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.

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Questing suggestions

I haven’t played ashes yet so I don’t know how it is. But Is it just me. Or would you guys rather do less quests but longer more detailed quests that offer more xp? I loved in RuneScape where you find a quest out in the world and it sends you on an actual journey where you have to think and navigate and it’s not just spoon fed to you with bread crumb style map pins. Bring back difficult engaging quest chains. I get the need for kill 10 boar quests and harvest 6 plants but lord these get boring after a while *new world* cough cough

Comments

  • @Odal i agree for sure on the getting frustrated part. Maybe there could be an option to turn on and off the bread crumb style pointers to get you past that stuck part then turn them back off so you can go back into detective mode. But it is also very satisfying once you figure something out yourself and accomplish the quest on your own volition
  • @Odal no doubt on that. I’m interested to see how they pull it off. I think they’re headed in the right direction from what I’ve heard and seen
  • DygzDygz Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    There needs to be a range of quests that can be completed for people who have casual time.
    People who have been playing MMORPGs since 1997 now have kids and families and jobs that don't allow them to play 4+ hours per day. They need to be able to jump in and accomplish things in an hour or two.

    Doesn't mean there can't also be longer quest chains.
    We can expect those as we prepare for sieges... and as we try to move up in social orgs and religions.
  • Very good point. But also if you have an hour maybe you could start the first series of chain quests and that will be your adventure for the week. I have no real dog in the fight just some opinions
  • I'd rather have more detailed quests.

    I also wish to see a comeback of class quests.

  • If the quest involves a single cliche objective (kill, travel, collect) then they should be handled as simply as they are: jobs. An npc or job board at the appropriate location has a roster of things available suiting the faction handing it out, varying in challenge/commitment with suitable rewards, which would be more like reputation among the node, religion, faction, or materials appropriate to who you're working for- weapons from a mercenary group, etc. Handing out XP for run of the mill tasks always felt like I was getting sandbagged into doing the same crap everyone else was, where if the world is big enough, I'd rather do my own thing. In old Wow it always 1) new area. 2) get 1 delivery and 2 kill-specific-type-mob quests. 3) do the sequential part of those just in different 'zones'. Verrryyy linear.

    Now for true QUESTS, I would like to see some actual storied elements, likely a fair bit of world traversal, something that feels like actual investigation, revenge, whatever... I would like to see more long term story, perhaps spanning several character levels. But these long, slower quests should be much fewer, which I think suits the variable node system well, since it would be hard to make lots of quests.
    A quest log could be an actual log.. Jobs could just be more like a short hand lists in the journal, since they shouldn't need any spoon feeding.
  • GrilledCheeseMojitoGrilledCheeseMojito Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    From the Alpha-1, minus the occasional issue where the map marker pointed somewhere completely unrelated, I think they handled the marker balance mostly alright. I would certainly advocate for the marker covering a much larger area than a single spot whenever possible. I also enjoyed the integration certain quests had with it - some NPCs actually tell you they will mark your map with a specific location, and you can increase your precision there, as you would when needing to talk to a NPC you've already talked to (e.g. "Return to Karl to report your success"). I also think it was good that you could choose to only have certain markers on, i.e. if you don't want to see one, you shut it off, decrease noise on your map.

    The one quest where I had a serious complaint is the one where you pick up a weird Minotaur mask (I forget the name, but there was a large Brood Mother boss enemy involved at one stage), which has a quest description that's approximately "wander around and see what happens" but has a map marker. That didn't make any sense to me, and while it was probably fine in the context of Alpha-1 in order to make sure players would test the quest triggers properly, I think that quests of this type should exist without any indicator whatsoever of where you need to go. I'm a big fan of having certain deep, involved quests where all you get are the notes from past steps that are written up in the quest log. Sure, the quest will end up on a wiki eventually, but you can...just not read that data source. That's a lot easier to ignore than the game nudging you away from the mystery altogether with a marker.
    Grilled cheese always tastes better when you eat it together!
  • GizbanGizban Member, Braver of Worlds, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I'm a story hog so love the longer, more elaborately storied quests.
  • We actually just did a Dev Discussion series topic on this for this month! I encourage you to go check it out and see what others have said on the topic :)

    https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/51141/bonus-dev-discussion-level-progression/p1
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