Topic

What's Wrong With Quests/Badges?

I can already imagine the Flak/fallout from this question.  First I want you to know that this post is my opinion and you do NOT have to agree with me nor do I expect you to.  Please share some ideas and positive input and curb any urge to be personally nasty to anyone who posts their own opinions/ideas.  Thanks!

I hope there will be some renovation of Quests.  There should be at least one Quest per skill but there are not.  I have now had 3 or more Skills with no accompanying Quest.  We do have Quests with no associated Skill - the Races, the Tower base, maybe something else.  We also have the repetitive and painful for some, tree planting Quests.  No sooner did I finished with that nasty tree planting Quest (because I personally hate killing trees) than I got a second tree planting Quest and had to kill more trees.  Also the Last Egg Quest might even be considered yet another tree planting Quest although you can do this without killing and planting.  Then, if you add in the Badges for tree planting and/or plank harvesting you could spend hours upon hours killing and planting trees.

I noticed that there are a number of Badges which involve tree planting and animal raising. To get these you must kill even more trees and you must overpopulate the streets with animals.  I have nothing against tree killing if that is your thing and if you replant.  It is part of the game.  I don't like it much and once I got the Quests that involved it I was through with it.  I will NOT go for the Badges that will require even more killing.

Badges that require raising multiple animals seem unnecessary to me.  We already have some locations which are overrun with animals.  If each Glitch goes for these badges there will soon be no room for Glitches to move and we won't be able to do a thing because with every step Chickens will be flying and squawking and Butterflies already make it difficult to do things.  Every time I try to harvest a tree, enter a door, select a sign post, a window pops up and asks which thing I want to interact with and includes the tree, door, sign, etc. and one or more animals.  Until some sort of Animal Management is introduced (Community Farms?) these Badges should be limited.

I hope that there will be some changes to these Quests and Badges by the time of the Reset or maybe some management options introduced.  Now, don't fuss about this please but suggest solutions or just say what you like or don't like about the Quests and Badges.  Thanks!

Posted 17 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I did my first (and only) tree planting quest without one tree-kill. How? Bought houses. And the same for breeding and raising animals. Of course this method only works if there are enough empty  houses with empty patches.
    Posted 17 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • We really need to be able to use the hatchet on the chickens to make chicken soup.
    Posted 17 months ago by MaryLiLamb Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Folks seem to have a need to finish quests as soon as they get them - which in the case of Glitch is really not necessary. In a lot of games you have to do the quest to get the skill bump, but here you don't. 
    So, it is possible to do those tree quests without killing trees - you just need to be willing to put it in your back pocket and look for patches as you go - and they are out there - imho, many more than there used to be. 

    Also, and you're probably heard this already, but the game is 'maximized to level 20'. I believe there will be quests attached to those skills that don't have them now, but that they'll come when higher levels begin to be optimized, after the game open for real real. 
    Posted 17 months ago by Wren Bramble Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I've managed to do all my tree planting quests without killing a tree, but I have moved house several times.

    I'm in total agreement about the animal badges, no way do I want to overpopulate the world even more than it is, so I dont have those badges. Although now we can release animals from our own house yard I could raise umpteen chickens, pigs and butterflies and just release them to get the badges...nah couldnt be bothered.
    Posted 17 months ago by Teena Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I get a little (ok maybe a lot) annoyed when mining under the influence (of earthshakers) and the clock is ticking as I try to make sure i select "mine" instead of "massage" butterfly or "nibble" pig for the 10th time in a row.

    So +1 to the idea of community farms/out to pasture retirement areas for excess creatures,  though for that to work different streets/areas might have to establish "minimum creature levels" so that we don't end up with a world where every single creature is captured and confined to a beautiful but fenced in farm.
    Posted 17 months ago by The Cat Face Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thoughtful post, Brib, thanks for posting it.

    I agree that quests need an overhaul.  

    There is an early 'tutorial reinforcement' one that really taxes the new player, given how difficult it is to find a patch.  The last few tests, the number one question in Global is 'where do I find a patch', sometimes followed with some long timeframe as to how long they've been looking or how many streets they went down.  Given that they go over this on the start streets and in later quests, I'm not sure why it still exists.  I'm not saying all quests ought to be easy, but this one in particular just seems like it needs to go.  If the point is to make sure they know how to tend a patch, then don't let them off the start street until they do it.

    It's been some time since I did the gardening/croppery quests, but I distinctly recall being annoyed by the last one I got, which was so simplistic and easy to finish and didn't actually teach me anything I hadn't already been doing in-game for weeks.  

    Quests should take longer than 5 minutes to complete and most of them do not.  I'd like to see quests get exponentially more difficult or take longer to complete, such that the first few you get for the base skill levels are fairly easy/quick to complete but the ones for the higher skill levels are more complex.

    Agree that the newer skills need to also have quests, with the caveat that the herb quests need to be somehow distinct from the gardening quests, possibly using the properties that some of the herbs give you.  Perhaps getting 5 other players to try Purple or staying on Hairball for 30 minutes.

    As for the achievements, my take on them is that because the game is not fleshed out well above level 20, people turn to the achievements page to 'have something to do'.  I went down that road for a while until it dawned on me that I'd have to do it all over again after the reset so I backed off, but I know others who are going after them.  There is incentive to do so (leader boards, 'boredom'), so it's natural that it occurs.  

    The problem, the unintended consequence, is that the achievements likely weren't meant to be done as individual missions but more as serendipitous happenstance, where over the course of your Glitch's life of months or years, you managed to create 2000 pigs or whatever.  But because of the incentives, we see people going full hog on making 2000 pigs or whatever, then releasing them onto streets and overcrowding them.

    Interestingly, the other unintended consequence is how this impacts the Rook.  In the last test, people in Global were discussing the fact that many streets have too many animals on them, which interfere with whatever you try to do on that street, and argued for not saving the animals during the next Rook attack.  I have to admit, on a pragmatic level wherein my brain recognizes that the dying pigs are just pixels on the screen, I agreed.  Let the Rook wipe out entire streets of animals, since the incentives of achievements are going to re-populate these streets within an hour anyway.  But that takes a huge bite out of the storyline and diminishes the role of the Rook's place in the game.  Yes, there will likely always be crusaders who will ensure that all the animals survive, but my take away is that there is some N players who are have a disincentive for dealing with Rook attacks because of the incentives of achievements and their impact on the world.

    My thought is to just stop with the achievements and leaderboards because I don't care for the incentives they produce, but I doubt the devs will do that.  Perhaps the incentive for players to go for achievements as though they were quests will be lessened as more stuff to do in-game gets fleshed out.
    Posted 17 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 Brib, and all follow on comments - Major tweeks are needed for both the quests and achievements. And yes, major work needs to be dedicated to levels above 20...we've only been up for a few months since last reset, and only been live/online for maybe only 30-40% of that time; people will be above level 20 in a few days once they go 24/7, and then we deal with these issues pretty quickly after reset...
    Posted 17 months ago by b3achy Subscriber! | Permalink