Are the problems with the daily quests going to be addressed?

Hi all:

I understand that with a major patch like the one L2 experienced last week, issues will persist, but I feel like the major issues surrounding the daily quests are simply being ignored by NCsoft. Since launch, there have been these issues:

1) Some daily quests are not daily at all.

2) Only two of the three daily quests are accessible.

3) Crowding issues in some daily quest areas make it impossible for a lot of people to do them.

It's #3 that has affected me the most, and the one I choose to whine about here.

Kicking things off, there's the odd fact that the easier the daily quest, the more XP/SP it awards:

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Wall of Argos - Open Secret

Kill mobs to get 30 quest items.

Wall of Argos is a big place all things considered, but a mere 25% of it is all that's applicable for this quest. The other 75% belongs to the 70-75 variant of the quest. This might not be a problem if crowding isn't an issue (it is on both sides), but even if the fields are free, a staggering ~26 million XP + SP is awarded for killing at a minimum, 30 mobs. Of the three dailies, this is the easiest quest to do in terms of time and effort, but rewards the best.

Silent Valley - Wonders of Caring

Kill mobs to get 50 quest items.

Silent Valley is also a rather large place, but what makes it ideal for a quest of this type is that the spawn density is at least 5x greater than most other daily quest areas (and areas in general). Of all three, it's also the easiest to do given that nothing is aggro. The reward here is ~22 million XP + SP.

Shrine of Loyalty - In This Quiet (LOL!) Place

Kill mobs to get 77 quest items.

Like Wall of Argos, the daily quest in Shrine of Loyalty only applies to about 25% of the total area - even as a slow human, I can manage to cover the entire area in about four minutes. This quest offers the lowest reward of these three dailies (~20 million XP + SP), requires the most amount of quest items to complete, and has a brutal spread out spawn. Of all three daily quests at this level tier, this is without question the most tedious to do - if you can even stomach it at all.

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Adding to the frustration, not long into this level tier, players will be a high enough level where mobs will almost never be white (Wall of Argos will be about half and half), and as a result, the quest rewards become even more tedious to get - about 2 per 3 kills or worse. Due to the crowding, getting a reward off each kill would still be a test of patience, but when the drop rate is much lower than this in most cases, the problem worsens.

Since the launch of the patch I have not seen NCsoft discuss either of the three issues mentioned above. If there is a post somewhere, I have missed it (and did look rather hard). As it stands, the daily quest system is broken in three different ways, and with no official word, it's hard to know if NC is even looking into said issues.

Of course, #3 could be solved with the help multiple instances of the same areas, but due to the mechanics of the game, I don't think that's feasible here (it'd introduce loading when walking into an area and that's not ideal). The only solution I see is to increase the spawn rate temporarily in these areas. The quicker people can hit their required quota, the sooner they will leave and open the area to others.

Over the past couple of days, I've gone to these daily quest areas and tried to find if there was a single time of day when the number of people to a mob was less than 1:1, and I have yet to find it. Granted, I haven't tried early morning, but have tried different times ranging from 12PM-4AM EST, and so far, I've been unable to see an improvement at any of these times.

I made a quick YouTube video earlier showing a run-through of the two available daily quests, where the crowding problem is more than obvious (and sadly, the run-through at Shrine of Loyalty as seen in the video is the best I've ever seen it):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irHSi3mIkxU

At this point, I have a hard time knowing what I should go do in the meantime if daily quests are impossible. I can't easily go grind, because the perfect spot for my main at the moment is exactly where the daily quest takes place (Argo). I am not in a clan, I am in-between major quest arcs, and it seems my only option is to level alts (which seems boring).

I hate to rant, but having to just "wait it out" doesn't seem like an ideal conclusion to me.

I'm struggling with the exact same problems as you. One thing I would add or say is a bit different is the amount of quests shown by the adventurer's helper - it's not always 2 out of 3 for every character every day. Most of the time it is 2 out of 3, but yesterday on my level 79 it was all 3. Other days on various character's it's been 1 out of 3 and multiple times it's irritatingly been 0 quests shown, even though I know there are quests that they are eligible for. Yesterday was the first time since launch that the WOA quest was available to me - I had assumed I was too high level for it and it wasn't available to me.

For my level 79, all of the quest mobs are light blue. There is one type of angel in the WOA quest that is green. I haven't done the SV quest yet because it took so long to kill the blue mobs with my healer nukes and the xp per mob were dismal, plus no adena drops, so I felt like it was too much of a waste of money (S-grade BSpS) to kill them. But all of the mobs that I did look at in SV were light blue - possibly further in there could be some green ones that I'm unaware of.

The overcrowding is really the most frustrating part. What would take me 25 minutes winds up taking an hour. And then you have the idiots who think they can claim an entire area and come up pretending they're gonna PK you, but don't even make it through your CP before they stop, scared they'll go red. And the KS'ers, love the KS'ers...

Even without the overcrowding, the mob respawn at Shrine is way too slow. I did manage to find a room to myself one time (and one time only) and I kept the room cleared with lots of standing around time waiting for the next mob to spawn. It took me about 25 minutes to complete the quest that time, not having to share mobs. I was really lucky that day to find a room to myself - haven't had that same luck since. Usually there are already multiple players or parties competing for the mobs in a room.

I have to agree 100 % of your thread.

Gm's ain't doing nothing about this 3 topics mentioned here :(.

2) Only two of the three daily quests are accessible.

3) Crowding issues in some daily quest areas make it impossible for a lot of people to do them.
2) I think that's by design, I don't know for sure of course, but it seems to work on a rotating basis, where it can be any one of them on a day, probably to hinder bots a slight bit.

3) Crowding is a consequence of a drastic change in game design philosophy but not updating the mechanical workings behind the scene to go with it. Before people would hunt mobs that gave exp, and that was the only reason to hunt them, most quests sucked.
Now there's a reason to hunt some mobs over others, but no more of that type of mob.

Wall of Argos - Open Secret

Kill mobs to get 30 quest items.

Wall of Argos is a big place all things considered, but a mere 25% of it is all that's applicable for this quest. The other 75% belongs to the 70-75 variant of the quest. This might not be a problem if crowding isn't an issue (it is on both sides), but even if the fields are free, a staggering ~26 million XP + SP is awarded for killing at a minimum, 30 mobs. Of the three dailies, this is the easiest quest to do in terms of time and effort, but rewards the best.

Silent Valley - Wonders of Caring

Kill mobs to get 50 quest items.

Silent Valley is also a rather large place, but what makes it ideal for a quest of this type is that the spawn density is at least 5x greater than most other daily quest areas (and areas in general). Of all three, it's also the easiest to do given that nothing is aggro. The reward here is ~22 million XP + SP.

Shrine of Loyalty - In This Quiet (LOL!) Place

Kill mobs to get 77 quest items.

Like Wall of Argos, the daily quest in Shrine of Loyalty only applies to about 25% of the total area - even as a slow human, I can manage to cover the entire area in about four minutes. This quest offers the lowest reward of these three dailies (~20 million XP + SP), requires the most amount of quest items to complete, and has a brutal spread out spawn. Of all three daily quests at this level tier, this is without question the most tedious to do - if you can even stomach it at all.
The items are actually balanced quite well. The mobs aren't all the same, the angels are harder to kill, takes more hits, the other two areas are more or less 2-shot mobs to ranged classes and a bit more for melee (what's up with that by the way? :p melee already have longer to travel)


Adding to the frustration, not long into this level tier, players will be a high enough level where mobs will almost never be white (Wall of Argos will be about half and half), and as a result, the quest rewards become even more tedious to get - about 2 per 3 kills or worse. Due to the crowding, getting a reward off each kill would still be a test of patience, but when the drop rate is much lower than this in most cases, the problem worsens.
The drop rate for the quest items has nothing to do with level, at least very very little to do with it.
I get items form nearly every mob if i do the quest on my main class (lv 82, the sub that picked the quest up is 78) and nearly all mobs are past the level limit for getting exp from it.

What really hurts the drop rate is when multiple people hit on a single mob. I don't know why that is, but items are rewarded much less often if you try to share, and not just less often as in *you* get less, I mean the mob is less likely to give anything at all if 2 or more people try to kill the same.


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A way to alleviate the problem would be to allow items to be awarded to every member of a group if they kill it, that way an area would be able to accommodate 5 times as many people easy, and grouping up with strangers doing the same quest would be a benefit to both.

Must agree here.

I have no problem waiting a lot of time to finish a quest.
What bothers me is that, after you've finished your quest, you can't find an area to lvl-up efficiently.

In answer to your question: probably not.
Lineage 2 has always been a "if its broken, don't bother fixing it" type of game. NCSoft has faith that if people leave L2, they will at least try one of their other games. In fact, that's how the company has survived outside Korea all these years.

One thing I would add or say is a bit different is the amount of quests shown by the adventurer's helper - it's not always 2 out of 3 for every character every day. Most of the time it is 2 out of 3, but yesterday on my level 79 it was all 3. Other days on various character's it's been 1 out of 3 and multiple times it's irritatingly been 0 quests shown

Hmm, that's interesting. The available quests for me have remained static for the most part, though after this week's maintenance, the two of the three available quests rotated. Last week, I had Silent Valley + Shrine of Loyalty available, whereas this week I have Shrine of Loyalty + Wall of Argos. I had a similar experience on my 70-75 character.

2) I think that's by design, I don't know for sure of course, but it seems to work on a rotating basis, where it can be any one of them on a day, probably to hinder bots a slight bit.

Hinder bots... how? Each quest needs to be turned in each day in order to do it again, and at best, any daily quest (at least >80) should take no more than 30 minutes to complete if spawns are good. That aside, perhaps it is by design, but NCsoft has made no mention of it either way. This isn't the sort of thing that should be left up to the players to figure out, because as it is, the game just appears broken.

3) Crowding is a consequence of a drastic change in game design philosophy but not updating the mechanical workings behind the scene to go with it. Before people would hunt mobs that gave exp, and that was the only reason to hunt them, most quests sucked. Now there's a reason to hunt some mobs over others, but no more of that type of mob.

I understand this, but surely this is a problem that NCsoft could foresee? It shouldn't take a brainiac to figure out Limited Hunting Space + Influx of Players = Problem Waiting to Happen. That said, I don't think this is an easy problem to fix, but I do think it could have been fixed nonetheless. Some MMOs have a system in place where the faster mobs go down, the greater the spawn densities become or the rate at which they spawn. This would have required some clever coding, but even if this wasn't the solution, I am sure there has to be another one (eg: make half of the dailies happen in new, instanced dungeons).

The drop rate for the quest items has nothing to do with level, at least very very little to do with it.
I get items form nearly every mob if i do the quest on my main class (lv 82, the sub that picked the quest up is 78) and nearly all mobs are past the level limit for getting exp from it.

This is not how I've come to understand things, but this is mostly based on experience. It feels like to me that if I am doing a quest and battling light blue or green monsters, I have a lesser chance of getting the reward, whereas it's appeared to me that if I kill quest mobs at least 2 levels higher than me, then the drop rate becomes 1:1.

Last night on my Dwarf, I did the 70-75 Wall of Argos quest, and at the start of the area (green mobs), the drop rate was about 1:2, while when I traveled in towards the middle, with white mobs about a level or two higher, the rate became 1:1. This could be a major coincidence, I'm not sure. I'll do the quest again later to see if it happens again.

A way to alleviate the problem would be to allow items to be awarded to every member of a group if they kill it, that way an area would be able to accommodate 5 times as many people easy, and grouping up with strangers doing the same quest would be a benefit to both.

That... would be amazing!

In answer to your question: probably not.
Lineage 2 has always been a "if its broken, don't bother fixing it" type of game. NCSoft has faith that if people leave L2, they will at least try one of their other games. In fact, that's how the company has survived outside Korea all these years.

Oh, of course. We've always been at the mercy of the Korean developer anyway, as the NA office has limited abilities to change the game in any real way. It could however increase the spawn rates in these areas, which to me would be the best and easiest thing to do at this point. Then when things do finally die down, the settings could be reverted.

Thanks for all the responses :D

Oh, and I should mention - I realized not all daily quests are as tedious as the ones mentioned above. I did the 70-75 oen the past two nights in Swamp of Screams, and there's quite literally no problem with it being overcrowded. It likely helps that seemingly 100% of the area is applicable for the quest, but even while I ran into other people, the spawns were SO good, that it just wasn't a problem. I managed to get the 80 trophies I needed in 21 minutes. If only all the other daily quests were like this.

My daily quests don't even work...

I tried almost every single town Adventurer guide npc next to newbie buffer and they never even offer any quests.
W
T
F
?

I completely agree. They need to have more hunting grounds besides the daily quest areas where people not even doing dailies have to grind out xp.

Plus, I also have had problems with the "Daily Quest" because in my case, I have only been able to do these quests one time and that's it till I level up to the next "Daily". So I have resorted to the oldschool L2 xp method by grinding (which is fine by me, but the overcrowding sucks)

I think if the daily quests were working correctly people would be leveling past these areas quicker and making them less crowded instead of having to grind out levels in the same area.

The dailys and even frequented hunting areas would really benefit from having faster spawns, or more spawns.

Would it be possible for NCSoft to look into supplying more monsters on the battlefield at a time, or even make respawns faster?

no, these problems are not going to be addressed on whatever schedule you find timely.

no, they dont add spawns of monsters.

this would constitute "interfering with gameplay" which theyve NEVER done because they swore never to do it.

Spud tells the truth!!

There was a time when GMs helped but that was 2004...the game has progressed since then and NC West couldn't do anything anyways. Korea had to do any changes that NC West wanted and in most cases there was always a language problem.

The other thing that new players have to be aware of is that the Catacombs and Necropolis were excellent places to set up Bots...not for levelling but for RMT Adena/AA.
NC took those places away. So now the RMT/botters have two choices...find new rooms or level in fields (not very efficient). I've seen Bots doing fields around Goddard...taking quest mobs but not too many...they mostly would prefer to set up their trains in places that have rooms. So the areas where there are rooms will be taken over by Bots so those quests will always be a problem for real players.

Not much NC can do since the banning of Bot accounts is impossible because of the legalities... I know most of you will find this hard to believe but just about every bot they banned eventually was seen in game again. So my advice is to buy all the NC Coin experience advancements you can afford in order to level quickly.

I just can take one quest per day, and it is ALWAYS the same, now that im lvl 67, its always the quest that u need kill 12 Antilopes, 12 Buffalos, 12 Grendles, etc.

Why i cannot access the other quests? Like the For the Sacrificed, Plain Mission, for example... they have to correct that site...

i dont know if is just me, but did u guyz notice that gms dont answer post like before, when this go free, we post, post, post and dont get any answer.

What would we give for this kind of quests like 2-3 years ago...I can really feel the pain of players that would like to exp in the areas where daily quests take place.

With the amount of players joining the servers it will be even harder with time to get the needed kills in these areas.

Sometimes the best leveling spot is not the one where you can get most XP per mob, considering the crowding factor.

Before GoD, WoA used to be almost dead place. I leveled most of my subs and during that time I barely seen someone running around (except the 3rd class quest).

Now when lot of people run around with mentee buffs, mobs became very easy to kill even solo, before you had to rely on DC maybe a greater wolf to keep the spawn down.