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Project Quest
There is a project that we are currently working on which, in good ol' Holy Celestine Empire fashion, has been dubbed Project Quest. It is not only a rather massive undertaking but also something which is not officially mandated. It is quite frankly a pet project and we are not interested in tying ourselves to a deadline. There is a sleek, comprehensive spreadsheet involved though and, as Havens people can attest, nothing keeps my interest better than stats and charts.
The project consists of three phases which in short are:
1) catalogue all the quests already in the quest system (the one accessed by QUESTS)
2) convert existing quests into the quest system
3) re-evaluate rewards and other minor issues for all the quests in the system
Phase 1 was a bit daunting with 18 fields to fill out per quest and a wealth of places to jump around for information but we are 82% done. You can see the result of some of that in Changelog 986, which includes the noticeable changes. You will also notice that almost all quests now list the giver and associated area as well - that is something we made sure to add while cataloguing. We've also been fixing some issues with quests not being visible (despite existing and being doable), having no or bad descriptions, etc.
We'll be slowly moving to Phase 2 soon but it is not something we are likely to need your assistance with because we have very good quest lists of our own. You have been sending Ianir lists of quests which you would like to use for guild tasks so we have that to go over too. Once we exhaust all of these lists we will ask you for more ideas.
Which brings us to Phase 3 and this post. We will only be doing some heavier rebalancing once we have a clear picture of everything (Phase 1 and 2 done) but far as I can tell already there will, at the very least, be some extensive tweaks to XP and gold some quests reward. Tweaks for the better of course! We'll be looking at ikons, curios, blessings, etc., too.
So this is where you come in. This thread will be here for updates, queries, feedback, but also info from you. We want to keep cataloguing these issues even as we work on Phase 2. Mind you, we are not looking for information about bugs. We know where those demons lie very well and they are being worked on. We are also not looking for information about whose epic quest sucks the most or how we should totally rebalance the whole Sea Battle. That is a whole other thing that this project will not be distracted with and you can expect such posts to go the way of Ned Stark's head. You have been warned.
So what we would like to hear:
- quests which give too small or too large XP/gold rewards
- quests which could thematically award some type of ikon but don't, or they do but shouldn't!
- quests which give blessings which need an upgrade or downgrade - based on quest difficulty/length etc.
- quests which give no rewards
- quests which don't give an honour but you think they should (because of how hard/long they are)
- anything else you can think of that does not involve changing the nature of the quest
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(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
Oh, and that quest to help the trill hybrid guy repair his balloon to access Lirangsha!
I'm a consent-based roleplayer! Kindly ask first, and I will return the favour. Open to developing tinyplots.
Atlantis is my client of choice! (Guide)
Maybe add ikons to the Fink and Gnome quests in Newton? I'm not sure if any of the sets are great fits, but it'd be a good way to introduce them to new people.
Both sides of Mornhai should probably give vernal ikons if they don't already. I can't remember if they do or not.
re: Mornhai - good idea re: ikons, will consider
re: Deitrii - his quest is what we call a pocket expansion and while areas will always be associated with honours, pockets don't always do. It generally depends on how much work goes into completing a pocket's quest which is hard to gauge due to all the variables involved. The rule of thumb is that it should take +/- an hour, maybe 40min if you know it well. From a brief glance it looks like that one might qualify. It currently rewards xp and gold on completion, and eats your xp if you fail
re: Fink & Gnome - we did not add ikons to those on purpose as we felt it might be too distracting and confusing at that point. At the moment, ikons are usually introduced to new players when they start doing their org quests (power, essence, etc) and get enough points. We are considering adding them at the college level though, perhaps when you complete the last quest and graduate with honours.
The Tosha monastery lotus/pilgrim quest (which I think qualifies as a pocket expansion) requires the same amount of influencing as the Tosha pits honors quest, and only gives a gold/xp reward. I'm biased, but I think it's worth an honors line, or at the very least a Vernal ikon.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
re: Ikons in general. There has been a Kephera set planned but never began. We might get to it but there's others we'd like to look at first, one of which has been sitting half finished. It has been a while since anyone made new ikons though and it's a challenge to keep sets well-balanced (though the system does help balance it all on its own). We'll definitely want to finish this first before getting into that though.
re: village quests in general. Villages always award honours and some are definitely easy once you know them well. Acknor has been tweaked to not be so easily farmed but now it's almost never done at all (also going to be looked at). We might look at Ixthiaxa being a bit too easy too.
re: Tosha pocket. Will add it to our list.
Am I going crazy, or did it get removed?
This is awesome! The fix to beggars is wonderful.
- One thing that would be nice would be for the generic blessings to stack.
- I don't think the Throne of Urlach gives vernal curios or vernal ikons, that would be a nice addition.
- (common Mag complaint) It's my understanding that the Spire gives vernal curios for fixing it, but very little for destroying it. It would be nice if we got something for the other side.
- Opening the catacombs might be tough-ish for someone who doesn't know what they are doing, but it is real easy otherwise. Vernal curio+blessing+undead released (okay, the undead aren't a big deal) seems like a lot.
- It's my recollection that these random quests in the mountains (Sleghi, Rasebal, etc.) give blessings that are almost negligible for the effort required. It would be cool (and doesn't seem game-breaking) if the blessings were beefed up.
- There's a large gap in difficulties of village quests, but it seems like they all give essentially the same reward.
My impression is that in general, gold rewards are low enough now that they can be essentially disregarded. If you are out for gold, questing is almost never your best bet.
re: Catacombs. Funny story, the Catacombs have been even 70% easier before a fix a few years ago, an easily overlooked operator mistake. Quests which award curios will be looked at with extra scrutiny in Phase 3.
re: Spire. Agreed on the tangible unevenness but taking it down is easier than putting it up, hence lower rewards, also would not make sense to reward Soulless curios there sadly. We can look at something else though (ikons at least, more xp, etc) and we have talked in the past about adding extra ways of keeping the Spire down. Way down the line though, with the size of staff we have and the amount of plates we're spinning, not eager to make promises just yet.
re: Throne. It's not in the system yet so I can't look it up quickly but definitely should be giving something Vernal once we get to it.
re: Raseball. Completion gives 2x dmp_divinus. We're gathering info on blessings as well because we might need to adjust them post-Overhaul. Frankly, I have no idea how good or bad 2x dmp_divinus is at this point and when we get to Phase 3 we'll need pros weighing in.
re: village quests. There's a very large disparity in the XP and gold they award actually. To give you an example, Delport awards the most XP (142.5k), while Dairuchi is amongst those who award the least (10k). Gold-wise, Talthos awards the most (10.7k), and Rikenfriez the least (250).
While most quests are not good for money at all (highest being Nightmarket with 35k and with good reason for it), it shouldn't necessarily be so. Bashing/influencing will almost always be better (and vastly level dependant) but gold rewards in quests were not meant to be an afterthought. Back before all the inflation, Paavik awarding 5k was a good deal as that was the worth of one credit on the market. It's unlikely we'll suddenly make Paavik give you 20k but it is my hope, with this project, to make questing more rewarding and enjoyable, and a passable alternative.
Another thought I had, it would be nice if there was a column on the Quests list that mentioned a minimum average level (with the gauge being someone with minimal buffs and few to no arties) it would be suited for. Or some way to allow newbies to be aware that we have a Quests list for them to consult right off the bat. I've had newbies in the past ask about quests beyond Newton, and always just send them to Toronada or Tolborola since that's where I started out, but I think there's probably more out there for them.
I'm a consent-based roleplayer! Kindly ask first, and I will return the favour. Open to developing tinyplots.
Atlantis is my client of choice! (Guide)
Other good options for novices who ask for quests:
Golden Salmon-requires bashing elemental
Estelbar and Stewartsville-basic influence/finding stuff and a logic puzzle.
Clarramore Swans(?)-I think no combat or influencing, but I might be forgetting a section.
If you want people to use QUESTS to find quests to do, it might be good to include ratings or reviews so it doesn't feel like you have to pick at random.
I'm a consent-based roleplayer! Kindly ask first, and I will return the favour. Open to developing tinyplots.
Atlantis is my client of choice! (Guide)
Re: Sileni. Will check when not on my phone. If it doesn't it is likely that it's not time and effort consuming enough (see above).
EDIT: No, doesn't have an honour, and doesn't seem to have a reward presently beyond lore.
Re: Quest system upgrades. Adding level brackets or anything of the sort is outside the purview of this specific project. We have considered trying to gauge a suitable level for each quest when starting our spreadsheet but ultimately decided it is already complex enough and that is not our purpose. The moment we start expanding the scope, we extend the time spent on this and it is already significant. There is good news though, we have discussed this and it is among the various features on our wishlist (along with categories and tags).
Already few quests in, I am confident that some things may end up being set on fire and a few admin may need to be admitted to the Havens ward for frustrated volunteers by the time we're done. In theory, this is a really easy undertaking because it involves making a quest in the system, finding two important spots in the code (start and finish), smacking the quest system on top of them, and prancing off into the sunset.
Unfortunately, ignoring other major changes, finding the spots always means rewriting them (often very radically) since the mobdialogue system is our standard now. At the very least we should easily guide the player into the quest with its help, even if later they have some figuring out to do on their own. For lower-level quest we also offer some hints (should the player have these on), including dialogue hints pertaining to what you could inquire about.
Now, old quests, they don't give a Kethuru's tentacle about that. Who needs hints? Some of them are like point and click adventures from the early 90s. If you happen to talk to this person about that other person you might find out that they like apples and if you give this random thing to someone else, they might give you a thing to trade to yet someone else for something that you then put into something and get an apple! And sometimes that's okay because it is meant to be a hard quest and you need to use all of the quest tools at your disposal to figure out who, what, and where. You will note we have made fewer of those in the last few years (*cough*and still sometimes people have problems because they often don't read what the mob says at all*cough*).
Questing is a skill some people say, and that's true. You need to know that it's worth greeting a mob a few times (especially for older quest), that it's worth mentioning everyone's names to everyone, and asking everyone about some of the things they or others mention (keywords), and then go do that all over again once you move onto a new stage of the quest in case they have new info for you now. You need to make connections, investigate, and push, pull, turn, touch, open, close, use all those verbs and more on whatever objects you divine as being there from reading descriptions really carefully.
It's not easy, it's not always meant to be, but sometimes it's really asking you for nothing short of omniscience and that is my question for today. What are the quests that you had a really hard time figuring out or perhaps still haven't? Be careful with spoilers please!
Highwater was briefly hard to figure out at the point where you have to kill a dude who has a diary page. It was not clear that he had to die and the initial attack message made him sound kind of like he was immune to attacks.
And yes, the guy is actually immune until you give him the thing! I'll pass it along.
The Glinthor quest is in the system and I still can't figure out how to wake him up.
I don't know what to do for the Lucidian side of Plaxios at its current state, and I don't know how to do the first half of the Taerin quest (I have the line, but only because I encountered it halfway done).
I for one am super grateful for any work done on the questing system. It's my favorite part of the game!
re: Taerin - also being eyed for improvements.
re: Glinthor - I remember cataloguing these and both sides need to be woken up. We'll have a look at whether or not there is enough evidence/hints on how to do that.
re: Djarrakh - therein lies despair and madness. I never figured it out as a mortal and having looked at it as an admin I am still left with a bewildered look on my face. Props to people who figured it out on their own.
There's this supposed quest in the plaxios lowlands ( I'm not even sure if there really -is- a quest ) where none of the npcs involved gives you any hint as to what you should be doing if you don't want to help the lucidian side ( the something Oakvine denizen just goes on about not letting the lucidians proceed, but nothing else could be procurred ).
A couple specific examples I have in Seren (just cause that's what I'm most familiar with) would be gathering the music sheets from the elfen wandering the treetop shops. Part of the old SS quest, which was probably most of the reward, besides a pittance in gold. But if there's no more SS connection, maybe that gold could be slightly more worthwhile?
Also coming to are the sick plants you give to Abeytu, which he does pay you for, but then it triggers some kind of defunct quest from the early days of Lusternia involving watering a tree, endlessly. For basically no reason at all, and no reward whatsoever. It takes a while to figure out this one isn't even really a quest anymore unless somebody tells you. But maybe it could be?
Today's least helpful quest award goes to Toronada Tidal Flats. The horror...