#Thoughts on Challenge Design

59 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

west urchin
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I brought this up before and this particular challenge suffers again from the same (design) flaws. Or put it another way: I hope that with these ideas we can improve challenges in the future.

In general I cannot be mad with what I got from the Roads Most Travelled Challenge. Mostly without needing epics I was able to progress until Round 23 of Challenge VI and claimed the epic. On the one hand it feels like it has become quite 'easy' to claim the epic, but increasingly harder to claim the 'legendary' although most of the time the epic is a really great car and key for some future events while the legendaries haven´t been very useful. Actually, that´s not even what I wanted to talk about....

To me it feels very frustrating that with challenges like in Roads Most Travelled or The Great Outdoors the car pool consists of more heavy-terrain vehicles (Offroad and All-Surface Tyres) than others which are most of the time hardly used. As most of the time these car´s cannot compete on Asphalt with Standard/Performance-Tyre Cars and vice versa, this strongly divides the strength of a garage for the event (city streets and sometimes wet twisty tracks result in the same thing, that only a few specialist cars are viable). The way these challenges are designed currently, the amount of all-terrain tracks is low and the difficulty on the all-terrain-piece seems to be quite low as well, so we can mostly beat everything with maxed SR cars. The (wet) Asphalt piece on the other hand is usually very pronounced in these challenges and often gate-keeper to progress. Of course not everyone can get every prize car always and that´s not my point. However, it feels very frustrating as with Round VI-25 this event when the epic/legendary car pool consists mostly of all-surface and offroad-tyre cars which for the most part are completely useless because tracks are all-asphalt. You can ramp up difficulty while maintaining a balance between car pool and racing tracks.

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Adding to this from a financial perspective: if only 2 of 12 epic cars I can pull from packs and 1 legendary from I don´t know how many is viable to beat any of these tracks even when maxed, the incentive for me to spend anything on a pack equals 0 as there is literally no chance I can get what I need. Generally, when designing challenges with mostly cars in it which have very little use, this kills player incentives to buy packs I would assume. At least if they even calculate chances of pulling something helpful before buying.

This brings me to the part what you could do to improve the situation:
Firstly, I think it could be cool to pool challenges thematically not only by cars, but also by tracks, so most of the cars in the car pool are somwhat viable and see use.
An alternative to that could be to run challenges similar to the UK challenge lately which feature several non-consecutive challenges (meaning you don´t need to win a complete challenge to proceed). So you could focus some more on heavy-terrain and other aspects of a car pool. That way you could evade the current problem, that if you put roadblocks too early in the challenge, people will be hugely frustrated because of missing a signature car from a lower rarity while having a great top end which would get them cool prize cars.

hexed onyx
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Money can't buy you time, and you're mad because of that, so you're suggesting pay to win model? Nice...

west urchin
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Could you expand on that, please? I don´t understand what you´re trying to say.

red urchin
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I like what you are saying, and I w toant add to it. I want to suggest that you make the challenge packs more divided among different vehicle traits. Take RMT for instance, and I am missing a UR perf car to get the epic. I wouldn't put faith into a carbon with the entire car pool being weighed down with all surfs. I would recommend that you make packs around like tire types so I can get what I need or close to it. Another this that could be viable but probably won't get added would be the ability to mod challenge packs with settings to modify what you could get, like filtering the pack to give me a 4wd perf car or a standard tire car.

hexed onyx
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You wrote the same thing. You guys realise that these are collection series? So it's aimed for the players with deeper garages. You just want packs to award you the exact cars you needed (perf or off road tyres when needed), hence I'm making comment on making it pay to win, because you can just use real money to buy packs and progress in challenge. Hence what you're suggesting is pay to win model where you just buy packs for every challenge to finish it. Take your time, build you garage, and even after 1400 days of playing there will be challenges where you won't win a leggy. It's just how it is, don't make it pay to win system

west urchin
# hexed onyx You wrote the same thing. You guys realise that these are collection series? So ...

To address what you´re saying:
If the challenges were to test our collections the way you say, we should completely remove the free starter packs for the challenge and all the ceramics and CFs over the course of events and challenges awarding cars required for the challenge to make it a true test of your collection at the point when it began without potential for further improvement. Doesn´t make too much sense in my opinion.
Also, this challenge doesn´t test if you have a deep garage, it only tests if you have the right cars from a pre-designed car pool of which most cars of higher rarity are utterly useless to complete the challenge. From a game-design perspective that does not make a lot of sense.
If you designed an ego-Shooter that contains 10 weapons and 8 of those weapons were just utterly useless in 95% of situations that would also be poor game-design.

Another aspect: I don´t see designing challenges in a way that made a higher percentage of the carpool valuable to complete a challenge, would be pay to win. Do you mean because it´s more likely to find what you want, therefore incentivizing you to buy packs beyond your gold stash for real money and therefore giving you an edge? No matter how you put it, you will always gain an advantage when you put real money in the game and you will boost your chances of finding something useful over someone who doesn´t spend money. I´m not saying I want this game to be pay 2 win, but in order for the developers to make money, some people have to spend real money on this game. Therefore, they need to incentivize you to spend your hard-earned in-game gold on stuff that gives you benefits (like a CF for this challenge for example). In the current challenge I don´t feel incentivized to spend gold or money on any of the packs because it´s highly unlikely I will find anything useful in them due to the way the challenge is designed.

hexed onyx
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So your garage is not good enough for this challenge, wait a month for the next one. Or the one after that one. One is going to be good enough for you. That's how collection series work. They're not made so you can finish all of them.

This way they earn more money, because people have to buy more packs to get what they need. If you put only good cars in the packs, people would just buy packs all the time and get all the best cars. There has to be a balance, for me it's about 20% good cars, 55% "I'll live with it", and 25% of fuse without thinking.

west urchin
hexed onyx
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Emm only there are only 2 packable ultras with all-surface, and only 1 packable super rare, and last 3 rounds where you have to use epics, there's one round with 4 off road tracks. So basically it is balance well enough in terms of tracksets (out of 15 races, you need an all surface car on 4 of them, plus on 3 other races All-surface car wins while being upgraded at 111, which is almost 50% of races you win just with all-surface tyres). And I think I saw fair share of wet asphalt or off road tracks in other rounds.

Think this challenge was very well rounded and balanced, with a lot of cars utilization. Just with ultra Caymans you could win epics, and all 3 are packable.

west urchin
# hexed onyx Emm only there are only 2 packable ultras with all-surface, and only 1 packable ...

I tend to agree to some extent for UR and below rarities.
looking at none-prize-cars:
5 legendaries, 1 of them is performance, the rest all-terrain.
12 epics, 6 all-terrain, 2 standard tyre, 4 performance.
Practically if you cannot win R25, it doesnt mean anything if you win R23 or R24 as there is nothing to be gained here. As R25 is the roadblock round, we will look at that. It´s all asphalt. Except for race number 5 none of the non-performance-tyre cars win any race. (except for race 3, the 2 top all-terain legends as 323). of the 5 performance-tyre cars you have available, 2 do not win 4 of the 5 races in any tune. so you´re left with 4 races which can only be won by 3 cars in a pool of 17 cars. that´s harsh.

My problem here is twofold: if you need prize-cars in order to obtain prize-cars the cat bites it´s tail because you cannot start.
Also, looking at the the tracksets, we see from R23 to R25 four off-road sets and 11 dry asphalt sets whereas we have 5 performance-tyre cars and 12 std/ALL/OFF cars. So basically, the epic/legendary part of the challenge only aims at having these mandatory performance tyre cars or prize cars. I have most of the all-terrain garage which exactly helps nothing because only dry asphalt tracks are there. It´s practically the same thing in the UR segment because as you pointed out you only need the caymans for the most part. As already pointed out, you don´t need a deep garage for the challenge, you only need specific cars. of which there were hardly any to be found at in the packs at higher rarities. That´s just frustrating and far away from good game design. You can create difficulty in challenges in different ways which feel a lot less frustrating than this.

hexed onyx
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From the moment you saw the tag cars, you could see most of the top end is prize cars. And you could know you have no shot for a leggy. Just accept it from the beginning. Take the epic, and move on. Be grateful for that, and wait for the next challenge 🙂

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Needing prize cars to win prize cars is needed, you need something to separate players. Otherwise, you win a prize car yourself, and it's never useful. So what's the point of it? You already can't use it in tri series, and if you don't need it in challenges, like where is your advantage? They still make it possible for everyone, but I think it's okay that players with better garages have am advantage

west urchin
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I think you're not Getting my point. It's nit about me nit getting the car.

red urchin
# hexed onyx Needing prize cars to win prize cars is needed, you need something to separate p...

Just so you are aware, you shouldn't need prize cars to win other prize cars, that has been a thing since collecthe tion series started. Example, take the Peugeot 208 T16. That was given out as a prize car a long time ago, and most players dont have it, either they didn't do well enough in the finals, or they started the game after it was given out. If the final round requires the 208, then it isn't beatable. Also, prize cars can be used in events, some challenges, clubs, expo collection, you name it, you can probably use it, except fro finals. Also, this post is not about this person complaining about the fact that they can't get the leggy, this is a person who is looking out for others and is hoping to improve their time playing this game. Ima leave this off here, I'll finish this and you later.

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So shut it and let this man explain his idea

hexed onyx
# west urchin I think you're not Getting my point. It's nit about me nit getting the car.

I get your point. You want a lot of people to get a car. And that's not the way collection games work. I'm guessing you'd want more than half of the players to get the car, right? Well, you can ask Hutch for percentage of people getting the car from this challenge (I'd say it's around 17-20% of players that finished it), and that's perfectly fine. I think they're making challenges much more easier lately, at least earlier rounds. Dunno how long you've been playing, but if you search in the past and look at the challenges, you'd be surprised to see how much it changed.

Like I said, not every challenge is for everybody. It's card collection game. And it shouldn't be pay to win (your suggestion was something like that, and that's how it looks like to me).

west urchin
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No you dont get my point.

hexed onyx
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Well, I told you already, out of 15 tracks where you need epics or leggies, it's 50/50 for the offroad cars and the track cars. It's perfectly balanced for the end part. Heck, it's the most balanced since the challenges exist. And you don't even need leggies in the last rounds, you can do it just with epics. So you don't even need any prize cars. But you can't make packs give you only performance cars in return

west urchin
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No, that just isn't true. Youre just reading what you want to read. I stated the facts above.

hexed onyx
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"Practically if you cannot win R25, it doesnt mean anything if you win R23 or R24 as there is nothing to be gained here. As R25 is the roadblock round, we will look at that. It´s all asphalt. Except for race number 5 none of the non-performance-tyre cars win any race. (except for race 3, the 2 top all-terain legends as 323). of the 5 performance-tyre cars you have available, 2 do not win 4 of the 5 races in any tune. so you´re left with 4 races which can only be won by 3 cars in a pool of 17 cars. that´s harsh."

This is where you think whole challenge comes out to last round.

"I´m not saying that I want to be able to finish all of them, and I´m not saying to only put good cars in the packs. I´m saying that they should improve on challenge design in order to utilize the whole car pool in that challenge in order to make it challenging and not just use asphalt tracksets all the time while fielding mostly all terrain cars in some challenges."

Mostly all terrain cars, are there's like 10 out of 70 cars...

"Adding to this from a financial perspective: if only 2 of 12 epic cars I can pull from packs and 1 legendary from I don´t know how many is viable to beat any of these tracks even when maxed, the incentive for me to spend anything on a pack equals 0 as there is literally no chance I can get what I need. Generally, when designing challenges with mostly cars in it which have very little use, this kills player incentives to buy packs I would assume. At least if they even calculate chances of pulling something helpful before buying."

This is where you want it to be pay to win.

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"My problem here is twofold: if you need prize-cars in order to obtain prize-cars the cat bites it´s tail because you cannot start.
Also, looking at the the tracksets, we see from R23 to R25 four off-road sets and 11 dry asphalt sets whereas we have 5 performance-tyre cars and 12 std/ALL/OFF cars. So basically, the epic/legendary part of the challenge only aims at having these mandatory performance tyre cars or prize cars. I have most of the all-terrain garage which exactly helps nothing because only dry asphalt tracks are there."

For this I told you, you can finish the challenge without prize cars. So you have off road garage, some people are missing them. That's why I told you not every challenge is designed for everyone to finish. And if your all-surface cars were maxed, you can still use them on asphalt tracks. They do win some races. And from this I got that you're mad you can't finish the challenge, and that you're asking for it to be easier. Trust me, this is one of the most balanced challenges there ever was. Making it easier would be a huge blow to people playing for long time

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I mean, just look at this. With 3 all surface cars, 1 off road, and an epic you can get a prize car. And for the last race, almost any stock epic wins it

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hushed spoke
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Tbf that’s a FULLY maxed all surface leggy in the middle

hexed onyx
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Same goes for round 23, so in total 11 out of 15 races are beatable by an all surface car, while 2 more are beatable by this broken Porsche. So 13 out of 15 races are beatable without per tyre car! Actaully 14, but you need a dupe Porsche

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hexed onyx
hushed spoke
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I mean, his point still stands. The all surface leggy you have to have FULLY upgraded is kind of a cop out answer to what could be a 112 epic

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The reqs for the final round this time were brutal bc they consider prize cars I don’t have as part of the calculated difficulty

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And it’s kinda not fun to know that even if I pull the guaranteed epic pack, I will most likely not get the epics needed

hexed onyx
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Well, you can do it with maxed epics also. You don't even need leggies.

hushed spoke
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I agree with both sentiments here. I think recently it has been a bit too easy for epic, way too hard for legendary

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But you can’t just make everything not about buying packs

hexed onyx
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Leggies have also gone down in difficulty. You remember couple of challenges ago where they put 5+ fuses requirements into leggies and epics?

hushed spoke
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Tbf tho a lot of people would have had the r8 from that time

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And having 5 fuses into epic is nowhere the same as 5 into leggie

hexed onyx
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True, but instead of fuses into leggies they made prize cars available. It's a good trade. You either get maxed epics or prize cars. Either way you have a shot, and for me it's perfectly balanced

hushed spoke
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Maybe it could be something they consider in the future

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Prize cars being a part of, but not considered in final round difficulties

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Because I’m losing more prize legendaries and falling behind while challenges will just get more difficult to bridge the gap

hexed onyx
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Like these 3 last rounds have the most available cars ever I think. They didn't even put drags, which is usually their do-or-die round.

hexed onyx
hushed spoke
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True

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Just sad to die on rd 23

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Specifically where the tag is kind of about off-roaders a bit, and they don’t really have any off road tracks as last round focus

hexed onyx
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Why would you have to have it? You can also use all-surface cars without a problem. What difference would it make if you have 5 off road tracks, and you still need a maxed epic or leggy?

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I have a feeling you think something like "I have a 111 leggy, so if they put off road track it would win, but on the road it doesn't beat anything"

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Same way they make asphalt tracks hard, they can make off road tracks hard. And with asphalt tracks they gave you a way out. You can use epics also! But how would you feel if you had to go against thay 93RQ Porsche on off road track? How many cars do you think would win then?

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Just because there are all-surface cars, doesn't mean you can't use them. And I think I proved you enough with 11 out of 15 races you can win with them. Basically you only need 2 per tyre cars. You're just expect to finish the rounds without upgrading your cars, and that will never happen.

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You can also say tag is about prize cars also then, but it is what it is. You have to have those kind of challenges also, to reward people who got them

hushed spoke
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I’m just saying it’s odd there was a HUGE attention to off road tracks throughout the challenge, and even the theme is mainly based on them, but the definitive cutoff rounds aren’t as focused on them

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It’s not a matter of my thought process about 111 all surface cars or anything like that.

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They can obviously design stuff however they want, but it’s annoying when PRIZE CARS are considered into the difficulty of challenges

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I DO NOT HAVE old prize cars

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THEREFORE, I can’t compete on the same level unless I buy a ridiculous amount of packs to even hope to have the right cars to be able to finish a challenge

west urchin
# hushed spoke I DO NOT HAVE old prize cars

But that´s what his point is. Bad luck on your side, people need to be rewarded for the prize-cars they obtained at some point.

I have a different opinion here because I think prize-cars should be helpful in challenges, but not gatekeepers the way they are here.
However, my point was as you pointed out as well that although the theme of this challenge appears to be somewhat offroad and the UR, epic and legendary car pool is almost nothing but offroad, we don´t see that represented in the races designed to require cars of those rarities.

I think we´re going in circles here and therefore I don´t want to continue that discussion, but I want to emphasize as a clear final point that personally I would have liked it more if the challenge had been designed in a way that made a wide portion of the car pool useful to win races. That was not the case and this challenge in particular feels like in the majority of races hardly any car except prize-cars and the performance-cars from the pool were viable. I do believe it is possible to make equally hard challenges leveraging a bigger portion of the car pool and thus making it less frustrating for players. The way it is now, it just feels frustrating that the majority of the higher rarity carpool (which is very hard to get!) is not capable of competing in most of the races they can participate in.

red urchin
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This is tiring to read through

velvet timber
hushed spoke