Duelyst Forums

How the new quest system will affect me (and the game)

#1

I know there are already a couple of threads about the new quests, but the goal of this thread is discussing the design of the new quest system.

I will start with a very personal example, discussing my experience with the game. I love Duelyst and I do my best to follow the scene and play everyday. “Unfortunately”, I’m not super young anymore and real life is taking me a lot of time from gaming, so I ultimately play very casually, say 4 matches per day.

Let me list the outcomes of the daily quest with the old system:

  1. ultimate aggressor + assassin: awesome! I can do the quests in one game and play more, depending on my free time

  2. faction quest + non-faction quest: good! I can safely reroll the faction quest to look for my favorite faction, in the worst case I’d still get the other quest done

  3. two faction quests: unlucky, let me reroll the quests to see whether I end up in 1 or 2

With the new system, scenario 1 is dead and rerolling quests for factions I don’t play is riskier, since I only have one faction quest slot. Also, I will never be able to complete the longer quest during a working day. After the nerf to the Welcome Back quest, this is a second hit to my gold income.

But who cares about me? I will still play Duelyst, but the problem is with new players. The new quest system is harming all the non-hardcore users. New players often try a game, play it for a couple of weeks, and only stick around if they feel a sense of progression. To be honest, I would have never entered Duelyst if the quest system had been like this from the beginning.

Also, be careful with “casual” gamers. Besides being obviously important in developing the player base, many of them are just people with limited time in real life, who may be willing to compensate their limited time by investing some money in the game. Making these customers unhappy may be bad for the game.

Please discuss!

7 Likes
#2

Wrote something about it in the Patch-Thread. Same direction of thinking:

1 Like
#3

Yeah, I took a hit too.

I work and go t college so playing 4-6 matches a day to get a pack was perfect for me.
Somedays I had the time for a couple more games, but doind that was just fine as I could play and make my collection grow a little every day.

It honestly feel like they are cutting the amount of gold rewarded to players, which was my main argument to HS players: duelyst rewards more, so you don’t have to grind that much to build a competitive deck.

#4

Good point, but you missed important thing. For “casual” gamers like me new quests are not simply “longer” - they are really hard to complete. You talk about old faction quests being unfortunate; but for beginner players they were actually best since I could complete it with any basic deck versus any legendary 14k deck (which I meet very often at low ranks), with a smile. Now basic decks just won’t do a sheet and if I make a deck from cheap cards I have it will still take half a day to complete (like, throwing all forces trying to reach enemy general, do 4-5 dmg to him, lose game, repeat 30 times (and get pissed off at the end of course)). Every day.

1 Like
#5

This is also a very good point, I didn’t think about that. I don’t want to sound too negative, but I hope CPG had something clear in mind when designing the new quest system. It really sounds like a big bash to casual players and a huge steep for newer players.

If CPG wanted to promote more playing, I would have appreciated more a third quest slot. Why didn’t they go in that direction?

#6

i really really hate the new quest system :smiley:
it punishes casual player and not everyone can invest a long time playing the game, it’s killing me.

such a system would deter casual player that wants to play the game so. idk CPG.

#7

I think the new quest system might actually work if they ever choose to implement the casual mode for the game. See my analysis here for an explanation:

#8

The lack of gold will give even less incentive to new players to learn Gauntlet, for example. Since gold is now more precious you’re going to be less willing to ‘risk’ it.

I also believe that if they lower the gold-gain by this much they should up the orb rarity-droprate, I was ok with my crap luck with orbs, getting only three legendaries over the course of 2 months because I could easily get an orb every day or 2 days. Now my shitty luck is going to sting extra hard, knowing I’ll only get an orb ever 2-4 days due to my schedule.

1 Like
#9

Judging from your experience seems like the the new system in practise is not even better for casual players like CPG intended. Together with the nerf for the 15g win reward it looks like the only players that actually benefit from the change are those who spend 4 hours or more each day grinding, while all other will see their daily gold earnings decline.

I adapted to the changes and instead of playing 2-2.5 hours each day for completing the 14 wins, I now only play until I have completed both dailies which cuts my play time in half. I hope that is the change CPG wanted to achieve. Curious how this will affect the player numbers. Not be surprised if we see a sharp decline in the Steam charts over the next week or so.

#10

Yup, seems like in my post I forgot to mention new players as well. They will be hurt by this the most and how is the game supposed to grow if you can’t keep new players around? My guess is it won’t and CPG knows that. They just want to milk the old players as much as they can.

#11

The patch made things much harder for newer and casual players, and only slightly better for players who spend a long time playing on average.
It might well be a move to milk existing players indeed, but that would be doubly disappointing:
It would mean them giving up on getting more players in, and them not caring much for their existing player base. That said, the division bundles were a nice move on their part. Only time will tell.

#12

I’ll add to that, that having played again today. I found I only feel like doing about 4-5 games, even when I have the time (weekend). So I don’t see much gold increase on my end.

#13

May I humbly admit that I was horribly wrong with my initial analysis of the new quest system? At least for me, of course.

The Assassin quest looks very doable, I have done it twice in 5 matches. Also, Adventurer is straightforward: by doing it in 2 days, the gold income is similar to before. I would never try Ultimate Aggressor, since it seems too long and unpredictable, but who cares? I can always skip it.

Retrospectively, I believe the most serious issue is with the faction quests. I have enough cards to build semi-competitive decks for all factions, so I can play the faction associated to the daily quest, but I think it’s harder for people with smaller collections.

So, I am happy to say that it seems I was wrong with the doom and gloom this time, at least for me. Anyone else with the same / opposite feeling? After some play testing, I think we can more safely comment on this.

3 Likes
#14

been playing with the new quest system. my only gripe is that now it feels very feast and famine. before the progress to 100 gold felt very deliberate. you would slowly watch progress happening to 100. Now if you hit a losing streak or even just trade games 1 win 1 loss, it can, and this is personally speaking, feel like you aren’t making any progress. yes the quests are being completed but none of that match gold trickle is happening. the end of which is “suddenly!” I have the gold and choose to stop playing because i didn’t feel like I was progressing without that large bump in quest payout. before I honestly was always one or two wins from just a bit more gold and that really did keep me playing.

however I am still attaining roughly 150 gold in the same amount of time as i normally would.

1 Like
#15

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.