Quest Mode Complaints

[erwos]

I like the concept of Quest mode. I have played a lot of it, and with all the characters. But... I have quibbles with Quest Mode right now:

1. Advancement rates past level ~13 slow down to a crawl.

2. The rewards for advancement are trash (ie, random cards) about 6/10 of the time.

3. It is almost impossible to solo with certain characters due to the "random-but-preconfigured" location setups. If I'm trying to solo Merisiel, and I get 2/3 of the locations requiring a Divine check to close, I may as well forfeit.

4. You are actively punished for doing well in a scenario and closing things too fast, because you don't get the experience from the monsters you banish.

 

The experience devolves into "win 3-4 times, and you'll usually get a single random card that is probably useless".  And that's 3-4 wins - and given the increased raised difficulty of Quest mode due to deck changes and not being able to create my own starting decks, that's usually going to be more than 3-4 sessions. Sorry, but that's not really fun. Or, to be fair, it's not as fun as it could be.

 

(I know that someone is going to say that you keep the cards on a loss. But I've generally got all of the cards I want out of a set the first 20 sessions through....)

 

There's a few things that could be done (not all at the same time) to fix these problems. Award experience on a loss to all living characters. Increase the scaling factor of experience on tougher challenge cards, or by character level so that it only averages 2 wins to level up. Adjust the location setups to have the easier closing conditions as the first locations, or do some logic to determine which ones are feasible for the characters. Give a substantial exp bonus for every card left in the blessing deck when you win.

 

The list goes on and on. Story mode is fun because the rewards are substantial and the gear is awesome. Quest mode tends to not hold up well in that comparison.

[Hannibal_PJV]

Hmm... I like the slow pace of quest mode. You see more character development, and less too good cards in the Beginning. So I would say that it is better balanced. But these Are matter of taste of course. I Also would like to see more different locations, it would be nice to have more variety among them. Even some new because this is allready have tweaked game mode.

Because of the huge randomnes of the cards, this is not good for solo game. 3-4 playe party is much better suits to quest mode!

You need a good character to every possible situation.

[erwos]

Hmm... I like the slow pace of quest mode. You see more character development, and less too good cards in the Beginning. So I would say that it is better balanced. But these Are matter of taste of course. I Also would like to see more different locations, it would be nice to have more variety among them. Even some new because this is allready have tweaked game mode.

Because of the huge randomnes of the cards, this is not good for solo game. 3-4 playe party is much better suits to quest mode!

You need a good character to every possible situation.

As you, say it's a matter of taste. I think that when the balance is altered to the point that solo'ing is no longer a viable option, you've got a balance issue. In fact, I'd argue that certain party compositions are unfairly punished in quest mode, period. If you want an extra challenge, choose a higher difficulty level... don't force it on people on normal difficulty.

[Longshot11]

 

I think that when the balance is altered to the point that solo'ing is no longer a viable option, you've got a balance issue.

To be fair, this is also true about Story mode as well. The game is *doable* solo, but is in no way balanced towards it, and with some heroes in particular you need a good dose of luck to beat some of the challenges presented.

 

Also, I haven't particularly advanced in Quest mode (it bores me) but does it have the same crap as Story where you can play a solo Seoni and then you get a *reward* in the form of a random Armor (which has no way at all to be useful to that hero) ?

[Kgk4569]

 

 

I think that when the balance is altered to the point that solo'ing is no longer a viable option, you've got a balance issue.

To be fair, this is also true about Story mode as well. The game is *doable* solo, but is in no way balanced towards it, and with some heroes in particular you need a good dose of luck to beat some of the challenges presented.

 

Also, I haven't particularly advanced in Quest mode (it bores me) but does it have the same crap as Story where you can play a solo Seoni and then you get a *reward* in the form of a random Armor (which has no way at all to be useful to that hero) ?

 

 

Yuppers.

[erwos]

 

 

 

I think that when the balance is altered to the point that solo'ing is no longer a viable option, you've got a balance issue.

To be fair, this is also true about Story mode as well. The game is *doable* solo, but is in no way balanced towards it, and with some heroes in particular you need a good dose of luck to beat some of the challenges presented.

 

Also, I haven't particularly advanced in Quest mode (it bores me) but does it have the same crap as Story where you can play a solo Seoni and then you get a *reward* in the form of a random Armor (which has no way at all to be useful to that hero) ?

 

 

Yuppers.

 

But worse, because in Quest mode, it's 60%-70% of the rewards, and you only get them on a level up. It's like getting one random card per adventure deck.

 

Maybe some logic to provide better cards (next deck/tier up?) would help alleviate that - at least when you get your stuff, it's not a dull shortsword or something.

[LunarWolf]

Not being able to solo with certain characters is not an "issue" unique to quest mode. They even warn in the manual of the physical game that certain characters are much harder to solo than others. PFACG was really made for 3-4 players or at least 3-4 characters.

[Longshot11]

Not being able to solo with certain characters is not an "issue" unique to quest mode. They even warn in the manual of the physical game that certain characters are much harder to solo than others. PFACG was really made for 3-4 players or at least 3-4 characters.

The point was not about solo as such. I can be playing a party of Ezren, Seoni, Lem an Lini, and the random armor 'reward' would still be absurd, just a little less asinine that the Black Magga 'reward' of allies you've earned either way.

 

(To be clear, I'm not bashing on anything Obsidian did, rather I'm venting at the original rewards in RotR - and the situation does get a bit better in the following sets. I do, however, think Obsidian have the opportunity to do away with this flawed system in Quest Mode , where they can just grant a "random card of the type of your choice")

Edited June 8, 2016 by Longshot11

[TheBigE]

Firstly - I am loving Quest Mode at the moment!

 

But I agree 100% that the level up rewards when you get a card are a complete waste of time (regardless of your party make-up). In saying that though I don't think they need to make the cards better either as that will imbalance the game. Instead they could look at a different approach - like rewarding with character image personalisation, or something similar.

 

Advancement rates are fine with me. I don't want to get to level 40 to quick as I will then start losing interest (until multiplayer comes in, or other cool game play options).

 

1 charecter parties are always going to be tough to balance for. Personally I would rather they invest energy into new features.

 

My only gripe with Quest mode is the lack of variation with locations. With a 6 charecter party you only ever get the same 3-4 different sets of locations. Which is a bit sad considering the potential number of combinations considering how many different locations exist even in just the B box. But like I said above 6 player parties are probably not where the majority of players sit so if they ignored that problem and added more game play I would not be to sad either.

[Kgk4569]

 

Not being able to solo with certain characters is not an "issue" unique to quest mode. They even warn in the manual of the physical game that certain characters are much harder to solo than others. PFACG was really made for 3-4 players or at least 3-4 characters.

 

The point was not about solo as such. I can be playing a party of Ezren, Seoni, Lem an Lini, and the random armor 'reward' would still be absurd, just a little less asinine that the Black Magga 'reward' of allies you've earned either way.

 

(To be clear, I'm not bashing on anything Obsidian did, rather I'm venting at the original rewards in RotR - and the situation does get a bit better in the following sets. I do, however, think Obsidian have the opportunity to do away with this flawed system in Quest Mode , where they can just grant a "random card of the type of your choice")

+10000000000 to this.

[Irgy]

It's designed to be a slow grind. It's there for players who want to play the game a lot, to give them an unlimited amount of stuff to do. If the rate of progress is boring that's fine, it's probably not designed for you, but on the plus side, odds are you can entertain yourself playing with a variety of different characters in story mode instead.

 

If the rate of progress was faster then the people who want to play a lot would unlock everything too quickly and then end up getting bored anyway. The random card rewards are pretty worthless even when they're a card you can keep, but they're there to spread out the real rewards (just like they are in story mode).

[erwos]

It's designed to be a slow grind. It's there for players who want to play the game a lot, to give them an unlimited amount of stuff to do. If the rate of progress is boring that's fine, it's probably not designed for you, but on the plus side, odds are you can entertain yourself playing with a variety of different characters in story mode instead.

 

If the rate of progress was faster then the people who want to play a lot would unlock everything too quickly and then end up getting bored anyway. The random card rewards are pretty worthless even when they're a card you can keep, but they're there to spread out the real rewards (just like they are in story mode).

I understand what you're saying; I just happen to disagree completely.

 

First of all, it's unclear who Obsidian designed Quest mode for, and I don't think that you know given that you don't have a Dev tag slapped on your profile. One would think it would be for the same people who enjoyed Story mode and want more. I sense that there is some sort of implicit accusation I'm not hardcore enough and always hate grinding - let me dispel this notion by noting that I've got hundreds of hours on Disgaea games doing nothing but grinding. Slow grinding is not a sin of game design unto itself; slow grinding with extremely infrequent rewards, on the other hand, is a paradigm that is rightfully hated by most gamers (ref: pre-loot-2.0 Diablo 3).

 

Second, I feel like people are not doing the math here. If it takes three games/wins to increase in level, and each of those games takes 20 minutes, then by the time we hit the eventual  presumptive level cap of 70, that is 70 hours of gameplay in Quest mode alone, and that's assuming something of a best case. If it were to take five sessions (3-4 wins plus 1-2 losses), you'd be at something closer to 115 hours. And, doing some averaging here, if ten levels takes ten hours, I am getting a meaningful advancement for my character roughly every 3-5 hours (7/10 of the rewards atm usually being trash cards). These would be punishing numbers on a table, and they are just as punishing on my phone.

 

Finally, the idea that Obsidian must turn Quest mode into a slow grind to stretch out the content is basically saying the designers suck at their jobs, and had to artificially generate more gameplay hours to make up for a lack of content. I don't think that's the case here - I think they rushed Quest mode, and it still needs significant tuning. If I want to stretch out Quest mode, I'll play it on Heroic or Legendary for more challenge. Don't punish me for trying to access more content at a rate that a normal gamer would find gratifying. I'd much rather they make Quest mode three times as fun and take half as long to reach cap.

[Kamikazi]

Advancement rates are fine with me. I don't want to get to level 40 to quick as I will then start losing interest (until multiplayer comes in, or other cool game play options).

Personally I'd rather have it reasonable enough that I can have a Drunken Master and a Zen Archer. A Wild Warden and a Shapeshifter. Then I could mix and match to my hearts content. A place where I could experiment and see how I like the feel of different characters. Especially since I cannot re-run regular games with fresh new characters and get the gold payout. Fix that and I might experiment with different roles in the regular game.

 

As it stands it is a monumental effort to get one copy of a character to level 40. I've got one set (Lini, Meri, and Seoni) there. And yes its a letdown picking up a Blessing of the Gods for my reward after five games. The only saving grace is that I can put in Lini with three schlubs and be at difficulty 4 with it's higher XP payouts as well as better items. My Lini sits with two Mass Cures, three of the 2D6 Aid spells, and Orbs of Fire to support everyone else no matter what location they are at. And she closes anything like a champ!

[Kamikazi]

Oh and give us XP for defeating the villian. It sucks to find him as the first card with no evade in hand, insta-close the location, then meet him again as the second explore in the second location. Congrats on your 0 XP for two of the locations! I'd even suggest to give out XP on a loss, that would encourage me to play six person parties and have fun, rather than insta-forfeit on certain setups or a seven card wipeout when rolling four 1s on 2D12, 2D6 + 4 on the first turn.  I'd even enjoy attempting a Black Maga villian with Boa henchmen (impossible in 30 turns with most party comps on some locations) where you have to grind all 60 cards.

 

The other thing that bugged me about Quest mode was how it handles treasure chests. I have trimmed down my vault to only have one copy of sub-optimal cards. If say Mersi has one and Sajan has another and I accidentally put them in the same party, guess who is getting a deck B basic item! Meanwhile I have two Deathbane X-bows in the same active party. Yet at the same time I have yet to find a second Devout despite having three in my vault. Go figure.

[Irgy]

 

It's designed to be a slow grind. It's there for players who want to play the game a lot, to give them an unlimited amount of stuff to do. If the rate of progress is boring that's fine, it's probably not designed for you, but on the plus side, odds are you can entertain yourself playing with a variety of different characters in story mode instead.

 

If the rate of progress was faster then the people who want to play a lot would unlock everything too quickly and then end up getting bored anyway. The random card rewards are pretty worthless even when they're a card you can keep, but they're there to spread out the real rewards (just like they are in story mode).

I understand what you're saying; I just happen to disagree completely.

 

First of all, it's unclear who Obsidian designed Quest mode for, and I don't think that you know given that you don't have a Dev tag slapped on your profile. One would think it would be for the same people who enjoyed Story mode and want more. I sense that there is some sort of implicit accusation I'm not hardcore enough and always hate grinding - let me dispel this notion by noting that I've got hundreds of hours on Disgaea games doing nothing but grinding. Slow grinding is not a sin of game design unto itself; slow grinding with extremely infrequent rewards, on the other hand, is a paradigm that is rightfully hated by most gamers (ref: pre-loot-2.0 Diablo 3).

 

Second, I feel like people are not doing the math here. If it takes three games/wins to increase in level, and each of those games takes 20 minutes, then by the time we hit the eventual  presumptive level cap of 70, that is 70 hours of gameplay in Quest mode alone, and that's assuming something of a best case. If it were to take five sessions (3-4 wins plus 1-2 losses), you'd be at something closer to 115 hours. And, doing some averaging here, if ten levels takes ten hours, I am getting a meaningful advancement for my character roughly every 3-5 hours (7/10 of the rewards atm usually being trash cards). These would be punishing numbers on a table, and they are just as punishing on my phone.

 

Finally, the idea that Obsidian must turn Quest mode into a slow grind to stretch out the content is basically saying the designers suck at their jobs, and had to artificially generate more gameplay hours to make up for a lack of content. I don't think that's the case here - I think they rushed Quest mode, and it still needs significant tuning. If I want to stretch out Quest mode, I'll play it on Heroic or Legendary for more challenge. Don't punish me for trying to access more content at a rate that a normal gamer would find gratifying. I'd much rather they make Quest mode three times as fun and take half as long to reach cap.

 

 

I obviously can't speak for what they were thinking, but I can describe who the gameplay would suit and presume it was by design. I've seen people here talking about what happens after level 40, so I know someone out there plays enough to get there.

 

I think our main difference of opinion is over the difference in gameplay at high and low levels. My interpretation of what you've written suggests you see high, or indeed maximum level play as for some reason much more fun than low level play, and you see progression as purely a grind to get to there.

 

For me, progression is the fun part. If they slow it down, they're just rationing it out. The gameplay at max level isn't substantially different to the gameplay at lower levels. In fact it's worse once the novelty of the last power you got wears off because there's nothing to acquire or look forward to. I don't need to unlock everything before I start having fun. It's not a grind, it's just playing the game. I'd much rather spread 70 hours evenly between all levels than spend all of it at max level, because it's better variety and always something to look forward to.

 

It's not a matter of being bad at their jobs it's a matter of doing their job in terms of working within the constraints of the game they're implementing. There's a maximum number of card, power, and skill feats they can give out before they leave the existing game entirely and need to start designing and balancing entirely new content. The game is fundamentally designed around constant progression. When you play the physical version you constantly progress (with pauses for the oft-worthless card rewards to spread things out a bit) and then you stop. Heck, you don't even get to use the rewards from the final scenario once. Maxed out characters are the end of the game not the beginning. So their design for quest mode doesn't just fit my way of thinking, it fits the original game design as well

 

Honestly I don't ever grind games, I just play them. If I thought it was a grind I'd do something else. Sometimes I play enough that I unlock everything and that's good too, though I'm far from it currently in quest mode. Personally I would like quest mode progression to be faster as well because it would suit me better. I'm just acknowledging that the design is a better for people like me (in terms of enjoying gradual progression) but with more spare time.

[LadyKaieta]

Hey guys! 

Thanks for the feedback, I can't say a lot just due to normal industry hoodoo and voodoo but, you should notice improvements over the coming months with a lot of these issues and new features. Quest mode is kind of its own crazy animal and as we get more and more content and mechanics in it'll get better and better (We even go back and improve old quests if new mechanics and content can be put in them). So keep up the feedback! We may not always comment but we are reading!  

[jumpthegun]

When Quest mode was first introduced, I imagined taking my Story mode party on break between scenarios to partake in side quests, or mini adventures to grind out more loot, further develop my characters, and learn more of the lore of the world. I was really disappointed when I discovered I had to maintain different characters in both modes. I understand why this is needed, in terms of when feats and bonuses are awarded, but I just don't understand the point of Quest mode. It's an endless dungeon, but where exactly is the "Quest"? What Is the point of grinding out to level 30? What is the point of maintaining different characters? There is no goal, there is no mission in Quest mode.. Why should I play quest mode? 

[Hannibal_PJV]

You play endless pathfinder game with unlimited amounth of scenarios.

There is a limit how long you Are gonna willing to play the same story scenarios again and again. It can be quite Many actually, because there Are so Many party combinations, but Sooner or later (like in my case) you Are willing to try something else.

 

But in quest mode there may not be the end, but I am quessing that somewhere in the end of "level" 6 there will be hand writed end of the game scenarios. It would be quite pointless without them because you will run out of new cards and, skills and powers and so on. So in the end there has to be a end scenario.

But because They Are random you should not run too often to the same combinations of powers and Villains and so on. This is at this moment a quite "work on progress" so I Expect that we will see a lot of more variation, and those hand made scenarios here and there can be interesting too. Mini quest as someone called them.

 

So it is more traditional nethack/rogue type of game where there is end goal, but dungeons aka scenarios Are randomly made mostly.

Edited June 13, 2016 by Hannibal_PJV

[ikarinokami]

quest mode would be terrible if you advanced any faster, the advancement right is perfect. the only thing I do agree with is that you should be rewarded or given a bonus based on how fast you finish the encounter. there should also be an XP bonus for higher difficulties and not just a gold bonus.

Edited June 13, 2016 by ikarinokami

[erwos]

Hey guys! 

 

Thanks for the feedback, I can't say a lot just due to normal industry hoodoo and voodoo but, you should notice improvements over the coming months with a lot of these issues and new features. Quest mode is kind of its own crazy animal and as we get more and more content and mechanics in it'll get better and better (We even go back and improve old quests if new mechanics and content can be put in them). So keep up the feedback! We may not always comment but we are reading!  

Thank you. I didn't expect any specifics, I really just wanted to give my opinion about what I found fun and not fun about Quest mode. I'm sure you will do an amazing job in the coming patches with improving it!

[Kamikazi]

quest mode would be terrible if you advanced any faster, the advancement right is perfect. the only thing I do agree with is that you should be rewarded or given a bonus based on how fast you finish the encounter. there should also be an XP bonus for higher difficulties and not just a gold bonus.

Let me be one to disagree vehemently. The amount of effort it takes for me to get a new character to unlock their role card is a big turn off. If someone else wants to grind and grind by all means let them, they can just delete their character and start over. Me? I'd like to have options. Eight games to gain a single level is a big turn off to me.

 

Perhaps a slider that people can set to their preference?

[jtrowell]

I find that XP slow down at mid level (10~15) but that you starts to get more at higher level for some reason.

 

4 games to get a level or maybe even 3 is closer to my experience near level 25-30.

 

I have however not really player above level 30 much due to the bug of the wrong reward at level 30 meaning that alsmost all my characters are currently waiting at level 29 for the next patch.

[Kamikazi]

I find that XP slow down at mid level (10~15) but that you starts to get more at higher level for some reason.

 

4 games to get a level or maybe even 3 is closer to my experience near level 25-30.

 

I have however not really player above level 30 much due to the bug of the wrong reward at level 30 meaning that alsmost all my characters are currently waiting at level 29 for the next patch.

Even if 4 games per level is true (which I don't think it is from my experience). You are talking about 60+ hours to get 1/3 of the characters to current max level. At an hour a day we are left with half a year to get a team up to date. For most people that is approaching burnout rates.

[zeroth_hour]

Maybe there should be a fast/medium/slow XP progression?  So people who want it to take longer can and people who don't don't have to?

[magniTT]

To me it also seems that quest mode is not very well thought out. It seems too tiresome to repeatedly play though very similar scenarios to get a useless card every 5 scenarios or so. I hope the developers will eventually will come up with some ideas to make it more thrilling.

 

But I very much like the story mode and difficulty options and I am very grateful to the developers for that. The quest mode is just a bonus option which unfortunately doesn't work very well so far but that doesn't diminish the value of the main game.