Questing Brutality

[Illeist]

Decided to try out the Quest system today, and was flabbergasted when I almost immediately lost. I didn't notice that you only get six turns until afterwards. Has anyone managed to beat a quest yet? What's your strategy?

[Rein00]

I feel like it's a bug, I started a normal one with only 10. Pretty sure it's not possible without an amazing starting hand and someone using Augry.

[Therokito]

It's given me between 4 and 7 turns. I just don't see how to advance even if you get better cards, since your character stats will never increase until you level up

[Hannibal_PJV]

The game time is 30 blessing.

If you have 1 character, you have 30 turns to win.

If you have 2 characters, you have 15 turns to win.

If you have 3 characters, you have 10 turns to win.

If you have 4 characters, you have 7.5 turns to win.

If you have 5 characters, you have 6 turns to win.

If you have 6 characters, you have 5 turns to win.

 

So the game plays very differently with different size parties!

You have to push hard forward, if you have Many characters!

[StormbringerGT]

Haha no no!

 

It's a bug; You are supposed to get 30 turns... Unless you are playing Heoric or Higher and come across a wildcard that gives you 5 less blessings...

[da_mayor]

Haha no no!

 

It's a bug; You are supposed to get 30 turns... Unless you are playing Heoric or Higher and come across a wildcard that gives you 5 less blessings...

 

I think he means that EACH character gets x number of turns, not that the party as a whole does.  It is definitely like that, especially since (usually) there are up to 10 more cards to encounter for each player.  So in a typical scenario:

 

1 player  - 30 total turns to address 3 locations, 10 cards each, 30 possible explores (barring cards getting shuffled back in or locations closing before all cards are encountered)

2 players - 30 total turns to address 4 locations, 10 cards each, 40 possible explores (Ditto above)

3 players - 30 total turns to address 5 locations, 10 cards each, 50 possible explores (Ditto above)

4 players - 30 total turns to address 6 locations, 10 cards each, 60 possible explores (Ditto above)

5 players - 30 total turns to address 7 locations, 10 cards each, 70 possible explores (Ditto above)

6 players - 30 total turns to address 8 locations, 10 cards each, 80 possible explores (Ditto above)

 

The only balancing thing is, 6 players will have WAY more blessings and allies for exploring (unless they're all Ezren with nothing but Acolytes) to get through them.  But yes, you have to explore aggressively and close immediately rather than hoarding your blessings and/or milking locations for all possible boons.

[Illeist]

@da_mayor and Hannibal

No, myself and the other posters are familiar with the game. We mean that the total number of blessinga in Quest mode is frequently between 4 and 10. Not 4 blessings per person; four total blessings.

[da_mayor]

Oh, yes, that's a known bug.

[koala404]

Yeah, well I started the quest after not being able to for a day, and I was stunned to get just SIX turns total with just one guy.  What a joke.  Three locations, six total turns?  I mean, come on, what on earth are you thinking?

 

I can start with two guys also, and then I get the princely sum of TEN turns.  I mean, seriously, is this intended to make me never want to play?

 

Come on guys, this is really simple stuff to sort out.  I am amazed that this even managed to get past your first internal check, let alone make it all the way to an Apple submission in order to fix really game-breaking stuff like this.

 

Now I may look like a whinger, but please tell me exactly what the $24.99 was good for, other than a terminally broken attempt with very little care for the customer at all?  I am your CUSTOMER.  Please tell me that you actually take note?

 

K

[PinkRose]

For the record, it didn't get past beta testers. It was working then, it isn't now. They're trying to fix it.

As for what $24.99 gets you, as of right now, my $24.99 gets me all the characters and adventure decks 1 & 2, and a whole lot of fun. Haven't had any game breaking bugs, and the annoying ones are easily fixed.

Sorry you're not enjoying yourself.

[Brainwave]

While there are some bugs, I've played quite a bit through AP1 over the past few days (haven't gotten the 2nd adventure pack yet) and have yet to hit anything game breaking. Well, yes, quest mode is broken, so play story mode for a few days until they get it sorted - story mode is the original game anyway, quest is just something extra they added for the video game. Also the staff online seems very responsive, and games unfortunately tend to have some bugs on release. Try playing WoW after a big patch - and that games been out for years.

[StormbringerGT]

Yeah Quest Mode was working fine during beta. Its a very complex game mode compared to the story mode.

Trust me, we want the game to be bug free even more than our players.

[Therokito]

Do we perhaps have an ETA on the patch to fix it? I know you said its done internally but it'd be nice to know

[Decius]

For the record, it didn't get past beta testers. It was working then, it isn't now. They're trying to fix it.

 

That's worse.

Beta testing is about testing the product that you want to release. Don't move the release date up a day and release something that wasn't tested at all.

[PinkRose]

I really feel like i need to defend them.

They can't test what servers are going to do when thousands of people are crashing their servers in the same hour until it goes live.

But really if you want to complain,that's your bandwidth. 

But some of us are extremely happy with the product they made and that we helped make and would rather spend our time playing.

I'm truly sorry you aren't happy.

[Feywood]

 

For the record, it didn't get past beta testers. It was working then, it isn't now. They're trying to fix it.

 

That's worse.

Beta testing is about testing the product that you want to release. Don't move the release date up a day and release something that wasn't tested at all.

 

 

To be fair, there have been quite a few cases where an app (or other piece of software in general) has been working perfectly fine in testing, then has suddenly just not worked for some reason upon release.

 

It doesn't help that Apple's testers apparently didn't pick up the problem in this case and ask for it to be fixed before they'd allow it through, which suggests that they're either not particularly thorough, or it was working for them too when they were testing it.

[Decius]

When the steps to reproduce are "Start a quest mode game, don't have it softlock", I think that it's reasonable to conclude that either zero testing was done or a conscious decision to release with the bugs in question was made.

[StormbringerGT]

When the steps to reproduce are "Start a quest mode game, don't have it softlock", I think that it's reasonable to conclude that either zero testing was done or a conscious decision to release with the bugs in question was made.

Change a tutorial box timing issue in Story Mode.... Quest Mode breaks. (That is not the reason here, but an example of how things can break that were once working.)

 

That's how these things happen. When a change is made in the game it can have an effect completely different other parts of the game.

 

Quest Mode should work and we are super bummed it doesn't. There was no conscious decision to release it in a non working form. I think it is reasonable to conclude that your binary conclusion choices are wrong.

[Kgk4569]

Haha no no!

 

It's a bug; You are supposed to get 30 turns... Unless you are playing Heoric or Higher and come across a wildcard that gives you 5 less blessings...

 

Once you fix the bug, you should Isolate it into a gauntlet mode.

[LunarWolf]

As a beta tester(rather the brother of one of the officially admitted beta testers) I feel I need to point out this isn't something that was missed by us. Quest mode was working just fine literally one day before the official release. I'm very flabbergasted and very disappointed that whatever switch(es) they flipped from beta to release had such a devastating affect. How did this happen?

[Kgk4569]

As a beta tester(rather the brother of one of the officially admitted beta testers) I feel I need to point out this isn't something that was missed by us. Quest mode was working just fine literally one day before the official release. I'm very flabbergasted and very disappointed that whatever switch(es) they flipped from beta to release had such a devastating affect. How did this happen?

 

Stormbringer already mentioned that.

 

Honestly none of these issues surprise me and they are not VERY game breaking. Yes, quests are disappointing, but there is still playability in at least one of the modes. Day 0 issues even after extensive beta testing are common across the board in the industry.

 

I am the main tester (V&V and some beta testing) of hardware and software for the company I work for, and I am very familiar with how a apparently good software can go out and not work properly.

[Decius]

 

When the steps to reproduce are "Start a quest mode game, don't have it softlock", I think that it's reasonable to conclude that either zero testing was done or a conscious decision to release with the bugs in question was made.

Change a tutorial box timing issue in Story Mode.... Quest Mode breaks. (That is not the reason here, but an example of how things can break that were once working.)

 

That's how these things happen. When a change is made in the game it can have an effect completely different other parts of the game.

 

Quest Mode should work and we are super bummed it doesn't. There was no conscious decision to release it in a non working form. I think it is reasonable to conclude that your binary conclusion choices are wrong.

 

I get it; changes have unexpected results. My concern is that changes were made, a new version was approved, and then it was made live without anyone checking to see if quest mode worked on that version.

 

If it were subtle I could see that they might have been introduced through complex means and then missed during ordinary testing.

 

I suspect that the root problem is that the 'box' contains ~14 blessings, and that in the setup phase those blessings are given to player's hands and location decks first, and to the blessings deck last. If there aren't enough for the location and character decks, it freezes during setup? Just some results consistent with my attempts (notably, that Ezren solo gets enough time to win, and that the total number of blessings cards seem constant).

[Skrills]

I just got to level 5 questing solo with Kyra. It's taken me a while, but it's a fun grind. I run 2 cures and an augury that I've picked up along the way to cycle blessings to get more explores out of the 8 turns and once in a while the augury helps me pull up the villain or henchmen so I can close locations faster. I don't have a good victory rate, failing more often than not, and have fallen a number of times deciding to risk it for the slim chance of victory since they are hard to come by, but somehow I managed to win 2 in a row tonight. Usually it does take things lining up right with the villain and henchmen not too far down and being able to get things closed with checks I can do.

 

I think it's a good challenge since I can't always win, but I did come from playing with a group where we completed all three physical PACG games with 3 characters and 8 location decks every time and got through everything, usually on the first try.

[Kgk4569]

Wow.

[FatePAC]

I don't get to experience how brutal questing is since it doesn't even load for me.