Please redesign the "Wizard Squad" challenges!

[DoonDoon]

Let me start by saying that I absolutely LOVE this game and I thoroughly enjoy the experience overall.

Now I am going to vent...

As currently designed, Wizard Square I is a 1-hour challenge of doing NOTHING, and Wizard Squad II [erratum: should be III] is triple of that -- 3-hour challenge of doing NOTHING. You come back every now and then, click a few buttons to cast a specified spelled in the most perfunctory manner, with absolutely nothing to achieve. And you better not miss any of the classes -- it takes another 3 hours to loop back.

In other words, it is a challenge of BOREDOM! Not general power level, not knowledge/skill (like Upgrademeister), not clicking speed (like Blind Wizard), but BOREDOM!

Even worse, some upgrades can be HARMFUL, specifically the Summon Duration. Why forcing the players to NOT hit the "Buy All Upgrade" button if it is not even part of the challenge?! (Speaking of which, all the other challenges that require you to think before buying upgrades, especially "This Will Suffice" and "Upgrademeister", are amazing. Only at those time, I was forced to actually learn what the upgrades are, and I am absolutely glad the game did that to me.)

I just finished Wizard Squad II an hour ago, felt very glad that there is no Wizard Squad III , closed the game right away to give my computer a break, only to just realize that the game does not save on closing (which I must say is an anomaly for idle games). And GREAT, my completion is not saved, and now I am back at the FIRST class with a few unfinished cast for the LAST class.

I already said that I absolutely love this game -- which only fuels my hate for this particular moment. I have been holding off typing f-bombs like 6 or 7 times by this point.

As for re-designing... I am too frustrated, engaged and annoyed to come up with any groundbreaking ideas right now. Perhaps make the classes and pets rotate MUCH faster --- like 3 minutes for characters and 30 seconds for the pet, and lower the number of times needed to cast a spell. A challenge like this should be friendly for completing in one sitting, especially given that there are so many classes to rotate.

[Jey]

There is a wizard squad III though.

[DoonDoon]

I am actually on Wizard Squad III now -- I was wrong in my original post. Typo is now fixed.

And -- I stayed up for an extra 2 hours to beat it. And I will beat it in 3 minutes! I will make absolutely sure I save before I quit.

[FrankTheUnicornSlayer]

I agree with OP. The Wizard Squad challenges were annoying slogs.

The last current challenge The Legion has that same rotation mechanic, but done a lot better: The classes switch exactly as soon as you finish the associated objectives.

Hmm... what if one did something totally off the wall in the Wizard Squad challenges instead? For instance, what if the pets/classes switched every 5/20 upgrades, not minutes? Then one is only timegated by spell cast times and one's own mistakes.

[Jey]

I highly doubt challenges will ever be changed unless they have a critical issue.
Just deal with their annoyance once and be done with it.

[Ping the Dude]

I'm the same opinion. They are so annoying, I don't even feel to beat the secret achievement involving Wizard Squad unless I need it to go for the 800.

But I suppoase, if they got deleated, simply another challenge would be the most annoying one :)

[Rathmun]

The worst part? If you do get the summon duration upgrades, it makes the challenge FUSCKING IMPOSSIBLE!!! No, not just slower, ACTUALLY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ IMPOSSIBLE. Why is it impossible? Because the cast count updates at the END OF THE SPELL. So if the class rotates before the summon times out, you can't progress that particular objective AT ALL!!!!

[Arkhne]

The worst bit is, they USED to be tolerable. Then, somebody at the design department took the wrong meds, and now the spells count AFTER use. I don't know about you, but even at minimum times, this can result in having 3 seconds to select and charge the spell, and *I* I can't do that. They have gone from doable in one cycle, to forced multiple cycles. As far as I am concerned, this series was bad before, and a big FU to the players now.

However, this entire thread is pointless, as I suspect this challenge is one of the reasons that the change was made. The Wizard Squad series has always been a spot of disagreement between players (and likely devs).

[spellsweaver]

The reason those changes were made has nothing to do with this challenge. It's there as a countermeasure to spell-cancelling with macros to get a lot of accumulated spell casts. Also while the challenge is kind of boring, it's totally within your power to not pick the summon duration upgrades.

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by spellsweaver:

The reason those changes were made has nothing to do with this challenge. It's there as a countermeasure to spell-cancelling with macros to get a lot of accumulated spell casts. Also while the challenge is kind of boring, it's totally within your power to not pick the summon duration upgrades.

So, you read the post enough to answer part of it, but totally ignored the rest, I specifically mentioned MINIMUM times/durations. Perhaps you could, I don't know, actually try the challenge now. I have played it before and after the change. You could at least read what was said in the post that you are clearly responding to, and make an effort to understand it. Or, you could just stick your head in the sand, since the problem only exists for new players, so why should anybody who already completed the challenges care?

[FrankTheUnicornSlayer]

Do remember that exser is just one person, who may be designing this on the side. And, along with the testers, they spend a lot of time trying to balance things well. And they mostly do a great job! :)

[addition: it's just a thing that they happen to be spending most of the time balancing for the higher levels right now, alas.]

[Jey]

Originally posted by Warchild:

So, you read the post enough to answer part of it, but totally ignored the rest, I specifically mentioned MINIMUM times/durations.

As I remember there is an issue on the first one because 5 Hallowed Writings take exactly 5 minutes, so you'd need two rounds.
It was reported to exser a while ago, and I'll ask him again during the next beta if it's not fixed then.
Is there any other of the requirements that is impossible to do in one cycle?

For the fact that the challenge can become impossible to win if you mess up the upgrades... I want to say, yes that's normal.
If you buy the wrong upgrades for These Will Suffice III, you can't win either.
Challenges aren't meant to only be set and forget (or bruteforcing them with mysteries/Paragons/attributes/items). Sometimes having to think about what you do is nice.
Sure, wizard squad isn't the most user-friendly challenge series, and this change doesn't help, but macros were an issue (The difference between macro users and non-macro users was way too big to ignore), and making spells count at their end was needed.

[TakeMyLunch]

im not at this challenge yet but one change they could make from what im reading here is that they could make spells "end" when classes switch that way you dont waste any time on spells that dont end? reading this it seems it would still be kinda bad but at least you wouldn't be able to speed macro the cast times and still get credit for legit* casts. if not add a small touch of casting before rotation to get a cast out when you normally wouldn't allowing for more input from the player instead of just sitting there waiting as you guys have been saying.

but again i dont have any self experience so i may be entirely wrong...

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by TakeMyLunch:

im not at this challenge yet but one change they could make from what im reading here is that they could make spells "end" when classes switch that way you dont waste any time on spells that dont end? reading this it seems it would still be kinda bad but at least you wouldn't be able to speed macro the cast times and still get credit for legit* casts. if not add a small touch of casting before rotation to get a cast out when you normally wouldn't allowing for more input from the player instead of just sitting there waiting as you guys have been saying.

but again i dont have any self experience so i may be entirely wrong...

Exceptions were made, such as for Truest of Sorceries, so I'm not sure why the same can't be done here. As I mentioned though, these Challenges have always been a source of dispute, so conversations about them rarely result in anything productive to hand over to the devs.

Originally posted by Iffu:

Originally posted by Warchild:

So, you read the post enough to answer part of it, but totally ignored the rest, I specifically mentioned MINIMUM times/durations.

As I remember there is an issue on the first one because 5 Hallowed Writings take exactly 5 minutes, so you'd need two rounds.
It was reported to exser a while ago, and I'll ask him again during the next beta if it's not fixed then.
Is there any other of the requirements that is impossible to do in one cycle?

For the fact that the challenge can become impossible to win if you mess up the upgrades... I want to say, yes that's normal.
If you buy the wrong upgrades for These Will Suffice III, you can't win either.
Challenges aren't meant to only be set and forget (or bruteforcing them with mysteries/Paragons/attributes/items). Sometimes having to think about what you do is nice.
Sure, wizard squad isn't the most user-friendly challenge series, and this change doesn't help, but macros were an issue (The difference between macro users and non-macro users was way too big to ignore), and making spells count at their end was needed.

I'll check again later, I have a few things to do first (irl), but I'll make a list of problematic (be it literally impossible, or requiring twitch-level reflexes to complete, noting durations/requirements), and add them here.

[Arkhne]

Ok, in order to not make my above already big post bigger, I'm going to double-post with my findings, and recommendations.

Wizard Squad (1)
Attributes:
75Int/125Ins/0Spc/150Wis/0Dom/16Pat/175Mas/75Emp

ZERO Spellcraft, 150 Wis. Spells are rapidly charged, with Summons at minimum durations.


Druid:
Force of Nature x10: Trivial. Raise to 20 Casts, which is still quite easy to do.

Force of Nature only requires 12seconds each, for a total of 2 minutes, 0 seconds. Druid is beyond Trivial, and really should require more.


Demonologist:
Horned Incinerator x3: Terrible. Theoreticcally possible, but humanly unlikely.

Horned Incinerator requires 1m39s each.This requires you to select, charge, and cast your first Incinerator in UNDER 3 seconds. I failed this. I recommend switching this to Infernal Thrasher (1m6s) x4 for a total time requirement of 4m24s.


Necromancer:
Festering Abomination x3: Fair to Easy. Upgrades make this impossible, which is fair.

Festering Abomination requires 1m30s, for a total of 4m30s. Not much to say, 30s is almost generous, and fair to slower people, or people with lower Wisdom (although why you wouldn't pump Wisdom for this challenge is beyond me). Laughably, I almost failed this one, and finished with a mere 2 seconds to spare, as I missed the change time from Demonologist as I was double-checking Activated upgrades for possible Summon Duration increases.


Arcanist:
Karnaphen's Spellshroud x10: Trivial.

At a mere 20seconds to cast, this is barely harder than Druid at a staggering 3m20s. Given Arcanist's shard income, there is no excuse for an not having an almost perfect runtime here. I would recommend raising it to 12 casts (13 would be fine, too).


Prodigy:
Primal Power x10: The "difficulty" here is a joke, you have to try to fail.

At 5 seconds per cast, the final requirement for Prodigy is a whole 50s, this is a joke, right? Please tell me this is a joke that I just don't understand. This needs changing almost as much as Demonologist, in my opinion. Maybe Alter the Laws x12 for 4 minutes?


Voidmancer:
Ebon Truncheon x10: Trivial, same as Arcanist.

Once again, this class has such a trivial requirement, that it really looks silly compared to the harder ones. As with the Arcanist, I recommend raising this to 12-13 casts.


Exorcist:
Hallowed Writings x5: LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

This is not even possible if the game automatically shifted it in, set to reckless. This is completely 100% impossible, and even worse, as the last class in the set, it is a really big FU to the players, who have to go through ALL the classes again just to fix this oversight. I STRONGLY recommend reducing this to 4 casts ASAP (preferably in the next patch).


As you can see, it is literally impossible to complete this challenge in one cycle. I could forgive the Demo being theoretically possible, and a possible fail point because of it, if Exorcist was not completely impossible, which is unforgivable.

The Incantation based requirements are trivial at best, and a joke at worst (excluding Exorcist, who is literally impossible). This really makes Demonologist stick out, when Prodigy is done in about 50seconds, and Demonologist takes a whopping 4m57s, which requires twitch reflexes, and spell location memorization to succeed, which is a little unfair to the less physically capable of us.

PS: I will likely be re-reading this post and editing it for mistakes or clarifications as I continue to wait for Exorcist to come back (currently up to Voidmancer).

TL;DR Hallowed Writings needs decreasing, Demonologist needs changing.

[grommile]

While refactoring this, please exclude Interrogator/Archivist from the pet rotation :)