Item Minor improvements to the Olaf quest chain

Hello,

I think the Olaf quest chain is a great addition of custom content on this server, especially in terms of the rewards it gives relative to the effort required. With that said, I feel that there are a couple of slight, specific improvements that could be made in the placement and/or order of certain tasks in the chain.

In general, I'd say the tasks overall and their intent are fine (with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions such as "use a chaos scroll" that can just be cheesed). The focus of this feedback will be from the perspective of a fresh, new player who is trying to progress their character. This is the main lens through which I will be offering my opinions on various tasks, and most of the tasks I will be discussing are the ones about killing bosses. I will also do my best to avoid discussing how several bosses required for Olaf are camped. While that's an important issue, it has already been discussed a lot on these forums, and there are other threads specifically on that topic.

Assignment 5 (lvl 100 - 119 range):
- Kill Bigfoot(32m HP) and Kill Black Crow(35m HP) should both be placed somewhere higher in the quest chain in my opinion. Anyone fighting these bosses in these level ranges are likely not fighting them but just getting carried by a friend, guildmate, or are paying someone to kill it for them. It's essentially not in the realm of do-able content for players in that lvl range unless you are multi-clienting and killing it with your main to get your new character through the quest.

-Kill Pianus could be removed entirely due to the scarcity of the boss and required demand for higher level players(HW quest chain item), and replaced with another more level-appropriate task.

While some may counter with "well the boss's level is within that level range", I'd argue that mob level is a somewhat useful metric, it isn't necessarily a golden standard for suitability to fight the mob, and encourage anyone to take a fresh leveling 100-119 character to any of these 3 bosses and let me know how it goes.

Assignment 6 (lvl 120 - 139 range)
-Kill Kachuu Musha(78m HP) and Kill Female Boss(75m HP) should also be placed somewhere higher in the quest chain as well. The reasons are pretty much the same as before, except additionally, these bosses drop etcs required for endgame bosses (which you don't even fight in Olaf till Assignment 9 at lvl 180+), and with the mechanics/difficulty of these bosses(especially Female boss), they're more reflective of endgame content.

Assignment 7 (lvl 140 - 159 range)
-Complete CWKPQ could be moved up maybe 1 assignment higher, but is probably ok here in my opinion from the perspective that maybe some attacking jobs in that level range may have money to buy Mark of Naricain service. However, I don't think Olaf tasks should be there to just stimulate the server economy. Players in this level range are probably not contributing much to clearing the bosses unless they are a funded mule borrowing CGS from a main or a friend.

-Defeat Wulin Yaoseng (a.k.a. Shao, 100m HP, 10minute timer) falls in a similar category as the one above. Players in this level range likely aren't contributing to the boss, but are probably just buying kill service for exp. which stimulates the economy for late game players. Some players in this level range might not even have the required HP to survive the fight.

-The 3 Neo-Tokyo Bosses could all be moved up to Assignment 8 for similar reasons stated for other Assignment 7 tasks, with the most egregious task mismatch in my opinion being Dunas V1. I personally think that doing some entry level NT content at 160 makes a lot more sense for most newer players when considering the NT content and questline in its totality. It's also fitting in this regard too that Assignment 8 has "craft a white scroll" as a task, in which 2 of the 3 fragments come from these bosses anyways.

Assignment 8 (lvl 160 - 179 range)
All of the temple of time tasks including mobs and bosses could be moved down to Assignment 6. The difficulty of the mobs and bosses (except maybe for Lyka which uses seduce) are much more suitable and in line with level 120-139 players, and the level requirements to begin those quests match this. also (999 memory monks requires lvl 94 to start, ending with 999 chief oblivion guardians which requires lvl 131 to start, according to this guide: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/pink-bean-comprehensive-guide-to-pre-quests-boss.21239/ )

Assignments 1-4 and 9-10 I think are fine as is.

These are just meant to be minor tweaks as stated before, as the quest serves its purpose well and certainly doesn't require any kind of major overhaul. Again, the main lens through which I'm delivering my opinion and feedback is from a fresh, brand new player on their first character who may not have the resources of long-term, time invested and well-funded players.

Adjusting the quest in some minor ways to make it more new-player friendly could be a nice, fresh step in a different direction. I'm sure there are valid counter arguments to the points I've brought up, and that the Olaf quest isn't just for newer players. It is a perfectly valid stance to take that Olaf quests are designed to be things that your friends carry you through, or may be there in order to stimulate the server's economy for example.

Regardless, I'm interested to hear the opinions of other players, and also hear staff feedback/communication about the Olaf quest as well, since they could comment more directly on the design intent and goals of the quest in a way that normal players could not(if it's meant to service one subset of players more than another, for example).

Lastly, I also heard a rumor with absolutely no basis that the staff who was originally in charge of making the Olaf quest is no longer on the team, and that is largely why it wouldn't ever be changed or improved. I'd like to respectfully ask staff directly if there's any truth to this, because if that is in fact the case, I think it'd be good to just tell us. That way, the community knows to not expect any changes to Olaf in the forseeable future, and could focus our feedback on things that may actually result in changes.

Cheers and thanks for reading.

 

Honestly I didn't really read the actual points you made but I don't really think it matters to my opinion.
A. The fact that the quest is level 120, doesn't mean you have to do it at 120. Zakum is 50+ but no one is expecting you to solo kill zakum and level 50.
B. You got a choice within the quests, if a specific one is too difficult, you can do another one.
C. I really don't see anything wrong with getting carried / partying up to kill area bosses for Olaf, its not even hard to find people that would help you for that. If you find an area boss and smega, it is very likely someone would come kill it for you.
D. I agree that maybe some of the bosses are a bit out of place but I still don't think anything in Olaf should be changed at this point.

 

I do think there should be some small changes,
For example I wish that Level 2 had one more non-party quest option for Ironman characters.

Ultimately though they're not meant to be things to power through like a shopping list, some of them are meant to slow you down on purpose, that you have to spend some mesos or find a party just to take down a boss. It's meant to give you a goal to casually play through as you level and be something you have to figure out how to solve. Just like "Participate in a GM event" or earn X Tokens of Teamwork.

Some of the stuff like BF can be done by 70+ players (CB?, etc) and gives purpose for HB, Some of it is to teach you these bosses/skills/whatever exist.

Also just because a staff member leaves doesn't mean anything's off the table it's just code and staff like to surprise us, but Royals is a bit low on Dev resources right now in general so a lot of energy is being focused on keeping the lights on.