Board :	Dreams
Author :	Astrael
Subject :	Re Nmail / quests
Date :	2/29
Re Nightshadow, The client will crash if you send an nmail to a character that doesn't exist.  Probably that. Re Quests It's easy to appreciate the desire for some kind of reliable solo progression.  At one point that might have been "making money", but today's economy isn't going to motivate anyone there. That said, solo progression is a double-edged sword, and you can see this all over the place in other MMOs.  Putting in effort to find groups is such an offputting task for a subset of players that if there is ANY reasonable alternative - solo'ing at 1/4th the speed, buying leeches fuelled with real money, etc - they won't ever consider seriously looking for groups.   You have this balanced seesaw of effort/reward of group play vs reward of solo play, and NTK is one of the few games where the group play reward is so significant that it overcomes the typical natural skew towards solo play.  This is great, because the player value of social play is massively greater than solo - it just becomes a matter of pushing people over the friction. Thing is, this is a *super* sensitive balance.  If you bump up solo incentives - say, to half the rate of group play - you end up hitting the left side twice: the relative reward of group play is lower, so more people just choose to solo, so finding groups becomes even harder.  With a relatively minor change, you can wipe out a huge amount of player value - especially at the start, where getting people engaged matters most. Realistically, I know development around here is rarely shooting for sustainability, and people just want a solution to avoid sitting on hands.  Adding reliably repeatable MQ exp definitely does that, even if newcomers would find it unbelievably dull. However, if you asked me what would actually improve the game, it definitely wouldn't be more solo progression - it would be more focus on making sure people have the communication tools, gameplay tools, and the right incentive balance to engage in group play from the word go.