Today, in the course of six hours of play, I went on two high level quests, saw six PCs die (one of whom abandoned their character), and we ended our journey with next to nothing to show for it. No supplies of any use, no interesting equipment, very meager experience, and an empty hole in my inventory where my good supplies used to be. Oh, and 45 gold. This is a very, very typical day in the life of a Sanctuary adventurer right now. At least, this has been my consistent experience since my character reached level 7.
I realize that supply bloat is a very real problem and I am very glad we don't have that problem anymore. On the other hand, there is simply no point to questing at all if all it's going to earn you in the end is a respawn and the chance that one out of ten times something useful might drop that everyone in the party will want. There are certain quests where, after numerous repeated attempts, I have so far never seen anything good come out.
(I also realize that as soon as I post this there will be people inclined to tell me something along the lines of, "loot isn't the only point of questing, dude." Let me spare you the effort; yes, I am already aware of that fact, thank you.)
I would only recommend a moderate increase in the frequency and quantity of meaningful rewards on quests that have greater difficulty. None of the level 2-6 quests, to my knowledge, have this problem. I'm not suggesting a return to potion bloat, I'm only pointing out that, at present, it is entirely possible to risk death over and over again and get nothing useful, not even so much as a pack of herbs. Mix in a few extra tangle bags, minor healing trinkets, or just something to keep players from walking away empty-handed at the conclusion of a difficult and expensive journey.
That was the one and only time ever doing that quest(Jubals), but 45 gold and not one single bit of healing/buffing from it seems oddly skimpy.
I hope the fun you had adventuring and playing this great game would of course be factored in.
Some of the Quests give nothing back. They are there simply for exp. If you die on them, sometimes its best to just turn around and leave. Jubals in particular is basically worthless loot, especially with the advent of dissipating potions (of which only aids the characters in quest trains, and offers nothing to a more casual player).
Quote from: putrid_plum;354211I hope the fun you had adventuring and playing this great game would of course be factored in.
Quote from: PlayaCharacter;354207(I also realize that as soon as I post this there will be people inclined to tell me something along the lines of, "loot isn't the only point of questing, dude." Let me spare you the effort; yes, I am already aware of that fact, thank you.)
I would only add here that I waited two entire weeks after I noticed this problem before I said anything about it. It's probably also worth mentioning that I continue to play, I am not angsty or whatever other noises people like to make when someone complains about this sort of thing, and I fully realize that this is fairly low on the DM priority list while they work on more important, more badass things. I am raising the issue because it has been a consistent problem for me and others.
It is frustrating when a player does a quest and spends more in supplies than they earn. I understand this. This will inevitably sometimes happen in EFU, and really the only solution is to try to enjoy/embrace the difficult life of an adventurer. Cultivate zen in your attitude of these little trinkets.... and remember that very often in EFU you'll likewise find something far too rewarding for the risk/difficulty!
That said, some of this sounds odd to me. Jubal's Quest and only 45 gold?
I did nerf the loot on that quest recently. I did this because myself and other DMs were noticing after after every single reset different groups were "raiding the drow tomb" in a very MMORPG'sh way. They were also beating the quest fairly easily and some of the PCs were getting really, really rich.
If I nerfed it too much, I'm happy to re-tweak. But there are some very, very nice items that drop on that quest. This quest, as with basically all high level quests, are fairly randomized in terms of what loot is found. It is a basic design principle of high level quests that the "nice" items won't drop every single time, and when they do drop there won't be one for every single PC on the quest. If we made them drop every single time, and for every single PC, very rapidly they would stop being nice items and turn into common junk on a server that suddenly is much higher magic-power...
I guess I would say that I think the way to have nice items on high level quests drop is that not every time the quest is done will PCs get all their supplies back, but occasionally the quest will drop really, really nice items. This also means that if you go with a larger group it's less likely you'll end up with one of those items that do drop. There are other quests that can be done for less risk, less reward, and for more consistent modest profit.
The issue of "unequal" reward is definitely one the DM team is discussing, and struggling a little bit with. The thing is, on some of these quests there are PCs that do their best, take nothing from the end except a share of gold as there's nothing they need, or spend a lot of supplies, etc - and find themselves really struggling..... but there are other situations where the PC doesn't need to spend supplies, picks up all the little scrolls and trinkets to sell for 7-10 GP each, picks up the loot to resell in town... and amass huge fortunes. Tens of thousands of GP, hundred of cure serious potions, boxes upon boxes filled with purple crystals.... and Dms see this, and we freak out a bit.
So I'm not sure what to say, exactly. I'm happy to tweak quest rewards, I'm happy to consider alternative ideas for rewards that address some of these issues, but ultimately I think players need to accept that not every quest every time will be very rewarding - but that there is some kind of reason to try every quest, and thus promote trying new things/mix up the quests that are done (i.e. don't spam quests, but rather cycle more slowly through different stuff).
For example, if there's an Amazing item, and it drops only once every 5 times a quest is done, and of that one lucky group only one PC gets the Amazing item - is the quest still worth doing? In EfU, I think so. But there should also be more mundane quests with no amazing item but less risk/consistent reward. I think we have both.
As a player, I don't care if the loot is all stuff we've seen before. Sometimes just the flavor of the same drop that might be found on another quest is enough to go, cool. For example, I might have some nice reflex boots with other boons that dropped on a goblin raid somewhere, but the boots are goblinshit stained boots. Now, say in that high level quest like Jubal, a clean pair of "Nice Drow Boots" were found, that had only the +1 reflex and none of the other pluses.
It could still feel like a potential upgrade. It adds something.
I say this because we seem to have one flavor of loot for each type of item. I personally have done lots of these high level quests and multiple times each. I have never seen an item that made me go wow. Not Once. I made gold selling the trash off to people that thought it was slightly more then trash /sometimes/ but really. Why cant we just have some interesting flavored stuff? Why is it always, POWER vs NOTHING.
Every time Jubal's was being spammed (and yes, I saw that same thing happen), it was being spammed for the EXP. Its loot was shit the first time through, the middle time through, and not present towards the last.
I seriously believed towards the end of my last pc, that Questing was a punishment. That succeeding in anyway materialistically meant DEATH. It is very very very easy to get whatever I want material wise from efu. I want a wand? Give me two days. I want to buy 20 cure serious potions every day for a week? Sure not hard. So balancing that will take more then just kicking the dog when it runs out to play for a little while.
Sets are annoying.
Dissipating potions help only those SPAMMING quests.
Weak but cool flavored loot is ALWAYS fun and SHOULD ALWAYS be present. Even if it's just trash to the people with better stuff, its at least something for those that aren't playing that HERO front-liner that needs everything you got to survive.
As an unskilled level 8 player, I do find Jubal’s a bit of an odd quest. I got 48 end xp for doing it last time, and maybe 20 xp for the endboss. It has no consumable resources replacement of note, and I have never seen a piece of loot I wanted to wear from the loot table (I guess that is just bad luck). It has appeared from my angle to be a no xp, no resources, no items sort of quest. The only time I have run it is to give xp to lower level tag along from OOC charity. Oh, and it’s reasonably hard. I don’t think I have done a run where someone hasn’t died. The drowning bug alone usually kills at least one player underwater.
All of which is a pity, because I really like the quest. The underwater combat ticks my boxes for being unique, tense and have an odd cadence that you don’t get in other fights. I would like to do this quest more often just for the fun, but it doesn’t really seem to be viable.
Perhaps this is an expression of a larger problem for me. Having hit level eight I appear to be entirely dependant on the kindness of DMs for supplies. Traditionally the quests have been split into to (roughly) supply OR high xp OR quality loot table. That way you need to do a spread of different quests to get everything you need to have a fun and empowered character. However if there is a level 8+ resupplying quest, I haven’t found it yet. So every quest I do makes me go backwards in terms of consumable resources. I feel that resource wise, that level 8 is the new 10, if that makes any sense :)
I would probably be much happier doing Jubals as it is, if I knew that the next quest I was doing would give me a decent chance of some consumables back.
hmm...regarding healing loot, gold and casual loot, might have been just tough luck there.
but as for rare items i'm with Howland. i think that one of the most amazing things in the server, is that you rarely see PCs with the same weapon/armor/equipment. I guess that part of the reasons for that is because not every time an amazing weapon just falls down as loot. but as Howland said, only one out of a bunch of times. as i play a fighter right now, the only way he can feel somewhat "special" in combat, is if he wields a weapon that no one else has or uses. it's good for both RP and diversity in my opinion
I wrote at length, but I don't want to get this thread too off topic.
The Jubal Quest has a ton, a TON of flavorful kinds of loot. It may well be over-nerfed though and I'll tweak the quest to have more drops.
From the perspective of a DM that notices how often quests are being done and how much loot/supplies PCs have, though, it really, really doesn't seem if things are too hard to find.
I personally dislike questing and I encourage everyone to find a sense of enjoyment and accomplishment on the server that does not revolve around questing, quest rewards, or supplies. Do something that doesn't necessitate a knowledge of NWN's oftentimes clunky combat engine and instead emphasizes enjoyment from roleplaying accomplishments or similar things. I realize that this is getting slightly off topic from the suggestion at hand, but it's important to realize that there are a lot of ways to succeed in EFU outside of having more supplies than your buddy.
Personally, I hate questing. I'm a passive person out of character. Unless I'm really hurting or it's flagrant that I was the prime contributor to a quest, I often take things from loot piles only after everyone else is finished. And when I do aggressively insist on getting my fill IC, someone usually kicks my PC's ass and takes all the loot anyways. OOC skimming is prevalent and I don't like the oftentimes grindy and selfish nature of armor sets. So I just avoid questing altogether and find different ways of enjoying myself and creating relationships in character.
To clarify, 45 gold was our individual split of about 6-7 people who did the quest. There was *one* healing item, but a pair of gloves so it wasn't very useful for those pounding away the supplies in the thick of it.
I was able to sell off some minor items to a merchant to pad the take a bit (don't think the others were so lucky), so all in all I ended up with about 190~ gold or so for the entire quest.
I don't expect every quest to refill my potions and flood me in gold, but this seemed more like one of these quests I'm just not very likely to ever do again at it's current reward levels for having to risk crit-death at the hands of certain x4 Bobo wannabes.
Certainly quests should vary in reward and difficulty, but maybe the reason it gets spammed (or was? no longer?) was because there aren't a lot of easy to reach quests for higher levels. Maybe it would be worthwhile to move it to a location further out and harder to reach to allow the rewards to be better for the investment in completing it.
It is always entirely possible that some people didn't reveal what they found.
It got spammed because it was easy and close and fun, not because it had good rewards.
I tweaked it a couple days ago, I'm fairly sure it should give somewhat decent minimum reward now.
I've been away for a few days so I missed part of this conversation (sounds like I'm better off not looking) and I just want to thank the DMs for their attention to this.