Excelsior

Hi all, I'm on the shard for around 3 months but only now I feel the need to write on this forum.
At first I wish to say thanks to everyone which helped at the start and made the shard a very cozy home where I'm happy to stay.
Really guys, thank you so much!

Let's talk about Mistvail quests changes..
Personally I find the latest changes way too drastic. I understand the need to do some good reward hard to take, but to force people to complete the whole set plus the reaper in order to access to the Sash and Cloak quests it's way too much.
If someone has no need to all those armaments what's the point to force them to do it? I mean, I completed the Cloak and the Sash just in time, but sadly my sweet half couldn't take the Sash quest today.. And now if she want to take the sash, she need to complete all the whole set plus the reaper? Are you kidding me? We don't even need those things.. We are talking about long/boring quests which can be completed "camping" the same dungeons over and over and over.
Why don't change them and add stronger monsters? Maybe gathering few mats that are now worthless on the market (like the Dragons Scales, Oil Cloths, or other resources which hardly sell)... Killing Balron (15), Shadow Wyrms (20), Ancient Wyrms (20)? At least we could give to the marked a huge boost. The changes on the creatures that need to be killed could help to vary a bit the areas. Killing a single Balron make it a lot more funny than running here and there in order to kill 60 liches lords.
Or an objective like: go to that place, talk with a Npc which gives 3 minor quests that once completed give an item which will be needed for the main quest.
Or complete at least 3 armament quests then you are free to choose from reaper/ sash / cloak. Which has sense 'cause not everyone need the reaper (I'd take it to sell on the market or just like a "fashion" item).

If one is not willing to work hard for pieces of gear that they will keep nearly indefinitely, and replace very last when building their relayer sets - then one does not really need to obtain these items. The quests for reaper, sash and most particularly the cloak were far too easy for the level of the item received. That's now fixed. Today I will be finishing up these updates by modifying the requirements in the lower quests as well as increasing the drop rates and mob respawn rates in the various dungeons, to help balance out the overall length of time required to finish the 6 armor quests. After that, I'll keep an eye on these (as usual) and do any further tweaking I think is necessary as things progress. Eventually I might do a full rewrite on the quests to give them more immersion, as was my original intent, but that will have to wait until after Elysium is finished.

I want to argue that this change achieves 2 bad things:
1) Most new player will wear same mistvale items(if anyone do the quest ever)
2) You add more mindless grind to the game. Especially first 120 days there are lots of fun things that new player would do besides mistvale dungeons.
So you taking a glass of water from newbies and forcing them to work hard for shiny item. Well maybe cloak is really too good so could be nerfed or mistvale armaments could be made better, but doing _all_ those quests is too boring. I'd suggest reaper/sash/cloak to require any 2 or 3 of armaments quests. Making load of quest items higher is not best solution because items are not claimable and it is a hassle to loot thousands of them.

Nothing stops any player from also doing all the other "more fun" things in tandem with Mistvale. Most players complete all 9 armaments quests in less than 1 month. Mostly they do so in a couple weeks. It isn't something where it takes people the entire 100-ish days they've got access to Mistvale, playing for hours each day, in order to complete. Further, as I already explained, the overall requirements are now less (20%+), the mobs spawn faster (50%), and they drop items more frequently (20%). So, yes, there are more quests you must do in order to obtain the cloak, and perhaps folks find them boring. But they're doable, the cloak is an extremely good item that is highly desired, and it is worth the work. If you don't think it is, simply don't do the quests.

Mistvale isn't a requirement for player progression, but it is an area that I'd say most if not all the new players do partake of. As these players progress into later areas of the game - particularly when Elysium opens - working hard for things will be more and more of a requirement, and it's better folks start learning to do so early on.

These changes will remain, and as I said previously I will keep an eye on them as time passes and implement any further tweaks if I think they're needed.

I'm not saying that everyone must get everything in a week, but work could be fun/intellectual. Mistvale not as much boring as it is a hassle to loot each monster there. This why i suggest that smaller amount of quests to do, or smaller amount of harder mobs to kill would be better.

Part of the updates was that claim is now enabled - forgot to post that one lol. I'll see how it goes, since claim can sometimes cause problems with the quest items' being looted. Which is why it was previously disabled.

My account is four months old and I can't access the Mistvale area? I should have two more months right?

Bah- never mind, I see that the time frame is 120 days not six months. my bad...

I didn't even know these changes take place


It goes back to me saying that this shard places too much emphasis on making it not "carebear"


News flash. Too late

I suggest not having it be like the "haves" and the "have nots"

As already said, I perfectly understand the need to make things harder, but it's not a problem working hard to obtain those great rewards (you are talking with the one which refused to get free armors/weapons/pets from players.. 'cause I prefer harder things. Now you have an idea with whom you are talking with), it's more the fact that the quests are pretty boring (no offense but it's the truth ).
The task of the quest maker is to make things hard but at the same time not boring, and we are not talking about how long must be a quest, but how much fun and how much challenge it gives to the player. When a quest ends the player should think "Have been long but I had lot of fun!".
How those changes affect the market? You said that the full armaments it's good enought to last till a full relayed set.. Good but bad at the same time. So crafted / dropped armors will become useless? What do I sell to the players If they'll have a full set 'cause now everyone is forced to make it all? Basically this change will risk to affect the armors market too.

Let's return on the quest storyline.. "Stick here and kill stuff till death.." 9 quests ask the same thing and the scenario it's always the same. No doubt that there is a great effort on making dungeons and the scripts behind those quests, but isn't that the problem. So thanks for making those items which are of great help!

As Iltar said, and as I've understood talking with players in game, it's the storyline and the tasks that are bad here. I'd prefer a task who asked me to go to a far away island (without the chance to mark a rune) and find an ancient Dragon with whom I have to talk in order to obtain from him a rare scale. How do I reach the island? I need to buy a boat and travel.. Hard? Not so hard, but it takes time. What do the dragon ask to me? Could be a funny thing, like retrieve to him the food 'cause he says that his wings are broken.. You need to go back and tame 10 sheeps.. You give them to the dragon which ask now 10 pigs... (i'd killed him already arr!). Then maybe the player could discover that the dragon tricked him and used the player like a slave to carry him the food. With a bit of effort on the dialogue it could become funny even if not hard, even long if we consider that must be done without gates or recalls.. (Shipmakers have also something to sell on their vendors too!). At the end of the quest he gives the scales.
Another quest could ask to go to a Cyclops village and challenge in arena their best champion in order to receive the item you need, you fight 5 champions without the help of the pet and the difficult increases each fight with the last one who is hard enough to force you to make more tries.. Maybe with a standard equipment in order to keep it balanced.
Another quest could ask to seek the task giver's friend which disappeared and you need to find him. "last time he was trying to find a very rare creature which has high quality wool".. You find him imprisoned in a dungeon, you help him to get out of there, retrieve his equipment who got stolen by a goat! A goat? A speaking goat who likes to play tricks! That goat have the high quality wool the imprisoned guy was looking for.. How the goat can speak? Isn't a goat it's a human, or better, a mage which failed a polymorph spell times ago and can't return to his original state.. At this point or you kill him or you help him to return human and he gives the wool which need to be turned in cloth in a special loom.. Where is this loom? In a far away place guarded by mages? Or in a fairy village..

And so on... I mean, there are lot of things you can do to make things longer and longer, or harder and harder, but also funnier and/or as already said challenging. Those I wrote are just examples. All these quests can be a side quest or just override the need to kill all those creatures but keeping the need to collect quests items.
I know it will requires time but I'm sure that in this way the whole thing will turn great.
Killing liches with maxed mules/nobles isn't hard working, I could just relax and eat a pizza in the time pets clear everything.. Where is the hard working part? Killing a lich lord takes few seconds even without a pet, killing 100 just require the time for the respawn and the need to move from a dungeon to another running or recalling out.. it's more a rinse run and repeat thing more than a challenging.
Did you considered to block pets in those dungeons? Few players could need to work together in order to fight few group of mobs and the thing could create aggregation's moments and friendship. 'cause as it is now, a player just need to buy two pets and boom all clear.
Sure at the end you reached your goal 'cause the player will think "has been long"... but Nor funny nor challenging nor hard. Just long.

As last thing, I think that the whole armament it's way too overpowered and it's one of the reasons why I avoided to collect it and I bought things from players instead (I don't like easy things). If at the time I had to complete it to have access to the cloak, I'd saved a lot of money for sure but players wouldn't sell anything. Imho the changes could affect the market in many ways. I'd put instead of the whole set "max 3 of 6 armaments can be collected", leaving to the player the choice and then having the last 3 items to collect (reaper, sash and cloak) or 3 armaments plus one from reaper, sash and cloak. You are making things longer but boosting at the same time the players. Instead of having hard time on mobs and dungeons, players will have the more hard time on the chain quest instead then the game turn in a piece of cake? O.o LRC gear will become less valued too. Dunno really..

Read it as tip from a player, nothing more, nothing less. It's a player's point of view in the hope it will help to improve this chain quest. As admin you have the "power" to ignore players feedbacks or use those feedbacks and in both cases you'll reach your own goal but with two different results. It's your choice.
By the way, did you considered also those who are close to the max account age and they need now to rush everything in order to reach their goal? Who start them now with months available to finish the whole set, has nothing to worry.. But for those who have just a month or less? They were sure to have the time to complete a single quest.. If you at least said it in advance giving a prior advertise of 15 days or so about the changes, who had not much time could finish the things before the 120th day.. Turning Mistvail accessible till the 6th month it's so bad?

Once more, it's only my own opinion so take it as player feedback. No offense really, I'm trying to type with the best english I can but I could typed something wrong dunno, keep it in mind.
Peace and Love!

+Nyx wrote:Eventually I might do a full rewrite on the quests to give them more immersion, as was my original intent, but that will have to wait until after Elysium is finished.

+Nyx wrote:These changes will remain, and as I said previously I will keep an eye on them as time passes and implement any further tweaks if I think they're needed.

Mistvale was opened as a stopgap - I actually built an entire city where I intended new players to start, instead of logging in at TC where everything is confusing. They'd go through a tutorial if they desired, and have access to these quests as well as others. However, it looked like that wasn't going to be able to be implemented for the foreseeable future, so I built this incarnation of Mistvale as a way to help boost the new players instead of ignoring their needs for more content. Thus, these quests weren't done quite the way I wanted - since they can't tie in to the actual city - and are still, in a sense, temporary.

Honestly, there's no pleasing pretty much any of you. First it's that we hate the newbs and there's nothing for them to do except grind out GoCs and gold for relayers. So, I add this place, and then everyone's mad because it's too easy - which I agree with - and others are mad because it's boring, or because they don't want to have to do any work for it at all. We've had far better newbie retention since Mistvale was released than the year or two before it, and any new players joining from here out won't know the difference, they'll do these quests and receive the rewards same as all of the rest of you did when it was the old way. Some will whine about it being too hard, too boring, too easy, too useless, too overpowered regardless. So it comes down to the simple matter of me changing my content as I think is best and whoever likes it, great, whoever doesn't, oh well. There's really nothing to discuss at this point. The changes are staying, and when I have the time (after my facet is finished), I plan to rewrite these quests to be more interesting as well as to fully implement the actual city of Mistvale, in tandem with +C's planned updates for how new players begin when they log in for the first time.

Actually quests are not boring, its fun to hunt mobs in mistvale or other places where they spawn. It's just boring to loot those quest items from every skeleton/ghoul/zombie.

just a question: would it be possible for older players who were never able to access Mistvale, have a chance at Mistvale say if your account is over 2 or 3 years old? The reward items can also be account bound from the get go (i.e. sgail leggings). I think it would be interesting to explore the place and the items an added bonus (since most players over 2-3 years old probably wont need the items) and selling them wont be an issue since they are account bound. The only issue I see are the stealables which could be (I dont know) a solid source of income for newer players. I personally am just curious about the dungeon and the quests and would like the gear for my alts. Anyways just an idea. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

I actually initially felt the same way as the OP on reading the changes but after taking a bit of time and thinking about it I found what was bugging me.

It came down to something simple.

Story.

If there was some sort of story to each dungeon that expanded on what Thaddues says or ties them to their content I would feel the investment.

Right now it does feel a little go here kill stuff.
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My suggestion is this is actually a great opportunity to make use of all the great writers on this shard and hold a little story competition. Have us the players do the work for you and then you can just copy and paste or at worse have the winner sit down and type it into an ingame book.

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I over all like the idea of Mystvale and have enjoyed parts of the content. I'm just a story man

oh, come on.

Please READ the thread before replying. I should not have to keep repeating myself because someone didn't read the thread and instead posted the same thing I already said as if it's a new idea.

+Nyx wrote:Eventually I might do a full rewrite on the quests to give them more immersion, as was my original intent, but that will have to wait until after Elysium is finished.

+Nyx wrote:The changes are staying, and when I have the time (after my facet is finished), I plan to rewrite these quests to be more interesting as well as to fully implement the actual city of Mistvale, in tandem with +C's planned updates for how new players begin when they log in for the first time.

Alex wrote:just a question: would it be possible for older players who were never able to access Mistvale, have a chance at Mistvale say if your account is over 2 or 3 years old? The reward items can also be account bound from the get go (i.e. sgail leggings). I think it would be interesting to explore the place and the items an added bonus (since most players over 2-3 years old probably wont need the items) and selling them wont be an issue since they are account bound. The only issue I see are the stealables which could be (I dont know) a solid source of income for newer players. I personally am just curious about the dungeon and the quests and would like the gear for my alts. Anyways just an idea. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

No, I'm not going to open it for older players. We don't reopen old events so that everyone newer can get those old, rare items and I don't see any reason to do so for Mistvale. On top of that, it'd be an absolute ton of work for no actual benefit and it's not something I find more important to spend my time on than event/facet development. I've already got so many shard things to do lately that I feel swamped, I'm not going to add anything to that list unless it's something I think is very important or worthwhile. I don't feel that this is. Information wise, the quests are outlined on the wiki for those curious about the requirements, and it also has screenshots of the gear pieces. If you're after gear for your alts, Alex, you've got several spare relayers in your shop, maybe wear those instead.