This discussion continues to amaze us: the amount of feedback is overwhelming. Keep it coming, please!
From what we have now read, we would say that there are two core problems with the quests system as it is on Beta now. This does not mean these are the only problems, but it is what we believe might be the very cause of why this change is so heavily rejected by the community. Because of these reasons, you are skipping quests that we would want you to enjoy. We have "fixed" the effect of this now, but we want to go deeper than that, and fix these underlying problems whereever possible. The reasons that we believe cause most of you to decline quests are:
- The quests that you receive, are not interesting enough for you as a player to complete, due to varying reasons. Examples:
- The rewards are not good enough for the investment you have to make, either time-wise or resource-wise.
- The buildings that the quests require you to upgrade and/or build do not interest you as a player.
- There are quests that you cannot complete, for example due to not having the required buildings or space to do so (e.g. players who have a maxed-out city already).
As said, there may be more, but from what we have seen, these reasons appear to be at the bottom of any reason we have seen. Please, if we missed anything that does not fall under each of those two reasons, do make us aware!
As before, we would like to take the time and reply to a bunch of posts individually as well. Again: if anything is missing, do not hesitate to post again and make us aware. We want your feedback - all of it!
How it was
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How it will be
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Thanks a lot for this analysis,
@LordB, this will help us a lot!
A lot of feedback has already been given and I didn't read all, so I might repeat some.
I don't like the declining of the quest, the way it is now. I do see people can repeat quests over and over again and gain coins and supplies fast. I understand you want to stop that. But I think this is the wrong way to do it. The reason I think that, is because I think peple will be stuck soon and/or forced to play in a way they don't want.
For example: I don't want to produce 3 daily things, I like to produce every 3 hours and then the 9 hours for the night. I am stuck with that quest now, because I am forced to produce 3 daily potions. That also reduces the production of my goods, even with the 200 elixer bonus. 867 per 3 hours or 2767 per day, it is a huge difference. I don't want that quest now, not today, I only like that when I won't be online so much.
I reached the end of the tech tree weeks ago. My buildings are finished, my city has no room anymore for further expansion. Of course that might change with the expansion of the tech tree, if that expansion ever comes. But in the meantime, how to upgrade buildings? I can't upgrade workshops, residences or manufactories anymore. In the dutch server, I can upgrade buildings. But I would be very pissed of if a quest forces me to upgrade 2 workshops, while I want to upgrade my residences or manufactories.
The quest: research a technology (I don't get it here anymore, but in the dutch sever) sometimes requires 70 or 72 knowledgepoints. If I don't buy them and don't fight or negotiate for it, then I need to wait 3 days before I can do another quest. That is not funny anymore. I like to do something, work for it and get a reward, but a repeatable quest shouldn't take days.
Lord B posted a list of usefull quests. Those are the quests I like and repeat. I sometimes do the gain 100 culture, or gain 4 relics, only when I had planned to do so. Meaning I am not gaining 100 culture to do that quest, but choose that quest when my culture is almost finished. I decline the train 1000 units (takes too long). I also often decline the upgrade buildings.
These quests are really usefull and also the ones that can give huge amounts of supplies and coins when you repeat them.
I don't understand why we can only decline 1 quest a day. It means we can be stuck on a quest for days, or do only 1 quest each day, depending on the quest we get. If we should get daily quests, we can still enjoy it and still decline and there won't be so much profit as we can get now and we wouldn't be stuck.
Suppose you can do each quest once a day. And decline quests if you want.
We can then decide to skip the upgrade of the building for example and choose to collect 150 k coins. After completing a quest, it won't appear again till the next day. Skip the fighting and winning of 3 encounters, because my troops aren't strong enough or because I don't want to fight today. Then choose something else that can be done in a few hours or takes a day. We will get rewards, but it won't be as huge as it was.
I think people should be able to choose how they want to play. I think daily quests would be a good solution between what we had first and what we have now.
We would say that this is a perfect example of the behavior we tried to describe above: the quests you mentioned take too much time to complete (sometimes even multiple days), but the rewards are not high enough to make them worth your while. While it is not bad that a quest may take a longer time to complete, we do realise that they should be worth doing. If that is not the case, then we should certainly review the quest and improve it in a way to make it more attractive for everyone.
When I was new to the game and first realized that the declinable quests are also repeatable, i thought that it should be a bug. But in the forums i read somewhere (i couldn't find that particular thread now) that this is intended and not a bug. Since then, i am using this "feature" even if i still think that such a quest system is not appropriate.
After several months, you say now that this was indeed not intended. That is a bit strange i believe.
It was intended that the quests were possible to skip an unlimited amount of times, which is why we said it is not a bug. And it was not, and still is not. But, it is not intended that the quests are used as an unlimited supply of coins and supplies, or making it possible to do the same quests over and over again, just for the rewards. We want quests to be engaging, challenging and most of all fun to complete. Repeating the same one or two quests all day long reaches none of these goals, which is why we made the decision to change that. Did we do that in the right way? Maybe, but judging from your feedback, there is still some more work to be done to make the system perfect. This is why we are having this conversation with you now, and will continue to have this conversation with you for as long as is necessary. We want invest our time in making this feature work in a way that everyone is happy with. It may take some time to pull it off, but that shouldn't stop us from trying at all.
Did you read my whole post? There are examples in it.
Yes, we read the entire thread up to this point, including all posts. And, thanks for the examples you have provided us with so far! If you have more, do not hesitate to share!
to sum it up : I train sorceresses, they are oh so useful, but not 500 !
the problem with this quest is that it has no logic behind it;
or some twisted logic, which is the same to me;
I cannot figure why I would have to train 500 sorceresses before getting another quest, it does not fit my gameplay, hence I decline it.
This would certainly be a quest that I could see needs a review. We'll find out which quest this is exactly and we will make sure to forward the feedback about it.
Apparently they do not want to understand, what the players actually annoys.
Yes, we do want to understand. If we didn't, we wouldn't be reading or replying all this.