NEStalgia: Daily Quests and Sanctum Rewards

ID:100417
 
Aug 16 2010, 10:29 am
Keywords: nestalgia
As I noted in my last post about NEStalgia v1.20's PvP rewards system, my goal in this update is to include fun stuff for players to do even after they reach the current stopping point of the story content... and what's more fun for MORPG players than getting better weapons/armor/stat boosts?



While the Black Sanctum itself will not be open to explore yet, players will now be able to walk right up to the door and interact with the Warlocks guarding it. You'll quickly learn that although the Sanctum is sealed, the situation is not under control. Enter daily quests.

The magical seal on the Sanctum door must be constantly maintained, which requires many different spell reagents. As the Warlocks run low on various reagents they'll give players daily quests to go out and replenish their stock. There is a different type of reagent to go out and gather from monsters for every day of the week, and each day's reagent hunt will take you to a different part of the world.



Another daily quest will be to win v1.20's ultimate boss fight: a creature called a Shade that will randomly appear and wander the overworld every few hours. Taking down the Shade will require both strategy and high-end equipment - assuming that you can find the Shade before another party of players does!



The final new form of currency in v1.20 is the Sanctum Shard. You'll receive one of these shards for completing each daily quest, which can then be spent on various types of stat seeds or equipment from the Black Sanctum vendors.



Stat seeds are a new item that give a permanent boost to a variety of major stats. Different types of seeds are found in different places; some only drop from monsters, others can only be purchased from special vendors. The seeds you've taken are tracked in a player's status HUD. You start out being able to take up to a maximum of 3 seeds - a total which can eventually be bumped up to 9 seeds.



These seeds provide yet another way for players to customize their characters in v1.20. Will your Conjurer focus on Plus Fire seeds for increased spell power, or Resilience seeds for PvP survivability?

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Yet another note to the NEStalgia community - the screenshots you see in these posts show items that have not yet been finalized, and therefore may or may not have temporary placeholder stats/prices/etc. Planning your current and/or future gear acquisitions based upon the items pictured in development posts such as this is likely a waste of your time.

Furthermore, apart from stating that August is my release target for NEStalgia v1.20 I have not given out a set release date. If I pick a date for release then you'll hear it here first; everything else is just rumors and speculation!


NEStalgia Hub: http://www.byond.com/games/SilkGames/NEStalgia
Main Server (Shrenwold): byond://cablemonkey.game-host.org:2045

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Aug 16 2010, 12:06 pm
Sounds intriguing
Aug 16 2010, 1:20 pm
I can't say I haven't heard the whole concept of shard gear and daily quests before, but I guess, it keeps people occupied.
Aug 16 2010, 10:37 pm
There is a reason you've heard of these concepts before, because they are good ideas. I'm looking forward to it.
Aug 16 2010, 11:06 pm
Sabb wrote:
There is a reason you've heard of these concepts before, because they are good ideas. I'm looking forward to it.

Well, not to hate on silks game (because it's more of every mmo doing it, not just him), I don't like the whole idea of daily quests. I see that they have their place, and that is to keep players busy while giving them rewards, and possibly in the end, more rewards after doing so many quests. Is it because it appeals to more casual players, relieve boredom while trying to keep interest, what?

I also never really understood the idea of 'shard gear' - WoW does it, and EQII does it, but it just seems to require an alternate currency to prevent people from grinding the main monetary currency and just buying everything in the end. I guess, that way, with expansions, everyone is on equal footing, even if they don't grind money?
Aug 16 2010, 11:35 pm
DivineTraveller wrote:
I don't like the whole idea of daily quests. I see that they have their place, and that is to keep players busy while giving them rewards, and possibly in the end, more rewards after doing so many quests. Is it because it appeals to more casual players, relieve boredom while trying to keep interest, what?

Daily Quests are a brilliant gameplay mechanic. They give max level players a reason to keep logging in everyday while also making players' game time count towards something. Saving up an alternate form of currency to purchase powerful items is both fun and addicting.

This type of end game reward system is actually the crux of every major MORPG. The point of the alternate currency is to force players to have to accomplish a variety of different tasks and work towards a goal over a period of time. It's a proven formula that keeps both hardcore and casual players coming back for more.

For example, In WoW I used to log on for a couple hours almost every day to complete a few daily quest dungeons for one type of currency, then rocked the PvP battlegrounds for another. If those systems didn't exist then I'd quickly lose interest just grinding for gold on the same high level monsters. Variety and ever-changing objectives make a huge difference.
Aug 17 2010, 12:57 am
SilkWizard wrote:
DivineTraveller wrote:
I don't like the whole idea of daily quests. I see that they have their place, and that is to keep players busy while giving them rewards, and possibly in the end, more rewards after doing so many quests. Is it because it appeals to more casual players, relieve boredom while trying to keep interest, what?

Daily Quests are a brilliant gameplay mechanic. They give max level players a reason to keep logging in everyday while also making players' game time count towards something. Saving up an alternate form of currency to purchase powerful items is both fun and addicting.

From a developer standpoint, I do completely agree. In fact, I can see myself doing it as well. It's a good way to keep top-end players. From a player standpoint, I can't stand them. I like to be able to go places, talk to npcs, and complete all of their quests. It's a sense of completion of having a full quest log. I'm sure there are ways around that (clearing it out of the log, etc), but that isn't the point.

For example, In WoW I used to log on for a couple hours almost every day to complete a few daily quest dungeons for one type of currency, then rocked the PvP battlegrounds for another. If those systems didn't exist then I'd quickly lose interest just grinding for gold on the same high level monsters. Variety and ever-changing objectives make a huge difference.

Yes, several of my friends do that, too. One of them, I recall speaking to recently, said he was just fed up with it, and slowly stopped playing altogether. I know some people who don't mind the mindless work (haw), and just keep cranking away at it. Then, there's some people who just make their ways along without ever doing daily quests, because actually doing dungeons, and providing enough high-level dungeons is more entertaining to them. That's more my style, too, even though it is repetitive (but isn't any MORPG looking at it that way?), it's still constantly challenging. From my experience, the daily quests are just 'go kill x of y,' changing x and y daily. Occasionally a delivery of some form. That gets older much more quickly. Now I understand WoW has daily quests that actually make you do dungeons for bosses? I don't remember exactly.
Aug 17 2010, 10:31 am
I saw seeds and dreaded for a moment, thinking back to Shadows of Erdrick days. And then I saw that you capped them at 3 (for now) per character. Brilliant plan, a little bit of customization, but not an unending pool of free stat gains.

I am looking forward to this game more and more.
Aug 18 2010, 5:54 am
Are the stat sseds gonna be bumped up in later updates to the general population, or are we gonna have to do something in game to get our maximum increased?
Aug 18 2010, 9:36 am
Caer_Death wrote:
Are the stat sseds gonna be bumped up in later updates to the general population, or are we gonna have to do something in game to get our maximum increased?

I haven't yet talked about the many uses for gold in v1.20, but this is one of them. "Seed Boosters" bump up your max stat seeds by 1 and cost 40,000 gold each:

http://files.byondhome.com/SilkGames/nes/v120/ seed_booster.png


Lumino wrote:
I am looking forward to this game more and more.

Thanks! I'm definitely looking forward to releasing v1.20 :)
Aug 24 2010, 3:51 pm
That is one heavy example of diminishing returns you've got there. So much for seeing people with "perfect" maxed out characters left and right. With the moon blessing upgrade, that's 340k you can sink into one character in this update. Trying to do that with all eight classes any time soon would be lunacy, plain and simple. Love to see how this pans out.