Dreadful
Notorious Pirate
In going through the Black Pearl quest for the first time, I decided along the way to take the time to read through the dialogues, look at the journal entries, and try to actually understand the story. I noticed a few more minor things along the way that could/should definitely be fixed, but looking back at it overall, I think I may have found a way to solve an issue with the logic of the questing system as well as potentially help the often-loathed length of the Liberation of the Black Pearl storyline quest.
In the image above, the goal given to you in the quest is to recover 6 planks of wood from EITC Marauder ships. This is one of the primary things that makes the BP quest so lengthy - "defeat and collect" (DAC) quests. They require you to go and defeat a number of enemies and bring back specific items. And while this is a typical thing for any quest based game or MMO to do, I think POTCO went about this a bit lazily. In the above quest, I went and defeated 1 EITC Marauder and received 1 wooden plank for my efforts. Really? 1 wooden plank is all that entire boat had to offer? There are many quests just like this one, where you should be able to collect multiple items from one enemy or container, not just one. So, my suggested fix is one I've seen in other MMOs before and one that would just make more sense logically - have each quest drop an amount of the needed item within a certain range. For example, to get my planks from EITC Marauders, I would receive from 1-5 planks per ship. This cuts my amount of work from finding and sinking 6 of them to likely only needing to find and sink 2-4 of them. It's a relatively small difference, but if the concept were applied across the entire questline (and the other quests in the game as well), it would make a huge difference timewise.
However, there is another issue with questing logic for DAC quests, and it's pretty similar to the previous one.
In all honesty, I screenshotted this because of the strange glitch with my ship spawning inside someone's Brig. But, the quest goal in the top right shows "Capture Captain Jones from an EITC Barracuda ship." When I go and defeat an EITC Barracuda, the first one I defeat instantly gives me Captain Jones. This logic just doesn't really make sense - every EITC Barracuda has Captain Jones? How many Captain Joneses are there? So, again, a fix for this is one I've seen used in other quest based MMOs - there's a % chance for each Barracuda defeated that I will recover Captain Jones. For example, there could be a 33% chance that I would find Jones on each Barracuda I defeat, so it may give me a message saying "Did not recover Captain Jones from EITC Barracuda. Try again.", or I may see a message saying "Collected Captain Jones." In theory, this concept would be applied to every quest where I am told to go and collect an item there can only be one of. And in reality, this would only make the BP quest slower, sort of counteracting the previously suggested fix. But I think overall, questing would still go at least slightly faster and it would definitely make more sense.
Thoughts?
In the image above, the goal given to you in the quest is to recover 6 planks of wood from EITC Marauder ships. This is one of the primary things that makes the BP quest so lengthy - "defeat and collect" (DAC) quests. They require you to go and defeat a number of enemies and bring back specific items. And while this is a typical thing for any quest based game or MMO to do, I think POTCO went about this a bit lazily. In the above quest, I went and defeated 1 EITC Marauder and received 1 wooden plank for my efforts. Really? 1 wooden plank is all that entire boat had to offer? There are many quests just like this one, where you should be able to collect multiple items from one enemy or container, not just one. So, my suggested fix is one I've seen in other MMOs before and one that would just make more sense logically - have each quest drop an amount of the needed item within a certain range. For example, to get my planks from EITC Marauders, I would receive from 1-5 planks per ship. This cuts my amount of work from finding and sinking 6 of them to likely only needing to find and sink 2-4 of them. It's a relatively small difference, but if the concept were applied across the entire questline (and the other quests in the game as well), it would make a huge difference timewise.
However, there is another issue with questing logic for DAC quests, and it's pretty similar to the previous one.
In all honesty, I screenshotted this because of the strange glitch with my ship spawning inside someone's Brig. But, the quest goal in the top right shows "Capture Captain Jones from an EITC Barracuda ship." When I go and defeat an EITC Barracuda, the first one I defeat instantly gives me Captain Jones. This logic just doesn't really make sense - every EITC Barracuda has Captain Jones? How many Captain Joneses are there? So, again, a fix for this is one I've seen used in other quest based MMOs - there's a % chance for each Barracuda defeated that I will recover Captain Jones. For example, there could be a 33% chance that I would find Jones on each Barracuda I defeat, so it may give me a message saying "Did not recover Captain Jones from EITC Barracuda. Try again.", or I may see a message saying "Collected Captain Jones." In theory, this concept would be applied to every quest where I am told to go and collect an item there can only be one of. And in reality, this would only make the BP quest slower, sort of counteracting the previously suggested fix. But I think overall, questing would still go at least slightly faster and it would definitely make more sense.
Thoughts?