Straying away from the melee debacle, I wanted to know opinions on the quest system. often I have seen complains that quests are not fun, rewarding, inmersive or complex.
what would be a good quest system? what makes quests fun? Think about what skills you have at your disposal, and come up with a quest system that you feel is rewarding, inmersive and fun without having to reprogram the whole game.
Its been mentioned before that since L2 doesn't use instances and as such events and real mob AI is non-existant.
Guild wars gives a few interesting scenarios that such as fighting a wave of mobs and dueling with boss, getting chased by mobs and making it back to a safe haven, protecting NPCs/structures etc
In part L2 does shows its potential for dynamic repeatable quests with some of the events we've had. If the Raid Boss event allowed the bosses to move towards town and attack players, then we would have had a lot more players participating.
Another scenario, imagine a quest that where you obtained a contract to PK X amount of players (no drops/XP loss for player, no karma gain for PKer).
There's endless possibilities for meaningful quests that would really make use of all the classes/abilities that we thought were gimped and the non-instanced nature of L2 would really facilitate player participation/interaction. There's just so much potential for dynamic PvE and PvP quests. We've seen some of this in the events that we get, it would be great if it become part of the core of L2.
Straying away from the melee debacle, I wanted to know opinions on the quest system. often I have seen complains that quests are not fun, rewarding, inmersive or complex.
what would be a good quest system? what makes quests fun? Think about what skills you have at your disposal, and come up with a quest system that you feel is rewarding, inmersive and fun without having to reprogram the whole game.
:cool:
I personally hate the L2 quests... I thougth I hated all quests until I tried some other games... and really liked them...
What I liked was that i knew the reward up front (so I knew whether or not I would want to take the quest) I usually didn't have to travel, and ... if I did I would get the reward THERE and not have to travel back again.
Some quests that allowed one to be clever or use tactics were very fun.
making it so nukers dot have the advantage!!!! lol just kidding.
I think this is a great post, I wonder what does make a quest fun? Certainly the current quests leave a lot of room for improvement. But how?
I think that adding special NPCs and special quest mobs and special items related to completing the quests, as well as making game mechanics and goals that are very dissimilar to the normal "grind" makes the quest much more interesting.
I hate when they tell me to go out and kill 100of such and such mob. Mobs I kill all the time anyway. Yeah these quests are good incentives to exp. And I dont think they should be done away with. But I think there needs to be a wealth of quests that let you do something out of the ordinary. There need to be quests that are a diversion, not just buisness as usually.
I would also love to see quests that pit you against a formidable quest boss. Maybe have it so that only the one person who spawns him can fight him. Maybe have different mobs for different class types so that they are appropriately difficult. Just something that challenges you. unlike everyday quest mobs that pose little to no threat.
Well the rewards have been upped a bit... I know they seem pale and distasteful but I got a nice pair of blue buckskin boots from one wquest that was relatively easy to accomplish and didn't involve a whole lot of travel.... and at mid 20's that's one hell of a reward.
good to see we are all talking in good spirit.
The major problem with high end quests in this game is that they are only truly soloable by nukers. Melee folks require buffs or a partner more often than not. The snake scale quest for Majestic Jewlery recipes was..interesting, it would take me a day or so to complete it(3-4 hours) and a clan mate on her SH could complete the quest a minimum of 6 times in that time frame. She didnt need to chug heal potions, didnt need to use buffscrolls, when she could find random people willing to buff her, getting Empower Acumen and Zerk is far easier than getting all the buffs a melee person needs to fight at peak efficiency.
High level quests are very nuker centric(Archers too). Melee are at a severe disadvantage.
Another scenario, imagine a quest that where you obtained a contract to PK X amount of players (no drops/XP loss for player, no karma gain for PKer).
That would just rock so hard. Of course it would have to have limitations, otherwise the whole server would have a quest where you have to kill someone and parties would be griefed by this.
I must say some of the newer quests are a big improvement over the old quests. They tried to give you more tactical decisions and some have a big background story that is interesting to read as well.
But in the end, the best quests for me are those that give me lots of adana.
at the forest of undead (new c4 area south-east of rune) are 5 quests that are linked together (u start w/ the first one and after u completed it u can start the next one and so on) those quest tell u the story of that forest .... quite interessting if u read all the text :p
but one thing ncsoft should really change about those quests; give a reward after each part! now u get 100k adena after 3 parts and 2 pieces of top b grade jewelry (2 rings + earring or earring + necklace; random) after all 5 parts :confused: .... imho bad reward for lvl 62-65 quests :(
1 requires 200 magi bones for 300+k xp and 25,000 adena
other gives 120k adena for 200 vampire hearts
and the 1.6 mil one would take the average player a week and is started at the port point
its a six part quest with most quests giving little or no reward and 1 quest looks like this (http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/6373/insanequest1an.jpg)
also at the end of the quest i got 3 b grade jewleries (2 rings 1 earring) to go with the 1.6 mil xp
my friend got 1 necklace and 1 earring
doesnt help my sp situation though :/ 70% into lvl and im still 3 mil short
i like doing quests even if they are quite bad in this game tbh, but i do them anyway ;) one thing that would make them more fun and apeeling for people to do is to balance the rewards. a lvl50+ quest should have a greater reward then a quest at lvl20+. im not saying that we should get hundreds and hundreds of millions of adena ;) but some balance would be nice.
the main deficit in the l2 quest system is lack of rewards, you get next to nothing for completing quests, and the harder and longer the quest the less rewarding it seems to be. if they would give better rewards, like maybe a decent chunk of xp or something the quests would be better worth doing.
the quests is one of the things they need to take a long hard look at. a lot of the new c4 quests are borderline tolerable to actually ok, but most of the old ones are straight out insane. they did boost the rewards for most of them at c3, but it was like a 20% boost at best.
good example is the Song of the Hunter quest in HV. you get a job to go kill something to earn x amount of quest items, usually 20, 30, or 40. so, you go kill x amount of mobs, get your quest items and turn them in. on average, you get about 10k in reward. wth?
or the food quests from dion. you run them all to help the wh guy prepare dinner, like 4 different quests that take literal hours or days to complete, and in the end you get a low grade d accessory, worth about 20k. wtf?
I'm not saying to make the quest rewards outrageous. instead, perhaps a 2x adena boost to most of them would be appropriate, may 3x in some cases. I know if I completed a Song of the Hunter job and got like 25k to 30k I wouldn't feel as cheated.
(side note: there was 1 quest in the game that payed off extremely well. grim collector in gludio was a great quest for new players. you could hunt RoD and RoA from 15 to 20, and easily make 200k or even higher. so, when c3 hit, they nerfed it. payout is now 1/2 to 1/3 what it was. brilliant thinking, there.)
There is a quest that starts in the Forest of the Dead called "the hidden truth".
I stumbled upon it while I was on the PTS and vowed I would do it since it started off well.
you meet a wizard in the forest who complains about a ghost who hovers around a nearby tomb stone. You then go to the tombstone and after reading it the ghost comes, laments about a few things and asks you to do something for him.
He then summons a servant which you follow to a burned out house with a bookcase inside. After reading one of the books you discover a crucifix and a voice tells you to go and speak with a particular priest in Rune.
So far so good. It seems engaging, there is somehting other than "text' as the ghost appears in front of you and then summons this servant (standard mesh of those sword handed spirits that are in the dark elf swamp - which are neat) which you follow.
I figure this is exactly what I've been waiting for.
I finally locate the priest (after asking other priests "isn't he the guy...' is that how a high priest speaks!? "isnt he the 'guy' who... blah blah... seems very common) and he says things like "Zounds!". His other speech is very crude as well. Thought I was talking to anyone BUT a high priest.
He then asks me to speak with the Dark Elf Teifl (or somethign like that) and that's it.
So... I hvae no quest indicator or anything. I go to Aden thinking it might be a dark elf there. Turns out he was actually across the room.
It would have helped if he said "Speak to the grandmagister Teifl. I saw him on the other side of the library not too long ago..." or something like that.
THIS is the crux of the L2 quest. They don't give enough info or are to vague or just seem incomplete.
I looked on the map and he wasn't there.. and there was no indication that I was (in reality) in another quest "Tragedy in Von Hellman Forest".
I had no idea. Until I searched around and discovered this other quest.
so NC... this is what you need to do.
First off, be specific... even if it is a "generality". Instead of saying "go seek blah blagh" and end it at that, say "go seek blah blah... I believe he makes his home in Aden" or "The person you might want to speak to is "bleh bleh" and I'm sure he was puttering around here somewhere... maybe upstairs. Something like this.
2, If the quest lead to another quest (like in my first example) it would really be nice to know that. Have somehing 'pop up" indicating that i am about to start the quest "von Hellman's secret fetish" or whatever it is. Or even have it appear in my chat window. Not giving a clue as to where I am in the whole quest structure does not help.
3, (and this list will become longer I'm sure) hire someone who knows what they are doing becasue surely the person who writes the quests must be one of the artists or programmers. It's about story... it's about gently leading the player but not necessarily holding their hand.
I like quests because it takes my mind off of grinding to the next level...i do the stolen ore quest...i grind for hours..but it doesn't seem like it because i am always counting the quest itmes i get...(kails coin quest too)...and looking over my back for reds always keeps my mind off the grind...
but i like quests...some make moeny some do nothing...but give you ears :p
meh, as a side note, much as I dislike the payout of most of these quests, I have a policy of not hunting anywhere I can't also get quest drops. true, the payout is usually pathetic, but it is a little extra adena after all, so why not.