7 replies to this topic

[BodakOfSseth]

Great Job, PGI, for knocking another hockey puck out of the park and getting a hole in one for a goal with no wickets lost!

(Did I get the sportsball terms right?)

Anyway.

To unpack this one:
I was greatly amused by the flavor text and football terminology, tying the theme together wonderfully with the Linebacker was a stroke of tongue-in-cheek genius. Give that team a raise.

Daily Challenge: Red Zone Offense; 10 out of 10 stars.
I still love me some daily challenges. Keep it up. Keeps me coming back - sure, a couple days I was like “Crap! OMG! I have 20 min to get in one, maybe two games! Let's make this work! Okay! Done! Log off and do other things! Whew!”; but even with the stress, it was worth it.
Overtime Bonus: giving 14 days to complete a 12-day requirement. Sure, there will always be people who still can't make all the days work, but the bell curve of people who were able to make it work, I imagine increased dramatically.


Gunnery Skill Challenge: Roughing the Passer; 8 out of 10 stars.
Certainly achievable with enough dedication, even for the rawest of players - some players claimed to complete it in a day or two - which is entirely likely given their builds. Other players struggled with it, but ultimately I think it helped focus players on achieving things other than the fastest route to the kill. I saw more mechs walking around as sticks during this challenge than I have ever before. It also got me to look more carefully at the paper dolls to understand what I'm shooting at - so thanks for helping me improve my game.
Overtime Bonus: Not tying it to the daily made it work. Don't get me wrong, There's certainly room for daily challenges that are not such an easy lift - but If you're going to go that route, I'd recommend scaling that up slowly, knowing that for more casual gamers, they will be less than happy about it. Hopefully you're wise enough to offer other incentives to play for that subset.

Teamwork Challenge: Defensive Line; 7 out of 10 stars.
This was remarkably easy to achieve. Good job - and I think it helped, overall. Most people tend to blob up already, but I think this gave those "lone wolf snowflakes" more incentive to stick close to the group, which I think helped overall performance. I know it helped me with situational awareness and the locations of my team.
Overtime Bonus: Again, not tying it to the daily was part of what made it work. That said, I think you could go for a daily component for this challenge. This challenge was such an easy lift that raising the bar a little would be in order.

Teamwork Challenge: Pass Protection; 9 out of 10 stars
This one was fantastic. First, getting people to play lights and mediums to support the heavies and assaults. Second, getting those lights and mediums to stick close to the assaults and heavies while fighting. Love it.
Overtime Bonus: Figure out how to incentivise focus firing on a target. This may be harder than I think it is, I'm not really sure. Probably some server-side counter to track which mechs within say, 120m have shot the same target in the last 5 seconds, and counting a tick for each of them.

Completion Challenge: The Completionist; 12 out of 10 stars
This was the best of all. Complete all of them, get a free mech, not just any, but a hero mech. BRILLIANT. It's a great way to breathe life into older, less ubiquitous chassis, help newbs choose which chassis to master or even get started with, get more players into lower weight classes. That said, I don't expect you to give away a mech with every event - that would be a fast way to deincentivise people from buying mechs using their own resources. But perhaps once a quarter, or once per trimester, or even just biannually. OR, if you were to make mech giveaways much more common, then to raise the difficulty bar fairly significantly - again, I don't think that would be terribly wise.
Overtime Bonus: This completion challenge was a relatively light lift. I'm curious what the numbers actually will be - what percentage of the player base is able to complete it. That will be borne out a little bit over the next few days by seeing how many HBK-GI show up in matches, but even that's just a tiny window. Of course, there's also the folks who already had the HBK-GI. Long term, it might be worth it to make a couple special edition heroes achievable only through these larger challenges.


Keep it up PGI, I look forward to more challenges that focus on teamwork and skills.

[VonBruinwald]

I've got to give my support for this event but I feel the daily challenge had too high a bar. I'll admit I didn't achieve it due to work (missed the first seven) but it was still too high imo. Here's why:

Using the standard working week as a baseline, 5 days on 2 off isn't unreasonable. If you're asking people to give more than 5 days a week you start making it a chore for people who have other commitments in their lives. 5 days allows someone to (hypothetically) work the week, play a few games in the evening and spend the weekend away with their spouse/kids/etc.

10 days would have been a much more reasonable goal for this event imo.

[BodakOfSseth]

VonBruinwald, on 01 December 2016 - 09:13 AM, said:

I've got to give my support for this event but I feel the daily challenge had too high a bar. I'll admit I didn't achieve it due to work (missed the first seven) but it was still too high imo. Here's why:

Using the standard working week as a baseline, 5 days on 2 off isn't unreasonable. If you're asking people to give more than 5 days a week you start making it a chore for people who have other commitments in their lives. 5 days allows someone to (hypothetically) work the week, play a few games in the evening and spend the weekend away with their spouse/kids/etc.

10 days would have been a much more reasonable goal for this event imo.

Fair enough - and I respect your opinion.
However, I disagree. The daily component was only "log in, score 100+ points for the match, log off" A couple of days I could only manage the one game - 15-20 minutes, because the games where I scored below the target number were over in a few minutes. Perfect for busy folks, even over the holiday, to get that game in.
Of course, some people won't be able to complete it - there is a bell curve in all things. I'm sorry you couldn't get it done.

Edited by ScottAleric, 01 December 2016 - 11:34 AM.

[Reality Dysfunction]

ScottAleric, on 01 December 2016 - 08:17 AM, said:

Teamwork Challenge: Pass Protection; 9 out of 10 stars
This one was fantastic. First, getting people to play lights and mediums to support the heavies and assaults. Second, getting those lights and mediums to stick close to the assaults and heavies while fighting. Love it.
Overtime Bonus: Figure out how to incentivise focus firing on a target. This may be harder than I think it is, I'm not really sure. Probably some server-side counter to track which mechs within say, 120m have shot the same target in the last 5 seconds, and counting a tick for each of them.

Saviour Kills?

[BodakOfSseth]

Reality Dysfunction, on 01 December 2016 - 04:17 PM, said:

Saviour Kills?

Not far off. According to the Wiki:

Quote

Savior Kill is a reward for the kill of an enemy 'Mech, when that enemy had been attacking a teammate (within the previous 10 seconds) with a critical component that has 50% health or lower.^[1]
You will be awarded 4500 c-bills and 60 XP.^[2][/color]

Edited by ScottAleric, 01 December 2016 - 06:35 PM.

[Natred]

Could tell they put a bunch of time in this, good job!

[TheFallOfTheReaper]

loved the event, however the hunchback horde it summoned after the fact was hillarious.

[BodakOfSseth]

ShadowHimself, on 02 December 2016 - 07:35 AM, said:

loved the event, however the hunchback horde it summoned after the fact was hillarious.

"...was awesome."

There, I fixed it for you.