Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Sounds like a fun quest, reminds me of the Archeage chain that results in the "Friend of Giants" title.
I did that on every character I made in that game, just because the title was rare back when I played.
Most games (though not all) would break that down in to several small quests that are each a part of the larger quest line.
However, even if it is one quest, in a discussion like this we can talk about each task as an individual concept, and discuss whether we like them or not individually, even if we like the quest (or quest chain) as a whole.
Completely agree. And a few quests - from a few different games - come to mind immediately.
Sadly though, I do see this sort of thing happening in Ashes and Intrepid being OK with it (player agency and all that).
To me, an acceptable (even if not ideal) situation if such quests are to be in a game is if the quest journal lets you know others will be able to sabotage your progress at some point in the quest or quest chain. At least with that, players know what they are getting themselves in to before they invest too much time.
That is obviously a fetch/kill questchain though?
Reward: character development
If there must be such a quest I'll prefer it to be meaningful.
Like a quest where NPC that hold a shop is very embraced because a few day ago his supply has been attacked and he has nothing to sell anymore.
( player that come and go will make it feel like they are unhappy customers)
Because you look strong and gentle he ask if you could go reclaim some of his supply.
To do so you'll need to kill 3 types of mobs and get 5 item from each of them.
The weakest have a low chance of drops because they hadn't all a chance to get something of the plunder. ( may need to kill 15-20 of them)
Most of the fastest and sneaky one got there hand on something ( 5-10 to get the items)
The strongest have for sure got something out of the plunder and some more than one thing.
(5 will be enough to get quest items. Got a 1% chance to get a good loot)
Once you get back to the NPC he will open his shop to you and you'll have to chose between 5 of the basic stuff he sell. + some xp and gold.
The whole quest didn't get you enough gold to buy everything you could need ( at least if you had got lucky for the quest loot. If not you killed more so you may have enough to buy the whole basic stuff.)
You'll need to do others quest for sure to get the gold for the best equipment the NPC sell.
This is a way a prefer if I need to kill mobs , make me stay longer in the area and not on the way between to zone and the npc ...
Formerly T-Elf
I think that they would be okay, if the player that started it could then share the group quest, and the people can do it for as long as they are in a party.
Repeated dailies/weeklies/whatever. Shallow gameplay that detracts from the world as a whole. An adaptive world should never be lacking for context appropriate quests.
Quests where the mega boss dies in three hits.
Pointless errands that anyone could do in the span of five minutes but god forbid an NPC know how to solve minor inconveniences on their own.
They probably won't go the exact same route, but I'd expect a similar approach.
See, I'm torn on this a little bit.
I don't like having a solo quest suddenly turn in to a group (or raid) quest, but I do like quests that have parts where you need a group (or raid), but big parts of it where you have to work on it yourself.
I can see two easy solutions - the first is to once again ensure players can see that a quest or quest chain will involve group or raid content when they first start it.
The second, and my preferred, is to design the game where all quets and quest chains requiring a group or raid at some point start in areas you need a group or raid to access.
That way, these quests or quest chains can have aspects of them that require the player to go off and do things by themselves, but after that would be able to require a group or raid again and no one would be able to complain.
I absolutely hope they don’t go quite as crazy with as swtor did(swtor was about that personal story so it made sense for them to be everywhere), but I wouldn’t mind seeing them to a certain extent to keep immersion.
I guess quests that break immersion are really my biggest pet peeves, like many examples given above; fetch quests with rare fetches that should drop everywhere, quests requiring a specialization but anyone can do it, running errands for towns folk that are just lazy and don’t want to walk down the road to the store. At least make these characters a sweet old lady who can’t walk, or an injured person. Drives me crazy when perfectly capable npcs just give mundane tasks to complete strangers.
They've said in a recent live stream there would be a sort of "push" mechanic on characters. How that gets implemented and weighed idk.
That one was at least fun, and only minorly confusing by being unexplained (when/where do Evenbards even spawn??).
AA had much much worse. Dream Ring, Ayanad Earring (original version) not to mention the collectable book ones (Iyor, Rudal and Alecto).
RE: OP:
When you boil it down to the essence of a quest, really what other kinds of quests exist other than 'gopher' and 'killer'? ( or some hybrid of those two) (these are also modifiable by a grind factor)
Without mundane quests, what would a player be doing with their time instead?
i need you to deliver this peach donut to my uncle,
kill 56 wild wolfs and buy 1 apple from his shop"
"i will give you some silver and a dagger"
1. "Dear hero, i beg of you to deliver this backed good to my most honorable uncle. Make haste, for it is the only thing that shall protect him from his accursed illness!"
2. "There you are hero! Wolves are terrorizing our flocks and if no one culls them, then they shall soon be numerous enough to endanger the city propper! Go to my aunt, she sells special apples that will sustain you during this dangerous endeavor."
3. "Thank you hero, it may not seem much to a mighty person as you are, but please take a token of our gratitude! All villagers managed to scrounge together these 55 silver coins, and i hope that my families ancestral dagger will help you on your travels to come."
I hate quests that send you to a place far away, you do something, return, rinse repeat x number of times. Traveling again and again is NOT content.
I like working on faction, but not doing the same quest over and over 40 times to get enough faction to move on to the next phase/quest.
I admit it, I hate repetition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykVOo1z0_gM
Formerly T-Elf
I just saw that one on YouTube xD
Very fitting :'D
The best escort quest is still, where your escortee charges an enemy 30yards away, even though they didnt try to attack you.
Yes one kill one quest item is how it should be, or better yet you get the item or credit for the kill before you get the quest while you just happen to kill the mobs on your journey. Oh you have been killing those boars I see you want to sell me those tusks you have or if you could kill a few more am willing to pay.
But that could lead to people selling the quest items for gold, which would lead to people farming the quest monsters just to sell the Q items.
Maybe if the items were bound to your character. Hmm
That works to a point. I could still see a group of people (or one player with several accounts) being able to block a passage - it just means they wouldn't be able to do it while afk. The book quests seemed odd to me in Archeage.
It's the kind of quest you really enjoy in games where you care about the lore - but that game never really went out of it's way to let players know it even had lore.
I love collection quests in general, and en(something EQ2 did better than any game has or will ever do),
The Dream Ring quests I only ever bothered with on characters that I was planning on using a fair amount for PvP, and the Ayanad ring - when it was eventually released - never interested me as a quest or reward. I didn't think the time investment was worth it, as if I put that time instead towards simply farming my land, I was able to get better gear than if I did that quest.
IMO, if there is a seller willing to farm the items, and a buyer willing to buy them, let the two of them have at it.
Quests use to do things that lead you on prolonged multi-staged epic journeys. Now every farmer has one and it's your primary source of experience gain through out any given MMO.
So I've decided all quests suck now. Unless it takes an hour or two to complete (and preferably require a group), it shouldn't be a quest. It should be a "task" which is just "go kill some of those things and I'll pay you for their pelts" with no specified number and no experience gain just for doing a deed. Use tasks to direct players to where certain creatures are, and to direct them to where they can get paid to kill those creatures.
Here is a true adventurer