Challenges are great! I love challenges. Challenges are a good way to decide what to do and a nice short term goal to aim for. Generally I try to complete every challenge I get, but the win x game in x game type challenges are incredibly irritating. Why?
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A lot of the gametypes in H4 are extremely casual and don’t benefit from a “playing to win” mindset. The point of these games is that there are a ton of mechanics in place to reward weak players and give them a chance to win so they continue having fun. Regicide is the worst in this respect (better not get first place till the end!) but flood’s camping in a corner nonsense is pretty aggravating too. If you go into these gametypes with the intention of screwing around and killing a lot of dudes, they can be a larf, but if you’re intentionally trying to win every single time the game coddles someone into a position of superiority, however minor, that’s another tiny frustration added to the pile.
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If trueskill is working properly, your win/loss rate will approach 50%. Therefore, a win x games challenge is actually a play 2x games challenge that feels like half your games were a complete waste of time. The time investment involved in grinding through these challenges ends up vastly outstripping the other challenges with similar point rewards. The 117 monthly challenge is okay because you get a huge bonus for completing it that feels justified, whereas the weeklies feel worthless because the others are always things you can complete in a single game. If I were rewarded enough exp for these weeklies to justify the 3+ hours they can take sometimes, maybe they would be less frustrating.
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Challenges in FFA gametypes discourage playing with friends. This one speaks for itself, why would I play with a friend who I know is skilled and will make completing the challenge more easily?
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These challenges encourage boosting. I haven’t boosted any challenges yet but it is EXTREMELY tempting to just get a full group together and trade wins to get rid of them and satisfy the OCD. Of course, once a player starts boosting for a piddly challenge, why not do it one more time for a few more exp? Or maybe once more after that?
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They encourage ignoring the challenges entirely. If I’m going to ignore a couple of stupid challenges, I’m going to be less likely to give challenges effort in the future, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. This reduces the power of challenges to get me into the game each day, which is the purpose of daily challenges, isn’t it?
All in all, I think that switching to mini-objectives in a match that don’t require victory are a better choice. Instead of “win x flood” matches, make it “infect x spartans”, “kill x zombies”, or “achieve last man standing x times” (that last one better be a small number!) These challenges are more varied, more fun, and far less frustrating.
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- THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE and I can’t believe I forgot. Completing the weekly challenges doubles the win for your last game, but completing a single spartan ops missions TRIPLES it. It’s so hard to justify playing matchmaking at all if experience is an issue because it’s so much easier to get exp from SpOps. These challenges either need to compete with the exp/hour you get from SpOps by multiplying themselves by a lot (like, twelve or more?), or they need to be fun, which they currently aren’t.
