By design, in Journey events each battle shows a specific number of Miles awarded, however the actual amount earned can be less than advertised due to ally Troop deaths and battles lasting more than 10 turns (resulting in confusion such as this).
This is a stark contrast to other event types (particularly World Events), where the amount of collectibles (or score) shown to the player (either in-game, or in the forum announcement post) is the exact (or at least the minimum) award given for winning.
So here’s an easy idea. Instead of the Journey screen showing a base (maximum) award (but with potential deductions) change it so that the Journey map screen shows a minimum award (but with potential bonuses).
For example, instead of this:
Say a given battle says it awards “30 Miles”.
Subtract 2 Miles for every extra turn (above 10 turns)
Subtract 2 Miles for every empty Ally slot (e.g. ally death, 0-3x)
Actual Miles awarded = (minimum 14 - maximum 30)
Do this instead:
The same battle instead says “12 Miles”.
Up to 20 bonus Miles for every turn less than 20 (if any)
Add 2 bonus Miles for every occupied Ally slot (e.g. 1-4x)
Actual Miles earned = (minimum 14 - maximum 30)
Note that the underlying calculation hasn’t technically changed at all, the only thing changed is how it is presented to the player visually.
(The exact point thresholds for each event reward tier is itself a different discussion…)
Well, the stupid part is … that it actually works.
There’s a known anecdote in World of Warcraft’s design history where they tried to implement a “Fatigue” mechanic that would slowly accumulate over time – and players hated it. One or two patches later they added a “Rested” mechanic which wore off over time – players loved it, even though it was literally the same mechanic under the hood.
Player psychology / perception matters. Advertising a specific reward (like Journey Miles) then docking penalties via formulas feels bad to the player, whereas advertising a minimum reward then adding bonuses (via the same formulas, just inverted) feels good.
This is one concept that is trying to be good in the new PVP , a pleasant surprise to get more points than the low base VP advertised . Obviously overshadowed by other problems going on there right now but this concept tracks and it seems like they must be aware of it
Not exactly. I see this little anecdote get thrown around a lot, and while it is true that the way a mechanic is sold matters a lot, there is a bit of revisionist history going on every time the “everyone was happy” part gets repeated. The truth of the matter is that there was significant backlash around the time about trying to “sweep it under the rug” as it were, particularly by the people that were number crunches and min-maxers.
For our purposes, this solves exactly nothing for nearly anybody that spend any of their time posting or even reading forum posts. For one, the illusion breaks pretty heavily when you have this kind of perspective. The aforementioned group of people that couldn’t be placated by the change? The people dedicated enough to read and post on forums and apply to be beta testers. In our community, if there were a parallel, it would be pretty much anybody reading this post (or tl’dring it and reading any of the other posts here, even).
The situation is also very different - we have a well established baseline of what an event should cost, both comparing other events and previous iterations of this event, and the loudest complaints are how these metrics are affected. In WoW, a huge amount of people didn’t like feeling that they were getting punished for playing too long, because that felt bad, and a shift in perspective can fix the issue. For the large majority of the playerbase, the mechanic feeling bad wasn’t about being able to grind x levels in y amount of time. In our case, it feels bad spending the additional time and gems on an event because the silly troops that existed when the baseline was established were basically obliterated without a proportional drop in milestones, resulting in the event requiring significantly more commitment than the established baseline. There is an expected amount of resources (time, gems) which was already considered high compared to other events (for tier 15) which is now even higher.
No amount of repackaging is going to fix this issue. If the event had started as these miles being packaged as “bonus” miles, it would have changed nothing if the established baselines included the bonuses from the start if the established baselines included. We can even see this for other events within this same game, when 2x scoring bonuses for “event captains” in other events went live, NOBODY here was signing their praises because in every instance they were transparently a handicap compared to previously established baslines because you were required to use the troop/weapon to get to the same (in sometimes slightly more, in some even less, before the new reward tiers were added) score.
Then, outside of established baselines, theres the matter of what is “reasonable”. Now, this is a metric that is a lot easier to fudge, but if an event buy-in is too high or takes too long it will see significant drop off in engagement that can propagate to the other areas of the game. The subset of players that includes a lot of frequent forum goers are going to, dispute everything, buy into and finish these events whenever possible. But even the most dedicated players are going to be subject to burnout and you don’t want your thresholds so high these players are actively annoyed by “needing” to participate in the event because, and you especially don’t want an event where your most dedicated players have decided it isn’t worth playing. Because this event gives books, I’m not sure where that line is, but everyone has a limit.
For the record, I’m of the opinion that the nerf of the journey troops was a long-term net positive for many reasons that I may or may not explain when the other threads are out of lockdown. A potential fix is somewhere in how the scoring is decided, and having troops that just auto loop forever by themselves without needing set ups being the “counter” to score decay and lack of scaling in the first place was a bad idea. There is a solution with troop design as well, and it definitely isn’t either how the troops were designed or what they were nerfed to, but I’ll get to that if I get a chance to post where it is relevant.
Looking forward when/if the time comes: particularly interested in whether the Epic Trials & Underspire that relied on those particular troops can be salvaged without a drastic bump in difficulty.
In the grand scheme of things, the Underspire ones can be salvaged eventually. The Epic Trials, Vulpacea and Hellcrag in particular: let’s just say I’m glad I don’t have to do them again.
I see why you think just changing the way how it’s presented would matter now.
But for people who are in a guild which requires minimum buys to finish the event, how it’s presented doesn’t matter. How much actual change, how much gem cost is what matters.
No intention to argue which play style is better. Just to clarify that for many of us, the one thing we check is how many minimum tiers buy is needed to finish the event. And if this doesn’t get changed, nothing will change our opinions. I don’t even look at how many miles I gain after each battle, do I “gain” from minimum or do I “lose” from maximum. I only need to know it’s T2 buy or T4 or T6.
