Poet's Palace Access Questlines

Poet's Palace Access Questlines, seems to me a bit of an extreme (tedious) timesink for such outdated content.

snowline wrote:

It is amazing how much I disagree with such a short statement.
EQ2 as a whole is a timesink.
Quests are fun, especially when they have a meaningful reward such as access to a zone.
Content might be out-levelled, but never outdated.

I just can't get excited about going to a room and standing there for an hour, waiting on click items to respawn so each group member can click their turn, then walking to the next place and standing there for another hour many many many times. For me it totally crosses the line between quest content, and unnecessary and annoying time sink.

I expect the dungeon will take 97% less time to complete than the access quest It doesn't seem a great balance, particularly when I go to dungeons when I want to get away from questing.

I'd like to see the dungeon, I'd like to have a character with access so I can zone others in, I don't get why I need to spend hours waiting on click respawns when I am trying to get a new somewhere to hunt stuff. Defeating some names to get access to a new area to kill things would make more sense to me, not this 1 node per 10-15min wait harvesting.

A lot of areas have had thier access quests removed or toned down when their content became less current/relevant, would you really want or be bothered to quest for zek access still? Poet's Palace zone is a prime candidate for such an reassessment imo.

The real issue with the access questline is that they've added Poet's Palace to the Chronomage missions. Which is fine, but its really frustrating to go to do the mission, only to find that you have a couple of hours worth of quests to do before you can even walk in the door. THEN you have to do the inside quests to open each floor... each time you go there.
The same thing with the Bloodlines instance. Nothing like realizing you have 5-6 quests to complete before you can access the correct version of the instance /sigh.
I have no issues with the access quests, but if those instances are being used for missions, they should have a special version that doesn't require access, or use a different instance.

After running through these, it's amazing everyone didn't quit with PoF. The auto-closing doors, mislabeled tables, and bugs if other players try to move a statue that you're already moving are maddening. Why weren't these all fixed with Gu54? The auto-closing doors could be made auto-opening ala Crucible. The tables could be corrected and perhaps tinted a more prominent color. And the house item movement bugs have long since been resolved. Why not move these statues to the new code.

Eveningsong wrote:

IIRC you only need to do the "floor" access quests once EVER. So that's not every time (as long as everybody else has done them too). The doors are annoying though, and always have been.

The worst thing is when you are moving the statues on the second floor, put one down to open the door to the room with all the pedestals, and then the statue starts giving you the out-of-range error every time you try to pick it up. I've had that happen twice now, where we were unable to progress int he zone because one of the statues just bugged-out like that.
That having been said, Poet's Palace is a really cool zone--I especially like the lighting effects in the garden on the top floor. Just beautiful, as befits the home of the Djinn Master.

More content is better than less. I personally have always enjoyed the long quest lines of the earlier stuff, the Bloodlines quests for instance. I like feeling like I'm going through a personal story, rather than "pick up list of quests, blindly enter dungeon and knock them off".
"Time sinks" could be removed without losing content and fun factor for the completionists among us, but they rarely are.

Terron@Splitpaw wrote:

I would hardly consider access to that zone at this time a "meaningful reward".

urgthock wrote:

So don't bother doing the acess quest.

Rahatmattata wrote:

Then you can't do the zone. Poet's Palace requires every member to do the access quest to reach each floor.
By the way, if the statues bug out on anyone, wait 2-3 minutes and it will reset.

i haven't set a foot inside Poets since KoS was released. It looks great but the zone mechanics are terrible.

It's needed for the Dirge epic.

i want these doors gone, i often get tired of waiting for door to auto open.
enough to get my baseball bat out of the closet.

feldon30 wrote:

"I would hardly consider access to that zone at this time a 'meaningful reward'."
So, then why would he care if he can't do the zone

Kind of off the beaten path, but I don't like questlines that have you do the same thing over and over. As an example from this thread, the Bloodline Chronicles are much like that--I do one quest that has me basically clear the entire cave of creatures (including several named in the process). Then I go back and get the next quest, which has me clear the entire cave again but includes a step where I need to kill one of the named I just killed. That process continues for about 3-4 quests and occasionally I had to zone out and back in from killing a named that I needed for a latter part of the quest I was on (i.e. I killed the named before I was at the point in the quest where the named was needed for the update). If there had been lockouts implemented with the Bloodline Chronicles, I probably would have screamed quite a bit while going through this quest series.
I agree the lore is good, but it's utterly frustrating when you're jumping through the same hoops mindlessly with each new quest. The same goes for Poet's Palace--I don't mind an instance or questline taking a long time to complete but it would be nice if some of these were more engaging instead of simple waiting or delays due to bad mechanics. They could've implemented the boats from EQ1 and accomplished that sort of timesink!

I think its funny how attitude changes. I am not sure if its better or worse, just different...

You guys have to be aware that this kind of stuff once was hard content. The doors in Poets have been danger. The zone was needed for many different quests and also to access the Djin raid. And the loot was woth the efford. Today people rinse and repeat instances for nothing but shards. Times change... i thought the current instances are boring

Also the access quests and the dangerous camping for the urn etc. have been exiting. Living tomb was heroic and dangerous to play. It was about how to move in a dungeon, about safe spots and about surviving pops. Really, i d trade this kind of gaming anyday for the dull instance runs. This was exiting beyond anything. I never ever again felt like i did when handing in my Prism2 quest.

Never mind, just wanted to tell you that this once was very good and difficult content.

Waiting for the doors was never good..

All I see is a bunch of
Threads like this can proudly be a part of the whole neuter-the-game-so-a-complete-moron-that-plays-4-hours-a-week-can-win-the-game movement. When's the last time you saw some noob dead on the path through Nek Forest? Hell, when was the last time you've been off the docks in Nek Forest? Yay insta travel. Game has gotten real easy, and players still complain this is too hard! this takes too long!

Nice try. The doors are buggy. The placement and movement of the totems is buggy compared to how other items in the game are moved. The tables are mislabeled. (ie. You're asked to place a statue on cyan table #4 and it only works if you put it on magenta table #7). We're not asking for a nerf. We're asking for a bugfix.