4500 quests? a reasonnable maximum?

[Llogwey]

<p>Hi there, I read somewhere, from one of Fluffy's posts that there is a checkpoint at 4500 quests... (I hope there are none others afterwards...) Though I don't doubt this number could certainly be reached in the future addon(s) and GU(s) I find it odd to make it the final cap right now...</p><p>I suppose that most of the "achievement caps" that are currently in test take into account the "achievement capacity" at the given time (thus before sentinel's fate)</p><p>It is currently technically impossible to achieve 4500 quests unless : you betray (or better, have betrayed in the past) to other alignements and to have done several tradeskills classes to make all the tradeskill tasks , possibly in all towns... Though such things are done by a little bunch of people (maybe the top 25 worldwide questers) I doubt it is a reasonnable achievement cap at the moment...</p><p>I myself made nearly 3814 quests or so (without collections) without having betrayed ever or changed classes and if the fluffy database is correct, I only miss 52 quests that I COULD do without chaning my alignement or TS class... which makes reaching 4000 impossible.</p><p> I think that reaching 4000 "could" be a good objective but 4500 "at the time being" is totally unrealistic, only 6 or 7 players can reach this cap... even Fluffy (Mazahs) himself does not reach it and he is worldwide first quester... Are achievements meant to be "that" elitists?   Maybe it would be fairer to have the limit at 4000 at the moment, and raise it later.... (actually I think that even 4000 is a bit too high)</p><p>Since the quest counter is something that can be captured retroactively, if the cap increases later it would automatically update to the next level if it has already been reached no?</p><p>I'm not being egoistic here but I think that people should have the feeling that an achievement... can be achieved... (to its maximum) with some (or lots) of motivation... but 4500 is actually technically impossible (due to all the quests that were erased or due to the dire unecessary sacrifice that only a very few people all over the game are ready to do... (ie. multiple betrayal / TS class shiftingfor questing purpose only)</p><p>Indeed, if the cap is meant to remain at 4500 throughout all of Sentinel's Fate that would be more than fair... but it's hard to know, at the moment, which achievements have a "definitive" maximum and which one will be "updated" in the future... For example I see no reason why Signature, collections, Heritages, and hallmarks should be maximized at a "reachable amount" right now (which is actually below the true maximum) if the total quest number is not... that would not be coherent , would it?</p><p>Thanks for your ideas or answers on the matter <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Rothgar]

<p>Actually the highest tier in this achievement group is currently 5000.  While it might be near impossible to reach now, we don't mind having achievements that are slightly out of reach.  We're always adding new quests with holidays, GU's and expansions, so you never know exactly when someone might reach that goal.  So we'll probably always try to have an achievement be slightly out of reach so when the first person does get that 5k quest, he'll be rewarded with the achievement right then.</p><p>It would be pretty anticlimactic if we added the achievement later and the next time you logged in you just received it automatically.  <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Maroger]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Actually the highest tier in this achievement group is currently 5000.  While it might be near impossible to reach now, we don't mind having achievements that are slightly out of reach.  We're always adding new quests with holidays, GU's and expansions, so you never know exactly when someone might reach that goal.  So we'll probably always try to have an achievement be slightly out of reach so when the first person does get that 5k quest, he'll be rewarded with the achievement right then.</p><p>It would be pretty anticlimactic if we added the achievement later and the next time you logged in you just received it automatically.  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p>But putting it out of reach makes no sense either - nor does your policy on retroactivity.</p><p>I can see this will NOT BE FUN -- just another grind if you choose to do it -- any part of it.  When you have high numbers and stuff is out of reach - you make it a grind.</p>

[Te'ana]

<p><cite>Rothgar wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Actually the highest tier in this achievement group is currently 5000.  While it might be near impossible to reach now, we don't mind having achievements that are slightly out of reach.  We're always adding new quests with holidays, GU's and expansions, so you never know exactly when someone might reach that goal. <span style="font-size: small;"><strong> So we'll probably always try to have an achievement be slightly out of reach</strong> </span>so when the first person does get that 5k quest, he'll be rewarded with the achievement right then.</p><p>It would be pretty anticlimactic if we added the achievement later and the next time you logged in you just received it automatically.  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></p></blockquote><p><em>Hmmm......</em>I am reminded of a donkey cart; the one where the driver dangles a stick with a carrot tied to it in front of the hungry donkey's face to lead it in the direction the driver wants to go! It is rather unfortunate that players are being seen as donkeys instead of people. </p>

[Whilhelmina]

Well, actually, what Llogwey has not said is that he's the top quester of our live server (Storms) and at the 21 or 22 rank in the worldwide quest list. And he's at 4228 on EQ2 players, including collections. Most of the top 20 players worldwide have betray before the removing of all the newbie quests in FP and Qeynos (100+ quests) and have changed their TS classes several time. 4500 quests is reached by none, even the topmost quester and 5000 is far above that value. I would like to ask you to think a bit more about it and at least put the current cap to 4000, not 5000 ! There are not, currently, 5000 quests in the game that can be done without betraying. According to fluffy, there are 6188 quests and 422 collections including deleted quests that cannot be done and PVP tasks. Mazahs (Fluffy) completed 4656 (with betrayal + all TS quests) and not all of those quest do count as I think he said the top achievement he saw was 4500.

[Llogwey]

<p>according to the stats I checked... there are approximatly 6610 quest EVER released on the game, more than 1000 of them are not accessible anymore (some have completly been definitly erased from the game after the towns and class revamps and will never be possible again). If you remove all the "class or race related only" quests that gives a total around 4000... And you also have to remove all quests that exists only on the PvP servers...In addition, if that is 5000 now, what do you plan for next "cap removals" with forthcoming extension? 6000? I agree with you Rothgar, if this cap is meant to remain due to future releases.... which will make this cap reachable... but as far as I know, this achievement is the only one among all achievements that are technically impossible to achieve at the release of the achievement system....  why are all other categories easier to achieve then? Signatures? HQ? Collections?  The hard caps are hard to reach for these too but ... reachable <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> that's odd the same politic does not apply for quest ?I remind you that not even the worldwide first quester has not reached 4500 and thus not 5000... so I don't think you have to worry about people having a reward after their first login for THIS title .... not a single person in the whole game has ever reached it... You should reduce the cap and then make it improve on the next addons... As I said earlier.... achievements ok, but not if they technically can't be achieved at a given time. (quests are something that can't be grinded or done repeatedly the number is "fixed" at a given time unlike missions, tradeskills, combines, kills counting... so that's very hard to play with) Not to mention that it seems some quests do not count. (counted in journal, not counted in achievement) besides , an achievement that requires "illogic gameplay" are too odd to be accounted for (by illogic gameplay I mean, for example : betraying several times, chaning TS class several times for quest accounting purpose only....) Honestly I have seen no other achievement in the whole list that requires as much as this one... I suggest you look at the worldwide top 100 questers to have a better idea at what COULD be the current achievement cap, instead of just considering the number of existing quests which is not a good statistic to use I think... due to all the factors I already mentionned above.</p><p>I will add some numbers here. As Whilhelmina said I am first quester of my server and between 21st and 25th worldwide quester but it is not a matter of pride... Being at this rank allowed me to make some stats :</p><p>I am currently at ~3820 quest (not counting collections) and after having marked all quests that are unavailable for me (which require betrayal or TS class switching several times) there are only 51 quests that I have not started yet in the WHOLE game... which means that technically at the moment, the maximum reachable without changing class is around 3900 let's say 4000 with GU53 and GU54 forthcoming.  Certainly not 5000 <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> that's mathematic ... It's not about being granted a title or achievement right away, I agree it is not "fun" but simply about "technical impossibility", the same way it is impossible for me to reach a higher rank in top 100 without betraying <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[-Fluffy-]

<p>Right, I was asked to comment on this, so here goes...</p><p>First the facts:As of GU #53 there will be around 6250 quest listed on the Questlist.Almost 800 of those are marked as removed from the game, but the actual number is a bit higher because I haven't market a lot of droped quests, as there is no way of knowing if they actually drop.So that's around 5300-5400 quests still in the game.</p><p>The post being referred to about my questcount is from before the bug with repeatables not being counted was fixed.My achievement now shows ~4750/5000, which is actually 93 quests higher than my journal shows, but that's due to a very old bug where the journal actually doesn't show the real number. The 93 extra quests fit perfectly with the number on EQ2Players, but that's another story not relevant to this at all... With the mentoring changes to writs and the new quests added, GU53 should open up another 400-450 quests for me, which will put well over 5000. ~450 of those completed quests are marked as removed.</p><p>So the achievement is definitely achieveable at release, by me that is. I posted elsewhere that less than 10 people would be able to achieve it at release, but I'm pretty sure the actual number is more like 3-5, one of which has recently stopped playing.</p><p>Calculating an appropriately high number that most other players would be able to achieve would be pretty hard/imposible due to all the removed quests. Old characters will always have advantage because of those. Based on my count minus the removed ones, I'm guessing it should be possible to reach 4500 from scratch, but that would involve levelling all 9 TS classes and by the time you're done with that another 1000 quests have probably been added anyway... It took me around a year and a half i think, Quester did it a bit faster. Betraying to get more quests isn't so needed any more since it seems the low level writs don't actually check your alignment and there aren't a lot of other quests that do either.With that in mind, 4000 would probably be a good number.</p><p>Now the point of this thread I think was to get the amount of quests needed for the achievement lowered.</p><p>I can see the reasoning behind it, but I'm sorry my selfish side says NO! I don't want to log in on day 1 of GU53 with the quest achievement saying 4000/4000, when I have almost 1000 more. That would also mean that when TSF comes out and they up the limit on the achievement, I would log in on the first day with that done already. Same story every time the up the limit. As it is now, I will log in and be able to do the 450 or so quests and get the achievement along the way. You will be able to log in and do whichever many quests you have available and get the 4000 achievement as well as a good deal of the way to 4500. You wil eventually get to 4500 and even 5000 as more quests are added, you just won't be able to do it RIGHT NOW!</p><p>Maybe a fitting solution to this problem would be to add some kind of reward along the way in stead of only at 5000, I believe the collections achievement has rewards at both 200 and 400 (titles). Maybe a reward halfway, or even better for every 1000 quests completed.</p><p>That brings me to the end point of it all, which is the rewards for this achievement... For as long as I can remember one of the big wishes in the Quest forum has been to get titels based on how many quests you've completed. Adding rewards along the progression of this achievement would be the perfect opportunity to add titles.The only reward given for the achievement as it is currently, is an appearance-only cloak:  aITEM 166730967 -1819609580:Shroud of the Shattering/a given at 5000 obviously. I find that a bit disappointing, but maybe that's just me.</p><p>I hope my ramblings made sense... It got a bit longer than planned.</p><p> - Mazahs</p>

[Whilhelmina]

I would agree with the suggestion made by Mazah : it would be better to have a title reward at 2500 or 3000 quests for example, and the the final reward at 5000 quests (assuming the 5000 number will not change in the future). At least, that way, questers could still work on quests in the future while getting a little something if they don't want to betray/change TS classes.