lachlaan wrote:No.
It's silly to expect people to organize their day around when a task procs, or make extra fields, leave empty pots and so on so forth in case a task resets to something obscene like plant more fields when fields are done. Same with hunting, i hunt if i need to and having to do miniature tasks would break people's rhythm.
I disagree. This is probably personal preference since people have different playing styles and different objectives in the game, some people will soon become bored if gameplay becomes repetitive.
Methuzelah23 wrote:It's dumb to provide so much hand holding in a sandbox game.
Holding hand can be replaced by showing opportunities.
I can say I enjoyed greatly doing Haven credo quests in series and it surely gave me a feeling of anticipation when I was completing one quest and looking forward to a new challenge. Being presented daily with a set of challenges, majority of which were not possible to fulfill directly on my char and finding ways around to meet requirements was a lot of fun. I'd say it was way more fun than stats grind.
Key upsides of Haven quest system:
- Grind can by worked around. Instead of "grind enough stats to kill a bear" it asks for "be smart enough to hit it and not get steamrolled" or "acquire some bear drops".
- Quests are somewhat related to current char development focus.
- Instead of holding hand it presents opportunities. Rather than "get gear to progress" it goes like "make it, now see what you have learned by making it, perhaps it is useful for you".
- Forfeiting a quest comes with a cost. That cost is significantly higher in credo quests and lower with regular quests up to the point of abuseability, which is not necessarily an upside.
- It encourages travelling in the local area which is yet another way to explore the game.
Compared to Salem Royal order system weakneses in respective areas:
- There are less ways to complete trade orders, it is either get it yourself or trade. While it certainly allows alts to help with acquiring stuff there is little variety in activities undertaken.
- There is no relationship with players game style and current focus. Tradeability was intended to deal with it but it does not work currently.
- While it certainly motivate to try and acquire stuffs the amount of quests is limited and does not stimulate as much exploring game mechanics as Haven system does. That's because the set of items really being used for orders is limited to items referenced by easier/better orders.
- Trade orders being tradeable is in fact a weak sport. Perhaps it could be different if the game had more variety, like 10s of different birds, animals and wood types. At the current stage either the trade order materials are product or byproduct of some profitable and manageable activity or the whole order becomes **** and is thrown away. The cost of forfeiting an order is equal to a cost of keeping an alt to farm orders.
What can be done to improve:
- add orders which demand certain effect rather than strictly defined items, for example deliver foods worth 100 (1000, 10000) yellow bile points, the order would take any any food with non-zero YB but complete only when certain total has been reached, similarly an order can demand restore foods of certain value, though this kind of orders could be probably easily stuffed with charred something.
- add orders that demand slotted gear with certain minimum stat value, e.g. deliver a set with 100 feasting. The order would take any clothes with non-zero feasting and productivity value. It is disputable it if should take same type of clothing twice (e.g. two hats).
- add orders that demand certain, somewhat randomized set of (unslotted) clothing fitting within certain theme but allowing several options for each piece. e.g. soldier gear, craftsmen gear, ball gown with accessories.
- increase number of order types, perhaps introduce different grades within the same order type, e.g. the order that demands iron bars could demand various amounts or various metals (and respectively give different amount of IOUs), the order that asks for butterflies could ask for certain species but in lesser quantity.
- add orders involving darkness drops, offered more often to witch characters (just more often, in vague terms)
- add orders focused on certain professions and triggered/enabled by being advanced in these professions e.g. there is already an order demanding large amount of mushrooms, there could be more, asking for flowers, vegetables or fish fillets.
- Introduce orders that involve visiting Landmarks, it could be buying special stuff from NPCs/stalls located at these landmarks (none currently AFAIK) or returning the order itself to a different NPC instead.
- The NPC handing out the orders can be improved in several ways:
-- offer more than one choice of order (and more than just two or three), possibly demanding payment in silver or IOUs for higher level orders
-- can be bribed in more than one way to offer even more orders and the additional orders would be related to bribery nature. The NPC or his fellows should sometimes drop a hint about items he would accept. E.g. a witch in Nod could sometimes mention a notable who used to buy her potions and the fiddler in the marketplace could complain about unfair competition of trumpeters who are given free trumpets by royal clerks. The NPC should also accept small briberies in farm products from poor farmers (resulting in marginally better but more focused orders).
-- take character looks into account and hand out different orders based on what kind of slotting is dominant in the gear (or just consider affluence, or see how much slots in the clothing are filled or see to which industry the clothes themselves are related).
-- take character proficiencies into account
-- there could be a dynamic bonus system on less popular orders, so the returns are adjusted to perceived difficulty.
Royal order system comes with some limitations, within that system it is difficult to justify doing an action that does not result in dropping an item and because there is no quest giver network, it is also difficult to encourage more wandering around with that system but certainly it can be improved to provide more varied challenges.