2008-08-18, 03:35 PM
I think the quests, in theory, are awesome. However, as others have mentioned, they've gone overboard with various things. I'm fine with the phantom seed drop rate to be honest, I think it's perfectly fine. I'm also fine with how many trees are supposed to spawn per map that they spawn on. What I'm not fine with is the spawn rate. When you can't "force" something to spawn by mass killing on a map (Like how you can force black squids to spawn on the lethal map by just killing enough lethals, etc), and the things have a horrid spawn time plus a horrid drop rate, there are problems. I have... 14? Phantom seeds, and I know that I've spent 2-3 hours hunting through maps that spawn trees. Channel surfing didn't help either, except to almost get my butt run over by bigfoot (Another small beef of mine with the patch) a couple of times. So in the end, we're left with being able to find maybe one tree every other minute on average if we're not extremely lucky. Hell, after killing 3-5, I'm lucky to get one in the next 10 minutes. There's just no realistic way to complete the quest in any reasonable amount of time (NX is not realistic, you should not have to resort to spending real money for a supposedly free quest).
As someone else above, I wanted to make one of the forging items. I decided to deviate from seed hunting since it was getting late and more bigfoots would probably spawn, leaving me dead if I tried to keep looking, and went after Crimson Wood. I spent over an hour, maybe two, in path of strength. For my time, even after channel surfing, I had two Crimson Wood, 1 more Nightshadow (Forgetting their name at the moment) badge than I had previously, a good 20 or more additional Firebrand badges, and about 2%. I'm sorry, but 400 of something that it took me an hour or more to get 2 of, plus other things? Besides, I don't even know if Taos are iTCG or not (I suspect they are), which would basically mean I stand no chance of making that staff. Every Hermit/NL in Broa will be after them, as well as any other potential forger, so eh.
I like the idea of the quests, I really, really think it's a great concept; I just don't think the implementation of it was quite as good as it could/should have been, especially if Taos are not something that drop/can be crafted. It'd be kinda nice if they dropped from Guardians, so warriors could bank to offset pot costs for training there.
As for the way these quests go in regards to the future of quests, I just hope they get a chance to see various feedback and consider tweaking stuff. I'd much rather have something spawning with a bit of an annoying drop rate than have something I can't even find to kill, much less get to drop with it's pathetic rate. The concept is awesome, that we can get good items with say, 20 hours of work or something. However, right now, it's more like 200 hours of work, which honestly is a bit overboard. These items aren't level 180 or something.
As someone else above, I wanted to make one of the forging items. I decided to deviate from seed hunting since it was getting late and more bigfoots would probably spawn, leaving me dead if I tried to keep looking, and went after Crimson Wood. I spent over an hour, maybe two, in path of strength. For my time, even after channel surfing, I had two Crimson Wood, 1 more Nightshadow (Forgetting their name at the moment) badge than I had previously, a good 20 or more additional Firebrand badges, and about 2%. I'm sorry, but 400 of something that it took me an hour or more to get 2 of, plus other things? Besides, I don't even know if Taos are iTCG or not (I suspect they are), which would basically mean I stand no chance of making that staff. Every Hermit/NL in Broa will be after them, as well as any other potential forger, so eh.
I like the idea of the quests, I really, really think it's a great concept; I just don't think the implementation of it was quite as good as it could/should have been, especially if Taos are not something that drop/can be crafted. It'd be kinda nice if they dropped from Guardians, so warriors could bank to offset pot costs for training there.
As for the way these quests go in regards to the future of quests, I just hope they get a chance to see various feedback and consider tweaking stuff. I'd much rather have something spawning with a bit of an annoying drop rate than have something I can't even find to kill, much less get to drop with it's pathetic rate. The concept is awesome, that we can get good items with say, 20 hours of work or something. However, right now, it's more like 200 hours of work, which honestly is a bit overboard. These items aren't level 180 or something.