Weekly Arcade Exclusive Reward Drop Should be 100% Guaranteed on Clear | Forums

[Vakris_One]

As the title says: every time you clear the Weekly Arcade quest you should be 100% guaranteed to get the exclusive effect for one of the three effect categories - Idle, Execution or Emote. Having it be a completely random roulette wheel spin to decide whether it will even drop after the first clear feels cheap and exploitative. It does not feel rewarding and frankly it's insulting to the player's time and effort spent trying to clear the quest. This is not a casino for gambling after all, this is a video game. The player should be adequately and consistently rewarded for clearing a task/challenge, this is a fundamental and very basic principle of good video game design.

In my case, in order to get the effect for all 3 categories for the hero I wanted to use I soloed the quest a total of 9 times by myself and cleared it in coop twice with a friend. On the 8th time I got the effect to drop for a second time and on the 11th time it finally dropped for the third and final time. That is patently ridiculous in my opinion. You are asking a player to complete a difficult challenge of skill for the mere chance of having a pull on a slot machine, that is not alright. The fact that it is down to pure luck whether you get the exclusive reward to drop is what makes it truly disgusting. Someone could get all the effects in just 3-4 completions but then for someone else it could take 20-30 completions. This is cheap and feels very unsatisfying. If you intended for this content to annoy and frustrate your players because of how cheap it all feels then you have succeeded. If on the other hand you intend for this content to be a satisfying challenge that feels adequately rewarding to the player then you need to go back and rethink your approach not just for the reward drop rate (it should be 100% guaranteed on every clear) but also the viability of the entire roster of heroes vs an outnumbered gank scenario, however I am only giving feedback on the drop rate in this thread.

Ask yourself this; if you're asking the player to take the time and effort and be skilled enough to clear a difficult challenge then why is it ok to not reward the player with the prize for successfully completing this challenge?

[DefiledDragon]

It's funny. Not disagreeing with you here at all, but I remember the days when the act of playing a video game was supposed to be fun and they didn't have things that players saw as a grind to be overcome in order to unlock a reward. It speaks to how bad Arcade mode actually is that so many are complaining about how tedious it is to play through.

[Knight_Raime]

It's funny. Not disagreeing with you here at all, but I remember the days when the act of playing a video game was supposed to be fun and they didn't have things that players saw as a grind to be overcome in order to unlock a reward. It speaks to how bad Arcade mode actually is that so many are complaining about how tedious it is to play through.

To be fair though Arcade mode is bad because AI behavior is bad. Not to mention nothing really special about it. it's just a flavor text inbetween each "mission" with a random map segment and the terrible AI. it's a nice gesture for those who like playing against AI instead of players. As it offers comparable gear earning and steel/exp gain. But that's about where the praise for this mode ends.

[Soldier_of_Dawn]

Yes, the mistake from Duel Tournament is being repeated in Arcade Mode where the drop is not 100% guaranteed. Why repeat the same mistake?

[DefiledDragon]

To be fair though Arcade mode is bad because AI behavior is bad. Not to mention nothing really special about it. it's just a flavor text inbetween each "mission" with a random map segment and the terrible AI. it's a nice gesture for those who like playing against AI instead of players. As it offers comparable gear earning and steel/exp gain. But that's about where the praise for this mode ends.

Yeah, I have actually played it. The difficulty level is way beyond reasonable at the highest tiers. The lower tiers are an OK substitute for AI grinding XP and gear though.

[Knight_Raime]

Yeah, I have actually played it. The difficulty level is way beyond reasonable at the highest tiers. The lower tiers are an OK substitute for AI grinding XP and gear though.

I played all the tiers. all seem fine sans the yellow and green ones. Absurdly difficult. I really only play arcade now for those orders like "pla x amount of matches as x hero" or "get x amount of take downs with x faction." as each "mission" counts as a match. so you can complete most of those orders in two runs.

[DefiledDragon]

I played all the tiers. all seem fine sans the yellow and green ones. Absurdly difficult. I really only play arcade now for those orders like "pla x amount of matches as x hero" or "get x amount of take downs with x faction." as each "mission" counts as a match. so you can complete most of those orders in two runs.

Maybe it's designed for 2 players rather than one. I only ever solo queue because the only two people I know with the game don't play it anymore, but even so, you would have to be 2 extremely good players to compete with any consistency against the AI at the top two tiers of Arcade mode.

[Vakris_One]

It's funny. Not disagreeing with you here at all, but I remember the days when the act of playing a video game was supposed to be fun and they didn't have things that players saw as a grind to be overcome in order to unlock a reward. It speaks to how bad Arcade mode actually is that so many are complaining about how tedious it is to play through.

I remember in yee olden times I used to replay all the levels in Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven on the hardest difficulty for fun. No rewards to be had, it was just fun for the sake of the challenge and feeling like a badass perfect ninja. Co-op was also a blast even though it was hard as nails to ace without an alarm triggering.

Fast forward to when online multiplayer games started following the model of offering rewards for playing and replaying a level. Without going into an in-depth analysis there's nothing inherently bad about that as long as it's done right. This is the model that Ubisoft are going with so I think they should make the effort to do it well.

The fact that Arcade is pants is because it mistakes "being cheap" for "being challenging" and the AI behaviour is nothing like a real player. It's also heavily geared towards anti-ganking, which only select heroes can effectively deal with. I don't think Ubisoft will be changing Arcade at such a fundamental level so I'll settle for the Weekly reward drops not being RNG as that is a minor change to make but would help make the mode less of a tedious thing to play.

Maybe it's designed for 2 players rather than one. I only ever solo queue because the only two people I know with the game don't play it anymore, but even so, you would have to be 2 extremely good players to compete with any consistency against the AI at the top two tiers of Arcade mode.

It's heavily down to what modifiers you get and what heroes you play it with. With Highlander for example I soloed the Gold tier every time I tried it because the AI always falls for the kick/grab like a lemming. As Aramusha or Centurion for example you're pretty much screwed versus parry bots no matter what.

What I discovered with this weekly challenge is that co-op is actually harder than doing it solo. In co-op you do a lot less damage to the enemy while they do slightly more to you - the artificial difficulty approach yet again; make it more unfair via hidden damage modifiers instead of upping the quality of the AI. Additionally at the final stage with the 3 Shaman it's much more tricky to co-ordinate with a teammate to kill them at the same time than it is to do it solo. Still, it's always more fun in co-op.

[DefiledDragon]

The fact that Arcade is pants is because it mistakes "being cheap" for "being challenging"

I think that's pretty much nail on the head really. Gamers, at least gamers of my generation, like to be challenged. I know I do, it's why I started playing video games in the first place. As you rightly point out though, cheap isn't challenging, it's just frustrating. As you said, replaying levels in Tenchu was fun because it was challenging and I think that's where Ubi has missed the target here by mistaking cheap with difficult. There's been a lot of feedback about arcade mode though, so who knows, maybe we will see some changes. I'm being extremely optimistic here, but one can always dream.

[Knight_Raime]

Maybe it's designed for 2 players rather than one. I only ever solo queue because the only two people I know with the game don't play it anymore, but even so, you would have to be 2 extremely good players to compete with any consistency against the AI at the top two tiers of Arcade mode.

I managed to beat gold tier with a friend. But I was back packing as my centurion. He was basically just fodder to distract a bot.