Task order should be reconsidered

[Slypenslyde]

Last night I was playing GoW and waiting to get sleepy. I started focusing on my Campaign Tasks. The first rightmost task I had was “Win battles with Deathknight”. I hadn’t done the Dungeon yet that day so I set up a quick Dungeon team with Deathknight and got the task. Then my next task was “Fight Dungeon Battles” -_-

This is one of many places where GoW does a frustrating thing that makes me quit playing for the night. I suppose I could’ve gone to a third-party fansite to be informed about all tasks in advance, but seeing as one of the game’s prominent third-party fansites just shuttered that doesn’t seem like a great thing for the game to rely on existing.

This would’ve been a worse surprise in the case of a slightly-casual player trying to catch up on tasks Sunday. They’d be stuck without spending gems. Ha ha, no full tasks for you this week, right? That kind of stinks.

One or more of the following would improve it a lot:

1. Players should be able to see all tasks so they can predict order of operations fails like this.
2. Progress should accumulate towards all tasks concurrently whether or not you can see them, so in my case I’d have immediately qualified for the Dungeon task.
3. Task order should put “play this limited-play game mode” tasks near the “front” so players are less likely to get “stuck” more than a day.

I feel like (1) is the most elegant fix, as I imagine (2) makes it much easier to finish and (3) involves subjective thought about whether tasks “block” each other.

[Shimrra]

And the devs won’t implement any of them.

[RottenSis]

Great suggestions and I wholeheartedly agree. My favorite is your option number one, followed closely number two.

I got caught by surprise (and stuck for a day) by the adventure board bronze task as I do my dailies from left to right.

[Arelana]

@Slypenslyde

I feel like (1) is the most elegant fix, as I imagine (2) makes it much easier to finish and (3) involves subjective thought about whether tasks “block” each other.

I agree with you, although the time-saver part of me would absolutely love (2).

@Shimrra

And the devs won’t implement any of them.

Probably, because players flailing around in confusion means they spend more time in the game and possibly consider spending Gems to skip some of the frustration.

[HounganAtLarge]

Never happen. Since you have all week to complete them, they won’t consider it worth the effort, just so players can get them done in one day instead of 2 or even three.

[Razzagor]

From the previous week I’ve learned to not do ANYTHING limited per day (Dungeon, Delves…) before I can see if a task will require it. This week I was surprised there is a task about the adventure board, lucky for me I don’t play the ones with traitstones so I had the chance to finish that task requiring to do them all.

[Rockwell]

Yep, I got stuck because I got the Pest Control task needing to kill Treasure Gnomes, but I would usually use Vault Keys as soon as I got them.

Now I’ve got one that’s just sitting there doing nothing in case I get that task again

[Slypenslyde]

Yeah, I feel like that’s their opinion, I’m going to protest it anyway.

I’m thinking about a person who, for whatever reason, doesn’t think about their tasks until late Sunday and gets in a state where they discover they’re hosed and have to spend gems or miss task points.

Small group, but like I said, there are a lot of minor frustrations like this scattered throughout GoW and if a couple of them happen on a bad day, that’s what makes people quit.

The “obvious” workaround is like @Razzagor says: don’t do anything that’s limited until other users list all the tasks. That’s a bummer and I don’t want to have to potentially put off playing GoW while I wait for people to do detective work. Generally if I start telling myself “don’t play this game because…” that’s when I stop remembering to play.

[rbchaffe]

@Slypenslyde

I’m thinking about a person who, for whatever reason, doesn’t think about their tasks until late Sunday and gets in a state where they discover they’re hosed and have to spend gems or miss task points.

I thought uncompleted tasks carry over to the following week? You would be “hosed” only on Sunday of week 10. Haven’t tested that yet so I’m probably mistaken.

[Lorien1973]

@Slypenslyde

Players should be able to see all tasks so they can predict order of operations fails like this.

Requested. Denied. I think for obvious reasons.

@Slypenslyde

Progress should accumulate towards all tasks concurrently whether or not you can see them, so in my case I’d have immediately qualified for the Dungeon task.

This is the obvious reason.

Campaigns are a time sink. Allowing them to be completed in any order; and to allow concurrent progression takes away from this.

Think about part of the goal, from their point of view. The “quirky” interface (where you have to go back and collect the reward, to get a new task) is meant as an interrupt to slow down mindless/efficient farming - for at least a period of time during the week. I think campaigns are, partially, a reaction to people finding super efficient ways in explore to grind a ton of gold, very quickly.

[ChunkyMono]

I put the optimal order in my Guild’s chat. Not that all our members read chat…

But yeah, anyone waiting until week 10’s Sunday to finish all tasks won’t be happy.

Going in to week 3 of campaign, expect a dungeon, delve, and event boss task, and don’t do those until they count for something.

The ui will still suck, and I still don’t know why there’s a skip button that doesn’t skip. (On Xbox, at least. Does it work on touch screens?)

Edit: I just noticed there is a Community Guide (created by @Hawx, respect) listing the weekly tasks. Easy enough to find on the forum.

For the 4 DK battles, I fought the Kingdom explore starter battles, and left the mini-boss for later.

For the Mace/Banner fights, I fought the first 8 AB fights and left final for later. Proper prior planning…

[brc_ro]

@Lorien1973

Campaigns are a time sink. Allowing them to be completed in any order; and to allow concurrent progression takes away from this.

Think about part of the goal, from their point of view. The “quirky” interface (where you have to go back and collect the reward, to get a new task) is meant as an interrupt to slow down mindless/efficient farming - for at least a period of time during the week. I think campaigns are, partially, a reaction to people finding super efficient ways in explore to grind a ton of gold, very quickly.

Or a good way to frustrate your player base and make them quit… I am… I was playing this game for fun… Now it feels like I have a to do list that makes no sense, imposed by my boss, and going through it not slows down my fun, but it also frustrated the hell out of me… I’ll soon have a PhD in useless clicking in a UI of nightmares…
Might be time to get a new boss… I mean game…

[Voq]

@ChunkyMono

The ui will still suck, and I still don’t know why there’s a skip button that doesn’t skip. (On Xbox, at least. Does it work on touch screens?)

The skip button doesn’t work either on PC with mouse or Android w/ touch screen. Almost seems intentional .

[UKresistance]

It’s going to be hard to convince the devs to change anything when most people complete all the campaign tasks in one or two days. They are probably even thinking of ways of slowing completion down by a few days.

[Sossitch]

Yes, and you should be able to set different medals sets for defense, and you shouldn’t be able to waste honor on revered people, and they shouldn’t sell you useless stuff in daily offers, and deeds should be grindable, and it should never take 11 clicks to get to the next explore battle.

Given how they have ignored our feedback for the last year, the forums are more of a support group than a way to help devs improve the game at this point.

[Slypenslyde]

It was pretty easy to make the post but thanks for stopping by to register your disapproval of a thing that won’t hurt or probably affect you in any way, we all appreciate it.

What’s ever been easy to get devs to change? Should people just stop posting feedback?

[BelethS]

I do all the tasks that imply play X matches with team/class/banner Y solely in level 1 explores.

I can’t possible imagine why would someone start with dungeons or adventure board instead, when lv1 explores are so much faster and plain brainless, especially with such a schedule like world event AND gw AND faction event AND bounty in the same week…

Campaign tasks are the most boring and time consuming of all chores, so I rather get them done as soon as possible, thus running purely explore 1, unless encountering a specific task that can’t be done there (like the dungeon one or the fight mythic X times one).

[Slypenslyde]

Well see this is what makes thinking about games difficult: you have to step out of how you play and consider other people might play it different. Those people might make different choices, thus the quality of life improvement that doesn’t hurt you in the slightest might help them.

For example, when do you reach tier 1 PvP? Your seals for the week? How many mythic pets do you own? How many level 500 factions have you finished? How many hours do you spend playing per day?

My answers are “Thursday”, “Saturday”, “2 or 3”, “0”, and “usually 1”. I’m willling to bet your answers are significantly “earlier” or “more” depending on context. If I treated GoW like I did games in college and played, say, 6 hours a day, I’d make completely different choices and probably agree with you about “optimal” play.

But I don’t. I’ve got work crises, family crises, pet crises, home maintenance crises, basically I’m running out of things that aren’t on fire. I popped into bed and wanted to do some tasks while I waited to feel sleepy. It was the first time I logged in that day. I set my GW defenses, got the glory troop, and decided to go do the daily dungeon while knocking out a task at the same time. When you only plan on playing 10-15 matches, you make different decisions than if you plan on a few hundred.

That’s what led me to ask. But thank you for your feedback that I’m not living an optimal lifestyle and spending more hours of my life in GoW. I’ll file it in one of the flaming file cabinets.

Ultimately the worst feature of GoW is the community. People show up and say, “Wow, this felt kind of bad, it’s part of what makes it hard to answer why I even bother anymore.” There are a few hand-picked people within the community who show up to say, “It’s because you’re wrong and don’t play hardcore like me, make better life choices.”

Quitting would be a good life choice. I’m not here because I make good ones.

[ChunkyMono]

@Slypenslyde

I suppose I could’ve gone to a third-party fansite to be informed about all tasks in advance

Taransworld will be missed even by players who didn’t know it existed, or who knew and didn’t visit it.

Until your requested changes are implemented by the Dev team, here is a link to the community guide. Not all forum threads are toxic. There are some in the community that still try to help. Even if we are doing it wrong.

Campaign Guide and Tasks (Week 10 Updated)

I’ve created a guide to the new Campaigns. Feel free to share with your guilds. This guide was made specifically for the BDC alliance so you will see some mention of a discord channel that only BDC Guild members have access to but other than that it should prove useful to you and your Guild mates Also here is full list of Campaign Tasks for Week One - Maugrim Woods [image] Here is a full list of Week Two - Ghulvania [image] Full list of Week Three’s Tasks - Silverglade [image] Full …

gl hf

[TheCuillin]

If you could see the tasks up front it could affect whether or not someone invests in a campaign pass. I totally get your frustration but last week we had to fight 6 dungeon fights so the nett outcome in your case is the same…stalled for a day.