Increased reward for first time quest completion.

Santar

I've noticed a common trend in questing. When you first talk to a denizen and learn of a quest, it generally takes a while to figure out how to complete most quests. Depending on the complexity of the quest, it can take from 15 minutes, even up to an hour if you get stuck trying to figure something out. Of course, after you do figure out the quest, most quests are able to be easily replicated in a very low amount of time, say 2-3 minutes. 

As a result of this, you end up spending a good deal of your time(15-60 minutes) generally, to receive an amount of gold usually in the 200-500 gold range. This is a very minuscule reward for the time and effort put in. However, if the reward was raised significantly, people would replicate quests and be able to generate gold far too quickly due to how easy the quests are to do after you figure out how.

My proposal is to to significantly increase the amount of gold received for the first time a player completes a quest. That way the player will be properly rewarded for the amount of time and effort they put in. The reward for completing a quest after the first completion wouldn't be changed. This would encourage players to explore and enjoy the game's quests.  Some quests are a good deal of fun on their own, but it ends up feeling like a waste of time when the reward is so small. The current rewards seem balanced enough for the actual raw time to complete the mechanics of the quest, but the time the player spends to actually figure out the quest isn't being accounted for, and I feel that a higher reward for first time quest completion would do a great deal to validate the player's effort.

This wouldn't necessarily have to be a static multiplier across the board. Quest complexity could be taken into account. Obviously quests that are just handing corpses in are already fine, since that's just a bonus reward to bashing, and they're generally very simple quests(go kill ____ and bring the corpses to me). But the quests that need an extra incentive are the thoughtful ones, the ones that require you do nothing more than figure things out for long periods of time. When you spend a great deal of time working on something like that, it ends up being very disappointing when you're only rewarded a small amount of gold for your effort.

Thoughts?

Cesarina

Santar said:

<some things I liked>

Really don't see anything wrong with this. Some stuff does take a while to figure out, and after slamming my face into a wall and damaging my skin over quests, think we'd all like a nice bonus!

Sarapis

Yeah, would be nice, but requires that every single quest in the game is actually hand-imported into a system that lets the game know what a 'quest' is. Most quests don't exist to Achaea, which is why we've started from the ground up (newbie, lowbie first) to fix that. A "quest" in the sense of most of Achaea is just you giving something to someone (as an example) who gives you a reward. It's very primitive. 

There's a bunch of ongoing work currently that is putting quests into a formal system such that Achaea and the Achaea client can do things like give you a display of what quests you currently have, but it's a gigantic amount of retrofitting just to get to the point where the game knows quests exist. We'll get there, but it's going to take awhile!

Blujixapug

I consider going through an area the first time, and figuring out the quests, part of the fun of exploring new areas in this game. I don't believe that needs to be connected to the xp/level treadmill. It is rewarding in its own way, as quests are often the mechanism revealing the story of an area and its inhabitants. (For @Sarapis's benefit I will say that I enjoy this as an explorer-type player, as distinct from an achiever, socialiser, or killer. Tagging the achiever reward of experience onto the explorer activity of first-time questing does not make sense.)

If an area is poorly-built and boring, then it is not rewarding, but that is a flaw that will not be fixed by the band-aid of an extra first-time gold/exp reward. Doing something unfun (boring quests in a boring area) to gain a reward in the context of an MMO fits the definition of a grind, and I would not like to see more of that in Achaea.

If a quest is unintuitively designed, and extremely difficult to figure out without playing guess-the-keyword or guess-the-syntax, then that is its own problem, and will also not be fixed by this band-aid.

I would like to see more complex quests and honours quests in this game. But that is a separate subject.

Sarapis

It may not be fixed but it certainly will be made more rewarding to players, and I'm all for rewarding players for doing something new (to them) the first time.

Santar

Blujixapug said:

I consider going through an area the first time, and figuring out the quests, part of the fun of exploring new areas in this game. I don't believe that needs to be connected to the xp/level treadmill. It is rewarding in its own way, as quests are often the mechanism revealing the story of an area and its inhabitants. (For @Sarapis's benefit I will say that I enjoy this as an explorer-type player, as distinct from an achiever, socialiser, or killer. Tagging the achiever reward of experience onto the explorer activity of first-time questing does not make sense.)

If an area is poorly-built and boring, then it is not rewarding, but that is a flaw that will not be fixed by the band-aid of an extra first-time gold/exp reward. Doing something unfun (boring quests in a boring area) to gain a reward in the context of an MMO fits the definition of a grind, and I would not like to see more of that in Achaea.

If a quest is unintuitively designed, and extremely difficult to figure out without playing guess-the-keyword or guess-the-syntax, then that is its own problem, and will also not be fixed by this band-aid.

I would like to see more complex quests and honours quests in this game. But that is a separate subject.

I considered this point while writing my post, and anticipated that someone may use this argument. I agree with you fully that  the main motivation should be providing engaging content that is fun for the player. However, I see no reason why  an extra little bonus for taking some time to quest is a bad thing. If my motivation is purely to grind, I can go bash gold faster than I could make gold questing. If I choose to quest it's because I -do- want to explore and have an engaging experience, but it'd make it more satisfying overall if I was actually getting a decent reward for figuring out a quest, rather than spending so much time for a denizen to say "Thanks" and hand me 250 gold. 

After thinking it over a bit, I was wondering if a different reward system other than gold might be better? If the entire quest system is being overhauled, there could be incentives other than gold made. Thinking about it strictly from an IC perspective, it doesn't make as much sense for the character to be rewarded with more gold from the denizen for completing a quest for the first time. It might be a better idea to have some sort of credit incentive, which would further the attitude of allowing people to progress their character by actually playing the game. I'm not saying people should get a credit per quest, by any means, but I'm sure some type of reward system could be drawn up that would be reasonable. Receiving a long-term boon to your character's progress such as bound credits would be a more fitting reward for a one-time endeavor than getting extra gold, since bound credits directly reward the character progression in response to the effort the player put forth in exploration of the game.

Korben

The devs said they were working on new rewards for bashers/questers beyond gold and experience. I am sure this could be worked into the idea of a higher reward for doing a quest the first time.

Nim

I like @Santar's idea, although lessons might be a bit better than credits, but for new players, they're both basically the same thing. Earning lessons for doing new things just sounds cool.

Other, more miscellaneous rewards are cool too, like items (special and/or non-decay), abilities, languages, etc. Neat things that can be parlor tricks in front of novices and stuff.

Santar

Nim said:

I like @Santar's idea, although lessons might be a bit better than credits, but for new players, they're both basically the same thing. Earning lessons for doing new things just sounds cool.

Other, more miscellaneous rewards are cool too, like items (special and/or non-decay), abilities, languages, etc. Neat things that can be parlor tricks in front of novices and stuff.

Yeah, this is kind of what I had in mind.

Like maybe in a certain area, if you completed every single quest, you'd get a special item characteristic of the area, a sign of the villagers giving thanks to you or something. It could have some minor activated ability, something small that doesn't have any balance issues but is still something neat(for example, something that gives you some type of supply once a month/year/whatever)

Xith

Sarapis said:

Yeah, would be nice, but requires that every single quest in the game is actually hand-imported into a system that lets the game know what a 'quest' is. Most quests don't exist to Achaea, which is why we've started from the ground up (newbie, lowbie first) to fix that. A "quest" in the sense of most of Achaea is just you giving something to someone (as an example) who gives you a reward. It's very primitive. 

There's a bunch of ongoing work currently that is putting quests into a formal system such that Achaea and the Achaea client can do things like give you a display of what quests you currently have, but it's a gigantic amount of retrofitting just to get to the point where the game knows quests exist. We'll get there, but it's going to take awhile!

@Sarapis Does Rapture ever get modified for things like that? Or is that a no-no?

Sarapis

@Xith There's no need for it to be. Rapture is just the engine and scripting language. Everything you see in-game is written in Rapture's scripting language.

Sylvance

Sarapis said:

@Xity There's no need for it to be. Rapture is just the engine and scripting language. Everything you see in-game is written in Rapture's scripting language.

Sorry, @Xith, but that nickname is gonna stick

Xith

Sylvance said:

Sarapis said:

@Xity There's no need for it to be. Rapture is just the engine and scripting language. Everything you see in-game is written in Rapture's scripting language.

Sorry, @Xith, but that nickname is gonna stick

Dey call me Xity-Cent.

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Jonners

I miss the old Parodies thread. That reminded me of Cuz I Got High (Achaea Style) and Here Comes Ironbeard. Good times.