Best In Slot + Epic Quest Line + Core Class

novercalis

I don't have my thoughts fully fleshed out but I wanted to discuss about a portion of Best in Slot.

I Do believe BiS should be a mix of:

- Raid Drop
- BoE Crafted
- BoP crafted
- Quest Line
- Dungeon

But I want to focus more on advocating for a EPIC QUEST LINE BiS item along the lines of EQ.

These Quest Line in of itself took months to complete. They were very long and tedious and forced players to also have to CRAFT IT THEMSELVES. So this BiS isnt a player bought item.
In Order for this to work, we should assign the core class to a profession.

8 CORE CLASSES:

Bards
Clerics
Fighter
Mage
Ranger
Rogue
Summoner
Tank

8 CORE ARTISANS:

Arcane
Armor Smith
Carpentry
Jewel
Leather
Scribe
Tailoring
Weapon Smith


Now within the 8 artisans class, 7 of them we can tie to a class and create some type of BiS for themselves.

Bards = SKIPPED (See Below)
Clerics = Jewel Crafting - BiS Amulet
Fighter = Weapon Smith - BiS Weapon
Mage = Tailoring - BiS Armor Piece
Ranger = Carpentry - BiS Bow
Rogue = Leather - BiS Armor piece
Summoner = Scribe or Arcane = BiS ????????
Tank = Armor Smith - BiS Shield

While we will have professional Crafters, these crafters can create BiS for many items for many classes. BUT EPIC QUEST BIS needs to be completed by the PLAYER ONLY. So a Tank can get all his BiS bought from a crafter except for a shield.
The Tank needs to make his own shield.

Thus we can create a small little bonus for classes. Tank Classes gets 5% xp bonus to Armor Smithing. Clerics gets 5% xp bonus to jewel crafting, etc etc.

Now HOW ABOUT THE BARD??? WHAT WOULD THEIR EPIC QUEST LINE LOOK LIKE??

I don't see Bard working with Scribe or Arcane, so I thought maybe Animal Husbandary, their music able to soothe and calm beasts.

So, Bards would also have this long quest chains that will also forces them into animal husbandry. Eventually, it will be a RARE RARE RARE animal that spawns, cant be tamed by anyone, not even the bards, but you can attempt to. Upon Success - the animal in question drops something... lays an egg or leaves the area, which allowed the bard to find a legendary MAT or legendary Music Instrument that is BiS for them. If it is a mat, they are the only class that doesn't require for them to make it. Since they had to hit MAX animal husbandary to complete their BiS, like Tank had to hit max armor smithing to make their BiS.

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Players lately has posted about Content and 45-50 days to hit max level is to short. I AGREE
But I also remembered in EQ - doing Epic Quests also took another 30-60 days to complete. Being forced to run around all over the world, get mats from dungeons and raids with a drop rate of 2%, forced to solo a content that is near impossible, forced to level up a crafting profession because the item made is BOUND to the player who makes it. It was time consuming but it was ALL SO WORTH.

SO TL'DR - I want to advocate ATLEAST 1 ITEM per CLASS has a EPIC QUEST LINE that TIES A CRAFTING PROFESSION THAT THEY MUST LEARN.

Nova_terra

I am not sure I agree with the idea that you have to max something you just don't want to do (crafting). For example, I am not a crafter but my 2-3 friends I am playing the game with 2 are heavily into crafting/artisan skills. I should not be explicitly punished for not enjoying this but maybe have a way to get this done utilizing my friends/resources to get the item. For example, while I am not a crafter I enjoy obtaining mats for them or using my time to assist them in the creation process but in ways I find entertaining/exciting which I believe fosters positive interactions with other players.

I am all for a long journey to obtain a powerful item, but I think having to sink hours and hours into a function I am not fond of is not an exciting loop but more of a frustrating process when other gates/factors could be introduced to make sure I am not just "buying" myself this legendary item.

novercalis

Fair. At the same time, it is gating only 1 item. Maybe it doesnt have to be MAX profession level, but entering the final tier levels (150-199/200), so 150 requirement. Crafters needs 200 for all other BiS sellables.

That should shave down hours - but this also introduces - what I think is important - Gold sink as well.
I do lean in time dedication, for a BiS - it should be tedious, annoying. That's the risk for that BiS Reward & Dopamine

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As for the friends aspect you mentioned - it's already in the game. Crafters will be able to create BiS items. So you're gonna need to bring mats to crafters in general already. Hence 1 of the BiS item can't be made by them, but only by you.

Nova_terra

novercalis wrote: »

Fair. At the same time, it is gating only 1 item. Maybe it doesnt have to be MAX profession level, but entering the final tier levels (150-199/200), so 150 requirement. Crafters needs 200 for all other BiS sellables.

That should shave down hours - but this also introduces - what I think is important - Gold sink as well.
I do lean in time dedication, for a BiS - it should be tedious, annoying. That's the risk for that BiS Reward & Dopamine

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As for the friends aspect you mentioned - it's already in the game. Crafters will be able to create BiS items. So you're gonna need to bring mats to crafters in general already. Hence 1 of the BiS item can't be made by them, but only by you.

This is a good point, I for one always (nostalgically so) loved the horrific grind for Jedi in SWG. It felt like you earned the "power" so to speak so I am definitely on your side for the idea that you can spend 6 months or whatever plugging away at X item or Y power etc. Part of the reason I liked the Jedi grind however was it could be earned basically any way you played the game (not all grind paths were equal as there were obvious best practices) but maybe instead of it being locked to class specific artisan requirements it might be 1/3rd of these items can be made/crafted by you for that BiS, while another 1/3rd are accessible by means of very intense pvp/pve requirements in the form of raid drops or something else.

This is all spitballing, but I do recall Steven speaking to the fact that there would be "Legendary" items acquirable via other means that would effectively be 1 of's on any given server which I feel would answer the call I am stating of being able to get these items another way.

wrms

I like the idea of epic quests, those were some of the most memorable things about Everquest, but I wouldn't want them to require a maxed artisan skill. Since we can only max 2 skills per char, it would suck to be forced to use one of those specialization slots on a skill you might not otherwise want to do. If it only required going up to the max non specialized limit, I would be ok with it.

xMrWoolf

so you want to force players to max out a profession they may not intend on using for one BiS item? why would they do that when all items are not BOP or BOE and they could simply buy the items?

wrms

I think the idea is to preserve the "epicness" of the quest line. Not all of the epic quests in EQ required crafting skills, but they did often have bound items, crafted or not, to ensure that the player had to get the quest items themself and not simply buy them. Simply put, a quest wouldn't feel very epic if you accepted the quest, bought all of the items from the auction house, then completed the quest without ever leaving town.

If they did add some form of class based epic quests, that would be the one area where I would hope for bound items, both intermediate quest items and the final result. Epic weapons in everquest were more than just a good item, they were also a sort of status symbol that showed you had put in a lot of time and effort for the achievement, and that would feel diminished if you could just buy them.

This type of thing might not fit with the vision of AoC, and that's ok. I'm not going to be upset if there isn't something like this. However, for those of us that played EQ, those epic quests are something that many of us still remember fondly over 20 years later. While they aren't a "must have", they were a really cool feature that can add a lot to the game.

Maybe instead of the epic quest yielding a BiS item it could give a useful clicky instead, inspired by EQs epic 2.0s. That way the gear economy wouldn't be affected, but there would still be a good reason to undertake the quest for people who wanted a smaller but still relevant reward.

Edit to add:
I don't want them to be added for the games launch, no more feature creep is needed, we just want to play haha. Epics in EQ came with the games first expansion, so this is definitely something that could come later.

novercalis

wrms wrote: »

I think the idea is to preserve the "epicness" of the quest line. Not all of the epic quests in EQ required crafting skills, but they did often have bound items, crafted or not, to ensure that the player had to get the quest items themself and not simply buy them. Simply put, a quest wouldn't feel very epic if you accepted the quest, bought all of the items from the auction house, then completed the quest without ever leaving town.

If they did add some form of class based epic quests, that would be the one area where I would hope for bound items, both intermediate quest items and the final result. Epic weapons in everquest were more than just a good item, they were also a sort of status symbol that showed you had put in a lot of time and effort for the achievement, and that would feel diminished if you could just buy them.

This type of thing might not fit with the vision of AoC, and that's ok. I'm not going to be upset if there isn't something like this. However, for those of us that played EQ, those epic quests are something that many of us still remember fondly over 20 years later. While they aren't a "must have", they were a really cool feature that can add a lot to the game.

Maybe instead of the epic quest yielding a BiS item it could give a useful clicky instead, inspired by EQs epic 2.0s. That way the gear economy wouldn't be affected, but there would still be a good reason to undertake the quest for people who wanted a smaller but still relevant reward.

Edit to add:
I don't want them to be added for the games launch, no more feature creep is needed, we just want to play haha. Epics in EQ came with the games first expansion, so this is definitely something that could come later.

THis was 2 fold.

One for what you stated and the other, to break up the end game loop of most typical mmos and to add more hours to the "end game" content.

New World - spam dungeons for expertise
WOW - spam raids for loot

EQ - outside of spamming raids/dungeons, you also had this epic quest that required 100s of hours of going to different dungeons/raids that arent the final spam dungeon/raid content that we have become used to.

It branches you off now into a profession, running around the world to get stuff, etc.

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another person stated being against MAX profession but was OK with X amount.
Let's say artisan goes to 200, and I made the suggestion that maybe you needed 150. But we can also play around with all the other artisans and not be that high.

Maybe you're required to cook something and it's artisan level is 50, then dump that and get weaving to 66, then dump that for the final piece that requires wood working 125.

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Adding more variety of end-game content beside raids/pvp is ideal. This epic quest encompasses Solo content, group content and raid content, maybe pvp content too.

As for the reward - sure, doesnt have to be armor/weapon/jewel. can be enchantment, trinkets, "clickies", etc.

and we can also find ways to give artisans epic quests lines too.