Main Quests and lower level players

Discussion in 'Quests & Lore' started by Armar, Feb 8, 2017.

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  1. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    As I wrote in a thread before:

    What about ONE first starterquest for ALL new players to push them up to a lvl with f.e. 200-300 hp. May be in the hidden vale to learn this place and its towns and the gameplay. It would it make easier for the new gamer not to be confronted from beginning with the big world. At the end we enter the oracle confirmation to choose our first path and starting with at least 250 hp to grow in a good way on the paths!

    My whole thoughts about quests can be found here:
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/paths-and-difficulty.71977/#post-708022
     
  2. Net

    Net Avatar

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    I think that the big part of the issue is how weak low level avatars are... and how long it takes to get all the required skills to level 40 (and perhaps the more useful ones to 60-80). And to get decent gear, especially now when you need to get recipes and gather resources and level all the craftign skills, that is if you play singleplayer. Of course you can just buy the gear, but then you have to grind gold which takes longer than grinding resources, that is, if you are low level. The progression is painfully slow for new characters especially after many late nerfs since the game went peristant. And what is worse, new players are not familiar with deck building and training skills and will hardly go for the msot effective build from the start.

    I kind of wish that we started 40 levels higher and it would not be so painfully slow to skip useless skills in skill trees to get to skills we need.

    Also I agree that quest xp should be much higher and single player scenes should not be that difficult (when it comes to mobs). They should have riddles, puzzles and talking with NPCs.

    PS: also new players canot get through passes without dying, and most of the underground is really for high level players, there seems to be serious lack of alternate long routes with minimal to no resistance.
     
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  3. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    Having read this thread slowly, one post at a time, I have come to the opinion that these 3 main quests are the Main Quests of the game, and shouldn't be run through by players by low level characters.

    Imagine that in WoW, Fallout, Morrowind, anything. Early level players have huge amounts of other things to do that don't involve the end game quests. If are involved in in game quests it's introductory only, and the player won't be heading back to those regularly, as there are tons of other things to do in the meantime.

    Meaning the players need lots of other things to do in the meantime. There was a great suggestion by @majoria70 to let us help fill out side quests.
     
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  4. Numa

    Numa Avatar

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    I visited Xenos yesterday and was informed by a minor quest character there that I was to rush posthaste to the final destination of the quest. Considering that area was 5 skulls and I can just about survive a 3 skull zone I decided to take care of some easier unfinished quests instead. NPCs have no awareness of how ready you are to undertake the next stage of an adventure and this gap show up starkly in some quests.

    It also doesn't help to be told that "YOU ARE THE ONE TRUE AVATAR" when you know that's exactly the same line told to the other 32K backers following the story :) As a confidence builder, it lacks conviction.
     
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  5. Turk Key

    Turk Key Avatar

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    The starting NPC of a major quest line should be the gatekeeper. He determines whether the player has sufficient skill to proceed. If the player does not, that NPC will give advice, but not the clue towards the next quest station. If the player meets an NPC further along in the quest that NPC should always refer him back to the gatekeeper if he has not been approved.

    People may not like the fact that devs would determine at what adventuring level a character must be to qualify for a quest because at the same adventuring level, some people can be effective while others won't. Thus the level the gatekeeper uses to test against the player should be established to be the minimum requirement.
     
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  6. Turk Key

    Turk Key Avatar

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    One other thing. Just because the current design does not work as I just stated may be that for testing purposes, middle and end quest content has to be accessible for testing purposes. Hopefully at launch all this confusion will be managed.
     
  7. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    We absolutely do need to both have more side-quest content (we've worked solely on getting the main quest functional up to this point) and have some means of determining whether or not a player is able to reasonably take on a given quest.

    A hard gate from a questgiver would be bad since the intent is that players be able to do Path of Truth/Love/Courage in any order or simultaneously.
     
  8. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

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    Thanks so much for all your hard work. I am looking forward to seeing the stories unfold, but I've been holding off until they are completed.

    Also side quests will be great and they can be detailed or simple depending on the quest but to discover the world quests and achievements can be simpler like visit every town in the world or fish in every lake, collect every type of fish, cook every type of food, eat every type of food, kill every boss in the game, explore every dungeon, and even each individual kill of a boss, like yay you've killed Torc whatever his name is ;).

    I am hoping for repeatable quests for those who need to grind quests too like the crafting npc who is always needing resources for some event or the pvper who wants criminal points to achieve wanted status in the game as an example.

    Thanks so much for listening to us. I am always so amazed by the team. You are the best. What a fantastic game this is going to be.
     
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  9. yarnevk

    yarnevk Avatar

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    Having a three act structure is fine, but if that is all there is at commercial launch it will be a disaster, nobody wants to replay a story based game because it was not fleshed out at release. The game already lost players when Love was deemed complete at persistance, and we all now know it was not.
     
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  10. SabeSr

    SabeSr Avatar

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    As it stands now, this game is a solid year from being released to mass market... do to the lack of quests and objectives.

    The three main quest lines are fine but not even close to bug free and complete... gives players a couple months of playing, 6 at most. And they are unclear to find unless you know the story of the avatar.

    The game needs hundreds of quests if not thousands of small ones. There are NPC's all over the place. Assign them each little quests to give out which pushes people towards grinding without realizing they are grinding because they have a reason to be out in the wild killing things and gathering stuff.

    NPC: I lost my favorite shovel can you go find it?

    NPC2: My sister was kidnapped by bandits can you go save her.

    NPCKing: My daughter the princess is being held captive by Orcs can you rescue her I will reward you with a kings ransom!

    yada yada yada...

    Don't say you don't want cookie cutter crap because without it the game will slowly die off as have other games over the years.

    The naysayers will blab how this is a PVP game with no place for questing... The Questers will say this is a questline game with no place for pvp... the crafters will say... buy my stuff I don't care how you play it.

    You've built the maps, the world, the craft system, the pvp system... now focus on the quests (thousands of little ones, hundreds of lines, and the three main lines)
     
  11. tekkamansoul

    tekkamansoul Avatar

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    I gotta agree with the OP here.

    The biggest drawback to the early game is the difficulty spike. You start off fine, then all of the sudden, even with doing all the side quests you find along the way, you're going from a 2 skull zone to a 5 skull zone -- this isn't an exaggeration, that's just how it is. To anyone except people with friends IRL that are already very established (and high level), this is a huge breaking point and a big turn-off. Especially because at the current state of the quest content there's not even an NPC that says "hey, this town on the other side of the continent also has some how-de-do with the virtues. Maybe you should check them out and gain strength before going to that tower!"

    Even if you want the game's quests to be playable in any order, you need to make compromise on the difficulty. I think the culmination of the individual virtue quests shouldn't be any more than 3-skull, and the final act should only be 4 skull, 5 if no compromise can be given at all. The highest level and tier difficulty zones should be the MMO-style, "extra" stuff - nobody should be required to max out their character just to enjoy the plot of the FIRST CHAPTER of this five-chapter game.

    This worked fine in the single player Ultimas because honestly, they weren't that hard. Once you came up against really difficult encounters, you had already done everything that had to be done in order to REACH those encounters, thus giving you an opportunity to power up. In U4, for instance, the enemies scale to you -- difficulty was fixed, something that is not available here.

    No other open world game out there functions like this. If a single player game gave you a quest to go kill level 50 monsters at level 20, you'd think it was broken. If an MMO did, you'd think the same thing. At the moment there's not even a logical way to go and find the other virtue quests - they're blocked by 5-skull zones! Sure you can run through them, at times ghosting, but what *logical* player would think that's what they're supposed to do?

    At the moment, progression works like this:
    -Start one virtue quest
    -Blindly start another virtue quest
    -Start the last virtue quest
    -Grind for 30 hours
    -Group up and finish all the virtue quests at once

    I understand single player and multiplayer are going to have different balancing, but I doubt that quest progression is going to change that much.
     
  12. Vallo Frostbane

    Vallo Frostbane Avatar

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    All the problems I read about mainly come from people unable to grasp how the leveling in this game works.
    Portalarium needs to explain better. Because it is fairly easy to get to 5 Skull zones in a fair amount of time, if you know what your doing.
    If so many people don't know, we need to explain it better.

    Granted some trees are just not playable, and SotA currently is in a state were people play what they must to achieve things, rather build their char to their play-style.
    Of course the first works in every game and is always more successful, however the latter usually gets you there as well but slower... in SotA not so much... some styles and schools are just not viable.
     
  13. tekkamansoul

    tekkamansoul Avatar

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    The problem with this discussion going back and forth is the diehard MMO addicts are unable to grasp how video game progression works as a whole.

    -Do a quest, get another quest.
    -Repeat. All is well.

    ^ That's how it should be.

    -Do a quest, get another quest.
    -Do the next quest, its fine, get another quest.
    -Attempt the next quest...
    -Fail miserably because you're massively underpowered.
    -Grind.
    -Fail less miserably.
    -Give up out of boredom, go play another game.

    ^ This is how it works right now. Complaining about difficulty is one thing, complaining because this is how it's been for 25-some odd releases is something else.
     
  14. Vallo Frostbane

    Vallo Frostbane Avatar

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    The game was advertised as a sandbox with a story or story in a sandbox whatever you like more... You cannot just cancel out the sandbox ;) It is what you get. I am sure they will make you level faster in Single-player though.
     
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  15. Ravicus Domdred

    Ravicus Domdred Avatar

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    the game was kickstarted as a single player game that you can play online with your friends actually. It never said MMO but it did say MO. The scenes where designed in the beginning to hold around 15 to 18 players at most. I think this is the rub in much of what port has done and why so many people are upset. I pledged for the single player online aspect as I thought it was really interesting. Seems it is nothing but a hunt gather mode though, and the bosses are not scaled for single player online, Just the MMO part now.
     
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  16. tekkamansoul

    tekkamansoul Avatar

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    Also, "sandbox" is not analogous to "imbalanced progression". If anything, it's analogous to "small power curve".
     
  17. Vallo Frostbane

    Vallo Frostbane Avatar

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    Well for me it was easy to get into 5 Skull zones pretty fast. Some struggle more.
    All I am saying is thinking questing alone would level your character to be able to beat the high-end content was a mistake. Maybe some day they increase quest XP, who knows? But I always liked grinding mobs more than grinding quests ;)
     
  18. tekkamansoul

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    I hear you, unfortunately, and it could be years of modern gaming that has softened me, but I think the major issue I take is the giant leap. It just feels off - if every story quest jumped a skull in difficulty, I'd probably not even complain, but it feels like it goes 1-1-1-2-5.
     
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