Greedy Goblin

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Red exclamation mark

Business update: same as yesterday.

The PuG: 10 lvl 85 now, lot to come. 3 new, 2 inactive kicked, 1 left. I can really value the guild players when I'm not playing with them but with randoms. I mean what can go wrong? Terrible many things. I left ring of blood with frustration after 10 minutes of mis-starts, AFKs, DCs and such. In Vortex pinnacle the mage broke the CC with ice lance, damaged below the tank and died in the first triangle. At least I could do something about that: ninjaed his cloak and vendored it. 6.39 gold income never felt sweeter.
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My current zone progression:
  • Vashij'ir: 85/160
  • Hyjal: 20/115
  • Deepholm: 117/125 (and have the achievement, some bug)
  • Uldum: 61/108
  • Twilight highlands: 40/108
I'm already lvl 84, 7% missing from 85 and I leveled strictly with my girlfriend, which means I got just half of the intended XP from "kill 10 wolves" quests, "kill named wolf" quests and from accidental pulls of random monsters while doing "activate whatever switch" quests. We are in the first days of the expansion, so rested XP is minimal. I find grinding annoying, I rather run 30 secs in ghost wolf form from an accidentally pulled monster than spend 20 secs killing it and has no gathering profession. I don't farm dungeons either, I prefer doing them once in normal. I did Therazan dailies twice. So it's safe to say that my quest-XP:all-XP ratio is higher than of most players. Yet I'm almost done leveling and haven't done half of the quests.

I understand that there are several different kind of players and Blizzard is right to make solo content for those who are focused on this type of playing. So I'm not asking for decreasing the quest numbers. However I find it annoying that I have to quest on max level if I want to reach all factions or access the phased storyline.

How could we have less quests and more quests in the same time? Let me introduce the red exclamation mark! I mean, the questgivers can give red and yellow marked quests.

Red quests are essential to access the zone's faction, to proceed to the next phase or to the next quest hub. By doing only red quests one can fully explore the land, experience the whole storyline, be sent to every dungeon and become at least friendly with all factions. It is not guaranteed that you can reach max level doing only red quests.

Yellow quests are optional. Only red quests are needed for other red quests, you can skip all yellow and get all red. They are for extra rewards (items, rep, XP), or fun quests (kill 1000 gnomes with fireball, find stolen pants for dwarf), maybe reveal details of the main storyline, give extra lore.

This way more solo or loremaster type people could have lot of quests, while more group play oriented people can get all phased vendors, factions and get a good summary of the lore. People would have choices how to level. Now you are on rails and your only option is to abandon that zone for another.


PS: did a little math. You need 2M XP to reach lvl 81, 3 to 82, 4 to 83, 5 to 84 and 10 to 85, all together 24 M XP. So a single guy who reached 85 on Friday gathered enough XP to get the guild XP to its daily cap every day since Cataclysm started. Am I the only one thinking that Blizzard put the bar way too low once more?


Moron of the day: Deepfriedegg of Aszune-EU found this specimen:

18 comments:

Carson 63000 said...

My guild has hit the xp cap within two hours of reset every day, and we're by no means a big guild (e.g., the night of Cataclysm's launch, I think we had 17 people online, that was most we'd ever seen at one time).

The guild xp cap feels almost like a daily quest: it takes no effort to do, the only way to not get it on any given day is simply not to play.

Anti said...

i very much like the idea of knowing which quest chains are necessary. i've always been hesitant to leave a chain undone cos you dont know what lies 15 quests down the line.

it does seem however that the new questing system is very linear. there is 2-4 chains in each quest hub. you often need to do the step in both chains to enable the next step in either.

personally i did:
0% of Vashjir
100% of hyjal (got me to 82.1)
80% of deepholm (got me to 83.0)
80% of uldum (got me to 84.0)
99% of twilight highlands, there was a bugged quest and i think it was the last of the zone or close to it. (this had me sitting 170k from 85 so i had to go back and do 4 or 5 quests in uldum)

this was with zero instances, some mining, and little to no rested xp.

it seemed to me that the XP was very well tuned. but if you did 5 mans, pvp, used rested or any other way of boosting XP you wouldnt have to do a lot less of the content.

Anonymous said...

I leveled an herbalist/ miner/ fisherman to 82, which is enough to gather in any zone. He's in my bank guild. His guild rep is capped for the week. So, yeah...

Aaron J said...

I've been selling the Dust for 99g the past few days, and I seem to be one of two or three sellers on my server. Idiots, yes, but we'll take their money!

Anonymous said...

Gevlon asks:

"Am I the only one thinking that Blizzard put the bar way too low once more?"

Probably, but you might be misunderstanding Blizzard's goal for guild leveling. From some of their statements, I gather that their aim is not for individual efforts to feel meaningful in terms of progressing the guilds. Rather, older and established guilds (it takes 4.5 months at a minimum to fully level a guild) will have an advantage against new guilds. Furthermore, guild switching will incur some penalties in terms of lost perks. Whether or not these are good things is another question, but it appears to me that the guild exp system is functioning correctly in terms of doing what they want it to do.

Anonymous said...

We have people at level 85 in my guild too, it's easy to level when you play a game 10 hours a day.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you can't establish the baseline at 10 hours of playing a day to set advancement goals.

Eaten by a Grue said...

Thumbs up on the red/yellow quest idea.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous above

We have 25 lvl 85s, we had the first 11 85s on our server. Most were done leveling on tuesday. Time taken was between 11 and 16 hours /played.

You don't need to play 10hours a day, just 10-16 hours on the 1st day.

Townes said...

You're not the only one who thinks the bar is too low, no. Your idea would work. It would be handholding, like sparkling quest objects, yellow question marks on the map, and the posts you link from EJ asking what spec and rotation to use in raids. It also asks Blizzard to acknowledge yet another kind of player - but I think that kind of player is common.

RLWJR said...

Another reader of the "Greedy Goblin" and I are setting up a US server version of the PuG. We have the rules posted at http://pugsquad.blogspot.com/

If you are interested in joining, please drop by the blog above and let us know your thoughts on what server you would like to be on. This project is in it's infancy, and we would like your input!

Anonymous said...

"which means I got just half of the intended XP from "kill 10 wolves" quests, "kill named wolf" quests and from accidental pulls of random monsters while doing "activate whatever switch" quests."

Isn't there "group bonus" for XP meaning you both got more than half XP you'd normally get?

Anonymous said...

Lord of the rings online has this system in place and its working out very nicely IMO

Anonymous said...

Gevlon:

"Am I the only one thinking that Blizzard put the bar way too low once more?"

Perhaps, but I think you're missing the bigger picture.

People are reacting to the initial surge of quest xp from guild members. That's a moderately short time boost. Once that's mostly dissipated, the only way to earn guild xp is through guild activities (heroics and raids).

The problem for the one-man guild is that once his quests are done he has no path forward for progression. He'll earn his few levels from his main and alts, then will hit a brick wall.

The obvious exception to this rule is the Goblin owned guild, who will pay for "unguilded" level 80s to join his guild an level. Interestingly, the 10% to guild bank could even offset the cost.

-Cap

Andru said...

You will need your guild pretty soon.

The heroics are brutal.

When the wave of leveling M&S will reach 85, the forums will be drowned in tears.

From what I've seen, all 'fire on the floor' mechanics are unconditionally lethal, and healers have just enough mana to finish the fight with almost perfect play.

For your sake, don't even attempt to LFD heroics.

nightgerbil said...

I second Andru here. I spent near 8hrs in heroics, these are not bad players I am playing with, some do have a basic clue and they farmed the gear to get into hcs fast right? just like me. Still when the druid tank pulls while healer is 50% oom, the dk tank drops death and decay ontop of my icetrap and wyvern stung mobs and the protadin asks me to ice trap a mob at the top of the stairs in throne of tides, where I cant see the landing spot then has his shammy guildy spent the next 30 minutes abusing me over party chat for "huntard l2p scrub", I got frustrated. I have been boosting guildies ever since just to get normal people to play with.

Taemojitsu said...

Sad no one mentioned it :P but Aion has 'main storyline' quests with a different colour quest marker, tho the English name is different than the direct translation of meaning of the Korean name for them.

The enjoyment will obviously still depend on the content of the quests, and moreover if

Taemojitsu said...

people are satisfied with exploring a single storyline without feeling the need to have a 'unique' story codified within the set of quests completed. In the end, overabundance of content is not as likely to cause people to lose interest in a game as attitudes towards rewards for completion of that content is.

Is it easy to make all quests interesting, regardless of whether they advance an essential part of lore? Is it easy to write a bestselling novel?

A wise dwarf I believe it was, wrote some time after the invasion of Outland by the Horde and the Alliance: "Items are not content. Items are the reward for completing content." A perhaps strongly opinionated perspective, but was it strong enough to have a market influence..?

Katka said...

@ stupid mage in dungeon
Oh, I'm affraid it was me. Your comment impacted me a lot, it didn't seem so bad from my point of view. I wanted to yell on you, how hard is to wait 47 mins for first cataclysm dungeon, than to have no time to change talents or get some valuable food, when in it, to be a little nervious in new place, to learn just through death how triangle works etc., etc.
But wait. Let's make it goblin way. Profit. You've got your 6g. Congratulation. I hope it will help you.
But I've got knowledge. Also valuable. I'm not so perfect to make dungeon without errors on first sight. So I'm focusing on improving my char, not only by gear itself, but also stats and mechanism too.
Thank you, Gevlon!