Please. It is called EVERQUEST not EVERGRIND, and I don't mean insane long quests like the TOV earring.. Just fun little things, like The League of Antonican Bards- they seem to have stopped delivering mail with TSS quests.. or the quests you did with Abysmal Sea to learn how to use the new tradeskill supplies not books to teach you, but interacting with an NPC who trains you how to use something. Be creative, also why do we not have more conversion TS materials.. it makes sense that as we learn how to use TS we become more efficient and waste less which as I recall from that expansion was the point of the returns of 1, 2, 3 as you gained skill using the materials. This is not the same as salvaging materials when you fail.
Non-grindy quests would be awesome. Less "hail here, kill 4 of these, hail, done" and more sustenance. Definitely don't want something like the earring where it's "grind for 100 hours straight, then grind for 100 more hours for the next quest". It would be really cool having to learn how to do the recipes in the new expansion rather than "buy this 100pp book and scribe it"... Especially when tradeskill gear is BIS. I really like Heroic Adventures, not sure why those were taken out of the game. COTF & TBM had like 4+ missions (if you count HAs as missions) per zone which was awesome and lots of fun to go through even today.
I'd love to have quests which aren't included in Merc and Partisan achievements. Quests for decent items that doesn't mean you have to do all the other stuff. I miss the quests for clickies we had in TSS. EQ has become too regimental, do this and get the lastest mount, familiar etc. Other rewards and quests would be a welcome change.
Great idea! They could expand Featherweight Satchel of the Courier to make players go to the new expansions since then with new mail and get a bigger bag. Unless they want to make new quests? But there are tons they could add more steps and make a better reward for today's game
I always liked explore quest-chains, like the wanderlust guild-line: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=3680 TSS had great variation in quest styles! I want more of that.
I love quests. I am always in favor of more quests. But it's gotta be tough for a developer to figure out what the player base wants as quest. The OP mentioned the Abysmal Sea TS conversion quests as a positive ... which everyone that I know disliked in era and dislikes now. Then another poster mentions the ToV ear as a bad quest, which most folks (tradeskillers or not) think is one of the best quests in the modern era. I think the only thing EQ folks agree on is the ridiculous multiple hail requirements of TDS need never return. I would prefer more quests that combine learning the deep lore of an expansion with ornament/illusion rewards, outside the normal merc/partisan/hero lines (of course, that would mean someone has to write more lore). I would like more expansion-specific drops (even if mostly cosmetic) that are earned through outside progression quests. I'm not in favor of actual quest piece drops (which I think the developers understand so that's why so many quest parts turn into kill x of y). I'm not super in favor of quests that span multiple zones. I'm not opposed to HAs but honestly, the (still) issues with CotF and TBM HA mission scaling makes me hesitant to want more work done until they get it right. I like the idea of a quest in every expansion that is a multi-arc from an old expansion/quest. But I'd rather the focus be on the quality of the quest, not just as a way to get an upgraded item. I think it's important to give feedback, especially positive feedback, on quests for an expansion. If all a dev hears is complaints about a quest that they spent a ton of time on ... there's not going to be much desire to "go big" on questing.
Make the quest rewards worth repeating. Have enough quests so we're not doing the same 1-2 quests for the next 365 days. One of my favorite quest mechanics was in TBS. There were 4 easy and 4 hard quests. The easy were about 30 min and gave a base 100 coins, the harder ones took about 60 min and gave a base 200 coins. BUT. As folks did the quests, the server kept track of which quests where getting done and would increase or decrease the coins so the easy one everyone did would slowly drop down to 50 coins, while the PITA one few attempted ended up being worth 400 coins. AND. The coins were tradable, which means you had a reason to go back and do that hard mode mission because you could sell off the coins because the group vender stuff was pretty good.
That's my thoughts exactly. They used to have quests that were just for fun (or sometimes useful items) and had nothing whatsoever to do with progression. Somewhere along the way, "progression" became the only thing that mattered in this game. Merc and partisan tasks aren't really "quests"...they're just things you have to do to keep up with everybody else.
I can imagine somedy with maxxed out character, who played since Y2K may be limited in quest choice, which still give some thrill. But majority of players are not those. Even someone who has a couple of maxxed characters still can do questing for other toons on their account. I redo questlines several times for my alts. And even my mains still do quests for rewards mostly. Currency coins, tribute loot, sellable gear etc. Here is my take on questlines, which I repeat for all my alts (as time allows): VoA - hard pass, majorly annoying questline. RoF - massively entertaining storyline. Who knew I would meet Luclin face to face and murder that beautiful goddess ? Also, I redo several quests repeatedly numerous times for experience reward during PL cycle - 10-30 minute quests can give 75% of level experience for a new lvl 70 toon. and over 20% at lvl 80. CoTF - very nice and rewarding expansion worth doing the entire progression through it. Marks of Valor (currency) is still very useful. TDS - very entertaining and elaborate questline. The only flaw - that horrible Mercenary achievement in Thuliasar Island. All othe quests are very ejoyable, not boring and quite rewarding. I keep checking with Clayton Teek every day I play and if he gives TDS tasks in lvl 2-3 TDS zones I do those: quick and easy, double coin reward, sweet pleasure of killing those funny dorfs or dinos. Piece of Eight is a nice currency, very useful for pets. Expansion material Relic Fragments is quite valuable to craft with. TBM - very beautiful expansion. Those well-drawn skeletons are really funny! Good story line, elaborate quests, nice valuable rewards (high-priced when selling) EoK - was once-and-done for me. I only rerurn Paragon quests for Heroic AA's and AA exp for my alts. RoS - a major pita to quest. Alot of running back and forth. Not really rewarding past Heroic AA's and bag bought with currency. TBL - a hell in-era. GMM was a band-aid , which worked until they've nerfed it, still decent though. Att 115 I came back to TBL and ran the questline and ... actually enjoyed it alot. I am tempted to rerun it for my alts. ToV - imho, the most successful expansion in recent years. Everything was done right with it. Great balance between difficulty, rewards and annoyance. Completed it multiple times for my alts an keep coming back to it for this or that quest. The Rallos Zek earring is perhaps the best quest in EQ. CoV - well... it's current era, more difficult than ToV and better gear. Not as entertaining as ToV but quite decent. Basically, I keep redoing CoTF-through-ToV expansions for Heroic rewards for all my alts. Mix in tradeskill questline and I am busy every time I play and I rarely just "grind" for exp. So, it is still EVERQUEST for me, never turned to Evergrind.
Funny, see I remember the conversations with tradeskillers (and this might have been on the EQTC boards honestly before Ngreth was even hired by Sony) in the time before Abysmal Sea, we wanted a dedicated zone for tradeskilling, POK wasn't like it is now, but it still had lag issues back then. And we argued that someone who had worked within a trade would be less wasteful than someone just beginning. Imagine someone just starting baking from scratch.. they make a huge mess usually.. where a pastry chef keeps the mess to a minimum. Then Ngreth got hired, and the 2 things we asked for were given. it was kinda a pita to get to Ab Sea but I know many people who LIKED it, they just didn't like the warren like maze to get to anything. (Also Galdorian Visigoth can die daily and it would please me greatly =) ) The reward is unarguably one of the best in game. The quest itself, is pretty good, well thought out , to a point... the grinding of THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of mobs between levels to "bloody" it each time is ridiculous, I've not heard a single person say Oh give me more quests like this! I was meaning fun little side quests, maybe for useful items like the clicky ring you can get by doing a quest in Shard's Landing. https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=106328 Or the one for Jaggedpine https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=112799 Nothing earthshattering of importance, just fun and possibly useful. Believe it or not, I know some people who really only play 1 character.. Crazy I know, definitely not me, but they are searching for new things to do having finished everything, or nearly everything already in game. So they are hunting down ALL of the old tiny quests to do, or looking for people to help get their own stuff done because they want to play, but really have nothing much to do.
The have-a-conversation way of conveying story was excellent. It was a good experiment, and totally should be revisited in future. Players clicking straight through a block of text or not even trying hailing an NPC - and then complaining that EQ has no plot / they don't know why their characters are doing anything - is perennially infuriating. Having to redo those conversations on replay, like when pursuing loot or attempting speed challenges, was poor. The story conversations should have been shortcut to paragraphs when the character already had the Hero achievement for that mission or Paragon credit for that task.
Seeing everyone elses responces to hails as well really didn't help. IF it had just been your own hail responses it would have been a lot easier to read the text, one of the worse things they did was to add in the blue click to move on to the next bit of text. The hails just made it even easier and who really keeps saying hi in a conversation to move the conversation on.
That's a major bugbear with npc giving players text in general, it's especially annoying on "new expansion opening day" where you are trying to get to the keyword & the screen scrolls up before you can read the text let alone click on the keyword. So you end up using a guide from ZAM or EQR and spitting out just the keyword and not actually reading anything because it scrolls too fast anyway - unless you already did so during beta. And if you have a hub with multiple quest npc....oh hi scrolling wall of text that looks like the end credits of a daytime soap opera with all the spacing removed blasting past faster than the speed of eyesight...
Claws of Veeshan had awful quests. They didn't have anything to do with the plot of the expansion at all. The only lore you could really get was in the four missions. The Darkened Sea had a good idea, but it was overkill with the multiple hailing thing. It was neat that you accompanied Firiona Vie and shared that journey with her, however you should be able to [skip] the text dump if you've already read it.
You need to go back further to find the really decent quests. TSS, SoD, TBS, SoF, etc. I've been doing heros journey for an alt and I really miss having those kind of quests with rewards like https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=52408 https://eq.magelo.com/item/53631 https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=54208 https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=51937 https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=51450 https://eq.magelo.com/item/79590 https://eq.magelo.com/item/79579 https://eq.magelo.com/item/79759 https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=67317 The conversions are a good way for items which you make a lot off, food and and drink for example. Not so good if you have to do them just to create a one off item. ToV ear quest was good and interesting, the grind to be able to do the next quest wasn't so good. Halving the exp required to do the next would have made it far more enjoyable. Also having it in from the start would have made it feel less of a grind, having to go back and kill things in EW after you had finished there wasn't great. Same with having to go back and do GD mission after doing it a few dozen times was frustrating. I enjoyed doing the kill quest in Kael and hailing Rallos but now if you have already done it for someone else it just gives you credit you can't do it again. I did go and find Rallos in PoP after doing this quest just to prove I'm still not on his side!
Pardon you, but unless you found him -- to give him a hug? doing battle is definitely serving The Warlord!
Some have voiced disapproval at the level of ToV ear exp grind. I'm of the opposite opinion. It was fine, or perhaps not enough. Players need a reason to group up with others, and evolving exp is one of the biggest. If it only takes a week or two to max AA and finish all progression, what's left? Mob drop collections? Aug camps? Those might draw out the tail some, but not much. Evolving exp (through quest or not) is important for the health of the game, or at least the part where we group with others.
I did my ear.. it's raid maxed, this isn't about that. I'm asking for just fun lil tasks to do, not necessarily to be part of the progression, just something to do to take a breather from progression or the grind, or just FUN.
