Tedium Trials: Issues and Possible Fixes

[Ice Dragon]

Thinking about the downstream implications of each option:

Double stamina cost, double reward

While this halves the total number of runs you need to complete to obtain any one particular reward, it significantly reduces the motivation to obtain rewards beyond 50,000. You'd get 7 maps for the cost of 4 and a half at best, which is only 1.58× as efficient than the Training Tower. That's far less motivating than the current 3.15× stamina efficiency.

Double reward, halve event time

Players put in the same effort per time, but spend half the time. Combats burn-out, but not much else. Detrimental for people who actually want to grind the mode for Hero Merit and SP because of the reduced time frame.

I want to view Tempest Trials as a source of Hero Merit and SP, not as a race to the finish where the only reason I should care about the mode is the rewards.

Double event time

This doesn't work well for the ranking rewards. It's not difficult to keep the player base engaged for two weeks on an event. It's much more difficult to keep them engaged for 3 or 4 weeks to actually care about ranking. Those who went for the 50,000 reward are going to be bunched up there, and those who went for the 99,999 reward are going to be bunched up there, too, meaning the only real competition would be those who kept at the event the entire duration... which is really going to burn people out big time.

[Zeo]

3 hours ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

I seem to have misunderstood. 

You want to double the amount of points you get per match without doing anything to compensate for that (such as doubling stamina cost)?

In other words, you're basically asking to make this event easier, yes? My original interpretation was that you wanted the accessibility of the rewards to stay the same while reducing tedium (which doubling points earned and also doubling stamina cost would accomplish), but I'm now interpreting it as you simply wanting the accessibility of the rewards to be easier. 

Is that correct, or did I misinterpret you again? 

No, but thanks for calling me lazy.

I want the entirety of the event to be shortened. One week instead of 2 and doubling the points to match the ratio. Doubling points and stamina cost may reduce tedium due to 2 runs per stamina bar but it doesn't at all help the players who struggle completing the trials. 2 failed trials on Lunatic on the final stage would be 678 points. That's 1356 points for the entire bar in 2 tries. A player with bad luck would have a terrible time with a system like that and when the team composition is as random as it is with each unit having buffed up stats there's no guarantee of a perfect run unless you have just the right units with SI.

[Refa]

I agree with what people have said about either reducing or increasing the amount of time the Tempest Trials are available for.  Each one has its benefits.  I'm more preferential to reducing the amount of time, as it'd let me play through the trials and collect all of the rewards without getting burned out.  As for people who want to grind SP/HM, they should just make an 11th Stratum with a similar gameplay style.  Increasing the amount of time is good for getting all of the rewards while having more time to spare, although it'd make the ranking portion of it more stressful than it is already.  They'd have to completely rework that feature.

5 hours ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

The builds online are usually meant to be interpreted "this build is best with this nature but still usable with others" rather than "you have to have this nature for this build to work" (there are a handful like that, but most are not). 

In any case, the most basic cookie-cutter build for "Marth" is Fury + Swordbreaker. Either Luna or Draconic Aura work best as the special, and the assist and C slots are mostly up to personal preference. I personally favor a movement assist like Reposition and a team aura for the C like Hone Atk/Spd, but again it's up to you. 

You could also opt for a more Tempest-oriented pseudo-healer build with Renewal and Ardent Sacrifice/Reciprocal Aid as the B and Assist skills. The rest stay the same as before. 

Both of these builds work well regardless of boon/bane (the only Lucina build reliant on boon/bane is her Life and Death + Desperation glass cannon build, which wants +Spd to work properly). 

Fair enough, I just wasn't sure which one to pick for a fully neutral character.  I know I'm going for Fury 2/Draconic Aura/Reposition/Hone Atk 3 (Or Spd, but probably Atk because I have an errant 4* Olivia lying around), but the B skill is giving me trouble.  I've heard recommendations for Swordbreaker, Vantage, and Desperation (and if I did do this one, I'd have to decide whether or not I wanted L&D2 instead).

[NekoKnight]

I'm comitted to getting to 50k this time but I don't know if I will participate again. I've been playing since launch and I only have a few units who are capable of killing Veronica, assuming I even get that far. My typical score is around 500 points per win so I need around 8 wins per day to keep up. It's really tedious by this point and I struggle to find the time or motivation to continue. I don't want to spend hours of each day grinding for half a month just to get the worthwhile rewards.

[Xaos Steel Wing]

It's basically a long grindfest.

For some players it might take a while to find a good team or combination of teams to successfully clear the lunatic maps, but after that it becomes an exercise in repetition.

There's not much challenge, thought, or strategy involved in repeatedly solving the same few variants of a puzzle over and over, several times a day, for two weeks.

I'm at almost 20k points, I should be able to get the Quickened Pulse seal at 50k points which is the main reward, without using any more potions. But I'm bored. It's not fun. It's not challenging. It's repetitive and tedious.

Sure, it's a good way to grind SP... but the best/quickest teams to clear the trials are with units that already had as much SP as they ever will need.

 

How to make it better?

I'd say, make the event shorter and the required cumulative score total proportionately lower.

Even better: make the rewards less focused on cumulative score, and instead have a lot more interesting quests for the mode that offer rewards.

Quests like completing the trial with only 1 team, completing the trial without any deaths, completing the trial without any deaths with X type of unit on your team, completing the trial in less than X turns, that kind of thing.

These kind of quests would introduce some variety, and require you to use different units and teams and change things around, rather than just repeating the same thing over and over once you find your optimal team.

 

[Raven]

5 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

Thinking about the downstream implications of each option:

Double stamina cost, double reward

While this halves the total number of runs you need to complete to obtain any one particular reward, it significantly reduces the motivation to obtain rewards beyond 50,000. You'd get 7 maps for the cost of 4 and a half at best, which is only 1.58× as efficient than the Training Tower. That's far less motivating than the current 3.15× stamina efficiency.

That's not really a problem since they're both more efficient than the training tower. If the current trials were released at double stamina and rewards, people who care about sp/merit efficiency would still be praising it. While the bonus merit and sp gains are nice, I would like those orbs just a bit more.

[Kruggov]

Well there's one thing that came in my head about his just now.

Basically - If a party member died, and that map was completed, allow them to be replaced at the start of the map without requiring the rest of the team to be eliminated. That can help when, say, healer died, leaving good but not very sustainbale team (multiple Fury users for example) with basically no way to keep going for much longer. Or when a minor error results in a charater getting killed (Wings of Mercy and refreshers can go burn in hell for that).

Also... making the enemies stop looping things like Swap/Smite/Reposotion etc. Doubly so if enemies doing that are dangerous to approach.

[Frenzify]

I stopped at about 3000 points (very early, I know), and really don't feel like even bothering to get the first Lucina. It's just incredibly repetitive, and feels like I'll need to drain my stamina on it to actually get anything worthwhile.

Edited June 13, 2017 by Frenzify

[NekoKnight]

8 minutes ago, Kruggov said:

Well there's one thing that came in my head about his just now.

Basically - If a party member died, and that map was completed, allow them to be replaced at the start of the map without requiring the rest of the team to be eliminated. That can help when, say, healer died, leaving good but not very sustainbale team (multiple Fury users for example) with basically no way to keep going for much longer. Or when a minor error results in a charater getting killed (Wings of Mercy and refreshers can go burn in hell for that).

I'd appreciate that. Some teams will just completely fall apart if they lose a core member and you might as well just surrender and use your next team. I lost one match because by lance user died and the whole rest of the team got slaughtered by a Ryoma on the next map.

[Raven]

45 minutes ago, Kruggov said:

Well there's one thing that came in my head about his just now.

Basically - If a party member died, and that map was completed, allow them to be replaced at the start of the map without requiring the rest of the team to be eliminated. That can help when, say, healer died, leaving good but not very sustainbale team (multiple Fury users for example) with basically no way to keep going for much longer. Or when a minor error results in a charater getting killed (Wings of Mercy and refreshers can go burn in hell for that).

This is how I thought it would be before I played. I was quite disappointed. But that would bring some complications to the table on the final map where you have only 1 - 3 replacements after a team dies, meaning you're pretty much screwed unless for some reason you've saved three great units. The current system probably works best for keeping the flow between maps.

[Ice Dragon]

7 hours ago, Raven said:

That's not really a problem since they're both more efficient than the training tower. If the current trials were released at double stamina and rewards, people who care about sp/merit efficiency would still be praising it. While the bonus merit and sp gains are nice, I would like those orbs just a bit more.

If you're attempting to earn SP for only a single character, you'd be better off running Training Tower than doubled-cost Tempest Trials. A single unit needs to kill nearly 2/3 of the enemies in a top-tier Tempest Trial to earn the same SP for the stamina cost, and that's simply not happening except for the strongest of characters.

The reason the current Tempest Trial is so stamina-efficient for SP is because a single unit only needs to kill just under 1/3 of the enemies in the Tempest Trial to earn the same SP for the stamina cost, meaning you can easily farm SP for 3 characters for the same stamina cost as Training Tower, or even train 2 characters at increased efficiency without much difficulty since you don't need those characters to be able to practically solo the entire mode.

Hero Merit is obviously still going to be more efficient at double cost, but it's still worse than the Kozaki maps (which were over double efficiency), making it unimpressive.

[MaskedAmpharos]

3 hours ago, Raven said:

This is how I thought it would be before I played. I was quite disappointed. But that would bring some complications to the table on the final map where you have only 1 - 3 replacements after a team dies, meaning you're pretty much screwed unless for some reason you've saved three great units. The current system probably works best for keeping the flow between maps.

It would be nice if there were two separate options: one to rotate in new members to fill in empty slots (in the case of deaths) and a case to start over with a new team entirely. Or do you think that would be too complicated?

[DraceEmpressa]

9 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

It would be nice if there were two separate options: one to rotate in new members to fill in empty slots (in the case of deaths) and a case to start over with a new team entirely. Or do you think that would be too complicated?

The first case is what exactly what I wanted. 

[Vince777]

Playing Tempest Trial should probably just cost more stamina and reward more points accordingly. Then you'd get to keep the same scale of prizes.

I'd be fine if it costed as much as 50 stamina as it forces you into several maps anyway. More than enough to get your daily fill. 

[Locke087]

I wish this event was shorter my problem with it is that I feel compelled the play it to keep my feather tier. I am so bored of this mode everything else in heroes is not even close to as time-consuming as even one round of this mode. It was fun for the like first two or three days, and now I'm so bored that prospect of having to do this for eight more days is murdering me.

My problem is it's compelling me to play way passed the point that it stopped being fun and doing that seven tiered maps over and over and over and over and over is driving me insane it's so long and drawn out is an endurance match, but if I want to keep my tier have to play it, I'm so sick of it. You can complete this event a proximally five times per Stamina recharge considering it refills about 2.5-3 times per day that is about 105 (35 maps per fill) maps a day you have to play just to stay competitive.  

My other problem is that it encourages you Just use the same unit build over and over and over again my Cecilia has over 3000 SP now  any other team build I use is suboptimal and will lower my speed score so I have to do this team and keep putting SP on to someone who doesn't need it (she also capped HM forever ago too).  Variety is the spice of life and there's no variety in this mode, just occasional bull crap. 

Edited June 14, 2017 by Locke087

[MaskedAmpharos]

21 minutes ago, Locke087 said:

I wish this event was shorter my problem with it is that I feel compelled the play it to keep my feather tier. I am so bored of this mode everything else in heroes is not even close to as time-consuming as even one round of this mode. It was fun for the like first two or three days, and now I'm so bored that prospect of having to do this for eight more days is murdering me.

My problem is it's compelling me to play way passed the point that it stopped being fun and doing that seven tiered maps over and over and over and over and over is driving me insane it's so long and drawn out is an endurance match, but if I want to keep my tier have to play it, I'm so sick of it. You can complete this event a proximally five times per Stamina recharge considering it refills about 2.5-3 times per day that is about 105 (35 maps per fill) maps a day you have to play just to stay competitive.  

My other problem is that it encourages you Just use the same unit build over and over and over again my Cecilia has over 3000 SP now  any other team build I use is suboptimal and will lower my speed score so I have to do this team and keep putting SP on to someone who doesn't need it (she also capped HM forever ago too).  Variety is the spice of life and there's no variety in this mode, just occasional bull crap. 

There is literally nothing compelling you to continue playing more than you want to. Nobody is forcing you to do anything. You aren't punished in any way for not continuing to grind. Don't blame the event for your own choices. 

Also if anything it does encourage variety more than any other mode does. Story missions and GHB maps always have the same units, so there will always be certain units that work better than others. Arena is heavily centered around specific meta units, so it's more difficult to have a varied set of units. But this? This mode is easy enough to where you can clear it with very wide variety of units, especially since it's always changing. Not to mention it's way more efficient for SP and HM grinding than any other mode available, so it encourages you to swap out your most used units once their HM is maxed out to grind other units. 

[Ice Dragon]

31 minutes ago, Locke087 said:

My other problem is that it encourages you Just use the same unit build over and over and over again my Cecilia has over 3000 SP now  any other team build I use is suboptimal and will lower my speed score so I have to do this team and keep putting SP on to someone who doesn't need it (she also capped HM forever ago too).  Variety is the spice of life and there's no variety in this mode, just occasional bull crap. 

What does it matter that it would lower your speed score to use another team if you're still on track to get the reward you're aiming for?

[ShuriKandy]

Honestly, I just wanted to get Marthcina. So I got 4star Marthcina. As much as Quickened Pulse and a lot of orbs is VERY tempting, I'm not going to waste money on trying to get orbs to get stamina by getting more points when I can just buy orbs and use it on the spot. Also, building up a Marthcina while 4star gives more SP.

[Locke087]

44 minutes ago, MaskedAmpharos said:

There is literally nothing compelling you to continue playing more than you want to. Nobody is forcing you to do anything. You aren't punished in any way for not continuing to grind. Don't blame the event for your own choices. 

Also if anything it does encourage variety more than any other mode does. Story missions and GHB maps always have the same units, so there will always be certain units that work better than others. Arena is heavily centered around specific meta units, so it's more difficult to have a varied set of units. But this? This mode is easy enough to where you can clear it with very wide variety of units, especially since it's always changing. Not to mention it's way more efficient for SP and HM grinding than any other mode available, so it encourages you to swap out your most used units once their HM is maxed out to grind other units. 

Yes I am punished for stopping grinding I will lose my feather tier if I stop playing! I am compelled to play by the prospect of more feathers I want the feathers badly enough that I'm playing well past the point it stopped being fun. 

While this mode is not too hard it is hard to get consistent perfect scores with any team which is something I can do with this team. Because I can get perfect scores I continue using this team because it's obviously the best team for this mode and I want that high score so I keep doing it even though it's not fun. I have tried doing other teams but they can't consistently get A in speed which boosts your score considerably. Really if I could play this mode and get a perfect score without a bonus unit I could've done a lot more different teams as it is now I must feature one deadweight (in this case 4* Nowi) and this is the only team that works well with the deadweight hanging off it. 

36 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

What does it matter that it would lower your speed score to use another team if you're still on track to get the reward you're aiming for?

I'm after the feathers I already got the Quicken Pulse seal what I'm trying to do is keep my feather tier which requires me to spend all my Stamina every day to stay afloat.  If I keep using this team I might even be able to edge myself into a higher feather tier (currently in the second highest rank 1590) because I can get perfect scores with decent consistency with this one build and only this build (Cecilia, Elise, Ursula/Camus, Nowi). But frankly you're probably right I could maybe keep my current feather tier and play less efficiently, but I'm paranoid that I won't if I don't get the absolute best scores. 

I understand what your both saying that I am making this for this not fun for myself but my need to be competitive and play in the most efficient way possible is killing me right now and the game is rewarding me for playing it in this way. The game mode should be more inherently fun and require less time at the player (this is my biggest problem it's just too time consuming) even when you're trying to play to win instead it's designed in a way that's insanely repetitive for those that want to be competitive and requires really long play sessions more than the game has ever previously required.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Locke087

[Ice Dragon]

14 minutes ago, Locke087 said:

I have tried doing other teams but they can't consistently get A in speed which boosts your score considerably.

Every 14 A/A runs is worth the same number of points as 15 B/A runs. That's hardly a big difference.

If one person is running A/A runs at 100% stamina efficiency and another is running B/A runs at 100% stamina efficiency, the person running B/A runs only needs to use a single stamina restore once every 5 days to keep up.

[JJ48]

On 6/12/2017 at 5:31 PM, Ice Dragon said:

This is the main thing I'm going to be a stickler about, so I'll continue to rebut this one.

The highest meaningful reward tier is 50,000 points for Quickened Pulse.

Quickened Pulse is obtainable by obtaining 3,600 points per day for the duration of the event. This is just over 5 perfect (A/A) runs (100 stamina, 3,525 points) or a bit over 6 C/C runs (120 stamina, 3,360 points), which isn't unreasonable.

Everything above that is just orbs, which appear to be there more as encouragement for players to continue playing the mode after reaching 50,000 than as rewards to work towards. In suburbia, U.S., where I come from, you can buy 30 orbs for mowing a lawn.

3,600 points a day is about triple what I was able to get (1,200-1,500 points per day) the first few days, when I had plenty of free time to devote to it.  It would be nice if the competitive aspect were limited, but the point rewards were a constant that could be worked to with enough time and effort, even for those of us who are less skilled.

16 hours ago, Kruggov said:

Well there's one thing that came in my head about his just now.

Basically - If a party member died, and that map was completed, allow them to be replaced at the start of the map without requiring the rest of the team to be eliminated. That can help when, say, healer died, leaving good but not very sustainbale team (multiple Fury users for example) with basically no way to keep going for much longer. Or when a minor error results in a charater getting killed (Wings of Mercy and refreshers can go burn in hell for that).

Also... making the enemies stop looping things like Swap/Smite/Reposotion etc. Doubly so if enemies doing that are dangerous to approach.

That would be an interesting approach.  Often after your first character dies, it's a domino effect that ends up taking out the rest of your team.  Being able to replace individual characters would make this mode FAR more forgiving.

2 hours ago, ShuriKandy said:

Honestly, I just wanted to get Marthcina. So I got 4star Marthcina. As much as Quickened Pulse and a lot of orbs is VERY tempting, I'm not going to waste money on trying to get orbs to get stamina by getting more points when I can just buy orbs and use it on the spot. Also, building up a Marthcina while 4star gives more SP.

Yeah, after getting the 4-star, Quickened Pulse was really the only rewards I was interested in.  Since it was pretty much impossible for me to get it, I decided to just go back to training up troops after I got to 6K yesterday.