Epic Task Feedback from a high rank guild

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I’m going to divulge some guild thinking that went on last week. My guild is Carnivores, rank 15. For as long as I’ve been in it (over a year), we’ve hit Legendary Tasks on Monday. Previously our “minimum” gold requirement was 500k per player. Since each statue costs 2.61 million and there are 6 statues, that’s 15.66 million, or 522k per player. Then, every statue is done, and people feel free to donate as they wish.

Our guild leader didn’t want to completely sink everyone in requirements, so he only raised the minimum requirement to 600k just to see how things went the first week. Of course he and the other guild members know that the actual cost is much higher: divided perfectly, each player needs to contribute 1.572 million, that’s 301% of the previous 522k.

But in our rank 15 guild, asking players to donate 1.5 million each is really hard. Here are two thoughts that went on:

  1. It’s not fair for a few players to have to make up for a few other players. For instance, if 15 players donate 1 million each, then 15 other players have to donate 2.1 milliion each. That means half the guild is giving 600k more than the other half.
  2. People never felt pressured to donate once Legendary Tasks were reached, because it wasn’t a noticeable thing. People looked and saw that the statues were complete and they thought “I’ll contribute what I can toward any legendary tasks.” Now it’s a much harsher feeling: “Epic tasks aren’t done, we’re missing stats and resources, and everyone’s given way more than I have!”

So it’s Tuesday morning and currently we have only yellow and brown left. We are 8/12 on Yellow and 9/12 on Brown.

Our average donation amount has been 1.4 million, which makes sense: as the average gets closer to 1.572 million, tasks get completed. The interesting part is that 10 players, 1/3rd of the guild, have donated more than the evenly split 1.572 million, whereas the other 2/3rd of our players have donated less.

And that was the first point I raised: 1/3rd of our players are making up for 2/3rd. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem at all, because those 1/3rd of players would simply be completing legendary tasks. But here it’s not legendary tasks, it’s stat bonuses too. We’re on our first day of Guild Wars and we don’t have stats from two of our epic tasks.

That puts a huge burden on players to make them feel like they need to get all the tasks completed as quickly as possible. Prior to 4.7 it was simply because you wanted to get to legendary tasks and start the week off with a bunch of rewards. Now it’s a rush to complete tasks so you can actually use the stat increases before the week is over.

Patch 4.7 took the required event split donation amount of 522k and tripled it to 1.572 million, which in turn made guilds say “Okay, we need to increase our minimum threshold,” while at the same time not wanting to alienate players who simply cannot afford to meet that minimum, for a variety of reasons:

  1. Not as much time to play the game.
  2. Lower gold bonuses (from Armor, VIP level, Ring of Wonder)
  3. Slower team composition for farming due to troop availability/stats from kingdoms, etc.

One final thought: Brown has got to be the most least desirable task to complete… Tasks 10 through 12 reward traitstones, gem keys, deeds, and… epic ingots? Alright, there are two problems with this:

  1. The people who actually need epic ingots for weapons they are using (not just to upgrade weapons for competition and nothing else) are never going to be in guilds that will ever complete these epic tasks
  2. The guilds who are in positions to complete these epic tasks will never need epic ingots from these tasks. It feels really stupid to get them as a reward. I honestly do wish the developers would help explain who actually uses Epic, Rare, Ultra-Rare, and Common Weapons AND uses them long enough that they even have a chance to upgrade them. Their damage is lower, they have fewer traits, and legendary/mythic weapons are handed out so quickly that the other weapons are quickly forgotten.

Maybe the thinking is that players are converting ingots to higher ingots? I mean, I don’t think so, because that requires souls, and souls are scarce at that level. I watch my wife play and level up and I know exactly what weapons she uses – when she got War and Peace (which you get very early on) she didn’t even have any lower-rarity weapons upgraded because she didn’t have any ingots or souls to do it. 100 souls per ingot in the Soulforge is crazy high when you need 18k to level a troop fully.

It just feels like developers are sometimes very out of touch with the new player experience and how people are actually using resources.

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I agree with so many of the OP’s points, and this is coming from the GM of a Guild that is not among the high-ranking Guilds. Our Guild is more semi-casual and has some people who are still working on their Kingdoms. We’re currently trying to find a way to incorporate the Epic Tasks (E-Tasks) into our Task System, which is very difficult considering one of our mates here had shown us how much it would cost to get one level of any of the E-Tasks done; 100K in and of itself for a Level 1 Color for E-Tasks.

This is the chart he’d come up with, and I nearly lost my jaw in the drop when I saw what the figures were:

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This is insane of an expectation for most/many mid-range Guilds.

Granted, apparently there isn’t a foregone expectation to get the Regular Tasks (R-Tasks) done to have access to the E-Tasks. We could pick and choose still. However, for most Guilds like ours… There may never be that capability of getting Legendary Tasks done when most of our mates won’t be shelling out millions upon millions of gold for E-Tasks due to RT (real-time) or their need to level Kingdoms.

IgniteIce, I do believe you’re correct in your feeling that the devs may perhaps be forgetting about the newer players, mid-range players, and how much game play it would cost someone to be able to make the gold that is considered.

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Players had been asking for Epic Ingots, since they were in the shortest supply for completing upgraded weapon collections.

I don’t think Epic Tasks were the best way to address this particular resource request, though.

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There were so many methods they could have taken to reduce LT count (they intention most likely).

  1. Every 20 LTs, double the price. So 20 ls was 20 mil, but 40 lts is 60mil, and 60 lts is 120 mil.
    Ok, this method hurts those doing 120lts/week a lot harder than epic tasks, but guilds that only do a few? Unaffected.
  2. add on 100k for every LT done.
    So first is 1mil , second is 1.1mil, third is 1.2mil etc. 10 lts cost 14.5mil in total, 20 lts cost 39mil.
    Affects everybody, but those that do a few slightly (5lts=6mil) while those that do more, a lot more (61st lt would cost 7mil)
  3. something nobody really wants, but better than epic tasks, dilute the LT pool slightly. Add ingots (epic+). Add writs(10/25/50). Add badges (although only epic or higher in the ratio 6/3/1)

Last 1 reduces “valuable” LT drops rather than reduces lts in general. But still…

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I agree with the OP. It’s a joke and an insult that this was allowed to happen!
We were looking forward getting a few Legendary Tasks each week, but now this will never happen anymore. Developers should be ashamed. The cost of Epic tasks, if they won’t be removed, should be cut by 70-75%, while leaving the same rewards behind.

They should just completely scrub Epic Tasks. They feel out of place and unnecessary.

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@igniteice 100% on point. Thank you for posting this.

@Sirrian @Saltypatra @Kafka — please read the original post and take note. We are literally begging for the devs’ help.

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Also add the ninja “gold fix” to the added pressures placed on those high lvl players who are trying to finish the ETs.

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With all due respect,

The whole thing was designed to eliminate the only reward in the game that matters. Mythic troops.

We have all announced our opinions and the devs just don’t care. The reason they do not care is player count has dropped minimally since the update and purchases are still being made.

As long as people play and spend money nothing will change.

Unfortunately change requires teamwork. That is in short supply here. We had a plan to disrupt pvp by putting in trash teams, allowing everyone to obtain the gold needed more easily. What happened?

Many guild leaders laughed at us and said the update wouldn’t affect them. When they nerfed gold payouts for pvp? It caught their attention and they started to chime in. That didn’t last and they still only spoke about the problem and didn’t help with it.

What needs to stop is all the talk. What needs to start is doing something.

I’m a nobody on here, the people who lead these affected guilds have the power to mandate their players do something and for one goddamn time forget how important you guys think you are. Start thinking about everyone.

My post isn’t to badmouth anyone. My post is about telling all of you that we have the power to control things. Do you think for one minute if player count dropped 50% or purchases dropped 50% they would continue to spit on us?

They would listen, they would change what we want and this game would go back to what we all expect it to be.

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To be fair, most “mid-range” guilds would not have reached Legendary Tasks at all. I’m reasonably certain the devs are on record somewhere as saying that only a small percentage of GoW players ever earned LTs to begin with.

For guilds who were able to complete LTs prior to the change, the notable loss is the ability to pull a Troop. Due to the multiple adjustments to ETs, the rewards are “okay” if you don’t count the loss of the occasional Troop.

If you look at what players receive in LTs: Runics, Arcanes, Glory, Glory Keys, Gem Keys, Event Keys, Legendary Troops, Mythic Troops…all of this minus Runics and Troops is represented in ETs, although I don’t agree with placing Event Keys in the top tier and consider it to be another Event Key nerf, but that’s just my personal opinion mixed with a bit of saltiness over the repeated nerfing of these keys.

I still don’t feel the guaranteed nature of ET rewards counters the chance to pull Troops and will likely remain jaded over this change for the foreseeable future, but I’ve done a comparison of what my guild has earned from LTs other than Troops for the last couple months and the rest of the rewards feel “mostly” reasonable. I can’t put a value on the Troops, and I can’t put a value on the fact that RNG could totally kiss you some weeks and give you more of the rewards you value (i.e. Event Keys) even though other weeks it could give you the finger by comparison.

I suspect that overall, just like when weekly Events were nixed in favor of the Adventure Board, the average reward over time will trend downward slightly in value, and it’s entirely by design. By removing RNG, the devs/publisher have much tighter control over what is handed out, and I’m not sure this has ever been in the players’ favor at the end of the day. (Also: “Gem Value” is a joke. I am talking about value to the customer, not value to the business.)

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As Tabu states:

"Unfortunately change requires teamwork. That is in short supply here. We had a plan to disrupt pvp by putting in trash teams, allowing everyone to obtain the gold needed more easily. What happened?

Many guild leaders laughed at us and said the update wouldn’t affect them. When they nerfed gold payouts for pvp? It caught their attention and they started to chime in. That didn’t last and they still only spoke about the problem and didn’t help with it."

Precisely correct. In fact I made a new thread suggesting this kind of disruption in pvp to redress the gold that this nerf has cost. The thread was derailed until top guilds realised that by regularly completing the ETS that most of us can’t or won’t even contemplate massively affects their pvp earning potential as a consequence of their exorbitant team score. Pvp defs are nearly all meta teams regardless of player level. This hampers class boost opportunities and the games are annoying. Def rewards are a few keys, the amount of which could easily be increased by EVERYONE putting up trash defs so we can max our classes and gold and put ourselves back in the picture. They nerfed us and the majority of consensus is that we disapprove. Let’s nerf them back and see if that prompts a rethought. They’ve wrecked pvp…let’s wreck their gold sink by collaborating.

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If you’re directing this toward me specifically, you’re preaching to the choir, and I’ve already posted in one of the PVP defense threads that I posted a junk defense, so I’m not entirely certain what point you’re making that I apparently haven’t picked up on?

If you’re just reiterating the post prior to mine, just ignore my comment. :slight_smile:

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@Arelana. Sorry, no I wasn’t replying specifically to you or anyone in particular. We can cooperate en masse with trash pvp decks as you and others have suggested. Decent deck Def rewards are a few event keys…trash def rewards are gold and class boosting for all, and thus potentially more event keys. It’s a no brainer. I am proud to say that my pvp def is terrible lol.

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Gotcha. I saw a ping that it was showing up as a reply so it was just the forum being silly. No harm done.

This nerf actually got me to change my PVP defense team for the first time in probably a year (and no, I didn’t have a grief team…I had some random Goblin Rocket setup that actually got a few occasional wins).

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