Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
World Quest Idea
Crango
Member
I assume most of Players know what am talking about by just reading the title.
I think World Quest will be a nice feature in the game. If players take a look at World of Warcraft to be specific, but with a few changes.
Lets say there is currently 4 maps in the entire game in each map there is about 6 Zones, or 1 depending on the Dev's.
Now Across the the Zones there is about 5-20 World Quests that players get to do on each Zone, some of the World Quests will be harder than others to complete, some might require players to find a group in order to kill certain mobs, bosses, or collect an objective, capture so on.
Now this can be done with a group or with out a group completely up to the player's to do whatever they want, since their might be a few World Quests that needs a group of 4 or more to complete, like ( World bosses but that's different than what am talking about just a example). So on some World Quests Gear might not be efficient enough to complete a World Quest.
So about the difficulty of World Quests, it would be nice to see 3 Modes, """" Easy mode """" """" Hard Mode"""" """" Hell Mode"""".
Now the harder the difficulty the more rewards players get and maybe cut sense gets included in some World Quests for fun.
Now about the World Quests lets say Player 1 got 20 World Quests while Player 2 got 17 World Quests and Player 3 got 14 World Quests. Since the maximum Number is 20 World Quests as I said above, ( of course its up to the Dev's to decide how many there will be. As for Player 2 and 3 got different number now if they join Player 1 to do World Quests they all should get the same World Quests in order to continue throw out the whole Zone, Map. IF Player 2 or 3 did complete a few World Quests on their own, or joined a group did a few and left, as for player 2 and 3 they will not get reward toward the Completion if they doing the World Quest around the Area they did before till they move to a World quests on a new area to complete.. but Player 1 will get the reward.
Also upon completing each Zone successfully there will be a special Chest that we can get maybe turn in a quest to the main city or Look for the special chest around the zone. and so goes for the whole Map. another special Chest we can loot from mobs a quest main city or hiding behind a rock in a cave under dirt and mud under water.
I just wanted to let the Dev's about this idea, maybe it is a great idea maybe is a bad idea, personally I think its cool idea.
and sorry for my English am trying my best.. Thank you for reading.
I think World Quest will be a nice feature in the game. If players take a look at World of Warcraft to be specific, but with a few changes.
Lets say there is currently 4 maps in the entire game in each map there is about 6 Zones, or 1 depending on the Dev's.
Now Across the the Zones there is about 5-20 World Quests that players get to do on each Zone, some of the World Quests will be harder than others to complete, some might require players to find a group in order to kill certain mobs, bosses, or collect an objective, capture so on.
Now this can be done with a group or with out a group completely up to the player's to do whatever they want, since their might be a few World Quests that needs a group of 4 or more to complete, like ( World bosses but that's different than what am talking about just a example). So on some World Quests Gear might not be efficient enough to complete a World Quest.
So about the difficulty of World Quests, it would be nice to see 3 Modes, """" Easy mode """" """" Hard Mode"""" """" Hell Mode"""".
Now the harder the difficulty the more rewards players get and maybe cut sense gets included in some World Quests for fun.
Now about the World Quests lets say Player 1 got 20 World Quests while Player 2 got 17 World Quests and Player 3 got 14 World Quests. Since the maximum Number is 20 World Quests as I said above, ( of course its up to the Dev's to decide how many there will be. As for Player 2 and 3 got different number now if they join Player 1 to do World Quests they all should get the same World Quests in order to continue throw out the whole Zone, Map. IF Player 2 or 3 did complete a few World Quests on their own, or joined a group did a few and left, as for player 2 and 3 they will not get reward toward the Completion if they doing the World Quest around the Area they did before till they move to a World quests on a new area to complete.. but Player 1 will get the reward.
Also upon completing each Zone successfully there will be a special Chest that we can get maybe turn in a quest to the main city or Look for the special chest around the zone. and so goes for the whole Map. another special Chest we can loot from mobs a quest main city or hiding behind a rock in a cave under dirt and mud under water.
I just wanted to let the Dev's about this idea, maybe it is a great idea maybe is a bad idea, personally I think its cool idea.
and sorry for my English am trying my best.. Thank you for reading.
1
Comments
Not for Ashes, please.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
What he said
May I ask why do you guys hate it ?
Not long after Rift launched before the first expansion they added a long quest line that spanned several zones a couple of the encounters required multiple players and ended in a max level (at the time) dungeon. Got some neat gear along the way and the Crocnard mount at the end. Was fun running around the world doing stuff and took several hours to do.
Something along these lines I think would be good. Maybe throw a caravan raid in there or something. Really stir up the pot on a server.
First, I hate all quests, period. An NPC giving me a list of chores and a sob story is one thing, but when game designers make quests more worth my time than other content, that pisses me off.
It should always be more worth your time to do difficult group content or PVP than quests. I feel very strongly about that.
World quests specifically are time gated chores with bloated rewards. To the point that it becomes nearly mandatory to do them. You basically become tied to the game, logging in to try and get your chores out of the way, so you can actually play the game... It is extremely annoying when you have things in the game you want to do, but a list of things that you don't like to do, but are heavily rewarded.
I only ended up playing the first three weeks of Shadowlands this last expansion. Long enough to kill Sire and realize that I was not going to keep up with world quests, the covenants or the stupid tower. My group's original plan was to stay geared with M+ key farming and ignore all the other chores. When realized that was nerfed, we quit.
In Ashes want to be able to long in and do what I think is the best thing for me and my guild to be doing. Not the chores the developers decided I should be doing. I really don't want to see any dailies all in the game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
how about if they made World Quest rewards lets say a maximum of 20 World Quests can spawn every 7 days that depending on the zones it can be 20x4. either way they just make like 2-5 Quests effect your power gain or upgrading, a currency used to achieve more gear or greater gems,etc.
The rest just receive a extras for your housing, titles, achievements, etc. a rewards that will not effect your progress as pvp or pve player. so basically you just doing 2-4 quests and its a minor achieve, the main reason behind World Quest should be collect currency, help housing, etc like I said before. Now will that make the players a bit more happy, from my end It would.
for example in World of Warcraft, when legion was released I started on second patch, lol I log in knock out all of World Quests everyday, I miss 0 World quests on all zones. because that was the first time they introduced that system. now I really loved doing it I enjoyed it. period. but when BFA, SL came out, I did a few for start of first month, than I really hated it, felt forced into doing them to get better.
Am just trying to let you know I know what you talking about and feel, because I felt it lol. currently I don't play WoW either. same reason as you. with a bit more maybe.
what you guys as players think? I would love to hear feedback.
I like the idea that nearly everything in Ashes outside of titles and achievements has a dollar value. Everything can be earned and acquired with in game resources. Nearly nothing is bound. If you can just do some easy world quests for resources instead of going into a highly competitive open world dungeon and competing for drops with a group. That devalues the group content that is already in place.
The rewards would have to be really low. You can't just throw housing items and other extras in as world quest rewards. That stuff should come from the profession system. Everything in Verra is a resource to be fought over. The world quest system is a source of daily resources that don't need to be fought over. It goes against the philosophy of the game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Several older threads about this.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/47344/daily-quests-yes-or-no/p1
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/43877/forcing-dailies-to-progress
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/48133/daily-weekly-activities-and-systems
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/43713/do-you-want-daily-quests-if-so-to-what-extent
They also talked about it way early on.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/33123/i-agree-with-steven-daily-quests-log-in-rewards-often-become-chores
But if it becomes a daily requirement... Nah I'm good
Ashes is an MMORPG ... so the higher challenge (and better rewards) lies in group content and PvP.
I sometimes pity the choice of MMO's you have played, based purely on the opinions you share.
While Archeage had a lot of pointless quests for leveling, other games I have played did not.
Take EQ2, there were quests in that game that saw players having to raid to progress by the time they were level 25. The quest was basically there in order to introduce players to that raid content, and kind of funnel players from all over the game world to it so that you could get enough players present to actually run the raid.
Most quest lines early on in that game were there to catch players and funnel them towards group or raid content.
Basically, the quests operated as a giant arrow pointing players to group content. There is usually some fluff/story/busy work before hand, but the point of most quests in early EQ2 was to funnel players to group content.
The experience of that leads me to just not understand the perspective you talk about here. You say you prefer group content to quests, but to me, quests just funnel players to group content and so are something a player like you should value for that reason.
The only thing I can relate it to is saying you don't like poorly designed games - but that should go without saying.
I agree with you here. I really enjoyed how EQ2 not only drove you to group, but to meet people. It was not a solo friendly game though, especially if you look at some of the current MMOs out there today. Most content was locked behind at least having one or two friends in a group and there was a lot more that required full raids to be complete. But isn't that the point of a MMO. I personally really enjoyed the Heritage Quests in EQ2, which sent players all over the world (at that given level) to hunt name bosses and to acquire rare drops. These quest lines started at a very low level and they had them every few levels. The Heritage Quests near max level sent players all over the worlds and in zones/dungeons to complete the quest, and in some cases raids. They always culminated in getting a very unique piece of gear that could only be obtained via completing the entire quest line. The items could also be turned into housing trophies after they out wore the usefulness as gear. I hope there is something like this in AOC, personally a MMO is as only good as it's content and quest make up a large part of that.
EQ2 heritage and Signature quests are, imo, the best content of any type that any online game has ever produced. And this is coming from a top end raider.
While that is indeed a bold claim, even for me, I stand behind it 100% and challenge anyone that has experienced them in detail to come up with any better content.
I have "played" nearly every MMORPG other there is... Most of them I just did not like enough to stay playing them. EQ2 is one of those games. There has never been a point in EQ2's history where there was not a game on the market that was not more worth my time.
Quests exist in every MMORPG that try to get players to do group content. The problem is they don't really work. Some players just refuse to do group content or do the bare minimum to complete the quests they need, then split. These players are usually a liability anyway because they don't know good team work and put forth the minimum effort. This makes fail parties more common, and then people cry to the devs until you get things like WOWs "Looking for raid" system. Where the raids are toned done to the point that they are basically cutscenes where you can use your skills... Which is not the group content I care about.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I very much agree here. The only thing I really liked was the GW2 event system that alerts you when you are in a zone were a group event occurs nearby. You can either join and contribute or ignore it and continue on your path.
The world quests system in wow feels like an absolute chore. I hate it. It doesn't encourage exploration as you just open the map and fly to the quest. Opening the map everyday and seeing all these chores just build sup anxiety more than anything and because it is always on your map (with a timer!), it adds even more anxiety of missing out. It is constantly bugging you and because it is daily it is never going away.
GW2 event system is much better as it rewards exploration and happenstance.
100% agree. AoC with its node system is rewarding group actions. They need to go full down that path and avoid the wow solo content daily world quest bs.
GW2 had great group events that would pop up when you pass nearby. This could be a great base for AoC by indicating players what to do to attack/defend or sabotage/contribute to the node they are in.
It is build as a themepark experience intended to be grazed, rinse and repeated, you are matched with randoms you probably dont recognize at all, while it might take place in the open world it still destracts from it and makes it more barren. It decentivizes player interaction, like instanced content... but without instancing.
Their world quest system is simply geared towards most accessible version possible, while it got striped most of the aspects it could have made actual fun and well designed for a virtual world.
Here is how i could see a similar idea working well with ashes´ design pillars.
1. Make the nodes host "kingdomquest" that are accesible for everyone that is within the proximity of an royal npc. He shows up in intervals (maybe like 6 hours) and hands out a group oriented quest. The players all gather in the city and start the quest from the same spot.
2. Make those kingdomquest unique for every node and node type. Military nodes host pvp events, like king of the hill , or some military node vs military node game mode and so on. Divine Nodes host some raids, not sure about Economic and Science nodes though.
3. Those kingdomquest scale and change with the node´s level. The higher the node´s level the grander the reach and possibilities of the quest.
This would heavily incentivize visiting other nodes so that you can participate in their unique Kingdomquest.
You would get to know other guilds in collaborative and competitive game modes.
Meeting and seeing other guilds gather in town right before the big events could be fun as well.
You and your guild has the choice between a few different game modes that are in the proximity or you might chose to travel further to challenge guilds from all over verra.
Sure, many games try to use quests to funnel players to group content. EQ2 succeeded in doing that, they didn't just try. This is the difference.
The game (at launch) did it from right near the start of the game, there were grouping opportunities on the starter island. By the time you hit level 20, groups were more common that soloing. By the time you hit level 30, there were raids being organized. The most popular content in the level 40 range was a raid - literally everyone did it while leveling in that range - most people did it multiple times.
By the time players got to the level cap, raiding was just another part of the game, rather than being something new that only starts when you arrived at that cap.
That is all because that is where quests that people wanted to do directed them to go.
Groups and raids failing were not all that common - the lower level content didn't have the same auto-fail mechanics that later content had (it would be stupid to have this), and if anyone was not pulling their weight, they just weren't invited back. Most players that played in similar time zones knew which players to not bring along. These days, developers consider this kind of thing to be toxic. Just look at FFXIV, you tell a player you are not bringing them along on group content because they under performed last time, and you can expect a suspension - a joke of a game, honestly.
2006 to 2012 there were so many better games than EQ2 "for me" on the market. I tried EQ2 during that time, and I am glad I left for better games. L2,GW1,DDO, WOW,FFXIV,CoH/CoV... I am sure I am forgetting other games I liked more than EQ2 during that time. From 2009 to 2012 was Darkfall, I would choose that game over any other during those years. I would maybe take a few months off to do Ulduar again in WOW when it was new. For me, all of those games were all better. Which is why I played them.
I bet EQ2 did not have the population on most servers where you could afford to tell people to leave based on poor performance often. You might not have had many choices to fill roles. The game was just so hopelessly unpopular that pushing people into group content may have worked.
You are also out of your mind if you think people don't get kicked from parties for sucking in FFXIV. You just have to tell them like an adult. There is nothing toxic about telling someone they need to practice more and are not a good fit for the group at their current skill level. It is very common to see the words "Multiple mistakes=kicked" in a recruiting message. If you set the expectation that people need to preform, only the people that can handle that generally show up. Most static raid groups have try-outs anyway to make sure you are a good fit for the group. That or they are all close friends that are willing to work with each other's weaknesses. No one just puts up with poor performance in actual raids. Even in "practice" groups, people will get asked to leave if they are underperforming and holding the group back from prog.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Lol in the current WoW, if you say hi you get vote kicked.. and no one speaks from the start of a content to the end of it, only in raid maybe and maybe some speak because they forced to either flame you trying to kick you or explain the mechanics.
Let the busy-bodies in those town things have incentives to do stuff, to check boxes, etc etc ad nauseam. Some of us don’t need any other motivation beyond what might be over the next ridge line.
Just as an example, in 2006, while L2 had about 1.2 maybe 1.3 million players, less than 90k of them were EU/NA. EQ2 in this time had about 300k total players, of which 250k were EU/NA. While DDO released with a bit of a bang, it's population very soon fell down to under 100k.
Then you say you went back to WoW to do Ulduar - a raid zone that in comparison to what EQ2 had at the time (and what it had just finished with) can only really be described as underwhelming.
The more you try and convince me that you gave EQ2 a go and that it wasn't for you, the more it seems to me you didn't actually give it a go - or at least not the same kind of a go you gave other games.
Either that, or what you wanted from an MMO back then was drastically different to what you want now.
Those system really can make game be a lot more active.
I don't know what to tell you. As much as you have spoken about how good the raids in EQ2 were. I have heard people who I have raided with in WOW and FFXIV say I was not missing anything by skipping EQ2 raids because they were lacking.
What opinion would you trust more? Someone who likes the same stuff as you, or someone whose tastes you don't know?
I regret zero of my time in those games I listed. I know EQ2 players who wished they were not contrarians and got into WOW sooner.
In order to play EQ2 I would want the ability to not age and a time machine. That way, I can be 100% sure I was not wasting my time.
The best I could offer is: "Maybe" some day, an accurate and popular EQ2 private server will come out between raid tiers in other games and I will try it. Maybe.
The one hook you have is I hate the feeling of raid bosses being out there I have not experienced.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.