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Skyscale Quest Fix Request


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5 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

It do seem like you put in alot of your interpretation and what you feel Sobx.1758 is saying and then vilify them for what you made up in your head mate.

It cant be a health way to live your live so maybe take a break and sort some kitten out mate.

 

It's funny you say that about me when in the post i quoted he literally did what you accuse me of. He wasn't even responding to the post. He repeated information already in the thread while being disrespectful and picking apart others' choices based on his preconceptions of them. But yeah i'm the bad guy cuz i did it last, right? 😘  

 

I mean he's literally criticizing people for choices in how they play a game we don't even know for sure that they made. You gonna tell him to get his kitten sorted out? And stop repeating information already in a thread? 

 

The changes are good yes, but the collection is still not a good experience in its current state and that's the issue.

 

I think that they should make collections like this more varied and let people choose from a variety of activities instead of putting everyone on the same linear path. The strength of gw2 is its many different game modes and play styles and i feel like anet doesn't lean into it enough. 

Edited by Firebeard.1746
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31 minutes ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

I think that they should make collections like this more varied and let people choose from a variety of activities instead of putting everyone on the same linear path

While this works for more general goals and is used in this game in many instances (e.g. festival or living world meta achievements), I don't think this is a feasible approach when it comes to the more quest-like goals in this game.

 

Meta achievements have a lot of generally comparable tasks. Take wintersday for example. You can choose to skip the jumping puzzle or the bell choir and still do activities that require a comparable amount of engagement. Player retention is achieved, and people don't feel put off by the fact that others seem to have put less "effort" into achieving the end result. In fact, many people that enjoy wintersday will do all of the achievement even if not all are required.

 

If you compare that to the skyscale quest, finding comparable activities that tell the story and aren't vastly different in scope and engagement required is not quite as easy, if not (close to) impossible. Take one of the early scavenger hunts for example. Let's say you put in three ways to do that step, either do the scavenger hunt, or do a number of achievements in that area of the map, or achieve the goal by sacrificing a number of materials. Do you feel that those are comparable? Would a roughly equal number of players choose each alternative?

If one of the options seems vastly superior/less work than the others (e.g. buying your way through by spending materials), the likely outcome would be that most players would choose that way. The other ways that are only done by a minority would then be just a waste of development resources. Why would ANet put in three times the work (to create three separate ways to finish that step) if the end result would not give three times to player engagement, but in fact enable players to choose the "easy" way and spend less time actually playing the game?

 

Then again, if you had different ways to finish each step of the skyscale journey, how would you make sure that each alternative gave the same story experience? Unlike the character-bound personal story, you can't achievement-based quests in GW2. What about players who choose one way because "everyone said that is the best", only to realize later that they would've rather experienced the story of an alternate way? And to come back to the previous post, why even put in the development work for three story paths if you know that no account can experience more than one of them?

 

If you want varied collections, there are plenty of non-story ones in game that allow a lot of freedom to choose how to get there. The Skyscale journey isn't one of those. It is very story-centric, and as such can't easily be generified without sacrificing the core of the story/quest/whateveryouwanttocallit.

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1 hour ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

Then again, if you had different ways to finish each step of the skyscale journey, how would you make sure that each alternative gave the same story experience? Unlike the character-bound personal story, you can't achievement-based quests in GW2. What about players who choose one way because "everyone said that is the best", only to realize later that they would've rather experienced the story of an alternate way? And to come back to the previous post, why even put in the development work for three story paths if you know that no account can experience more than one of them?

Why does it have to be the same story experience?

For example, what if you had an item you empower with energy in raids or fractals, and that was your contribution? You could fill in the gaps with dialogue with Gorrik. "Your allies have gathered eggs from the Dragonfall, and I'll use the energy you've gathered to hatch them". And the dialogue basically establishes that the skyscale was a joint effort and you were part of the whole. 

The way for them to avoid a "best" strategy is to playtest the different ways and use data from the game to ensure that on average, they're equal in terms of /played time. And in giving players choice, it allows them to do "off-meta" things they're more comfortable with. I don't see a problem with most players doing something a particular way, but giving options only helps the experience. 

The complaint is that collection as-is is bad, and I don't think that defending the status quo is helpful, I think the skyscale collection as designed has hurt anet more than helped and unfortunately, as most people on these forums are active players, you'll see a lot of confirmation bias. 

 

Edited by Firebeard.1746
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2 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:



The complaint is that collection as-is is bad, and I don't think that defending the status quo is helpful, I think the skyscale collection as designed has hurt anet more than helped and unfortunately, as most people on these forums are active players, you'll see a lot of confirmation bias. 

 

Okay, confirmation bias is a very real thing, but why do you think it doesn't apply to your perception that the skyscale collection has hurt ANet?

There are an awful lot of skyscale riders flying around the game. Maybe there are larger numbers of people who uninstalled once they found out the had to visit 46 places in Dragonfall in order to get it? But how would you or I even know that?

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23 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Where am I telling anyone how to play the game? Advising someone to take the skyscale collection in small steps (since that's what they are) when they complain about it being too long (relevant bit of context btw) is "telling them how to play" now and somehow a negative behavior you need to point at?

It really seems you're kittenhurt here about something from the past and just try to aim at me instead of understanding what you're responding to. Take a deep breath and go on a thread re-read spree or something 🤷‍♂️ 

I agree with you. It's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Of course, some people, would just rather scream into the night than do something to make the game better for them.

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On 1/12/2022 at 1:42 PM, Gibson.4036 said:

Okay, confirmation bias is a very real thing, but why do you think it doesn't apply to your perception that the skyscale collection has hurt ANet?

There are an awful lot of skyscale riders flying around the game. Maybe there are larger numbers of people who uninstalled once they found out the had to visit 46 places in Dragonfall in order to get it? But how would you or I even know that?


We wouldn't. Arenanet has the data though and they should be watching it. You see opinions both ways here so at that point, what makes sense is to go through the data. If I was anet, the group I'd watch most carefully are the combination of new players and/or returning players who got through the collection and also any text/NLP they have on their chats indicating how the experience felt. Because the most dangerous thing to do would be to scare off new or returning players with a terrible experience. 

 

On 1/12/2022 at 2:55 PM, Vayne.8563 said:

I agree with you. It's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Of course, some people, would just rather scream into the night than do something to make the game better for them.


What do you think inspired him to write such a scathing response to the post he initially responded to? That had nothing to do with the actual contents in it? I have no idea where he pulled out that this person was rushing anything, let alone still needed to finish it based on their feedback. Or why did he inject narrative about entitlement etc, on top of it in follow-up posts? This feedback is indeed wise, and I might even agree, but it's a tad bit disheartening to see the number laugh of emotes in response to his takedown of the player that literally has nothing to do with that player's post. His response to my initial response on the thread also had injected narrative, that is outright false, but I know this person is never honest with me and it doesn't help to tell them they're wrong, so I didn't bother. If we're going to apply this feedback, we should apply it everyone. And this guy, rarely, if ever lights a candle, it's usually something snarky to bait laugh emotes at people. 

Edited by Firebeard.1746
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1 hour ago, DarcShriek.5829 said:

When I look around and see all the skyscales around me, it reassures me that the requirements to acquire the Skyscale are not too difficult.  If it was too difficult, then there wouldn't be so many. 

There were also people saying that they wouldn't tolerate another collection like it when it first came out on these forums. I'm in the camp of completed it, but felt it was overly burdensome. The logic you show here is the sort of logic blizz devs have been using with their users and it backfired horribly in Shadowlands. They figured their players were whiny and fine with them re-inventing the wheel every expansion and then finally WoW players looked up and left for FFXIV. Players, if they're invested in a game, will tolerate awful gameplay to a point for rewards, but at some point their backs can break and it backfires terribly. 

Edited by Firebeard.1746
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1 hour ago, DarcShriek.5829 said:

If it was too difficult, then there wouldn't be so many. 

Yes, but difficulty isn't the topic; fun/enjoyment is.

The OP found the process tedious/repetitive compared to other mount journeys, and others have said similar. Improving the experience to be more variable and fun is the intention here. If the Skyscale experience can't (or won't) be improved, then the feedback in this thread serves as consumer input for future mounts/systems that may come further in GW2's lifespan.

2 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

the most dangerous thing to do would be to scare off new or returning players with a terrible experience. 

I tend to agree here. Whether it's the Skyscale journey, the way living world gets advertised/packaged, the introduction (or lack thereof) of new game mechanics, or some other speedbump to enjoyment, new and returning players seem like a demographic you want to watch carefully. At minimum, you want to be aware of what those people are saying when they try the game (or come back to it) instead of acting solely on the opinions of diehard fans.

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First time I did it (close to release), the first step was okay, a bit of exploration, lots of alttabbing, but moderately enjoyable.

 

Then I unlocked the second step, found out it was more running around the map, and found it moderately annoying.

 

Then I unlocked the third step, and found some really tedious, un-fun, unimaginative gameplay design. (If there had been yet another repeat...)

 

For the record, I've done it 5 times over a period of time, and WON'T ever need to do it again, and I think that this meaningless repetition style of quest should never be made again. And by all means, fix it for new players. 1 scavenger hunt is nice, 2 is an annoyance, 3 is a litter of kittens.

 

Or at least let the 3 steps be done concurrently (just change the quest lore a lil to fit it).

 

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Things like scales/medicine/eggs are part of every MMO because no team of developers can make enough content to meaningfully occupy players over the course of years.

You have a limited amount of developer hours, so you can't make a deep involved quest for this whole process. Will you cut a bunch out, potentially leaving players to feel like this once-per-account activity was way too short and insignificant? Will you leave them looking for something else to do for the hours that you removed from the process?

There's clearly a desire on the team's part to create meaningful ways to get significant rewards. There's visiting several dozens spots on Dragonfall to get your skyscale, but there's also getting it a ball to play with and playing hide and seek. There's identifying places that exemplify various phobias so you can collect fear based magic. But at some point, content has to be stretched to make finite development time intersect with almost infinite player play time.

Haven't legendary weapons illustrated this clearly over the lfe of the game? First generation was RNG precursor drops. Second generation ArenaNet explored making lore-rich collections so that there was a meaningful journey involved, then openly told us it took way too much development time for each individual weapon. Now they're experimenting with a full set of one style of legendary weapons that can then be transformed into other looks in order to try and increase return on investment.

You want the skyscale journey to be more meaningful along its entire path? What other things in the game should lose their alloted development time for that to happen?

Edited by Gibson.4036
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5 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Things like scales/medicine/eggs are part of every MMO because no team of developers can make enough content to meaningfully occupy players over the course of years.

You have a limited amount of developer hours, so you can't make a deep involved quest for this whole process. Will you cut a bunch out, potentially leaving players to feel like this once-per-account activity was way too short and insignificant? Will you leave them looking for something else to do for the hours that you removed from the process?

There's clearly a desire on the team's part to create meaningful ways to get significant rewards. There's visiting several dozens spots on Dragonfall to get your skyscale, but there's also getting it a ball to play with and playing hide and seek. There's identifying places that exemplify various phobias so you can collect fear based magic. But at some point, content has to be stretched to make finite development time intersect with almost infinite player play time.

Haven't legendary weapons illustrated this clearly over the lfe of the game? First generation was RNG precursor drops. Second generation ArenaNet explored making lore-rich collections so that there was a meaningful journey involved, then openly told us it took way too much development time for each individual weapon. Now they're experimenting with a full set of one style of legendary weapons that can then be transformed into other looks in order to try and increase return on investment.

You want the skyscale journey to be more meaningful along its entire path? What other things in the game should lose their alloted development time for that to happen?

Not entirely right. Every gen1 legendary later on got legendary journeys. But only the first 4 in gen2 got the journeys before anet declared it was not cost effective.

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14 minutes ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

Not entirely right. Every gen1 legendary later on got legendary journeys. But only the first 4 in gen2 got the journeys before anet declared it was not cost effective.

Thanks, my post kept getting long so I was trying to resist too much detail. The arc is there.

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On 1/2/2022 at 6:28 AM, Epilogue.4735 said:

Hello All, 

 

I've returned to GW2 recently, after having played a month or two around the HoT Launch, and been progressing through the story slowly but surely, grabbing some map completions here and some side-adventuring there. The game's great, with a beautiful aesthetic, intimidating monsters and honorable fights. I just made it through Living World Season 4, and while the dialogue was middle-school levels of cringe, the scenery, enemies and encounters were glorious. Excited to mount one of those cool Dragons, I started the Skyscale Quest...

Step 1. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'

Uh, okay. Not my cup of tea but if it has to happen, I'll do it. 

Step 2. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'

Wait, didn't I just do this? It's roughly the same locations too... and all I have to... kitten, I guess I'll roll with it.

Step 3. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'

There is no excuse. Who designed this? Who thought of this? Why was there not one veteran interjecting and correcting this? How'd it get greenlit for launch? This isn't some silly hidden side-quest, this is the most popular mount in the game, and you're going with this? 

 

After taking a little break I, feeling like I was being clowned while doing it, went around Dragonfall to once again press Interact at 20 random locations. Now I've just received a list of another 20 or so quests, which'll be followed by another 20 or so quests, and the first one is:

Step 4. Go to the map 'Dragonfall' and kill 150 random enemies

 

Yeah, this needs to desperately be reworked, top to bottom. I'm convinced not even those silly P2W Grind-Fest games have quest-lines this blatantly low quality. If you asked me "Make an absolutely terrible questline", the purposefully terrible nonsense I'd come up with would be more engaging and fun than this. A game that asks you to kill 20 wolves north of town, wouldn't then ask you to kill 20 wolves north of town, and wouldn't then ask you to kill 20 wolves north of town, and wouldn't then ask you to kill 150 wolves north of town. Can anyone explain this? 

 

Now when I bring this up in-game, I am faced with the collective trauma of gamers that slogged through honest to God the single dumbest quest-design I've ever seen in my life. "If they change it, people would be furious!". That's bad reasoning, and is forcing newcomers / returning players obviously looking to get the kitten Dragon mount to engage with Game Design that wouldn't be acceptable in the Alpha Demo Version of the first Runescape. This can not be good for the game, and the idea that you've already had half the player-base tortured, so up-on-the-rack go the other half should be wholly ignored. If you have a Skyscale today, in your heart of hearts, do you honestly not want the people coming in now not to have to do this? 

 

While I'd love an explanation for the philosophy of this questline... I mean, I can't rhyme the quality of the rest of the game with the literal-zero-braincell-design of this... Is the philosophy of this questline literally "Make it as bad as humanly possible"? Anyway, I feel fully justified in asking for a fix, not just for me but for every other player that's looking to get the Dragon mount, the main mount. This is a stunning stain on a game that doesn't seem to have that hardcore 'grind, grind, grind' mindset anywhere else... 

 

TL;DR The Skyscale Questline is the dumbest thing I've seen for as long as I've been playing games, and needs to be fixed. Back me up here... 

Agreed its just horrific time sink.. i to this day have still never bothered with Skyscale. Its a mess that needs overhauls..

Luckily my Griffin murders skyscales.

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Honestly thought this post was going to be more constructive consider how long it is, but you just kinda complained the whole time while not offering any real solutions.

 

It more so seems you're frustrated because you have to do anything at all. God forbid you actually have to work for something. Considering your claim that the Skyscale is the best mount, "everybody wants one" - honestly, anything other than the current questline would be just giving it away, wouldn't it?

 

And why would ANet just.......give it away.

 

With roughly 1k hours prior to, I just recently acquired my Skyscale. Looking on the wiki at the long list of achievements and time gates, I thought it was going to be a pain, but as I played through, I planned that I would do other things in game to occupy time in between and if I didnt feel up to completing any of the achievements that day, then I did something else I felt I would enjoy more at the time. It took me maybe two weeks to get my Skyscale, and none of it seemed like too big of a chore. A couple things were frustrating, but that was mostly because I was lacking in patience at the time - which seems to be the primary cause of your troubles; lacking in patience. 

 

I suggest changing your perspective, because the game will never be built in a way that specifically accommodates your personality traits.

 

Less stress, more joy.

 

 

Edited by Jianyu.7065
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And it bears repeating, they have actually made it less grindy than originally. Before the Return To achievements, IMO, the grindiest part wasn’t running around Dragonfall for scales/medicine/eggs nor waypointing around for the Skyscale Of collections. It was the 250 currency from each LW4 zone.

Someone at ArenaNet seems to have agreed because the Return to LW4 rewards look pretty clearly targeted to give players an easier route to that. All you need is tier 3 in each zone.
 

Now, instead of repeatedly doing node runs or hearts you have a variety of things to do for that part of the Skyscale quest.

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On 1/1/2022 at 2:28 PM, Epilogue.4735 said:

Hello All, 

 

I've returned to GW2 recently, after having played a month or two around the HoT Launch, and been progressing through the story slowly but surely, grabbing some map completions here and some side-adventuring there. The game's great, with a beautiful aesthetic, intimidating monsters and honorable fights. I just made it through Living World Season 4, and while the dialogue was middle-school levels of cringe, the scenery, enemies and encounters were glorious. Excited to mount one of those cool Dragons, I started the Skyscale Quest...

Step 1. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'

Uh, okay. Not my cup of tea but if it has to happen, I'll do it. 

Step 2. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'

Wait, didn't I just do this? It's roughly the same locations too... and all I have to... kitten, I guess I'll roll with it.

Step 3. Go to 20 random locations in the map 'Dragonfall' and press 'Interact'

There is no excuse. Who designed this? Who thought of this? Why was there not one veteran interjecting and correcting this? How'd it get greenlit for launch? This isn't some silly hidden side-quest, this is the most popular mount in the game, and you're going with this? 

 

After taking a little break I, feeling like I was being clowned while doing it, went around Dragonfall to once again press Interact at 20 random locations. Now I've just received a list of another 20 or so quests, which'll be followed by another 20 or so quests, and the first one is:

Step 4. Go to the map 'Dragonfall' and kill 150 random enemies

 

Yeah, this needs to desperately be reworked, top to bottom. I'm convinced not even those silly P2W Grind-Fest games have quest-lines this blatantly low quality. If you asked me "Make an absolutely terrible questline", the purposefully terrible nonsense I'd come up with would be more engaging and fun than this. A game that asks you to kill 20 wolves north of town, wouldn't then ask you to kill 20 wolves north of town, and wouldn't then ask you to kill 20 wolves north of town, and wouldn't then ask you to kill 150 wolves north of town. Can anyone explain this? 

 

Now when I bring this up in-game, I am faced with the collective trauma of gamers that slogged through honest to God the single dumbest quest-design I've ever seen in my life. "If they change it, people would be furious!". That's bad reasoning, and is forcing newcomers / returning players obviously looking to get the kitten Dragon mount to engage with Game Design that wouldn't be acceptable in the Alpha Demo Version of the first Runescape. This can not be good for the game, and the idea that you've already had half the player-base tortured, so up-on-the-rack go the other half should be wholly ignored. If you have a Skyscale today, in your heart of hearts, do you honestly not want the people coming in now not to have to do this? 

 

While I'd love an explanation for the philosophy of this questline... I mean, I can't rhyme the quality of the rest of the game with the literal-zero-braincell-design of this... Is the philosophy of this questline literally "Make it as bad as humanly possible"? Anyway, I feel fully justified in asking for a fix, not just for me but for every other player that's looking to get the Dragon mount, the main mount. This is a stunning stain on a game that doesn't seem to have that hardcore 'grind, grind, grind' mindset anywhere else... 

 

TL;DR The Skyscale Questline is the dumbest thing I've seen for as long as I've been playing games, and needs to be fixed. Back me up here... 

If you don't like the conent then don't do it. The skyscale is optional and you don't need it to complete anything. Time consuming collections like this one is meant to give the player a sense of completion. If they just handed it to you on a platter for doing nothing, you'd also complain. 

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On 1/13/2022 at 8:45 PM, Firebeard.1746 said:

There were also people saying that they wouldn't tolerate another collection like it when it first came out on these forums. I'm in the camp of completed it, but felt it was overly burdensome. The logic you show here is the sort of logic blizz devs have been using with their users and it backfired horribly in Shadowlands. They figured their players were whiny and fine with them re-inventing the wheel every expansion and then finally WoW players looked up and left for FFXIV. Players, if they're invested in a game, will tolerate awful gameplay to a point for rewards, but at some point their backs can break and it backfires terribly. 

It's not the same thing that happened to Blizzard.  Anet isn't going around doing major changes to systems which is one reason you blame for the exodus.  The other reason for the exodus from WoW is do to the behavior of the devs.  Again, this is not the case with Anet.  You're trying to connect events that just don't connect.

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On 1/12/2022 at 1:31 AM, Firebeard.1746 said:

This sort of phrasing and behavior feels more like telling them how to play than recognizing what they have to say, and validating it like I did with a suggestion. This isn't suggestive/advice: you make it sound like this is the only way you should be playing and that the way they chose to play was wrong. 

"This sort of behavior"? "Telling them how to play"? Because I wrote "lol"? How about reading the whole post without trying to add some meaning that's not even there? Literally read the words I wrote: "That collection is nothing else than a bunch of small steps. Just because you want to knock it all out at once doesn't mean you can't complete it gradually step-by-step. If you want to rush through the steps, it doesn't mean there are no steps -it just means you want to rush through it anyways despite what you're claiming above."

If including "if/just because you want(...)" throughout the post isn't enough for someone to understand this is not in any way telling others how they have to play, then I'm not sure anyone can help you here. What you claim I said there just isn't what I said or did at all.

 

On 1/12/2022 at 12:14 PM, Linken.6345 said:

It do seem like you put in alot of your interpretation and what you feel Sobx.1758 is saying and then vilify them for what you made up in your head mate.

It cant be a health way to live your live so maybe take a break and sort some kitten out mate.

Yup, that's exactly how it looks like, thank you.

Edited by Sobx.1758
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