"Secrets" opened after quests

[DanRothar]

When 1st the Arius tele-chest and then the PV-Kusa boat was removed I was a bit annoyed, I was after all one of the players using them, but in stead of just complaining I started thinking. One of the reasons those short-cuts were removed were that the secrets were no longer secret so everyone could use them. (There were other reasons but they have no relevance for my proposal.)

 

So in stead of adding new secrets that would only stay secret for a short time I was thinking that a new kind of "secrets." A "secret" that was only available after completing a quest. The reason I propose this is that I think it would be more logical for the secrets to be earned, than just found out by way of word of mouth, or from some website.

 

Let´s take an example: (only an example of concept not an idea for a quest, I think the quest writers are better than me at that sort of thing anyway)

Reward: Access to a good fighting cave, or a good harvesting cave.

Quest: The cave has been closed due to a cave-in, and an NPC has a friend that is trapped inside. The player need to find a way to clear away the cave-in and make a stable entrance so the NPC can get his friend out.

 

After the quest the entrance might cave in again, but having done the quest once, the player will be able to reopen the cave using the method learned in the quest. However if someone that has not done the quest attempts to clear the entrance, they will fail on every attempt and possibly get badly hurt/killed in the process.

 

I hope my search on the forum did not miss someone making this or similar suggestions. I did find that there is a competent quest writer team working on future quests, and there is currently one person working on the server side of that. That is great news to me, and I want to wish them the best of luck on that endeavour. I hope this post and any comments can be of inspiration to them. Although the quest team might already have similar or better ideas.

 

A note: this post is not intended as an invitation to post ideas for short-cuts, secrets, rewards, quests, etc. it's about the concept of quests as keys to short-cuts, secret areas, etc. So please do not comment on the actual example, I know it's not particularly good, it was just an of the top of my head example.

[Shadow_runner]

The only trouble with this, is like all of the other quests. Once the solution is known, someone can put it up on their website and people can just read that.

 

So then there not really earning the quest, they work from the 'cheat' sheet.

[DanRothar]

Sort of true, but with well-designed quests a walk-trough is not necessarily that much of a help, I have tried quests in other games, where the only real value of the walk-trough was a list of items needed, starting locations, and locations of quest NPC's. The rest were task you had to complete so it only made the quest available to players with less encyclopaedic knowledge about the game, and maybe saved them a few shopping trips.

[MagpieLee]

I think you have good intentions but after everyone has done the quest(s) what next? We're back to square one and everyone will be using those shortcuts like before so it wouldn't really change much. Although I do like to see more quests in the game (and not just god quests).

[ProHibited]

If the quests are 'expensive' in either time or money, not everyone will do them. Only those that 'need' to use that area will do those quests. Those that do not plan on using an area that much might not think its worth the trouble.

 

In the example of the cave collapsing, it costs something (time or money) when the cave collapses again (x% chance upon attempting to enter it?). If the cost is high enough they wont be 'overpopulated' areas. GC sink ftw?

[Shadow_runner]

Gold coins sinks simply don't work. Your just cutting away at the leaves of a bad bush. Where what you need too do is tackle the root of the problem.

 

The root of the economy problem in this game, is that it is possible to make things for no gold coin input at all. You can harvest everything you need for 'free', (Time input). Then make them for 'free', (Time input).

 

So in this game, you have too have a cost of gold coins somewhere. I think the first step (meaning there would need to be more than this IMO). Would be too introduce a gold coin cost for the storage that everyone uses.

 

Too make it fair for new and old players alike. It could be based upon the number of items in storage. A basic example could be 1 gold coin per slot per game day. (Storage has up too 300 slots for player use. )

 

For example: My character currently has 215 slots used, so I would pay 215 gold coins every game day too use storage.

 

(I wouldn't, because if this ever came into affect. I would empty my storage of a lot of the crap that is just laying around in there.)

[DanRothar]

This is not about gc or item sinks. Quests, the god quests included, won't sink enough gc or items to do much of a difference, if they did, no one would bother.

 

This is about making players work for some in-game benefits, as it is now, anyone can use a short-cut or a secret area. Let's take the example I started with, if clearing the entrance require you to build a support and blasting away some rocks, this could require a certain engineering level to be successful, or have a higher chance of success depending on engineering level, so only players with a good engineering level would be able to complete that quest.

 

There is actually 3 of this type of quest in-game (that I know of), they are not that hard, and two of them let you save lot's of money. I have done them, but I have guildies that haven't. They prefer to pay a higher price on those items, either from other players or NPCs. The same will be the case with all quests that gets added, some will do the quest just to have done it, some because they can see a benefit in doing it, and some some won't do it.