Whether Epic milestones should be achievable through normal play or niche board manipulation?

Phumade

Without removing or changing the current reward tree.  Should future epic milestones be achievable through normal play patterns or require niche board conditions unlikely to be present in normal play.  Niche board conditions are more candy crush style objectives that require special tile generators to do strange board manipulations.  Vs. Normal play patterns are the type of actions you see in normal pve outside of the Challenge nodes.  As a side note, I consider the hard challenge nodes to be epic milestone worthy achievements

grumbLEGO

We definitely need some milestones based on very specific weird stuff. Makes us change our style of play and think of new ways to do things or forces us to use more characters. 

Theghouse

I imagine they could potentially add quite a mix of both types of challenges.

But the time investment to be competitive in SCL 10 PVE is already considerable for most non-whale rosters.  And required characters in PVE, PVP, DDQ, Shield Training, and Introducing events already encourage/force players to rotate their rosters outside of their normal best or favorite teams. 

I know I personally won't spend much time chasing milestones that aren't completed by my normal play patterns or more than a couple extra plays.

HoundofShadow

One of the biggest feedbacks is 90% of rosters is sitting unused unless they are essential. Even if they are essential, players are going to Gritty or iHulkoye the nodes away.

Maybe we can have some sort of Milestone Quests like "Use Emma Frost's Psychic Meddling to destroy 12 enemy strike, protect, or attack tiles." or "Use Spider-Woman's To Love and Fear to remove 30 enemy special tiles." instead. This way, the number of unique quests are virtually endless. With over 200 characters, there are over 600 possibilities. On top of that, this really force users to think of ways to put together a non-typical team that works together.

Omegased

something i've had in mind for a LONG time, is a mechanic to force different characters being used.

My thought originally for PvE, would be to get maximum points per node, you need different characters.

I would like to see a challenge that would end in "use every unique 2/3/4/5 star characters". then, FINALLY My massive roster will pay off, and I'll finally get to use Flaptian

Vhailorx

Ummm, make a case that the answer shouldn't be "both" and I will make an argument for one of those two options.

KGB

Omegased said:

then, FINALLY My massive roster will pay off, and I'll finally get to use Flaptian

You can use Flaptain now anytime you want. The problem is you want an incentive to use your roster.

Personally, I'd hate to see quests based on characters such as "Use Spider-Woman's To Love and Fear to remove 30 enemy special tiles". Not because I don't want to use her, but because (A) it would clutter up the milestone quests (it already takes a lot to scroll through it and we aren't even 1 week in) and (B) the rewards would likely be insulting (a handful of ISO for such a quest) and (C) this disproportionately favors veteran deep rosters esp in 4/5 land.

Niche stuff should be quirky but theoretically achieveable via multiple characters/roster combos. For example:

1) Cover Board with Special Tiles: 30+ tiles covered gives basic reward (small amount of ISO), 40+ tiles covered gives next level reward, 50+ next level, 60+ next level and finally 64 gives final level (maybe an LT).

2) Win a battle on turn 1 (ie before opponent move): Opponent Levels all 10+ gives basic reward (Small amount of ISO), opponent levels all 20+ gives next level, opponent levels all 50+ gives next level, opponent level all 100+ gives next level, opponent level all 200+ gives next level, opponent level all 300+ gives next level, opponent level all 400+ gives next level, opponent level all 500+ gives final level (maybe 500 shards of 5* favorite since this may take years for a lucky cascade to achieve).

KGB

HoundofShadow

I think players will be bored of those quests (create x tiles, gain y aps etc) in three months' time.

A one turn knock out can be done with Supports (Black Widow's Baton and Quantum Realm) and +4 purple ap boost or any support (+ a total of 12 yellow ap with ap boosts) with ability to gain teamup ap quickly. So, the harder quest will be achieved easily by those getting top 25 in PvP season.

Phumade

Vhailorx said:

Ummm, make a case that the answer shouldn't be "both" and I will make an argument for one of those two options.

Of course it should be both.  The goal is to give the devs an idea of player preferences.  The actual % mix can grow organically over time based on feedback and dev resources.

shardwick

I'd rather see them bring back the gauntlet and just turn it into a Candy Crush style event that has those types of niche board challenges and leave normal play conditions for milestones.

Omegased

KGB said:

Omegased said:

then, FINALLY My massive roster will pay off, and I'll finally get to use Flaptian

 "Use Spider-Woman's To Love and Fear to remove 30 enemy special tiles". Not because I don't want to use her, but because 

Agreed - I would not like something that granular. but maybe something like, play a match with every boosted 4star this week, or something similar? I hate the idea of a specific power quest as some powers are too unique, but just using them I think is manageable.

ThaRoadWarrior

One super edge case "achievement" I've done is to use Banner/Carbage/4ocket to initiate a 3x auto-turn before I get/have to make my own move scenario. Stuff like that would be rewarding at some level, but again it would super favor the deep roster which may or may not be desirable.

PiMacleod

Sadly, I can totally see those very "specific" quests becoming a reality.  It's kinda like essential nodes -- you can't play those without a specific character.

I got a couple players in my alliance who groan during boss events, because sometimes they don't have that specific character.  They miss out on those points, and also, they feel like they are failing the alliance through no fault of their own.  Of course, this is designed on purpose, so that if a sale comes around that features that character, those players just might loosen the pocketbook a bit.

This is the same thing -- completionists could see these theoretical quests and feel pressured to complete them... you know, get that "achievement".  And that's something that a developer could definitely use to their advantage.

Disclaimer:  I'm NOT supporting this idea at all.  I merely just see the option viability.  

ThaRoadWarrior

Probably worth pointing out that Achievements as a concept exist to drive engagement with your product. You can see it already working here with @Michael1957 changing their attitude towards building a big roster because of these Milestone Quest rewards being more "worth it" than champ rewards were to them I guess, and with @Mr_F
 who had left the game, and then suddenly come back because of the influx of progress on Wa5p. So if people are incentivized to build deep rosters more than they already are, then working as designed and that's totally fine, right?

Daredevil217

My answer like many others is both. I like the idea of character-specific quests as well; like 1-3 that become visible once you champ them. This would do a few things. One, it’d make champing even **** characters a little exciting and give some additional incentive to try them out. Like IW Spidey can try to cover X amount of tiles with webs, negate X amount of damage with webs, and do X amount of damage with his punch. 

For us vets it’d be daunting having like 1000 quests on our screen but for a new player it’d be pretty cool to champ a new character and be given some fun challenges to do with them. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Daredevil217 said:

My answer like many others is both. I like the idea of character-specific quests as well; like 1-3 that become visible once you champ them. This would do a few things. One, it’d make champing even **** characters a little exciting and give some additional incentive to try them out. Like IW Spidey can try to cover X amount of tiles with webs, negate X amount of damage with webs, and do X amount of damage with his punch. 

For us vets it’d be daunting having like 1000 quests on our screen but for a new player it’d be pretty cool to champ a new character and be given some fun challenges to do with them. 

I think you'd need to have at least some indication champing a character would provide you with a quest for them to be a driver for new or old players to want to champ them.

I would maybe offer the suggestion of streamlining those character specific ones by aggregating them into character families much like the Alliance Event nodes do. So there is a tree for all Spiders-man, some specific ones specific to various flavors of him, another for Captains America and so on.

Mr_F

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Probably worth pointing out that Achievements as a concept exist to drive engagement with your product. You can see it already working here with @Michael1957 changing their attitude towards building a big roster because of these Milestone Quest rewards being more "worth it" than champ rewards were to them I guess, and with @Mr_F who had left the game, and then suddenly come back because of the influx of progress on Wa5p. So if people are incentivized to build deep rosters more than they already are, then working as designed and that's totally fine, right?

I never thought that my love for 5* Wasp will become such huge element of community. Not to mention that my "left into came back" made it even bigger. I fell like I became a part of "top X most famous players of MPQ" with other  being such Big Ones as @Rick_OShay, @PiMacleod and Eloy from MPQMastery due to their YT channels. Yes, it is exaggaration but I hope ya'll get the point.*

I feel proud. A little life achievement. Dear God, I made people INTENTIONALLY into playing or chasing THE WORST (1st or 2nd) 5* in the game just to HELP ME get going with her! I have so far seven pages long topic of that. 2020, I just found out something good in you!

Also incentivized. I had to remember that word. Incentivized. New in collection.

*Ignorance is blessing. My current random picked alliance is propably unaware of the fact who I am.

Michael1957

Since this is already being done in the Puzzle Ops I don’t see the necessity of having it  in Milestone as well .