Some are 3 hours, some are 6 hours...I have no idea what governs which one you get. I do know that only about half the time I get a recovery quest it's for an incapacitation that one of my agents has.
I agree with more longer quests, but from a different angle. If Overseer is to help the casual player more, it would be nice if there were also options for 48h and 96h quests. Certainly, more 24h quests would help more as well. In terms of quest labels, there is MUCH room for improvement. The solid colors designating quest rarity are the only labels in place now, and that information is far less useful than: 1) Quest type (Recruitment in particular!!!), 2) Whether you can actually run a quest with current agent pool, and 3) Quest duration. It would also be just fantastic if, when selecting an agent for a quest, those that meet at least one of the bonus characteristics stood out. Maybe a different border?
Two suggestions here. First, for each type of quest, there needs to be 3 different versions (short, medium, long). The rewards/risks need to be adjusted accordingly, with the long tasks (lets say 24 hours) giving the biggest rewards, but also have the most risks (for incapacitated agents) and require more skilled agents. Secondly, there are WAY too many types of quests. For example, there are 3 different quests for tradeskill materials (Crafting, Harvesting, and Research). Why? Aside from recovery and conversion quests (which really aren't "quests" to begin with), there only needs to be 5 types: - quests to get collectibles - quests to get ornaments - quests to get tradeskill materials - quests to get Merc AA - quests for recruitment Each quest should have 3 reward options: xp, tetras, or their primary reward type. All of that wipes out the need to even have the Overseer stats. Having different tasks lengths (think of them as easy, normal, and difficult) would take care of all of that, with the harder tasks requiring higher level agents.
Having thought more about the length of quests it would be nice if we had the following. 10 X 6 hour quests (so you can do 2 sets per 12 hour rotation) 5 X 12 hour quests 5 x 24 hour quests That way you can time all quests to finish at the same time.being as we have 20 quests plus the coversions this would work rather well. The longer quests (recruitment) you could either add an extra quest and do it as a bonus or lose one from the 24 hour rotation. The shorter quests (recovery) you could lose from the 6 hour quests. Noticed recovery are 3 or 6 hours, don't understand why some are longer than others, but the 3 hour length throws out the rotation of the other quests.
This would make more sense if they gave different rewards, rather than the same kind of TS items. For example Harvesting gave items used in Baking, Brewing, Poison and Alchemy Crafting gave you items used in jewelcraft, Fletching, Tinkering and Pottery Research gave you items used in Tailoring, Smithing, Research and Fishing.
Or, let the longest quests have the biggest rewards, but less per unit time than the shorter quests. For instance, if the 6hr quest rewards X, then the 12hr quest would reward a little less than 2X, and the 24hr would reward a little less than 2 times the 12hr. So, what you gain for using the longer quests is offset by lower efficiency (i.e. the min/maxers who stay logged in and start new quests the most, gain the bigger overall rewards). I'd prefer to see that, as opposed to harsher penalties.
