Invasion weekly quest screwed up by patch ore deliberate change ?

pelgrax

HI , post the patch the weekly invasion quest has changed . before to get credit it just required opening 2 chest . Now it's percentage based . I ran an invasion ( opened 5 chests and killed 5 or 6 lieutenants ) and it was only at 13% . If this is deliberate most people will likely max out the currencies before hitting the 100% value thereby making a weekly quest unachievable .
So is this a deliberate change or just something that got screwed up in fixing other issues ?

infinitejesse

Deliberate from what I understand...and it has totally killed my enthusiasm for the new mod. With that weekly being so easily completed before the patch I was considering finishing the campaign with all of my alts. I simply won't have the time now...back to doing the bare minimum with mains.

rich3671

Deliberate or incompetent, it's a toss up. Going from 10 to 500 buzzjewels is just about as bad as it gets with this crew though.

mintmark

I'm concerned about the pelgrax's concern. What happens if you're at the buzzjewel cap? Can you still make progress in the quest (but not keep any more buzzjewels)?

I don't think I'm too far away from finding out... I'll let you know if nobody else does.

mithmyrr

According to the Patch Notes, it is a deliberate change. Whether they got the math right or not, I do not know. I do know, not including waiting for an Invasion to pop or or getting to an instance with an active Invasion, this was one of the top 3 easiest weeklies to complete before the patch. I think it should be probably 2-3 invasions to complete.

As far as hitting cap not letting you progress in the weekly, you could always spend them, so there should be no concern. it may not be on what you want, but you can get rAD in the campaign store.

plasticbat

mintmark said:

I'm concerned about the pelgrax's concern. What happens if you're at the buzzjewel cap? Can you still make progress in the quest (but not keep any more buzzjewels)?

I don't think I'm too far away from finding out... I'll let you know if nobody else does.

There is no buzzjewel earning cap. There is a buzzjewel storage cap. If you happen to hit 1500 storage cap, just spend them. Get some AD. 15 buzzjewel for 1000 rAD. 1500 rAD if you have AD boost.

chaderickrax

With the current changes, it appears that 5 buzzjewels = 1% of the weekly haul.

On a very good run, with people killing commanders every time they pop and opening each chest three times, I come up just shy of 100 buzzjewels. And not every run is best-case.

Regardless, that means that best-case would be six invasions to complete the weekly haul. Each invasion is approximately 15 minutes long. Unlike most other things in the game, there isn't really a way to make these things go faster, and there is literally no other way to earn buzzjewels. So, this is a very clear time-for-currency exchange, and the cost is no less than 90 minutes, per character, per week. (Commanders and chests only re-pop so often. You can't speed that process.)

Just for that one weekly, which is one quarter of the weekly haul.

And in the end, you will have 5000 buzzjewels, and, well...that amounts to 333,000 rough astral diamonds, or a little over three days of random queues...after ten weeks invasions.

Each person will have to decide whether that's worth their time, but considering there's just about nothing to spend buzzjewels on, the game here is to devote hours of our lives to earn, effectively, a paltry amount of rough AD...and every now and then cross off 25 points from a weekly quest.

It will be interesting to see whether invasions continue to be the flashpoint of this campaign, or if people just say, "What's the point?"

trinity706

For the most part completing 5 repeatable quests takes less time than the invasion weekly (after the patch) so saving and turning it in the following week to get an instant 25% of the weekly haul may be useful to do.

Of course completing it at least once to progress the quest line is required though after that it can be skipped if desired or turned in as it is gradually completed (even if it takes more than a week).

plasticbat

There are 4 25% weekly. Doing the quest line should give you more than 25%. Do the other 3 weekly will give 100% for the week. I also do the invasion when I have a chance. My first character after the patch got 62% invasion after 2.5 invasions (entered one of them after 7 minutes mark).

To do that 'faster', you don't just kill boss and open the chest. You should kill the mob when you are 'waiting'. Some time, you get more buzzjewels from mob than killing the boss.

neverromler

I'm probably wrong, but sometimes I get the feeling that the developers either want to torture us or are simply overwhelmed by what they are doing. Maybe they're just bowing to the wishes of marketing, which is all about money and profit. I don't know. What I do know is that I was quite positive about this module. Of course I was already expecting quests and/or encounters not to work. This has been normal for Cryptic for years. But what I don't understand and can't tolerate is the sometimes massive degradation of quests that have already been introduced and tested(???).

The current change is a slap in the face to the players. A guild member plays Tank as his main character. It took him 11 (!!!!) invasions and several hours to complete the quest and he was frustrated afterwards. Understandable, right? Just in case the developers forgot: Tanks do "little" damage! The argument of playing in a team is hard to realize in a time when guilds are dying and alliances are dissolving.

Maybe the developers will think again and change the quest. The current method is no fun. For example, it would be worth considering doing three or four invasions and killing the bosses.

Thanks for reading.

darthpotater

The mission should be done with 1 invasion. The time should be even more than other weekly missions.

This is an overlook by developers.

plasticbat

darthpotater said:

The mission should be done with 1 invasion. The time should be even more than other weekly missions.

This is an overlook by developers.

"Done with 1 invasion" and "the time should be even more than other weekly missions" seems to contradict each other. What do you have in mind?
Finishing one invasion can be 30 seconds or 13 minutes. Longer than that means more than 13 minutes.

There are 4 weekly quests.
"Seed of destruction" may take less than 10 minutes.
The HE one may take 15 minutes.
The "Activities" one will take a long while. I usually complete this one by keeping doing HE and invasion.

I personally only do 100 weekly haul and then stop for the week for each character. I don't do more than 100 weekly haul of the campaign.
This week, just the quest line itself gives 49 weekly haul. What I need (for this week) is to do:
The HE quest for 25.
Activities quest for 25. Since I use HE and invasion to fill that quest, the invasion quest is over 50%.
Hence, I got 99 weekly haul. I only need to one extra 5 point quest to fill that 1 weekly haul left over.
I don't need to do 'Seed of destruction" or complete "invasion" for this week.

strathkin

Well as I said in another thread on the Topic, I'd be fine if they reduced the requirements by about 20%. Currently you can do 5-8 Invasions which takes about an 1 hour to 1.5 hours to complete; and honestly that's a bit much.

greywynd

Can't reduce requirements. Got to grind til you're blind.

darthpotater

plasticbat said:

darthpotater said:

The mission should be done with 1 invasion. The time should be even more than other weekly missions.

This is an overlook by developers.

"Done with 1 invasion" and "the time should be even more than other weekly missions" seems to contradict each other. What do you have in mind?
Finishing one invasion can be 30 seconds or 13 minutes. Longer than that means more than 13 minutes.

Sorry I was trying to say that the quota should be doable in 1 invasion, 6 chests for example, or 9 bosses. 1 full invasion usually takes more time than other weeklies (that was in my mind when I said "the time should be even more than other weekly missions")

trinity706

Prior to the patch the invasion weekly was very easy to complete, personally something felt wrong because "most" weekly quests current and prior were not that easy to complete in regard to time (excluding legacy quests). The post patch effort required to complete is pretty much where it "should" have been initially when compared to other weeklies with a "activity" type objective to complete.

chaderickrax

trinity706#8838 said:

Prior to the patch the invasion weekly was very easy to complete, personally something felt wrong because "most" weekly quests current and prior were not that easy to complete in regard to time (excluding legacy quests). The post patch effort required to complete is pretty much where it "should" have been initially when compared to other weeklies with a "activity" type objective to complete.

Initially, this felt like a "Midnight Market" type of quest. Something that was quick and easy and a nice diversion from the rest of the game. It's become something more in line with a second Weekly Activities quest, which generally take two weeks to complete if you stop when your weekly haul is complete (making them ironically named).

There is precedent for an easy weekly quest. I'm not sure there's precedent for something as grueling as what invasions have become. I have the math up above. I've played every campaign, and I may be forgetting something but I don't remember a single weekly quest that requires this much of my life.

Additionally, it's not something that will resolve itself through natural gameplay, like Activities. The only way to complete Invasions is to go to an invasion, cease progress in anything else, and purposely collect buzzjewels. I'm not remembering a weekly quest in the past that required both this kind of time investment AND neglecting everything else in Neverwinter to accomplish it.

trinity706

chaderickrax#3780 said:

I have the math up above. I've played every campaign, and I may be forgetting something but I don't remember a single weekly quest that requires this much of my life.

The only way to complete Invasions is to go to an invasion, cease progress in anything else, and purposely collect buzzjewels. I'm not remembering a weekly quest in the past that required both this kind of time investment AND neglecting everything else in Neverwinter to accomplish it.

This may be true.

Personally don't remember a quest/activity that offered the amount of different high level equipment as a random drop to the extent of this particular quest/activity (especially for all classes other than universal shirt/pants). For those just starting the campaign and or on another character yes the effort required to complete has been increased significantly though it is essentially a one time completion requirement per character (to advance the story). If 25 of the weekly haul was reserved and this quest had to be completed to cap for the week then that would be quite different, this is not the case. Once "Seeds of Destruction", "Sailing the Astral Sea" and "Stopping the Empire" are unlocked that's 75 of the weekly haul, complete 5 repeatable quests and the campaign is capped for the week without having to touch this quest again...

A number of people are making it seem as if this quest has to be completed every week, which it doesn't, and that helps offset the increased difficulty in completing it post patch.

chaderickrax#3780 said:

Each person will have to decide whether that's worth their time, but considering there's just about nothing to spend buzzjewels on, the game here is to devote hours of our lives to earn, effectively, a paltry amount of rough AD...

That is not entirely true.

Boons (who isn't going to run the campaign even if just for these?), enchantments, companion equipment and some equipment cost Buzzjewels. For newer players/characters the equipment (head, chest, arms and feet) costs about the same as one piece from other campaigns (300k AD) and is quite the step above leveling equipment. Also moving to another instance can decrease the overall completion time especially if you can get into multiple instances with an active invasion.

chaderickrax

Great points. When I originally wrote this, I wasn't thinking of the boons at all. I was focused on the fact that the invasion was available as drops, and just completing just one week of the invasion quest would get enough buzzjewels to buy at least one piece - that wouldn't even get you through half the campaign for the most part. The jewels are more pervasive than I was giving credit for, but I still maintain that the greatest anomaly of this quest is that it's presented as a "weekly" that most people won't need (or have the patience) to complete more than 3-4 times, maybe ever.

That may not be a bug, I'll concede that point. But it's not what I would call consistent game design. Or a new thing that makes the game more fun, rather than more tedious. But, looking at what is probably the goal - it's not done in error.

plasticbat

chaderickrax#3780 said:

Great points. When I originally wrote this, I wasn't thinking of the boons at all. I was focused on the fact that the invasion was available as drops, and just completing just one week of the invasion quest would get enough buzzjewels to buy at least one piece - that wouldn't even get you through half the campaign for the most part. The jewels are more pervasive than I was giving credit for, but I still maintain that the greatest anomaly of this quest is that it's presented as a "weekly" that most people won't need (or have the patience) to complete more than 3-4 times, maybe ever.

That may not be a bug, I'll concede that point. But it's not what I would call consistent game design. Or a new thing that makes the game more fun, rather than more tedious. But, looking at what is probably the goal - it's not done in error.

Actually, it is kind of consistent. It is a currency for you to farm to get boon. It is similar to Menzoberranzan Elite Sigil which you farm from killing drider during lockdown. People are still farming them.

Buzzjewels is the new Menzoberranzan Elite Sigil (happens during invasion) with the added optional benefit to give you 25 points for the weekly haul.