Quests are already harder in this setting by far than they were in EfU:M. There's been quite a lot of difficult spice lately too. This leads to lots of deaths, and lots of quest spamming in order to regain those lost levels. When you do these quests frequently enough, it becomes harder and harder to put in the effort to deploy good roleplay. This leads on to the MMOization, as DM's notice people just aren't putting in that effort. Which leads to DM's spicing them in order to induce some roleplay out of the players. Which in turns leads to death. Which leads to more quest grinding. And it quickly becomes a rather vicious circle I think.
Coupled with a much diminished tendency for DM's to liberally reward good RP / Plotting with XP and loot, it is tending to lead people to prefer spending a lot of time spamming quests in an attempt to get to their comfort level of XP and Supply, whilst not seeing plotting and conflict as a viable way to any material rewards.
The only sufficiently rewarding system in place right now seems to be the bounty system. Aggressively pursuing people who do cause conflict is by far the most rewarding occupation. While this is very much in-keeping with what one expects from a wealthy police state setting, it is still somewhat hampering to effective storytelling - and seems to teach new players that the path to riches and success is by not rocking the boat, and ganging up on those who do break from the norm.
Ultimately: players will only do what they're rewarded well for doing. If a player earns five times the XP he or she would get from another mindless run through Sahuagin for a decent bit of intrigue, they'll want to do that sort of thing more often. Arranging the assassination of political rivals / Catching notorious criminals / even writing an incendiary pamphlet on the forums should engender heftier rewards - especially if its done by a player known to shy away from such things normally - and perhaps a bit of custom loot in some circumstances.
Making progress on active DM plots should also ideally come with larger bonuses. I've found myself getting sprinkled with 20xp hits when making small contributions to such, and 200xp for earthshattering serverwide events that resulted in serious consequences. These numbers don't seem consummate with the gravity of what is going on. If people see this and think 'I could be earning three times as much exploring those abandoned duergar halls, and face much less danger', they would hardly be wrong, and may start to see DM plots and their attendant events as merely unrewarding things which will only increase their characters chance of dying.
In summary: The answer to this isn't quest take caps, or further reducing the already meagre rewards for questing - this are a recipe for misery. Merely greater DM attention and more liberal rewards for the behaviour they crave is all that is required.
Coupled with a much diminished tendency for DM's to liberally reward good RP / Plotting with XP and loot, it is tending to lead people to prefer spending a lot of time spamming quests in an attempt to get to their comfort level of XP and Supply, whilst not seeing plotting and conflict as a viable way to any material rewards.
The only sufficiently rewarding system in place right now seems to be the bounty system. Aggressively pursuing people who do cause conflict is by far the most rewarding occupation. While this is very much in-keeping with what one expects from a wealthy police state setting, it is still somewhat hampering to effective storytelling - and seems to teach new players that the path to riches and success is by not rocking the boat, and ganging up on those who do break from the norm.
Ultimately: players will only do what they're rewarded well for doing. If a player earns five times the XP he or she would get from another mindless run through Sahuagin for a decent bit of intrigue, they'll want to do that sort of thing more often. Arranging the assassination of political rivals / Catching notorious criminals / even writing an incendiary pamphlet on the forums should engender heftier rewards - especially if its done by a player known to shy away from such things normally - and perhaps a bit of custom loot in some circumstances.
Making progress on active DM plots should also ideally come with larger bonuses. I've found myself getting sprinkled with 20xp hits when making small contributions to such, and 200xp for earthshattering serverwide events that resulted in serious consequences. These numbers don't seem consummate with the gravity of what is going on. If people see this and think 'I could be earning three times as much exploring those abandoned duergar halls, and face much less danger', they would hardly be wrong, and may start to see DM plots and their attendant events as merely unrewarding things which will only increase their characters chance of dying.
In summary: The answer to this isn't quest take caps, or further reducing the already meagre rewards for questing - this are a recipe for misery. Merely greater DM attention and more liberal rewards for the behaviour they crave is all that is required.
