Monthly Side-Event Review - March 2020, Mole Man Expeditions
Hey guys. So I thought it would be a good idea to make this thread, looking back at the side events that Kabam releases each month. I want to talk about what I think Kabam's goals for these side events were, whether they did a good job at satisfying those goals, and how Kabam could go ahead making a more enjoyable iteration of these quests in the future.
This month we have Mole Man Expeditions. We could pick up small quantities of rewards along the many paths of the quest, which added up to slightly more rewards than what we've seen from side events in the past
What I think Kabam's goal(s) were for this content
- To paraphrase Kabam's words on the 6.4 beta, Kabam wants to create content where the player feels rewarded for each and every path they complete. This explains why the majority of the rewards were on the paths. It also fits in with the asthetic of a series of caves that Mole Man has created; you're gonna find each type of mineral scattered all around the place, not have all the diamonds in one big lump.
Did Kabam succeed in these goals? And was it fun?
I think that while this quest was a good concept for rewarding players on every path, the sheer number of paths has led many players to become demotivated. I'm likely to not do any more of Heroic or Normal and just do Epic and Master personally. It's just SO MANY PATHS. Yes they're no energy to do and they're short, but it's still way too many paths for each individual path to feel rewarding. You just don't see those big quantities of resources showing up on the Quest Clear screen at one time.
How could Kabam improve upon this event type in the future?
First and foremost, SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the number of paths. You guys know from past precedent that 6-8 paths is the most paths you can have before people start to get sick of a quest. This would also allow you to place larger clumps of rewards on each path, which makes it actually feel like each path gives a good amount of rewards.
Here's my personal idea. For each type of reward you want to give to the players in a quest, have one path. So if you've got 6 different types of currency, have 6 different paths and all of the rewards of a certain currency are on one single path. Imagine how happy players would be if they finished one path in a quest (yes it would be slightly longer, say 7-8 fights) and suddenly BAM they have 3k or so t5b. Then they finish another path and BAM 10-12k t2a. Then 3k or so 5-star shards. Then 300-400 6-star shards. And so on. And then you still get those pretty sizeable Quest Completion and Exploration rewards on top of those and boom endorphins (those reward hormones game developers exploit all the time) everywhere.
TL;DR I thought this event was quite a cool concept to make each and every path of a quest feel rewarding, but it sorta backfired on itself by overloading the players with too many paths and not enough reward for each one, even with the shortness of each path and the lack of energy cost (plz keep this going as a trend btw, we love it). Reducing the number of paths in these quests and piling each type of reward into one path each (I'm imagining like if you were robbing a bank's vaults... are there any bank-related marvel characters you could implement to make that work? 3-person party restriction would still work then...) would really help to make Summoners feel sizeably rewarded for every path they complete.
What were your thoughts on this event? Did I do a good job at this review, and how could I make them better? (I'm thinking of potentially making this into a video series in the future) Do you guys have any other ideas for how to keep the core of this quest's concept alive and make it more enjoyable (outside of just massively jacking up the rewards)? ARE THERE ANY BANKERS IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE WE CAN STEAL FROM? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
