Salty has stated that nice itemized lists are more actionable so I’m gathering up what I’ve seen from other posts (feel free to comment with more, or point me in the direction of a pre-existing thread):
Important:
No time-gated tasks on week 10
Put time-gated tasks as first task of their respective color (i.e. first in bronze, silver or gold)
Ideally remove all time-gated tasks
Explanation
No double time-gated tasks on any week (if memory serves it’s Adventure board, Dungeons and Delves)
Ensure class/weapon/team/hunt specific troop tasks are doable within the world event (specifically for gold and silver tasks)
Fix text on Glory task to say “PvP” battles instead of “any” battles
Limit all time-gated tasks to 2 days at most
Other: (I don’t particularly feel these are problematic but others have mentioned it so including it here)
Remove any tasks that requires spending resources, particularly:
Just posted this in the other thread but will add here: Time gated tasks should just be removed. A common and well accepted F2P model accepts payment (gems) to speed up content (tasks), and provides free players a way to grind (??? Not provided). Waiting is not grinding. Twiddling thumbs is not a good free player track.
Will add another idea as a compromise: Put the time gated task as the first task of the week. It means we don’t need to look up what the tasks are Monday morning outside of the game. All game content needs to be in game. Also, the game should not encourage delaying gameplay. This also ensures we don’t have two time gated tasks.
Please yes. The delves make the campaign tasks unfriendly for new players. They can’t finish high level delves. Thus, there is no point for them to buy the pass. Thus, less money for the devs.
The delves make the campaign tasks unfriendly for new players
Newer players are meant to fail the last couple of tasks and panic-upgrade their campaign pass/buy gems
Have fewer tasks in total that take 3-5 battles each to complete rather than microtasks that take a single battle to complete.
Increased sales from making players return to the campaign menu every 15s are probably offset by alienating a sizable chunk of the playerbase into refusing to spend money longterm.
In general (to the thread and not sls directly), keep in mind when developing actionable feedback, is that if these proposed changes would significantly impact the financial feasibility/performance of the Campaign mode, they are very likely going to be not actionable at all from the dev/publisher point of view.
These proposed changes are nice and all, but they won’t happen. IP2, and f2p games at large, don’t care what annoys you or what would be best for the players. They care about money. They’re a business. Sure, they’ll fix bugs here and there, do some QoL, and that’s to keep paying players happy.
Why aren’t important things being fixed or changed? Simple: they don’t make money.
But in counter-point: the main reason most people buy the campaign pass is to get the mythic, (+pet, weapon, troops (screams at the camera in best William Shatner impression: Heart of RAAAAGE)). I would argue that more people would buy the campaign pass if it was more fun/doable than would panic-upgrade to Elite+ (3 people purchasing Elite pass give same amount as 1 purchasing Elite+)
I am fully aware that what we want and what’s profitable for them are many times in direct opposition. As such, I don’t foresee that many, if any, will be accepted. But that won’t stop be from trying to get our feedback to someone that might care. I could even modify the OP with reasons why each point is profitable for them, but I want to leave it as clean as possible.
Could they use the list above to make things even worse? That has crossed my mind. But I’m still optimistic enough to think that what they do is not purposeful malice but rather negligence.
The alternative here is, potentially changes made could increase the revenue. I’d argue good changes would encourage more money being spent. So, at the end of the day, giving feedback is important if it’s followed by less revenue obtained, or more revenue as a result, either/or.
Logic should prevail that overbearing tasks could effect their bottom line, whereas more unburdensome tasks might encourage more expenditure.
I think they have this wrong. They should not be encouraging payers to pay gems to skip tasks by creating multi day blocks. They could (maybe I shouldn’t say this) implement a sigil system into the pass, which if you pay $10, you get 4 sigils to use to skip tasks. In Free you get 2 and Elite plus 6. I still don’t like that. I’m more tempted to sit out campaigns altogether if they are burdensome like this one anyway.
I agree with @blindnighto posting the thread in this regard, it’s useful either way it’s viewed.
Devil’s advocating the proposal for the sake of discussion (not trying to pick on you at all here),
Ok, that’s reasonable as an opener.
Less revenue = not going to happen, unless the loss is minimal and the intrinsic gains from the proposed change can be perceived and accepted by the devs/publisher as sufficient to offset the financial loss. That said, carry on…
Well, isn’t one of the premises of this thread that the overbearing tasks tend to result in gem spending, which could very well generate gem sales (if not spent from purely passive tribute income)? Removing these tasks would potentially eliminate this income stream. That’s going to have to be replaced by an equivalent income source.
Explain how these unburdensome tasks would generate income sources would replace this income stream that is being proposed to be eliminated in greater detail?
I’m confused. You want to remove these burdensome tasks complete, but at the same time want to give a limited number of free skips to these tasks. If these tasks are removed, then why would these skips even be necessary?
Ok, let’s go with the skips concept for the sake of discussion. Personally, I strongly doubt that the free track would get free skips at all. Free is free, and has to come at a cost. So, these free skips have value to the player. At a minimum, these skips would each have a gem value of the cost of the tasks that they would be skipping, plus possibly a premium for being on-demand/bankable for the duration of the campaign. Where does this gem value come from? I doubt it would be absorbed by the base $10 elite pass costs, unless those gems are directly removed from the reward tiers (that’s not going to over well at all). Otherwise, the cost of the pass would have to increased to absorb the value of the skips.
At that point… isn’t this just a repackaging of buying skips? These skips would be purchased up front in the base price of the pass, instead of being on-demand when needed?
What about the players who are completing campaign tasks without using any skips now? Should they have to pay more for campaign passes just because others want “free” skips? That crowd is going to be 100% against this proposal. Do players get refunds of unused skips at the end of the campaign? And if so, what should the refund be for each unused skip (it surely will not be a cash refund, (shudders at logistical nightmare of that)?
I just can’t see this idea gaining any serious traction with the devs because the answer would be to let players who want to skip spend gems on-demand to avoid the refund scenario, plus the cost of valuing the skips into the base prices of passes resulting in price increases. And that leaves the situation exactly where it is now, unchanged from the current implementation.
It’s a good thought, but at the end of the day, IMO, the devs are almost assuredly going to choose to let the player make their own decisions on when and where to purchase a skip in the middle of a campaign than to buy a number of them up-front and invite the possibility of the issues mentioned above from occurring.
Firstly, the sigil situation was not really something that I was behind, I said it wouldn’t work for me, but it was just an alternative I thought about while posting. It probably wouldn’t gain any traction, as you point out, it could raise issues. However do you think another campaign that ends like this one will encourage more spending?
Look at all the negativity surrounding the gem sinks to get what you paid for.
Forget the devs for a minute…I’ve been in business a long time, I know how it works…
Here I am a customer, just like all of us players. Do you tell that customer that you are paying for something, then pay for it again, (in a different way) are they going to come back to you next time?
Why would players want to endure another end week like this one and pay up next time?
Wouldn’t it be be better if the Devs got more money because customers felt more incentivised to spend next time, rather than feel like they do.
In answer to unburdensome tasks, that’s my point. Ok, let’s say there were no tasks that went beyond a day, would that encourage more to pay than now? I’d say so, less people agitated, more people playing, less people skipping the campaign altogether → more money for the Devs.
If a sale is good, customers come back, if they feel screwed over, they won’t be so willing next time. I understand in games like GOW, other reasons sometimes overide general logic, which is what game companies prey on.
Personally, I would just like a campaign that doesn’t take from me and doesn’t force me to pay again to progress.
Imagine if they advertised the campaign as such;
‘‘The campaign costs $10 and during which there will be times when you will have to spend gems as well, to complete tasks to get a full week of the bonuses and content made available. You won’t get all of the gems you get in the pass rewards and this is the start of how we will ask you to spend more gems to continue the campaigns moving forwards.’’
Never going to happen is it, as people would baulk at paying for it. So, they don’t explain it like such, but that’s how it now is.
Now if they changed that message by saying the same, but saying that it won’t cost gems to complete, maybe threw in a couple of tokens here and there, maybe more people will pay for it, and Devs earn more money and players aren’t so agitated by giving up stuff. I mean really those tokens will still be grinded at this rate 20 years from now…
Anyhoo - I’m outta here - thanks as always for debate.
Why on earth would anyone want the multi-day task to be the FIRST task in that color? It should be the LAST if anything! If we must have them at least let us complete tasks simultaneously with other tasks if possible.
If the multi-day task is first then we are denied any chance of doing the blocked tasks efficiently.
I like that idea. I have also suggested in the past that maybe give the amount of skips to match your VIP level so at start of campaign if you are VIP 20 then you get 20 skips. This might get folks to increase their VIP level maybe.
That is a good point and yet another reason they should be done away with.
I was thinking first task because its frustrating when, for example, I do the adventure board and later get a new task telling me to do the adventure board. Well damn. Should have looked outside of the game to known that.
Your responses surprise me a bit, so I’d like to keep going with this debate.
You present some solid points here. This surprises me a bit because my interpretation of your responses revolve around customers’ perception of the issue as the primary source of conflict here.
My initial takeaway is that if this perception issue could be resolved, the underlying conflict would be resolved as well. From a business perspective, that would suggest that the solution would be a repackaging of the presentation of the rewards presented in campaigns.
What incentivizes people? Different people incentivize in different ways. I think it is safe to assert that what the players that post on this forum want as incentives are generally not the same as what the devs want to use as incentives. There will always be some sort of perception conflict here.
Why would it? The only possible logical connection I can make here is connecting easier completion of the campaign to more purchases of the pass. So, if the campaign was easier to complete each week, more players would buy passes? That doesn’t sound right…
This concept of the campaign “taking” from players comes up frequently as one of the primary perception issues with the campaign. If we accept a premise that the devs’ intent from campaign rewards is that the payout to players is the net of campaign pass rewards and expenditures, would it simply be better to not offer these rewards (and associated expenditures) to address this perception issue?
So, what you’re really saying is that you want the campaign to be more rewarding? If the campaign was perceived as more rewarding (even with the reward deductions/“taking”), would there be any of perception issues at all?
