When the daily challenges update first came out, I called it the Forever Update.
I was convinced that this was going to stay relevant for a long time,
and to be fair it kind of did. But I think it's safe to say
that this enthusiasm has faded, and I want to talk about why that is.
I want to clarify that Cishshato probably doesn't watch my videos,
and even if they did, they wouldn't change something just because I asked for it.
Thus, the purpose of this video isn't to demand anything, nor do I
encourage anyone demanding updates. Part 1: The Psychological Problem
The first reason has to do with the daily challenge streak and how
streaks in general affect us psychologically. On the surface, streaks promote consistency.
Because we get attached to our streak as it grows and we don't want it to get reset,
we're more likely to try to keep it going, even on days where we don't feel super motivated.
However, if you get too invested into it, then this can result in seriously unhealthy habits,
which is something I and several other Entry Point players experienced.
An additional problem in EP is that receiving skins is tied to how many
daily challenges you have completed. Back when new tiers were being added,
the only way to get one of the new skins the day they came out was to maintain a perfect streak
since day one, which is what I had. Because I didn't want to fall behind,
doing the daily challenge became a permanent part of my daily routine.
One thing that happened sometimes is that it was like 30 minutes before the daily reset,
and all of a sudden I realized I hadn't done the daily yet.
This was kind of stressful, and I would just drop whatever I was
doing to try to finish the daily in time. There were also many times when I was supposed
to be working on something, but I wasted a bit of time doing the daily, which sometimes took
longer than expected. Until one day, I decided,
you know what, I'm done. I stopped doing the dailies.
And honestly, I felt so much better after that.
After that, I still kind of kept doing dailies just to finish the skins,
but it wasn't consistently. If a daily really sucked,
then I could just not do it. And if I forgot to do the daily one day,
then I didn't have to stress about it. It's crazy how much something as simple
as a number in a video game can affect us psychologically.
So, if you have a really long streak in Entry Point or any other game, my advice is to take
a break for a day; let it reset on purpose. That doesn't mean you have to quit permanently,
but rather, that you can't let a video game have control over your schedule.
That being said, this would've been less of a problem if the daily challenges had actually
been fun and refreshing every day. Which brings me to the next problem.
Part 2: The Practical Problem When the daily challenges update came out,
the first daily was great, and that's because the first few dailies
were actually manually chosen by Cishshato. After that though, the quality has been mixed.
The best dailies are those that add a layer of difficulty that forces you to play differently,
but in a way that can be mitigated by different strategies,
instead of just being plain annoying. Unfortunately, some of the modifiers are awful,
especially Inexperienced. Then there's challenges where
the modifiers are fine individually, but put them together and it's just a headache.
For example, in this daily, not only can you not bring a gun that's actually
good for taking out the gunship, but you can't bring grenades either.
It's also just unethical to mix explosive flashbangs with half health,
as then you can get one shotted. And then there's this abomination in the
Killhouse where you have to wait for 3 minutes. That being said, I feel like even the really
bad dailies were still interesting at first just because it was all new.
But because Cish didn't add more modifiers, eventually
every challenge became a slightly different repeat of something we'd already seen.
I also don't understand why Concept wasn't included in the daily challenge pool.
It's a cool mission that people usually forget about, so this would've been a good
way to familiarize people with it. Then there's Black Dusk stealth,
which aside from the escape, is probably the coolest mission in stealth.
I feel like it shouldn't have been removed from daily challenges
so long as the challenge counted as completed even if you got detected at the escape.
Overall, I think that opening Concept and Black Dusk stealth to daily challenges,
as well as preventing really bad modifier combinations
would've helped keep the update fresh for a bit longer.
Part 3: New Modifiers I really would've liked to
see more unique modifiers, even if that means they're a bit weird.
Even if it's obviously not happening, I came up with a few ideas of potential modifiers.
Number 1: Increasing Detection. The idea is that the detection rate starts
super slow, but it gradually gets faster. Once it's been a few minutes, depending on
the mission, the detection rate will be a lot faster than normal, though
it wouldn't increase indefinitely. Because getting a disguise can take a while,
the meta would be to take advantage of the super slow detection at the very beginning
to rush into the map undetected.
Then you can start completing objectives ASAP and get a disguise
in the middle of the mission to save time. This may be a weird modifier,
but it encourages unconventional strategies, which I see as a positive.
Number 2: Shorter Range. With this modifier, your weapons
have slightly less range than normal, and the damage dropoff starts at a smaller distance.
This means you have to be decently close to enemies to deal full damage,
or else it takes more shots than normal. It would be interesting to see how this would
change the strategy in missions where sniping is normally important, though I think it would be
unethical make this a modifier in the Score. Number 3: Darkness
This makes everything super dark, like the Nightmare Assault in the Killhouse.
This means that bringing a flashlight will actually be kind of useful for once.
Number 4: Delayed Detection With this modifier,
detection remains the same, but the suspicion meter lags behind by 1 second.
Whenever the suspicion meter shows up, this means an NPC has been detecting you for 1
second already. And if you see a 1 bar,
then that means the real suspicion meter was at 1 bar a second ago.
To prevent cheating, the audio would also be delayed.
While this doesn't get rid of the suspicion meter outright, it makes you have to guess
how far you've actually been detected, which is an interesting layer of difficulty.
Number 5: Stronger Shotguns I would've liked to see more
modifiers that have both a positive and negative aspect, like Glass Cannon.
Anyway, this modifier makes the 480 MCS have more range, more damage,
and a bit less spread as well. This makes the infamous shotgun
squads more dangerous, but it also makes the 480 MCS a lot more viable as a player.
Number 6: Restricted Room With this modifier, a room
that isn't normally restricted will become a restricted area, giving you a red status.
This would have to be specific to the mission and chosen in a way that it's balanced.
For example, this could apply to the garage in the Lakehouse, or this room in the Blacksite.
This is interesting because it forces you to either avoid
or be very careful in the restricted room. You may not necessarily like all these modifiers,
but the point is that there are a lot of potential modifiers that could've been added over time.
Part 4: Conclusion Because I don't want to
be negative for an entire video, I do want to give the update some credit.
The Daily Challenges update was not a failure and I don't intend to imply that.
On the contrary, it provided a bunch of much-needed content that was genuinely fun
for the most part for quite a while. By just about any standard or metric,
it was a successful update. However, I still think I was wrong
in my original assessment. Although it did add a lot of content,
ultimately, what keeps a game relevant in the long term isn't so much the amount of content
as it is consistent updates and maintenance: something that Entry Point severely lacks.
And that's the end of the video. Anyway, I'll see you guys next time.