Crisis Quest Feedback

As a mature, well educated player that uses the game to relax and have fun I just have to say that the Fallen Soldiers just doesn't make the grade. Many of the other players summed up the valid negitive points of the quest very well. The only positive side I can see is that maybe some of the players will actually spend hard cash trying to complete the quest so that the company, BB, will stay in buisness. Make the game fun to play, the rewards worth the effort and then players will want to spend their money on the game so that the company does well.

Proper Quest design:

Cost of Resources needed to complete the quest chain + fair value for player time investment should ALWAYS be equal to or LESS than the reward for the quest.

Otherwise why bother to do it.

You've set up a quest line where even first part of the quest has a greater cost to the player than the reward they are going to get for completing the entire chain.

Why would anyone in their right mind participate in such a quest?

It doesn't take long to figure out the fair market value of the respective items, both cost to complete the quest and reward for finishing the quest, and use them as a staring point to balance a quest. A player did it in one of the first few posts on this thread.

It's pretty obvious this wasn't done on the Ubisoft side of things.

The thing that gets me upset is that I really enjoy playing this game.

The reason I'm bitching is you are making it harder for me to derive the fun I get from this game by insulting my intelligence with these repeated, epic, quest design failures.

Please put some semblance of balance back into these quests. Keep the fun in the game. Stop making un-fun content.

Think of it in these terms:
All the hours you spent designing these quests and implementing them . . . . wasted because you didn't take the time to do some simple math.

It's a game. If you don't make it fun, you've failed from the get go.


Current Crisis quest . . . . not fun.

I'm not seeing a lot of newer player feedback, so here's my take on this: it's really disappointing. At first I was excited, thinking this would be a fun, new challenge for me to face. Then, after reading all of the requirements, I still felt like I could do it if I put in the time. But then I saw what the prizes were and felt really depressed. Why would the devs make something so hard with such terrible prizes? Why would you want to punish a player like that? I understand that your goal is to make money but...if the prizes are still terrible why should anyone (those who will pay and those who won't) want to do it anyway? As someone who is new and is only lvl 23, it makes me wonder if this would be a good game to play in the long run.

Agree with pretty much all of the above comments. The ROI on most of the quests is asinine. I'm lvl 41, and I won't be doing the SotV for the pitiful reward offered. If I happen to achieve some of these stupid objectives in the course of normal play, great, but I'm not doing it on purpose. Not for 250 gems. Jeez devs.... is that not the LAMEST possible prize you could come up with?
SERIOUSLY?
If this is your example of 'having learned your lesson', do us all a favor, and quit while WE'RE ahead.

what a bad joke this fallen-army-quest is!! it cost more in resource's then all the rewards combine! what are they thinking,they said they where going to make these quest's a little easier????? ha ha.not to funny.i think ill pass,not worth the resource's or your time!!

Setting the cost to reward issue to the side. The biggest issue I have with this is the building a dama smith just to produce the 50 swords. I've never had any intention of building that or any of the other expert buildings. I don't like how we are being forced to change the game plan we had for our islands bc the devs think we should. There is more than one way to set an island up and expert buildings are not in my plan.

Secondly, as many have said, the devs are seriously out of touch. Whats with having two groups doing the 2 WORST adventures in then entire game? SE and SoV. Do they not realize that almost no one does those advs? I straight up delete both when they come back on adv searches.

All the other stuff is do-able, not necessarily cost effective. But at least with effort they can be done.

Well guess i should have read this first. Already dropped the 5k saltpeter but no way am I going to do the rest once again the costs out weigh the benefits. If the devs. want us to buy more gems give us something worth it. If they want to do something for us just ask there are a lot of smart people playing that are way more in touch with the game then they are. Just wondering how much time it took them to come up with crap we don't want when they could have been working on PvP or higher levels that we all want.

Maybe the Developers don't realize this is an economic game. Unless we gain something of equal or greater value, we are NOT going to be doing something. Doing the Crisis Quest simply means I'm going to have an Economic Crisis in terms of my economies total value.

There was a request for specific feedback, here goes.

1) Don't make quests that are a net negative.
2) Remove "Produce" quests. Or tie them with "Or Acquire"
3) Make "OR" Quests. ("Do this OR that")
4) Compile and analyze statistics for an "After Action Report".
5) Actually run through the quests as a player.
6) Make a third "Adventure" slot for "Quest Adventures".

The extended version:
1) Don't make quests that are a net negative.

Yes, this means you have to actually figure out reasonable market prices for stuff. Yes - "Experience" and "Gems" are both trickier. But they aren't that tricky - especially because you just need ballpark estimates. Yes, different servers have slightly different pricing. Yes, -dynamic- pricing would be excellent. Yes, this -still- applies if you have unstated goals like "Let's drain the excess saltpeter from the system!"

Quest 1: Make 150 Baskets, Donate 5000 Saltpeter, Earn 400 Exotic Wood Planks
Making the baskets is around a full day, but is a 'push' - you can sell or use the baskets and the 'production cost' is worked into the price.

5000 saltpeter = 2500 gold. (or so).
400 exotic wood planks, 100 gold or so.

So this quest is:
"Tie up your provision house for a full day (Half a day if you rabbit for another 300 gold!), and pay a net of 2400 gold!" (More if you have to buy the saltpeter after-the-fact because the price will be going -up- temporarily.)

Quest 2: Find 30 Granite, Trade 20,000, Earn 150 coin.
"Find" is a (time consuming) push. "Trade" is a (time consuming) push.
So this quest is:
"Time passes, earn 150 gold."

Quest 3: Produce 500 Sausage, Buff 200 Friends Buildings, Earn 150 Map Fragments.
"Produce" is time consuming, and -requires- specific buildings.
"Buff" is time consuming (at 200!), and costs 4+ per basket. So 800.
Earn 150 mp = 750 gold.

So this quest is:
"Build specific buildings, time passes, and pay 50gp."

Quest 4: Complete Epic Adventure, Purchase 20,000, Earn 300 Titanium Ore.
The Epic adventures are ok, but 100gp reward is pathetic.

Quest 5: Produce 50 Damascene Blades, Buff 200, Earn 100 coin, 1000 brew.
Produce quests require specific buildings. Rant on that later, but this is
"Earn negative 150 gold."

Quest 6: Employ 250 Cav, Pay 10,000 Exotic Wood Logs, Earn 100 coin and 100 map fragments.
"Pay 2500 gold for 600 gold."

Quest 7: Complete Secluded Experiments, Produce 2000 Sausage, Earn 400 Granite.
Complete -and- Produce lots. Ouch.
The rewards for Secluded Experiments are wildly out of line with the time, effort, and -minimum- resources to get through it. I wouldn't run it myself for less than 3000 granite as a standalone quest.
2000 is a fair number of sausage…
"Pay 3 days and a whole lot of troops to get to the next level."

Quest 8: Produce 300 Exotic Wood Planks, Save up any adventure,
Time passes.

Quest 9: Complete 5 adventures, pay 5000 steel, Earn 700 Granite
Time passes, earn around 300 gold.

So that's around 15 days and 5000 gold spent to get the "Chain Rewards" here.
The 250 gems is roughly 1000 gold. I'd actually call it 1500 gold - because actual gems are better than the same number of gems spent on one's behalf.

But the key things that can't be gifted or traded are building licenses and generals. So that's 1/3 of a building license and 1/20th of a vet.

My counter offers. Note that although these are -wildly- higher than those stated currently, they're -still- more like 'break even' pricing rather than something one should jump on as a deal. (And the other side is spending "virtual coin" anyway.)

Quest 1: "Earn 10,000 exotic wood logs." Yes, 10,000. Or pick a different resource.
Quest 2: Fine.
Quest 3: 300 map fragments.
Quest 4: 3000 Titanium Ore.
Quest 5: "Produce 50 -or- Acquire 500, Buff 200, Earn 100 coin and 50000 Brew."
Quest 6: "Earn 1000 gold and 300 map fragments"
Quest 7: "Earn 3000 granite."
Quest 8: Fine.
Quest 9: Fine.



2) Remove "Produce" quests for Advanced and Expert materials. Or at least tie them with "Or Acquire"

When it's small quantities of beginner or intermediate resources, the "Produce" quests can be prodding newbies to build a darn sawmill or whatever. All of that is fine. But the "Steel Chain" and all of the Expert Buildings (other than the plausible exception of the sawmill) are fundamentally not economically viable.

If I suddenly needed 1000 cannons, I'd buy them for 1000 gold, easy. If trading for them was out, it's a whirl of epic adventures in my future. But actually constructing them from scratch costs more resources than the end product is worth. It's like heating your house with burning $100 bills. Yes, it can be done. But -why-? Take the $100 and buy a quarter-cord of wood - it will last longer that way.

So the "Produce" quests (at high levels) are pushing people to construct buildings they don't want. And, actually, -multiple- buildings if they're going to finish in any sort of reasonable times. Even buffed. Or upgraded buildings - which are -quite- expensive, particularly when you consider just how many cannons, crossbows, or damascene swords could just be flat -bought- with the upgrade costs. (Level 2 Crossbow, 2000 gold, 4000 granite. Call that 8000 gold, which would buy around 15000 crossbows.) And that's just the -direct- problem with the specific building, not considering how much work and upkeep all of the subsidiary buildings are if you're looking for balance. One damascene weapon smith requires the titanium smelter, the steel smelter, and a decent chunk of coal and iron ore….

The "Pay" and "Donate" quests fall in here sometimes too. At the lower levels it was no big deal generally. But here near the top, the "pay" and "donate" can be things that can't actually be produced. "Pay 5,000 saltpeter" for instance. I haven't ever sold off my saltpeter, I'm level 48, and I'm right about 9k. That's a lot of adventuring to "Donate" it all.

I'd rather "Acquire" -10x- as many as are demanded from current high-level "Produce" quests. And that leads to the next bullet:

3) Make "OR" Quests. ("Do this OR that")
"Produce 100 Damascene Swords _OR_ Acquire 1000." I'd rather do that one all day long. Even if "Acquire" didn't allow "Purchase" - because Acquire -does- allow questing for resources. But allowing some flexibility in the quest structure will (IMNSHO) dramatically reduce the angst.

4) Compile and analyze statistics for an "After Action Report".
The best part of computers is the ability to have them tabulate "What actually happened". How many in-each-level-block finished the first sub-quest? The second? The third? … What was the going rate for saltpeter on day 1? And day 7?

This allows hindsight: "Oh, 0.127% of the high level group did sub quest x! It must need tweaking!" This also allows calculating "150,000,000 saltpeter drained from the system." Or whatever other unstated goals there are.

This goes for the Daily Quests and the Guild Quests as well. Figuring out which quests are just -never- done shouldn't be hard. And figuring out which ones are only done reluctantly should also not be hard.

This does -not- mean "Look! 100% of people do -this- one, it must be too easy!" It's mostly virtual resources, the goal is to make the other quests -better- not gimp the ones that people are happy to do.

5) Actually run through the quests as a player.
This is -not- "Put it on the test server", because with the gems and resources floating around there you aren't getting practically -any- testing of the -economics- of anything. And if a dev account here is much like any of the dev accounts I've participated in, there are plenty of tools to "Give self XYZ!" That does allow testing (much like the test server) of whether things physically work. "-Can- someone do the donation?" But never the "Does it make any sense for them to do so?"

The "Complete Adventure X" sub-quests are like this in particular. Some adventures don't require much added incentive. But some of the adventures are not appealing. They may seem fine if you're whipping up troops out of thin air and can regenerate generals at whim, but they're otherwise just not appealing.

The "Complete an -Epic-" is better than, say "Complete Secluded Experiments" as well. There's some flexibility. If I like DB more than BK, I can do that. But the other option is a -specific-, difficult, general-eating adventure. It needs an epic building at the very least in there.

But the easy way out is just to provide a decent, guaranteed lump for any specifically named adventure.

6) Make a third "Adventure" slot for "Quest Adventures".
This is particularly for the players in the lower levels of each bracket. We have an "I started it" slot, and we can have an "I was invited to it" slot. But please make a third slot for "An adventure needed for a quest".

Say I just started a Dark Brotherhood - which gives me -eight- days to finish, but today's guild quest just showed up as "Finish Island of the Pirates". I -can-. It's not overwhelming and I like the adventure fine. But I have to make 1000 cavalry before can finish the dark brotherhood … I can -cancel-. Well, that sucks. I can't start a new adventure. I can't just transfer my troops over and focus on the easy adventure first. I can't buy it as a slot - it's a solo.

Daily Quests, Guild Quests, and now Crisis Quests all asking for adventures where the "fair" amount of time was already set at a week or so. -and- They're all under 'time pressure', unlike "Hey, I just made 42, let's see what I can do in the Dark Brotherhood!"

Another slot just for quests would be most excellent.

So, does BB have any way to track how many people are doing the quest? At what levels? Or how much* of the quest they are doing?