A proposal to make challenge competitive interesting again

Virtus said:

I went back and read @zbots post.  Hat Tip.

Scavenge allows retries. Outpost isn't a retry, but you can play again right away.  Your argument here is unpersuasive and doesn't make sense logically.  In fact, logically, you could argue that Challenge mode allowing replays is the outlier and should be changed to disallow replays.

Many people already watch videos for tips on the challenge.  Look at all the You Tubers and their subscribers (small plug for @Firekid, who has the best vids imo).  So, the changes I suggested won't change the reliance on videos.  Maybe it gives them more subscribers!  Plus, it takes time to do that, so already, that lengthens the challenge.  And if you forgot to change weapons or take the wrong team (we've all done it), so what?  This is a Challenge, not a layup!  You should be penalized for such carelessness and inattentiveness.  For example, if I take the wrong team and weapons in Guild Wars...too bad.  I have to make it work or I cost my guild.  Is it a sign of the times that we wish to disassociate actions and consequences?  We should reward players that don't make careless mistakes and who do pay attention to detail.  Am I wrong, or is that unfair?  If players know upfront that retries are not possible, they can direct anger for failure at themselves.  They'll get over it if everyone plays by the same rules.

I'm not familiar with Level Playing field suggestion, but will read up on it.  My point with my post was to propose the easiest changes that NG could make to toughen the challenge, reduce ties, and limit new bugs.  You can't have it both ways - Challenge is no harder for you, but knocks down everyone else.  Doesn't work that way.  If you are an elite player (and I think you are), my suggestions shouldn't scare you.

Scavenge and outpost is for farming and can be barely be called real game modes.

To make the game interesting and fun, NG has been succesful in creating game modes that are not copies of each other:

1. Challenge. Play progressively harder missions perfectly by having the chance to try again.
2. Distance. Play progressively harder missions by utlizing your whole roster and developing intricate strategies that work on each map (note, this is how it was until recently, now of course you just blast through it with SMY). Unlike the challenge, killed heroes can't be used, but you can retry.
3. Guild Wars. Have one attempt only on an unknown map. Retries cost swords or red gas and might cost you the win.
4. Last Stand. Have a limited amount of heroes.

In Distance you can retry an unlimited amount of time by sacrificing pawns, and this was a key strategy before SMY.

In GW you only play with two teams, one for PvZ and one for PvP. In challenge you often have to use two or three different teams and different weapons. Sure, you could argue that you need to pay more attention, but at the end of the day this is not a real war we are talking about but a game supposed to be fun. We probably have different perceptions of fun, but for me it's not double-checking three times before every single mission that I have the right team and equipment.

@Anjelos - I'm sure you remember playing this game when Melee was king and a great score was anything over 2000 stars.  I spent tons of gold on challenge back then, so how would that be any different for mid level or low level players today?  I have a second account that can finish the Challenge without gold or tools - that's how ridiculously easy the game has become because of the super powered heroes we have now.  If it was more challenging, I think people would spend more because it would be more challenging/competitive, for all levels.

Raven2318 said:

Please forgive me chiming in, since I am nowhere near an elite player, although I have been playing since 2016. I was wondering, would it be an idea for NG to randomly bench a hero player from each class for each challenge? Or if that is too much, maybe 3 heroes from different classes? The idea behind the star hero, I understand, was to up the difficulty and encourage players to use different heroes and strategies to succeed and reach the top of the board. In real life, players are benched all the time due to injury etc. This would encourage even low level players to mix up teams and strategies, although much less than elite, since lower level players in my guild don’t tend to use the Sasha/Mercer/Yumiko/Princess/Shane combos so much since those were mostly introduced later and their tokens harder to get. Please don’t pile on me if this is a terrible idea, I’m just wondering!

I like this sort of idea, I think limitations on heroes in challenge is the most reasonable suggestion to up the difficulty. I just not sure it should be enforced on the everyone. A lot of newer players leave most of their heroes locked until they’re at higher levels to save on the cost of levelling them. They’re also definitely not in the group of people saying challenge is too easy and they want it to be made harder. Imagine going through the 6-18 month grind of getting to the higher levels with only a handful of heroes and each week the game randomly picks one or two of them which you can’t use in the flagship game mode - that’d be pretty brutal 

@Raven2318, what would you think about a choice of normal or expert mode for challenge? Normal being exactly the way it is now, expert being a limited range of heroes available but both modes doing the same challenge? And probably with better rewards if you choose to play expert? Basically, exactly like Last Stand 

Lower level players tend to ignore the star hero in my experience, they pick their ‘go to’ heroes regardless. So two levels of challenge, the expert one with both a star hero and benched heroes would accommodate both levels and styles of play, I think.

Raven2318 said:

Lower level players tend to ignore the star hero in my experience, they pick their ‘go to’ heroes regardless. So two levels of challenge, the expert one with both a star hero and benched heroes would accommodate both levels and styles of play, I think.

Yeah, totally agree! There’s a few milestones in challenge as it is, I reckon.

1. Complete challenge
2. 3 star every mission (old school max score)
3. Complete challenge using star hero in lead every mission
4. 4 star every mission (current max score)

I hope NG won’t disrupt this trajectory for new players, seems to me the best solution for everyone is to come up with a fifth milestone, not throw away the first four 

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)

↑
That's the best solution I've seen so far.

1. Doesn't overcomplicate or restrict anything.
2. Affects only those who care about LB, only after they reach 5358.
3. Doesn't negatively affect all others.


PS: Allow SH in any position for an extra star. Tired of being bored with the same Lead the whole week.

Walker HP is totally irrelevant anyway seen as the two main damage dealers are fire and Mercer's LT. Those are both % based so anything on top is just a small bump.

The only way is to just overload the map with tanks/spikes or hell even clone the handrails hunter so there are multiple

Wouldn't it be much, much more easy to add a secondary scoring system for players with the same amount of Challenge stars? I.e. players with perfect star scores are then ranked based on number of retries, time spent within missions or number of tools used.
I'm not sure if elite players would be interested in such a scoring system, but I think for NG it's relatively easy to implement since these things are (probably) already being logged

I would be cool with 1 hero locked up each week. @Raven2318

1 hero featured (Star hero) and 1 hero in the penalty box (Locked) each week? I like it.

I also like @zbot idea @FuriousMoldovan however, any ideas about adding extra bonus rounds with the express purpose of breaking ties on the Leaderboard should not offer extra rewards. Let the challenge conclude, and then let the leaders vie for dominance to see who can inch their neck further across the finish line. For no reason other than Rank. Once it's in place, if they determine there's harmless value in awarding Rank with resources, etc, then they can add it in later.

@BenjaminT i honestly don't like the idea Expert mode Challenge. That might very well be the straw that broke this camel's back. I have all the heroes pretty well pumped up, and I'm sure I could do it... But I think it would become less fun and more chore after a while, like the Last Stand is. 

ATLAS-Z said:

I would be cool with 1 hero locked up each week. @Raven2318

1 hero featured (Star hero) and 1 hero in the penalty box (Locked) each week? I like it.

I also like @zbot idea @FuriousMoldovan however, any ideas about adding extra bonus rounds with the express purpose of breaking ties on the Leaderboard should not offer extra rewards. Let the challenge conclude, and then let the leaders vie for dominance to see who can inch their neck further across the finish line. For no reason other than Rank. Once it's in place, if they determine there's harmless value in awarding Rank with resources, etc, then they can add it in later.

@BenjaminT i honestly don't like the idea Expert mode Challenge. That might very well be the straw that broke this camel's back. I have all the heroes pretty well pumped up, and I'm sure I could do it... But I think it would become less fun and more chore after a while, like the Last Stand is. 

NO

Firekid said:

@ATLAS-Z you could just do normal challenge then, if you didn’t want to do expert? Think splitting challenge is only way to keep both those who want a challenge and those who find it challenging enough already happy. 

IDK bro, I can't see a vision of it polished and pretty that works in my head. How will it work?
Few would say anymore that challenge doesn't award enough, and the only gripe is the leaderboard ties, so both modes should have the same rewards. What about round passes, are they good for either mode? What about leaderboard? Will they be separate? Or the same again like last Stand? And if they're separate, what about the guild team leaderboard? What if half your team does expert and half does normal? How should that look?

I'm sorry but (no offense NGs) but we saw what happened with round passes and (far as I know) challenge code wasn't even deliberately altered? How are they gonna keep 2 interlaced game modes bug free and running smooth, fair, and consistent? 

Maybe I'll feel different if I see a point by point, clean, polished end product or layout, i might feel differently? I would certainly give it a go, but right now i feel... Mmmm no thanks. 

Does challenge reward enough, particularly to those who don’t maximise challenge score?