main quest progression

My opinion on how the lore weaves into this is somewhere between Ezie's and Jumbers'. I agree that it's not as open/closed, like Ezie stated, but I also think that the MQ lore and buildup from the old world still interacts more heavily than Ezie's post lets on. I'm not sure how to make specific points without some spoilers. Perhaps one that would be fine to point out is that you still use an item from the old world as a bank in Ikisith.

I generally agree that as a guildleader we tend to either 'recycle' players or put some pretty large hurdles up for the new players to cross in order to catch up to the T10+ stuff. I think that we all generally would agree to this being the case. That being said, I think as a playerbase the only thing we can argue strongly in terms of QoL is that some of those barriers (of which there is plenty more than MQ factions) being reduced would help the current state of the game. I think we should leave the 'how' to the reduce barriers up to the staff, as they will know the long term effects of such an action better than we will and there are a million possible solutions that we will just get lost arguing about, ultimately drowning out the core argument, that some of the barriers to enter Ikisith raiding being reduced would help the current state of the game.
 
I mean, from what ive seen, the only faction that takes seriously long hours of effort is Blackscale. outside of that ive helped others, and done myself, CoI and Silvercrown from start to finish within 1-2 days.
 
What are other possible steps to bridge the gap between the existing playerbase which is basically tier 10+ and the new players trying to get a foot into the door to one the 4 guilds (sorry CrC =5 , I hope you do well I really do) can be looked at or discussed? What about increasing the faction gains to reduce the amount of quests/tasks needed to reach ally-final augment? XP bonus and blessed zones was good start but I am afraid its proven to be not enough. I agree blackscale seems to be the most tedious but 1-2 days seems a bit unrealistic except for players that can sit at this game for 8 hour stretches doing these tasks.
 
Yeah, 1-2 days is most definitely with resources no new player is likely to have. What could be done to populate the lower and middle tiers imo would be a better question, albeit an old one. There's no reason other than that's where lots of the server is atm for new players to need to skip or fly through a bunch of great content like they've been doing for at least a couple years now to get to the stuff near the end. Maybe some incentive to help lower stuff (like shrouds or something) for the higher-ups, instead of just scumming new folks into higher stuff and rushing them to the top when they have no idea what they're doing yet, and missed 8-10 tiers worth of great content. It's a great server, but current set up is encouraging anyone new to just fly by most of it. and then when they get up there with the rest of us, and half the folks up there have no patience for anyone that hasn't learned the game start being shitty or not including them in stuff because they're a liability, the top end they got fast-tracked to isn't going to be fun for most of them either. It just isn't a very sustainable model for a game designed to be somewhat different from other games in that you grind and don't just get handed a reward-a-day. We spend most of our mental efforts trying to force it to be so many other games in that respect. We're setting up the new folks to fail, and that sucks, because this server rules, and almost anyone reading this knows that, yet almost all of us got to experience it quite differently than any of them are going to be able to. I wish I was this motivated to figure it out and help the lower end when I wasn't sitting at my desk at work pounding coffee, lol.....
 
Besides flagging for zone keys and stat augs, which I do not support skipping or modifying quests for, the biggest reason to get main quest faction is that it unlocks 3 of the more powerful spells a character can typically get, their refuge spell, runic 1, and runic 2. Refuge spells already have an alternate method of acquiring them outside of refuge. If an alternate way to grab runic spells (ie just the box turn-in, you'd still need to farm the scroll parts and such from their respective zones) was added, then I can't think of anything atm stopping you from tagging along with a guild that already has some keys and still making a T10+ capable character with some loot, exp, and charms.
 
@ Mart: I feel like this thread is mostly focused on the faction quests of SC, CoI, and BS rather than the actual overall Main Quest. Maybe I'm missing something.
 
At first I was against this idea but the more I think about it, being able to continue with MQ without having to get MAX Heartlands faction doesn't seem so bad to me. Instead of Blackscale Warleader, just get Raider's rank in order to do Kromtash quests for entry. Then you can't progress past Kromtash's entry quests until you get Warleader's and finish it. Making you able to port there, etc. but not necessarily move towards 5th seeker or anything.

I think this is what Paxit was leaning towards but correct me if I'm wrong.
 
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I actually don't hate that idea at all, but is it really worth it from a coding/dev time perspective compared to other things?
 
I'm pretty sure you can skip those quests with the little helper in game as is, so you can get to ikkisith do murk dubious faction quest and your good to go.
 
Emzur and Hugh are correct in that we are only talking about the MQ faction grind not the whole of the MQ.

My thoughts/concerns on this are that:
1) faction augs are good enough on their own to merit wanting to do them.
2) getting access to all your class abilities is slow enough to feel you aren't getting the most out of your class for a significant amount of play time and that might be a turn off to new players.

Example for #2: Playing a Monk/Cleric feels totally different before and after Deific Brand, while not a requirement it both made mnk/clr feel different than war/clr and made mnk/clr a more interesting duo for me. Or after the warrior change, not having melee disc book from refuge really decreases your engage potential and ability to generate the precious foe lock bonus threat.

There is a work around for refuge spell but not tomes (except -resist tomes in murk at night if youre flagged) and the scope of that work around is not targeted at new players. First, I have spent plenty of time Tmapping and grinding in that zone and only seen the guy twice. Second, knowing about it with as vague a clue as (at night in FoB for ten times the price!) under the spell list isn't exactly aimed at helping the new players who might want to go that route. Third, knowing, finding and having the close to 15k might also be pretty steep for a new player.

After your MQ faction gets you a meeting with the Dryads you are back to ignoring them until Shaina makes it a requirement. Allowing players to bypass that requirement to get entry into refuge and maybe to struggling society 1 or just apprehensive with all the different turn-ins so they can use the vendors, start their R1 and get ports. I am not saying increase their seeker stone or rank at all or that faction and refuge quests be made easier, just that maxing MQ faction not be the road block to progressing your class.

Players should at least be able to see all their class has to offer before hooking them to the cart and whipping them.
 
Correct me if im wrong but the faction requirement is only checked when you try to turn in captains log to start refuge questing with brother kromtash? Assuming that is how it works ONLY brother kromtash faction check would need to be altered? He would see that you have the heartlands part done upto mainquest line and allow you to proceed to refuge questing. I know very little about dev or coding but isnt this the case?
 
AngryCow said:
I'm pretty sure you can skip those quests with the little helper in game as is, so you can get to ikisith do murk dubious faction quest and you're good to go.
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OP:
Does it make any sense to have the 3 faction bands like blackscale , COI and silver crown augs/ally maxed for main quest progression into refuge anymore?
Can these be made optional to go back and max out and still get into refuge or rather the captains log turn in to brother kromtash as long as main quest is current (ie. high seeker aug) so newer players don't have to spend weeks of faction grinding just to experience the refuge portions of mainquest?
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Mart, are you being a goofball, or should we be worried?
 
I know it's a step away from the OP in that way, but if your just looking for a way to make it so characters can be viable T10+ raid characters and get the grinding done on the side while still being able to progress, this was a corollary to that. Else-wise I still don't see skipping faction lines to be a prudent solution.
 
I dont think it has as much to do with raiding as it does getting players caught up to the community that exists , the raiding aspect of it is just QoL for us guilds that exist. The new players would most definately wana be part of something other then struggling for help that only comes when we have free time to go back and do these things.
I think we can all agree that the family of lower tier help is pretty small now and is only done when and if we have the free time to do so and even smaller because a vast majority of the server just wants to raid format/quest/ group , etc within guild first.
 
I feel like if that's your main goal, then they really should experience the whole thing, that's part of the fun, and the shared experience of all players. Though, if you got T10 raid gear, farming faction stuff isn't as much of a chore.
 
Nothing is getting removed with this idea , the task and quests are still there to explore and do. It simply allows them a choice to grind more or proceed to character advancement via mainquest and runic/refuge spell lines.
 
Paxit said:
I cannot imagine any raid leader or guildleader saying "oh man I wish my new recruit could spend an extra few weeks or month doing an aug instead of getting runic spells and refuge port first"
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huey said:
Yeah, 1-2 days is most definitely with resources no new player is likely to have.
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I was merely referring to this. Im not talking about a new player with no friends or anyone to play with, im talking about a new player who has joined a guild. It takes little effort to help someone through those quest lines. I mean, this game is meant for more than 1 person.
 
I guess my thoughts are a little jumbled on this as I think about it more and more. I've tried to keep a good balance of content during my latest run through this game starting last August. Emzur is Silver Crown and Sihala, Skaoli is Council and Sihala -> Pariah, Vextal is Blackscale and Tarhyl. I've even taken it upon myself most recently to start some lowbie characters from level 1 without any ringer help just to see where this game currently lies from a person who's already raided every monster in this game, and not someone starting from scratch. I've gotta say that Blackscale is by far the biggest chore when it comes to Heartland faction, with Silver Crown coming close second. Every time I hear someone new to this game ask which faction to choose, people instantly tell them don't even bother picking Blackscale because of its difficulty. And by difficulty I may not mean difficulty of content, but rather the amount of time not only collecting items, but running across OSM for hours, back and forth. So already we have a problem of turning people away from one branch of content, which theoretically turns them off from even more branches of deities down the road because of their alignment (surprisingly new players seem to understand the correlation between faction and deity alignment very well).

Each faction aug seems to scale the same (roughly 3x) from beginning to end, so I do believe it has enough appeal to want to go back and complete if the max faction weren't required. I'll go back to my latest post's idea of being able to gain entry after hitting Heartlands in the MQ. I don't think this is a far fetched idea really. Do I think people should be able to progress beyond this without getting max Heartland faction? I'm not sure. I can understand it if you're just looking to be able to avoid KoS and be able to port/evac from Refuge for quicker travels, but the idea of skipping all of the faction content and be able to get your Runics / Refuge spells seems a bit much. Granted there is still a long ways to 5th seeker, a lot of the important refuge material gets unlocked at Apprehensive faction rather than Warmly. The one thing that still rests beyond Apprehensive is the ability to turn in tokens and get class books / augs from the Logistician, which comes at Indifferent, and to me that's also kind of a big deal as well that may be able to reason out being able to get your Runic/Refuge. So do I think people should be able to port there without maxing Heartland faction? Yeah. But there needs to be a clear line where you intend to stop Refuge progression without having to max your Heartland faction in order to make this a decent idea, because I don't think you should be able to progress the entire Refuge portion.

**Tying this back into my original statement, having the ability to skip a lot of the Blackscale stuff and go back to it at a later point would make it more appealing for some and reduce the amount of negativity the quest line gets for being so burdensome. And at the end of the day, I don't have a strong opinion on which way this ends up going if it even gets attention at all since I have the resources to do anything really. This is more from a new beginner's standpoint.
 
I 4 manned far into the game with no outside help six years ago. The game was amazing from levels 1-65. I didnt start my main quest till i was guilded. I guess looking back at it through the eyes of a t10-12, you are biased.

At level 65 (just gearing up through listsold, and not many AAs), hitting iksith mobs is like a brick wall. Contextually, it is odd to want to jump right into refuge.

Killing dreadland ice wurms would be impossible for someone at that tier.

A point is, this sounds like "let people skip on tier appropriate content so they can rush into impossible content"

BUT, its not impossible if you have assistance, and if that's the case, then they would have assistance with faction aug.
 
The hardest thing for a fresh 65 is AAs. Boxing with my SK and cleric took a while (a few hours) for just one AA killing light blues/blues.

Sawk took me to eastern wastes orcs, and I was easily getting 50x the experience.

Experience groups is what new players would want (its what helped me the most)

I would save up all week for about 2000 plat selling crystalline blood just to buy one upgrade. And it was amazing. Its a totally different game at that point.

(And now im ranting)
 
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