Lack of Attn. To Detail

[Duergos]

Devs please...

It is your game and your right to have the trainers no longer take lore tokens for formulas. However, why have the trainers continue to give the lore tokens as quest rewards? Why not have them give coin instead.....???

Speaking of coin, the forms seem to be way overpriced relative to a new players earning potetnial.

Oh, use the formulatrons you say? Well how will a new player know about them? The trainers dont mention them and there is no direction to lead the players to them.

All the players know is that the trainers says they take lore tokens even though they actually dont.

This makes the game look unpolished and the devs a bit disorganized and makes for an overall uncomfortable start for a new player.

It only takes a few extra minutes to do a job right? How hard is it to edit a few lines of text?

[Magnir]

Thanks for posting this, I had no idea that tokens were no longer exchanged for formulae. Luckily I'm restarting from the very beginning and haven't had to discover the near uselessness of the tokens now.

[Tcei]

I believe that it was said that there are future plans for tokens, but the devs have been rather quiet on what that use is.

[Duergos]

Let me be clear, I dont give a rats patootie about the use of tokens or not, I am saying that the text that the trainers say to new players needs to be adjusted according to whatever is decided.......

[Frith-Rae]

Yes, I've always thought the way the various vendors say "coin" when they mean any number of currency (which are worth varying amounts of "coin") is extremely confusing..

Added on top of that this (which I too was not aware of) - things really should and need to be cleared up in this area.

[Whysp]

Please try to be patient. From what I've seen, Istaria is going through a massive reorganization, so it is (for all intents and purposes) unpolished. I've noticed quests that couldn't be completed (at the time) because of NPCs being lost in the shuffe. I've noticed the token thing from the first day I came back. But since most people don't seem to do the quests past the first 20 levels, I considered it a small issue.

While I acknowledge that it might be a bit of a tap-dance to discover all the changes as they're made, I think we should keep an open mind until the Devs say "Ok, this is it. This is where we decided to go." In the meantime, continue to calmly let the devs know if there're things you consider amiss. Four eyes are better than two, and 4000 eyes are better still.

Keep in mind I have no direct ties to the game, nor contact with the developers. I just know that Istaria is the only MMO I'm currently playing in the 8-odd years I've been gaming online, and at the moment I'm not seeing anything in the changes that would prevent me from continuing to play.

[CallakDW]

Lack of attention to detail has allways been a problem in this game, just a couple of the many examples is off aligned text links, and many bits of art in the game. I'd love to hear some day that there is someone working at art clean up, but in all the many years I've played, no bit of art I've ever reported was ever cleaned up, it seems like no one cares about it. Nor have I ever seen an art flaw that I haven't reported ever corrected.

[Nambroth]

I'd love to hear some day that there is someone working at art clean up, but in all the many years I've played, no bit of art I've ever reported was ever cleaned up, it seems like no one cares about it. Nor have I ever seen an art flaw that I haven't reported ever corrected.

People care about it.

[CallakDW]

People care about it.

Really? I haven't forgotten the many scoffs I got about getting dragon necks officially fixed. I was told that someone was working on it, but I never saw any results a whole 1 or 2 years after.

And I'm utterly suprised that the scrambling female satyer models were never repaired.

[Creme]

I believe this latest patch or client on Blight has addressed the text-link issues, also the chat-tab backspace and text displays incorrectly bug.

[Shinkuu]

I have had to search around to find out what to do with these stupid tokens myself. No one in-game had a clue as to what to do with them and the trainers specifically tell you to bring them to an "Imperial Lore Keeper" who does not exist anywhere. I was getting very close to trashing the things as worthless rot.

I have to say though that it is not just this that is a problem there are a lot of quests which tend to say "Go kill this" or "Go to this place" and fail to give ANY direction whatsoever to find what they mean. Even a general direction would be a great start and this sort of info should be what is saved in the quest log which is usually pretty worthless.

A good example is the quest that has you kill Bronze Golems for the Gift of Dragons. You are told to go slay 20 of them and anyone new is going to assume they must be somewhere nearby but...NO...They are anything BUT nearby. They are a looong looong ways away from the quest giver in a whole other area entirely but nothing in what he says or in the quest log gives the foggiest CLUE as to where you should go to find them.

Contrast this to the quest to go kill 20 Malachite Golems where the quest giver tells you to go to the top of the nearby mountain that looms over the city to find them. While getting there is a real pain in the tail at least with that information you KNOW where you need to go to find them.

[neva]

I have had to search around to find out what to do with these stupid tokens myself. No one in-game had a clue as to what to do with them and the trainers specifically tell you to bring them to an "Imperial Lore Keeper" who does not exist anywhere. I was getting very close to trashing the things as worthless rot.

I have to say though that it is not just this that is a problem there are a lot of quests which tend to say "Go kill this" or "Go to this place" and fail to give ANY direction whatsoever to find what they mean. Even a general direction would be a great start and this sort of info should be what is saved in the quest log which is usually pretty worthless.

A good example is the quest that has you kill Bronze Golems for the Gift of Dragons. You are told to go slay 20 of them and anyone new is going to assume they must be somewhere nearby but...NO...They are anything BUT nearby. They are a looong looong ways away from the quest giver in a whole other area entirely but nothing in what he says or in the quest log gives the foggiest CLUE as to where you should go to find them.

Contrast this to the quest to go kill 20 Malachite Golems where the quest giver tells you to go to the top of the nearby mountain that looms over the city to find them. While getting there is a real pain in the tail at least with that information you KNOW where you need to go to find them.

Lore Tokens really have no more use, I have a ton of them from back in the days when they were useful.
Though I need to report a bug about a beginner trainer who apparently still likes to give them out for no reason.

As for the quests and you not knowing where to go, well-- this is the thing with Istaria/Horizons, and it is said by the NPCs time and time again--
Explore!

Istaria/Horizons is all about exploration. You want to know where something is, either ask an older player, cause we may know some locations closer, or go forth and run about and then make markers of it for future reference.

That is, after all, half the fun of Istaria.

[Takora Drakan]

I think there should be a line added to the trainers that you can spend the tokens on the formulartrons in New Rachival.

[Shinkuu]

Lore Tokens really have no more use, I have a ton of them from back in the days when they were useful.
Though I need to report a bug about a beginner trainer who apparently still likes to give them out for no reason.

As for the quests and you not knowing where to go, well-- this is the thing with Istaria/Horizons, and it is said by the NPCs time and time again--
Explore!

Istaria/Horizons is all about exploration. You want to know where something is, either ask an older player, cause we may know some locations closer, or go forth and run about and then make markers of it for future reference.

That is, after all, half the fun of Istaria.

Actually the tokens DO have a use still. I was able to get some nice new plans with them that I was able to scribe and make right away. It may be a gamble now but so what? It is just a bonus gift for doing quest to work up my skill in the first place.

Exploration is fine and all but the place is just too darned huge to expect that you will magically stumble across something that is so distant. To give an example for those in the USA: It would be like you are in Florida and I tell you to go kill some monster but what I do not tell you is that the monster lives in Washington DC. Now I also do not even give you a direction to begin searching so in theory you can start looking over the entire United States. It is going to take a loooong time before you actually find what you are looking for unless you are very lucky.

I do not need the quest giver to give me a very specific coordinate but at least a general idea of where I am going would be a real good start like with the Malachite example I gave or even a solid direction like "Go to the north and slay..." with that at least I can figure if I keep going north eventually I will find what I am looking for.

In other quests I DO need the specific coordinates but only because the Devs thought it was a bright idea to make me stand in a very specific spot to trigger the continuation of my quest even if it makes no sense to do so. For example: I was told to go to blighted land, which I did with no problem, then go find sand pygmies but that part is where things fell down. I FOUND them quite easily buuut that was not what I was supposed to do I was supposed to stand in a very particular spot on a road a ways above where they were which was not even a direct path between the blighted land and their location. That essentially is the opposite of good incentive towards exploration because through exploration I FOUND what I was supposed to find but I was not given credit for it because I did not walk over a specific invisible spot that the quest in no way indicated I needed to walk over.

In short, I have played GREAT free roaming games like Elder Scrolls and know what it is like to go explore and figure things out on your own (Morrowind and Oblivion both have an unbelievable number of quests you can get involved in and thousands of secrets if you are adventurous enough to stray from the storyline and explore the world) but they always give you just enough of a hint to get you started. You almost always had to figure out a lot of what was going on by yourself but at least you had an idea of how to get started even if it was vague. So I cannot help but see the utter lack of such as an oversight or flaw rather than a positive "Feature" (as some other bad MMO's love to label their shortcomings LOL).

Also, I do want to say that the player community here IS awesome and they help keep this from being game breaking but perhaps they should not be burdened with constantly filling in gaps created by the game itself and be free to help with the more challenging things. (I for one get sick and tired of telling people for the millionth time where to go or how to do something knowing that the only reason I have to do it is because they were not given enough information by the game to stand a chance of figuring it out themselves.)

[Frith-Rae]

Yes I agree on quest details, its a topic that's been brought up recently.

I did notice that most of the new patch quests have pretty good directions. Though they can still be pretty vague - as I found out the "Peak" of Dalimond Ridge wasn't ACTUALLY the peak..after about an hour..

They are listing the places/pepole to go back to instead of just leaving it to your memory .

And I swear if I see "go explore its what the game is for" I'm going to scream even louder - YOU CAN"T REALLY BENEFIT FROM EXPLORING EASILY IF NOTHING SPAWNS IN FRONT OF YOU AS YOU DO IT *pants and takes a deep breath*.

God its become a mantra - only somehow it just shows the weakness of our engine and not the greatness of the game - but people think its a plus.

So I do think the quests are getting better, but the quests after Tier II and possibly many of the Teir I ones may not have been made with that in mind. Not having done Tier I in years I can't say if they're as fixed. But it gives me hope for the future revamps .

Btw, Amon did ask if you find a quest that is just totally "wha?" you can submit it in a ticket and ask for it to be tweaked. He also posted to do that with quests that don't send you back where you started from or give you any clue where you got it.

[Dragonboy]

Apart from the fact that during my last Lairshaping quest I received 5 or 10 Jman loretokens I think they should simply be removed from the quest rewards untill they are possibily needed again in the distant future or never if they are supposed to become extinct except for the select few that will keep a few for collecting purposes.

As for the quest assistance…
I tend to agree that some quests are vague in directing players towards their destination, not to mention completely annoying because appearently they are designed to be finished in a certain way or by “walking” a certain undefined path.
Example 1… One of the trainers in NT, probably the dragon crafter trainer orders you to go to the pond near the sandstone, if you don’t walk past the Cow ranch and past the Flax plants you are screwed because the quest will not continiu since the quest never used to update when you took the other way around which is strange considering we want to encourage players to explore..
Example 2… LvL 30 is still T2 level range in cases of mobs and also the level on which many if not most hatchlings wish to become adults. The revamped T2 quests as well as every Dralnok’s Doom quest that requires you to find a specific location generally all require the player to walk.
Example T2 revamped quest… I was supposed to search for the second Forest Skulk village and kill the elder for some artifact. Not so difficult I guess, never enticipating that flying could become a problem and adult or ancient dragons tend to fly. So I fly and land right in the middle of the village kill all around and then storm the Elder, while I actually got the artifact it didn’t count because appearently the quest required me to WALK from the nearby road into the village which I never understood from the quest info itself. So I never walked from the nearby road towards the village, which had the annoying effect of having to kill the elder again, but he only spawned after having killed a few Gatherers which took quite a while to spawn.
Example DD quest… While you search for the spirit of a Dwarf long dead you have to walk at specific locations to get an update for the quest, but if you don’t know were those locations are you are forced the walk the whole route from the entrance gate passed the Corrupted Iron Guards, then the beetles and scorpions and to make it more fun the actual “evil ghost” of the dwarf long dead and his hard hitting friends while dragon flying is limited to 0 and as such we kinda walk. Especially in DD an ancient dragon can be quite a nice target for all the mobs that walk around and in general prefer to fly passed them at speed 124 then walk passed them at 75-99 depending on roadbonus.

I also however must place up for discussion here that a huge amount of questions could be avoided if the newer people started reading the forum and Wikia when they are (not) online.
The people that want their hands, paws or claws held at every step of every possible quest will still keep asking for this, but for those that like to figure out things themselves but cannot do so ingame both the wikia and this forum is a huge source of information about many things related to the game.