Way to bump an old thread... And this topic has been discussed already. The devs never intended spies to be a big part of the game. For this reason, they do not plan on implementing spy quests. Spies are meant to be secondary to attack buildings.
Devs may not have meant it but spies are now a very important part of the game and the devs need to acknowledge it. No point sitting under the covers yelling loudly and saying spies are not important. They are important and vital to this game and will continue to be so unless devs nerf it Spies add a greater dimension to this game and the tactics. Yes the OSF was not something they wanted but it happened and they tried to combat it in a lot of ways but there are still OsF around. So given that - why not add spy quest? Doesn't hurt to add stuff like it does it?
No support. Quests give such crappy plunder even at the hardest one. Some may argue that the crystals are worth doing the quests. You would make more doing ebs then doing quest and getting a few token xtals
Devs have nothing against OSFs. They've even said as much. What gave you that impression? They are still around in their original role, if not having a monopoly on that role anymore. As for "they will be vital until nerfed", you sound like the majority of the community back when they nerfed Assassin gold income from steals and increased gold from steals on Scouts and Rogues, and everyone thought they were trash for a bit after that. Or after the gold lost from steals was nerfed and gold loss from attacks was increased to compensate, etc. Spies have always been borderline overpowered and their last big change was a buff to assassinations if I'm not mistaken. They've even recieved Quality of Life things that weren't even required such as scouts showing the win percentage with and without pots instead of just at the moment. To address your "why not add spy quest? Doesn't hurt to add stuff like it does it?", for starters, OSFs/OAFs are for gold income, and attack/steal wins. Spy quests would not even come close to income from steals, and would only grant quest "wins", which are considered by some to weigh less than spy or attack actions in calculating for the overall leaderboard (although GaW suggests quests have good weight versus battles, that's a separate game). Income and wins aside, let's look at what spy quests would do: -Espionage Quest Mastery: Yes sirree bob. Get your crystals, get them while they're hot, more crystals for everyone...Everyone is going to support more crystals, save conspiracy people that believe the devs would never do this just because more 'free' crystals = less income from IAP sales. To that arguement, quests basically are like an In App Purchasing free trial. They get people to see the worth of crystals and get people to seriously consider them if they were not before. -Nobility Grinding: Oh boy. Are you giving nobility grinders an entirely separate resource bar to grind nobility off of? Do you know what you're saying? This is going to both devalue nobility (possibly leading to decreased gold from turn ins), and increase the spam in world chat. Many accounts entirely just grind nobility just for speakers, and you'd be effectively doubling the speaker allowance of these players. Not sure if that's entirely a bad thing, as conversation comes as well as advertisements, but this also devalues the 5 speakers daily people recieve. -Effects on the Battle List: Yes, I said it. You know that long forgotten and rarely used battle list? It's used at the early levels due to people not having defense/spy defense potions, and then rarely at all by attack builds later as they're told off, but spies are invisible. Spies are ones that stay on the battle list for a longer period than attack builds, and yet because of spy defense potions they too are heavily discouraged from making too many forays, but they're there. Spy quests would remove "someone stole x from you!" from those still getting those in their newsfeeds. You might say epic battles have already done this, but epics are not being done 24/7, not every clan does epics, or epics constantly, and there are those who are either independant of clans, own very small clans, or roam a lot. Attack heavy builds would just spam spy quests either for mastery and later for nobility, and pure spies would minimum try to get full mastery, and later weigh the pros versus the cons for taking a risk stealing versus safe questing. This "harmless addition" would punish build choices less and encourage passivity and pve more in an originally nigh pure PvP game (quests originally had no mastery, and availible quests depended on your combined, not mastery). ------------ Now, here you might say: PiMD and GaW (other ATA games) both have effectively quests, and both 'troops' and 'spies' can do them. Why can't we get something like that here? Ok, I'm so very glad you asked. The difference between there and here are several. For starters, you'll notice that attack actions also drain the spy bar, and vice versa. This means you only get 1 round of quest unloads (or only can do one full attack unload or one full steal unload, but not both), and only 1 set of quests. This means you can forget the doubled "free" crystals, as quests would just be using the current line. Now, here you are likely to say: That's fine. Spies can just use the existing quest line. Most of the quests seem like spy actions anyways in their description. The issue here is two fold. First, crystals as stated would not be the issue as much as nobility. You would still see the doubled nobility income and what that brings (see above), and would also effectively now increase your mastery clear by nearly double (depending on build composition). Also, you'd see dynamic questing, such as an attack heavy build working on the last quests in his mastery line and his spies on nobility grinding, and vise versa for spy heavy builds. This isn't neccessarily bad, but again, encourages passivity. None of those actions are hitting another player, nor are clan members involved. You might be convinced that the game isn't very PvP-like anymore if it ever was, but the game is social, and this kills that. Also, look at the new players. For a new player, quests are amazing/seem the thing to do up until someone hits them on the back of the head, possibly gives them a volley, gets them in a clan, gets them to do epic battles or at least max plunder and hit players smartly, etc. If they don't get contacted by that player though, they are going to miss out on the majority of the game, and quests here are not like other ATA games. They scale in difficulty rapidly, and the pay is terrible for the risk / stats required. Slow growth and the odd outside hits in isolation is going to lose the game players, and doing this encourages such play on the new players of the game. You could argue that's the players fault for not finding a clan in world chat or forums, but you forget that they're NEW, and not everyone knows everything at the start. Some people have to be guided through the process of applying to a clan, assuming they even realize to look at their wall or ally chat, much less looking in world chat and walling someone else. You could argue the income and difficulty of scaling of quests is out of balance and needs to be reduced in difficulty and/or increased in income so they're comparable to PiMD/GaW. For starters, while it sounds like a good idea, and it very well may be, this both encourages passivity (bad thing. already talked about), and later on discourages questing as you break the rapid mastery (not neccessarily bad, but will also discourage/make those who "earned" mastery feel cheated/jaded about the reduction). You could also say: But Corinthian, PiMD and GaW have those higher income and lower difficulty according to you. Why not give it here? Very simply, those 2 games do not have epic battles, and this is the solution for the time being. Also, due to mechanics there, OSFs do not exist or are what you and I might call hansels, and so better paying jobs/quests are somewhat essential (apologies on not speaking about FC, I haven't played it in some time). As for if they'll ever get a system like epic battles, or if we'll get better income/lower difficulty quests, I cannot say. -------------- All of this stated, I'd be against spy quests myself, and don't see them being implemented past epic battles, especially since troops/spies are NOT on the same resource like PiMD/GaW. Double unloads in itself is too big of a difference/unintuitive(compared to other game mechanics) and having troops/spies both drain on quests would be both odd and discourage those questing on the side whilst spending spies on an enemy (you know what I mean). Pardon the long post, TL/DR: I'm against spy quests.
This has been suggested and shot down many times before. So: a) It's a bad idea. b) At least think of something original :twisted: