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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.
Story Arcs - just bigger public quests?
Garrtok
Member, Alpha Two
Hi,
to be honest i was expecting a bit more information about the system itself.
That there are dungeons and areas that open up with node progression we already knew.
Now we also know that in the case of the tower of carphin, there are two ways to do that.
Lets be realistic about that, there will be zergs farming both ways as soon as they pop up.
It will be like events in guild wars or public quests in warhammer online, just that some part is locked behind node progression and they will be farmed over and over again.
I was really hoping that Steven shows more "system" also what concretely changes with node progression, node differences or choices. To me, even the area was visually impressive, it looked like it was lacking any gameplay/system depth.
to be honest i was expecting a bit more information about the system itself.
That there are dungeons and areas that open up with node progression we already knew.
Now we also know that in the case of the tower of carphin, there are two ways to do that.
Lets be realistic about that, there will be zergs farming both ways as soon as they pop up.
It will be like events in guild wars or public quests in warhammer online, just that some part is locked behind node progression and they will be farmed over and over again.
I was really hoping that Steven shows more "system" also what concretely changes with node progression, node differences or choices. To me, even the area was visually impressive, it looked like it was lacking any gameplay/system depth.
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Comments
Well, I am not PvE oriented not even by a bit, but I also felt the need for more information about the system itself. Like, what happens first? What happens then? Knowing about scenarios and their possibilities.
Great feedback.
PS I saw that there was an Abandon button on the quest UI and a quest limit of 30, for now.
However, there wasn't actually any request for feedback on the Story Arc system, so I hope that the Devs aren't too concerned about this.
I'll hope for Fallen London quality, have no complaints if we get Elite Dangerous quality, and hope that we don't need to 'keep things up' with no multiplier shift on certain servers (or the reverse, that as people get higher level, the multiplier shifts upward as players reach higher levels).
The 'equivalent' FFXI content gets kinda squashed now that the level cap is so much higher than when that content was introduced, and I always assumed this was the reason why games don't take this approach, but it isn't as if there's no solutions, so I look forward to seeing what the team comes up with.
You can do it guys! Go all in!
Hi all! Thanks for the feedback
As a huge fan of public quests in both Warhammer Online and in GW2, I wanted to mention here that story arcs don't quite function in this way.
They are sometimes simply locked behind node progression, but we look at other variables, too. Some of which will, I hope, be a delightful surprise and be fun to satisfy even when they're datamined/discovered/whatever y'all do.
In terms of "farming" them, that's where I think you'll see the biggest departure from public quests in other games. These aren't like events with zergs/FATE trains/whatever pushing them forward (though we have an event system that more closely resembles this). They're more like "packs" of quests that are available for specific amounts of real time (from days to months depending on the scope of the arc and the amount of content in each pack). In some very rare cases, we advance the chapters in other ways, but whether or not we talk about that before we launch remains to be seen (because of potential spoilers). I'd compare it more with finding some time in your busy schedule to watch that episode of your favorite streaming show that dropped before the next episode is released.
You can't really farm the quests in any meaningful way, because once you've done the quests in a chapter, that's it until the next chapter. Whether 1000 people participate or 10, the chapters will stay active for the same length of time, and as long as you participate in the clearly-marked time frame in your quest journal, you're good. The only thing that a concentrated effort can help with is influencing the narrative paths through the arcs. The cooldowns between arcs repeating will also be quite long--proportional to the length of the chapters, but we're still in pursuit of the right numbers there. You can't do the individual quests again until the entire arc restarts.
Some events (our version of the public quests you were thinking about) and commissions will only be available while Story Arcs are in certain chapters, too. What could feasibly be farmed are story arc-specific crafting ingredients, however, I can't get into the specifics of how necessary and valuable those ingredients will end up being (we have other excellent designers worried about that).
It's awesome getting additional insight into this really unique and fascinating system, @skotty! Thank you for sharing 💪😁
It would seem to me that you would "simply" be able to develop new story arcs and drop them in.
This seems to me to be a good way to add in new minor content to the game.