HP Challenge Beta Review: Tiers 1+2

Greetings,

As a wielder of the mighty Maple M Playphone and completer of the current iteration of the HP Challenge questlines, I thought I'd weigh in with a few of my prevailing thoughts while running through it. I decided to create a new thread for this as the old one has gotten quite rusty and feel it relevant to make a dedicated spot for other users to share their thoughts/experiences running through it. Feel free to add your thoughts below. Please note that this isnt intended to be a guide, though you may find some helpful insight. I'll try not to make it too direct with spoilers, but if you want to experience the questline and its mechanics blind yourself, come back later.

I've decided to compose this after completing the blind run-through on one character, but plan to grab the phone on my 2nd account, which I believe would provide insight into what the future of the challenge would look like, once users know how to progress. My thoughts before then will be speculation of said experience.

Relevant Character Info:
Class: Bucc
Level: 200
Solo/group: Solo
Blind/Guided: Blind

Background Info (for users mostly):
We are initially presented with a checklist of tasks to accomplish: complete 3 of the "optionals" from a small list, complete the "job quests", and complete the "custom questline" to advance an HP tier. Status of each of these is available with a '!challenge' command.

The optional tasks are what they were before with little to no changes. Tasks such as "use x scrolls", "do x type of quests", "discover x (specific but unknown) maps ". One of the tier 1 tasks is to attend 5 weddings, while another is to pass 10 100% scrolls. It's not the biggest thing to complain about, but some of them are definitely worse than others, and will likely see users gravitate towards those and largely ignore others. It did seem like there was a bit of nuance between the tier 1 and tier 2 optional choices, though. We shall have to wait and see if there's enough variation to make it feel unique.

The "job quests" are where the "do x damage" type tasks were placed. I've only done the two for marauder right now, one with energy blast (currently bugged to still be drain) and one with energy drain. These two were mostly still doing damage or indirectly caused by doing damage, though I don't fault this as I question how unique one can make these. I'd imagine the intent is to get out there and grind using these skills, but I still just took the shaolin dummies approach as always for Tier 1, while Tier 2 I was actually able to complete it while doing the questline (more on that later).

Finally, the "custom questline" provides you with a quest in a new tab right at the top of your quest log. Your task is to follow that questline to its completion. This is where a little bit of custom lore gets dropped, using some of our beloved NPCs and monsters. The first questline starts with Vikin in Lith, while the second starts with Muse in Aquarium. Most of the following discussion will center around these quests.

Tier 1:
Overall, I can see where much of the development time went. The questlines have a few new maps, a few new items and NPCs with new dialog, and even makes use of some of those mechanics introduced in previous patches (like feeding the doll pop-up from halloween last year). I'd say Tier 2's quest had more in the way of new mechanics, however.

As a player experiencing it blind, I'm not surprised many users simply get stuck on the first task (finding some coins in the Kerning Swamp). There's very little to go off of, both in terms of where in the swamp to search, and how we are expected to search. Is is a drop from the ligators? Is it a shiny coin like that from Dunas2? Do we need to break the grass? Without spoiling *where* to look, there is actually a hidden NPC somewhere in swamp that you'll need to mouse over. Don't worry, its not as hopeless as that sounds, and I focus on this one in particular as this is the very beginning and the player has not yet been trained to consider hidden NPCs as something to look for in accomplishing these tasks. Once the guides get out there, this becomes even less of an issue, but its still worth highlighting.

After that initial hurdle, the rest of the quest played out as expected. There were a couple of minor puzzles that will probably confuse some players, such as where to go when the dialog seemingly stops. Those can usually be solved by consulting the quest log or talking to nearby NPCs because you never know what may turn up. I believe the quest log was generally helpful for guidance except for Ant Tunnel scene, where I believe it made reference to an NPC leaving the tunnel. The text makes sense afterwards, but it did confuse me in the moment of whether I was supposed to follow into or out of the tunnel. Speaking of the tunnel scene, I wonder if a setting up a simple timer would be possible. I felt it was lacking any kind of urgency for what it was depicting.

More important than the minor plot details, however, are the mechanics/difficulty/whatever else. I have not been able to get a clear answer on the intended difficulty/time to complete of these tiers. Thus, I cannot say for certain how well it hits the mark without knowing what the mark even is! That is probably my biggest issue with these challenges. These first 2 tiers start to give the impression that they can be completed in maybe a week or two. The first tier is by far the easier, and give the impression of being like a level 40 quest (minus the final boss, which feels like a level 70). It actually involves nothing of traditional quest substance, and it probably took me just as long to complete at level 200 as it would have at level 100. It was mainly talking to NPCs, killing some red drakes for a few minutes, grabbing a very small assortment of items, and a casual stroll through the ant tunnel. I didnt actually time my progress, but I probably spent like an hour-ish casually reading through and figuring out where to go to complete the quest. Know that I know what to do, I could probably expect to do it in 30 mins, give or take. Add in a bit of dummy punching if im not grinding and some owls/scrolls, and I'm ready for tier 2! Quite underwhelming for anything other than an introduction. I think the questlines overall need more item hunting/monster killing, but I also think the ideal way to fix this Victoria Island questline is to reduce its level to 70. That gives some focus for the 3rd job damage quest, provides a good introduction point to the challenges right at 3rd job advancement, and makes killing the few Victoria mobs you do a bit less of a joke, while still possibly standing a chance against the boss (lower its damage if needed). I cannot stress this enough, I think it would take me longer to get an ellin ring casually than to do the first challenge tier. I have no idea if that's the intent, but I'd be overall unimpressed if it was, especially with how long/fragmented the development time is.

Tier 2:
This one is the more interesting of the two questlines, as you actually have to do a bit more than grabbing a paltry sum of bananas and friends. It also takes longer to do, as a meaty kill quest finally makes its return. Due to its targeted nature of hunting specific mobs, I actually think it took me longer to do than the ludi 7k solo, but I dont think that's a complaint. It might feel dry, boring and artificially pads its length, but its also the cornerstone of all questing in this game. Killing things, looting things, and bringing them places. As far as I'm concerned, all of the other cool mechanics and toys are flavor text to playing the game. I enjoyed feeding the bird, capturing fish souls in a stealth mission, but it also had less sense of completion compared to killing the mobs or finding the tooth from the drake. There's likely a good balance to be had here, especially as being bombarded with the kill quest after 1.5 questlines of meh was quite a tonal shift. In my head, the killing quests encourage party play, looting common etcs encourage economy, and the questline itself is a counterbalance to simply multiclienting your way through the kills. Right now, the needle is too far towards focus on the quest itself though, and that's also what likely takes the longest to create. Birb was fun, but the "challenge" of HP challenge won't be in feeding the birb. Outside of the kill quest (and box RNG), the second quest is probably only marginally longer than the first.

Note on quest structuring:
I had imagined the questline to be the "juicy in-between" of the actual challenging content in the traditional gameplay loop. Have a large quest of killing, looting, what-have-you (ideally by interacting with other players), and then a cool-off of exposition/lore/travel/minor tasks. Repeat a few times between these larger quest "checkpoints" and we've got a challenge quest. Perhaps we've only seen the easy levels and they get more engaging as we go. Or perhaps I simply have a different vision in what I want.

tl;dr I do feel that overall the project has good potential and has that Legends feel, but I must keep asking the question: should these be taking considerably less time to complete than a card tier? Actual relevance of the HP numbers aside, this is supposed to be an alternative path to voting for years, where you play a character at full power (which is also what the monster book ring was supposed to do years ago).