Currently the design of mercenary tasks is centered around get 3 checks in a box per zone, and then another check in the box for another achievement. They are a waste of development time for their current implementation because they offer no repeatability. At every request and feedback we have to face the explanation the developers have limited time, but resources are being spent on single use content. Why not add experience rewards and expansion currency, like Underfoot and a myriad of other expansions? It would increase your return on investment as people would repeat it. At the same time it would reduce burnout, because people could stop cycling through the same 4 missions that are also used as raids. TLDR: Mercenary tasks have less life-span than a disposable diaper, and add even less value to the game.
While I understand your point of why mercenary tasks are in the game, adding currency to such an insanely easy task is not the solution. Everyone would just gravitate to mercenary tasks instead of missions for currency...
What’s the issue with multiple paths? It improves the game, and keeps the solo player moving towards something. This wasn’t an issue in Underfoot or House of Thule. People are still going to do missions for spell runes, gear, TS components, augs, etc. These missions in ToV are about the same difficulty as a mercenary task, and take less time with the exception of GD. Full disclosure, my own suggestion is contrary to my own self interests, since I 6-box and sell the currency for Krono.
I'd be happy with them just rewarding exp for completion. Quests like the Dervs in GD and the 1st and 3rd merc quests in Kael take far too long for just a tick in a box.
Then you make them worth very little currency, it would still be some reward for people repeating while helping others.
My biggest complaint with ToV XP is that tasks are one time big rewards instead of repeatable. It makes the content one time use and also makes it so people aren't rewarded for helping other people do these tasks. It was nice to get to 115 fast but from a view of the health of the community lower amounts of repeatable XP is better. Meanwhile we are busy doing Planeslayer, for what exactly? There are more enjoyable time sinks that more importantly encourage players to play with one another. Single use tasks and mindless killing are not it. And who cares if I get my currency from a task instead of a mission? Why is there only one option for success in my open world RPG?
There are 21 merc tasks. Each one gives 1 currency, 60 hour lockout timer. That would be fine and help supplement those who cannot do missions for whatever reason. You cannot get a full set of type 5 augments, at best maybe you get 2-3 of them. The rest comes from missions. I can buy into that. Or do you all just want to get a full set of type 5 augments killing ten live and ten undead mobs every day in Ry Gorr?
I don’t understand your opposition to adding a sufficient currency to the mercenary tasks? We’re supposedly an RPG. A mercenary would expect to be rewarded. If, we can modify existing reward structures to promote a continuous game play loop, then everyone wins. Well, I would lose out on my easy Krono farm but the game would benefit by more player engagement. You’re seemingly holding missions as a standard of purity, but they’re not. Also, you’re weirdly placing type 5 augments as some sort worthy end that must be protected.
I totally agree with this. If the rewards are balanced, it won't cause any issue. Adjust the currency reward, the replay timers, maybe introduce a daily cap, so people won't be able to stack missions + mercs missions like mad and get too much currency per day, way too fast. We're on the same boat, Enclee. With my husband, we're 6 boxers (2*3 or 1*6 or wathever combination), so we can run the missions easily but ... some EU players like us do not always play on the Always Broken EU server, so if they do play during their prime time or day time, the servers are often pretty empty. I'm first to say that EQ1 is a group (and raid btw) centric game, and should stay that way, but a little help here and there for solo/duo players won't hurt. It's just a matter of balance.
