How to deal with level 10s

[Damien]

At the moment with all the changes I believe we now have more level 10s than in previous settings, which means when the board doesn't deliver, they don't get ig (for at least 1-2 days based on avg reset times), and tbh I think what compounds this a bit is lower dm times, especially in gmt.

Given having more folks on is always a better thing, was trying to work out ways to resolve it, options include;

- the board includes more or all quests
- Luca is always up
- creation of some other static high level content

Let me know thoughts.

[knifey]

Perhaps just a more reliable way for 10s to get more War Supplies to trigger raids.

Though with the War winding down sometime in the not so distant future - a more permanent solution would be ideal.

Perhaps two relaxed quests on the board instead of just the one?

[Providence]

Relaxed quests are not the solution.

My idea is this: ensure that the board, no matter what, has 1 level 11 and 1 level 10 quest.

[Egon the Monkey]

More isn't always better
Having more folks on and doing things that involve other players and risk-taking is a good thing.
Having more L10-11s on silently 3-man powerquesting wouldn't be a significant upgrade from 'Having L10s only turn up to smack-talk in the Comments Section Bellows'. If you've hit 10 on a political PC, you never need to leave town, and are only going to die to a perma or a really committed PvP driveby.
I like quests because they drive new RP, and can draw people out of their comfy orbits of faction PCs and reliable co-conspirators.

So I think we need more ways to do get PCs doing stuff in the world. And the mechanics are there. Something that can fit between the high-risk, low-reward, large-team challenge of a Titan battle, and the mid-risk exploration content that is Animal Bounties. Essentially a 'PvE Dispensary'.

PvE Dispensary, you say?
The Dispensary, if you didn't play V5, was a non-lethal Battle Royale/Capture the Flag thing where the goal was to be the last one standing holding a parcel of loot. You could share it with allies, but it cost potions to win that fight so you wouldn't share with too many.
Raids provide enough potions for everyone to share. Titan Shards can't be shared. Neither are optimal to have a small team for.

I can see from the Delivery Quests that the Quest System doesn't have to involve Quest Areas. Given that, would it be possible to script a quest that:

• Spawns a nails-hard bounty NPC and a support squad for them in a given area.
• Adds the objective of "Kill this NPC and return their head"
• Rewards you with a random pile of potions, to avoid it becoming gold bloat

Hell, you could maybe even do it with a bounty that drops 5-6 decent potions, but a Quest would prevent it from being soloable or 2-man-able.

This would work particularly well if it also provided something that factions had to compete over. So you only want your faction or unaligned people on your team. Or another faction could poach your bounty out from under you. Which means you can lose. We currently lack a selection of ways for high-powered PCs to lose without permaing.

Longterm PCs lack risk and so we get more L10s
I feel part of this is that PCs aren't dying or retiring in the numbers they used to. And those that are, are mostly dying on perma events. Perma events are more likely to take out a lower level PC, because generally:

• The thing that kills you is unsurvivable bad luck. Which would take out a L10 too but there's fewer of them.
• The thing that kills you is something that was tuned to be threatening to a L10 PC and will therefore obliterate a newish L8.

So we get a flurry of activity for a couple of weeks after one, as there's a load of players who are energised about their new PCs. Then it gradually settles back into 'everyone calling everyone else a Wyrmist over sendings' and 'making backroom deals with the same 5 PCs'.

Providence: Why are relaxed quests not the solution? They provide a way to get low-investment resupply, which is what you're lacking at L10 if an event drains you. You're not lacking for high-risk options. I'd argue that having a Relaxed Quest on the Lower Board is a solution, as it lets a L10-11 try the Max 9s again, but doesn't mean DMs worry about balancing them to not get constantly smashed. As opposed to leaving up the few 10-11 quests to become routine.

I'd argue that one good solution might be 'implement a soft level cap at 10'. Let people bank XP at 10, like for 11. Then manually opt to take 10 off the craft menu or a /c command, in the same way a DM has to let you manually take 11. As it is you can get 10, but it narrows what you can do. So it's rewarding if you have a Crush Squad, but a bit of a poison chalice for more casual play.

[Damien]

Yeah tbh I was trying to not make this a wider setting conversation and more just on level 10s, as believe that's the direction people all want.

Historically this was solved via 1) more difficult quests vs the spells, equipment available, 2) pvp, 3) quests always being available

1) and 2) are out, given the directional set up, which only leaves 3) in my view.

Stuff like Luca and orc forts have been a great addition to manage this, and probably getting more is even better. Also I am aware there is a dungeon somewhere but I've not seen people investigate in years now, so not sure if gate keeped which means just no one is doing it.

More relaxed quests are a bandaid really, and while I loved dispensaries, what tended to happen was sad high levels would just come in and crush people. Gladiators coming back would be fun though!

Also I do think more is more actually. Efu has shit loads of great content, showing more of it will only bring more people to the server and others staying online for longer

[Egon the Monkey]

There's a big megadungeon under the Well, Al-Nasr.

The thing is that:

• For quite a while PCs were able to gatekeep it by making the Astros approve all trips/Trips having to be sneaky illegal ones. And not all PCs would be sneaky.
• The way to get in is reliant on a couple of super rare drops
• There's no strong IC reason to go and do it (unlike lots of reasons to smash raids)
• There's strong IC reasons not to do it (it might stir up NPC monsters for other people and players hate getting risk without loot).

So given it is high-risk, not progressing a plot, hard to access, and then requires politics or subterfuge on top. It hasn't gained the same uptake as the v5 megadungeon of ringrunning.

Also you haven't explained why you think more relaxed quests would be a bandaid. Rather than a way to let people rotate through the available quests rather than powersmash the same handful of max 11s.

[Abala]

I'll preface this by saying that plenty of level 10s don't quest at all and never have. There isn't anything magical about the number, and seeing a decent number of them doesn't personally bother me. I always reached level 10 easily on every PC in every past chapter.

v6 dungeons are not directly comparable to ringrunning, which was itself a Herculean project.

Are player population numbers low? They don't seem to be.

Putting all quests on the board would unfortunately cause problems. We made it only show a small number of quests to solve the problems that permanently available static quests caused, to increase variety, and to diminish the advantages of being able to play EFU full-time. This direction is unlikely to change at this time.

I can't speak to DM activity in GMT but there are big events coming up that should work fine for that timezone.

Dispensaries feels unlikely.

Open to exploring a separate max 9 pool or moving some level 9 quests to max 10.

Open to adding additional 10 max quests, and I do plan to make one myself, but it should be said that this does take a significant amount of effort.

Open to exploring some kind of 'ascension' system to prolong the leveling experience for players that want that.

Open to alternative systems and alternative ways of playing in general to encourage people to log in and enjoy EFU.

In general though, player numbers seem to be in a good place. We can always have more content and definitely want to work towards that goal. I think raids are a big deal that EFU has never had before and took a huge amount of work from Tala, who deserves an enormous amount of credit. More stuff like that is in the pipeline, so please look forward to it.

[Damien]

Aye the player numbers are okay, but again I'm just thinking of how to bring more, jealously looking at 50+ servers, and I think there is probably a bit of correlation between no max 10 quests and less people. Unfortunately I feel like sometimes this happens when the max 10s are instead max 11s too, which is a sadness.

I do think you've already solved the disparity between folks who have time to play and those don't via x3 exp quests! As I barely play and I'm 10 (I didn't hit 10 in v4 or v5 iirc ha), so not sure adding more would make things worse! Also again given there's little pvp anyway, not sure it matters too much?

Honestly just trying to figure out quick fixes versus stuff like additional quests which aware is quite an effort, hence suggesting just adding more quests.

What could be cool too, are quests where the reward is just an item and it's actually a supply drain and deadly too. Something similar to the mist mountain quest from v3? Or maybe one-two max 11 quests could be available but they aren't listed, so pushes people to roam and investigate or something