Quest Runs - Testing with 5% of Users

So here's the thing - I've been trying to solve a problem with quests for a while now. How do you make every quest feel worthwhile? Some quests give great sP, some don't. Some have cool item rewards, some are just... fine. I've really struggled with making it feel like there's a point in doing all of them, not just the ones with the biggest payouts.

Quest Runs is my attempt at fixing that.

The idea

It's inspired by roguelikes. You start a "run" when you begin questing, and every quest you complete gives you a bonus card. These bonuses stack - sP multipliers, extra items, jackpot chances, reputation boosts. The longer you keep your run going, the better your rewards get.

The base rewards are still good! But now there's a reason to do "just one more quest" because your next completion might be even better than the last.

The risk

If you time out or abandon a quest, your run ends. All those stacked bonuses? Gone. Start fresh next time.

Why I'm excited about this

This is a foundation we can build on. Once this system is solid, we can do things like:

• Morostide bonus cards that give you extra turns in the Pumpkin Patch, or add items from previous years to quest prize pools
• Event currency that scales with your run - right now we're giving 5-15 New Years tokens per quest, but imagine if that ramped up the longer your run goes
• Super rare old items as jackpot rewards
• Tie-ins to other parts of the site

It's a much nicer system for events than just "here's some tokens." The goal is to make getting to that next quest genuinely exciting.

Why only 5%?

I'm being careful. I want to watch how bonuses stack in the wild before opening this up to everyone. If multipliers are getting out of hand or rewards are breaking something, I need to know before it's everywhere.

If you got randomly selected (you'll see a banner on the quests page), please let me know how it feels:

• Does keeping a run going feel rewarding?
• Is losing your run too punishing? Or not punishing enough?
• Are the bonus cards interesting or just "oh, another +5%"?
• Anything broken or weird?

Thanks for helping test this!

I'm realizing that without images, this doesn't make a lot of sense!

At the end of each quest, you get to choose from three bonuses that carry through with you:

And then you can see that reflected in the prize area:

I'm still tweaking some of these prizes (such a low % doesn't make sense for currency. If we're giving you 5, maybe you should get +2 of each or something, and have that scale, instead of percentages)

The bonus items currently now come from a pretty weird pool of low cost junk items (sorry! hope you can autoprice!) but I'd like to think about how to make them more interesting

And the jackpot is currently an empty item pool, but one that I am planning to add some much asked for / requested items that we haven't seen in a long time, or old currencies, or something

Hey everyone - I appreciate the responses! I want to gently redirect this thread though.

None of you are in the 5% test group for quest runs, which means you haven't actually been able to try the feature yet. And I notice all the feedback here is about quest item costs and quest viability - which is a totally valid thing to care about, but it's a separate conversation from runs.

Runs are purely additive. They don't change your base quest rewards at all. They're an optional layer on top of the normal quest system - extra prizes you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. If you don't care about them, you can ignore the streak counter entirely and your quest experience is unchanged.

For the item cost concerns specifically:

• There's a separate thread about the change to require only 2 items per quest
• There are threads for reporting bugs and feedback about requests/prizes
• I've also been working on getting more quest items into shops - you may have noticed this over the last day. We've built a mechanic to make that more likely going forward.

Hundreds of people are doing these quests daily on top of the regular site quests, so I know it creates pressure on item availability. I'm actively working on that.

I do want to hear how quests are going for you! Please make a separate thread about it so I can get your specific feedback in one place. That'll help me track and respond to it better than if it's scattered across different feature threads.

For this thread: if you're not in the runs test but have thoughts about a system like this - the concept of bonus rewards for maintaining streaks - that feedback is welcome here! Otherwise, a new thread for general quest feedback would be really helpful.

HELLLLOOO EVERYONE! Thank you for testing, and for those of you who were in the group and giving feedback! I anticipated growing this from 5% to 10% (and then further) after the first day, because it seemed pretty ready to me!

During testing, I've seen some runs that end up rewarding with billions of sP from the stacking of the benefits in a particular way, and then saving Saggi for last. Unfortunately, it wasn't my intention to start creating billionaires of everyone, so I had to roll those back 😂

So before I increase the percentage (and I've also added a soft cap on the prizes) I'm going to:

• Rebalance the bonuses
• Resolve some of the bonuses not working (currencies, it looks like?)

And I want to brainstorm a few more bonuses, things that could be added as prizes, maybe a % chance for a random stat (but I know that would freak battle people out!)