Many quests are being revamped and all give better rewards the better your
faction is. The following is a post from Bill Trost on the matter. I have
personaly done two quests in Kaladim which have changed in the last patch
since I did them right before with vastly different results.

Kitasi of E'ci

Bill Trost on Game Concerns
Community News [ 12:06 AM PT ] - Den
<mailto:den@...?subject=EQNews>
Verant's Senior Game Designer Bill Trost posted the following in-depth
message to the EQSS Gamers Forum <gamersforum>'s popular
Westwood+Tavern&number=1&DaysPrune=30&LastLogin="Westwood Tavern
<http://eq.stratics.com/cgi-bin/ubb/cgi/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&forum
= message board:
First I would like to thank the posters on this forum for all of your
thoughtful postings.. I would like to address some suggestions brought up by
Khadgarr;
1. GIVE SOME DECENT EXP. AND LOOT FOR DOING QUESTS!!!!!!!!!! You have the
ability to reward other playstyles (i.e. Questing) SIMPLY by taking the
already existing quests and making them worth more exp. and loot. You could
then follow that up by making some more interesting quests.
This is a major focus of the development team at this time, loot should be
getting better on existing quests slowly but surely. As well as additional
quests being implimented. The EXP rewards are being looked at as well but
they present a different challenge and a bit of a catch-22 which I will get
into below.
2. Give a small amount of exp. every time someone successfully completes a
trade skill.
This is a possibility as well, but i would bet our definitions of "small"
vary quite a bit. (see catch-22)
3. Give exp. the first time a person steps foot in a new town/continent.
This, unfortunately, would require much more programming and data
restructuring than it would seem.. doubtful at best.
4. Have loot spawn in a chest in a random room in an Inn every so often.
5. Have loot spawn randomly in the forest in the middle of no where every so
often.
6. Have a special item hidden under a rock in the forest.
7. Have loot spawn randomly at the bottom of a river.
All these are basically the same thing, spawning items in the world. We are
doing this to a VERY limited extent now for certain quests. Could it be used
more often? Sure. Will it? Most definately.
8. Make really low level creatures spawn every so often with 4 plat on them.

A low level monster with higher level treasure. Does this happen now? Yes.
Could it happen more? Yes. Will it? Yes. But once again the definition of
"more" comes into question..
9. Make players answer riddles/puzzles for exp./loot.
Questions or riddles anwsered or solved are part of some current quests. Can
these be quests in and of themselves? For EXP reward? Under current
conditions, no. They would be too abusable. For any kind of loot reward?
Yes. We could add riddle quests that pay out "Lore Items" (items which you
have only one of in your possession at any given time) the problem with that
then becomes, you have to assume that everyone knows the answer (ah.. the
web is a wonderfull thing) and whatever the reward is has basically become
"newbie equipment" and if it is worth having, everyone in the game WILL have
it. So will we have these types of quests for lore items? Yes. But they will
be fewer and farther between and the rewards probably not as great because
they potentially could greatly disrupt the balance of the game. Now, riddles
as a component of bigger quests? Yes, we have more of these going in all the
time.
10. Make a maze, and players who get through it get exp.
Something like this could be implimented with existing geometry, The Gorge
of King Xorbb or the maze in Cazic-Thule or the Qeynos Aquaducts come to
mind and there are quests that require you to traverse those things.. But
could just the act of traversing the maze gain you EXP without interacting
with any NPCS? No. Not at this time and I doubt that will be changing. But
could we have more quests that take place within and requiring you to travel
through these maze like areas? Sure. And we will. Will there be more maze
like areas added in the future with the EQ Expansion or Paineel and The
Hole? Bet on it.
11. The first time that a player casts a particular spell he gets exp.
This is something that is more complicated than it might seem and would
require new data structures.. I don't think we will see this. Now, after
saying that.. Could we add a small EXP component to Scribing a new spell in
your book?? Hmmm..
12. Make a gambling place (or simply an NPC that plays a gambling game with
you for a prize).
There are a few quests that mimic "gambling" but a "gambling place" is
something we are looking into...
13. Reward the 1000th customer at a particular store.
Sounds simple but would require some data restructuring and addional code
that I dont think we will have.
14. Make an NPC that appears randomly, gives someone an item/quest, then
disappears.
This does happen now. Could it happen more? Yes.
15. Have bards put on plays in the town square.
There are NPC bards that sing in some of the taverns and such but we really
wanted to keep this type of action to a minimium so that extended NPC "spam"
doesnt clog up an area where player driven events might be occuring. Now,
that being said, will we have more Dynamic GM run events like this? Yes.
16. Give exp. to the first person who talks to a new NPC.
(See answer to # 13 above... )
17. Have a drinking contest in a bar.
18. Have an archery contest in the woods.
19. Have a contest where the person who hits the bag the hardest gets a
prize.
Yes. We will have (are having)things such as this in the form of Dynamic GM
driven events. (Also I must mention that there are many VERY good player
driven events happening all the time.)
20. Randomly have the bank make a money error in your favor.
hmm.. How about in the banks favor? I think the banks are going to be
staying as they are but maybe..
OK, now the Catch-22 I mentioned about high EXP rewards for quests and other
non-combat related actions. Given the current basic rules of EQ, non-combat
EXP gains must always suppliment combat EXP and not replace it. If we were
to allow players to advance solely by doing quests and other non-combat
related actions we would generally be doing the player a diservice given the
current "rules" for EverQuest. In EverQuest, your character's ability to
survive is based upon three things. Your Experience Level, your Skills, and
your Equipment/Spells. (well 4 things really, player knowledge and skill
count quite a bit as well) Any ONE of these things is not enough. While it
would be possible to gain EXP and EQ though solely questing, Skills are only
gained by using them.. using them ALOT. A character who gained his levels
and equipment solely through questing would always be statistically worse
than a character who adventured and participated in combat. Now what does
that matter to someone who just wants to roleplay a merchant and doesnt give
two hoots about stupid stats and numbers? It doesnt. Until they want to take
part in GM run quest through the heart of the Plane of Fear and get
slaughtered while characters of their same level and equipped identically
survive without a problem. At that point there is no going back. Anything
that they could possibly gain combat skills off of, due to thier level, will
kill them in two hits. With EverQuest's current structure, there are no
avenues open for that character at that point besides being the town
dwelling merchant. Is that bad? It would be, for someone who didnt realize
the choice they were making by completing all those high EXP quests and
avoiding combat on thier way to higher levels.
Now that being said, are the current EXP rewards to low? In some cases, yes.
Are we working to make quests more rewarding in both loot and EXP? Yes.
Ideally quest rewards would be roughly worth the time invested. In actual
practice this will be seen more in the quality of LOOT rewarded as opposed
to great increases in EXP or Faction rewards.
Is it a perfect system? Nope. But, it IS a good start for Massivly
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games of this scale. Just like the D&D red
boxed Basic Set (or the three brown booklets, depending on how old school
you are... was a good start for pen and paper role playing.
Just one (or two) general word(s) of advice, don't play EverQuest like a
racing game.. sure you CAN, but it really is MUCH more fun if you slow down,
meet some people, roleplay and explore. Do some quests because your
character wants to help the person giving the quest, not for the reward you
would get for helping. Heck, try that in real life too.
Well I have yakked on enough, thanks for taking the time to read this, hope
it helped more than hurt..
Bill Trost
Senior Game Designer, EverQuest
Verant Interactive, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: Raoul de Grunt [mailto:eq_corbolu@...]
Sent: Friday, July 02, 1999 3:39 AM
To: eqbards@onelist.com
Subject: [eqbards] Quests

From: Raoul de Grunt <eq_corbolu@...>

Can anyone tell me the use of qeusts? I completed the string quest at the
qeynos bard guild and only got 2 copper, some faction hits and a litle bit
of exp for about a 1,5 hour walk. That was when i was a low level ( at +- 7
), now i am 11 and recently moved to freeport,i love selo's and the drum, my

shadowknight friend (who's not as evil as you migth think) was very jealous,

he walked twice as long as i did from qeynos to freeport :)...

But i'm drifting of, can you tell me what the reward for most quests is,
because walking for 1,5 hour and getting 2 copper is not worth it.
And getting exp figthing is much cooler than running.

Corbolu, 11th at Bertoxxulous

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Where do some of the Internet's largest email lists reside?
http://www.onelist.com
At ONElist - the most scalable and reliable service on the Internet.

------------------------------------------------------------------------