Melaira was always one of my favorite NPCs, partly for the fact that she openly threatened users who trespassed into her home. It was a letdown when I finally discovered that her threats were completely and totally empty, and now her quest text makes that fact all too clear. It makes me a little sad. Then I thought "What if status effects were added to questing?"

Exactly what those status effects could be I'm not sure, all I know is that it seems right to have a small-ish percent chance of them happening, and the status effects should be different depending on who you're doing quests for. Like perhaps the Wizard could give a healing status effect to your current active pet, making it ideal to do Wizard quests before battling. Perhaps Siggtarius could give you a small sP bonus status of some sort, which perhaps could help you in quests or games. Melaria could give you some kind of negative stat boost, (or stat decay, if you wanted) something kinda dangerous or something that might hold your pet back in battle.

I for one love status effects and think there's not enough of them on this site. (I could say the same for alchemy, actually.) I believe that adding these would not only add another interesting layer to playing Subeta, but I think it would help further develop the presence and personalities of the Quest NPCs.

Another side note, it would be cool if we could actually see the inside of the Quest NPCs' homes too (or wherever they're supposed to be, exactly). It would feel more immersive that way.

Questing balance in terms of sP and items it creates and the economy already seems complicated, no need to complicate it with balance status effects on top of it for the sake of some character development.

If there are quests that only give out good effects, then people will probably just do the ones that only give good effects and ignore any quests that may harm them instead. I know I would just ignore Maleria if she only had the chance to only give me bad effects. You may need to balance it with all quest givers giving good or bad effects and I don't think it's in Maleria's character to really help or somebody like Sarah or Cinthia doing something bad.

I also don't like the idea of feeling punished for trying to earn some income, even if the chances are small.

I'm not too sure how I feel about the idea generally, but I'm pretty sure its not a direction staff wants to go.

They've already removed all the negative REs, so I really don't see adding negative stuff to quests. And added positive stuff, as said could unbalance quests.

Its an interesting idea to add characterization, but I'm ambivalent about this method.

As for adding "houses" or "backgrounds" to the quest NPC, again an interesting idea, but I already adblock most NPC images to run faster and keep the quest stuff up front and center. For people with smaller screens, it would simply get in the way of questing - forcing scrolling or other small annoyances. LOL besides as a huge wardrobe fan, I want the artists drawing clothing and other items I can use rather than backgrounds for the site.

And, well, if there are other ways to do it without messing up the economy I absolutely wouldn't mind hearing ideas.

Yep its been gone (and the achievements retired) for a while now. Rotten rogue, who used to steal items and, if I remember right there was someone who stole a bit of sP - not nearly as much as the tax.

There may have been a few other negative ones, but I don't remember for sure, and they're all gone now anyway.

The only things that remain are neutral and positive ones. LOL well if you consider a pie in the face positive - but you get to keep the pie, so its positive as far as I'm concerned.

[edit] I don't really have any suggestions. Maybe something temporary - so far most character development has happened during "events" and I like that method. I could see having an event where bad things can happen....but I'm a very active player, so to me losing a couple of million of sP isn't a serious thing, that's not the case for the majority of players, so anything negative has to be very small.

And here I've been secretly hoping I'd get that random event and further my quest towards the achievement. Oh well. Thanks for letting me know.

yeah I was "lucky" enough to get all those achievements done before they retired. The tough one was getting the million taxed because in those days there was still interest, so I was trying to keep max in the vault for interest, but enough on hand to get taxed for a million at the lowest taxation rate.

I do definitely remember the interest. Don't let my one star deceive you, I've been here for over nine years haha.

And I didn't get around to replying to your edit before you responded again (hadn't seen in until after I posted), I'll tack this on here: While I do love the idea of using an amped-up version of the REs (I was absolutely thinking these would be really minuscule buffs) and sticking that in a specific event, as I think that would be a lot of fun, I also think that alone wouldn't help very much with the lack of presence from these important NPCs. Think about it, events like those don't come around very often. We get maybe a few hundred words jam-packed with character development and then silence for the next few years at least. The only way you'd get any feeling of presence or life from these characters outside of that is if you started writing your own fanfictions.