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Scout quest for arcane catalysts now one per day !!!!! - REVERT

Discussion in 'Release 54 QA Feedback Forum' started by Anvar, May 28, 2018.

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  1. Anvar

    Anvar Avatar

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    Just tested on Qa and shocked to see youve stealth nerfed the siege quest so we can now hand in once per day
    The scout actually has text now that says I cant take any more till tomorrow.

    a) this is plainly a kneejerk response, 6 isnt even a siege, 18 is a siege and 3k per day from a quest isnt exaclty much. (6k on double) WHY ???

    as a bare minimum it should be atleast 18, Id go more for 180 so its 10 per day.
     
  2. istyrl

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    definitely agree it should be a minimum of 18. Makes sense if we are given multiple daily quests in the game. Does not make any sense if it is the only daily....
     
  3. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    Definitely 6 too low. I think 18 catalyst is fine but nothing special.
     
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  4. Fruck

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    yea.. at least 18... not sure what was wrong with it before though.
     
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  5. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    Honestly... I can go back to the blood river outskirts (I think it is? The one with the elven refugees?) and go around collecting wine and turning it in for almost as much xp as the arcane catalyst turn in, and it is nowhere near as hard to collect them!

    Yes, I was saving up the catalysts I was collecting while breaking sieges to turn in on thursday, but knowing that double xp was coming for almost a month, who wouldn't? Still makes zero sense for you to change this now, as all it amounts to is a miniscule bonus in terms of both gold and xp, compared to what I get for killing the siege engineers to get enough to turn it in!

    Wtf guys????
     
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  6. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    Just ran through clearing one catapult... 6 arcane catalyst = 1 turn in = 3000 xp (if not doubled) and 200 gold. xp per engineer = 1925, loot = about 100-200 gold. And that is just the engineers... not counting the marksmen/high wizards/champions, and the assorted "trash" mobs in the siege camps. Just from killing the engineers to break a siege, I get just under 36k xp and 1800-3600 gold in loot.. and you are going to make the 3 turn in's worth of catalysts, that amount to a quarter (half if doubled) of the total engineer xp, a daily???
     
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  7. Anvar

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    Can confirm that the scout seems also to know about our time as when he says tomorrow hes talking about our tomorrow not his, so he cant even get his own lore right :p
     
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  8. Ameresta Trilon

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    This is ridiculous and petty, as usual. Players shouldn't be penalized for holding the arcane catalyst that they worked hard to get - for most people clearing the sieges isn't easy or quick. And how is turning in dozens a day and getting the exp any different than hoarding hundreds of animal carcasses or hundreds of ore to smelt or any number of things that people have been hoarding all month in anticipation of the first ever double craft exp??? There is absolutely no difference in any thing being hoarding to take advantage of double exp from using it.
     
  9. kaeshiva

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    I have to agree this seems a bit ...stupid. I understand the logic in perhaps putting some sort of limit but this is ridiculous.
    If you clear a single siege, you'll end up with 12 'extra' catalysts that you can't turn in.
    Clear a siege a day, and in a month, you'll be drowning in things you can't do anything with?

    What do they expect us to do? Go into a siege, turn in 6 things to the scout, then turn around and leave without clearing it because well, I'm 52 days ahead....

    Of course, perhaps the drop rate of the catalysts has also been nerfed to match. Wouldn't surprise me.

    Adding the catalysts was a nice little incentive to actually do something about a siege, instead of it just being a POINTLESS USELESS HASSLE and EXTRA LOAD SCREENS to walk through. It seemed like a step in the right direction. If this goes live as is, its a big, giant leap backwards, another major pendulum swing nerf bat. Disappointed is an understatement.

    Having players collect quest items they can do nothing with that will just accumulate into the thousands is extremely poor design and a bs solution to a non-existent problem. If you think the reward's too much, then nerf the reward, not the number of times it can be done. 3k xp for clearing a siege is a joke the only reason it was worth doing was because you could do it repeatedly otherwise why bother. Even at 18k xp per siege for most high level players they could make that 18k faster doing just about anything else.


    ....I guess they "forgot" to put this in the release notes?
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2018
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  10. Complicationatbirth

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    Maybe this just confirms my suspicion of loot being on diminishing returns and they want you to keep moving around doing everything instead of farming where you want to.
     
  11. kaeshiva

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    In the interest of productive suggestions/alternatives :

    Limit how many catalysts you can pick UP - so once you've got so many, they don't drop anymore, you can't stockpile until you turn them in. Say limit it to 36 or something, that's two sieges worth, and I think reasonable. Other items work this way (ie dormant automaton monkey). Players who have been saving these wouldn't get a kick in the teeth but the problem solves itself moving forward and there'd be considerably less short term rage.

    Either that or just leave the turnins alone and reduce the xp per catalyst to whatever is felt to be an appropriate amount.

    Or make it so you have to turn the catalysts in before exiting the siege or they disappear from your inventory or something.

    Or make them tradeable/sellable so if you can't turn in the hundreds/thousands of extra ones you could maybe sell them to lower lvl folks who can't kill them.

    There's a lot of other ways to fix this problem if indeed its a problem (personally, think it was fine, there are far more lucrative xp methods) but making players endlessly accumulate quest items that they will never be able to unload is short sighted.

    I'm so baffled by this decision that I can't help but hope its a bug
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2018
  12. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Moving to feedback. This is not a bug - our systems designer went through the roof when he saw what people were doing with this. By design we strictly limit quest turn-ins because otherwise they are money printers. The fact that this one had no limit was a bug.
     
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  13. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    @Lum the Mad, I could believe that, if the quest were tied to a limitless source.

    But it isn't.

    First, you only have maybe 18 per siege, IF you kill all of them AND loot them before the bodies disappear. That's it, because the siege engineer only spawns so many times. That number alone demands, by the expectation it creates, that the minimum number per turn in be 18, and the reward commensurate.

    The second thing that limits their quantity is the sieges themselves... sometimes, you have half the face of Novia burning in siege, but most of the time you have almost nothing. Perhaps there should be two types of siege, one for the NPC towns that has this catalyst quest, and a different version for the POT's, that uses a different type of siege, or spawns a slightly different type of siege engineer and scouts that do not have this quest included in their dialog/loot?

    If anything, the item that is the money printer isn't this quest turn in, it is the siege engineer. Aside from the potential for artifact and special purpose item (bones, for instance) drop from other creatures, the siege engineer drops the most loot in the game for its level of difficulty... BY FAR. It is almost a guaranteed 200 gp worth of items dropped per kill, not including the catalyst. I mean, if I needed the wood that much, I would have had to spend WEEKS in RL game time rolling through adventure scenes to acquire the thousand or so units of wood I have received from killing engineers for a day or two worth of RL game time.

    If your System Designer's head exploded because you had a pittance of gold going out for these, it should vaporize in a fine red mist if he/she actually looks at the things giving out the quest item :p

    Perhaps you should, as suggested, refine the system that creates the sieges, and thus the number of possible quest items available to turn in, and control it from that direction rather than quietly sneaking this fix in from the rear...
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2018
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  14. Draugur2

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    I agree that this change is a very stupid idea. Just from the fact alone that you can get 18 per siege. Systems designer went through the roof, money printing??? You can tell that person doesn't play the game AT ALL. I tend to stay on top of the market and NOTHING CHANGED since this quest came out. The amount of gold he gives is a joke. If it's that big of a deal take the gold out of it. Not going to miss that whopping 200gp per turn in.
     
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  15. kaeshiva

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    @Lum the Mad

    If this is about the small pittance of gold you get per turnin, why not just remove the gold reward instead of screwing up the quest dynamic?

    To be honest, I didn't even realize it GAVE gold, it is so little. What, a couple hundred extra gold per siege? Take it or leave it. The extra XP was nice. No, it wasn't a lot siege by siege, but each siege gave you that little bit extra. It was a great incentive to actually clear the sieges instead of groaning that the town's under siege -again- and just running through.

    Is anyone actually caring about turning in catalysts for an extra pittance of gold?

    The fact is, you can get far more gold far quicker doing just about anything else other than finding and clearing a siege to earn a few pennies. The actual act of killing monsters in the siege gives you a decent amount, but so would killing monsters anywhere else - that aren't in limited supply, and that don't require you to run around the map finding an active zone to hunt in.

    If its about the money, then just....get rid of the money. As I say, I wasn't even aware that the quest gave a gold reward as its so little its inconsequential - take it away, leave the rest alone lol.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2018
  16. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    When speaking of "money printing", I meant the reward in general (gold and experience) not just gold. Regardless of how much or little drops in a given siege there were a few who were massively abusing the lack of limit on turn-ins to the tune of thousands of turn-ins at once which is how it was uncovered.
     
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  17. kaeshiva

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    Yeah, I get that. I'm not trying to be pedantic here. But the frequency of turn in was not really the right fix here, I don't think. You can only kill / clear the engineers so fast. The fact that people held on to them to turn in in bulk, instead of stopping by the scout every time on their way out, is immaterial.

    The quest as implemented was: clear a siege, get 600 gold and 9000 xp.
    Repeat as many times as you'd like.

    If this was too high a reward for clearing a siege, it would make more sense to just reduce the reward and leave the repeatability.
    The alternative - limiting the turnins to one a day - is just going to create a bloat of unusable quest items in everyone's inventory who ever does a siege, ever, since you get 3x as many as you can use. That's the puzzling bit.

    If the intent instead was:
    Clear a siege, get 600 gold and 9000 xp. Do this once per day only.

    Then again, there's no need to limit turnins, simply make the quest items stop dropping once the player reaches the "got all quest items" stage and this also solves the problem.

    I mean really what this comes down to is this:
    500 extra XP, and 33 extra gold, per siege engineer, regardless of when/where/etc. this was turned in. This really isn't a lot considering they are temporary/conditional zones with no respawn and finite 'farmability'.

    Turning them in 1000 at once or turning them in 6 at once did not change the amount of xp/gold gained.

    The only thing it did do was making players running around clearing sieges from towns a fun and lucrative activity and alternative to just grinding cash/xp in one spot. I thought it was an elegant solution. Was hoping to see more repeatable quests in other zones to spice things up / make them appealing compared to the same 3 places everyone grinds. Sad to see it go. @Lum the Mad
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2018
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  18. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    The key here, despite how often it can be repeated, is the number of catalysts. Instead of a guaranteed drop, add it to the long list of RNG calls, making it something like a 6-17% drop rate, and you now have 1/18th to 1/6th the number of possible turn ins. Can someone still collect a lot? Yes... but you have to do 6-18 times the number of sieges to get the amounts they were getting.
     
  19. kaeshiva

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    @DarkStarr @Lum the Mad

    Ok, I'm really really upset now.

    Based on this post and based on Lum's feedback above that this functionality would be changed, and not wanting to end up with a bag of catalysts that I've acquired over the last two weeks that I could do nothing with, I figured screw it, I'll just turn them in now.

    Apparently this has resulted in my account being BANNED? Are you freaking kidding me? Its bad enough that the fact that I've been saving these up from sieges for a couple weeks now has been a waste of time, but deciding to just cut my losses and turn em in now rather than stare at the unusable quest items forevermore has resulted in denial of my access to the game? I sincerely hope this is rectified promptly.

    So if anyone else has a few hundred of these or w/e and is considering turning them in.....be warned.

    EDIT: After reflection I realize this is probably an automated process linked to the amount of gold I sucked out of the faucet in a short time frame, but I would think especially considering the age of my account there'd be a bit of an, I dunno, buffer area here before going straight to auto-ban. I could see it on a fresh account with an hour played suddenly rolling in the money but now I wonder if I'd hit that trigger if I just decided to unload all the crap I have stored in boxes? I don't like being banned. I'll be good, I promise...
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2018
  20. Hornpipe

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    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    :D;)

    I get what you mean here, and it's ok if you maintain that change. Really, I had fun fighting those 70 sieges and I won't feel mad about that :p (mouth her ears to prevent smoke from escaping)



    That said, I will only try to give my humble point of view on this :

    I killed (more than) 1265 engineers and numerous of their friends, including the cabalists (as a bonus), to get to that point. I manually charged each attack with my bow, fought with cabalists confusion effects, and I had to think about each of my tactics as long as running in the crowd can be instant-death for me, depending on the configuration of the fight.

    It took me something like two weeks (and a bit less than one hundred hours) but it was my choice to grind in that place, according to the fact that I could rely on a nice reward to the end.

    It is not free gold (42 000 gold for two weeks is not a great deal, really) or experience (630K, 1,26M adv/craft when double experience) for me. You have to stay focused and motivated. You have to avoid death (and decay). And if the problem is not about gold, then you have to remember that there is a XP cap now. I didn't even reach it with what I've done, when some people easily get 1M adv XP in one hour.

    According to my experience of the game, the only credible reason you have is about crafting experience, because 1,26M crafting experience would be a bit big for two weeks (on top of the rest). But, did not I deserve it ?



    Now I have my own question : if you want to limit money printers, why are we still to that point where every AOE spell allow people to stay in the middle of a control point with the proper healer and sell experience in the marketplace ? :

    [​IMG]

    (image generated with @Spungwa 's parser while doing a control point)

    I know that you try your best to make this game balanced. But sorry, my opinion is that you are not going in the right way with this. It seems to me that other more important issues require your attention.



    And one other solution would have been to limit the quests reward to adventure experience too, or to lower the crafting experience reward with those.
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2018
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