Suggestion: Seasonal Tree Reward Book Pages

[Lantea]

Introduction

Currently we are on Year 2 of Seasonal Reward Trees on the main page of the reward book. There was already a huge outcry when the Year 1 seasonal trees were originally not planning to make a return in Year 2; and I am sure there will be the same outcry when Year 1 & 2 trees are going to disappear forever when Year 3 is about to start.

Suggestion

The best possible way to ‘fix’ this is to make a Reward Book Page for each season – that means 12 Reward Book Pages each dedicated to a specific themed season.

These Reward Book Pages would each contain a General Themed Tree around that specific season, and all the Yearly trees that have been released already and that will be released in the future. These pages would function as a hub for the Lore and information on each Season and people could go back at any time and read the Lore they already unlocked from past Seasonal Trees without all this incredible content just vanishing from the game.

How it would work

There a several options for the operation of this new system.

1. The more player friendly option would be to allow players to unlock nodes from any past and present seasonal trees for the currently active season.

2. If this would severally limit the developers for the future, they could just leave the past trees locked and only the current year tree would be unlockable during a specific season; but players who unlocked past trees would still be able to go back to them and read the Lore they unlocked and marvel at the great art of the past trees.

To avoid confusing new players with old reward trees and them not understanding why they can’t unlock them there is a perfect solution that would at the same time support the game financially.

The 2nd option would present a further option for monetization, introducing a way to buy the seasonal nodes of the older trees and thus allowing even new players to unlock the past reward trees. The standard nodes would be unlockable with reward points and the special seasonal nodes that were linked to specific seasonal tasks in the past could be purchased for a set sum of money that would allow you to still unlock old trees if you so desired.

This way the developers could still sell past season cosmetics in the store and it would be up to the players whether they want to just buy the cosmetics or buy the season tree nodes and unlock the cosmetics by completing the rest of the reward trees with reward points.

This system would also not tie the developers hands if they want to change the seasonal modes in the future as the old quest nodes would only be purchasable and no longer linked to any active quests.

I hope I have not lost anyone and the above makes sense

Conclusion

I would love to hear what others from the community think of this idea; and hope @SlamaTwoFlags and the dev team could consider this option before the end of Year 2 of Gwent.
With Year 3 implementing the new system and releasing a Reward Book Page for each season as the Year progresses and keeping it persistent going forward.

I think this is the best solution to bring together the whole system of Seasonal Reward Trees with each Season having a dedicated hub in the Reward Book and players not losing access to the trees and lore they already unlocked; while at the same time the past reward trees present a perfect additional way for players who missed out on some of the trees to support the game financially, while getting cool rewards of past years.

If you have any questions or would like me to expand on the idea or something is not clear, let me know

 

[RichardIgnanz]

Principally, I like the idea. I would organize it a little bit different.
(Let's assume CDPR is storing the progress for each season. )

We have tabs on the right side for the themed years. So I would also make a tab for each seasonal year, for example on the same line on the left. The main page should only show the current season of this year (e.g. cat + border). You can always look at the old trees but you can progress only in those seasonal trees which are currently active (e.g. 2019 cat, 2020 cat, ...).

 

[rrc]

...
There was already a huge outcry when the Year 1 seasonal trees were originally not planning to make a return in Year 2; and I am sure there will be the same outcry when Year 1 & 2 trees are going to disappear forever when Year 3 is about to start.
...

I don't think so. On the first year, CDPR promised that the seasonal trees will come back the next year and people took decisions based on that (like skipping some season when RPs are low, etc.). After the outcry the tress were back and Slama specifically said that this will not repeat, that is, in the third year, there will new content and the old trees wont repeat. To be honest, I was also super pissed when the year 1 seasonal trees didn't return (even though I had got almost all of the cardbacks - the only trinklet I cared about) ONLY because of the false promise they made. They rectified it, brought the trees back for the community. If next year, both seasonal tress are not coming back, I wont mind. I am prepared for that.

The rest of your suggestions look good and I will be happy if that happens, but I wouldn't blame CDPR if they choose not to do any of that and only have Year 3's seasonal tree.

 

[M3e0w]

To be fair, if they made all the previous seasonal trees stay the whole reward tree section will be a huge cluttery mess, overwhelming for new players that will find it frustating not being able to finish seasonal trees before the season is over.... and ignoring all the existing trees.

Also it's kinda neat to make old rewards unobtainable so they feel more special to get/have :3.

 

[Lantea]

To be fair, if they made all the previous seasonal trees stay the whole reward tree section will be a huge cluttery mess, overwhelming for new players that will find it frustating not being able to finish seasonal trees before the season is over.... and ignoring all the existing trees.

That is why the whole suggestion is to have a separate Reward Book Page for each season that will make it clear which are old trees and new ones.
The old trees could be unlocked by purchasing the season nodes, thus allowing new players to make use of them, while supporting the game. And the old trees would not limit future changes the devs want to introduce because they will no longer be tied to seasonal events.
New players will also not have to feel like they are missing out if they don't have enough reward points to unlock the whole tree, because they could save up and unlock the old trees next year when the season comes back on.

The main point of this whole system suggestion, is to not lose all the content of past seasonal trees that people unlocked, and make the Book Pages into coherent hubs for each season.

Also it's kinda neat to make old rewards unobtainable so they feel more special to get/have :3.

That is already not the case, because you can just buy the old rewards in the shop even if you don't have the reward points for all trees.
And I think that should stay that way as its a great way to support the game financially. The new system I propose won't affect that as you could choose whether to purchase just the past season rewards direct from shop; or you could purchase an old tree season nodes, maybe for a bit less and then spend reward points completing the old reward tree and not only getting the old rewards but also unlocking the Lore nodes.

Post automatically merged: Oct 9, 2020

Principally, I like the idea. I would organize it a little bit different.
(Let's assume CDPR is storing the progress for each season. )

We have tabs on the right side for the themed years. So I would also make a tab for each seasonal year, for example on the same line on the left. The main page should only show the current season of this year (e.g. cat + border). You can always look at the old trees but you can progress only in those seasonal trees which are currently active (e.g. 2019 cat, 2020 cat, ...).

As for the UI and organisation; each Season would have its own tab (since they have separate book pages) and I was thinking maybe put the 12 new tabs along the bottom of the Reward Book (6 on each side of the 'Close' button) so it would not interfere with the Year tabs on the right side of the reward book. Or you could put them on the left as you said.
And for visibility its not a bad idea to also highlight the current active seasonal trees on the main page, while having everything on the seasonal book pages.

 

[DRK3]

I agree with the general suggestion, of having the past seasonal trees on the reward book, but with some conditions:

-Do not make a tab for each season, that meant 12 seasons=12 tabs, plus the other tabs that already exist, that would be a mess

-Have them available for visibility only, to read the lore and check the artwork and rewards. Allowing them to be fulfilled normally would defeat the purpose of having seasons and exclusive content, if everything was accessible all the time.

-There already exists a monetization system that gives players an alternative and 2nd chance on obtainining seasonal cosmetics: on the shop, there are packs with seasonal cosmetics for the current season and for the season that occurred 2/3 seasons past (not sure on the exact number)

-The tab for the Year of the Wererat is so damn empty, it cant stay like that, even if they add 5/6 reward trees with the final expansion of 2020 it wont be enough to make that tab satisfyingly full, so something else should be added there

 

[Lokiat0r]

I see three options for including old seasonal trees that don't lead to excess tabs being generated:

1.) Alter the "Year of the XXXX" tabs to display the generic "Year of the XXX" tree and the 12 seasonal trees from that year. At any time, only the active season can have points added. All expansion trees go into a generic Expansion tab. Add a new Expansion tab when the current one becomes too cluttered for any more trees. At present probably 1 extra tab, with a 2nd one likely to cover 2021-22.

2.) Show only the current month's seasonal as a sub-tree for each "Year of the XXXX" reward tree. The 11 inactive ones wouldn't be available to view until their month comes up. No extra tabs.

3.) Have a "Season of XXXX" tab that shows the current seasonal tree and all its historic sub-trees. 1 extra tab.


Optional -> the generic "Season of XXXX" tree also remains in the centre of the "Base Game" tab with the new sub-tree for the current year displayed.