First Campaign and other Quality of Life Ideas

I never really got a chance to give feedback on the first Campaign. And @Saltypatra is asking for Quality of Life ideas for tomorrow’s stream. So here goes.

The First Campaign

Mostly, I liked the Campaign, mainly because it made us think a bit and introduced some variety. However, the rewards and Pay-Wall desperately need to change.

  • The free pass needs more keys in its rewards. The sum total of the free reward is laughably meagre.

  • Don’t add so many new weapons and troops through the Campaign pass, especially behind the pay-wall. It’s just too hard to get after the campaign is over, especially for new players.

  • For non-Mythic troops, you could include a single copy of a new troop late in the free pass, while those who pay get it earlier, and enough copies to ascend (for example).

  • Potentially adjust some of the awards based on VIP level…

  • 17 new Mythics a year is too much. Find another way to reward people (the Campaign stats are enough for most).

  • Establish a fully predictable pattern for Boss troops (and lower their crafting cost). The idea of needing to gather 24 Major Orbs of Ascension every year (or even more frequently) is enough to make someone quit.

  • Give those who didn’t buy the pass another way to target any new troops/weapons/pets at a prescribed time (eg: Shade of Kurandara in Summoning Stones this week is fantastic!).

  • When a task is completed and I go to “complete” it, take me straight to the Tasks tab.

  • Speed up the whole process of claiming a task – those stars take forever to claim, and it seems like the game isn’t doing anything (terrible design).

  • Allow us to see all tasks in advance in-game, so we can plan without visiting the forums.

  • Don’t show next week’s text early – it’s confusing!

  • Make the Campaign/World Event easier/quicker during GW, or even tie some of them together.

  • If the game is constantly growing, don’t behave as if it’s in financial strife! :slight_smile:

Other Ideas

  • Please make the Guild Wars points award visible on the Victory screen once all the rewards have scrolled by. Ideally, shift it all the way to the right of the rewards cards.

  • Add an icon on the map to any Faction that has a Delve active.

  • Add an icon on the map to any Kingdom that has an Explore run active.

  • When a Kingdom retains its Mythstone bonus after an Explore run, show it on the Explore screen.

  • Fix the bug where the selected Banner/Class/Armor isn’t outlined on their respective selection screens.

  • Fix the bug where the selected Medal isn’t outlined when you switch to another medal set.

  • Make it (much) easier to see which Medal is currently selected (it’s far too subtle, right now).

  • Add a miniature Gem icon under Chat when new Cosmetics become available to buy with Gems. Briefly. Maybe not on the map, but on the Cosmetics tabs themselves.

  • Fix the problem that the Gnome Event counter isn’t visible when a pet is active.

  • If you Scout a battle, then retreat, maintain the visibility of the enemy team, so that battle doesn’t need to be Scouted again (esp. Daily Adventures and PvP).

  • Rework the Guild Wars interface (just the way the screens behave) so it doesn’t look like an abandoned high-school IT project when GW isn’t active. And let us always see all the results of the last GW. (Save a bigger rework for another time.)

  • A calendar graphic (as you discussed on an earlier stream) of all upcoming events would be amazing! (They’re not really spoilers, and never have been.)

  • Make it part of the dev process (not the community management process) to show precisely when new troops hit the drop tables, ideally in-game.

Some Philosophical Stuff

  • Players – both new and old – need to feel they have achievable goals to keep playing. That sense of achievability is critical – and has recently vanished, as a result of Pay-walls, ridiculous kingdom levels, and the ongoing dilution of the troop pool.

  • Long-time players need fewer new things to keep them playing than do newer players. Emotional investment is strong.

  • There are solutions to the dilution of the troop pool.

  • Adding new things to a game does nothing to bring in new players. Advertising and word-of-mouth does.

  • Changes can as easily lose you players as retain them. Always consider what pushes players away, as well as what draws them in – the latter is fleeting; the former accumulates…

  • Sticking to a schedule in software is dumb.

  • Not all opinions are equal… Trust your experienced players, just as you trust a Doctor about an illness (and not a businessman/politician).

  • Overloading the schedule with events – even by accident – is not acceptable. GW + World Event + Faction Launch Weekend should never be allowed to happen.

  • The real problem with Pure Faction L500 is that we only get a single reasonable chance at it. There needs to be a way for people to have more opportunities without having to grind all the way from L20. I could write a whole thread on this, but allow me one example to illustrate the principles involved: if my Faction is L500, on that Faction’s Tuesday Event, let me purchase bonuses not accompanied by Sigils. Those bonuses apply only if I spend all 3 Daily Sigils together and run a Pure Faction team (and are separate from the Event bonuses).

  • I would like to see you move your focus back to the player, back to the game. Fix all those things that have been broken forever.

  • It feels like the last few updates have been entirely about monetisation and the publisher, and not at all about the players. That’s not a good place to be. The game seems in a good state, and the monetisation more than decent to you, so leave that alone for a while.

Note to Readers

I’ve covered so much stuff here, I don’t think it makes much sense to comment. If you want to comment on an individual item, I recommend creating a new thread, quoting me manually, and then adding your opinion.

Hope this helps, @Saltypatra. :heart:

10 Likes

One more:

  • After you buy a Daily Offer (Epic Troop for me, today), it says, “You already own this and cannot purchase it again”. That is incorrect. It should read something like, “You have already purchased this today and cannot do so again.”
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This deserves a highlight. Fatigue makes people want to quit things even when they are addicted.

2 Likes

I had another idea:

  • When buying Tier 7 in the Event Shops, show us how many times we’ve bought Tier 7.
  • Also, show us how many Tiers (or how many times Tier 7) we’ve bought, on one of the fight screens.

I feel I need to clarify my comment about schedules in software development.

In my experience, schedules are essential to software development. However, expecting to stick to them is unrealistic. Even worse, trying to force people to stick to a schedule is ridiculous!

We’ve all experienced trying to print a big document, or even just write something in Word, where it takes many times longer to complete than expected. This is accentuated when programming, especially if the ground-work for the project hasn’t been well laid-down.

The best thing I’ve heard on this topic comes from a podcast I’ve really come to love. The group is talking about Crunch, and Mike Bithell – developer of “Thomas Was Alone” and many other games – makes some brilliant points about studio management. The link is straight to timecode 58:00 within the discussion. There’s about a minute of contextual lead-up, then a few minutes of great stuff, then more great stuff stretched out by questions, running at least to the 1:04:00 mark. Very worth the 5-10 minutes of watching/listening time.

1 Like