Update

Jeremy Saunders

Just a quick update of what we are working on.

1. We have a small event that we will start this weekend or early next week.
   
2. We did a small event that very few people noticed, so we have not run with it.
   
3. Classleads obviously
   
4. A large addon to the Champion system
5. Client update.
6. Completely fixing up Al'drym. Yes, it sucks and Elokia is hating every second of it.

Jeremy Saunders

We turned the small, unnoticed event into a perma quest that we will probably revisit.

Ultrix

Would this "small, unnoticed event" happen to be the Slitherer that went around killing all the orphaned kids in the cities?

Because if so, you could get a child to respond to you if you greeted them and then said "slitherer" but after that, it was sort of a guessing game on how to get the kid to say anything more to you. And guessing games on how to prompt quests are no fun.

Septus

Champion updates you say?

Excite.

Jeremy Saunders

Septus said:

Champion updates you say?

Excite.

Yeah. Feels like it will be pretty fun and add more value to the system without everyone needing to do it.

Khizan

Basically I start ignoring a quest/event prompt the moment it expects me to do one of these things:

1. Play "Guess the Keyword" with a mob. 
2. Search the area/world for something that may or may not be there.

Jeremy Saunders

Khizan said:

Basically I start ignoring a quest/event prompt the moment it expects me to do one of these things:

1. Play "Guess the Keyword" with a mob. 
2. Search the area/world for something that may or may not be there.

We tried to keep that one a little low key and under the radar. The next one will be much more blatant.

Khizan

My problem with the Slitherer is that the quest basically consisted of "there is a monster somewhere you should kill it" and... that's it. I went looking in the city, nope. Went looking in the sewers, nope. Played a bit of keyword bingo with the urchins in case I had to lure it out of somewhere, got no results and had no idea if that was because there were no results or because I was not guessing the right keyword.

Gave up, asked somebody to tell me where it was, found out that the location was "wander in the desert long enough and you'll find it somewhere".

It's pretty representative of everything that bothers me about Imperian questing.

Jules

Khizan said:

My problem with the Slitherer is that the quest basically consisted of "there is a monster somewhere you should kill it" and... that's it. I went looking in the city, nope. Went looking in the sewers, nope. Played a bit of keyword bingo with the urchins in case I had to lure it out of somewhere, got no results and had no idea if that was because there were no results or because I was not guessing the right keyword.

Gave up, asked somebody to tell me where it was, found out that the location was "wander in the desert long enough and you'll find it somewhere".

It's pretty representative of everything that bothers me about Imperian questing.

Not just Imperian questing.  That is almost any "serious" IRE quest ever.  I mean... there are people who enjoy it?  Besides knowing "lore" backwards and forwards, you might need to know the right language.  And there often seems to be a kind of moon logic you have to tune into.  And some things play out over extended periods even... there are apparently a few quests (not sure if we have this kind here), where you need to be around at various times during a RL day, and the clues play out over the course of a real life month or so.  That kind of thing.  I mean, not only would you need to be whip smart and have a certain kind of intuition, you'd need to be whip smart/intuitive and unemployed, and... not have any real responsibilities, basically.  And sometimes, something might be broken (and how would you ever know)  All of that is pretty much why I almost won't touch most IRE quests with a 10 foot pole - and I'm pretty okay with that here because the rest of the game is freakin' awesome.  

Khizan

My thing is more that I don't care how complicated and tricky and difficult you make it as long as you make it relatively obvious what the next step should be. 

You say, "Slitherers?"
A ragged street urchin says, "What's that in the mirror? In the corner of your eye? What's that footstep following? But never passing by? Perhaps they're all just waiting, Perhaps when we're all dead. Out they'll come a slithering, From underneath your bed."

This is the point at which I had exhausted the one keyword I had. This absolutely does not give me the impression that "hey, there's a monster in a cave in the desert and it's sneaking into the city to eat children". I was looking in the city and in the sewers, because those are the logical places I would expect to find the slithering monster that creeps out from underneath beds. I was looking for a snake/worm/tentacle monster(because slitherer) in the city where the dead children were, not some kind of spiked werecat-thing out in the desert. What kind of moon logic gives you that?

Ultrix

Jules said:

And sometimes, something might be broken (and how would you ever know)

This, so much. If doing a new quest, you can't tell if it's broken or you're just doing it wrong. I would love if there was a more straightforward way to figure this out.