IC Repeatable Quests only available 1 at a time

Hobb

The issue: What I found was that only one Imperial City district's daily repeatable quest is available at a time. Dropping one of these quests allows you to pick up another or the same in any district. You can only have one district's quest at a time, however, even if you take the time to zone in/out from your alliance base's ladder network to try to pick them up or perhaps are returning with an old one still in your journal.

Opinion/thoughts: This seems like a pretty silly way to arbitrarily force players to slog back to base through the sewers between every turn-in of the only current long-term PvE content besides monsters/bosses and instanced dungeons in IC. The time wasted running back and staring at loading screens to turn these quests in could be better spent doing almost anything else in IC at a better payout of Tel Var Stones (assuming you didn't just accidentally complete it and/or were headed back to base anyhow). Unless perhaps the satchels have chances for certain rare drops, there is little incentive in picking these up, much less spending time focusing on completing their objectives. Now, if you could pick up all of them from your alliance's base and then cruise through the districts to the tune of 6 quests for a total of what I estimate to be around 480 stones for somewhere around an hour of questing with only one run back - that might be worth it and would only take shuffling the current quest givers. Throw in an extra hour or more of running through the districts to hit the sewer hatch closest to base and hoof it back between quests (as it is currently), and you're better off not bothering and mindlessly mobbing a boss or two in the sewers while saying, "Lulz whut quests?" instead.

Rev Rielle

I tend to agree. I'd also like to see those missions improved in their complexity somewhat, and make them repeatable every hour.

Why? I'm a little worried that there are just not enough things to do in the Imperial City at this point in time.

Hobb

I can certainly understand your concerns that there's not enough to do in IC at the moment, Rev. I've certainly been having a lot of fun there lately, but it seems like without more variety, the risk of burn-out is fairly high. And I do have faith that it will be tweaked and added to, hopefully timely. This is just one thing I'd like to see tweaked, I guess. They have a handful of quests. They're just behind an apparently poorly designed barrier to access. For all I know, the devs already plan on doing something along the lines of what I suggested though.

My personal priorities tend towards desiring a well-balanced area if they're going to call it a hybrid PvP/PvE area. As it is, the PvE portion rings kind of hollow unless you're willing to settle for a basic, old-fashioned mob grind like late '90s Everquest - grab your torches and pitchforks and play Whack-a-Named. I understand that this content was intended to be mostly PvP-oriented as well; it just seems like without too much of a stretch, it could really be rounded out better and give VR14-16 IC PvE some extra life beyond grinding two new dungeons or public bosses for months.

Nebthet78

The quests need slightly better complexity. They need to allow you to gain more than 1 at the same time, plus they must raise the Tel Var stone pay out and allow the bags to give you more if you have the multiplier on.

As it stands right now, the amount of stones in the sacs it gives you is rather insulting. I would rather go kill 5 deadra and get get more stones in less time than it takes to do some of those quests and sneak around enemy players. 80 stones is not enough.. It should be 500-800 stones per sac.

Teiji

Nebthet78 wrote: »

The quests need slightly better complexity. They need to allow you to gain more than 1 at the same time, plus they must raise the Tel Var stone pay out and allow the bags to give you more if you have the multiplier on.

As it stands right now, the amount of stones in the sacs it gives you is rather insulting. I would rather go kill 5 deadra and get get more stones in less time than it takes to do some of those quests and sneak around enemy players. 80 stones is not enough.. It should be 500-800 stones per sac.

Six repeatable quests for 3000 stones unaffected by modifiers per day would be great.

However ZoS knows this would be a great quality of life change and encourage so many people to purchase Crowns to get Imperial City.

Why is this bad?

Casual players would be able to do the quests for 3000 stones per day in order to slowly acquire crafting materials to make several V16 armor sets. ZoS wants to grieve their playerbase in order to punish us for forcing them to go B2P by making numerous poor quality of life gameplay adjustments such as Spellcrafting intending to be released Lorkhan only knows when, plus complete news silence regarding The Road Ahead development posts.

Nebthet78

Teiji wrote: »

Nebthet78 wrote: »

The quests need slightly better complexity. They need to allow you to gain more than 1 at the same time, plus they must raise the Tel Var stone pay out and allow the bags to give you more if you have the multiplier on.

As it stands right now, the amount of stones in the sacs it gives you is rather insulting. I would rather go kill 5 deadra and get get more stones in less time than it takes to do some of those quests and sneak around enemy players. 80 stones is not enough.. It should be 500-800 stones per sac.

Six repeatable quests for 3000 stones unaffected by modifiers per day would be great.

However ZoS knows this would be a great quality of life change and encourage so many people to purchase Crowns to get Imperial City.

Why is this bad?

Casual players would be able to do the quests for 3000 stones per day in order to slowly acquire crafting materials to make several V16 armor sets. ZoS wants to grieve their playerbase in order to punish us for forcing them to go B2P by making numerous poor quality of life gameplay adjustments such as Spellcrafting intending to be released Lorkhan only knows when, plus complete news silence regarding The Road Ahead development posts.

That many would be fine, 3000 stones doing the repeatable quests per day and unaffected by modifiers, but as it is right now, I get 80 stones only from doing these daily quests. That's 480 stones total with a whole lot of risk if you have to do it solo because a lot of groups don't want to go up in the districts. It's not worth that much time and frustration to do those dailies right now with so few stones.

At 500 stones received per reward bag, it would actually be worth the risk to do the dailies, especially as someone who can't find a group and may need to solo.

danno8

I agree OP. I don't mind the walk, so much as the load screens, which are probably 25% of the time it takes to make the trip back to base (depending on district).

Right now the 10% blood port fee is worth the guarantee of 90% stones + drastic reduction in sneak time. I hope they don't start upping the % stone loss to mobs in order to stop the practice though, since in that case I would simply not bother with the dailies at all instead, seeing as how the rewards are only 80 TV's + some XP (the XP is more rewarding than the TV's imo).

Hobb

Just wanted to throw out there that allowing the modifier to apply to opened TVS satchels seems like a bad idea to me. I'd caution against it specifically because everyone could simply withdraw all of their stones from the bank, get their max available multiplier, and open the bags at base. I'm fine not having the multiplier apply to the quest satchels.

Hobb

danno8 wrote: »

I agree OP. I don't mind the walk, so much as the load screens, which are probably 25% of the time it takes to make the trip back to base (depending on district).

This. Definitely this. Maybe when/if they fix the loading times, getting around in IC will be less of a pain. It's certainly not an impatient person's friend at the moment. Good point in relation to my OP though. Definitely a large factor in preventing the quests from shining.

Darlgon

Teiji wrote: »

Nebthet78 wrote: »

Casual players would be able to do the quests for 3000 stones per day in order to slowly acquire crafting materials to make several V16 armor sets. ZoS wants to grieve their playerbase in order to punish us for forcing them to go B2P by making numerous poor quality of life gameplay adjustments such as Spellcrafting intending to be released Lorkhan only knows when, plus complete news silence regarding The Road Ahead development posts.

Lolz.. How many CASUAL players do you know who are braving all six of the sewers and districts daily? Judging by the forums, none.. Heck I have not even done all six on my main, and he is a Cyrodiil Centurion.

Hobb

Darlgon wrote: »

Lolz.. How many CASUAL players do you know who are braving all six of the sewers and districts daily? Judging by the forums, none.. Heck I have not even done all six on my main, and he is a Cyrodiil Centurion.

I'm a casual player. I also mostly do solo PvE. I think my somewhat recently returned V13 main is about alliance rank 3 (so noob). I spent a few days doing the districts and the rest of the main IC storyline solo with help from randoms I came across and one friend for one or two of them. I play a NB, so I can mostly choose to skip encounters with other players. But I do still like my stones and will murder anyone I think I can and typically run away from the rest. Now, I'd love a steady stream of PvE content past the handful of quests for the Drake of Blades. Since the official designation for IC is PvX, that shouldn't be too much of a stretch for any players, casual or not. Currently, the only structured, repeatable PvE content in IC are the dungeons and dailies (pitchfork boss groups in sewers being what I consider unstructured and hardly challenging). As per my OP, dailies desperately need a retooling to beef up the PvE offerings. Otherwise, like Cyrodiil, it's a PvP area with a small splash of PvE, not a true PvX area.

Obviously, this includes my personal bias as a more solo-oriented player. As such, I ran out of useful, structured PvE content in IC in a few days, which is highly underwhelming to say the least.

Darlgon

Ok.. Then I guess I will reinforce that the "one at a time" district concept is the same as the other message boards back at the base, "one at a time" for the kill 20 and scout/take keep/take resource. You can only have a capture Brindle quest, not a capture Brindle and a capture Arius.

That said.. Sorry ZoS but, How STUPID is it that the factions ran a tunnel to run warriors OUT TO the districts and DID NOT CARE if they got back safely. Those tunnels should be two way, with an entrance back to that central hub in their lower half. Not like you dont have room, with them being elevated.

Hobb

Problem with the lines being used to get back are that any enemy players could feasibly use the same ladder. Now, obviously that wouldn't have to be coded into the actual game - that's just how it would work logically. Maybe if we had keycards to open the hatch (attunement stones?)... But that's effectively what dying to get back to the hatch does. It lets you access an area that's supposed to be off-limits once you've entered the fray, at a cost.

One major difference between the quests in IC and Cyrodiil proper are the countless load screens that now take upward of 30s each - as danno mentioned. Say you're 3 districts away from the closest sewer hatch to base. That's a minimum of two minutes of loading added to your run through sewers crowded with mobs that you can't mount through (nothing godawful, but at least galloping through Cyrodiil you get some scenery flashing by, maybe some sparkly nodes, and trees to slalom through). In Cyrodiil, combat is also almost totally optional, both PvE and PvP, by virtue of so much open space and mostly localized skirmishes. Not so in IC, as you can easily get blocked at a door when in combat after running through a quarter of the zone's mobs, only to get ganked by an enemy player (sneaking being the much slower but safer alternative). In Cyrodiil, if you want to get to base, you can teleport from any linked/controlled keep (can't fast travel anywhere in IC except leaving the ladder network) or you can simply run up to an enemy player and put on a dance show for them with really no harm to your pocket. In IC, that same "welfare port" we'll call it, is going to cost you the vast majority of the currency you've scrounged up. And sure, you can go die to some PvE mobs at a lesser cost (probably what most people end up doing), but there's no guarantee you won't be tagged by a sneaking player and end up regretting that (also anywhere along your run back to base). The cost also effectively goes up the longer you're out and the more you participate in other district or sewer activities. If Cyrodiil worked the same way as IC, you'd only be able to fast travel OUT to keeps, and you'd lose 80% of your AP if killed by an enemy player. Sound like that would fly with players?

TL;DR New currency means you HAVE to run back if you want to keep ALL of your hard-earned TVS. Running back in IC is obnoxiously more effort than the rewards from the quests are worth. What's good for Cyrodiil isn't necessarily going to be good for IC. Solution: retool IC dailies to fit the area they're in.

Darlgon

I take it you dont play Cyrodiil.. ever. I can run into any keep my faction owns, click the door and go inside. The opposing faction doesn't even get an E to enter. Silence the room, like all the other rooms out there. Then make a sewer access inside that door.

eliisra

Not a fan either. I rather be able to pick the quest in every district, than do one or two objectives, when I feel like it, when I happen to pass by while roaming.

Some quests also needs a smaller group, so would be nice if you could move somewhere else and finish another quest, while waiting for your buddies, random heroes(or huge enemy zerg to go away). Right now you often have to abandon quests half-way, because of that very reason.