How To Improve Questing

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

I was reading over the Nauker thread, and it got me to think about a way by which questing could be overhauled to eliminate some of the more obvious abuses. And it all starts by eliminating quest giver trees/stones/etc and replacing them with a randomly generated set of coordinates and a range around them.

Rather than having a quest giver occupy a tree, have them instead be a nebulous force that asks you to do tasks for it. Whole discussions could be had on how to contact a spirit, but the present method of 'One Just Speaks To You' seems to work just fine.

Once contacted by a spirit you'd be given a task that must be carried out within a certain distance of a randomly generated location. It's important to note that the possible location should never be a static point, but instead be a 'follow the spirit's guidance until you reach said location'. Then you just follow the indicator until it changes from a tree to a sun (or whatever).

This eliminates the ability to road to quest givers (thereby eliminating 'gaming' that aspect of it), while still retaining most of the current aspects of questing.

[jordancoles]

Roads would still be used to head in the general direction, but I wouldn't be 100% opposed to randomly assigned locations if the quest marker had a distance attached to it which would update as you moved closer

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

Roads would still be used to head in the general direction, but I wouldn't be 100% opposed to randomly assigned locations if the quest marker had a distance attached to it which would update as you moved closer

The point is you wouldn't be able to *SET* roads to predetermined destinations, which would cut down on the usefulness of roads that travel an arbitrary distance. As for the 'distance attached' part... I dunno, I feel like this should come with an additional cost, whether in resources, XP, etc.

Maybe an "offering to the spirits" that would tell you how far you had to travel to your destination, a fetish of some kind?

[Jalpha]

"We just want to fast travel accross the map."

"I never see any other people."

Pick one.

I would actually like to see certain important quests occur in static locations and some kind of interruptable event to take place in the open world. Because potential for tears.

[MagicManICT]

I would actually like to see certain important quests occur in static locations and some kind of interruptable event to take place in the open world. Because potential for tears.

This reminds me of old-school WoW (EQ or any other MMO) before the dungeon finders and instant teleportation. Used to be that you had to travel, or get at least two people to, the summoning stone so your party could run a dungeon. On PvP realms, high levels would camp the stones ganking anyone that came around. Sometimes it was for a purpose--guildmates wanted to run the dungeon, so a couple people would come and secure the location but take off after the lowbies were in. Often it was just a gankfest and we'd bring out our big guns to run off the gankers.

Was it fun there? Sometimes... often was just an annoyance, but we liked to have the freedom to make that choice against the other side so dealt with the annoyance. Others have different values on the matter.

Will it work here? With the current death rules? It might, though death is still annoying (assuming you get killed and not just KO'd and can hearth out). I think jorbtar can dig up some examples from Salem (while they were working on it) and various "end of world" events.

[Jalpha]

In WoW it was sometimes of benefit. There was a lot of elite mobs with fast respawn timers around Scarlett Monastery. I remember playing commando and hiding in the hills with the rest of my low level party while the guy who drew the short straw kept a closer eye on an invading party of Alliance while they cleared a path for us so we could access the easier dungeons there. Exploiting enemy labour ftw. Sure many experiences were much, much less fun.

I was thinking more of Albion when I made the comment though, and world spawn crates. One person scouting around the edges ready to fight a retreating battle toward the rest of us while somebody looted the crate.

I was one of the people who clamoured for an easier WoW and I've since regretted every change made in the name of the "dirty casual".

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

"We just want to fast travel accross the map."

"I never see any other people."

Pick one.

To my mind teleportation isn't fast travel, and shouldn't exist in Haven. (With the exception of hearthing home within a small range around your hearthfire)

Fast Travel is Horseback, Fast Travel is Knarr travel, Fast Travel is by Boat, Fast Travel is Wagons... These are already built into the game and more than sufficient for our transportation needs. Teleportation is just the death of locality.

But that's another drum...

This variation on questing is specifically intended to make teleportation impractical for questing.

[kitsune121x]

knowing the distance of NPCs would be a godsend cuz I don't want to walk for 30 minutes for an NPC
if I cannot do it on Horseback I give up on the quest if I do not see an easy way to cross a river I give up on the quest

[Aceb]

"We just want to fast travel accross the map."

"I never see any other people."

Pick one.

To my mind teleportation isn't fast travel, and shouldn't exist in Haven. (With the exception of hearthing home within a small range around your hearthfire)

Fast Travel is Horseback, Fast Travel is Knarr travel, Fast Travel is by Boat, Fast Travel is Wagons... These are already built into the game and more than sufficient for our transportation needs. Teleportation is just the death of locality.

But that's another drum...

This variation on questing is specifically intended to make teleportation impractical for questing.

Yeah because I want to suffer with nomad quests, where often You have to drop your boat / wagon / horse / knarr etc. because the terrain forces You to, going by foot, building another boat (since anything else can't be built ad-hoc and then travel back because "im so far from hf"

[Jalpha]

Bridges, when implemented, will solve much of your discomfort.