5th Patron Dilemma

[OldGamer]

As discussed recently in the dev insights stream.

I thought of an idea that might help with your design of it when you do add more patrons.

FIRST IDEA

Instead of the current system where all the challenges are separate to the patrons, each getting 1,000 currency (and with the blessing/perk 1,000 more I believe). You could have a "pool" of challenges per week that can lead to whatever patron the user chooses.
The "pool" would be made up of 50 weekly challenges.
Therefore, you can have 5,000 (+5,000 more if you have perk) currency per week in addition to the separate 5,000 FP currency for each patron.
This would negate the player having to play each patron for the challenges, but still enabling at least 5,000 currency for each patron if they choose to.
The player can also choose what challenges they want to go to what patron, so you could still do up to 2,000 per patron if you desired. But effectively could do 15,000 currency for a patron in a week.

PROs
1. The player doesn't have to play a specific patron to do the chores each week
2. More freedom of choice in a game isn't bad.
3. More patron currency if you choose to for one patron per week.
4. Good for "weekend warriors" as even with 4 it is hard to do all challenges in a day.

CONs
1. The x,xx,xxx champions in the formation challenges might be messed up or always the same (aka they would have to be with champions that can go in all patrons - unless you had a system like blessing conversion but with patron currency.)
2. Complete change in mechanics, could be long to game dev.
3. You effectively still have the same number of challenges, just the choice to stick with one patron or move around to others to complete said challenges.

SECOND IDEA

Another idea would be to decrease the challenges from 10 to 5 each week, but still have the same currency (1,000) being added. This automatically half the "workload" for the player and rewards them greater than before. And if we are being perfectly honest here, 1,000 is not that much patron currency, it doesn't even make a time piece available. Unless, of course, you have the perk. Then it does, or a potion of course.

THIRD IDEA

Sort of a combined idea of the two above, and less thought out, but challenges which are combined by each patron. So you would still have 10 challenges per patron but some of those challenges are linked to another patron. A bit more complex, possibly, to understand for players and to implement but essentially how I see it in my mind's eye is that the challenge would be stated on both patron sheets (challenge tab) with both/all/whatever their faces on the bar. So it is easy for the player to determine where/who the challenge belongs to.

FOURTH IDEA

We turn it all on its head and go crazy.
Implementation of a patron specific drop item (like gems). I even slightly touched on this with Pearls with my new chests/currency ideas.

Pearls (or whatever the item would be called) would only be dropped during patron runs, are a rare chance to be dropped AND the player would need to buy a perk in order to even start them dropping in game. There could be room for further perks increasing the amount dropped or rate dropped etc. This is basically off Black Viper's proof of concept in her ruby ability.

Now with these pearls, you can "buy" challenges (ok, more like unlock kind of.) and you would have two prices. One price is that you unlock the challenge in order to manually do yourself as a player, another price is to buy it out right and gain the reward of that patron's currency. I have sort of made a shop with challenges here. This is why I said we were heading to crazy idea territory haha!!!

Pearls, could also be used for extra chests (new or old). Like electrums or platnium (not sure when we dropped the "i" in platinium)...
-side note on that: My in mind "lore" is saying Electrum is your to blue (bog standard) chest for all champs and your Platinum (steam forced me to miss the i.) Chests would be epic for all champs.

Therefore adding another dynamic to the game. Pearls could also be used to buy any patron chest and not use up the precious patron currency for instance.

[Noeh23]

So what's the dilemma?
From what you wrote it looks like completing patron challenges is a hassle or it's too much.
For most end game players (or anyone with 3 cores) I would say this is not true. If you actively try to complete them you can be done in a few hours (which I sometimes do if I have time). Otherwise I just complete some challenges that may require some micromanagement and then just let the background cores do it's thing for a few days to complete 2 patrons and then switch to the other 2 patrons.
I do remember times when I was able to barely complete the challenges (and that was when I only had 2 patrons), but later on it becomes not even worth a mention.
So I don't see a dilemma - when you are at a certain stage you have 0 problems completing patron challenges and if you are not there yet then you should not expect to complete them all without considerable effort. That's my base premise.

[OldGamer]

Originally posted by Noeh23:

So what's the dilemma?
From what you wrote it looks like completing patron challenges is a hassle or it's too much.
For most end game players (or anyone with 3 cores) I would say this is not true. If you actively try to complete them you can be done in a few hours (which I sometimes do if I have time). Otherwise I just complete some challenges that may require some micromanagement and then just let the background cores do it's thing for a few days to complete 2 patrons and then switch to the other 2 patrons.
I do remember times when I was able to barely complete the challenges (and that was when I only had 2 patrons), but later on it becomes not even worth a mention.
So I don't see a dilemma - when you are at a certain stage you have 0 problems completing patron challenges and if you are not there yet then you should not expect to complete them all without considerable effort. That's my base premise.

I get that, but the discussion was about the added patron. The devs said they were looking for ideas to solve the growing problem.
Even though, it might be another case of "making problems to solve" like they did with the event champions.

[Noeh23]

Well that's the premise I don't get.
What is the problem? If it's growing, is it really growing at a speed that will result in a disaster?
I think that over the past year or so by adding patrons but also cores they actually reduced the time of active play needed to complete patron challenges.

[OldGamer]

Originally posted by Noeh23:

Well that's the premise I don't get.
What is the problem? If it's growing, is it really growing at a speed that will result in a disaster?
I think that over the past year or so by adding patrons but also cores they actually reduced the time of active play needed to complete patron challenges.

They are thinking of doing 2 patrons a year. (or that is what I got the impression in the latest Idle Insights stream)
And only one new core/party so you will always be one behind by the sounds of it.

[Noeh23]

1 core per 2 patrons is absolutely doable without too much hassle.
But what gives ... I actually like your ideas, it would mix up things a bit, I am only worried about the execution :-)

[OldGamer]

Originally posted by Noeh23:

1 core per 2 patrons is absolutely doable without too much hassle.
But what gives ... I actually like your ideas, it would mix up things a bit, I am only worried about the execution :-)

Also adds another layer and power.
1st and 4th Idea I would love implemented especially. Or variation thereof.

[Coo Coo Pigeon]

I didn't give it much thought to be honest, but 50 challenges in a pool would have too many duplicates or increase the workload.... so, I guess that number should lower.

Just pool 20-25 challenges - if target is the workload.
Make 'm worth 500-2000 currency each or sth.

[SuperTim]

I'm not that far in game, but I do notice that Mirts challenges are significantly easier than Strahds. So putting all challenges into the same pool would make Mirt much harder.

I also don't do all the challenges, I'll usually just skip the "do 500 levels without any support heroes" or "do 250 levels where Strix (or Lucius) has the most damages". With fewer challenges that could mean that I lose a lot more Patron currencies.

And I think that about 1.5 more modron cores each year should be fine if there's going to be 2 more patrons each year, especially if you need to buy some of them. At this point I don't even know if I should buy the third core, or more familiars, or more chests (even my base 12 champions aren't all purple yet).

[Noeh23]

Originally posted by SuperTim:

At this point I don't even know if I should buy the third core, or more familiars, or more chests (even my base 12 champions aren't all purple yet).

Technically speaking the third core is free, the second core you have to buy

[OldGamer]

Originally posted by SuperTim:

I'm not that far in game, but I do notice that Mirts challenges are significantly easier than Strahds. So putting all challenges into the same pool would make Mirt much harder.

I also don't do all the challenges, I'll usually just skip the "do 500 levels without any support heroes" or "do 250 levels where Strix (or Lucius) has the most damages". With fewer challenges that could mean that I lose a lot more Patron currencies.

And I think that about 1.5 more modron cores each year should be fine if there's going to be 2 more patrons each year, especially if you need to buy some of them. At this point I don't even know if I should buy the third core, or more familiars, or more chests (even my base 12 champions aren't all purple yet).

It wouldn't make Mirt "harder", it be the same 10 challenges you would get from him if you were completing the challenges now. However, it's in a pool so you could do any challenge for any patron.

With the difficulty, it does, as Noeh pointed out get easier. The problem the devs were coming up with on their stream was each patron creates more workload and they asked if any ideas to negate that. (not saying my ideas are the best, just jotted them down when I was listening to the streams I missed for this week).

For help, is I would go for the core/evergreen all epics first. Obviously, go for the evergreens too - Azaka, Drizzt, Dragonbait, Ulkoria, then (trying for) Reya was m order of getting the evergreens. It's 1080 gold chests, if you have the worst luck which is about 540,000 gems(? i think). But well worth it as that increased power makes you better at getting gems (by completing adventures). Then you buy familiars up to the 100k one to start gem farming properly.

[SuperTim]

Originally posted by OldGamer:

It wouldn't make Mirt "harder", it be the same 10 challenges you would get from him if you were completing the challenges now. However, it's in a pool so you could do any challenge for any patron.

In that case, I probably won't like to have 50 challenges (or 70 or 90 or 110) in a scrolling window where I'd have to scroll a lot to see all of them. It sounds like fun if you like scrolling.

For help, is I would go for the core/evergreen all epics first. Obviously, go for the evergreens too - Azaka, Drizzt, Dragonbait, Ulkoria, then (trying for) Reya was m order of getting the evergreens. It's 1080 gold chests, if you have the worst luck which is about 540,000 gems(? i think). But well worth it as that increased power makes you better at getting gems (by completing adventures). Then you buy familiars up to the 100k one to start gem farming properly.

Lol, I only have Azaka and Drizzt right now, and I got all the familiars up to the 100k one. So I should be epic all my core champions first then. Thank you very much for the advice. (And yes I have like 400k gems now.)

[OldGamer]

Originally posted by SuperTim:

Originally posted by OldGamer:

It wouldn't make Mirt "harder", it be the same 10 challenges you would get from him if you were completing the challenges now. However, it's in a pool so you could do any challenge for any patron.

In that case, I probably won't like to have 50 challenges (or 70 or 90 or 110) in a scrolling window where I'd have to scroll a lot to see all of them. It sounds like fun if you like scrolling.

For help, is I would go for the core/evergreen all epics first. Obviously, go for the evergreens too - Azaka, Drizzt, Dragonbait, Ulkoria, then (trying for) Reya was m order of getting the evergreens. It's 1080 gold chests, if you have the worst luck which is about 540,000 gems(? i think). But well worth it as that increased power makes you better at getting gems (by completing adventures). Then you buy familiars up to the 100k one to start gem farming properly.

Lol, I only have Azaka and Drizzt right now, and I got all the familiars up to the 100k one. So I should be epic all my core champions first then. Thank you very much for the advice. (And yes I have like 400k gems now.)

1. Of course, there would be a creative solution to the endless scroll conundrum : )
They already do something similar with the achievements, where you can collapse all or expand all, so I guess something like that. The main getaway is that you don't have to use Mirt, for Mirt challenges or Varja or etc... I could say, go to Strahd and do Mirt's or do Mirt's challenges but then give that currency to Varja etc... It would shake up the current metric and dynamic but be easier as Patrons get added to the equation.

2. In that case, you should find this easy haha. Yeah definitely get all evergreens and their epics as soon as you can. Then you can start using patron chests & timegates to get your event champs all epic too.

[SuperTim]

Originally posted by OldGamer:

2. In that case, you should find this easy haha. Yeah definitely get all evergreens and their epics as soon as you can. Then you can start using patron chests & timegates to get your event champs all epic too.

Thanks, I just got my core heroes to epic. Hopefully I will get the rest of my missing evergreens soon.