Following the comments on another topic, I would like to open this thread to give my feedback on the automated adventure system.
Answering your question, I personally believe that the answer is no. But I will further elaborate:
Advantages of random adventures
First of all, I agree that randomness help keeping things fresh. However, since it will be just a rotation of the same adventures, that “freshness” and feeling of novelty will probably be highly limited, since while you may not know which adventure comes next you do know it will be one you have already done. Therefore, I believe the advantages of randomness are few.
Disadvantages of random adventures
Now, random adventures have disadvantages too. With all respect to the dev team, some adventures are more interesting or “valuable” than others. A random cycle is bound to create issues, such as overlapping of great adventures, streaks of several low interest adventures in a row, too long time between instances for a certain adventure a player may be interested in… If the randomness is full, then this is much worse (maybe an important adventure takes 5-6 months to appear, while we get a low value adventure several times during that period). If the randomness is contained it would be a bit better (such as having a cycle of 9 weeks with 2 adventures per week, their order random but making sure each of them is revisited before the next cycle). This way we at least avoid what we are seeing right now, revisiting Wizard’s circle and to your doom adventures without getting Flametree expedition or Dragon King’s prize adventure once.
Advantages of a predictable cycle of adventures
Regarding a predictable cycle, the truth is that while adventures are a nice exploring mode for the first, maybe couple of times, then they just become a way to get resources. That is why knowing when a certain adventure is revisited is highly important, for example to know when we can get the Dragonking’s axe, when we will be able to get khazdhuli/flametree/dreamhold relics, when we can stock on ancient coins or follower crystals… Also, it would make sure that adventures are revisited at a constant pace, which further helps when managing your progression. For example, taking until september to revisit Flametree adventure is a huge issue for plenty of players that rely on that adventure to get loot tickets.
Disadvantages of a predictable cycle of adventures
About the disadvantages of a predictable cycle, I believe there aren’t that many. The main one would be the cycle getting “boring”, but I don’t think it will happen. Why? Because we have enough adventures so that players that don’t care about tracking and predicting will still find themselves getting surprised by the new adventures coming. Do you really believe the average player will be keeping track of a fixed cycle of 18 adventures, with 2 of them each week? And the ones that do it, or that consult those that keep track of it will be because they prefer it that way.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I strongly believe that we need at least a constrained adventure cycle, and preferably a fixed and predictable one. It would help all players that depend on adventures for progression and resource farming, and I really doubt it would hurt causal player’s experience.
Feedback and suggestion
All that said, here is my feedback and my suggestions for an automated adventure system that would work best for all players.
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I like the system of a non-replayable during the week and a replayable during the weekend. It is fair, useful, predictable… 10/10 on that. From what I have seen there are 2 adventure cycles, one of 6 replayable adventures during the weekend (gong’s, farm girls’, rune hunter, borderland bash, coin collector and dawn circuit), and one with the rest of the adventures (12 if I have checked corretly, the non-replayable 9 and the 3 expeditions). I will assume this is how the system has been designed.
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I will strongly argue against a fully random system, meaning that every new adventure within its cycle (week and weekend) is fully random. As I said above, I believe this will create many issues and be overall really bad. For a long time it seemed this was not the case, since every week adventure was a new one. However, we are revisiting wizard’s circle and to your doom while we haven’t yet visited once Flametree expedition, Dragonking’s prize, unicornicopia and Deep mines. This, and knowing that Flametree doesn’t come until september, makes me thing there is too much randomness into the system.
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Continuing with the previous point, I strongly suggest doing “closed” cycles, meaning we don’t start revisiting adventures until all the ones from the previous cycle have been done. We get all 12 weekly adventures, even if in a random order, and then we start a new cycle with those 12 adventures again (same for weekend). If you firmly believe that a random system is better than a fixed one, please at least consider this to reduce the negative impact that randomness can have.
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Personally, I would go further and just create a fixed cycle where the adventure order is always the same and therefore can be predicted, so that players can know when their favorite adventures will come back and plan ahead. I truly believe this option is the one most players would prefer. The ones that like to know will be able to predict it, and the ones that just want to play will just do it normally, not care about tracking and probably still get surprised and excited when their favorite adventures show up again.
All this is my personal opinion, I cannot truly speak for other players. Thus, I encourage my fellow players to give their opinion on the matter. Even if the dev team doesn’t plan to change the adventure system for now, I believe it is always good to let them know our opinion and ideas. The more feedback the devs have, the easier it will be for them to give us what we would like.
Thanks to all.
