Quest rewards - a new approach with more choice perhaps?

SantieClaws

Dearest travellers

Khajiit had one of those thoughts with pictures this morning. An idea she has heard it called.

This one she has ten apprentices and they have travelled to the same places in Tamriel many times.

Now this one she begins to tire of getting them to do very similar tasks over and over again as part of their training.

Khajiit thought that perhaps if the rewards were more varied the motivation it might return. This one is sure it would.

This one she thought perhaps there could be a choice of reward yes:

The original reward (usually weapons or armour which are fine at first but not so much on the 5th occasion onwards)

Perhaps an envelope containing a blue (or very occasionally purple) furnishing recipe from the relevant zone?

Perhaps a bag of crafting materials?

Perhaps a bag containing a random furnishing?

Perhaps a bag of something else random?

This one seeks your thoughts on this. Would it not reinvigorate the original zones and motivate you to want to do some of the older quests again if you perhaps have done them many times before?

Perhaps there is some other way you can think of to make the original quests more appealing on the 8th occasion? If so this one would like to hear your ideas.

A guildmate suggested perhaps a point system (or token system) where you could 'save up' for better rewards if completing the quest after the first occasion.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

SantieClaws

*Gathers her ten apprentices around her*

Greetings dear employees.

It seems support for the plans of this one to give your lives meaning is rather slim.

Therefore you may need to seek your own fortunes elsewhere.

Spiny Tim - this one has booked you on a one way caravan to Craglorn

Sherlock - you will be a life drawing model at the school of art in Summerset Isle

Rosie - there is a vacancy for a bottle opener at Castle Wayrest

Hodorf - you will be staying at Castle Claws - the pool needs defurring still

The rest of you must now find your own way in this cruel world.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Apache_Kid

After completing all the quests on my main I have not gone back and done much of any quests on other characters due to it not being the fastest way to level alts. If there were other options for rewards it might actually inspire me to go do this content again.

Vimora

Khajiit should have just said he is tired of the trash rewards and no motifs from Wrothgar dailies. Well, I agree that there should be more incentive to repeat those quests. I played another game for 5 years always finding new goals for myself. It's safe to say that somewhere halfway through the 3rd year it began to require hard thought what to do next, but it was always some old-new reward that kept me going. Having to think hard about what to grind for made the process enjoyable enough for me to keep playing for years. It was things like a pet that I initially thought was lame/useless/annoying etc that some years later somehow became attractive. Basically, I ended up mining out every last thing in the game before I finally left it. Like I said, this provided sufficient enjoyment for me to stay, but in hindsight, I regret it. I will not do it in ESO. At some point, you realize life is too short to be stuck doing something you don't enjoy anymore, but you don't see that while you are young. So my only advice here is not to obsessed over the game. Everything in life is just for now. Enjoy it while it is fun, but be aware that you're not entitled to this fun forever. This is my new way of thinking and I hope it will make things easier to let go of in the future.

victoriana-blue

This idea is good and you should feel good, Santie. :Db I remember plot lines too well, so with a few exceptions I don't like running quests to level alts. (I don't reread books often either.) And that's a shame, because there's a lot of good writing and many excellent npcs in this game. The variable reward envelope would add a nice bit of novelty/randomness and would definitely encourage me to rerun more quests.

(Especially if it were a furnishing plan envelope, proportional to the difficulty of the quest so that zone quests were purple and secondary quests were blue, but I get that not everyone is a plan collector and angry at rng. XD )

Nestor

It would be nice to have a choice. Sometimes the Gear Drop is one I want, but most of the time, it's decon fodder. It would be nice to be given a choice at quest end something like:

1. Gear Drop
2. Provisioning Recipe Drop
3. Furniture Recipe Drop
4. Random Furnishing

We choose, the game gives us something from that category. Recipe farming for one has gone sour, I am selling mid level green recipes for 499 Gold, and that is just wrong. I am no where near close to having most of the furniture recipes, much less completing a category.

Maybe not for all quests, maybe only for boss delves. Not sure, but some choice might be nice.

monktoasty

I like choosing the type I need cause you rarely get daggers for quests it's all staffs mostly

static_recharge

Sounds good to me. As long as the furnishing plans and items are themed for the zone so that there's slightly less RNG involved.

doslekis

The achievement furnishers in each zone are what encouraged me to complete quests. Since I have access to them on one character I see no need to complete them again on another.

You're right. 90 percent of the rewards for quests are trash that are sold or deconstructed. Crafting materials or furnishings, maybe even potions, runes, or alchemy mats would encourage me to complete more quests on my alts.

kojou

I like what they did with CWC where every quest reward is a bag that has a chance for a CWC gear piece.

In normal zones I don't even think about doing quests anymore because the rewards are so bad. It is usually for a set I don't want in a trait I don't want, or for the delve quests it is not even a set piece.

aldriq

Completely agree... a recipe, a furnishing or a transmutation crystal would go a long way to make repeat quests more worth the time.

Darkhorse1975

I agree, most of the time a quest reward is similar to this...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0bAFr3lEvgE

But imagine the happiness your heroism brings to AI...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WlgJs_G8Co8

Jarryzzt

"The pool needs defurring." Certainly brings up memories of one's university days...

...one wonders how technically feasible it would be for the game to keep track of quest completion at the account rather than character level. Because that is essentially what would be needed to ensure variability of rewards on the nth completion. I suspect at this stage there would be no small amount of re-engineering required to make that work...

Adding a reward choice to the quest itself also sounds dubious. Do you put the reward selection dialogue before "Complete"? After? What technical issues might be involved? Too much fur in that pool, I say...

One way to try and bridge the gap, methinks, is to replace item rewards with boxes, sort of like in the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild quest lines. Each box is a roll on one of several loot tables adjusted by level...and so on. This would certainly add some variability to rewards - and perhaps for those quests that just give gold/XP, there could be an extra loot table with crafting ingredients or what have you. From a technical side, I suspect this would be the least time-consuming - though still time-consuming - approach. One wonders, however, whether this would clash with how ZOS views the reward system, gear distribution across different content types, and so on.

SantieClaws

@Jarryzzt

Perhaps the system would not need to track how many times you have completed the quest. Just have the original item along with a couple of other choices at all times if that is much less complicated yes?

As for the choice itself being complicated well we have dialogue choices within quests - also there are some quests that do have a choice of reward depending on what you do - this one is thinking of a certain guild ...

New zones, new quests - all very hard work. If you can add redoability to the existing quest system then it may be possible to gain a lot while doing little - depending on how complicated this would be under the bonnet.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws