The Shadow Oddysey quest series nerfed.....why?

[Morghus]

<p>I just finished this quest today and was forced to choose between the various items AND the two  cloaks one used to receive by turning it in. I don't understand the reasoning for this change as not only is the quest long but it is rather difficult and the two rewards were not at all out of line based on the difficulty. I suggest either compensating people who have recently received the downgraded reward options or removing the cloaks from everyone who finished it beforehand and was not faced with this nerf.</p>

[Methriln]

<p>Not sure i exactly understand what your talking about was nerfed. Was it the face u had to pick 1 cloak from the 2? or that you could only get 2 items? because its always been that way.</p>

[Morghus]

<p>It was changed so you can no longer get the two cloaks at the end along with the other items you would have gotten from Fondfate. You now have to choose one item from all 3 cloaks and the other items. You can no longer get for example the Ethernaut magus dagger and the caster cloak, it has to be one of them.</p>

[Methriln]

<p>oh i c. Well that dose suck.</p>

[shadowscale]

<p>sigh i wish i could have done the dam quests sooner...</p><p>i really hate being uneeded as a necro even more now.</p>

[Divakitten]

<p>I just finished this today as well and I was definitely disappointed. Why was this changed after being the way it was for so long? It used to give AA twice and two rewards if I'm not mistaken. I put in the same work as everyone else did (including my main character) before the nerf but now I received diminished rewards. This wouldn't seem like such a big deal except that it was so long before the change was made.</p><p>I'd love to read an explanation for this change. Please!</p>

[Malteser]

<p>I petitioned this last night after finally completing Chapter 8 expecting to get a cloak and one other item.  This is the response I got:</p><p><strong>This is Game Master XXXX on behalf of in-game support. I am responding to your petition regarding the quest "The Shadow Odyssey, Chapter 8: Aloha, Ethernauts". We are currently aware of this issue. However we are unable to assist with this issue currently, as we are unsure if it is an intended change or not. However that is not to say that in the future we may do differently. The best thing for you to do currently is to wait, and watch for an update regarding this issue.</strong></p><p><strong>Thank you for contacting us here at in-game support, if you ever need anything else don't hesitate to /petition again!</strong></p><p>I have replied as this is a totally unsatisfactory response, it takes so long to complete this quest and we expect the same rewards for it as everyone else has had.  They cant remove a quest reward like this without any warning, and I havent found anything in the update notes.   If the GM's cant find out if the change is intended or not, then who can?</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Malteser@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I have replied as this is a totally unsatisfactory response</blockquote><p>Whats unsatisfactory about that response?</p><p>It may not be the response you are after, but he told you everything you need to know. CS are looking in to whether this is intended or not, that they are currently unable to hand you the cloak in case it IS intended, and that if it is deemed that this is indeed an error, it will be mentioned as such in an update.</p><p>TBH, of all the CS responses I have read for incidents that have not been able to be resolved immediatly, this is by far the best of them.</p>

[Malteser]

<p>So its ok for them to take away half of the rewards for this quest without any warning?  I dont believe this reply tells me anything I need to know.  It says they are aware of it but they dont know what they are going to do about it.  They dont say they are looking into it, they just want me to sit back and wait indefinately for something to happen, probably until I forget about it.</p><p>If there is an explanation for it, thats fine but this response just tells me to go away basically.</p>

[Huntress Jellica]

<p>At least CS was being honest with you. Noaani is correct in saying that that is probably one of the best responses you could ever hope for in this situation. Just because they didn't *say* they were checking into it doesn't mean they aren't. I think you're reading way too much into it, to be honest.</p><p>And, by the way, it isn't good form to throw around CS names on the boards. In fact it is against the forum rules.</p>

[kyrr]

<p>Well I guess I won't even try to finish the line now.</p>

[Malteser]

<p>Lol well I only came onto this forum to see if others had the same problem with this quest as I did, and to show via the GMs response that it certainly isnt a publicised change to the quest.  Sorry if I broke any rules!</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Malteser@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>So its ok for them to take away half of the rewards for this quest without any warning?</blockquote><p>The response didn't give you the message you wanted to hear. That doesn't make it an unacceptable response.</p><p>What you should be saying is unacceptable is the change that was made, whether accidental or purposful. It was not CS that made the change.</p>

[feldon30]

<p>EITHER the quest rewards are really being changed as such OR it's a bug. Because this determination hasn't been made (maybe you might have heard, all the EQ2 devs were in Las Vegas talking to the players about how to improve the game?), they can't take any action other than passing it up the chain.</p><p>If it turns out to be a bug, a /petition will fix it.</p><p>If it's a quest reward change, then now we have a thread to try to get an explanation.</p>

[Divakitten]

<p>I'm pretty sure it's not a "bug." Fondfate used to give experience and a reward at the end. Then one could go to the Overlord or Queen and receive a cloak and (I think, not sure) some more experience. Now, instead of giving experience or a reward, Fondfate just sends the individual to the Overlord or Queen at the end, where the cloaks and other items are now all part of the same reward pool. It seems unlikely this could happen on accident. It is a design change.</p><p>About that CS post above. I agree that it seems like a fair response. We cannot expect these folks to contradict what probably is the intended gameplay mechanic in order to satisfy our complaints. What needs to be addressed is the design change itself. Why was it done? Why was there seemingly no heads up so people working on the quest could try to finish it beforehand.</p><p>As it stands, I do feel entitled to that extra item AND more quest experience if that was removed as well.</p><p>Edit: This is the only reference to this I found in recent patch notes:</p><p>"<span >It should no longer be possible to gather every available reward when completing the Shadow Odyssey signature quest line."</span></p><p>To me, this implies some people were somehow getting MORE than two items for this quest and the update was designed to address that. However, the change actually made it so that players can only get one item now instead of the two we had always gotten before. Something doesn't seem to add up in all this...</p>

[Kordran]

<p>I would imagine the change is indeed intentional, but can't for the life of me understand why they would feel the need to do this. The completion rate for this signature quest is probably what? 5-10%? I'd guess the vast majority of level 80 players probably can't even get past the librarians in Palace, let alone actually kill Ferzhul and then Varsoon.</p>

[Ranja]

<p>While this sucks, it is fine for a ranger because the only viable reward was the cloak anyways.</p>

[Enoa]

<p>Yep i experienced this same thing tonight.    Completed quest for the 3rd time.. this time on my Paladin.   On both my necro and my templar prior recieved both an ethernaut reward and a cloak... today just one or the other. </p><p>Is this a class specific isssue?   Morghus you are a pally?   Or maybe i am mistaken.   MAybe that was the fix for having no viable crusader ethernaut option... just take the option away ><  </p><p>/petitioned it as well in case i can get a more favorable response... or at least a indication they will be fixing this sometime soon. </p><p>Enoa</p>

[Morghus]

<p>I am a Warlock, the others who completed the quest with me were a Dirge, Paladin, my Bruiser, and an Illusionist. We all only had the one option.</p>

[shadowscale]

<p>i think. from what it sounds like, is people would get the ethernaughts reward, then deleate the quest before talking to the town leader, then repeating the quest, thus getting all of the reward items before getting a cloak.</p><p>never had the chance to see if the quest worked like that thogh, still stuck on chapter 5.</p>

[Sharakari]

<p>Maybe a DEV will respond today.  It's Wednesday so all the hangovers from Fan Faire should have been slept off by now.</p>

[Rattfa]

<p>A guild mate of mine completed the quest last night and only got the choice of one reward. He petitioned and got the cloak too.</p>

[Valdaglerion]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Malteser@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>So its ok for them to take away half of the rewards for this quest without any warning?</blockquote><p>The response didn't give you the message you wanted to hear. That doesn't make it an unacceptable response.</p><p>What you should be saying is unacceptable is the change that was made, whether accidental or purposful. It was not CS that made the change.</p></blockquote><p>That is a completely canned response. If I had a nickel for every time I had received that exact response I could pay my subscription for a couple of months.</p><p>The response doesnt tell you anything at all other than they confirm what you are saying but have no idea what will be done, if anything, ever and they arent going to spend anymore time helping you on it.</p><p>They expect that you will just sit around and hope that something changes, maybe. I agree completely the response is unacceptable. They need to provide a timeframe and followup mechanism. Closing a petition with this respone just basically tells your customer you simply cant be bothered with issues you know exist but dont care to address.</p>

[QuestingCrafter]

<p>Having managed a software CS team (not at SOE), I can assure you it's sometimes all but impossible to get timely answers from developers.</p><p>The posted CSR's response was wholly <span style="text-decoration: underline;">appropriate</span> ... just wholly <em>unsatisfying</em>. I think I'll hold off the turn-in phase on my alts, until we see a red-named post on the topic.</p><p>I'm hoping that their patch aimed to stop the exploit, and overshot -- by taking away from legitimate completion. And if that's what happens, hopefully they'll acknowledge that and fix it in short order.</p>

[Enoa]

<p><cite>Rattface@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>A guild mate of mine completed the quest last night and only got the choice of one reward. He petitioned and got the cloak too.</p></blockquote><p><img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  my petition got a similar canned response as the OP did</p>

[EQPrime]

<p>I hope the devs can take a break from their hangover recoveries to fill the CS team in on whether this is a bug or a nerf.  I expect it's an unintended side effect from them slapping in a fix to stop people from abusing the quest series.</p>

[Xavianna]

<p>Would really like an official response to this aswell. One of the major reasons I went thru the pains of running this quest when coming back to the game was that I would get 2 big upgrades from it. Last night I finished, and could only receive one while countless people before me have received 2. The GM response I got was that it's a potential issue and that they can't give out the cloak until they learn more from devs/QA. So please, get this sorted out as I can't believe you all of a sudden decided people that finish it now only get 1 reward while everyone else get to keep both of theirs.</p>

[Kunaak]

<p>This is a Extremely Unfair change to the questline, to those of us currently working on the questline.</p><p>if there was a issue with the questline - fine, fix it. but to make every person doing that questline, now only get 1 item when everyone before us got 2, is a very unfair way to "fix" something, by punishing every person doing the questline.</p><p>give us the option for our cloak back + a reward item. as it has been.</p>

[pechablu]

<p>This just happened to me also, my guess is, that they changed it so that Antonia or the Overlord would give both of the rewards so that people could stop doing the quest as many times as they wanted before actually completing it by going to Antonia or the Overlord. But, in doing so, they screwed it up, and managed to get the seperate cloaks on the same reward table as all the other loot.</p>

[Xavianna]

<p>Still no official response on this? Would think this was a rather big issue, and now it's some crappy holiday over in the US aswell so guess I won't get any help over the weekend either.. Please SOE, let us know if you meant to screw us over or if it was just a mistake, I'll forgive you <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[EQPrime]

<p>Still no dev response.  It's only the signature quest line in the expansion.  You'd think someone would know what's going on.</p>

[Double E]

<p>I would also like to know, as I spent a heck of alot of time to receive an average reward in my preist censer.</p>

[Kunaak]

<p>where you devs hiding?</p><p>come fix this. this isnt a small screw up, so fix it soon please.</p>

[SugarWalls]

<p>I agree, this makes no sense at all and I do expect a timely resonse on this from a dev or support on why, and what they are going to do to make it fair for all. You cannot just take away a reward like that and then allow those that already finished the quest to have both. Whose grand idea was that? And in what world did it make sense to them as far as fairness?</p>

[QuestingCrafter]

<p>I can't imagine it's hard to reproduce ... perhaps there's an office-politic conflict over the issue, and we're not hearing anything until one dev/producer wins out over another?</p><p>In any case, it'd be nice to hear they're aware of the dust-up over the change, and they're examining options.  =p~~</p>

[EQPrime]

<p>I'm holding off on completing this quest until we get an answer one way or the other.  I suggested to my guidies to do the same.  Just hope for an answer sometime soon!</p>

[SugarWalls]

<p>I just heard back from a GM and they said they are waiting to hear back from the development team on this issue. The GM also stated that he does know it is unfair but he is unable to award me the additional item at this time. I was told to keep an eye on the update notes and post on the forums that I would like both items. So here is the post. Fix it already!</p>

[Barx]

<p>My guess is that people were exploiting it... getting rewards from Fondfate and then deleting the quest or somehow resetting it and completing it over and over again, each time going back to Fondfate for a reward, since (as I recall, it was a long time since I did this quest) Fondfate was not actually at the end of the quest. They probably moved all the rewards to the final turn in in order to prevent people from exploiting it... but in so doing lumped the free cloaks with the older rewards. My guess is that it was unintentional that you can no longer get a reward + a cloak.</p>

[Elessara]

<p>When I petitioned I was told that the GM's are waiting for Dev response and to repetition again in 7 days when they hope to have the issue resolved.</p><p>Ele~</p>

[Dareena]

<p><cite>Lord_Ebon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>My guess is that people were exploiting it... getting rewards from Fondfate and then deleting the quest or somehow resetting it and completing it over and over again, each time going back to Fondfate for a reward, since (as I recall, it was a long time since I did this quest) Fondfate was not actually at the end of the quest.</p></blockquote><p>While I'm agreeing that this is likely the case, it baffles me that they just didn't code the quest to mirror how the Crafting Epic series ends.  This quest line ends with the official turn in and reward from a halfling NPC.  Yet once the series is done, you can still go talk to the initial di'zok quest starter and get the reward cloak even though there's no particular quest given for this item.  The two situations mirror each other completely, so I'm just mystified that they're being treated so differently.</p>

[Cronyn]

<p>Oh umm... o hai.</p><p>So, I checked in a fix for this yesterday.  QA is going to do their best to break my fix and make me cry soggy tears into my Cheerios, but assuming everything goes well, you should be able to get both ONE Ethernaut item, and one cloak upon completion of the quest.  <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>If there is a further delay (the aforementioned Cheerio crying), then I'll post a heads up.</p><p>Thanks for your patience, and I do apologize for not updating you guys earlier.</p>

[Morghus]

<p><cite>Cronyn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Oh umm... o hai.</p><p>So, I checked in a fix for this yesterday.  QA is going to do their best to break my fix and make me cry soggy tears into my Cheerios, but assuming everything goes well, you should be able to get both ONE Ethernaut item, and one cloak upon completion of the quest.  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p><p>If there is a further delay (the aforementioned Cheerio crying), then I'll post a heads up.</p><p>Thanks for your patience, and I do apologize for not updating you guys earlier.</p></blockquote><p>Thank you very much for looking into this. Will this do anything for those of us who have already completed the quest as it is currently?</p>

[Cronyn]

<p><cite>Morghus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Cronyn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Oh umm... o hai.</p><p>So, I checked in a fix for this yesterday.  QA is going to do their best to break my fix and make me cry soggy tears into my Cheerios, but assuming everything goes well, you should be able to get both ONE Ethernaut item, and one cloak upon completion of the quest.  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p><p>If there is a further delay (the aforementioned Cheerio crying), then I'll post a heads up.</p><p>Thanks for your patience, and I do apologize for not updating you guys earlier.</p></blockquote><p>Thank you very much for looking into this. Will this do anything for those of us who have already completed the quest as it is currently?</p></blockquote><p>Ugh... I'm not sure I can give you an honest answer to that.  I think it will need to be handled by CS.  <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I'm sorry, but Brenlo might take all my axes and ale away if I say the wrong thing.</p>

[Wilde_Night]

<p>No! Not the ale!!!  Brenlo is an evil taskmaster, who looks good as a banana.  <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[SageGaspar]

<p>I'd honestly say just put them all on the Shady Swashbuckler, the amount of classes that can usefully equip two of the non-cloak rewards under any scenario is pretty small and not really worth worrying about.</p>

[Kunaak]

<p>we all suspect that some people have been exploiting the questline by deleting the questline on finishing C7, and restarting it over to get more loot.</p><p>simple ways to fix this is to make the questline undeletable - and/or make C8 auto-accepted upon accepting the C7 reward.</p><p>anyways, I hope you guys get a good fix in for this soon.</p>

[Boyar]

<p>Well if you wanted to go after the folks that abused this... you could add an invisible 2 piece set bonus that when it procs, sends you to jail(directly to jail, without passing GO or collecting 200g) until CS decides to let you out <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Double E]

<p><cite>Cronyn wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Oh umm... o hai.</p><p>So, I checked in a fix for this yesterday.  QA is going to do their best to break my fix and make me cry soggy tears into my Cheerios, but assuming everything goes well, you should be able to get both ONE Ethernaut item, and one cloak upon completion of the quest.  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p><p>If there is a further delay (the aforementioned Cheerio crying), then I'll post a heads up.</p><p>Thanks for your patience, and I do apologize for not updating you guys earlier.</p></blockquote><p>Will there be a way to retreive the second item, if you completed the quest during the time in which only one item was offered?</p>

[Splor]

<p>earlier today a GM contacted several people i knew including me and handed us our cloaks. just petition and you'll get yours.</p>

[Kunaak]

<p><cite>Thud@Befallen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well if you wanted to go after the folks that abused this... you could add an invisible 2 piece set bonus that when it procs, sends you to jail(directly to jail, without passing GO or collecting 200g) until CS decides to let you out <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>thats probably the greatest idea I ever heard on this kinda topic - so simple yet brilliant.</p><p>GM logs on, checks the jail, sees 12 people in there - look in thier bags, and inspect thier gear - theres no mistaking it. your a cheater, so here you are. so simple and effective.</p>

[Morghus]

<p>I'm glad to say that I got my cloak today as well, it appeared in my overflow slot when I logged in.</p>

[Xavianna]

<p>Got mine aswell last night after petitioning about it. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Enoa]

<p>still waiting for mine on two accounts.   will give one more day then i'll repetition i guess</p>