Daily Quests in Overwatch - Group Editorial

A few months after release & Overwatch is still going strong. With updates to the hero roster, a new competitive mode, plenty of eSports tournaments, and many more features, this game's shelf life is looking good so far. Today, however, we touch on a feature we've seen in Blizzard games & elsewhere: Daily quests. The GosuCrew shares their ideas on how and if these should be implemented in Overwatch.







Leggerless

I’ve been burnt by dailies in the past beforehand across dozens of MMOs. Blade & Soul was my breaking point and made me realize how much I despised poorly designed dailies.

At its best, dailies provide objectives seamlessly blending into the game environment such as tasks you’ll do while playing the game as intended anyway. At its worst, it is an artificial content creator providing filler material until the next patch, expansion, or hyped game releases or determines balance by how often you log in and finish them. I’m reminded of this reddit comment when thinking about the bad side of dailies:

” Yeah, they're pretty tedious, but they're worth it for the gold and rep. They only take an hour or two per day, and then I can go do something fun. ” - /u/Taoiseach

If I were to see daily quests in Overwatch I’d have them part of what you’ll do anyway in the game, such as getting X eliminations or Y assists in a match, for extra experience. You get loot boxes faster, no overpowered boosts, and Overwatch stays like the Overwatch you love to play and watch!

ggHarsha

As someone who does not come from a community with dailies outside of "first win of the day," I see plenty of pros and cons for such a concept. Dailies can at their best, encourage the community to try and play as often as possible, but at their worst, they simply become a grind and annoyance to players.

If Overwatch were to implement daily quests, I would expect them to try using benchmarks such as hit 10,000 damage in a game or get 30 kills in a match. While the dailies would not be particularly difficult, they would grant the feeling of satisfaction once complete and perhaps make people consider playing more. Rather than an achievement, daily quests should feel like a supplement.

As far as rewards go, I would expect some sort of rotating reward system cycling between 150 gold and a sort of "mini" lootbox with 2 items instead of the regular 4. Some might argue that this is too little, but a daily quest shouldn't grant the same as leveling up, which takes around 90 minutes.



Here we see a Zenyatta in his natural habitat, ordering two daily quests.

SkyMach7

I would be in favor of daily events considering how well the summer games event went. However, perhaps weekly events would be better instead of daily to allow people a better chance to get things if they were exclusive items. I think if it was a simple "meet condition get coins" thing it'd be fine, however it wouldn't be very exciting.

I think a great way for blizzard to do daily events would be to offer a unique reward, like a card. Collect a certain number of cards for an epic unlock. It could be a diamond weapon skin or something similar. That way it's rewarding, but not exclusively time based. The unique item and paced rate of acquisition would keep players drawn in. Furthermore, you could make the reward a mystery. In 10 days collect 7 cards to trade in for a mystery gift. Seems exciting!

You could also have a separate shop specifically for this unique “card” currency. It could have rotating rewards that would be available for purchase for a certain period of time - this way you maintain the exclusivity factor but it's not quite as RNG based as the summer games skins.

I think that daily events can't hurt unless Blizzard makes them have exclusive rewards. If you only have 24 hours to get something and then it's forever gone, it would have to be something small that wouldn't generate interest or risk huge uproar. Consider that the lengthy summer games had some backlash. Now, imagine the epic American McCree skin having only a 24 hour window of availability.

I think the forums wouldn’t need a DDoS attack to be overloaded. If the acquisition condition was something small, like get 25 kills in a match as McCree, that would be alright. If it was something like get 7 headshot finishing blows on McCree in a single match...well. It’s a very tricky balancing game between letting many people get a reward but keeping its acquisition conditions challenging.

The bigger issue with daily events is that if they're unique and the rewards are desirable, people unable to play every day are sure to complain. Having weekly events I feel would be the best option, and allow for more epic rewards. Daily rewards work well in games with a heavy currency system. I feel as though Overwatch doesn't have enough content to purchase with currency quite yet considering how highly leveled a lot of players are.

Perhaps the answer is already here. The weekly brawls could easily get more traffic if they had some rewards tied to them. Let's say in the "We're all soldiers now" event, you had to do a certain amount of healing OR get a certain number of helix rocket final blows. That would help make the event rewards more attainable for the general public. The reward could be a Soldier: 76 exclusive item or a generic item.

This can also offer a safe way to make character specific rewards and acquisition conditions. Imagine if the daily reward challenge was to get 30 eliminations with Reaper - everyone would play Reaper! This can allow for some more engaging challenges and rewards.

Shye

I’m used to dailies in mostly WoW and Hearthstone. In WoW, my issue has always been that I feel kind of “forced” to do this content. I feel “forced” to play. Which can of course be a good thing as well, but that’s personally not what I want from a game. Daily quests or objectives can be, if done right, a very great way to keep people playing the game. But if done wrong, it can make people feel overwhelmed with the same tedious grind day in and day out. So, if this is something that is to be implemented into Overwatch, it really has to be done right. What I really do like is how Hearthstone has made the daily quest “rotation”. You can have a maximum of three quests, so you don’t actually have to log on EVERY day to do your “chores”.

As for rewards, I honestly have no idea. I think this is something that goes under the category “you can’t please everyone”, so a safe bet with some loot boxes or a bit of currency would probably be a nice choice. (Although just currency could probably become boring.)

But, considering all of this, I personally don’t think that daily quests/objectives are something that’s needed at the moment. The game is still fairly new, so as long as we keep getting updates (new heroes, maps etc.) we should be fine. (For now…)

Broeder

I hate to say it, but daily quests are a big part of why I keep playing certain games. Especially for the other Blizzard games I play, Hearthstone & Heroes of the Storm, it's the quests that keep me coming back. Part of this is fine, because I do enjoy those games and the quests help me get currency required to buy game content, but the flipside is that these days we seem to need another reason to play games besides 'because it's fun to do'.

I do want daily quests for Overwatch (because I'm weak) and I noticed this during the Summer Games. I hadn't played as much Overwatch as I did during the Games since the Closed Beta. All because I knew that playing during the Summer Games was more valuable than playing after/before it. If Blizzard plans on adding more, regular events like the Summer Games then I am fine with them leaving out quests, but I doubt they will start fitting in more than 3 of those in a given year.

As for what kinds of quests I would like to see... It's not quite as easy as one might think. The very reason quests work in Heroes and Hearthstone is so that players try out all the content the games have to offer; in Overwatch the possibility of changing your hero during a game actually produced the opposite effect. Players shouldn't ideally ever have a reason to play a reason that isnt the ideal pick. The double mention of ideal in that sentence does also tell us that in practice that effect is probably ignorable.

So to finish this off, a few quest suggestions:



Heal X amount of damage

Activate Y amount of Ultimates

Help move the payload Z meters



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