Quest for Glory: Seasonal Mode Redone

[4RM3D]

Do you know what the Witcher has and Gwent doesn't? You've guessed it: nudity quests. Introducing quests can open up a whole new way to play the game. I've thought about using quest cards even before the introduction of the seasonal event, but I feared it would be difficult to balance. However, the seasonal mode is an ideal solution for this problem.

Without further ado, three ways to implement quests:
Quest Nodes
Quest Cards
Quest Bosses

Quest Nodes
Every seasonal mode has its own set of quests you'll need to complete. The seasonal reward book become a mini-map where you can walk through with each node having a little bit of story. For the Season of Love, a few examples: buff an enemy unit to 50 strength or higher, win a game without dealing damage, etc. These quests could be completed playing casual or a separate mode could be introduced.

Quest Cards
At the start of the game you can chose from 4 seasonal quest cards. Once you've chosen a quest, you need to complete it in order to win. Every quest comes with an artifact that cannot be destroyed. A few examples:

Army of Clones
Whenever a non-token unit dies, summon a clone.
When you have 6 or more clones, win the game.

The Sky is the Limit
Every turn, at turn start, boost adjacent units by the number of friendly units on the board.
When you have a unit with 50 strength or more, win the game.

^ The above are just examples and need to be tweaked.

Quest Bosses
This is basically Thronebreaker, but, instead, you'll use a homemade Gwent deck against boss NPCs. These NPCs have stronger decks, but aren't as smart as you. Every season has a set of new bosses you'll need to challenge and every boss has its own set of tactics to defeat it.

 

[rrc]

Again, fantastic ideas. Lets see if CDPR takes this direction.

 

[InkognitoXI]

The Quest Bosses sound like a concept that would really be interesting and purely positive.

The other 2 I am not too sure about.

However Quest Bosses sound like a concept that gives everyone a better feeling about their own decks, being able to adapt and overcome a harsh challenge, rather than just seeing their engines being answered most of the time or whatever.
Also allowing people to just play out super greedy strategies or having to control such an opponent.

The idea sounds incredibly positive for the game, all things considered.

 

[BrokeCiri]

Do you know what the Witcher has and Gwent doesn't? You've guessed it: nudity quests. Introducing quests can open up a whole new way to play the game. I've thought about using quest cards even before the introduction of the seasonal event, but I feared it would be difficult to balance. However, the seasonal mode is an ideal solution for this problem.

Without further ado, three ways to implement quests:
Quest Nodes
Quest Cards
Quest Bosses

Quest Nodes
Every seasonal mode has its own set of quests you'll need to complete. The seasonal reward book become a mini-map where you can walk through with each node having a little bit of story. For the Season of Love, a few examples: buff an enemy unit to 50 strength or higher, win a game without dealing damage, etc. These quests could be completed playing casual or a separate mode could be introduced.

Quest Cards
At the start of the game you can chose from 4 seasonal quest cards. Once you've chosen a quest, you need to complete it in order to win. Every quest comes with an artifact that cannot be destroyed. A few examples:

Army of Clones
Whenever a non-token unit dies, summon a clone.
When you have 6 or more clones, win the game.

The Sky is the Limit
Every turn, at turn start, boost adjacent units by the number of friendly units on the board.
When you have a unit with 50 strength or more, win the game.

^ The above are just examples and need to be tweaked.

Quest Bosses
This is basically Thronebreaker, but, instead, you'll use a homemade Gwent deck against boss NPCs. These NPCs have stronger decks, but aren't as smart as you. Every season has a set of new bosses you'll need to challenge and every boss has its own set of tactics to defeat it.

Instead of just seasonal trees, why not rework reward/leader trees into campaign trees. Replace the 3 treasure boxes with NPC battles with the 3rd one the boss battle then replace the 5 scrolls into 5 thronebreaker-like cinematic of narration. During the NPC battle nodes, you can only use the leader of that tree. The boss battle would be the leader with its most meta deck (example. Eist boss will use Eist warriors) so meaning the boss battle would be like a mirror match. ???

 

[4RM3D]

Instead of just seasonal trees, why not rework reward/leader trees into campaign trees.

The idea is nice, but that would defeat the purpose of having a seasonal event which rotates every month. And the reasoning behind that is that seasonal events should keep the game fresh and varied.

 

[Wonderboy8700]

Do you know what the Witcher has and Gwent doesn't? You've guessed it: nudity quests. Introducing quests can open up a whole new way to play the game. I've thought about using quest cards even before the introduction of the seasonal event, but I feared it would be difficult to balance. However, the seasonal mode is an ideal solution for this problem.

Without further ado, three ways to implement quests:
Quest Nodes
Quest Cards
Quest Bosses

Quest Nodes
Every seasonal mode has its own set of quests you'll need to complete. The seasonal reward book become a mini-map where you can walk through with each node having a little bit of story. For the Season of Love, a few examples: buff an enemy unit to 50 strength or higher, win a game without dealing damage, etc. These quests could be completed playing casual or a separate mode could be introduced.

Quest Cards
At the start of the game you can chose from 4 seasonal quest cards. Once you've chosen a quest, you need to complete it in order to win. Every quest comes with an artifact that cannot be destroyed. A few examples:

Army of Clones
Whenever a non-token unit dies, summon a clone.
When you have 6 or more clones, win the game.

The Sky is the Limit
Every turn, at turn start, boost adjacent units by the number of friendly units on the board.
When you have a unit with 50 strength or more, win the game.

^ The above are just examples and need to be tweaked.

Quest Bosses
This is basically Thronebreaker, but, instead, you'll use a homemade Gwent deck against boss NPCs. These NPCs have stronger decks, but aren't as smart as you. Every season has a set of new bosses you'll need to challenge and every boss has its own set of tactics to defeat it.

I am a little confused. Isn't this to some degree exactly what is happening already. They have quest nodes in seasonal tree tied to seasonal mode. For example kill your own she bear 10 times. Kill the enemies 30 times. I know there are more, but the point is, they already have quest nodes. As for the seasonal cards, we don't know what the other 11 seasons will look like. I do like some of your example ideas, but the one thing that concerns me is that you don't want to make one faction so much better than the others at the challenge. For example sky is the limit favors monsters (nekkers self replicate.) The clone idea favors consumption decks. The biggest problem we have with season of the bear is that SK lippy decks and NG draw decks are dominant.

Your quest card suggestion really confused me. Are we talking about different win conditions for opposing players, or isolating the player base to matchups with people who have similar win conditions. The former makes the game very hard to properly plan for and results in people ignoring their opponent and racing for their own win condition (how do you build a hand for 4 different outcomes?) The latter extends wait times and can be a serious problem if one is more popular than the rest.

We had a couple of single player challenges back in the beta. I agree we should get more. CDPR should use them as samples for the witcher tales.

Regarding side quests, aren't contracts the same as side quests? I support the idea of new contracts being added to facilitate different styles of game play. The issue with them being seasonal, is that they only can be done in a narrow window. Some people only play an hour a day (if that.) This means that unique seasonal concepts are quite limited for them. They are better off being able to do unique contracts piecemeal as time permits.

Finally, too contribute to your idea (sorry if I seem overly critical,) what about a mode where you can actually mix and match factions and pick your every card for your hand from your deck. I am talking about best vs best mode. Crazy amount of creativity and endless synergy. Of course this mode would not be ranked. You could also add special mode restricted artifacts and cards to this mode. The best part about this mode is it doesn't need balancing or oversight as it is designed to be unbalanced and just plain fun.

 

[4RM3D]

They have quest nodes in seasonal tree tied to seasonal mode. For example kill your own she bear 10 times.

True, but we need more unique quests and less grind quests.

one thing that concerns me is that you don't want to make one faction so much better than the others at the challenge

Also true. It's difficult, when every faction has the same handicap, to balance the seasonal mode. That's why I made the suggestion to use quest cards. There are 4 fixed quest cards to chose from per season. The idea is that some of those quests work better with certain decks than others. You pick one of the cards and then are randomly matched with another opponent. So, in one match you might want to stop an army of clones, while in another match you just want to buff your unit as much as possible. This allows for way more deck variety. Also, if one quest card becomes a dominant choice, players are going to run counters, leading to a mini-meta shift.

what about a mode where you can actually mix and match factions

I've thought about that, but that could lead to some insanely broken combos. The devs could introduce such a mode for fun, but it shouldn't be mandatory to get unique rewards.

 

[Meioneld]

I think seasonal mode was a good project but it wasn't studied in depth (that's why Skellige dominated this mode).
4RM3D provided a great analysis and has suggested some ideas to fix it.

In my opinion, the lack of variety could be solved by mixing seasonal mode with the premise of arena. Players would have flavoured quests (damaging bears, boosting enemy units, etc) but they'll achive them by building a deck like in the arena mode.