** QUESTS ** Please fix them FunCom.

[___________LostLogic]

This post is in the same vain as the others who gripe about unique mobs being camped, but....I am not griping about the campers....

Cause
Unique mobs spawn way too infrequently. 18.5 hours to spawn for one creature is insanely long.

Some quests spawn every 2 hours (Alvin), but disappear upon use.

Effect
This results in camping of mobs. How many times have we seen complaints about camping in other MMORPGs? 1, 2, 10000?

Only high-level campers win. The uniques are hard enough to kill without having to compete with people twice your level on top of it!

Special items are impossible to be obtained by everyone in the game. With a spawn rate of 18.5 hours between creatures, it would take ~105 years for 50,000 people to get the item. And that is only one item mind you.

Special quests such as the Alvin quest, are gimped. Not only do you have to work several hours to obtain the robot parts, but once you are done with this you must compete with others to be the first gimp to click Alvin when he appears. Why should you have to both a) work hours to get pieces and b) wait 2 hours and be first to click?

Solution
Create missions for special items. Make entry into these missions done with the current key system. Implement some type of quest that results in a key to the questor. The questor can then duplicate the key to give to his/her friends to help with the combat portion of the quest. And btw, make it where the key spawns a completely new copy of the dungeon for the questor and his/her team. Just like missions do today.

Special quests such as the Alvin quest should retain the first requirement a) collecting robot pieces, but should remove part b) waiting to be the first gimp to click on Alvin. IMHO once you have worked to get the pieces, you should be able to visit Alvin to get the mission key. In other words, Alvin should never disappear.

Implement quest timers. Asheron's Call does this quite nicely, you are not allowed to get some items too frequently. Big quests such as the bandit hilt quest can only be done once every 3 months (it may have changed, havent played in a while.) Make it where people can only complete quests every so often, this would fix the current problems like the Ash quest being done over and over again.

Make it where quests are always available to complete them. Why should players have to wait around days or weeks to even begin the quests? Sure, make it where quests are multi-part and take effort to complete, but don't make people wait around weeks and beat out others just to start the thing.

Anyway, my 2 cents worth.

[Bionitrous]

Lock the gate to Tarasque's lair. Have somebody (or even a special quest 'mission' terminal) give you a key to the lair. Whatever team uses the key gets it's own mini-dungeon with a giant monster chocolate surprise inside. Problem is solved. Get some buddies to help you kill him if you need. Solo him if you can. The problem is solved. Leave the entire rest of the the dungeon (PvP and all) alone. Just deal with the final dragon's lair and the foul crap that goes on there.

I don't care if every damn player in the game and every player to come down the pipeline has whatever that thing drops. As long as they are able to kill it, then let them have it. Just get rid of the camping for crying out loud. It's ruining the game for a lot of people.

Put McNugget inside a little shack instead of out in the open. Have somebody (or even a special quest 'mission' terminal) give you a key to the shack. Whatever team uses the key gets it's own mini-dungeon with a McNugget surprise inside. Problem is solved. Get some buddies to help you kill him if you need. Solo him if you can. The problem is solved. Done.

I don't care if every damn player in the game and every player to come down the pipeline has those damned glasses. Just get rid of the camping for crying out loud. It's ruining the game for a lot of people.

Lock the door to the Lab Director's office. Have somebody (or even a special quest 'mission' terminal) give you a key to the director's office. Whatever team uses the key gets it's own mini-dungeon with a Lab Director bio-surprise inside. Problem is solved. Get some buddies to help you kill him if you need. Solo him if you can. The problem is solved. Done.

I don't care if every damn player in the game and every player to come down the pipeline has that damn suit and tie. Just get rid of the camping for crying out loud. It's ruining the game for a lot of people.

See the pattern? Trigger has similar ideas in another thread:

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...threadid=14074

I could care less about the dungeon as a whole. In fact being in there with other teams is often invigorating. The problem is the cheeze at the end of the dungeon or the assinine NPC's on the 18 hr spawns that are pissing everyone off.

EDIT: I just gotta say that this change is probably about the most important single thing that could be done to improve the game right now. Screw changing OE. Screw the class balance. Screw PvP balance. Screw it all. I would just like for once in my small guild's existence to be able to say to the members 'hey let's go to the Foreman's Office and have some fun' and not have to know that some jackass from some uber guild won't be there either:

a.) Walking from start to finish killing everything in his path.

-or-

b.) Logging on 45 seconds before the final epic monster spawns and slaughtering it, looting it, and logging off.

I want something other than missions to do. FunCom put it in pretty nicely actually. They also allowed means for other players to prevent me from enjoying it. That last part sucks.

[Nikki.]

Wow some people do believe its Funcoms fault. Im sure they will change their mind when they see that I am agreeing with them :OP


Soooooo much content is needed.


Make all of Rubi-Ka 75%

Make true Solo Viable

Make Quests non compete

Make leveling Fun

Make sooooo much crap we get sick


How can all of this work? Well other games have had good ideas and should be considered. Heck isnt that what programming is about. Steal what you can then fill in whats needed?

Making all of Rubi-Ka 75%
How could this work in a PvP game?? Well many ways, but lets explain why its a good thing first. No game has been successful with Chaos zones. 99% of the people will jam into the safe zones. The other 1% will be mad because there is no one to PvP and just go level until a new game comes along promising PvP that never delivers.

Making all of Rubi-Ka would just let the 1% pisser off the 99% of the people. Too many games to point to for this. UO though is the best example with its original form.

So what about PvP? Well simple special zones with special rewards for defending areas and such. PvP tuornies with AWESOME rewards. PvP tags for the people that want to fight. Heck anything except forcing people to PvP that dont want to. It only ruins a game. Whatever you do though Make sure there are REAL rewards for the people that choose this path. Not just meaningless titles. As long as everyone has something to lose and its pretty much unexploitable then it will rock.


Making true solobility viable
Other games have had good ideas on this. Some used tradeskills. Some used Side games such as Fallen Ages city sims. Others just let you macro :OP Either way the single play game was just as good as the Group game. I mean heck who cares if somone Solos all the time there will always be people to have fun with in the end since alot of people love to play with others.


Making Quests Non-competeing
This is pretty simple Uniques and quests need to be set up so its hard but you dont have to wait around for your turn. If you are able to jump through their hoops thats all that matters. Nothing as simple as turning in tons of stuff in a series of checkpoints. Something that takes puzzle solving skills. Killing spawned creatures when an item is turned in. Putting objects together. and any other combination of things you can think of. Just make sure it has alot to it and not this simple dimple ****e.


Make leveling fun
Goodness just spread things out. Make it so everyone can just level while screwing around. HEHEH make high level EXP mobs. Make them tough to beat give HUGE exp but have to wait a certain amount of time before next spawn. This gives people time to chat and what not inbetween. Also it gives people other options. It wouldnt be anymore exp then now because of the respawn delay. Just adds more time to screw around instead of dashing through missions for hours on end.


Just Choke us with content. So much content we get sick and want to chcuk. A little like getting drunk. Its fun at first but we feel so bad at the end, yet we come back for more. Thats the feeling we want :O) We want to come back not feel like we have been cheated.

[____________Greystar]

I hate camping, i hate that most people cant get the most useful items in the game, just make it so that it takes real work, like a good team or 2-3 like with tarasque to get the items, but make respawn fast, real fast.

[Bionitrous]

Make instant respawn Boss MOB's.

As NikkiDial said in another post, they have 40 NT's in their guild and they are gonna get 40 of whatever items they need for them. This is a FACT. The current mechanics that are set up will never allow the rest of the gaming populace any chance to enjoy this content until they are bored or have filled up their treasuries.

I don't care if guild Storm (or whoever steps up next to claim a spawn) kills McNugget 40 times in 40 minutes and then goes home never to return until a new nanomage character joins their guild. It's done over with and they move on. 40 minutes, FunCom and we've got one guild off the spawn. Now, the rest of your paying customer base can have a shot at this content as well.

Do this now in 14.0 as a first step to fixing this serious imbalance. My $12.95 is just as important as the $12.95 paid by any member of a 200+ member guild. In fact, if you added up all the biggest guilds on RK1, you'd probably only have a small fraction of the people who actively pay and play.

I honestly don't think that Nikki and her cohorts are trying to deliberately keep these items for themselves to be more 'uber' than the general populace. They just know they are useful. They know they can easily get them. They go get them (to the unfortunate exclusion of 98% of the rest of the populace). The reason they do this is because they CAN.

Please make instant-spawning Zuwadza, McNugget, Lab Director, TIM, Trash King, etc. so that these guilds can get their crap and go away and let the rest of us have some FUN.

Neleb is bad enough, everything else is just stupid.

[_____________Paldorr]

**cough**sputter**choke**

My GOD!! I can't believe I actually agree with NikkiDial!!

It's the big one, Elizabeth!!

[Nikki.]

Paldor

I was saying the same thing in the other post if you took the time to read it :OP

Dont blame the player blame the lousy system. Put blame where it belongs :OP

[____________Founding]

Asherons Call really had the right idea in this regards.

Personal Timers : Timers could be anywhere from 24 hours to 3 months (Most were around 1 week).

This kind of system allowed for things like guild quest nights. Where you would pick a quest and anybody who wanted that item (or to help) would come along and you would go and try to get everybody one.

Mobs or items were on anywhere from a 30 second to a 15 min respawn (With guardian mobs on a more frequent spawn to keep everybody on their toes, you were never safe, so you couldn't 'camp' it too much)

Fighting the mob/finsihing the quest should be the challange not waiting for a spawn. Thats why Everquest was called Evercamp. And was one of the primary reasons so many people hated that game.

[___________LostLogic]

I submitted this post to support and got the following reply (thanks for responding so quickly!):

Dear User,

Thank you for your feedback!

The reason there are rare mobs is because they drop or give out reward
that is much better than other items at that level, and because of this
we have to limit the number of these items entering the world. Our plan
is not to have 50.000 people with a 'special' item in a day

Of course it is not perfect as it is now and we might change the way it
works sometime in the future.
--
Best Regards
Chris (aka Hadrulf)

[_____________Trigger]

Good job here, lets hammer the bejeasus out of this issue until they cant read anything without seeing someone pissed off about the current camping situation.

Thanks for the link Bionitrous, you and I are on the same page you got some great ideas and I hope someday funcom acts on them.

There are good ideas like the ones posted here all over the boards, keep them coming force them to hear us.

I submitted my thread too LostLogic and got a turned over to dev for discussion answer but that was it.

To Chris and all of the support staff. The response you gave Lost is not good enough. Not even close. There are literaly 100 posts on this board with ideas on how to stop the camping and still make getting the item dificult and controled. And to say its not perfect and you might change it is not going to cut it. Fact is it is ruining your game and bringing back one of the main reason people were playing this game verses others. Fact is you HAVE to fix it and you HAVE to do it soon. It is ruining your game period, put a stop to it while you still have something worth saving.

My 2 cents

[___________LostLogic]

My Reply To Chris:

Thanks for the reply Chris.

>>The reason there are rare mobs is because they drop or give out reward
>>that is much better than other items at that level, and because of this
>>we have to limit the number of these items entering the world. Our plan
>>is not to have 50.000 people with a 'special' item in a day

While I realize it is not desireable for every one of the 50,000 people to have the item, I think it is desireable for the entire player base to have a possibility of obtaining the item if they are willing to do the work.

If you have not played Asheron's Call, I suggest you at least give it a try or borrow a friend's login. In that game, there are multitudes of quest items attainable by people. Does everyone have one? No, but they can get the items if they work on it. And by work, I mean if they do the steps and processes required. I guess the bottom line is that you never are competing with players to get the items, you are competing with the environment. This is the crux of the situation in AO. Remove the competition with players and I think you will remove most of the complaints.

And BTW, I happen to run one of the guilds that camps the unique mobs and we get the items a fair % of the time. Unfortunately, this ruins it for others and I as much as the next person like fair games.

Thanks again,

LostLogic

[binaural]

wouldnt making them nodrop help stop the camping?

[Bionitrous]

Originally posted by LostLogic

If you have not played Asheron's Call, I suggest you at least give it a try or borrow a friend's login. In that game, there are multitudes of quest items attainable by people. Does everyone have one? No, but they can get the items if they work on it. And by work, I mean if they do the steps and processes required. I guess the bottom line is that you never are competing with players to get the items, you are competing with the environment. This is the crux of the situation in AO. Remove the competition with players and I think you will remove most of the complaints.

That's just beautiful, man.

[______________Jeamus]

If they are gonna keep the current system, the least they could do would be to steal a page from DAOC's quest system.

The way they had thier's setup was everyone in the group that killed a mob got the quest piece. This meant if you were camping quest-critter x and some else showed up, you could team together, kill the monster, and then both get the quest piece. This works to prevent much of the kill stealing, argueing, and uber-guild camping that you had in EQ.

The same system could be put in place for quest completion such as the Alvin/Droga quest. Let people group up and everyone in the group that has the proper items in thier inventory gets the reward.

As far as unique mobs go, the best way might be to simply give them a chance to spawn at anypoint within 2 or 3 zones. This way luck would pay a bigger role in who managed to get the kill. Another solution would be to have these items sometimes drop off boss mobs in the new team missions.

[Nikki.]

bump

[______________Psilex]

BUMP

[____________Valerian]

The official no-one-wants-to-join-uber-lewt-whores-incorporated-to-see-a-boss-mob bump!

[Cosmik]

This is a great thread. I'm grouping it with the responses to the Story Missions article and will make sure the team sees it. Personally, I'm liking the idea about the dungeon gate.

[___________LostLogic]

Thanks Cosmik,

I like the idea of keys to story-missions as well (as per the first line of my solution.)

[___________Misophist]

Yeah, something needs to be done. And soon. Right now the system is, well... crappy and boring.

There are other systems in this game that would go under the "crappy and boring" heading, but I'm just gonna go for the unique mob/dungeon problem here.

I never played AC, but that game seems to have the right idea. Funcom would do well to study the AC quest system.

Thanks for taking a look at this, Cosmik.