I've been working my way through the Maze Engine story/campaign and it's getting slower and slower. After the first three "chapters" you are asked to complete a daily quest for five days before the next chapter is unlocked. Then, after the next two chapters, you are asked to do ten days of the campaign daily quest to unlock the next bit of the story... and so on and so forth.
It's an obvious, annoying ploy to stretch out the amount of time for which the module will keep people busy, and yet I can't entirely blame Cryptic for choosing this route. In Underdark, they allowed us to play through the whole story in one go - and we did. Then I at least saw that the rest of the campaign consisted of grinding annoying heroic encounters and decided not to bother.
Inserting the grind in slightly smaller chunks between story chapters seems more palpable, but at the same time I can't help but think that there must be a better way...
There are certainly alternatives, but I'm not sure I prefer them to the current method. Here are a few possibilities:
ReplyDeletea) how it is now. Time gate with low difficulty
b) Grind gate where you must collect x whatever to open next task. This is the current method used by the Elemental Node collection or the method for acquiring enough Linus for the last Tyranny boons.
c) No gate. Everyone slams content as before, then complains after that there's nothing to do.
d) Difficulty gate. No time/currency grind needed but all missions are frustratingly difficult to pass, which will lead people to yell Pay to Win and such.
It's a tricky problem. :P