Quests

[korsario]

Hi there!
My vote is to leave it as it is. Even if the quest would not be removed, the main reason to make them, for most players (even those that enjoy the fun of a quest) is the XP reward.
And those players that make the quest just for the fun of a new mission/challengue, after havent done it once, they would not repeat it again with an alt.
Talking now about the alts, right, its boring to make quests once and again, but still, its fun when you check stats, and watch the progress! yay!
I know the idea is just to improve the game, but I dont agree with it, as I think, would be negative for the motivation and fun of the players. As someone already stated, people is used to certain stuff, and doesnt really like some things to change.

Po: Kors.

[ganandorf]

I voted to change the system but as long as characters stay how they are now.

It may be unfair to newer characters to not have these stat boosting quests available, but it is also unfair for older characters for all their hard work to be fruitless.

[delem]

Definitely change it to option 'b'. I don't really see the point in "You feel like you experienced a new part of the world" (something like that) and be able to raise your strength. I'd say those should directly go into your intelligence or wisdom, or maybe even both. Possibly a percentage of that experience goes to those two stats. Because those type of experiences does give you more knowledge of the world for your character, and does make sense that it should benefit only intelligence or wisdom.

Besides from that, I do agree that all quests that contains combat in them should only benefit combat stats. Quests that involves both fighting and thinking, should of course be divided into fighting and thinking stats. For example, instead of all your experience received at the end of the quest, they should be given during the quest, and then at the end you get your reward (if you get one). So after you solve the chess board mind buster part of a quest, you would then receive experience that goes directly into intelligence or wisdom once the puzzle has been completed. Then after you, for example, save Bidebip's wife, you will then gain your combat experience for defeating all those wargs. After returning Bidebip's wife, you get his reward.

[Olrane]

I voted for the third option, to remove the quest experience but keep characters at roughly the same size as before.

I have to agree with so many others that the quest system, as it is now, is terrible for RP. PVP players or even more casual players who just don't want to have low stats feel forced to do as many quests as possible, regardless of roleplay inconsistencies. Quests provide a really significant amount of experience, especially over a long period of time, so they can't be ignored by most players. The fact that quest experience exists makes it necessary for skill improvement experience to be less than it could be. I'd rather that the system lean more on the learning-by-doing method and give a higher experience yield for skill improvement. After all, that's what makes this MUD interesting and unique, as far as I'm concerned.

Quests are great and a necessary fixture of the MUD. This was my first MUD when I started playing in 2003 or so and the newbie quests, especially in Arborea, were one of the sole reasons I stuck around long enough to learn how to play. As a newbie, experience as a quest reward is not as important as more gold and more important information about the game world. I have made a few alts, and I always felt dumb repeating quests for experience. If the quest reward were more IC information, even if only stories and such that immerse the character in the world, I would not have felt like my time was wasted. New characters, especially piloted by new players, are in need of as much information about the game world as possible so that they can integrate themselves into the roleplay more fluidly. That's the most important role of quests, in my opinion.

poOlrane

[tessa]

I would be in favour of LQs or small tasks (including smaller quests that could be sensibly repeated) being continued in the game, but only if they gave alternative rewards than XP (ie, coins and reputation).

However, I wouldn't mind seeing quest XP removed, as well as some of the quests that don't really make sense to be repeated (how many times is Rawhide going to try to destroy the world?), or at least maybe have them altered a bit so there's a logical reason why they reoccur time and time again.

As Abharsair already said, things would be set up so there wasn't a dramatic change in old characters from new. Losing quests as a source of XP wouldn't be as harsh if an increase in xp for current/future skills would replace the loss of quest XP.

Maybe the only difference would be if you trained mental skills only, but used quests to boost your physical stats (or vice versa). And in that case, I believe there's an unanimous agreement that it's illogical to have a strength boost like you just swallowed some steroids for completing a riddle, or anything else with a incompatible relation.

[Herst]

If would be nice if their would be quests only for evil people. Maybe even found in Asador only. Kind of like the Elvandar quests.

I know evil people can do those quests as well, but unless every character does those quests from creation then approaches being evil, it may be kind of hard.

Either way is fine, just trying to give the evil people a bit more of an advantage

[Delmon]

The old argument to that one Herst is that you are evil so on the basis of being that cool evil guy you need to be at a slight disadvantage in other areas.

[Herst]

The old argument to that one Herst is that you are evil so on the basis of being that cool evil guy you need to be at a slight disadvantage in other areas.

I pointed out that you are at a disadvantage in those areas, what I was trying to get at was getting a slight advantage in the areas that they evil side controls.

I understand if it is not implemented at all, the evil side already has enough advantages going for them in my opinion. It would be nice to suck up some of that missed xp though Nothing like a masked head that rolls to the ground in the first round

[Delmon]

Nothing like a masked head that rolls to the ground in the first round

I dont see a problem with this! from what I hear it happens all the time....

[luminier]

certainly not often enough.

[Herst]

Swing harder.

[luminier]

Alright, Ill try light speed velocity next time.

[lanyara]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I would also like to state my opinion here. I try to not write a huge note ...

I think admin/wizzies should ask themselves this question - if you would be able to jump back in time, right at the time where the MUD was started/created, but you would have your current knowledge ... how would you design the quest system in the MUD? Would there be one? Or more importantly as it influences the growth of a character, would you keep the quest xp as it is?

And I reason that if the answer is you would do something differently compared to now, then the current system should be modified to reflect that.

Of course this is a hypothetical scenario, and the poll seems to point quite clearly that a majority seems to rather not want any drastic change (as in taking quest xp away completely). And perhaps those that reason that such a change is bad would be right too. I don't envy admins pondering their heads about what to do here.

However, the reason I personally think point 4 (have no quest XP at all) would be best to have is that it was my opinion since a very very long time that the disadvantage of "modifying" the roleplay of your character in order to solve some quests is really bad to have for any MUD that emphasizes on roleplay.

Many years ago (on another MUD) I was quite surprised to meet someone who didn't bend his roleplay just so he could run through the quests more readily. The player really flat out refused to adapt his mage char to this situation, and thus could not solve many quests (because they didn't really make much sense In-Character). As as a result the char was really rather weak (for a "mage" back then, compared to many other chars). That was quite an eye opener for me, because I didn't really notice these type of players before, and because it demonstrated that some people value a more consistent roleplay higher than just going to maximize something for the sake of... well, any other reason. Just not a roleplay reason or something that he could reasonably explain In-game. It surprised me a lot.

Certain quests make it quite hard to "seek" a reason, and I can well understand that other players feel compelled to do quests in order to be more competitive in things the character does (as stats influence skills), because the setup rewards such a behaviour.

There was a little bit more I wanted to write, i.e. a compromise where the quest XP reward is curbed back heavily (more % for large quests, smaller % for smaller quests, so that newbies dont suffer from that as much), perhaps introduce RXP (roleplay XP), make a little bit more use of explore XP, give a little bonus to learn new skills for those that "suffer" from curbing down the quest XP reward and so on and so forth, but my note is already so long and I really just wanted to put down my opinion.

With that being said, I think there could be quite a few more newbie-like quests or puzzles which don't involve a huge team. Especially puzzles!

[luminier]

In truth I always felt it would be awkward to have an evil character helping out Yulian find his kid.

Quests should only really be done if they make RP sense. Honestly, as a Crusader I shouldn't really give a crap about helping people unless they follow Taniel or Evren, and I have helped people before that were not.

Maybe it should just be done away with, but I know a lot of effort has been put into it, and something should be done to still implement it in some way. I do think the more that combat can be based off pure skills rather than how many quests I solved would be good =D. It is tough though, cause I know I wouldn't want to take such a huge hit to my stats as Luminier has done some of the hardest quests the game has... except one...

[isengoo]

If it was easier to get access to Asador and there were "newbie" quests there, I would be totally fine with how it is now. But, as it is now, it's too much in favor of the "good side". I mean, it makes sense generally speaking (more people are good rather than bad, in general), but I'd like to see some more options for the bad guys.

[Desiderea]

I've noticed that the only times my stat-rankings really improve noticeably is from completing quests. It would likely be very difficult to build up stats purely from raising skills. I think it would also be nice to have more quests for the bad guys. I've seen some quests with evil options, but most tend to be geared towards good people.

Personally, I love all the quests though. They're fun to figure out and try and solve. I just hate that I'm not strong enough to solve the ones that involve combat, and have to wait for some people to help me with them. And it seems like wherever I go, I keep finding new quests, so I appreciate the effort that's gone into making them all.

[krelji]

It's more difficult to build up stats mainly from improving skills, but only in regards
to improving the attributes you're most interested in. Skills only influence their
related stats, and depending on which skills you're using some of the attributes
might be left behind.

While I am aware that there's a shortage of quests for the evil chars in Geas, I am
not so sure if adding quests only for them would be a good idea. Many chars -
my char being included here - have finished most of the quests, and some of them
have even used loopholes in certain quests to do them both ways.

Generally I'd prefer if most quests had two or even three variants. One for the good
chars, one for the evil ones, and the last one would be for those neutral chars out
there.

As for my vote on this matter, I've been reconsidering it a few days ago. As for now
my vote is 'Yes, but only if characters stay roughly the same size.', and I think I'll
keep it this way now. If anything it would remove the need for chars to do quests
because they want to get stronger more quickly, which sometimes ends up with
chars doing quests they're not supposed to for their chosen career.

[luminier]

Agreed. shamelessly ill admit that the main reason i did some quests was to make my char stronger, and ive done it with my alts too. I like shortcuts especially when it saves me a couples of days playing IG... =D