Next expansion

[Mrevil]

Gimme!11 the expansion n0w!!1..

That sounds like an expansion that makes me stay..:-)

glad you are going in right (in my opinion) direction..

[cairnz]

Regarding quests..

Some examples of quests, that, i find both enjoyable and horrid.. I'm clan, so these would be related to it:

Adonis Garden key:
A `decent` quest. The mobs you have to kill should be instaspawn (like A-4000`s at Smug and stuff). Delivering parts here and there is not too bad. Having to travel around the land and `tag` the two computer thingies was actually pretty cool, since i would not had dreamed of going up there purely for `explorational` purposes.

Adonis Sanctuary key:
A good quest gone relatively bad. The purpose of this quest is to free the diviner soul that is trapped within the demon. You usually bring another person with you for killing the demon for safety. But in order to kill the demon you have to 'farm'. Farming and quests dont mix. Killing mobs for quest is not bad per se, but having to kill multiple mobs without any assured advance in the quest is. The infernal demon blueprint should had been 100% droprate from any instaspawn mob (make it harder or something, if that's the problem).

Inferno Boots:
Oh yeah, covered everywhere in puke and /fblocks. A good example of a bad quest.

Trash King Part 2 (pad quest):
Good quest. Travel around, find stuff, tag it - stuff anyone can do solo, and in teams.

Trash King part 3 (pad quest):
Lackeys are okay, except if you're a team wanting to do it. if you are 6 guys needing to do the TK part 3, calculating the time needed is actually insane. Give 1 hour for a TK spawn on average (if you're that lucky), and assume all lackeys are already up when first get there, you're still looking at 6 hours for TK, 8 times 1hr20min for lackeys, that means you will probably end up on 20 hours playtime for a team to complete a quest that you do in an hour or two yourself if you're lucky with spawns.


So.. in conclusion with quests:

If quest involves killing, hard or easy mobs, it has to be on demand, not on a timer. If the mob is hard, gathering help to kill it should only result in people showing up, and you be ready to spawn whatever you need kill, or you just kill it because it would already be spawned (instaspawn rules).

Most other aspects with quests, travelling, tagging (mobs/whatever to be tagged NEEDS to be present at location), is good enough.

Finally, quests needs to be team-friendly. If you're a team of 2 or a team of 6, the time to complete the quest for 2 or 6 of you in team should be neglectably different from eachother. Remove 20minute timers, 20%/20minute timers on -anything- quest related.


anyways, this 'expansion' thing looks pretty cool, org houses will rock .. just hope they'll be implemented a cool way.

[Snuble]

Finaly some news

The press release will be a repost of Zathenias fake They just needed 2 weeks to find another title for it

In addition to the stuff listed here, I want vehicles that you can sit on so I can show off my phat armor (red thong ). Please rip the vehicles from SW:G, just make them even more "custom bike" lookalike I want to take a ride with my org from PW to Belial by land Complete with deep rumbling motor sound and wind sound please

[Dyna18]

Originally posted by Cz
Third, there will be aliens, of the nasty, aggressive and technologically advanced kind.

Jay.... back to the Futuristic Science-Fiction theme, I liked AO so much for, instead of that good / bad, black / white fantasy crap.

Hopefully you will also finally give us in-game player shops / auctions....

[jutlin]

Cz:

you asked about quests.

i think quests that involve more content on demand, and less waiting, are the type of quests that people really enjoy.

take the ergo trials in scheol for adonis. the whole lead up to the trial is a huge timesink, that involves a bunch of camping. particularly the soul globes and the machines. however, when you finally get to ergo, you get what i think is the type of content on demand people like. that being a specific mission hall for people to go through with a rather unique, tough boss.

if AO gave more quests like that, where you basically commit to a certain quest, be it solo or with a team, and are sent to a dungeon or some other zone, and have to get through a series of difficult mobs, hurdles, etc. that is a type of quest people enjoy. rather than have it be just one mob in a trial room, why not have a quests involve such trials, but say have a hard boss or a series of hard boss like mobs or puzzles for each level.
basically you'd be upgrading the mission system to include the content of Shawdowlands.

however, i think quests like the dalja key quest are quite doable. even the vanya quest is of the right nature, except, of course, for a ridiculous requirement of 35 frags of the source. if you took out that part, i think people would enjoy it much more.

basically AO for the large part before shadowlands was a content on demand based game. the only real time-sink was when you couldn't find a team to do a mish. otherwise, the other time-sinks, like say waiting for TK to spawn and waiting in line to get him, were totally optional, so it was not something to get worked up about.

heck, even mercs was content on demand, you had to spawn ota etc.
i think if it's necessary it shouldn't have insane time-sink elements. if it's uba and it's optional, then, maybe, the uniqueness and waiting for a spawntime, say like pvh, is more acceptable.

dang that false press release!!!!!uno

[Brent]

Well according to storyline Humans are decended from the Redeemed surviors that left Rubi-Ka and found Earth millinena ago.

The Unredeemed followed and destroyed all other redeemed Colonies but left earth alone as the ones there seemed to be the ones that had an unredeemed mindset.

But what about the Unredeemed colonies?

After so many years they would have evolved along a different path and become....Alien...

Where Humans are divided between the two camps with others standing between.

What about these People who Once Plundered the source and had access to magical technoloigies..

If any colonies of unredeemeds happend they would be draw back to claim the source for themselves once a way back to it was found. They would not care about the ancestors who where trapped inside the Shadowlands for all this time. They would not care for the Human Breeds that impead their gaining back that with their ancestors told them would make them gods.

They'd be Powerful as they'd never had to scrape out a living from a stoneage life, they had Technology far beyond what happened today and it would only be acceptable to assume they have Improved on it.

As for aggressive..How would you be if your entire race was once godlike and it was taken from you and sealed away, leaving you to exist knowing you where once far more Powerful. Such a people would not let things like Morals or justice they want one thing only, "POWER" they want their "Godhood" back and we're in the way.

Just my thoughts on the matter

[Kermitdartt]

a big up for more sci-fi and less elves and demons crap!

.. oh and org HQ's and player-towns? YESSUM! We're talking pvp potential here!

Imagine the insane pleasure in setting Kinkstaahs little hut on fire.. OMG OMG OMG BURN clan-infestation!

[_______________Acyro]

I love the idea of org housing and player built cities. Also, the player stores (which someone suggested up a bit further) would be nice.

And on the subject of quests:

What everyone else has said pretty much hits the nail on the head. Quests are fun if they're PROFESSION specefic and doable when you're by yourself waiting for a friend to get home from work/school, etc. It's just aggrivating when you have to have half of your org. there to do a quest for ONE person.

Hope this helps.

[Rikerstc]

Originally posted by Cz
Rikerstc; I think you and I agree. You say "those quests". That indicates it's certain quests people dislike, not quests as a game concept. I was just trying to get that through to those basically saying "no quests at all, ever."

Several quests on Rubi-Ka are quite popular and have never seen the kind of feedback we get about some of the Shadowlands quests. I'd rather like to know what kind of quests people do like, so we can make more of those, than have people say "quests are evuhl!"

i HATE all quests exept alvin part 1 and 2 and by hate i mean really really hate them cant say all my feelings about quests here
or i get really angry in rl and go smash something and you delete
my post

good advice to fc stop making quests, sorry to say this but you cant make quests u sqrew upp the drop rate, loot tables and make them like timezinks so dont do this please pretty please with sugar on top...

and keep in mind you have alot of 200+ players now mabye make some cool new tempels/dungeons/missions we can explore without having the opposite side in them and reseting them.

and if you make uniques like merchs/smug etc make them in a mission or whatever so a entire guild/large group of friends can work on them without worrying that someone else come and killsteal and make enugh of them so we all can do what we wanto

[______________Corona]

I think the bad part of a lot of quests is the fact that you can spend a lot of playtime, and never advanced the quest. A solution to this would be more required loot items, that are all 100% drops from certain mobs who spawn anyway.

I think the Rat Tail quest for Tirbo Ratcatcher, as silly and newbie as it may sound, is a good blueprint for a quest. If you just look at it from the perspective of needing 10 Rat Tails in order to gain 1 level (that being the "goal" of the quest), then you could easily just go ahead and kill 3 or 4 Rollerrats on Monday, another few on Tuesday, another couple on Wednesday, and then Thursday, you would have 10 tails and would gain an extra level.

I think that if you just needed 1 Rat Tail for some uber prize, and the drop rate on those was 1 in 30, then you'd have some pissed off people, as you could go and kill 10 rollerrats, but have done absolutely no progress towards your quest that day.

Think of smaller, easier to achieve objectives that result in something much grander when pieced together. In essence, think of how the concept of "Save points" have been pretty much phased out from RPGs, and replaced with "Save anywhere" functions....players don't want to have a large portion of their game time mean nothing.

For example...NPC X has Uber Gun Y that every Fixer wants. It's obviously going to be a very long and hard quest...the alternative, though, is to camp some NPC A who drops Uber Gun B, but that NPC spawns once a millenia, and the gun is a rare drop. So, we opt for the quest. What does the quest involve? (Editted post thought: Think of the mob drop gun as a special "gift" for some lucky SoB who happened to go out and kill that mob. Maybe it's got a few extras on it that are nice, but no big deal. The quested gun, though, would basically set the standard for Fixers of a certain level, simply because it *IS* possible to get, given time...there's no luck factor involved.)

Well, the quest is split up into 6 distinct parts, each one requiring you to forge (or have someone forge) a piece of the gun. Piece 1 is the Gun Handle...in order to make that, you need 12ieces of Special Metal, that drops from Mob X, and 12 pieces of Processed Rubber, that drops from Mob Y. So you need to kill 24 mobs...not much different than an average mission. Once you kill 24 mobs, though, you have all the pieces you require for the first leg of the quest. And if on Tuesday, you only collect 10 pieces, well, then that's 10 pieces less that you'll have to collect. But with each kill, you get some sort of "token" that essentially "saves" your progress. If you kill 10 mobs and log, then you've accomplished that much towards your quest. It's not something where the drop rate is 1 in 50, so you kill 10 mobs and log, and essentially have nothing to show for it.

This is just my opinion of course...it's what I've seen from over 4 ears of playing MMORPGs, and over 10-12 years of playing games in general, mostly RPGs.

[_____________Pinkoid]

It's a friday afternoon, it's about time to go home. I didn't read teh entire thread, but I will say this:

I'm not going to moan and groan over something about which only an announcement that it is being developed has been made. All I will say is that I hope that it will be a fun expansion.

Have a good weekend all

[Dezmathio]

Originally posted by Cz
mawu; I don't know. I was just wondering whether people were against quests no matter how they were done and implemented.

I like the TK quest, from RK.

Physical evidence on your character, that you bothered doing a quest - is very nice, imo.

Oh well - who cares what I think anyway...

/Bras

[Wrangeline]

I just think its important that quests are made is such a way that we can finish it without having to fight other players for it (camp, KS, wait in line, need help from 6+ people per person that needs to complete it and such)

More soloable quests is allso good.

[Darkbane]

Nicely put Corona... that's exactly the sort of thing that's needed...

[Revelator]

Let's see now then, what kind of quest would I like to see? Oh, there have been lots of really good suggestions before me in this thread, and I see that they have covered pretty much all of what I DON'T want to see too.

That being said, when it's all said and done, the kind of quest I would really really like to see, above anything else, is the following:

ONE THAT WORKS, DAGNABBIT!



Heck, most of the SL quest were, and are, pretty crummy already, but patching them in completely and utterly broken in several places did NOT help. And STILL doesn't help...

[Ianjier]

I enjoy quests, but think AO can really improve on them.

Some quests I feel are decent are things like the Living Cyber Armor, Tirbo Ratchaser, the Nascesne Key Quests, Some of the Jobe Backyard quests. The Jobe backyard quests seem to work fine now, that there isn't as big a population in there, but when you had to hop GS's to find the Young Silvertail, or Heckler of Evolution, it sucked. Trying to find a specific GS to enter is a pain in the rear.

The Elysium Key quest is okay. If the NPC's are killed though, it makes it frustrating trying to locate them until they respawn. Having to kill a mob that the other side needs to talk with is a bad idea.

The Trash King quest to me sucks. Having to camp for the parts just to start it sucks. The second part is easy. The last part sucks also with having to wait for the Trash King to spawn, and competing for it with others. I've vowed never to do the quest again.

The Elysium Sanctuary quest, and the Adonis Sanctuary quest both suck. The mobs are overpowered in the Elysium Sanct quest, so you can't just assasinate the leaders like you're supposed to. The Unredeemed mobs have like 3000 point nukes, which kills most players until they're close to level 150. The Adonis Sanctuary quest requires camping, so sucks.

The Jobe Armor "quest" isn't even a quest. It's a damn money sink, which I also refuse to ever do until it's made into a actual quest. Not everyone is rich, and making this the requirement to get our Profession specific armor was a bad idea.

I enjoyed the quests in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. They made AO feel really boring to me after finishing it and trying to play AO. Asheron's Call also has pretty decent quests, that don't require camping. And the chests with the loot at the end have timers on them usually, so that each person can loot it fully, and can't loot it again for 30 days, so that if a team helps, each gets a shot at the chest, often with random loot, and perhaps a few specific items just for that quest. The Gaerlan quest for example gives you a item based on your highest skill, which defines your profession. The Aerlinthe Island Quest gives you a robe, and staff, as well as a recall spell, and other random loot.

I have been waiting and waiting for Towns of Rubi-ka though. I love socializing, and I spend alot of time just wandering, talking, helping people, rather then hunting and doing missions. I would like to see more clothing, and completed outfits. Also fix current clothing such as red ties, where the feet weren't done, and they show up as boots.

Also more furniture, and housing options. Perhaps even a mini-game where you can pick from different rooms to design your own apartment, so it isn't cookie cutter. Yes, it sounds like Sims Online, but the building part is great. I enjoy building and designing stuff. One of my favorite programs is www.dungeoncrafter.com where you can use tiles to create housing, dungeons, castles, etc. Neverwinter Nights also has real easy tiles system and works well.

And with vehicles, I agree with someone else who wanted you to rip off SWG vehicles. Now, don't rip them off, but make vehicles where our characters are seen. There are open fronted vehicles in the Clan base in Wailing Wastes which should be made as actual vehicles. Hoverbikes would be cool. Give them a throttle, so you can shift between walk and run like normal with the backspace key, to put the vehicle into full speed, or cruising mode. And give us a /autopilot command so we can use it on a road to follow a set pathing line along the road. Then we could have orgs with these hoverbikes in cruising mode doing rides.

And Aliens. Make them really alien, and with their own spacecraft and vehicles and stuff. And hurry up with this expansion. People are dying to play it.

[______________Lictor]

Originally posted by Cz
Several quests on Rubi-Ka are quite popular and have never seen the kind of feedback we get about some of the Shadowlands quests. I'd rather like to know what kind of quests people do like, so we can make more of those, than have people say "quests are evuhl!"

The problem with "quests" in AO is that they usually are not quests as most people understand the word. Most involve camping uber mobs and/or killing legions of grey mobs and/or waiting for spawn for hours. It doesn't involve that much skill, and it is not really a quest in the sense that it is not a test of skills or mind, just a test of patience.

Now, about the quests I like... The first Fixer quest is a good example of an alternative. It involves no killing at all, no camping... It can be frustrating, but if you fail, it is usually your own doing. Actually, despite having no uber-red-mob to kill, it is a very challenging quest if you do it at early levels. I remember I had a real sense of having accomplished something when I did it with my own buffs and no instant evac (but a yalm). Some people managed it without yalm, and they can be proud of it.
The Drake quests are ok as well, they don't involve much camping or anything.

I think we need more non-standard quests. Things like the Fixer quest would be appropriate for Fixers or Adventurers. With a twist towards sneaking, they could be good for Agents too.
Real D&D style quests with riddles and some thinking involved would be great too. Of course, the problem could be spoilers, but there are ways to prevent that. Like including some quests as game secrets in the EULA.
Actually, the best would be to have something similar to the ACG but for quests. Like, having quest templates, and creating a custom variant for everyone by filling the variable parts. That way, you avoid spoilers, and also make it interesting to re-take the quests with alts...

[Engelen]

Aliens!!!!!!!11111

Uhm...


Okay I`m WAY excited over this, just when the biggest hype of SL has stabilized FC again slams a upper hit in my pelvis and keep me at the edge.

I really look forward to this, seems like a more "relaxed" and "fun" expansion pack.

DONT FORGET TEH ALIENS!!!!!

[Keldros]

Cz, can you move this post to this thread?

A few things I'd like to see in the expansion:

Content for neutrals:
SL really only extends the game beyond lvl 200 for sided players, since all the high-QL items require Omni or Clan affiliation when Redeemed or Unredeemed faction would make much more sense. (Omnifiers...Clanalizers...What? No ICC version?) The so-called neutral token board (experimental cyborg token board) is usable by anyone at TL6, so neutrals are at a bigger disadvantage than ever in PVP and PVM but we've gained nothing more than anyone else in the tradeskill area.

Speaking of tradeskills:
Since I started playing, I've noticed that not only do tradeskills have a low return on XP, but they've been nerfed so you can't even level using tradeskills any more. The best items have always been quest rewards or boss loot, accelerated NCU and carbonum armor being the only exceptions I can think of. Who will spend IP on the skills needed to construct nanocrystals from components when they can use clicksaver to get the crystal itself?
*end rant*
I would like to see more useful items (like high-ql weapons and armor) that can only be obtained through tradeskills (and can't be made by anyone who isn't willing to invest a significant amount of IP into tradeskills), but does not have to be made from impossibly hard-to-find items. (When was the last time you saw an NT in a full set of notum-saturated metaplast?) It gives tradeskillers something to do, and gives PVPers a good reason not to use us for title farming (as in the recent event in Borealis on RK2) if they want that new gun or armor in the future.

Speaking of weapons and armor:
The idea of each class having a "class-nemesis" opposite didn't go over well in the past, and for good reason. People have also complained about certain weapons being overpowered.
My suggestion: "Weapon-stopper" armors. An example would be an armor set with an obscenely high AC vs. the damage type of a caterwaul, for instance, but offering no protection at all from melee attacks. Another may make players nearly invulnerable to edged weapons, but is totally useless against energy damage. (Think of something with +/- 75-90% ACs for different damage types as opposed to the +/- 25% ACs in current specialized armor.)

The advantage here is that anyone can change their armor if they're sent to reclaim, as opposed to no one being able to change their class under the class-nemesis combat. [b]It allows PVPers to adapt to the situation in a battle, as long as they remove themselves from combat for a minute to change armor.[b]

[Xhairs]

Guild housing: Wooohooo!

Player run towns: Ok, this can be very cool if done right.

Mean nasty aliens of the invasive kind: Finaly something to kick besides "demons and angels".

Ok, this shows potential. Can´t wait for the press release so we get to know what it will be called and a few other goodies i bet.

(Powers that be, i beg of thee, let there be eyepatches, cigares and pet Leets in this Expansion.)