Finished With My Epic Quest in Under Three Hours!

[Chackra]

Well, ok, "finished" probably isn't exactly the right word.  But that's all the time I spent on it.  

It had been a very long time since I had attempted anything but the simplest buy-and-hand-in quests.  I had just reached level 65 so I didn't have to drag anybody else along with me and either waste their time, or have to do everything twice if it's another Beastlord.  The mainhand weapon is, frankly, crap compared to what I can get on the Bazaar for a few hours' farming income, but the secondary looks like it might be nice to have.  So I figured what the heck, I'd give it a try.

Now I recall why I quit doing quests so long ago.  This is a colossal pain in the butt.

I looked up every single detail of the quest on Allakhazam's, then went to get the Copper medal, wrestled with the 1970's quality parser system until I got the right NPC to do what he was supposed to.  Even then I had to go through the process several times, going back to cheat boards to figure out what combination of things were most likely to get you to the item.

Finally, I was done with that.  Then I turned it in and started on the "epic battles."  I copied down the exact coordinates of every NPC scout (apparently there is no clue at all actually in the game as to where they are. I guess you were just supposed to randomly cover every inch of the planet looking for them; I skipped that part of the epic "adventure" altogether.)

I went to each spot -- exactly each coordinate of all six NPC's because the cheat sites said they were all hiding behind rocks and trees and things.  None of the six were there.  The cheat sites say the respawn rates are (probably) somewhere between 72 hours and 6 days.  So apparently, I am supposed to log on every couple of hours for the next half week at least - longer if another Beastlord on the same server happens to beat me to the punch, or if somebody just gets a wild hare and kills the NPC's for giggles.

The engineering of this game and the intricacy of the combat system are works of genius, and I have managed to squeeze a lot of fun out of this game.  But these quests are nothing but aggravation.  I guess some people take a perverse pride in being able to put up with more annoyance than others, but I don't see anything admirable about that kind of "accomplishment."  As near as I can tell, these quests are only designed to be enjoyed by a very tiny handful of people out of the hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers who are the first to actually put their clues together and finish the quest before anyone else.

I wouldn't mind if the quest took ten times longer -- in fact, the longer the better if the process were in some way fun or interesting.  But I actually caught myself saying out loud at my computer:  "God, what a pain in the a--!" on several separate occasions while I was trying this.  

Seriously, what are the designers thinking when they do crap like this?  Did it ever occur to them to take somebody off the street, sit him down at the computer to try this out and ask him:  "Is this fun?"  What kind of marketing guru would it take to come up with that idea?  Or, if they did do that, and somebody actually said he enjoyed the time he spent doing the quest, I want to know the name of the asylum that guy got out of because their security needs a lot of work.

[Taiglin]

Feel better now?

[Skanda]

Sorry, this may not sound too nice....

I went to each spot -- exactly each coordinate of all six NPC's because the cheat sites said they were all hiding behind rocks and trees and things.  None of the six were there.  The cheat sites say the respawn rates are (probably) somewhere between 72 hours and 6 days.  So apparently, I am supposed to log on every couple of hours for the next half week at least - longer if another Beastlord on the same server happens to beat me to the punch, or if somebody just gets a wild hare and kills the NPC's for giggles.

This is different from everyother epic quest how? 3-6 days is nothing. Not sure about on other servers but they are up for several days at a time on Saryrn. These scouts are a walk in the park compaired to most of the other epic quests out there and I think we, as a class, have the lease amount of room to complain about it. What other class can solo their entire epic? No epic is just handed out to a person, I'm reminded of the old Rage for the cleric epic here....we have it easy. If you want to see a hard epic go try out the Mage epic and spend the next month farming PoHate for the one peice they need there. I spent a nearly a month of nights in Skyfire farming the shards for my cleric's epic (I thank god that I came along after they had "nurfed" the Ragefire spawn in that zone).

[Chackra]

Sorry, this may not sound too nice....

This is different from everyother epic quest how? 3-6 days is nothing.

As I said, that wouldn't be nearly long enough if the quests were in any way fun or interesting.  As it is, three minutes is a bit too long, and three hours is insane.  Last time I checked, no online computer game involves heavy lifting, so nothing involved with this is "hard" and I never said anything about how BST quests compare to those of other classes.

Now, this part might not seem nice, but (although that's no excuse) it is honest:  I have absolutely no idea why anyone would think the quests in EQ are fun.  There is the thrill of getting something at the end, but that's like the old joke about liking to bang your head against a wall because it feels so good when you stop.

EQ approaches the concept of questing as a 400,000 man scavenger hunt.  I've read a lot about how the quests in WoW work, and that's caused me to be even more bothered by this.  I know it's what a lot of us have gotten used to, but it doesn't have to be this way.

[Chackra]

Sorry, this may not sound too nice....

This is different from everyother epic quest how? 3-6 days is nothing.

As I said, that wouldn't be nearly long enough if the quests were in any way fun or interesting.  As it is, three minutes is a bit too long, and three hours is insane.  Last time I checked, no online computer game involves heavy lifting, so nothing involved with this is "hard" and I never said anything about how BST quests compare to those of other classes.

Now, this part might not seem nice, but (although that's no excuse) it is honest:  I have absolutely no idea why anyone would think the quests in EQ are fun.  There is the thrill of getting something at the end, but that's like the old joke about liking to bang your head against a wall because it feels so good when you stop.

EQ approaches the concept of questing as a 400,000 man scavenger hunt.  I've read a lot about how the quests in WoW work, and that's caused me to be even more bothered by this.  I know it's what a lot of us have gotten used to, but there is no real reason it has to be this way.

[Chackra]

Sorry for the double post.  Does anybody know why sometimes you get edit and delete buttons in this forum and sometimes you don't?

[Skanda]

Sorry for the double post.  Does anybody know why sometimes you get edit and delete buttons in this forum and sometimes you don't?

You can't edit in the rants forum.

And Everquest is a game involving tons and tons of time. This game isn't built to cater to the instant reward type people. Epic quests, Shawl/Ring quest, Lord Seru's earring quest, Key to VT, PoP Flagging, GoD Flagging, tradeskills in general, faction building.... Everything in this game that is worth anything takes time to do. How exactly would you go about making quests "fun" given the current structure of EQ?

I can't think of any quest that I would call fun but the reward at the end of the quest makes it worth putting up with. I've known people who have been working on their epics for years (literally). I know I hated the VT key quest but for me finally being able to zone into VT made it worth it. It's all about time vs reward in this game.

[Chackra]

You can't edit in the rants forum.

Damn, that makes me mad!

How exactly would you go about making quests "fun" given the current structure of EQ?

Um, change the structure?  I know EQ originally broke a lot of new ground, and there were unavoidably some mistakes made in the beginning.  But if you look at where the trends are heading now, they are toward even more boring twinking and farming on one end, and on the other end even more raid equipment requiring a level of corporate hierarchy and hoop-jumping, which if it were a paying job, most people would quit.

As for the time-versus reward, as I've said three times now, I would be perfectly happy if that ratio were actually increased.  The first step in making quests fun would be to make them what I call "accessible" instead of random, insanely convoluted, and aggravating.  Make it so it's reasonably possible for a player to figure the quest out from inside the game; give me an idea of the difficulty before beginning so I know whether I should try now in a group or wait 5 levels and do it solo; let me know what I need to do without wandering through an endless parsing purgatory; and give me clear and meaningful choices to make as to what quest path I want to take and what techniques I can use to complete each quest.

Is that so hard?  Well ok maybe it would be hard to do it perfectly; but it wouldn't be hard at all to stop intentionally doing it as incredibly badly as it's done now.

For one extremely tiny detail:  WoW puts exclamation points above the heads of NPC's who have something to say that is relevant to your character that only you can see.  To heck with computer games, I wish real life be like that!  Sony managed to put individualized path markers in the game, are you telling me they can't manage to show me which of the hundreds of NPC's in the game have quests that I might be interested in at my level and class?

As for examples of "fun" quests, you can look up some WoW beta web sites for some examples of the fun stuff, but I advise against it.  By the time WoW is released, nearly every quest will already be compiled somewhere, and I'm sure some people out of habit will ruin the game for themselves by reading them.  Doing that is almost as stupid as trying to do an EQ quest without looking up every detail first.  

People tell students "you're only cheating yourself!"  Well, bull.  If you don't get caught, you might come out ahead in life.  But cheating at a roleplaying game should be an oxy-moron instead of standard practice.  If someone wants to be led through all the quests by the nose so they can finish a little quicker than me and avoid what for all anyone knows might be a painful process of thinking and discovering for themselves, I have a perfect solution:  Let them.

MMORPG's are great because there are so many people you CAN meet and work with.  Forcing people to work as a monstrous collective to accomplish goals is completely unnecessary and counterproductive to what should be the real purpose of any game.  If people want to work together from time to time that's fine, but it is impossible for a "collective" to have fun, only individuals can do that.  Sony has lost sight of that.

[Skanda]

I follow WoW quite a bit (I'v even played it a bit) and from what I'm seeing a fairly large portion of their quests are built along the same guidelines and EQ, collections, delivery, killing mob X for item Y, etc. EQ quests even have a story like WoW quests if people would bother to read the text given by the NPCs.

For one extremely tiny detail: WoW puts exclamation points above the heads of NPC's who have something to say that is relevant to your character that only you can see. To heck with computer games, I wish real life be like that! Sony managed to put individualized path markers in the game, are you telling me they can't manage to show me which of the hundreds of NPC's in the game have quests that I might be interested in at my level and class?

One difference between WoW and EQ. WoW is being built to cater to new players who don't have a clue about MMORPGS and battle net kids who can't even figure out how to use their keyboards properly. EQ wasn't built to be newb frendly. EQ wan't ment to force feed to population. You have to use some wits when playing EQ and figure things out for yourself (I will admit that a lot of EQ quests are needlessly vague about what to do next though). In my opinion if WoW fails anywhere it will be because they have made the game too easy. I enjoy some difficulty in my games. I enjoy having to think about things.

Um, change the structure?

Change the structure how? It's easy to say but not so easy to implement. When you say structure what exactly are you referring too? Storyline (EQ divorced itself from any form of a storyline a long time ago)? Walkthrough (so you don't even have to tab out and read AllaKhzam anymore)? Exclamation marks above the heads (Not a great idea in my opinion) ? Decrease the amount of farming/work you have to do (thereby increasing the amount that people farm the quest and devalue it)? Increase the spawn rate so no one has to wait for spawns anymore (again this would most likely increase farming of the quest to sell)? What exactly would you change without causing a problem in another area of the game?

which if it were a paying job, most people would quit.

This is worse then a paying job for us. WE pay THEM to play. I would be ecstatic if they started giving me a salary to put up with clearing my way through Vex Thal.

[Skanda]

MMORPG's are great because there are so many people you CAN meet and work with.  Forcing people to work as a monstrous collective to accomplish goals is completely unnecessary and counterproductive to what should be the real purpose of any game.  If people want to work together from time to time that's fine, but it is impossible for a "collective" to have fun, only individuals can do that.  Sony has lost sight of that.

You don't play in a raid guild do you? I have tons of fun raiding with 40+ people every night. Don't make assumptions. And how is it unnecessary and counterproductive? What, exactly, is the real purpose of this game in the first place? This is an MMORPG. Why play if you don't like working with people?

[Chackra]

Change the structure how? It's easy to say but not so easy to implement. ... Walkthrough (so you don't even have to tab out and read AllaKhzam anymore)?

Why do you like cheat sites so much?  

.. decrease the amount of farming/work you have to do (thereby increasing the amount that people farm the quest and devalue it)? Increase the spawn rate so no one has to wait for spawns anymore (again this would most likely increase farming of the quest to sell)?

Sorry I didn't make this clear the first four times I said it:  I don't want to make the quests "easier", whatever the heck that means, I want them to be "accessible", meaning that a person playing the game, from the point of view of the character has a reasonable chance of figuring them out on his own.  It's a difficult concept to describe completely from scratch, but it's called "roleplaying", or "adventure gaming."  If you don't like that kind of thing, that's perfectly fine, but please just try to understand there are some people who do.  Call me crazy if you want, but I happen to think an engine like EQ's could be used to do something like that.

EQ's catering to twinking, powerleveling, walkthroughs, and pretty much everything having to do with guilds (other than their social aspect) has destroyed any semblance of the "RP" part of MMORPG.  If the "MM" part is the only thing that you are interested in, that's what chat rooms are for.

And yes, the few minutes of WoW beta footage I've seen does seem a little more fast-paced than I would like, but the designers have said that the later quests are much more involved – unlike you, I have no idea how complicated they want to make them.  Obviously I would prefer much more complexity than the average person, but there is a very big difference between "complex" and "convoluted".   I understand the appeal of the 400,000 man scavenger hunt; it's a lot like watching a football game:  people want to feel a part of something big even if you're not the one doing it.  I simply like to do things that are more personally interactive and computer games, especially online computer games, should have no problem doing both.

Since you're a lot more of an expert on the topic than me, I'm sure that you're well aware that WoW uses a 'base-of-operations' approach to questing, where they tend to send the character to areas that are appropriate to his class, level and even tradeskills and other factors, where there are lots of other things to hunt and do while he waits for his spawn, number of kills, collections, etc.  And that the higher level quests are "threaded" with overlapping story arcs that allow the character to make decisions which will affect his development and the direction future quests will take.

The part I'm fuzzy on is why you think none of this can be done in EQ's "structure", whatever the heck that is supposed to be.

As for the time-sink aspect, I got to level 60 before I looted anything better than I had bought in the bazaar, and even those were still droppable; I just couldn't quite afford them before.  It occurred to me that if they just made more items no-drop and increased the stats, I could have been doing that the entire time.  Why do you have a problem with simply having quests be accessible in game and take no more time than bazaar-farming or guild-twinking an equivalent item would take?

[Skanda]

First you say you don't mind long quests as long as they are involved but then you say;

Why do you have a problem with simply having quests be accessible in game and take no more time than bazaar-farming or guild-twinking an equivalent item would take?

EQ is simply not a quest centered game. If you want the good stuff join a guild and raid or do the bazarr farming.

but it's called "roleplaying", or "adventure gaming." If you don't like that kind of thing, that's perfectly fine, but please just try to understand there are some people who do. Call me crazy if you want, but I happen to think an engine like EQ's could be used to do something like that.

If the "MM" part is the only thing that you are interested in, that's what chat rooms are for.

You're right, there are people who like roleplaying. Why is it that the people who like interacting with friends (or raiding) should use the chat room? Roleplayers can use the chat room to their hearts content too (I do PnP roleplaying so I'm not clueless in this subject either). As much as roleplayers want it EQ is not a roleplaying friendly game (Don't expect WoW to be a roleplaying mecha either). Even the FV server doesn't have much in the way of roleplaying. Roleplaying seems to be a minority in MMORPGs (even more so then PvP). Roleplayers will always get the shaft because they don't bring much money to the table for Sony/Blizzard/Other companies. Why should EQ cater to roleplayers vs raiders?

I can understand wanting to make the text of the quests more clear but in your origional post you were also ranting about the respawn time of the scouts. This leads me to think that better text isn't the only thing you're looking for.

Why do you like cheat sites so much?

I don't use Alla's much because I simply don't bother with the quests. Heck, I haven't even done my epic because it's not worth it to me vs my current weapon combination.

[Lorathir]

What you're asking for is to play EverQuest. You can't do that in EverRaid.

:wink:

[Chackra]

... I simply don't bother with the quests. Heck, I haven't even done my epic because it's not worth it to me vs my current weapon combination.

As near as I can tell, you apparently agree that EQ's quests suck.  I have no idea whether we were ever actually arguing about anything, but if we were, it's officially over now.

[Skanda]

You're right, I agree that quests suck.  :P

I just don't really see a way to make them any better.

we were ever actually arguing

I prefer the word debating.  :wink: