Stargrace

How do You feel about Daily Quests?

I’m torn on the subject of daily quests. On one hand, sure who doesn’t want a reason to log in every day. The daily missions in EQ2 that reward shards for armor were one such example of this along with the hot zone (meaning the zone has an increased chance to drop loot). On the other hand working towards a goal via daily quests like faction really makes me annoyed, because I don’t want to have to wait day by day in order to purchase a faction item, I want it RIGHT NOW. Or at least 10 hours from now once I’ve grinded the faction out the ‘regular‘ way.

Examples of this are the new daily crafter quests available in Sentinel’s Fate. In order to purchase any of the armor recipes (I’m speaking from a tailor perspective specifically) you need 40,000 faction with the kerra isle folks AND faction with the crafter division of that same island. If you’re an adventurer you’ll be able to gain one of the factions quite easily by completing the chain of adventure quests, but you’re still left with a whole lot of craft faction to work on at the end. The daily quests only give you 2,500 faction a day and you’ll be around 12,000 or so after the chain of crafter quests. That’s a fair amount of dailies to complete before you’re able to purchase the recipes you may want.

It seems that these days every game wants to add a ‘come log in’ factor for players – WoW has had daily quests for quite some time, and now even Aion is jumping into it with their new 1.9 patch that is in the works. It’s certainly not the first time we’ve seen it in EQ2 either, the Isle of Mara craft division has been giving daily (and weekly) craft quests for some time.

I’m a little burned out on EQ2 lately, I’ve been playing quite a bit since the release of Sentinel’s Fate and so my attention has wandered over to other games (like EVE, and Darkfall). If you’re looking to read some of my posts about those games please visit Nomadic Gamer, which is a 2nd web site I started up – and keep in mind that I’m also always looking for volunteer writers for that site. If you’re looking for a place to post your opinion (about games, mind you. They don’t have to be MMO specific) just let me know and I can get you set up. Anyhow, I’ve been logging in to EQ2 to complete my daily quests but other then that I’m taking a small break, I don’t want to burn out completely after all. This is where playing so many games actually comes in handy, they all seem to remind me why I love my ‘main’ games.

What do you think about daily quests? Are they a good thing? A bad thing? Would you like to see more creative ways to entice players to log in every day? Let me know in comments!

Safe travels, and happy gaming!

Instances are an Alts Best Friend

Having spent very little time in any instances that went live with Sentinel’s Fate, I was excited to join up for four of them yesterday. We started with the two that I have already been to, the Erudian Library, and the Research Halls. Afterward we decided to head to the Vasty Deep zones, Conservatory was our first mark, and then Labs. Unfortunately labs is still currently broken, one of the named refuses to spawn and it’s required in order to reach the final named, but it was still quite fun.

One thing I really love about running these instances is that it’s an alts dream come true. Pretty much every piece of scout related gear that dropped was an upgrade for my troubador – specifically because SOE changed us from being int / str based bards to agi which is a stat I have never focused on. It was very nice to be able to replace a great deal of my int / caster based gear for agi, and I also managed to inch my way closer to getting UT which is the only thing anyone ever seems to want from a troubador. Since this is my alt (and one of many) I admit that I’ve neglected her achievements quite severely, but I’m about 6 away from picking it up thanks to the plethora of quests available in Vasty Deep.

When I wasn’t running instances, I dove back into battlegrounds. It’s getting to the point now where people are gearing themselves up with ‘toughness’ gear which is mitigation / critical mitigation for PvP. In other words it means it makes them harder to hit. I don’t like where this is going, because eventually for anyone who didn’t get in on the ground floor, you’re going to have to face a large number of loses until you can save up enough tokens to also gear yourself out with that critical mitigation gear.

I also really wish the numbers meant something. When the game ends you see a screen pop up with number of death blows and healing done etc. I wish there was a (even small would be alright) coin number associated with the locations on that list, so if you topped the killing blows and damage dealt list, you would receive some coin for your troubles. Since Battlegrounds can prove to be an effective method of leveling from 80-90 and also even grant achievement experience, I think that awarding a coin value to doing well in them would be great and then you wouldn’t feel obligated to go quest in order to earn money.

As it is now those stats are for nothing but bragging rights, since you earn 1 token for losing, and 3 for winning. There’s nothing else to be gained.

In the mean time I hope everyone is enjoying their game of choice, and I’ll see you in Norrath!

Exploring Battlegrounds

I decided some time last weekend that what I really wanted was a battleground character. A character who would do nothing but battlegrounds (there for 80 is my goal) and not have to worry about too much more. Most of my regular characters are support classes, and aside from the illusionist I find them a little difficult to play in battlegrounds. The mystic casts very slow, and aside from run speed I haven’t really found a use for the bards. A lot is due to my gear and lack of achievements on these smaller alts, and the fact that for PvP they’re simply not suited for it. I know that ranged casters have an easier time of things because they can stand back and nuke, and scouts can stealth, assassins can put out some massive dps and stun (especially if you’re using poisons) but none of my characters are those classes.

When I finished moving all of my characters to Oasis I also did a little spring cleaning. That left me with three character slots on my main account. Something I haven’t seen in quite some time. I decided to create a necromancer, and level her up (power level to be exact) to 80 so that I could start doing battlegrounds with her. I managed to inch my way to levle 40 yesterday, which was the half way mark at least.

I’ve been having fun in the battlegrounds, it doesn’t matter if I win or lose. I’ve found the 24 person to be a lot more fun then the smaller versions, and I like going with an 80-89 character so that you’re not dealing with level 90 mains. It’s hard to fight against the Nagafen players because they’re used to constant pvp and they have toughness on all of their gear already, but I managed.

I’ve only managed to win one of five battles so far, but since you’re rewarded (although at a smaller level) either way, at least your time is compensated for. I wish that corpses had a chance to drop coin or some sort of other reward for spending your time in a battleground as opposed to say – leveling, but maybe that will come in some where down the road.

I haven’t played the smaller battlegrounds yet, but I do know that if you come up against a guild group and you’re in a PUG your chances of winning decrease drastically. Organization is a killer in battlegrounds, and the more organized you are, the more likely you are to win.

Other then that, I’ve still just been taking my time and exploring Sentinel’s Fate. It’s a beautiful expansion with a lot to do. I hope everyone else has been having fun, I’ll see you in Norrath!

The Changes in Raiding

I don’t consider myself a very hard core raider. Even back when I was raiding full time I never joined a guild that used call lists to gather members, and I’ve never fought an avatar. I enjoy raiding a great deal, but with so many games on my plate some times it’s simply not in my best interest to spend that much time in it. Thankfully Paradise Lost is quite aware of my unique hours, and I’m able to raid with them casually. Last night they were off to Perah’Celsis’ Abominable Laboratory which is one of the new Sentinel’s Fate raid zones. No, I’m not about to post strats here – but.

I did want to make a comparison between TSO raids and SF raids. First of all, developers had already stated that they didn’t want Sentinel’s Fate to be a repeat of The Shadow Odyssey where healers paid more attention spamming cures then anything else. If someone asked me what Zarrakon looked like I would have to check the guild hall trophy because I spent most of my time curing and running for red and blue pools (and trying not to fall off the edge of his platform). SF has a little less curing, but a lot more jousting (at least what I’ve seen from it so far). Jousting to avoid massive “bad things” that will happen to your raid if you don’t joust.

My favorite encounter by far was Perah’Celsis himself for one very specific reason. First of all, the fight is intense. Understatement actually. He has a buff that has a chance for random raiders to become charmed. The charm can’t be cured for a specific duration, once that passes you can cure it. There’s nothing more fun then having healers, mages, scouts, and fighters of your own raid all running through the ranks and killing everyone. In so many encounters it is the mobs who get to do the smushing, but this time around I think the guild got more kills then the named.I love learning a new encounter and being able to explore a new zone. It’s refreshing. It’s also exceptionally nerve wracking.

My mystic managed to land two pieces of gear (sure, no one else wanted them but that’s besides the point) which was nice and I really did have a good time even though I spent most of the night doubting my healing capabilities. It’s hard when you’re in a full raid of people who are geared up properly and who have been playing together for years. My character is still sporting T2 from TSO and some pretty poor jewelery slots. I did the best I could, and hopefully that was enough. It also comes in handy that mystics are armed with a whole lot of buffs for their group, so even if my healing wasn’t top notch, I was at least providing some awesomeness for everyone else.

Happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Norrath! I have a post in mind about Battlegrounds, but until things are a little more ‘fixed’ and not so ‘broken’ I’ll be holding off on that. The few that I managed to get into were actually a LOT of fun, and I’m looking forward to talking about them!

Erudian Library and Research Halls Instances

Yesterday I finally managed to wiggle my way into some instances in EQ2 – the first time I had actually gotten to explore the Sentinel’s Fate areas on live servers. My group first headed to the Erudian Library which is one of the easier zones included this expansion and also one of the most fun. Players get to figure out which NPC murdered another (and where, and with what) and accuse them of it. If you guess right, you get some extra rewards and neat house items. Afterward we headed to the Research Halls, which was also a lot of fun and not too difficult.

SF has new shards (and on a side note why did SOE implement the fix to disallow gray shard runs after they made those shards obsolete?) and I have a handful of them stored up. There are shards (tokens) for pretty much everything now, PvP, Crafting, various forms of PvE gear. Even all of the live events have a ‘token system’ of some sort (Erollisi day, Magical Grottos, etc). My banks are filling up with these things.

I managed to get a lot of nice upgrades for the troubador through these in instances including some very nice charms. I’m still inching my way towards upbeat tempo (the troubadors bread and butter) but I’m not that far away now. I haven’t played the bard seriously in quite some time. It’s been fun so far.

I did have one major change this weekend. I decided that playing on multiple servers is simply too difficult. It’s too hard to spread characters all over the place and expect them all to accomplish every ‘major’ goal in the game. I love games that only have one server so the choice is made for me, but since that is not an option for EQ2 I had to make a pretty hard decision. In the end I came to the conclusion that I would play on Oasis, and no other servers. This weekend I spent most of it packing up belongings from Antonia Bayle and moving my characters over. I don’t even remember the last time I was only playing on one server, it’s been 2-3 years. The decision was a long time coming and it certainly wasn’t an easy one for me. There were a lot of outside factors that came into play (that I’m not going to get into here on my blog because it’s simply not the place). I’m very happy with my decision, and I’m really excited on playing on one server. I’m already fairly settled in over there as it’s one of three servers I was attempting to play on.

I did also get some battleground time in – and I have all sorts of thoughts on that subject, but it’s a post for another day (maybe backlogging yesterday, since I didn’t make a post).

Happy gaming, and I’ll see you in Norrath!