Official Feedback Thread: Faster Campaign Progression for Alts

plasticbat

These token can only make sense if cryptic adds weekly AD reward to the zone. We have extra campaign currency for certain zone mainly because we go there every week to earn the AD reward. At this moment, there is no reason to go to SKT (ok, you may need to get vblod if you use relic) or RD if your character already complete it.

nirafelos

plasticbat said:

These token can only make sense if cryptic adds weekly AD reward to the zone. We have extra campaign currency for certain zone mainly because we go there every week to earn the AD reward. At this moment, there is no reason to go to SKT (ok, you may need to get vblod if you use relic) or RD if your character already complete it.

To add to / clarify this:

While Voninblod is occasionally a reason to return to SKT zones, SKT quests don't yield a meaningful amount of Voninblod (it would take 200 daily quests to farm the Voninblod required to Vivify a chestpiece, for instance), so when we do need to take our mains back to SKT after completing it to farm Voninblod, doing the daily or weekly quests that yield campaign currency is not part of that farming process.

safespacecadet

Was account-wide shared campaign currency too difficult to program? It sounded good when I first read it, but then I saw how much it costs to create a signet for SKT and RD. Wouldn't effect me either way though. The only alts I play now are on different account than my main character.

einsieg

Remove the campaign currency cost entirely and just give us the damn token for completing the campaign. With the way it is right now, farming the currency to get this token consumes all of the time you save just running the campaign on the alt without a token. It makes the whole thing pointless. It also robs us of currency that our mains are supposed to be contributing to our Stronghold coffers.

wodewick

Errm, is this a daft question?

Considering that many of the campaigns are time locked, how does this make it faster? The most obvious example is Underdark, which is completely linear. It matters not a jot how much Faerzes you have in the bank, it's 1 progression every 18 hours. Sure, ill save time grinding HE's, but my campaign isn't getting finished any quicker.

Tyranny is another good example. The last unlock is a repeatable task (x5) which is timelocked.

I'm sure most of the other campaigns suffer from this too.

So, we have grinding time to get the token and when we get the token, the time save isn't going to be anywhere near 50% (Underdark 0%).

Or am i missing something, does the timelock get cut in half?

ravenskya

So are they going to remove the fact that it takes 19 hours to process a campaign button in ToD? Because if not then this really isn't saving me any time

plasticbat

There are 2 type of time saving.

type 1: amount of play time
type 2: amount of real time

This saves time for type 1. It does not save time for type 2 directly. For alt (and many alt), I personally care about how much play time I need to spend to progress each one. I personally don't really about the time the toon is progressing when I am sleeping.

wodewick

plasticbat said:

There are 2 type of time saving.

type 1: amount of play time
type 2: amount of real time

This saves time for type 1. It does not save time for type 2 directly. For alt (and many alt), I personally care about how much play time I need to spend to progress each one. I personally don't really about the time the toon is progressing when I am sleeping.

That's fine, but the thread clearly states "faster campaign progression" Not reduced grind...as i mentioned in my post.

Faster campaign progression i'm willing to pay AD for, reduced grind i'm probably not, as i don't find this game that grindy.

plasticbat

wodewick said:

plasticbat said:

There are 2 type of time saving.

type 1: amount of play time
type 2: amount of real time

This saves time for type 1. It does not save time for type 2 directly. For alt (and many alt), I personally care about how much play time I need to spend to progress each one. I personally don't really about the time the toon is progressing when I am sleeping.

That's fine, but the thread clearly states "faster campaign progression" Not reduced grind...as i mentioned in my post.

Faster campaign progression i'm willing to pay AD for, reduced grind i'm probably not, as i don't find this game that grindy. And, it is faster compaign progression for me.

For one toon, it is not that grindy. For 5 toons, this potentially can help a lot in both play time and real time. Yes, I progress 5 toon at the same time (not necessary at the same pace). It is faster campaign progression for me.

froger

My original though was this seems good. That was until I read the details. My time is limited and, like others, I’m not grinding SKT and other campaigns again just to get a small overall boost for one alt. Perhaps if the token was account wide I would consider it. But, as it stands I’ll just wait for the 10k Zen campaign buyout and cash in a few million AD.

arcticblitz

I said it in the RQ thread but worth mentioning it here too, As part of these changes please just make the campaign dungeons all account wide unlocks.

kieranmtorn

From what I see, there is no upside to the tokens. Cost is too close to the savings, and for most of my support alts, I've already unlocked the dungeons that my guild needed them on (which means, none of my support alts can randomly queue for epic). So this looks like a waste of effort.

armadeonx

@rgutscheradev it's coming up to a week since you made this thread, do you have any reply to the points raised since?

einsieg

I would only approve of the cost of these tokens if they permanently applied to my entire account once created, and I never needed to make them again.

tripsofthrymr

@nitocris83 checked in with @rgutscheradev on this. He's going to have another look at the numbers but has a few bugs to squash before he'll get to it.

armadeonx

einsieg said:

I would only approve of the cost of these tokens if they permanently applied to my entire account once created, and I never needed to make them again.

Yes, me too. I'd run it for 3 weeks if it created an account wide token - that's a decent return on time.

diloul

I'm not sure i got it right, i was very happy when i learned about "ease alting " ...

So in order to create a token for your alt, you need to pay 50k ad and farm campaign ressources for 2 or 3 weeks before being able to craft that token ?

If this is right then Cryptic have a very different meaning for "ease alting " than us.

And all of that for 50% less farming...

Add farm to ease farm that make so much sense, i'm amazed...

plasticbat

diloul#3484 said:

I'm not sure i got it right, i was very happy when i learned about "ease alting " ...



So in order to create a token for your alt, you need to pay 50k ad and farm campaign ressources for 2 or 3 weeks before being able to craft that token ?



If this is right then Cryptic have a very different meaning for "ease alting " than us.



And all of that for 50% less farming...



Add farm to ease farm that make so much sense, i'm amazed...

It is more about pay 50K ad use the campaign resources your main already have (and more or less no use of them) to make a token. Those campaign resources are usually already gathered if we do weekly AD quests. The reason why we did those quests was for AD and campaign resources are gathered quietly. Many of them are gathered and could reached the cap without knowing.

No, not all campaign gives weekly AD quest. e.g. SKT and RD. Those are the campaigns that make creating those token stupid. It is not stupid for other campaigns such as Dread Ring, sharanader, etc.

Will this help my alt? If I want to raise another alt who did no campaign, yes.
I have 5 toons that have been capped in campaign resource of the campaigns that give weekly AD quest.
I have another 7 level 70 alt who do not do any campaign.
Hence, that can help them for quite a few campaigns (if I choose to raise them).
No, at the moment, not for SKT and RD though. 4 of my top 5 toons can definitely use that if it is changed.

onodrain

The devs said that they used the following formula to come up with the campaign cost:

What does an end campaign achievement cost + 50,000 AD.

On the surface, I think this sounds reasonable. But practically speaking, it is not. The person in charge of this is busy exterminating bugs but will look at the costs when they have the time, per another post.

If possible, for the campaigns I have completed, I give all my campaign currency to my guild, since we are still growing. So I do not have currency from IWD, Sharandar, ToD or DR. I would have to grind this currency.

And the 50k AD is too much when you consider it is per campaign and per character.

plasticbat

onodrain said:

If possible, for the campaigns I have completed, I give all my campaign currency to my guild, since we are still growing. So I do not have currency from IWD, Sharandar, ToD or DR. I would have to grind this currency.

If you don't have the currency and you need your main to grind it from scratch, this method will not help you at all. You may as well let the alt to grind on its own.
This method can only help people who has campaign currency on hand.

For my situation, if they put weekly AD reward to SKT and RD, I could send my main for weekly AD reward (and gather campaign currency in the process). That assumes I don't mind to do that particular quest (as I mentioned in earlier post, a simple quest such as the quest that involves that giant lady and NOT fishing).
After (say) a few months, the accumulated currency may be good for one token.
In my mind set, I did that for weekly AD and not for grinding for the token.

armadeonx

As it stands, the cost doesn't equal the benefit so there's no point in rolling it out as it'd still be more efficient to do it normally.

If it is rolled out as initially suggested, then it will flop and all that development time would be a waste.

It's a simple question of "is the cost of time + cost of AD = time saved". In longer campaigns we may save a week but that week costs 50k per character. In shorter campaigns, the time taken to farm resources exceeds the time saved.

The question that devs need to ask themselves is "how much time do players need to save to make campaigns attractive to running alts". The answer is "50%". We know this because it's been successfully done with IWD & Dread Ring via the Demonic HE's.

It is not a 50% saving if we need to run weeks of currencies per character and still face a fairly large AD cost on top.

Either we run 3 weeks, pay 50k and get a FULL completion - or the tasks are halved for alts at no cost of any kind. Anything else will get a luke warm reception, low uptake and not achieve the devs goals.

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ecrana

This was such a great idea...in theory. Once you read the implementation it's just another swing and miss.

The fact that I would have to farm currency to shorten farming on an alt is just off.

If I finish a campaign on my main and it ONLY costs me 50k to make a token for another character I think that's a good deal.

But if I have to farm currencies and pay AD to make a token, it had better be an account wide unlock or it's not worth my time. I don't see this happening though because it would negatively impact the market for campaign completion packs in zen market.

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armadeonx

ecrana#2080 said:

This was such a great idea...in theory. Once you read the implementation it's just another swing and miss.

The fact that I would have to farm currency to shorten farming on an alt is just off.

If I finish a campaign on my main and it ONLY costs me 50k to make a token for another character I think that's a good deal.

But if I have to farm currencies and pay AD to make a token, it had better be an account wide unlock or it's not worth my time. I don't see this happening though because it would negatively impact the market for campaign completion packs in zen market.

Yeah and they kinda miss the point that once you've finished a campaign on a character, you really don't want to go back in there and farm even more on the same character. You get a sense of relief at finishing one, this ruins that.

beckylunatic

Also, with Asterdahl in the process of implementing account-wide dungeon unlocks, the grind to finish each campaign on every alt is already being cut down.

I'm not questioning the necessity of the dungeon unlock change... the game needed it desperately. But it reduces the value of the campaign tokens.

I know I take a really lackadaisical approach to boons compared to a lot of players, but if you have alts, you really need to retain that kind of perspective or else you'll just throw your hands up in despair (which is how I feel about some campaigns, but not the bulk of them as I've already expressed).

vida44

All the man hours that were put into making this"faster alt progression" token could've been put into something else.
@asterdahl made dungeons account wide (with a flick of his hand) and basically that is all we really wanted. To run dungeons on our alts.
Dailies to get a boon don't take that long and are bearable. I don't mind slow progression for that. But being locked out of FBI or mSP on a 13k alt for over a month is so silly.

muminekm

vida44 said:

All the man hours that were put into making this"faster alt progression" token could've been put into something else.

@asterdahl made dungeons account wide (with a flick of his hand) and basically that is all we really wanted. To run dungeons on our alts.

Dailies to get a boon don't take that long and are bearable. I don't mind slow progression for that. But being locked out of FBI or mSP on a 13k alt for over a month is so silly.

They already announced account wide dungeons unlock with mod 12b (becky is relating to that statement too).

vida44

@muminekm#3459 I'm not following you?

I KNOW they announced it and that is the whole reason for the comment. Asterdahl made the change 2-3 weeks into the preview testing and this "feature" (faster campaign progression) was here since it hit preview.
I'm trying to explain how useless the man hours were for creating this faster token thing when asterdahl decided to make an account wide unlock for all dungeons. And he did it probably with one line of code (or c/p from the demogorgon unlock)

I don't know about you but I do alts and try to get them ready for dungeons ASAP so I can get better gear/loot. Boons are not that important to me since I will get them eventually between finding groups for dungeons. What frustrated me the most was the inability to run mSP and FBI with my 13k DC because I need to grind a whole month to run it.

And also the token thing is marginaly faster. You maybe save a few days. But in the end who cares. You can run any dungeon now. Take your time and save the 50k AD.

muminekm

vida44 said:

@muminekm#3459 I'm not following you?



I KNOW they announced it and that is the whole reason for the comment. Asterdahl made the change 2-3 weeks into the preview testing and this "feature" (faster campaign progression) was here since it hit preview.

I'm trying to explain how useless the man hours were for creating this faster token thing when asterdahl decided to make an account wide unlock for all dungeons. And he did it probably with one line of code (or c/p from the demogorgon unlock)



I don't know about you but I do alts and try to get them ready for dungeons ASAP so I can get better gear/loot. Boons are not that important to me since I will get them eventually between finding groups for dungeons. What frustrated me the most was the inability to run mSP and FBI with my 13k DC because I need to grind a whole month to run it.



And also the token thing is marginaly faster. You maybe save a few days. But in the end who cares. You can run any dungeon now. Take your time and save the 50k AD.

Sorry. It seems I can't write anything in the morning before 1st coffee. And I agree with you. I made decision recently to only focus on one character. So I was happy to hear it will be easier to complete campaigns on other alts (maybe I could return to other alts that way). But seeing step price for it to just get week off.. not worth it. If I'm getting account wide dungeon unlock (which is awesome!! Now I plan to make more support toons) I will not use that feature if the cost is so high.