Because complaining is satisfactory but not very productive I´d like to discuss alternatives to how his quests are done is varying the payouts to find a good solution everyone is content with (btw: Thank you for all the work and listening to our complaints). But it seems to be a hard matter to find a balance between extremely low and exessively high payouts.

I had the idea that Saggi´s quests could be altered completely, meaning that maybe we shouldn´t only concentrate on capping/improving the payouts but how the quests are done.

I had a few ideas (not really good or really thought through but a start nontheless):

• Saggi is sometimes on vacation, meaning he closes his quests for a few days during the year (maybe once per month he is absent for a few days. Spin a good story why he is gone)
• Saggi offers sometimes retired/rare items instead of sp. Maybe every 8-9 quests. Or with a 10% chance. You get my idea.
• Make the gambling with Saggi´s quests official, meaning he is warning the questadores right away that sometimes he WANTS to be mean and takes their sp on purpose. On a 5% chance he´s in a bad mood and you will get 0 sp during one of his quests.

The idea is that if you can´t find the balance by tampering with the payouts try another way.

I hope we find some possible solutions. Please don´t use the topic to complain. If you like to do so please use Site Feedback.

I'll be content if Keith can just hit a nice balance on sP payouts. But I'd love to see something more interesting done with him.

Saggi is supposed to be a wealthy dude, and his quests are supposed to ask for (according to him) "high expense items". But since when is 10-100k high expense? I'd love to see Saggi re-tooled.

Maybe the min sP becomes 10mil (maybe even higher, so that getting to Saggi becomes a goal for new/poor players like the Blue Building or Omen Islands are), and he's asking only one item per quest that's a Super Rare or other expensive item. Something in the 100k-500k range, with payouts to match and him occasionally throwing in an item reward to help replenish his pool.

Or maybe he just hands you a list of 30 high rarity. Rather than going through quests one by one, you have until midnight to collect as many as you can. The more you turn in the higher he pays.

Closing his quests for a few days a month? No Saggi offering items instead of sP? No. Having Saggi take our sP instead of giving it? No. Saggi is supposed to be a generous quest over the others. Not as generous has he may have been these past couple of days, but having him change in these drastic measures would seriously deplete who he is. Items are incredibly difficult to sell. So many of them just sit in shops for weeks on end unsold until you give massive discounts on them, gaining very little profit that way. Taking it does the reverse of what quests are supposed to do. Closing him down for a few days would cause a lot of disruption. I think he should just go back to the way he was before quests started giving out food and books for that week. He was the best then.

The problem is he is blowing too much sp into the economy. That´s why tries to control the payouts. But it doesn´t always work. Losing sp on his quests or gaining less than other quest givers give out is frustrating. And if it is not possible to control the payouts by capping/improving them another way must be found. Closing his quests for a while when too much sp were blown into the community IS a solution to regain a balance.

The other ideas I posted may be able to do it too.

Please think further than your personal profit. I don´t say those ideas are brillant or even doable. But they are there to start a discussion and find some solutions. I want to help, not only complain. Please, if you have good ideas, how a balance could be achieved, let us know them.

In my mind, I can totally see the hypothetical once a month absences as a potential future plot point tie in. For all we know, he's going off to the Vetan Mountains to indulge in his secret luxury werewolf spa.

I kind of like the idea of, provided there's PLENTY of warning in his intro quest blurb, of him just not rewarding the quester at all, or refusing the items, or offering something absurd like his empty coffee cup. "Here, take this away from me. What, you expected me to PAY you for this? Ha, rabble, not likely. I've changed my mind, I don't want it any more."

The corollary to that is, of course, the occasional payout that's really awesome.

I'm not sure I agree with the "find all the super rares you can in X amount of time" idea, I have the feeling that might do some odd things to the economy that wouldn't go well.

But he's snobby and temperamental, I'd like to see more of that in how he's presented on site. I do like raising the sP requirement for him, it seems a bit low at this point in time.

Edit: He's also supposed to be this big muckety muck dragonslayer in the lore; why not have him release some interesting Weekend Quest type items? Like new Battledome equipment, or maybe a vanishingly small chance for some retired battledome item? His "cast off swords that are a little too dull, surely a peon like you can find something to do with them" or something?

Yeah. Not really keen on the OP's ideas, but I do like Gunnar's.

Saggi, to me, should be a high payout quest. Period. He is the snotty rich kid, and money is no object. I'm fine with the amount of items staying, or changing to just one (high rarity for high payout) or even trying to complete a list of various objects (x amount turned in = X amount of $ for each item, with a bonus for turning them all in).

But what really needs to be done, and this is with all quests, is they needs to have a "base" payout. Like Saggi, for example, you will never be paid less than like 25k.

1 items payout could range from 25-40k 2 items, 35-60 3 items 55-90 4 items 85-140

or something like that. That way we can gauge what to spend, and payouts are fairly consistent, and there is still a little bit of a gamble. The same would be applied to all other quests (with smaller numbers, of course. Although no quest should pay below 10k. Just a personal opinion.)

We could even give out incentives to "boost" quests. Like, random events where the next three quests you complete, the payout will be doubled (or an extra 25% payout). So maybe you already did Saggi, and you'll have to use your three quests on, idk, Maleria. There could even be the incentive of getting something expensive or retired as a reward instead of Sp. (Think SBQ, a R99 item, or something holiday themed. Or even "exclusive" items, like ones that are strictly from vending.)

And as far as WSQ goes, they payout range could just be doubled or have a fixed percentage boost (at least 50%). Makes it easy.

Edit to add:

Saggi should always pay the most. All the other quest givers need to be lowered to work around his payouts. Balance all the quests.

Thanks for starting this board. I think the problem with the current economy now is not only about Saggi quest. If we want a reform that benefits as many people as possible, we might want to look beyond that. First, I think the payout for Saggi like today is something good, but only for his quest and not the others. Say, if you spend an average of 150k per quest and get back 300k in sP reward, you'll make an average of 1.5 mil for Saggi per day. If we can reduce this to 1 mil profit for Saggi then it would be better, I guess? I'd love to hear your opinions on this. Second, the point of quests is to balance the flow of sP - in and out of the economy, and it is therefore expected that quests can kill off as many items as possible. Suggesting that Saggi demand 30 high rarity items is a good idea, because it kind of resembles the number of items he wants now, but I'd suggest that the time allowance cut down to 10-12 hours, or even less, and the number of items might range from 30-40. Apart from Saggi quests I would suggest that other quests ask for more items than they give out, except for special holiday/ event quests (such as Cinthia/ Pete/ Carl during the last two events). I remember reading somewhere that there are now too many items sitting around in shops too deflated in price because vending machines give them out. The original poster suggested that these items be retired, which I completely agree with. Getting rid of old items means downsizing the pool of items being asked for quests and will help with the prices in users' shops, and players will be expected to spend more per quest (and hence kill off more items) for a better payout.

What do you think of this idea for Saggi: One or two days each week you can choose between getting sp as a reward or prizes from a special pool of items. You have to choose BEFORE you start the quests. You cannot change your decision. Only the rarity of the items is known but not the items. It is a gamble to get some really good items or ... crap (-:

[Edit] I like your suggestion to reduce the quests. Or make it a flexible thing. One day you can do more quests than on other days dependeing on the sp flowing in the economy.

No, I agree. That's why sometimes, for example, he'll ask for two items that's price are like 50k, so you can take a risk and hope to make that extra 10k, or you could get only 35k in return and lose out.

I think less quests with a better guaranteed payout isn't a half-bad idea. It is tedious work doing so many quests, and I personally am lazy and don't do them all because it's just repetitive clicking. BUT, if there were less to do and I was like 80% guaranteed to make a profit, I'd probably do more. You could easily cut down on the amount of SP that gets put out, but still make it feel like we aren't getting shafted for even trying.

Can't hurt to try it for 2 weeks and get feedback! (also, this would mean less tokens in circulation, too.)

EDIT:

And with less tokens, we can lower vending again. Try to curb the flow of "useless" items.

I like the basic idea but I think that lowering the number of quests from each quest giver could increase the number of worthless, NPC items on the site. I suppose we could always pawn or frag them but Humming Power Crystals aren't worth much at the moment.

PS: Other people posted while I was writing the above and the number of worthless items on site has already been mentioned.

I'd probably do more quests if I had less in total to do.

can we keep the the battle quests as they are if you was to re think the quests iam for less quests i like 10 ? but thats just me

I like your suggestion!

I also think the quests needs to be revamped and to leave the "buy and give items" concept behind.. The site is so big and full of features, NPCs and items that you can do whatever you want! We just need to think outside the box and to take risks :) Few examples:

1. search for items all around the site, like we do with the bird watching.
2. search at the krypts, trash can, excavation site etc.
3. a drop from a challenger.
4. go to a shopkeeper and search at the shop storage.
5. search at the NPCs houses.

and more and more.. we get different tasks to do every time, totally random.. you can do anything you want! it's a quest! The rewards can be exclusive items, a good amount of sp, something that worth the time and effort and the amount of the quest can be less than 10..

Yes maybe it'll take more time to code, new art, time to accept this change, but it'll be worth it! :)

I think having less quests per quest giver per day would make the average user complete more quest givers per day, however I'm not sure this would translate into more active playing time per user per day, so meh. Also would mean less items and likely less money flowing around the site. Questing isn't this huge amazing interactive system right now, but even drills quest which is probably considered the most interactive of them all doesn't fit that description either. I don't forsee major enough changes to make quests more interactive and encourage people to get on every day who don't already, and certainly not for people to spend more time per day who are on every day. In the end that's what an update to the system should do if it's to have a really positive impact. And lastly, any effort that would be put into such a system would probably be best vested into something completely new and truly interactive.

Not at all! Drills asking you to do tasks like play with a pet, play a game, etc. what I'm suggesting is to find the items in different ways.. to remove the "buy and give" from quests..

Ah Ha I see the distinction now, and like this idea. I was just having flashbacks of playing Slots for 45 minutes straight trying to get a damn Slots book for Drills Quests haha

I guess I'm the odd one out. I don't mind how quests are. (Before the last few days' tweaking. Not counting them because of heavy behind the scenes tinkering.) Breaking even days and making a bit of profit days were about the same, but then I don't count item rewards right away since I don't auto-price every night.

Quest rewards are, more or less, my only means of profit. Any items I get from them are generally tossed into my shop to be auto-priced once they've built up a bit. I also view them like playing in a casino. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

That being said, I don't agree with lowering the amount of quests per quester again. I have a GA at the moment so I've got 15 quests per. If I sit and can do them without interruption, I can get all of them done within half an hour. (This does not include Drills, BQ, or Sarah.)

I do like the idea of upping the amount of items each quester asks for. Instead of 1 or 2 items with a chance for 3, make it 2 or 3 items with a chance for 4. For Saggi it would be 3 or 4 items with a chance for 5, maybe an occasional 6. Item rewards going out could stay at 1 with a chance of the extra NPC item. Quests would eat up more items than they'd be giving out.

The idea of Saggi closing for a few days every month was mentioned sparked this idea. What if we did something like Carl? What if, on occasion, Saggi is called away in the middle of a quest? Because quests are suppose to be a gamble, instead of rummaging around like Carl, you are presented with these options:

1. You can leave the items (turn it in) and hope that Saggi comes back before the timer runs out to reward you; or
2. you keep the items and wait around for him to come back.

Option 1, not only would you lose the items he asks for, but there's a chance you won't get your reward either. The chances should be randomized, no set certainty. With Option 2, you get to keep the items he asked for, BUT this option would be skewed with a 95% chance he returns after the timer runs out. Both options would come with an ability to set an alert for when Saggi comes back.

I am also going to mention here that I'm the flip-side of ' coin. I do quests like Carl, Saggi, Wiz, etc. because they're easy and quick and I'm lazy. It's Drills that I find hard to do. In the time it takes me to finish all of Drills' quests I can finish everyone else and max out the payout for a handful of games.