick Analysis of the Freemium

Over the last decade or so, I got a habit when starting F2P games: I check premium stuff first. First, you shouldn't be able to buy power, a. k. a. pay to win. Since we're talking about a mahjong game here, that should be a non-issue. But I should be wary of it.

Secondly, it should be reasonably possible to get everything you could pay premium currency for by playing the game. The hard thing here is consenting to what's reasonable and what's not reasonable. And sadly, MahjongSoul already lets me down here.

Well, let's go the for easy route first: no, you can't buy Jade for Coppers. That's not a minus per se, but that would have been the easiest way to clear this analysis. So let's look at the thing everyone wants: summoning a new character. To do that, you need 200 Jade, which is about USD 3.40 (USD 1.20, if you factor in the first purchase bonus). Compared to that, you need 50 Stardust, the freemium currency.

How do you get those? By donating your items. Buying those of items costs you 15,000 Coppers in the in-game shop, and you need 50 of those for a single summoning scroll. That makes 750,000 Coppers for a single summon attempt. And don't forget that's just an attempt and not a guaranteed summon.

So how hard is it to get 750,000 Coppers? Let's say we can consistently win hanchan in the Gold Room, the middle range room, with +30 post uma. That'd be 4,200 Coppers minus 1,400 Coppers entry fee, so it's a net gain of 2,800 Coppers. So we'd “only” need to win 288 hanchan in Gold Room. If you're saying you gain more coppers in the highest room, I ran the numbers there, too. Yes, it's a smaller number of games you need to win there: you just need to win 750,000 ÷ (30 × 80 − 2800) = 134 hanchan in the Throne Room. Easy, isn't it? Looking at these numbers, I'd definitely say it's not reasonably possible to get everything you could buy with a Jade by earning Copper. So the premium aspect of this game is a big minus.

Granted, starting in Silver Room you can get free items playing, but even these did double the amount of items you get, it's still too slow. Plus, you are limited to 5 scrolls; no indication when I can get more. They get reset from time to time. The number of scrolls is limited to 4 per months. And you tend to get free summons from time to time. But it's still not enough if you're not lucky. As I said, that's just an attempt, there's no guarantee you even get a character. If you're unlucky, you'll need 150 pull for a character, after that you have enough tokens to just buy the character you want.

The Experience at the Table

This game has nice animations. Dora have a glowing animation on them. Among the cosmetics, assuming you can afford them, you can have different table cloths, tile backs, riichi sticks, hands and animations. This game definitely one of the nicest looking ones.

The information you need is neatly in the centre of the screen and below dora indicator, which you can find at the top left. The wall is not displayed at all. The hand options are to the left: automatic sorting (A), auto win (R), disable non-winning calls (C), auto discard (D). The arrow would show what the letters mean.

When you hover above a tile in your hand, the same tiles that are already on the table get highlighted. When you are tenpai, the exclamation mark appears to the right. Clicking on it or hovering over the correct tile to discard reveals your waits and the number of tiles left. They even warn you if you'd be furiten or don't have any yaku for that wait.

Sometimes, when you try to drag around a tile to sort it, the sorting action gets aborted. It's just an annoyance and only affects you if you tend to play with manual sorting, but it's an annoyance nonetheless.

Now, to the sounds and music. I wish I could say something nice about this. Oh, I can: the background music is calming at first. Then it just gets repetitive and annoying. The same goes for the cat girl Ichihime. She is cute for the first few games. Her “nyaas” in the calls and yaku names are cute at first. But you tire of them very quickly. And it gets annoying very fast, too.

Sure, you can disable the sounds. But if I have to do that, it just proves how terrible it is.

The Problem

Now let's talk about why I'm leaving. Don't get me wrong, I get fan service is how MahjongSoul gets their money. But oversexualizing underage girls is a problem. While before, it could be argued those are possible exceptions — it wasn't — the 2022 Saki Collaboration comes with 8 characters from Saki, 4 old and 4 ones, and their time-limited costumes: bunny girl outfits. Let me remind you, the oldest of the bunch are all under 16 years old, and yet, all of them got playboy bunny girl costumes. Don't forget, one of the characters looks like she's 10. I don't want to be connected to normalizing oversexualizing underage girls! And I certainly don't want Mahjong to be intrinsically connected to normalizing oversexualizing underage girls!

Better look for something else. At least, I am. I should have left many eons ago.