i was helping some players on quests for celestine ward faction today while working on it myself for my monk. after recent changes, you only get 2 faction per kill, and the mushroom quest is no longer repeatable for faction. The end result is the requirement for 13k faction has you easily outlevelling the content before you get there. or, if you group up in VT for the runes you outlevel there instead while splitting rune drops with the group. This faction requirement, or reward needs to be reconsidered since it impacts players in their 30's (which is where many new players are landing atm)
leavwiz wrote: eek! yeah thats not really good. But: Leav, if My memory serves you can start the quest line long before 13K, like a few k faction, in fact unless this change is really drastic, we hit max faction long before we completed the initial questline for the weapon and we only did the mushroom once, and the large kill quests once through. If you solo it, I guess thats an issue, but its designed to be done with a group, and a few runs into VT then Thel should net you easily the faction required to complete the entire questline as you do not need max faction to start, just a few K to get the initial quests started.
leavwiz wrote: You have No XP skill that you can toggle. Basically it makes u get no xp. Very useful imo for people who want to see everything the game has to offer without making 20 alts.
Nole wrote: what leav was bringing up wasn't so much the wanting to expereince the content it was that the lack of the repeatable mushroom quest for faction, creates an unneeded bottleneck in the celestine storyline and armour/weapon quest. it will force people to roll need on runes that people need for armour just to use them to up their faction and will discourage the bulk of people new f2p players coming through the content. this issue was addressed about four years ago because the faction needed was found to be out of line with the leveling curve of the area, hence the mushroom quest was made repeatable. this along with the pota t3 offerings really need to have their faction values adjusted up, the 3x was actually appropriate in those situations.
Nejibana@Telon wrote: yah, thats where i was going with this. the low 30's my monk was grouping with , were seeing the very low faction from individual kills, we did the mushroom quest, They weren't really ready for the VT stuff itself. So off to cragwind and river palace they went. I stayed on my monk for the eventual shurikens and forgotten earring. after a couple of days there i still have less than 1.3k faction and have gained 2 levels. Other than the runes, the faction gain potential there is too low for the level curve as stated above. Also, once they leave and go elsewhere, they miss out on VT itself.
eh i dont think not being able to repeate the mushroom quest is that big of a deal. the armor pieces themselves dont require a lot of runes so anyone who is running through vt/thel is bound to get extra runes. they can always turn in their extra runes for faction. the weapon may require a lot of extra grinding, but given how quickly you can replace certain cw armor pieces, i dont think its such a big deal.
The kill quest is repeatable. That's what I was doing up to 2k+ faction (I just started the wardship questline). Personally, I'd rather do that than the mushroom quest [although, I don't have a set path to take like many vets probably do]. Of course, I don't see any reason why that mushroom quest was changed. Maybe because they lowered the number of kills to 50 from 100 for the other quest???
Hey everyone. Just wanted to chime in here on this topic and give you some feedback, thoughts, and plans for the future. First, I agree with the opinion that the leveling curve doesn’t quite match up with the faction gain. When I was originally playing through the content to revamp it for the Free to Play launch, one thing I wanted to do was remove excessive grinding while making sure that there was enough content to satisfy all ten levels the area is intended to put you through. The mushroom quest was made not repeatable because that isn’t good valuable content. There was no reason to gate players behind a tedium experience that they had to repeat several times in order to get to the good stuff. Making this not-repeatable had the unintentional side-effect of just making the tedium experience involve a different task—grinding away at NPCs. A lot of the leveling process in the Marsh of Peril relies on the group dungeons in this area to really give players a surge in their level progression. Unfortunately, while killing group-intent mobs will grant you bonus experience, it won’t grant you bonus faction. Thus, you get the separation of leveling curve and faction gain curve. This makes the Celestine Ward a good case for trying something new with how faction is gained and seeing if it’s something that could work across the entire game. I spoke with Moorgard concerning this and what we’d like to do is make it so that players actually do earn more faction when defeating more difficult foes. The design of that feels right from a couple of different perspectives. Greater challenges should be met with greater rewards and this achieves that. Additionally, this encourages group play, while still giving soloists an option to advance their reputation with a particular faction, albeit at a slower pace. The last perspective that the design feels right in is that it offers the player a goal to achieve and then lets the player decide how they want to achieve that goal. Completing quests, close friends doing small group stuff, or six people getting together to take out the big boss all become viable options, instead of funneling player choice down to one option only. If this style of play feels right for the game, in the future we might consider also applying it to systems like crafting and diplomacy as a way to mitigate some of the grind and tedium that players in those spheres currently face. These are changes we’d like to put on the test server once we feel confident that these are the right changes to make. Then you guys can dig into it and see how it feels for yourself and let us know if you have any suggestions for improvement before going live.
TLoch14 wrote: Ok, I give up- this is the 7th sign of the apocalypse- - Dev who plays the game, including leveling characters; - acknowledges area that needs improvement; - discusses the game mechanics with creative director-types (sorry, I'm lousy with titles); - then posts, in response to a player-generated topic, comments that reflect thought and goals for improving the player experience and for applying similar approaches to other spheres of the game. .... Who are these aliens? How can we attract more of them (cookies?)?
TLoch14 wrote: Just my opinion here, but 10 levels in one area seems like a long time to spend in just one area, especially from levels 30-40. For some people who are not in game on a regular basis it could take months to get through just this one area. I can see starter areas encompassing 10 level as they go quite quickly, but I have a hard time understanding confining people to one area at this stage of character development for that length of time. Granted they don't have to stay there the whole time they can go to other places and level as well periodically coming back which is great, but when the faction requirements are as long term as they currently are in this area it almost deems it necessary to spend those 10 levels entirely in this locale to gain the rewards the quest series has to offer. There are just too many great places to visit in Vanguard to be that tied up to one.
I think most will do with this area what I have done with all of my characters, use it for 2 or 3 levels after the shadow hound or unicorn quest then realize the rewards are not really all that spectacular for what you have to put in to it. Then simply buy some cheap gear on the broker that is fairly comparable to the wardship armor and head to cragwind for the weapon, followed by the bounty hunter armor quest that is really very very fast to complete. I would have loved to have done the quests because I hate passing up content, but I just could not see myself spending more than two weeks begging for groups in one certain area simply to grind out faction and rares for an adventuring set that would not make a really significant change to my character, not when I could just sqeak by for a few more levels untill I get the bounty hunter gear, then the arena champion gear.
Whupin wrote: I would just like the point out that while a few of the lower tier pieces (bracers, etc) are pretty low quality, the chest/leggings/shoulders are all VASTLY superior to both Bounty Hunter gear and the Arena Champion armor. The only equal level armor sets that compare are the dropped stuff in Dargun's Tomb. I usually do that area first, get the weapon and whatever named drops I can, then fill in with Wardship. Or at least, that's how I did it before the Mushroom nerf.
Cuthalion@Seradon wrote: While thats true that those peices are superior to the bh and champions stuff, you can peice together some dropped stuff with those sets that will kind of even it out, untill the much higher levels gear stats really just do not make an enormous difference in power or defense, most of what you will be experiencing untill long after you have found an upgrade to the wardship stuff is going to be four dots in a group setting "maybe the occasional 5 dot", and the fights simply do not last long enough for a few points here and there to make a big difference. I guess my best example would be that if your fighting a mob and it takes you down with 30% health left, slapping on a chest and legs with 30 more ap and a few more points to all the stats will not improve your chances of success with that mob very much at all. So basically you can go to dargun's as you mentioned for decent gear, or the places I said and not really give up very much at all by just not doing wardship and you will be able to actually feel like your making progress rather than being stuck in one zone working on one line of quests for upwards of a month. To me even though I'm clearly not making any more progress outside of the wardship, it feels like I am by being able to skip it in favor of doing multiple questlines in multiple zones and dungeons. But thats just me, because I hate being stuck in one place grinding faction for weeks or a month, when I could be out experiencing so much more, I know not everyone feels the same. Like I said, I would love a reason to do those dungeons, and if that line was a bit more inline with the HL series, CIS, and Cragwind epic series I may have bothered, but it's more like a swamp armor grind for some gear thats no better of an upgrade than any other line that takes a week at most.
- make 4 dot mobs 9 faction gain per kill again. and for bosses: let the runes drop ALWAYS for each player, and let the outcome of the rune drops be determined by level and the boss. now getting eltha and zalge runes is really hard, since you always get people rolling need even if they don't have the faction to assemble t3 or even tier 1 armor!! annoying as ****, especially if its the only eltha drop for a full group in 2 hours dungeon crawling. - make the vol tuniel quests and all the 3 dot quests vailable for every player from start. it makes no sense that some 3 dot quests for lvl 30-35 require 5k+ faction. now you need 2k REAL faction to start the first "ceremony of vol tuniel" quest, and players start a minus 2000 faction usually.. i usually can start the quest AFTER multiple 2+ hours vol tuniel runs. makes no sense, as i can enter the vt dungeon and do stuff for my lvl there at lvl 30. - make the rift in celestine ward lvl 10 or 20. there is lvl 26 content in celestine ward, but you can use rift only at lvl 30. annoying!! same goes for other lvl 30 rifts. the lvl 40 req for plains of anguish rift is anoyig too, since some content there is lvl 37+. - make it MORE obvious how the armor and faction system works in celestine ward works. add a quest maybe, telling you the needed faction and items/runes with a map marker to WHERE the shrine is in thelaseen to actually assemble the armor. i think, over the course of 5 years, i answered 'where is shrine to make armor in wardship' 200 times. -make the forgotten earring quest at recondite treshold outpost in vol tuniel chunk worthy to do. now it gives no faction and a crap ring. unless they changed it recently. - add more "lore" to the wardship. i bet none of the players actually know the story of the swamp, the dungeons, and the link it all has to the queen of leth nurae. but that is an optional request
As someone whose lived in the Wardship and has a full account of chars that have gone through it... First off, to those that said 10 lvls for this "Area" is too much. Let me remind you that its not just one chunk but 2 (3 if you wanna count part of the Wardship chunk), and 2 HUGE dungeons in it (which USED to be 3 but don't get me started on the Vi'rak revamp!) VT will take you from 30-35 easily and Thel would take you up to 40. Collecting the Armor: Getting the Armor/Candles/Tomes is easy enough. Armor drops everywhere, and the candles/tomes are tradable. This leaves just farming Faction/Runes as the bottleneck of the armor making process... Faction: Making Armor: T1=2k T2=5k T3=11k Weapon=11.5k (Note:This is faction tab faction, add 2k to each if you're looking at dynamic faction(chat window faction hit)) -With triple faction the mushroom quest was giving out 1500 faction per turn in. And I could do one whole round in 10 minutes. That means in 1.5 hours I had all the faction I needed. Now, in theory, it's back to 500. Which would have brought it back up to 4.5 hours. For those that can't solo or have a short amount of time. I feel that the mushroom quest being repeatable was something viable. I would do it real quick before heading into work, or do it while killing time waiting for a raid, or group to pop up. Classes like the Rogue and Warrior, this is extremely helpful not being able to solo as easily as say a Disc or Necro. If need be bring it down to 250 faction a turn in, and that would make it somewhere around 9 hours to grind out the faction solo. This combined with any other quest would cover the "soloing solution" of the area. -Secondly, the difference in faction gains from mobs is technically already in there, if at least partially. It USED to be at least that VT-Faction based quests: I think they're pretty kool, the problem a couple people stated, was that people either don't know about them, or they're just starting and in a group that has already ground out their faction to START the questline. I can see how you would want the players to start on the quests outside, even the earring quest (which doesnt give faction!? This earring not only gives a debuff for VT but used to be a 10 parter, that right there could easily give everyone the 2k faction they need and familiarize everyone with the area! 200 faction a part and everyone is set to grab the dungeon quests!) Next you work on the VT dungeon quests, the skeeter one and the Vol Tuniel one. (BTW did it last night and saw you changed the books a smidge! Making it a clickie and moving them was probably a good idea). And I like how the VT questline takes you further and further in, and even to parts no one EVER explores! Then you finish off the Thel questlines which aren't nearly as engulfing as the VT ones (at LEAST the Ceremony questline). Ones just find an NPC and ones collect books on the ground. Runes:The true bottleneck of the whole process. And it truly boils down to Eltha/Zalge runes (Vt/Thel respectively). You can get delso runes from mobs outside the dungeons and inside. And Rigva/Somor runes are the "middle" runes that you will still have plenty of. The issue for Eltha runes is not every named has a chance of dropping them. Dreadwing, Ruulsh, and Warlord are the common known ones, with a couple other outta the way ones that can, like the undead named and maybe Messenger. Making the Eltha rune able to drop off all named but with differt chances would be the best solution. Zalge runes are actually not as hard to obtain if you know where to find the named, the issue is most people only farm the Golem room or Drake room, and only 2 of those named drop Zalge. Again changing it so the minor named (like vodel the sneak) CAN drop them even at a reduced rate, will help tremendously. Ruins of Vol Tuniel: -The usual dungeon crawl in VT has people going in a straight line. Literally. You take one turn (cause you have to) and BAM you're in the Warlords room. Now if people actually had the dungeon quests they could at least break up the monotony a little bit. Also the reason for the straight line is all the MAIN named (READ:UNBROKEN AND THEY ACTUALLY RESPAWN) are along this path. Namely Prestilent Wind, Lost Soul, Dreadwind, and Ruulsh. A couple other mobs along those paths usually are never up, most likely because they're borked. Solutions: -Having the dungeon quests helps you explore more and breaks up the monotony -Fix spawn mechanics of ALL named --WARLORD, Rotblood Messenger, ALLCAPS Ghost, and more I'm sure --Also Ruulsh does NOT count towards the VT Weapon quest named kills, no idea why -Also some rooms that can have named or quest items in them are usually really borked and aggro the whole room upon entering and will deaggro if you leave. Usuaully leaving a bigger mess all around. -Fix all runes to drop off all named (not asking to change the location specific ones though) -Add more quest to make you explore a bit more of VT. No one ever explores the Skeeter/Goo area, or the path towards Vi'rak anymore. The only reason the undead area gets explored is if you have the VT ceremony quests. Thelasseen: -The usual dungeon crawl for Thel is you head towards Golem Isle and if that ones taken or was run through you hit up the Drake Isle. And this is USUALLY just INSIDE the big rooms. Golem room has 3-4 named in it plus a summonable one (You can usually scrounge up enough clays if you clear the WHOLE 3 lvls but an increase in drops would make it so players can use more than one catalyst that drops, and you can usually get 3-4 catalysts to choose from.) The Drake room has one named, which is a fun enounter btw! If you can keep the group together after a golem crawl, people can go outside and down and hit up the two mini towers outside each of those platforms. Each tower can have a named spawn in it. The issue with most of these towers is that you need to clear them from bottom up. Why? if you go up a lvl without killing all the mobs below, they will aggro through the floor and add to the mess you alread are dealing with. NOW with enough patience and a SMART tank you can make all those pulls pretty easily with no more than 2-4 a pull. But not the average player/group. The pulls in the Thel towers are some of the craziest and buggiest pulls I have seen in game. Soultions: -look at the mob placements and some of the pathers and/or aggro radius of the towers is highly recommended. Especially aggroing through walls. -No named in the very first tower on the very first platform, or the two after that, iirc. Putting some there will help split up groups from overlapping on the back big platforms. Maybe put an NPC in the very first tower to add quests. -Vurm tomes ONLY spawn in the VERY back of Thel, adding them to the other spawn rates around the dungeon may help. -Only 2 quest for here, and ones just hailing an NPC and the other is ground clickies. That one has a smidge of lore to it, but not really. Expanding upon it would be nice. We have a questline for the Ruins of Vol Tuniel with the Ceremony, can we get one for the Drake/Griffon riders please? Wardship Pros: -1 rune/candle/tome ONLY drops in VT and same goes for Thel. I think this is a great mechanic, forcing people to explore! -Runes are tiered in themselves. Delso from named outside/lowbies. Rigva/Somor from trash named, and big named/ALLCAPS Eltha/Zalge -Thel has chests in them that can only be unlocked by a key drops there. These chests drop items completely unique to Thel! Amazing dungeon items that can help with named. 100% hp or energy regen. Double crit chances, double damage for 10 seconds, etc. They are made so you can't take them out of thel. I would LOVE to see this idea expanded upon to VT or even OTHER dungeons around Telon. -Did you know you can actually get a title for maxing out your Wardship faction? Did you know you can get one for bottoming out your Trueblood faction? I wonder if you can get one for bottoming out your rotblood faction... -I love faction based quests, you get more lore and quests the more you help them out, if you add more quests to this area please keep the pattern going -Build your own armor, instead of being given a certain piece per quest -SOO many named to choose from! Some just don't have much if any of a loot table. -Bring able to get books/candles/Delso runes outside of the dungeons, allowing players to start solo or small groups and get a head start. Then moving onto the group dungeon play. -Can turn in runes for faction or armor for motes. I love the ability to obtain what I need multiple ways. It allows for people do farm easier one way or another. Wardship Cons: -Getting everything together to make your armor is actually not THAT hard. The problem boils down to needing a SOLID group for a few hours. In two hours you can easily work up 2k faction and get near all the armor you need, some tomes/candles and hopefully a rune or two. The issue is with VT/Thel is after one named run through (see above) people break up and then you have to start all over. Changing a bit of the factoin machanics can help this alot. Making it so you can get T1 armor outside of the dungeons, T2 with finishing up VT and T3 with finishing up Thel. That would be my suggestion. -No more Vi'rak! --A lvl 55 dungeon attached to a low 30s dungeon? It was bad enough stumbling upon those salamanders in the low 30s and they were upwards of 40. --The best place for XP/Faction was Vi'rak, hands down. --Think you're group is tough? Vi'rak was the place to go to test your high 30s group. That place could tear a group apart! And it was amazing! A challenge! --There's a quest to explore the entrance to Vi'rak (from the outside), umm no ones gunna do that anymore with 55s outside it. -the places outside are amazing and beautiful! I've NEVER killed a Silver Knight or Treant. Those white buildings that look like thel but all over the chunk, I've never had a reason to go into them. They seem pretty kool. And I can only imagine how kool it could be with quests and exploring and named killing. No idea what they're for, wish I did. -Can't turn in runes for faction AFTER you complete the weapon quest. Not sure why. It would allow players to work on maxing faction and getting a title or two. The core of The Wardship is implemented near perefectly IMO. Everything is tiered, SHOULD move along gradually, and makes you explore EVERYTHING while learning lore and getting great gear and seeing some awesome dungeons. It just needs some more tweaking, like they have over the years. Having a dev go through it could easily work wonders! So long as it's not a quick glance over but an actual dive in. I've had all 9 pieces of armor made before my alt can even use them. I know where to get anything you need for drops, quests, and named. I've probably forgotten more questions/comments/concerns/complaints than brought up. If you want someone to run you through the dungeon, show you how it's done, or need a guide, please feel free to send me a message and we can work something out.
Himminy wrote: With over 150 chunks in the game I just personally think spending 10 mid to upper levels in 2 or 3 of them is quite limiting of content I can do. Now with that said VT is one of my favorite chunks, it's a great dungeon crawl with lots of names to pick from, but even still I don't like doing it over and over again. There is so much other content to enjoy I just find myself going other places and not getting the faction needed unless I buckle down and grind for it. I love doing Trengal Keep as well. Great dungeon, nice progression, you keep going deeper and deeper in throughout the quest series. After I complete it though I am ready to leave, I don't keep running through it. Hunter's League, same thing...progress through it, and then off to somewhere else. Thel I am not as fond of. It is definitely a full group crawl at 35, but the reason it is and what makes me steer away from it is the incredible aggro radius. It gets better as you level, but when you first go up there those mobs are coming from everywhere at you. To be honest I don't have much experience up there short of farming with a level 55 helping me out, but that is only because of the few times I did try to go there with people of the appropriate level it just seemed to be too much to handle. Now maybe that was just me and the groups I was in. I don't want to talk it down too much because as I said I don't have a lot of time in there. Again though, back on topic, I couldn't see running through it more than once or twice without tiring of it. There is so much to see and do in Telon that the repetition isn't necessary unless forced by quest mechanics or faction like this area is. As far as I am concerned the faction could simply go away. The duration of time required could easily be controlled with the levels that the quests are offered as they are now, but without the faction requirements. It would still require some time there, but you could go other places and then come back when you hit the next level that allows you to grab the next quest in the series. As a side note I have run 4 toons through it, though 3 of them when the mushroom quest was repeatable. Again, this allowed you a way to get the faction, although tedious, and leave and do other content, then come back when level appropriate throughout the series.
