[Feedback] Dev Notes: Improvements for Weekly Challenges

[Sir_Settlealot]

all this simply does not address the main problem with the weekly challenges, the main problem is that they are simply boring.

4 flavors, all about the same, only difference in what adventure to do and what resource to produce and pay.
from 56 and up the costs also become way to much.

but complaining is off course easy, so let me suggest a way to make them fun, or at least more fun as i see it:
everyone has the same quest in a week, off course with level brackets, but in general the same, and the last step is not a goal but a counter, the better you do compared to your level bracket, the more rewards, for example:

weekly challenge: pirate hunt:
step one, build a ship, gather wood, copper bars/ iron, tools (ammount en material dependant on level bracket) if everything is in order, you can build it on a quest location, like the x mass market spot.
step 2: scout out the enemy, do x number of adventure searches.
step 3, arm the ship, make weapons, and pay HALF of what you make (the other way as it is now with the resources, not produce 10, pay 20, but produce 10 pay 5)
step 4 provisions for the ship, like the current ship buffs you have to make for a weekly.
Step 5: kill as many enemy of the piraty type in adventures, make a leadership board per level bracket and give more tokens and mayby some special rewards for the top contestants in a bracket per server, this fase has no set goal, the faster you finish step 1 to 4, the longer you can do fase 5.

at the end of the week, you get some base token rewards for step 1 to 4, and a variable ammount for fase 5, and maybye the top contenders get a special building or so for bragging rights.

this is easily extrapolated to other enemy types, like cultists, nords, nomads, bandits, wildlife, desert bandits.

for me the biggest let down of the weekly challenges was that when i finish one in 4 days, i immidiatly get a new one, that is not weekly, thats a 4 day challenge

[Sir_Settlealot]

i said ship for pirates, for bandits for example it can be a prison, for cultists a temple, etc etc
for step 3, an alternative option could be to capture a big bertha in an adventure to arm the ship/ high priest for a temple etc etc, this should be an alternative to the player, not the devs , so, say, either produce 100 cannons and pay 50 OR finish an adv with a big bertha in it, wether its stealing from the rich, black knights or gunpowder, up to the player,
For leaderboards, kill xp before premium should count. scouting post, general traits en skills is all fine, since those are either limited in use or mean the general is weaker on other fields (less other skill books, sub par general combat wise etc etc)

[Bahkauv]

Your intentions for changes are very positive, sometimes you do not have the adventuire to do, or you're just upgrading the workshop, you shall produce...so having the option to patially carry out subquests is very very welcome; however the subquests should all be open in parallel. If, for any reason you do not like to ar cannot do the first quest, you can't earn anything. 1st, 2nd 3rd feed is OK as it goes from easy to less easy.
Thank you for changes.

[Aiken-Drum]

I am just happy you decided to "look at it" rather than being told "it worked as intended" - lost a lot of respect for BB at that point.

[AbsoluteZ]

The dev diary clearly states that the only changes being implemented are:

1) More weekly challenge adventures will be available for map fragments.

2) More tokens will be rewarded, and they will now be spread out over the sub-quests.

That's it. No new adventure options, no new production/troop delegation numbers, no cancel button, no parallel sub-quests, no changes to Storm scenario, certainly no complete overhaul of the entire concept like some are suggesting.

The changes are positive, but this will not significantly improve my perception of, or participation in, the weekly "challenges". If I get tokens for supplying the foreign ship, that's great since I tend to do that already. If more maps are available for fragments that's kinda nice, depending on how much they will cost. The main reason I don't do weeklies is because throwing away approximately 1000 elite troops, many of which we take great care to very rarely lose if ever, for a meager boost to population, is just plain foolish. This IS a strategy game right? We can get population in much more efficient ways.

If BB wants to give us a weekly challenge, they should try something like completing a certain adventure with low losses in a limited time with limited generals. If successful, throw some tokens into the loot.

If BB wants to prevent people from starring millions of junk resources they should just cap it at 15% of storage or something like that. Sure a lot of people might be upset but when has that ever stopped them before?

[IainC]

A lot of people have pointed out (very accurate) issues with the way that the weekly quests are implemented. One thing that no-one has brought up yet is that weekly quests are the first game system that lets you exchange gems for significant amounts of XP. Before, it wasn't possible to buy levels, but now it is. You could buy adventure buffs before of course (by purchasing star coins for gems in Excelsior), but you still had to actually do the adventure to get XP out of it and adventure buffs can't finish adventures by themselves. Now, you can just gem away each level of the weekly quest and get ~200k XP without doing anything else.

[FishSmell]

If we get tokens for sub-quests, we are even less likely to complete the whole thing.

Why I don't do the weekly quests has nothing to do with availability of adventures. I have 100+ Whirlwinds in my star because adventure searches have a very high chance of returning those. It's simply too boring to do 3 of the same adventures in a row. (We do that during events enough.) It would be much more interesting if we could choose between several, or complete a chain, like Evil Queen, though those are ventures. So more like Woodcutter - one of the thieves - ToK or ToW. I think it would be better if instead of putting more adventures into the merchant, you made the chance to drop from a previous adventure in a chain 100% - and then based on what drops, you let us choose which way to go.

There is also the part where we have to train and delegate units. Those are way too expensive. Even though I can do them because now I started producing platinum weapons other than swords and horses, I refuse because I don't lose that many higher units on one month's worth of adventures, even when I'm very careless. Other people might find them an easier way to gain XP than doing adventures, so I'm not saying to get rid of them completely, just make them optional, for example, let us choose to do some adventures instead.

The parts where we have to produce something in the PH and then put them on a ship are just boring.

[Tine122013]

good to hear that the weekly challenges will be tweaked. I like the idea of splitting the rewards for completing the sub-quests. Does this mean the rewards themselves will be changed? it would be more helpful if the adventure side was changed trying to find 4 players for whirlwind (times 3) out of sync with everyone else (i.e. mid-week) is incredibly frustrating as very few players do this adventure mid week. this results in a fail for that condition.
again just my thoughts

[sparkz]

If BB wants to give us a weekly challenge, they should try something like completing a certain adventure with low losses in a limited time with limited generals. If successful, throw some tokens into the loot.

Which doesnt solve anything because of 2 reasons :

- if the quest requirements are static, the "challenge" will be completely trivialized within days because youll have guides on how to do the adventures with particular losses
- if there is no way to use guides, the challenge is pointless because a good 90% of the people playing this game dont have the basic knowledge about the combat system that would allow them to figure out solutions on the fly, and without that you cant really optimize your compositions in a reliable way. Which would mean a greater part of the population would be effectively exluced from the part of the game, because there is no way they complete the challenge. BB would never go for it (unless on accident).

If BB wants to prevent people from starring millions of junk resources they should just cap it at 15% of storage or something like that. Sure a lot of people might be upset but when has that ever stopped them before?

Cap doesnt solve the problem because it doesnt even address the problem.

What the problem is is that the concept of the game relies on :
a) improviing your infrastructure (which results in increased production)
b) mindless grind that makes use of the resources you produced (since this is the only repeatable part of content, and was supposed to be repeated months after months for years)

If you remove the second part from the equation, for whatever reason (ie. you got tired of doing adventures over and over again, or you dont have time anymore due to your RL duties), then suddenly almost all of the production is the surplus, and the game was never prepare to handle it.

Cap doesnt take care of the root cause of the problem.

[CharlieOrpse]

Increasing the rewards will increase the frequency and liklihood of me chosing the quests i am willing to take on.

I like:
- the improvement to further reward progress made on sub-quests
- on completion the next weekly quest invitation appears

Further improvements for me would be:
- a less intrusive notification system for those that want to ignore the quests
- a selection of missions, including doing the same one (filling co-op slots from TO has never been a problem for me)