Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly Objectives Discussion (Live Service Games)

[ZedClampet]

Definition: So games that are generally considered "live service" games tend to offer objectives (and their rewards for completion) on a certain schedule in order to give players something to do and keep them from abandoning the game. If you've played a game that does this (or if you just have an opinion on it), I'd like to hear what you feel constitutes a good or bad objective system and anything else you'd be interested in adding to the discussion.

For me, these are rated from best to worst:


Warframe (Digital Extremes)
Note: Things may be different now since I last played it a couple of years ago. Warframe is the King of Live Service. Destiny 2 may have a few more players right now, but Warframe is 10 years old. The fact that it is usually not too far behind D2 is remarkable for its age. Warframe is all about its massive amount of endgame, but there is really only one timed objective. It's a daily mission to potentially get some of the finest loot in the game (the best of it can ONLY be gotten here). It would take some explaining but you could do this daily mission every day for years and the prizes would still be desirable. It's ingenious, actually. The mission only takes maybe 10 minutes. But that's all it needs to do. If you are a Warframe player, you'll want to log in once a day to run the sortie if nothing else. But the best part is that you don't have to. If you miss your random prize for the day, it's no big deal (you could even do it the next morning before it changes over). It's not building up to anything. It's just a daily prize. No pressure.

Edit to say that, depending on what you get from this daily mission, you may end up having more stuff to do.

Forza Horizon games (Turn10)
Forza updates it's objectives every week. There are a wide range of things you can do. You get prizes for doing each item, usually either a car or a prize wheel spin, and if you do enough objectives for the week, you get 2 valuable cars. If you do enough objectives for the month, you get two premium cars. You don't have to do all the objectives to qualify for the best prizes, and you can complete all the weekly objectives in maybe 2 hours if you are hardcore about it.

Basically, they give you fun content, great prizes, and it's completely non-stressful because it doesn't take very long. Guido and I did it for about an hour today and I got 2 super wheel spins and 4 new cars. Can't beat that. Another 30 minutes to an hour tomorrow, and we can quit for the week if we want to. It's a great system.

This is really the only reason I'm still playing the game. It's kept it fun.

Darktide (Fatshark)
I don't know if it's always going to be this way because the game is basically unfinished, but right now you have weekly challenges that would take you a minimum of about 8 hours a week. That's if you don't use Quick play to play a random mission. If you do use it, there's no telling how long it might take you, and there are some contracts you probably won't fulfill. That also assumes that you don't fail missions, which is a huge assumption. Meanwhile the prizes are just alright, and you probably won't want them at all once you get your max rank weapons.

It's not a good system, but it's not the worst, either.

Fallout 76 (Bethesda)
You will die of old age trying to complete Bethesda's quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily objectives. And if you don't spend a ton of time on them, you won't make it to the best quarterly prizes. This is actually the reason I quit Fallout 76. I damn well wanted those top quarterly prizes and it began to feel like a job with mandatory overtime. It was just way too much

 

[Pifanjr]

I liked how Hearthstone did it, because the daily quests were pretty easy and pushed you to see every aspect of the game. Common quests were to play as one of three classes, play a certain number of (specific) spells or minions (which promotes using certain strategies) or just play/win a game of a specific mode. In return you got either a card pack or a bunch of gold you could spend on new packs or new solo content.

You only got one daily quest a day, but you could have up to three active and you could reroll one every day, which was nice as well.

At some point they introduced a battle pass system and the daily and weekly quests just gave you progress on that, severely limiting the amount of rewards you got. I quit playing after that. I now only occasionally return to do the solo content.

 

[ZedClampet]

At some point they introduced a battle pass system and the daily and weekly quests just gave you progress on that, severely limiting the amount of rewards you got. I quit playing after that. I now only occasionally return to do the solo content.

This reminded me of Rocket League. When I first started playing, you could get a drop for doing just about anything, even playing a practice game against bots. Then they stopped that and went to a loot box (with real cash keys) and then to a battle pass type system. I basically didn't get anymore cosmetics after they moved to the loot boxes, and unlike serious players, I actually loved decorating my car. I just quit playing.

 

[Zloth]

I've seen a few of these. The only ones I've done have been for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, and I only did a couple of those. They were both really bland quests that gave really bland rewards.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I've seen a few of these. The only ones I've done have been for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, and I only did a couple of those. They were both really bland quests that gave really bland rewards.

I've done a couple accidentally. I was just looking for things to do to build up my XP and found out it was a timed challenge, or whatever.

Back when I used to play Rayman Legends, I did the daily and weekly challenges a lot. They were a lot of fun. I don't remember getting any real rewards for it, though. The draw of that game's challenges was mainly comparing yourself to other people in the community.

 

[Johnway]

I suppose Path of exile is a live service as they're new leagues every quarter, a battle pass on top of that. The battlepass i don't care, the items are far too specific to be of use.

That said the current league and the challenge rewards has made me go nuts as i dedicate nearly a month playing it. I should have stopped 2 weeks ago until the opportunity meant i could get the next 4 cosmetics by doing absolutely nothing and ride on the coat tails of other more successful players. Almost done... just need to splash the ingame currency one more time and i should be out...

i keep coming back to POE partly because of how each league makes the game so fresh enough to be different. So its doing something right, but the challenges can be irksome enough that i might call it quits for most of the leagues. especially now that i have some torso cosmetics.



The division 2 - Missed the boat on this one and the challenge time is way, way too tight for each of the operations. Nuts to that. I've got other games to play. The other problem was that i needed the warlords of new york expansion pack which i didn't get and yeah... buying the base game early burned me. But tbh, i don't think the game has enough content/variation to sustain my interest. As a horizontal gamer, The game doesn't sustain my interest compared to POE.




Chivalry 2 now has a battlepass so we're in live services terrortory. The good news is that even if you don't fork out cash, you get some of the rewards. Well... I say some rewards i mean only maybe half of it. If you paid the $20 you get a reward for each level of exp and a reward every 2 levels for free users. The good news is that its very, very easy to get exp in the battlepass. I found my progression with it faster then i was levelling up normally. The second piece of good news was that i got what i wanted from the entire battlepass for free. The third piece was that i was greatful for the extra free content.

That said, the battlepass is threadbare as a live service. i expect more maps etc otherwise its another multiplayer game on the way side. Not horrific compared to other live services but its starting to skirt towards it.

 

[Alm]

With Hearthstone you used to get 100 ish gold for completing your daily quests iirc. With the battle pass system it’s more like 75 gold.

With live service games in general, my main draw is keeping up skills but quest rewards do keep that more interesting.

I don’t think any system is perfect but I like earning cosmetics or in game currency and not feeling like the quests are too involved time-wise.

edit: if I want to put a lot of time into a game I usually pick a single player game

 

[Brian Boru]

Not something I've been aware of, but in my current trundle thru Far Cry 6 I have noticed maybe 3-4 screen prompts like "Community challenge completed".

I've ignored 'em cos FC6 has a habit of throwing useless info at me, but @ZedClampet it sounds like what you're talking about—you played FC6, so…?

 

[DXCHASE]

The one and only one i play that falls in this category currently is Destiny 2. It is far from perfect and has a bounty system that has become very stale and repetitive season after season. But its still a great looking and sounding sci-fi FPS space shooter (its 5 years old). As someone whos been playing religiously since its release in 2017, the reasons for me continuing to play are wildly different than other players with running a clan in game which includes my wife and son being the biggest reason. So theres more to the game than the game itself for me.

On top of that ive collected a huge majority of the loot the game has to offer and keeping that number up as the seasons goes up so i just want to keep adding to this lol. Cant fall behind!

Note: Things may be different now since I last played it a couple of years ago. Warframe is the King of Live Service. Destiny 2 may have a few more players right now, but Warframe is 10 years old. The fact that it is usually not too far behind D2 is remarkable for its age

I chalk this up to the fact that there are loyal fanbases dedicated to each game. Destiny 2 is 5 years old now with newer live service games out there and still sits in the top 10 on steam over all of them, only falling behind battle royale and MP games (Lost Ark is a fluke, it has a lot of bots). As much as its bounty/grind system is debated over, there is still a huge dedicated base of players that still come back season after season.

Darktide (Fatshark)
I don't know if it's always going to be this way because the game is basically unfinished, but right now you have weekly challenges that would take you a minimum of about 8 hours a week. That's if you don't use Quick play to play a random mission. If you do use it, there's no telling how long it might take you, and there are some contracts you probably won't fulfill. That also assumes that you don't fail missions, which is a huge assumption. Meanwhile the prizes are just alright, and you probably won't want them at all once you get your max rank weapons.

It's not a good system, but it's not the worst, either.

I 100% agree. The penances and objectives are really hard to pull off when you are being rushed through its boards and being attacked by hordes of enemies. Some of them make you play like a real jerk when you are playing with a full team too. I know they have private servers, or are bringing them, but the objectives need to be changed, or at least lessened (Complete 25 games within 1 or 2 days is always unobtainable for me for instance).

The division 2 - Missed the boat on this one and the challenge time is way, way too tight for each of the operations. Nuts to that. I've got other games to play. The other problem was that i needed the warlords of new york expansion pack which i didn't get and yeah... buying the base game early burned me. But tbh, i don't think the game has enough content/variation to sustain my interest. As a horizontal gamer, The game doesn't sustain my interest compared to POE.

Yea i hopped off this boat and i dont think i should have. I still belong to the Division 2 facebook page and regularly see posts of what is being done weekly and monthly in the game and i kinda wished i hadnt stopped so long ago. Its darkzone would just be impossible for me to do at this point lol.

 

[ZedClampet]

Not something I've been aware of, but in my current trundle thru Far Cry 6 I have noticed maybe 3-4 screen prompts like "Community challenge completed".

I've ignored 'em cos FC6 has a habit of throwing useless info at me, but @ZedClampet it sounds like what you're talking about—you played FC6, so…?

When I see the words "community challenge" I immediately zone out and erase it from my memory. Every time I've ventured to the com. challenges in a game, it's just been ugly. All that to say, I have no idea about community challenges in FC6, but I always ignore their other stuff too, like the Arcade from 5 or New Dawn or wherever it was. There were some side things in New Dawn I would have like to have done, like that guy who would put you on an airplane and take you to a mission, but Guido's favorite words are "Is this a main mission?" He's not one for side activities. I have to force him to do them.

 

[Brian Boru]

Arcade from 5

That's not bad, but you need to research some articles or videos before diving in—there are thousands of maps, and many are broken. This is the only note I have on it—I played maybe a dozen or so, they were ok but nothing that would draw me in.

New Dawn … that guy who would put you on an airplane and take you to a mission

Now those are good, well worth doing—they're 7 special levels outside the game map.

 

[Johnway]

Yea i hopped off this boat and i dont think i should have. I still belong to the Division 2 facebook page and regularly see posts of what is being done weekly and monthly in the game and i kinda wished i hadnt stopped so long ago. Its darkzone would just be impossible for me to do at this point lol.

Honestly i thought their various events were a bit meh tbh. it seems to be the same rinse and repeat process of hunt target each week and if you get all of them you take on the HVT. I believe the ops just rotate currently. I had kinda hoped that there was more locations to visit or story content as there's very little to keep me interested. I did go into the dark zone early and honestly i couldn't even kill anything in them (that was even despite in the DZ you're juiced to max level). So i spent less then an hour there. Shame, would have been interesting to explore i guess, but the enemies became absolute bullet sponges and i was losing patience.

Edit, the other thing that might have kept me going would have been cosmetics, if you were a free player expect to never get any cosmetics. Even the free stuff and the fact that you can get duplicates is just a middle finger in the players face. Honestly when it came to aesthetics, i preferred to have a more civilian look, for some reason being completely decked out in awesome miltary gear felt off especially when its during the collapse of society as a whole.