High-level quest "drops"

I know there are several threads about giving us more substantial rewards for completing quests, because as we all know most high-level characters could give two craps for experience.

I want to go one better. FoW, UW, and to an even larger extend, Sorrows Furnace are all about farming, for many people. I guess I don't really mind people farming so much, but what does bother me is that it's bloody impossible to get a group for SF quests! Tombs suffers from a similar problem with their barrage/pet groups. Those are the only kind of groups you can get!

I propose that in high-level areas there are no monster drops at all. Upon completing a quest, you get to open a chest that contains a large number of exceptional drops. Or defeat a monster that does the same. Or the quest-giver rewards you with the same. True to the satisfaction of finding good items by chance, these drops are still random. The reward is always high, but it could end up being 3 platinum and a gold shadow bow, rather than that ecto you were hoping for. Or 3.5 plat, 2 keys, and a purple shadow sword. The rewards are high enough that you basically make what you would have earned killing enemies and getting the usual random drops. Substitute money for those useless Shadow Essence drops or whatever they are.

I think this is the better way for a few reasons:

1. Quests become much more exciting and meaningful.
2. People who want to do the quests can actually get a group to do them.
3. Reduces the grind by making people do challenges, rather than the easy way of finding something they can kill efficiently and doing it over and over.
4. A group does not have to engage every enemy if they don't want to.
5. It encourages groups to explore the area more - while 1 person may want to explore, he can't do that if the rest of his group just wants to grind the easy parts.

The "grind" aspect that Guild Wars is always trying to get away from comes from the fact that every enemy gives random drops. Do away with that and the gameplay is more engaging. People do not do the quests, not because they don't neccessarily like them, but because after a certain point they're only interested in the drops. And that's fine, but what about those that want to do the quests? Just combine the drops and the quests together!

Keep in mind I'm not proposing they do this for all areas, just the high-level areas. After all, I would still want to get collectors items and salvage items.

I don't see how this changes anything.

Take B/P for example. The whole team build is about taking out the large amounts of enemies as fast as possible. That way they can get to the bosses faster and the greens faster.

If this was implemented, people would still run B/P, but they wouldn't be picking up junk Raven Staffs the whole trip, they'll get nothing and then at the end, they will get greens and a chest full of very good items? How does that fix anything? It will make more B/P groups because you actually get decent drops. I've been in groups, where only 2-3 people are picking up their stuff along the way, most people only pick up rares, ectos, dyes and their greens.

I think this would also apply to things like 5-man oro groups. They are a fast way to beat the quest. If a chest with good drops was added at the end, MORE people would start doing those 5-man groups.

I think this would make things worse. It would make over-farming even worse, and the availability of better items would increase, thus decreasing the value of ones on the market now.

Granted, I myself participate in B/P groups quite frequently, and I personally, would rather have the chest at the end full of sweet drops, than all those Raven Staffs that I salvage for wood.

This just encourages people to take the extra 6 steps and finish the quests...assuming there is a quest, because you dont need a quest to enter sorrows furnace...

It really changes nothing, I would rather grab the loot when its dropped.

Maybe it's just me but they've made Tombs harder with the Path it seems, I wiped there for the first time in a loooong time with a P/B group last night.

Not just one time we often came close to dying but one or two usually got away safely to res the others.

The problem is that the rewars zuck for quests when you reach lvl 20. If they would give ya more for reward. For example one of the hardest quests in the game could giva you a customized gold, ALMOST, perfect wepaon.

Yeah your right we need better rewards for normal quests, cause from what i tested i did no more quests from old asca and just missions i bought my skills, now level 20 in 15k armor and other ego stuf wich i like to wear and im still loaded with all quests, the only quests i did are the presears to get out and the 15 attribute quests. Why i dont do any quests? Cause i already have 66 useless skillpoints and dont really need much more of them -.-

I half agree with that. There should be customized rewards at the end of these major quest but there would have to be an account customization because what good is like, a customized bow for a monk. If they did that but made it a random drop of say 4 for a group of 8 then maybe people could actually afford nice things. They could also exclude specials like Chaos Axe, Crystalline Sword, Storm Bow, etc so that people could get good weapons but others with extra money could spend it on these specials. Also I think it would be better if the reward was randomly rolled but garunteed to have some dmg mod / skill recharge/fast mod (e.g. you get randomly rolled weapon but garunteed all mods present).

Admittedly this wouldn't change anything about Tombs. But SF? The oro quest isn't all that easy for a 5-man team you know. It's not terribly easy for an 8-man team. In fact, I love the SF quests and I think they're interesting, but I can't do them. I need a full, competant team and all anyone wants to do right now is farm, farm, farm.

(I hate that stupid gear trick by the way, but that's another issue for another thread.)

But the real point I was getting at is that you are doing tasks rather than grind while still achieving the same goal (wealth). A quest can be made interesting with a set of objectives. For example, a cookie-cutter build doesn't protect the mayor in UW any better; skill and team work is required. Farming, meanwhile, is nothing more than endlessly killing in a specific way. I'm talking about making the game-play interesting by bringing it back to what ArenaNet originally intended. They always stated they did not want this game to be about grind. They keep putting in quests for us to do, even when people don't do them after the initial introduction. I think rewards have a lot to do with it.

The rewards you get at the end do not neccessarily have to always be purple, gold or green items. Just basically money, a few random weapons with a better chance of being rare, and maybe materials; all equivelant to what you would get anyways had you bothered to pick all that random monster drop stuff up and sell it. Have you seen how much money warriors are willing to pay for a plain Crystaline Sword? Some of the best drops are not even magical!

Now, just to anticipate someone's arguement, doing the quickest mission (like Kilroy Stoneskin) over and over again is not an easy farm because the rewards you get at the end are based on the quest you do. Quests that typically take a lot less time can have substantially less reward. It does give you a "quickie" that you can do before you head off to work. And hey, this time you'll have the time to get your drops.

Well, bump.

With the talk of possibly adding Name Change or various other character changes, how about adding a token or some type of item that you can turn in for rewards after completing a "major quest". It is something that could be adjusted "on-the-fly", (the number of tokens needed to receive such rewards), and would actualy give lvl 20's something to work for.

Just a suggestion.