Hey All, Wanted to clarify some things about lorestones and offer a singular avenue for feedback. The phasing has a lore purpose and mechanically is a time sink but the rewards gained from the system are not insignificant. I wanted to give some powerful permanent rewards and passive abilities that ignore caps and stack with anything are certainly powerful. I knew that within a week most of the stones would be found and mapped in such a way that the time it takes to finish them was insignificant versus the reward. I was looking for the community to communicate with each other across all level ranges. When someone found a stone up they would let people know and everyone would rush to that location that needed the stone. Stone phasing is independent of interaction so finding one up means there is time to get the update before it phases out. Unfortunately the system did not launch bug free and some people took advantage of an oversight on my part. There is no reasonable action that can be taken against these people without resetting all progress and I do not think that would go over very well in general. If phasing does not work out well then I will reevaluate it and adjust things. This could potentially affect the power of the rewards as well but I cannot determine that right now.
well , lets see, if we have the quests, they are now bugged so we have to abandon them to complete them , which means having to refind several stones up again or a long wait/ random chance that someone else will find them up and we can rush there rather than raid, or craft or whatever we were doing. That is just punishing the players that did locate and start quests, fix that. When they were first up,, there was a community spirit that had bunches of us carefully searching for them chunk by chunk. I liked that aspect. having them not be there for more than 30 mins at a time makes that a pointless exercise in futility . The fact that there was an exploit turned the whole thing ugly with people not wanting to share locs. So just the opposite of your intent is what is now in place, no one looking, no one sharing.
leavwiz wrote: the phasing is no problem you just have to figure out how the phase mechanic works and also there are still plenty of guilds looking and working together to find the stones. i know my guild for one is working with around 4 others to find these stone. the way i see it the reward given is well worth the work you have to put into to get them. if your not having any luck finding them maybe you should talk to your guild leaders about trying to coordinate with other guilds in finding them though your guild may have to show some effort in having tried to find them in the first place. i dont see any punishment in the way they are now especially since sillius was able to give us the heads up with doing /say lore if one of the stones doesn't have the record option in the text. something like the ability of these passive buffs shouldn't be just given out we should have to work for it and the way the stones are now you have to.
Brohn wrote: so i am inferring from this that the reward was based on an extraordinarily long process to acquire the locs and complete the quests. At some point, someone will wind up posting locs making it merely a camp and wait exercise for late comers or lazy questers. sooo, would you nerf the reward then because it becomes easier to get? Lets face it, other than long faction grinds as you have used as a vehicle for reward before , there is no clean way to reward a long , exhaustive quest that ultimately becomes a "know where to go then wait " quest. At some point everyone will know where to go. So unless you want to link the stones to something that requires specific action other than sitting in a spot and waiting its merely a matter of time before the quest becomes easier for those that wait.
Silius wrote: I have read this very carefully and here is what I see: the premise is that someone, perhaps a low level person would find an object, recognize it as a lorestone and /ooc so everyone could come find it and add to their quests. Silius acknowledges that once the locations were known the quest would be somewhat easy to complete although still with a time investment. The rewards are powerful and passive, the best way to appeal to end game players tired of civics and buff stripping issues. He also acknowledges that it got off to a bad start with an exploit , followed by the patch that left it still partially broken with unresponsive stones that phase in and out. My analysis based on only having a few stones and no completed quests is this: 1.the low level player that passes by a lorestone in blighted lands while questng the "brothers" may not even know what it is, but even if he does and calls it out, can he really complete the quest himself? Not really, most of the stones are in locations that require flight just to get to, or higher level characters. conclusion, the quest isnt really for all levels, just a way to involve lower levels in feeling like they are a part of the community. but, unable to share in the reward. 2. the people that already know where the stones are could be sharing that info with guildies and trusted friends, but thus far it hasnt found its way to the forums or any open access wiki's. The community spirit ended when the exploit was discovered and things became all "hush hush". conclusion: in time this will pass and the locations will be posted so that anyone with the time and patience will be able to get the rewards. 3. The reward is very powerful. conclusion: the amount of time even if you know the locs is not "insiginificant" and there is a strong move to de-emphasize civic buffs in encounters. The reward is needed for end game players as an offset. by comparison, the battle griffon at the end of the quest line was a huge improvement over other game mounts, as were the POTA mounts. These rewards required faction, effort, teamwork and a lot of cash to complete. This reward is better than many augs combined. It is a super reward worthy of actual work to complete. 4. Phasing lorestones to make it more of a chance discovery process. conclusion: this is a disincentive for teams of people to go out and look for them and once they are found by chance it becomes just an annoying time sink used to justify the end reward. If you look at the griffon quest line there were things you had to do solo, grouped, and even in raid to complete for a very nice reward. Even though the quest is well documented, and is easier with help, it isnt just a time sink of wait and watch, it requires action and friends. This is just a boring camp mulitplied by 40+ If I had implemented the lorestone quests I would have done the following: 1. permanent lorestones but tiered so that lower levels could truly benefit 2. the wandering npc works for me 3. Craft or Diplo components to complete some of the quests (with better rewards) 4. Group or raid challenges for the highest rewards. let the completion process be more than just time, but effort. those are my thoughts gentle
Just a few suggstions I have at this time... 1. Make the lorestones blue like a raid locked mob when they are not 'up.' This way people can still find them if they are looking for the spots, but they won't be able to get the update. If you can't do that, then maybe an emote/red text when you within range of one's spawn spot if it's not up? 2. Can we get some consistency as to your "direction"? On one hand we've been hearing about how level 55's are too tough to design content for (resulting zones that strip diplos, capping run buffs, disable levitate, etc.) Now with this quest you introduce permanent, strong cap breaking, passives for arguably low in game effort. These two design choices seem to be complete opposites. 3. The passives don't seem like all classes needs were given consideration. The vast majority of the Lorestone passives are dps boosters. That's cool if you are a light fighter, or a caster, but I think tanks and healers are getting short changed. Consider changing 1 of the DPS boosters to a pro tank/healer passive. Something like a 2% hp/energy regen per 10 sec.
I agree with statement 3 of Dielle's quite a bit, and would like to add more. I think the balance of these rewards may not have been thought through fully. Like Dielle said there should be a reward for healers. I think a 5% healing effectiveness buff would be approrpriate, possibly a passive hp buff of around 300 hp would have been more useful to all classes as well. The passives feel quite overpowered to me, picking up all these passive buffs like this in a short amount of time is like giving a dps almost the equivalent of going from tier 2 armor to tier 3. I know for my character it is over a 10% dps boost, plus mit etc. In my opinion they would still be very vaulable rewards if the benefits were reworked to help healers more and if they were cut in half generally. It makes little sense why one buff would give 5% damage and another 5% critical damage. It is obvious one is clearly superior, it would be reasonable to expect one to give 2% dmg and another to give maybe 4% critical damage. Giving 2% strike chance and 6% strike amount would still be powerful, 3% accuracy and 3% mitigation. My opinion would be to change the critical damage into healing effectiveness, and possibly to change one other dps oriented passive into 200-300 passive hp. AoE mit or evasion might also be something that would be useful all around. I think that the lorestones phasing out is a questionable mechanic that doesn't really add to the fun factor in searching for them legitimately for the first time. Imagine a few friends starting this quest just now without any help from anyone. This person can scour literally every place on telon and only find half or less of them depending on if they are phased out. This doesn't promote exploration it just enables a form of frustrating tedium. "Hey I just found one in Arcanium" "Uh crap I just was in there 2 hours ago and it was empty" Player 2 should be rewarded for searching there even if he has to wait for it to phase in, he shouldn't be left wondering constantly if everywhere he just searched contained a phased out lorestone. So with that I think Dielle's suggestion about them being visible but unobtainable to be pretty reasonable.
As much as I hesitate to compare this to Second Life, there used to be a scavenger hunt game there that was So. Much. Fun. I wasted so much in-game money on it. And if VG could somehow recreate this game for the Lorestones, I think it would be a big hit. The problem is I don't know if VG can. But here's how it worked to give the Devs some ideas: When the game started (ie, taking the mission) you were given an item (I think it was a shovel, but it might have been a metal detector) and a map. The map was a random screenshot of a 'sim' (SL's versions of chunks). This was back when SL had a more generic pic of drawing of the sims, not like the current map. If VG used this, I would suggest the old drawn looking map. You had to go to that sim and then you had to 'search' for some random coordinates for the treasure. You searched by wandering around and letting the item telling you if you hot, cold, warm, chilly, etc. When you were at the proper location, you could 'dig' for the item and you'd win some random reward. The catch in SL is that the person running the game didn't own the land the coordinates pointed to. So you could easily end up on someone else's land and they would either not allow people to enter, or wouldn't have scripts running. If this was the case you had to start over. We know that VG can trigger events based on location. I'm not sure if this can be randomized per character. I'm also not sure that the devs can give us an image of a chunk. Though I'm sure we could come up with a bunch of riddles that hint to every chunk in the game. This would mean that the Lorestone could end up anywhere in that chunk, even in dungeons or more obscure locations. If you guys put this in game for the random chests too, I'd probably blow a ton of money on it. It was just too much fun to waste time with.
i like what gentleone had to say about impacting more levels, and incorporating some diplo and crafting in some of the quest fulfillment. On a positive note, the previously tight lipped players with many locs are now sharing and many players are travelling the world of telon to finish quests. At this point making any new changes would only lead to more frustration. I would still request that the stones be fixed so that interacting with them updates rather than /say lore, but that is a small thing. Still not a fan of wait and watch quests, but at least people are working together and that seemed to be the original intent.
There was so much you could have done with the spawn mechanics of these lorestones to actively encourange cooperation and community-building, but instead we are back to our favorites in Vanguard: the RNG for spawns and the time sink needed to simply wait for the RNG to blip in our favor. Make triggers for the lorestones that are something other than an RNG check every 5-10-30-60 minutes or whatever. There are so many possibilities, and across all spheres: A placeholder-style NPC is killed and a predictable lorestone spawns A mysterious taskmaster gives a special work order that spawns a lorestone in a chunk that has crafting stations A wandering diplomat has a parley that triggers a specific lorestone XX number of players in a chunk causes a lorestone to spawn A quest that has to be completed by a chunk-level-appropriate (or mentored) group triggers a lorestone I'm sure there are other creative ways to ACTIVELY trigger these things that cause players to interact with each other (or obtain help from others) rather than sitting passively (and alone) waiting for something to spawn Drive player participation once lorestones are discovered to be up by making them stay up 15 minutes longer each time someone activates the lorestone for a new update (ie, not the same person clicking it over and over). Instead of people being ./anon to prevent other folks from finding where they are, more people flocking to the lorestones would actually BENEFIT the WHOLE PLAYERBASE and again ./gasp encourange players to interact with and help each other. You know, the whole "let me help you to help me (and my guild)" thing. You talk about decreasing the power of the buffs if the spawns are adjusted on the one hand, while on the other hand you say "I was looking for the community to communicate with each other across all level ranges. When someone found a stone up they would let people know and everyone would rush to that location that needed the stone. Stone phasing is independent of interaction so finding one up means there is time to get the update before it phases out." It seems that you are saying you want the whole playerbase cooperating on getting everyone the updates by sharing current spawn information, but at the same time you're saying if it's too easy to get the updates, the buffs must be nerfed. I'm not sure how these two intents can be reconciled. Do remember that eventually all people who want these buffs will get them. Since the locations of the majority of these things have been made public, anyone with enough time and luck can get them, with a few exceptions. I'd also like to remind you that one significant facet of MMOs is competition. With other players, with other guilds, against raid mobs, etc. Since the rewards for these quests increase player power, it's not surprising that the locations of active lorestones are more likely to be kept under wraps rather than broadcast across the server. My guess is that when lorestones are spotted now, frantic guildchats go out trying to get folks to assemble for the update before the lorestones despawn. There is no incentive to share with other guilds or players, and in fact, when viewed from the perspective of competition, there is actually incentive to keep knowledge of current lorestone spawns hidden.
So far that doesn't appear to be happening. People have been announcing lorestone spawns most of the evening.
Yes. Did you happen to ./who any of the people announcing spawned lorestones? I bet most (if not all of them) were my guild, Phoenix Knights of 3305. I did also notice Ratief calling when he found lorestones up, as well.
once locations are found, phasing is just an additional timesink To say: if i remove the timesink i will make the result weaker is kinda a calous and pointless statement. If u xay- yes we will evaluate the effect of the buffs comared to the difficulty of the questlines is a different matter- Phasing doesnt make it more difficult really- just longer As you stated yourself- you expected the stones to be found within a week- most have been found but took longer than expected- so imo no need to revisit the rewards if phasing is focussed out or not tbh. Any quest that involves just running around will end up easy and maybe a timesink at best and that is something known from the onset. If it involved fighting to difficult spots (with no coh enabled) for part of em- yea- then u feel you earn the super buffs- running around and hailing with some flying around and hailing doesnt make it hard- with or without phasing stones. The way i see it- phasing is more an annoyance than a challenge- It might have been a challenge if there was phasing at the launch of the quest- pushing the completion time back. But once found- phasing is just extra timesink/annoyance. Soon the mak with locations will be augmented with screenshots showing exact locations of the stones and people will just join the "You have become better ath lorestonecaming club" So in short: If the decision is: We will nerf the effect when we remove phasing- then leave it. If the evaluation is phasing just makes a nice idea annoying so better to remove it- go for it- Or have em up daytime or nighttime only (in game time) so it becomes a bit predictable and not sit and watch your screen till it pops
If you wanted a mechanic so everyone would rush to a location perhaps you should include a continental announcement when the stone is first found.
as stated above there was a lot of communication last night going on when lorestones were up, also it's funny that most of the people complaining about the time sink are usually the ones complaining about not having anything to do, well they gave you something new to do now. also there is still a little bit of work involved even though the loc of 45 of the stones is public knowledge now. so instead of complaining that you got the red ball when you wanted the green one why don't you just be happy you have a ball to play with at all. so thanks sillius for the quest line and the rewards i for one think they were pretty cool and i know a lot of people in CORE and probably the guilds that worked with us do too
i want to echo gentleone's post that it would be a lot better for vg as a whole if all three spheres were to be implemented in a rather major quest line. not only does it require more cooperation on the player's part, but it can also increase the timesink and slow down the pace at which people complete the quest lines.
i got beat up earlier for commenting about lorestone quests being broken both at first release and then again with the patch. So let me give my current thoughts. The "see the world" concept was a good one to remind us all how much of telon there is , and for many of us , places we have never been. The initial start with them all up, then the change to phased threw a monkey wrench into the original plan. On one hand, it led to the discovery of most of the stones, on the other it prevented silius plan of having people randomly discover them and announce them as a community thing. the good news is that the community has responded and the locs are being shared, as phased stones come up, people are calling them out. So , in my opinion , the original plan is actually working. is it a time sink? yes, and people are all over the world afk camping stones. would they be doing other useful things ? maybe. But even with all the locs known, this is not an insignificant amount of time. The reward is substantial. I would NOT go back and nerf the reward now that it is out there, the time is already being invested and it would generate more ill will and gain nothing for anyone to nerf it later, especially since silius expected all the stones to be found and announced anyway. I do, however , agrre with gentleone that incorporating other spheres in a lorestone like quest would have been great. maybe add another set that fits that mold. Finally, the lorestones are still broken, but most know now to /say lore to make them work. All in all the lorestone quest is a good thing.
leavwiz wrote: Eh, ill will for what? I think well over 40 lorestones were found before anyone knew about the rewards, so the original pioneers won't complain. Anyone who is following the maps now is basically nothing more than a coattail rider, and they have absolutely no rights whatsoever to complain about 'time investment' because they basically put 0 in. I still think there's a good chance they'll be changed and/or nerfed a bit. Passives aren't like gear, you don't upgraded them, they are with the character for life. Other passives are usually around 2%. Guildhall passives are 2%. KDQ gives 2% accu/crit/damage, but that's after spending 50-100 hours grinding or doing named runs. Now someone can spend 90 minutes following a map w/ next to no danger, and can gets +5% to 7 combat rating stats? Yeah, I dare anyone to bear the devs ill will if they get toned down.
Dielle wrote: having not been one of the ones that got everything day one, i can assure you that the time investment is neither zero nor 90 minutes. Is it small relative to the reward? yes. But the bottom line is silius anticipated that the locs would be known and posted before he set the reward. He even said so in his post. To nerf it now because things were found sooner than expected would be a bit of a cop out that gains nothing for anyone. I still hold that people who spent time, whether a couple of hours or a dozen hours would be upset. This cant be compared to KDQ or other long grinds for lesser rewards simply because it wasnt designed that way to begin with. Was it a mistake to put such a high reward on the quest? yes, but then that was Silius decision when he put it in. Kind of like an actual veterans reward worth having. I hope he leaves this one alone and keeps the nerf bat in the corner closet.
