[Posted an initial stab at this subject over on Kong with good response, but wrote a new version to hopefully post in the next AMA. Won't be able to participate during the live portion this week, so hopefully someone will forward this along if they think it a valid question. Thanks].

Hey there,

Re-jigging all the challenges to have thier difiiculty-ramping be equal to World's Wake and Event campaigns has created a couple of problems/disapppointments.

First, it means that a player who is still building himself up to be able to crack the harder campaigns will now be able to run on those campaigns before he's able to do so normally, and collect hundreds of areas worth of silver chests - chests that won't be there as a reward for finally cracking those campaigns on the normal objective difficulty. I would suspect this will result in something of a let-down, making finally playing that campaign not so exiting as it should have been.

Second, and this is the one that effected me, it meant that even as i was getting to the point where i thought i could make a run all the way to the invincible boss on area 1660 of Michief at Mugwarts - thus breaking about 250 areas of new ground and establishing the 'highest area' stat at it's ceiling - a challenge came up using that formation in which i was able to run all the way to an invincible boss on area 2060! (as with WW and Events).

I now have a listed 'higest area' stat 400 areas higher than i can actually reach on a MaM freeplay. And, when i did do that run to the 1660 ceiling, it turned out to be completely pointless and surprisingly disappointling since all those chests i should have been seeing as i broke new ground were already gone and it didn't feel like accomplishing anything at all - even the 'invincible' boss area had no chest icon to tease me with since it had been removed by the easier challenge run. In fact, until the limit gets raised to e600 i might never see another chest icon on MaM again.

Bottom line - having a challenge version of a permanent campaign formation has completely removed all the fun and satisfaction from ever running a freeplay on that campaign again.

The best way to fix this, and retain the difficulty-setting that allows even those that can only play on WW to still do all the challenges, would be to (please) take all the challenges using permanent campaign formations and change them to use some of the many as yet unused event formations instead. May as well change even the one that uses the WW formation - as it is just more fun to play an event formation that would otherwise pop up only once a year (instead of a formation we can play with anytime we want).

For me, it is, as you say, "personal satisfaction" of course. A matter of order, consistency, and completeness. One goal i have is to be able to reach the highest areas before the next time they get raised (so if i'm playing them only once a year, it's nice to have some feeling of accomplishment).

It's also aesthetic. On WW, it's always that final area with the chest icon that alerts me to the fact i'm on the final area (since i know i've already gone as far as possible on that one). [No, i often CAN'T read the numbers if i've the wrong or no glasses on because i'm doing something else.]

So far as collecting the chests, i find it "fun" to see them as evidence of going through new areas i haven't passed before (since the areas repeat, the chest icon is the only indicator).