There's already bug reports. It's a know thing, but they're actively(?) relying on players to report each individual quest with issues. The issue being (generally Elite quests), requiring agents that simply don't exist at the levels needed to fulfill the role. As I've encountered more and more of these.. the "solution" of hunting every single one down seems... inadequate. So I've been mulling it over a bit and thought: "Why not just 'level up' the existing agents?" Instead of hunting and pecking at all the different missions that are messed up, simply add a little more code. Similar to conversions, add in the ability to "train" an agent. In order to train said agent, you would need 3 copies (Similar to converting) of the same agent...but at the same level/rarity. So just an example: Bandit Lookout (Common) Spy 2 Half-Elf Ranger Fierce Train to Uncommon would take x3 Common and yield: Bandit Lookout (Uncommon) Spy 3 Half-Elf Ranger Fierce Train to Rare would take x3 Uncommon (x9 Common) and yield: Bandit Lookout (Rare) Spy 4 Half-Elf Ranger Fierce Train to Elite would take x3 Rare (x27 Common) and yield: Bandit Lookout (Uncommon) Spy 5 Half-Elf Ranger Fierce Simply adding this one bit into the Overseer system would draw out the longevity of existing assets, without eating up "hunt and peck" time trying to chase every single fault within the quest generation system and without needing to add more agents to "plug holes." It works with everything out there, simply adding +1 to the existing job skill with each rarity increase. Now.. I know.. I know, there are many more important issues facing EQ than overseer garbage. I'm not promoting for it taking precedence over the bigger issues. Simply, This is a way they can extend the longevity of what already exists as well as alleviate the que list for overseer quests that can't be completed (and hopefully not expend dev time trying to fix those).
My biggest issue is I setup 5 quests, then log in the next day and have 4 quests complete. I set up another 5 quests, and the next day, have 6 quests complete. (All quests were 12 hours or less - so it's just hiding a completed quest here and there) I'm not actually losing quests, they're just missing for a bit. (too much trouble to sign out/in just to see if a missing overseer quest shows up)
I'm not convinced that this is questions disappearing and then the same quests reappearing later. There have been times when the 'extra' quests that would pop up were conversion quests, and I certainly never let those go unclaimed. It seems to me that the extra quests that show up could be ones that had been completed and claimed previously. Whatever it going on with that, it is more complicated than just quests becoming hidden and then popping back up later.
Overseer was a new feature advertised and added to the game almost a year ago now. It isn't about how 'important' it is relative to other issues. It is about whether they are going to follow through and make content that works the way it is supposed to and fix it if it doesn't. They gave us a new toy that they had been saying would be cool, but then we find that it is is somewhat broken. So, are we supposed to be fine with, "Well, sorry it doesn't work that great. You weren't supposed to get that invested in it anyway. We'll get around to fixing it someday, maybe." I don't know how well Overseer works in EQ2 as compared to here, but our version of it was nothing less than a fiasco. And with COVID already reducing their ability to work on things collaboratively and communicate, the expansion took priority and no progress has been seen by us on fixing Overseer problems in months. We play games for entertainment. Anything that is frustrating about a video game is going to take away from our enjoyment of it and that is bad for business, since we might simply decide to do something else less frustrating with our time and money. [Now, I'm a golfer. So I normally have a high tolerance for frustration. But in golf, my frustration comes from me hitting bad shots. That is motivation for me to work to improve my game. If my frustration was coming from one of my clubs being bent, then I'd throw that club out and get a new one, or if the golf course was poorly maintained, I'd stop playing there and go somewhere else.]
I appreciate the thought you put into this idea, but I don't think it would be as simple to code as you think, as you'd need to create a new uncommon/rare/elite version of each of the existing common agents. (There are almost 200 of them, I think.) Not to mention that I assume each agent at the other ranks would be upgradable? The only solution without adding new code is to fix the existing quests and then do better QC whenever they add to overseer in the future (assuming that they ever will). Also, just to clarify, I see the problem as that it isn't that the agents don't exist for the quests, but that the agents that they had in mind for filling all of the bonus traits didn't have the job levels that they set as the minimum. I.e., a quest requires a Spy (5) and gives bonuses for certain traits, but there isn't a Spy (5) with those traits, but there is a Spy (4) that has all of those traits. As you said, this happened with many, if not most, of the Elite quests. This happened in the Elite Recovery quests as well, but with job slots that required rank (3). There are common agents (all with one job at rank (2)) that will have all of the bonus traits, but there may or may not be any uncommon or higher agents with rank 3+ that have all of them. Then there are other similar problems, like some of the Elite Recruit quests that could only be started at all if you have that Elite agent to fill a required job slot, or the Clockwork VIIX agent that has the gnome trait (which is correct by game lore, as that NPC is in disguise as a clockwork), but some of the quests where he would fit the best give a bonus for a clockwork. (That is, there is no actual clockwork agent with the same combination of job and traits that would fit, but Clockwork VIIX would if the gnome/clockwork error was fixed.) Other outstanding issues: the disappearing quests bug (I don't think that the extra quests we sometimes get are really those coming back, as I've had completed conversion quests pop up too out of nowhere.) Recovery rewards that don't work to recover agents. Just a few minutes ago I claimed an Elite Blacklisted Recovery that did show "recover agent" in the reward window, but my blacklisted Elite agent didn't recover. That has happened with other recovery quests to me also, not just Elite ones. Incapacity in general messes up any reasonable risk vs. reward balance for increasing in quest level. Being level 5 in a quest type means you will typically need more agents and higher ranked ones to do the quest and/or achieve the same success chance, but the chance for incapacity goes up as well. Needing more rare and elite agents means fewer options to do the quests and with them incapacitated more often, then it is harder to fill out your 5 quest slots when you have 6-10 of the smaller agent pool incapacitated virtually at all times if you run overseer at least daily. Add to this that a Level 5 Diplomacy quest gives the same single collectable fragment that a Level 1 quest does, and it makes you wonder what reaching Level 5 is good for if you aren't going for the overseer currency or xp that does scale up with quest level decently. Success Chance - clearly, the displayed success chance is not the real calculation to determine whether the quest succeeds. I have 3 accounts, all maxed at lvl 5 in all quest types, and my failure rate is around 1% in each account. I'm not asking for the success chance to be nerfed, God no, but it isn't clear what relationship the displayed success chance actually has to anything as it is. People that have read my TL;DR posts in the past know that I have more than a tendency to go on in detail about things that seem small to most players. But, it is just in my nature to be very thorough if I am going to say anything at all about game mechanics, I guess. I think my point here is that there has been little to no communication from Darkpaw about what is going to be done regarding any of these issues, so that leaves me thinking about it way too much and obsessing about it. Besides, I seriously doubt that I'm among only a few that are annoyed by these issues, even if almost no one else is putting this kind of time and energy into thinking about them and then writing those thoughts on the forums.
They’ not going to do anything with it, Overseer is feature complete. They’ll just keep adding new expansion tradeskill items and collects. We get fed the constant lines about lack of resources and then they add in another system that requires resources. If, they’re needing some year end financial boost then they will start to sell the ability to raise your Overseer quest cap from 5 to 10. Overseer will go the way of LoN, and disappear but not before vacuuming up cash. You can already see their business philosophy from the last two expansions, which is building new features that add more cash shop features (Overseer agents, Fail your Overseer mission faster, and Dragons Hoard slots). Problem is they don’t have the human capital to sufficiently develop and maintain these new systems, and it reflects poorly.
