Monthly Side-Event Review - March 2020, Mole Man Expeditions

Mathking13

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.

GroundedWisdom

I disagree that it wasn't enough Reward. It seems lengthy all at once, but we have a week for each Quest.

Unknown

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HeroBoltsy

I agree on the points about no energy being good (please, continue this, Kabam) and also lumping the same-type rewards onto the same paths. I think the first week's path numbers were good though, and even the second week had a fair amount of paths imo. A reduction to about 6 paths would be really nice but also a little drastic, since Week 1 and 2 had fairly good path numbers. Something in their range would be great, a little bit of a challenge to get through without being too much of a grind.

That said, the idea of robbing Battlerealm banks is fascinating. Perhaps there's a story there.

Mathking13

GroundedWisdom said:

I disagree that it wasn't enough Reward. It seems lengthy all at once, but we have a week for each Quest.

I'm not saying it's lengthy. It just feels tedious and intimidating to have 16 paths shoved onto you in one quest.
Some of the agreed 'worst' permanent content in the game to explore (act 4 and the first half of act 6) have been partly due to how many paths there are, often being described as 'tedious'. Yes the paths being really short helps a fair bit with that, but 16 is still a lot of paths per difficulty.
And yes the rewards available add up to in fact more than most side events we've seen lately, which is awesome, but when you're only getting them in tiny increments, most people won't find that as fun or rewarding. I mean come on the Master mode rewards are pretty awesome; I'm definitely gonna complete it all, but I can't bring myself to get excited by each and every path; it just feels like a grind.

I love the idea of spreading out the rewards more evenly, and putting the rewards dotted around the paths is definitely an amazing way to do that; I think I'd have an absolute blast if it was on a quest with less paths. But too many paths can hurt content almost as much as say jacking up the attack values way too much (*cough* 6.4 *cough*), or super-restrictive gating (*cough* 6.1 and 6.2 controversy *cough*).

Mathking13

DoubleDelta said:

Think the reason they've made it so long is to keep players on the game for longer. I agree it feels a little too long, but for 0 energy? I have no complaints, I've been doing it between normal events whilst energy refills.

Ive got a good roster so found it really easy with 1 champ, but each path was short enough that people lacking can still comfortably complete without too much energy spend.

Rewards wise, I can't complain about this month, combine it with boss rush, 6.4 launch, abyss last month and V5 coming up at some point.

Kabam have been doing well so far, just need to hope it stays this way, unfortunately theres a terrible trend of everything they do right, theres a big scuff, so far the only one was AW launch, but that was relatively minor in comparison.

I 100% agree that the 0 energy cost and short paths are amazing features for this content, but when it comes to this content it becomes a bit more tedious with there being SO MANY PATHS. Especially for me with Master; the rewards are eh but still useful, the fights are hard enough that I can't auto-fight them but easy enough that it takes like 10-15 second per fight, and I'm having to do so much micromanagement just to get around the map sixteen darn times per difficulty (at least on these last two weeks; week 1 was actually really nice, and same with week 2 to a degree)

Mathking13

HeroBoltsy said:

I agree on the points about no energy being good (please, continue this, Kabam) and also lumping the same-type rewards onto the same paths. I think the first week's path numbers were good though, and even the second week had a fair amount of paths imo. A reduction to about 6 paths would be really nice but also a little drastic, since Week 1 and 2 had fairly good path numbers. Something in their range would be great, a little bit of a challenge to get through without being too much of a grind.

That said, the idea of robbing Battlerealm banks is fascinating. Perhaps there's a story there.

yeah I more meant the number 6 as a proof of concept. I could only think of 6 major currencies given out for Epic/Uncollected side events; 5 and 6-star shards, t2a, t5b, gold and sig stones. If there were more types they wanted to give out, they can make more paths, and less means less paths. Not to mention you could split a super spicy reward currency along multiple paths if you wanted to (like 2 paths with a 2% t5cc crystal each in the future maybe?).
Don't get me wrong they had a great idea going, and I loved doing week 1 and, to a degree, week 2 as well. But once you get to 16 paths it starts to feel more tedious than rewarding imo.

BowTieJohn

Another post with plenty of helpful advice from various players and perspectives.

GroundedWisdom

Mathking13 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

I disagree that it wasn't enough Reward. It seems lengthy all at once, but we have a week for each Quest.

I'm not saying it's lengthy. It just feels tedious and intimidating to have 16 paths shoved onto you in one quest.
Some of the agreed 'worst' permanent content in the game to explore (act 4 and the first half of act 6) have been partly due to how many paths there are, often being described as 'tedious'. Yes the paths being really short helps a fair bit with that, but 16 is still a lot of paths per difficulty.
And yes the rewards available add up to in fact more than most side events we've seen lately, which is awesome, but when you're only getting them in tiny increments, most people won't find that as fun or rewarding. I mean come on the Master mode rewards are pretty awesome; I'm definitely gonna complete it all, but I can't bring myself to get excited by each and every path; it just feels like a grind.

I love the idea of spreading out the rewards more evenly, and putting the rewards dotted around the paths is definitely an amazing way to do that; I think I'd have an absolute blast if it was on a quest with less paths. But too many paths can hurt content almost as much as say jacking up the attack values way too much (*cough* 6.4 *cough*), or super-restrictive gating (*cough* 6.1 and 6.2 controversy *cough*).

Each pass has 3 Fights and Mole Man. That's not really time-consuming in my opinion.

Unknown

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Mathking13

GroundedWisdom said:

Mathking13 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

I disagree that it wasn't enough Reward. It seems lengthy all at once, but we have a week for each Quest.

I'm not saying it's lengthy. It just feels tedious and intimidating to have 16 paths shoved onto you in one quest.
Some of the agreed 'worst' permanent content in the game to explore (act 4 and the first half of act 6) have been partly due to how many paths there are, often being described as 'tedious'. Yes the paths being really short helps a fair bit with that, but 16 is still a lot of paths per difficulty.
And yes the rewards available add up to in fact more than most side events we've seen lately, which is awesome, but when you're only getting them in tiny increments, most people won't find that as fun or rewarding. I mean come on the Master mode rewards are pretty awesome; I'm definitely gonna complete it all, but I can't bring myself to get excited by each and every path; it just feels like a grind.

I love the idea of spreading out the rewards more evenly, and putting the rewards dotted around the paths is definitely an amazing way to do that; I think I'd have an absolute blast if it was on a quest with less paths. But too many paths can hurt content almost as much as say jacking up the attack values way too much (*cough* 6.4 *cough*), or super-restrictive gating (*cough* 6.1 and 6.2 controversy *cough*).

Each pass has 3 Fights and Mole Man. That's not really time-consuming in my opinion.

I never said that it was time-consuming. In fact I agreed with you on that point. I just said it felt TEDIOUS having to do 16 paths per difficulty. Two VERY different words, last time I checked.

Rockypantherx

GroundedWisdom said:

Mathking13 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

I disagree that it wasn't enough Reward. It seems lengthy all at once, but we have a week for each Quest.

I'm not saying it's lengthy. It just feels tedious and intimidating to have 16 paths shoved onto you in one quest.
Some of the agreed 'worst' permanent content in the game to explore (act 4 and the first half of act 6) have been partly due to how many paths there are, often being described as 'tedious'. Yes the paths being really short helps a fair bit with that, but 16 is still a lot of paths per difficulty.
And yes the rewards available add up to in fact more than most side events we've seen lately, which is awesome, but when you're only getting them in tiny increments, most people won't find that as fun or rewarding. I mean come on the Master mode rewards are pretty awesome; I'm definitely gonna complete it all, but I can't bring myself to get excited by each and every path; it just feels like a grind.

I love the idea of spreading out the rewards more evenly, and putting the rewards dotted around the paths is definitely an amazing way to do that; I think I'd have an absolute blast if it was on a quest with less paths. But too many paths can hurt content almost as much as say jacking up the attack values way too much (*cough* 6.4 *cough*), or super-restrictive gating (*cough* 6.1 and 6.2 controversy *cough*).

Each pass has 3 Fights and Mole Man. That's not really time-consuming in my opinion.

Really? Tell that to the 2 hours I spent doing just quest 3 in master today. With 5/65’s.

This side event is alright. The rewards are great but Jesus is it grindy. I haven’t even touched arena this week because I’ve been trying to get these things done. 0 energy is amazing but honestly, I’d rather it have an energy cost and less paths. That’s just my opinion though as it suits my schedule better

H3t3r

GroundedWisdom said:

Mathking13 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

I disagree that it wasn't enough Reward. It seems lengthy all at once, but we have a week for each Quest.

I'm not saying it's lengthy. It just feels tedious and intimidating to have 16 paths shoved onto you in one quest.
Some of the agreed 'worst' permanent content in the game to explore (act 4 and the first half of act 6) have been partly due to how many paths there are, often being described as 'tedious'. Yes the paths being really short helps a fair bit with that, but 16 is still a lot of paths per difficulty.
And yes the rewards available add up to in fact more than most side events we've seen lately, which is awesome, but when you're only getting them in tiny increments, most people won't find that as fun or rewarding. I mean come on the Master mode rewards are pretty awesome; I'm definitely gonna complete it all, but I can't bring myself to get excited by each and every path; it just feels like a grind.

I love the idea of spreading out the rewards more evenly, and putting the rewards dotted around the paths is definitely an amazing way to do that; I think I'd have an absolute blast if it was on a quest with less paths. But too many paths can hurt content almost as much as say jacking up the attack values way too much (*cough* 6.4 *cough*), or super-restrictive gating (*cough* 6.1 and 6.2 controversy *cough*).

Each pass has 3 Fights and Mole Man. That's not really time-consuming in my opinion.

Technically 4 fights excluding mole man boss as you can get ambushed by mole man before even reaching the end.

Vendemiaire

For someone who is not uncollected yet (This is only my 3rd EQ. Started playing this January.) I think this is a perfect side event quest despite its length. The Heroic and Master's 100% Exploration can be done itemless. The Epic, on the otherhand, is pretty difficult but doable with a few revives and pots that doesn't drain my units. I was able to get all the 5* shards in the Epic Difficulty from Quest 1 to 3 along with a T4CC. T4BC, and some T4BC shards with my 5/50 Domino, 4/40 Starky, 4/40 Longshot, and 4/40 Warlock as a substitute. I already opened 2 5* shards this month with the help of this event. I'm looking forward to another opening once the 4th quest is opened and another one once the AW rewards are distributed.

Monto_Carlos28

Actually this was pretty good. Although there were/are a lot of paths, there's less fight in-between.
This was by far the easiest quest I had after becoming Uncollected few months ago.

Kalantak

overall 500+ fights !!! too long

StronstVngr

I was looking for an official Kabam thread for this new content that I could comment on about, but in my humble opinion, I enjoyed most of the experience doing the Mole Man Expeditions. Yes, some of the paths are longer than they need to be, or the map seems large, however, as someone already pointed out, we have a week to clear the entire map.
I wouldn't give this first try by Kabam to "kick things up a notch" a rating of 5 stars, however, I personally am very pleased with it, and appreciate Kabam taking the time to make things more interesting. I would say 3.5 out of five stars.
Again, for me personally.

Unknown

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Vendemiaire

Because of this event no one is gonna put Mole Man in AW defense. Everyone knows how to fight against him now! Lol.

xNig

Half the paths, double the difficulty. Too tedious and grindy imo. Very soul draining. 😆

GamecodeOne

Talking about the sidequest, in my opinion its was perfect, the rewards for doing 100% were low. so you dont have to do all 100% and could pick the pathes you need and want. Plus 0 Energy cost, what you want more. if anyone doesnt like this event, he should quit the game and cry in another place.

Timone147

I agree that the number of paths is just way much. Reward are good but it just LONG and boring. Too much time spent doing the same thing

This last quest just feel like... well A a slog is an understatement. It’s monotonous honestly going through those paths. And at 4-5 minutes a path with R5 burst damage champs counting loading screens(using iPhone too) it’s 80 minutes just to clear the last quest in epic in best case scenarios for summoners. Average case probably double that. Long and boring.

Most people lesser champs or using Samsung that will stretch north of 2 hours in the final week for one of the quests in one chapter. I know that doesn’t seem like super long but comparative to other quests and with the other chapter and paths added in it’s boring and a pain. Then if you want to do more than one difficulty the time and slog explodes.

Overall the quest is awesome because the rewards seem good and design is cool I just think the number of paths should be rethought if they look to do this in the future. They can push the resources on to more per path and up the difficulty so it’s engaging if they want.

For me though in its form It took what could have been a fun event with awesome rewards and turned it into a boring event with awesome rewards.