Feedback: Guild Quest Rework

[Ciara_Belle]

Most of the assumptions on the guild rework blog are false. Developers have no clue and do not understand.

"Do these changes mean that kicking inactive players is encouraged?
Absolutely not."

FALSE. You do want to kick inactive to make room for actives. To quote from their final parting words:
"Strength in numbers, settlers!"

Since inactive players do not move the quest reward bars. Your numbers are lowered. Dead weights.

Previously the guild quest was based on numbers in guild and inactive players actually helped. Now it is not the case.


"Hang on, the gem prices go up, but the individual rewards don't? That's very unfair!
The reason individual rewards have not gone up and have been standardized is to reflect the difficulty of the task given. Since the tasks have not changed at all, neither have the rewards."

FALSE. again.

The tasks actually have changed, I noticed. AND the rewards are worst. Not better. The rewards are worst.


"But my guild is very small. Would this mean that I'm being punished for not having a lot of members?
Not at all. We have reworked the balancing of the Guild Quest rewards so even smaller guilds will have their rewards boosted compared to the previous iteration. Even if your guild does not have many members, or completes quests with fewer participants, the amount of guild coins that you would obtain weekly will be higher than you would have obtained previously over the course of a week."

FALSE again.

The amount earned on a week to week basis and daily actually is LESS than it was before.
I already posted examples of how this is the case, in a previous feedback thread elsewhere. Smaller guilds actually hurt the most.


Overall conclusion: This heavily favors large active guilds.

Guild with Inactives or casual players, and Small guilds are at a huge disadvantage.

You're Absolutely correct;

1) i had to kick inactives to raise the PERCENTAGE for the guild coins....
2) yup we have a LOT less rewards now... like from 91+13 down to 7+14... so ya -that's a real improvement (sarcasm...)
3) the quests are worse too (run VLT and Pay 50 Dama?? and in less than 24 hours -- not (ya know some of us sleep..too))
4) punishing us for gaining higher levels by making gem buyouts higher is unfair and frankly - mean...
5) see # 2-- ya its pretty much impossible to 'make more a weekly basis' if you're making less on a daily basis... basic math.

[Koshko]

Good to know I can continue not bothering with Guilds.

[Eriond]

However, many of the quests are outside what can be expected for an average player to be able to reasonably complete, and will need to be tweaked. This is also true of some of the lower level quests as well.

This is the first problem. The second is that, even if they CAN be completed in time, many are so expensive as to be things no one SHOULD complete. The cost so far outstrips the "reward", it's ridiculous. It's easy to say "well, just don't do those", but depending on the dynamics of your guild, that may lead to a whole different set of issues.

[Aurboth]

You're Absolutely correct;

1) i had to kick inactives to raise the PERCENTAGE for the guild coins....
2) yup we have a LOT less rewards now... like from 91+13 down to 7+14... so ya -that's a real improvement (sarcasm...)
3) the quests are worse too (run VLT and Pay 50 Dama?? and in less than 24 hours -- not (ya know some of us sleep..too))
4) punishing us for gaining higher levels by making gem buyouts higher is unfair and frankly - mean...
5) see # 2-- ya its pretty much impossible to 'make more a weekly basis' if you're making less on a daily basis... basic math.

Regarding inactives, the part that changed is guilds can no longer use non-players to boost their output. There are two types of inactive players that I tend to see. The first are the people going on vacation or some other defined period where they will not be playing but are expected to return. There should be some allowance for those players. The other type are people who have left the game and are not expected to return. There is no point in keep those people in a guild other than to boost numbers and gain whatever benefit that comes from it.

I am finding the opposite experience with guild coin return. On my Zeus guild, which numbered over 55 people with a moderate amount inactives, guild quests were completed approximately twice a week. The return from that was 119 per quest, and with the bi-weekly reset gift, comes to approximately 576 coins per two weeks, or 288 per week. With the change, and GQ completing every day, I have already gotten 419 over the 4 completed GQ's. On Ares, we held the guild in 35-55 range, and we completed the guild quest 5-6 times per week. Calling it 11 times in 2 weeks, it comes to 550 coins a week with the bonus. So far we have gotten 620 guild coins over the 5 completed GQ's. For the Ares guild, we keep maybe 10% of true inactive people, as they are routinely removed if missing for over a month. However, we have not kicked anyone out since the quest change.

The key to why this worked for us is that we have always been doing the guild quest with the ideal of doing it daily. In the event there quest was held, we did not stay behind on the old quest, so the one we were working on reflected the most accurate list of active people. That kept the quests moving a bit better, as we did not have someone with a quest who has been offline for 2 days. But contrary to the #5 point, it very possible to make more on a weekly basis than before for guilds that routinely took more than a day to complete the quest. This is because each player actively completing the quest is now able to do it on a daily basis, and collect some of the coins then, rather than waiting an extra one or two days before they can do it again. From what I have been told, it is usually the majority of the guild that gets it done in the first day, and then are waiting for the remainder to catch up. Now, that majority gets the coins after the first day, and can get more coins on each successive day, not to mention the individual portion the player will also get every day.

As for the impossible quests, some are more than others. The production ones are a pain because you have to log in to start the quest and again to complete it. But the point they are trying to make is that players should be able to produce at that level before they reach level 51. The VLT adventure completing one is also painful looked at alone, but that also is looking at it individually rather than being done in a guild. It really should not be difficult to find one of three level 51+ players in a guild who can start the quest, and all 3 work together to finish it. A VLT can be solo'ed in less than 3 hours, and loses only disposable troops - 3 players at level 51+ should be able to tag team and get it done. The main thing that changed is that it is harder for the level 46-50 players to get help, as before the 51+ players were doing the adventures easily and giving the loot spots to them; now they do their own. I would definitely draw a line at the book making, as it could really be just impossible for a player regardless of ability or timing.

If we are going to complain about the quests in the guilds, we really need to give some information about the guild. Simply stating the change in unfair because someone gets less really depends on if they were doing the quest before, are doing them now, and what characteristics the guild has. There are some guilds that are simply going to make fewer coins, because they are counting the inactives as members for both the quest and guild size now; the loophole where there were two measurements being used is gone.

[Artillerist]

ok here is an example


level 4 with 2x buff cant make enough. and we don't have any need to make the building any bigger. We end up with plenty at lv 4.
So I assumed the rarity buff to convert reg paper to imtermediant would help complete this but it does not

[KingHomer]

From the five or so days we've had this active, my first feedback is to fix two mechanical issues:

1) Make the timer accurate for all players
2) Count production for those types of quests if you already have the buildings running before you log in

Once we get the base system working, then the quests themselves need to run for a few weeks, but my early comments:

1) Any adventure with loot spots is at least a chance to buy / swap LS if you don't have time yourself, I don't have a problem with any of these
2) Any production goal that can be done in 12 hours with an unbuffed level 5 building seems fair - if production counts before you log in. The game allows for specialization but that is your choice, so if you only run a gold chain and quest needs something else, don't complain.

Potential improvements:

1) Autocomplete at end of timer - if you complete one half and are unable to log back in within the 24 hours, the system should check to see if you completed the other half (i.e. a production goal) when it ends the 24-hour period. This obviously has more programming to it and is a phase 2 kind of improvement.
2) Autopay at end of timer - same as above, if the goals are produce xxx of one resource and pay xxx of another... and you complete the production goal, you should be able to check a box to enable "autopay" of the resources to complete the quest. This should always default to off, so if you don't log in you can't benefit from autocomplete...

Please stop whining and try to comment constuctively on the new system, we have three pretty obvious comment areas:
- technical aspects and bugs in current system
- difficulty of completing quests
- future improvements

I'd be glad to see improvement on my ideas, we know there are BB's in this thread - let's give them straightforward, solid feedback to make this work how we envision it should.

EDIT: I'm in IW, pretty sure the highest level guild on Zeus, so consider us a large active guild.

[Eriond]

OK, here goes:

I am in a small, very active guild. 20 members. We got the guild quest done daily before, and do now, as well. I am getting fewer guild coins daily now than before.

I think the biggest "future improvement" would be to make the guild market viable; it really isn't right now, so the economics are way off, especially for many of the new L51+ quests. Giving up extremely valuable resources to gain guild coins is worth it *IF* the guild coins have an equivalent value.

[CoffeeCat]

As for the impossible quests, some are more than others. The production ones are a pain because you have to log in to start the quest and again to complete it. But the point they are trying to make is that players should be able to produce at that level before they reach level 51. The VLT adventure completing one is also painful looked at alone, but that also is looking at it individually rather than being done in a guild. It really should not be difficult to find one of three level 51+ players in a guild who can start the quest, and all 3 work together to finish it. A VLT can be solo'ed in less than 3 hours, and loses only disposable troops - 3 players at level 51+ should be able to tag team and get it done. The main thing that changed is that it is harder for the level 46-50 players to get help, as before the 51+ players were doing the adventures easily and giving the loot spots to them; now they do their own. I would definitely draw a line at the book making, as it could really be just impossible for a player regardless of ability or timing.

If we are going to complain about the quests in the guilds, we really need to give some information about the guild. Simply stating the change in unfair because someone gets less really depends on if they were doing the quest before, are doing them now, and what characteristics the guild has. There are some guilds that are simply going to make fewer coins, because they are counting the inactives as members for both the quest and guild size now; the loophole where there were two measurements being used is gone.

I do agree with a lot, and I understand the incentive behind the redo, but our guild only has 2 members over lvl 51 who are in different timezones (3 hours apart) and me at lvl 50. The others are all under 50. There are several of us who can only log on once per day. Our guild isn't unique in that, hence the uproar on the Ares server. My time window is usually in the evenings after dinner, which isn't long enough to get a big production quest done regardless of whether I have production capability or not and often with only 2 hours before the reset (9pm my time), so even short advs are hard to get finished. I believe Zeus has been around longer and may have many more higher level players, but on Ares, there are many guilds which don't have more than a few 50+ players. There used to be several ls for BK and RB, but now those players are working on the elite Ali Babas and FTs with expensive (out of reach) loot-spots. Which, BTW, we shouldn't need to rely upon loot-spots in order to meet quest requirements. As far as "disposable troops" go, they still cost in resources and time to make, and since we can only have one barracks the time factor means after running one VLT, the player is probably not going to be able to run another for a few days while the grunts, bowmen and militia bake. This can't be a one-size-fits-all setup, it has to be doable by almost everyone or it just becomes a perk for the elite players and ruins it for the rest. Yes it helps thin the herd of non-players, but that part of it was far better before when the non-actives simply weren't counted, and the occasionally absent didn't hurt the guild percentage.

Bottom line is, yes the GQ system needed to be revamped and I thank BB for all the efforts and their responsiveness, but this was definitely not ready for prime-time and should be rolled back until it is, or reworked now and not wait until the next game update. BB will get it right I know, but this time I think there needs to be a back-track before more guilds are undermined by trying to meet unattainable goals.

[Artillerist]

Problem here was we never really tested these correctly on test server. In my Test guild we were all told by leader to gem it so they could see how many coins we got. Since we don't play as much on test as live it was simplier to gem it due to production limits and when the system started counting production. I believe this lead to BB seeing people gem it and thinking they should raise the gem cost for higher level players.
What i would like to see changed is as mentioned by others
1
the production starts counting as being made even if not logged in.
2
Use same system before where inactives were ignored before we needed 28 to complete for reward now we need 100. I have alot of people that used to play lots and only come back once in 3 months to check in and say hi to friends. We managed once a week to get 28 to complete. now maybe 6 a day can do it. out of 100 so the cost to do it is not worth the rewards. I dont want to kick inactives that come back to say hello, we never needed to before now this makes some people want to kick even the people who do log in but only do guild quest once a week. So much for friendly environment

[Aqua-Dog]

dumb question here.. but what was wrong with the old guild quests anyway?.. lol.. besides the bugs.. bugs are a given! :P