New Boss Event: Quandary Info

Crowl

@entrailbucket said:
If your alliance is forcing you to do something that's not fun, it's time to find a new alliance.

They might simply mean not wanting to let their alliance down by not contributing rather than literally being forced.

This time round, in our alliance, we expected regular performance level in the pve and then do what they could be bothered in regular quandry, hardcore had no expectations.

KGB

@bbigler said:
Just to add my 2 cents:

I enjoy puzzles and needing to use less common characters. But I don’t enjoy long matches and sometimes impossible puzzles. 1 long match is fine if the reward is good, but playing 25 - 50 long matches everyday is exhausting and disruptive. I have a life with other things to do. So, either give me a few hard puzzles OR lots of easy ones.

You can fix Quandry by simply allowing character powers!

The problem with allowing powers is that the characters who are most useful like Shang are gated away from newer players. So instead the level of frustration will be between 'haves' and 'have nots' in terms of who has the right characters.

Absolutely NONE of the puzzles was impossible. I completed every side node puzzle in both Heroic and regular Quandary using nothing but the loaners since firing powers was locked out. Some took longer than others of course but none were impossible or even close to impossible.

You can also reach full progression even skipping those 2 puzzle nodes each round and just doing the other 3 if your alliance is all engaged.

That's not to say the event was perfect. Far from it so hopefully they can make some adjustments to allow some limited powers (maybe powers only by 3* and under characters).

KGB

Crowl

If they ever bring it back as the alliance event, I'd like to see better board logic where it is not giving you basically impossible positioning on some of the tile removal puzzles, hoping for a lucky cascade is not a reasonable solution to something that is supposed to be a puzzle.

Even if it meant that they only had a limited number of previously setup layouts like the match the colours in order variant then it would at least be a case of working out a solution.

allen_koholic

Quandary is a mess. Because there’s two separate and distinct issues with that character - boss quandary (who is boring and sloggy) and node quandary, who goes from boring to alright to insanely stupid depending on the “puzzle”.

The Boss version should just be reworked from the ground up. Her stun mechanic on her is hard to proc because it needs at least 6 dmg hits to her in a single turn. It’s mostly just a thing that happens. It’s easier to run some hard hitting tanks and slog through the match. Her CD mechanic is boring. In practice, she’s a less-fun molten man.

The node version - just throw Hue Shift into the bin. Forever. Fix the shell game one where the 10-turn CD tile does absolutely nothing if you destroy it. Add at least four or five different starting boards for the actual puzzle one. The other three are fine I guess.

Seriously, Hue Shift has made me want to uninstall this game.

Punter1

I didn't change my opinion too much from run 1 to run 2.

Most of the puzzles were not too bad and I didn't mind the challenge. It changed things up which is always welcome.

I did get pretty frustrated with the Hue puzzle, mainly as when I am normally playing it's not easy to find a spot to note down the answer so it just became a brute force painful chore. Even on the few matches where I did make notes, it became even more frustrating when I had the answer, but there was no legitimate correct matches. If this had to come back, it should be coded that Quandry can only show a Hue of a possible match.

The main boss also had few redeeming qualities. She didn't present as a puzzle just a slog once level 8 arrived. It was too random what happened and I have no idea what triggered the appearance of the other puzzles. Compare to Ultron who has a definite solution and is a much more enjoyable boss.

entrailbucket

@Crowl said:

@entrailbucket said:
If your alliance is forcing you to do something that's not fun, it's time to find a new alliance.

They might simply mean not wanting to let their alliance down by not contributing rather than literally being forced.

This time round, in our alliance, we expected regular performance level in the pve and then do what they could be bothered in regular quandry, hardcore had no expectations.

I understand, but honestly I find this to be unhealthy too, and the sort of thing that'll lead to player burnout and turnover eventually.

Even when our alliance was top 10, we never had minimums or expectations of any kind, and the only rule was "have fun."

meadowsweet

@bbigler said:
I don’t enjoy long matches and sometimes impossible puzzles.
You can fix Quandry by simply allowing character powers!

I truly don't understand the mountain that folks seem to be making out of this mole hill...

I'm not sure which puzzles you consider "sometimes impossible"?:
1) Find the "three-card monte" tile
2) Eliminate all fortified tiles
3) Make six matches in a specific color order
4) "Hue Switch" where the colors don't match
5) Drop the climbing tiles to the bottom row

The game is called puzzle quest. It does take some planning to arrange tiles where they're needed. I found all of the Quandary nodes easier than the average Puzzle Gauntlet node. Since powers don't work, you can bring anyone from your roster of hundreds. Or fail dozens of times without needing to use a health pack. If you get an unfavorable board, you can just retreat and try again. If they allowed powers, there'd just be 30 second shortcuts to every round ("just use Quake or Black Bolt to destroy the entire board!") It's okay to not like or not play one event in the game - not every event has to please or be easy for every player.

I liked it, wasn't frustrated by it except for once or twice (there's probably room for a couple minor tweaks), and appreciate that the devs are trying something different. Because the other complaint I see all the time is that we're just running the same events over and over. So they try something new, and people complain about that too!

Bowgentle

The problem for me wasn't the side nodes, those were handled by the loaners.
The problem was the boss launching into riddle mode all of a sudden, seemingly randomly, up to 3 times per fight during the later rounds.
Those hurt, because you were using your own characters.
Without that, it would have been an OK event.

bbigler

@KGB @meadowsweet
The “sometimes impossible” puzzle I was referring to is the fortified tile one where sometimes I would get a tile stuck in a bottom corner and my characters would die from the attack tiles before I could clear it. Now, that problem can be mitigated by using the loaners and/or retreating to get a different starting board.

The fast tile swap puzzle is easily beaten by recording a video and playing it back in slow motion. Otherwise, that puzzle could be impossible.

The What Goes Up puzzle is always possible, just usually very time consuming. Just like the color changing one.

On a side note, new players can get Classic 5-stars relatively quickly, meaning less than a year. Probably 6 months actually. All of the regulars on this forum keep thinking that progression to 5-Star land is as slow as it was 5 yrs ago. I’ve been trying to show people that progression is fast nowadays, even more so with ascension and ascension rewards.

Seph1roth5

@meadowsweet said: It does take some planning to arrange tiles where they're needed.

The problem is that's entirely up to luck/rng. You can't just "plan" to be able to match-4 and take out a fortified tile. You can TRY and HOPE, but you can also have a 0% chance of it actually happening.

Bowgentle

Now that this is finished, can we get rid of the fake scrambled UI, please?