A proposal to make challenge competitive interesting again

Anjelos said:

Muirna said:

I think you guys need to be honest with us and yourselves that this doesn't have to do with being bored. It has to do with ego and needing something to whine about. When I proposed a simple solution for those of you tying every week on the leaderboard -- to start competing in your own league with a standardized set of rules to make it harder for all of you and screenrecordings to prove compliance -- there have been exactly 0 sign ups. Yet, this could be implemented immediately and with zero additional bugs. You would all know who ranked and scored where and could be tortured playing with a team of Merle, hunter Morgan, hunter Maggie to your hearts content, for example, without forcing it on the rest of us. But, sob, then you wouldn't be as high on the leaderboard and would miss out on a few rewards you don't even need.

Actually we already did that as intra for many weeks and is quite exciting .had a channel firecheese casino making bets on it every week .And surely it would be more fun with more people .
Yes , it is freaky boring having 40heroes and only need to use 2+sh.
Some people actually like to compete and find ways for maps that are hard .:) It is how the game was for 4 years and the reason it growed as much ....the fact that missions was like small riddles .
People also liked wild cup a lot ,people also liked national wars and many other small competition that makes a game exciting .

Sports and games usually have a target in case you never notice , they don't say thank you for participation you are all winners 🏆.
That happens only in kindergartens , and if I judge from your following silly comment, that is how far your brain can go to troll on a proposal to make the ge a little be like it used to .
Be sure , if there wasn't line and discord app and people didn't bond that much after so many years , game would be probably dead , cause yes it is hell boring at the moment . 

What is the reason no one is interested then in banding together to implement an idea like this without NG permanently and marketing it as open to anyone who wants to participate? I played in Wild Cup. It is a lot of fun. It is competitive. It had weird requirements to earn points that made things more difficult. And things like that don't rely on waiting on NG to see if they will ever implement it.

I will make my own thread about my Hardcore permadeath mode idea.

Adeline said:

Am I the only one who doesn't feel bored so far? LOL
I downloaded this game on the 2nd day after it launched - thanks to NG for answering my question, now my signature can be completed
And have never stopped playing or took a break.

The only thing that made me feel bored and feel like quitting was to even try playing an alternate account. So you have to ask yourself if you are playing a second account that makes you have to do everything twice.

I do have a life too, I have work, household chores to do, and to settle my child to sleep before I can even start playing the challenge every Wednesday. So it doesn't feel right if the leaderboard is based on who finished the fastest like what ATLAS has mentioned.

🙄🙄🙄

Anjelos said:

Adeline said:

Am I the only one who doesn't feel bored so far? LOL
I downloaded this game on the 2nd day after it launched - thanks to NG for answering my question, now my signature can be completed
And have never stopped playing or took a break.

The only thing that made me feel bored and feel like quitting was to even try playing an alternate account. So you have to ask yourself if you are playing a second account that makes you have to do everything twice.

I do have a life too, I have work, household chores to do, and to settle my child to sleep before I can even start playing the challenge every Wednesday. So it doesn't feel right if the leaderboard is based on who finished the fastest like what ATLAS has mentioned.

Sweet Adeline , you know how polite I am usually - so I will answer the following without stating the obvious reasons of why and how - yes probably you are one of the very few )))

Thank you handsome Anjelos
I have never said that your idea is not good, it's really nice to see new suggestions. No matter what the future brings, or what NG is going to implement, I will still continue to enjoy my game as per normal.

Wow, lots of discussion here which is great. Only posts which I think are bit stupid are ones where they say do it yourself, or just don’t use those hero’s. Yes we could do that but the amount of time and organisation required for it on a weekly basis would be massive. This thread is simply asking NG to make a change to what was (and imo still is) their flagship game mode. They tried to improve it with star hero so they obviously are open to the idea of making changes to it. As long as the change they make has no effect on players who play casually, enjoy how it is or are still striving to go perfect all the time then I can’t see the harm. 

Firekid said:

As long as the change they make has no effect on players who play casually, enjoy how it is or are still striving to go perfect all the time then I can’t see the harm. 

Out of all the suggests so far I feel that an expert mode that runs alongside regular challenge would work best, it would need a separate leaderboard though. 

I agree with all of this, and this is what I think some of us have been reacting to about what has been overlooked in all the recent threads asking for the ban, nerfing, or removal of this that or the other hero, or the forced restrictions on all suggestions, or demands for more or unlimited rounds when there are already too many rounds of the same missions over and over anyway and what we need is a faster path to Nightmare, not more rounds. I think there needs to be an alternate Challenge mode.

I'd actually be interested in your feedback on my post about Level Playing Field -- an idea for a hardcore Challenge mode as well.

@Anjelos I also want to apologize in that I did start to confuse this thread you made with all the others I've been reading recently and lost sight of the fact that you were proposing an alternative mode, versus all the ones that want to impose restrictive changes or bans on all players and that have been coming off as elitist and entitled. I'm sorry that I came off as rude. I have felt frustrated that the players I mentor, who are just starting to learn SPY and were feeling really excited by a personal best they had just made in the Challenge, or players I know who just finished all the rounds of the Challenge for the first or second time, but not with a perfect score, who were feeling proud of that accomplishment, then read all the posts in the ban Mercer thread with people moaning about how bored they are, how everything is so easy, how it takes no skill or strategy -- and they felt crushed. The title of this thread has also made players I know feel some type of way, which is how I think I lost track of the content in it.

@Mondlicht yours wasn’t the post I was referring to! Yours is a great idea and if that was implemented I would be love it. 

Virtus said:

Why not eliminate mission replays? That will certainly reduce some perfect scores, knowing missions can't be replayed if you lose or get one or two stars. You could also make it Distance style, where injuries or deaths carryover to the next mission and stay that way until the Challenge is ended. I would imagine these changes wouldn't be hard to implement by NG, and would actually put the "challenge" back in the Challenge mode. Some would probably not risk a master mission and instead take the long way playing each regular mission, so the time commitment might also knock a few others from the perfect ranks.

Implement these changes and then reasses whether more radical ones are needed.

Your idea is similar to @zbot's, and it would definitely result in less ties on the leaderboard.

BUT

We already have 3 game modes where retries are not allowed: Distance, Last Stand and Guild Wars (yes, you can retry but in each of them it either can cost you the victory or it costs a LOT of gold). Challenge is the only game mode which allows retries, so getting rid of that is really eliminating one of its main features. 

Also, since we already know that hundreds of players can score max points, it would mean that if you are going for a top leaderboard position (which I think a lot of people will), it would mean that instead of actually playing, you would spend your time at looking at Youtube videos to get ideas and tips about best team setups, best weapons, best tactics etc etc. Now it's ok to use team you think might work, and if it doesn't or you forgot to equip the right weapons and tools, you just try again. I'm totally sure we would have an endless stream of rants from angry players, that lost their chance of a good ranking because they forgot to change weapons or supports between missions.

I still think the Level Playing Field as suggested by @Muirna . That would really keep the spirit of the challenge best alive, would not interfere with the players that don't want anything changed, and introduce a really hard but fair playing mode for all of us that feel that the game has become too easy.

Anjelos said:

zbot said:

A simpler fix would be, if a player gets perfect stars (including Star Hero), it opens up one more round, and this keeps repeating, until the player can't get perfect stars.  So technically there is a cap of 80 rounds but for those that are die hards get additional round(s).  That way the change is only for those that finish the challenge perfectly.  (I had the idea when I was bowling)

I will argue that as long as to have a good mercer , know how to play and maybe have some tools , there will be no stop on that even if you spawn elite spikes every turn 😂

Probably not if star hero is still required? That would get pretty hard pretty quick.

Burmeliinis said:

Virtus said:

Why not eliminate mission replays? That will certainly reduce some perfect scores, knowing missions can't be replayed if you lose or get one or two stars. You could also make it Distance style, where injuries or deaths carryover to the next mission and stay that way until the Challenge is ended. I would imagine these changes wouldn't be hard to implement by NG, and would actually put the "challenge" back in the Challenge mode. Some would probably not risk a master mission and instead take the long way playing each regular mission, so the time commitment might also knock a few others from the perfect ranks.

Implement these changes and then reasses whether more radical ones are needed.

Your idea is similar to @zbot's, and it would definitely result in less ties on the leaderboard.

BUT

We already have 3 game modes where retries are not allowed: Distance, Last Stand and Guild Wars (yes, you can retry but in each of them it either can cost you the victory or it costs a LOT of gold). Challenge is the only game mode which allows retries, so getting rid of that is really eliminating one of its main features. 

Also, since we already know that hundreds of players can score max points, it would mean that if you are going for a top leaderboard position (which I think a lot of people will), it would mean that instead of actually playing, you would spend your time at looking at Youtube videos to get ideas and tips about best team setups, best weapons, best tactics etc etc. Now it's ok to use team you think might work, and if it doesn't or you forgot to equip the right weapons and tools, you just try again. I'm totally sure we would have an endless stream of rants from angry players, that lost their chance of a good ranking because they forgot to change weapons or supports between missions.

I still think the Level Playing Field as suggested by @Muirna . That would really keep the spirit of the challenge best alive, would not interfere with the players that don't want anything changed, and introduce a really hard but fair playing mode for all of us that feel that the game has become too easy.

Anjelos said:

zbot said:

A simpler fix would be, if a player gets perfect stars (including Star Hero), it opens up one more round, and this keeps repeating, until the player can't get perfect stars.  So technically there is a cap of 80 rounds but for those that are die hards get additional round(s).  That way the change is only for those that finish the challenge perfectly.  (I had the idea when I was bowling)

I will argue that as long as to have a good mercer , know how to play and maybe have some tools , there will be no stop on that even if you spawn elite spikes every turn 😂

Totally agree with this.  My proposal will reduce the number of ties, but there will still be lots of ties.  That's why this would be a first step.  Then, reassess after a few Challenges and then go to more changes based on evaluation.