SPOILER My one problem with 2.1

Now I'll preface this by saying that this update looks incredible. What dark magic the CT has used to make these models without mods I have no idea, but they look awesome. World Events are a really cool concept that I think will really add some emersion to the world, not to mention new raid challenges, and aspects (another thing to spend hours min-maxing yipee!)

However, there is one thing I'm not too sure about:
The removal of dungeon quests. Now I understand that this is to make it easier to do dungeons, however quests to unlock dungeons do serve a pretty important purpose: telling you why you're even fighting these people in the first place.

It's like the current Timelost Sanctum dungeon, it's a great dungeon, yes, however I have absolutely no idea why I'm even fighting Garoth, so why do I even need to care? My heart is just not in it as much as say, Undergrowth Ruins. In that I know I'm fighting Slykaar so he doesn't destroy Troms, there's actual stake to this fight, if I lose there are actually consequences I know about to the world. And this is all thanks to the quest.

If there's no quests to unlock dungeons new players are going to have no idea why they're fighting these people, there's no stake to it. Not to mention the quests also explain lore outside of the dungeon that is important too.
E.g, if Fate of the Fallen is removed, new players will have no idea:

-Who Theorick Twain is
-What happened to him
-Why Nesaak is frozen

Now on paper this is all connected to the dungeon, however this is fairly important to Nesaak's lore. Seaskipper tells you that Nesaak used to be temperate, but without Fate of the Fallen, the player won't know how this even happened. It'll also be pretty confusing in say, the Frost Bite quest, if you have no idea who Theorick Twain even is, other than some corrupted guy in a dungeon you killed a couple of levels ago.

However, I do understand why they've removed these quests, because they are annoying to repeat after the first time. But in my opinion they're not bad quests, Fate of the Fallen and Corrupted Betrayal are honestly pretty interesting and can be quite fun to do on a first time.

So why not have a system similar to The Breaking Point (the quest to unlock TCC), where the quests stay, however you only need to do them once to unlock the dungeon on all classes, so new players will understand the stakes and lore to the dungeon, and players just levelling up another class won't have to repeat the quest to do the dungeon.

Honestly, this system could also be applied to other areas of the game too (I'm looking at you RoL). Seriously, having to do these 5 quests on EVERY class is such a pain, legitimately the only reason it's somewhat worth it is for the items from the quests, which have decent xp boosts.

Now I know this random Forum Thread probably won't change anything, but I at least hope there is some effort to explain the lore of the dungeon even after the quests are removed, so players at least know why they're fighting these bosses. At least give us some Timelost Sanctum lore. PLEASE I NEED TO KNOW WHY GAROTH IS HERE AND WHO HE EVEN IS THERE'S SO MUCH THAT JUST ISN'T EXPLAINED!

And maybe at least keep some of the quests in game just as a standalone thing, particularly Fate of the Fallen and Corrupted Betrayal, because they're honestly pretty good quests and they explain massive parts of Theorick and Slykaar's character and lore, which are relevant even outside the dungeon, and it would be such a shame for them to just be removed.

Oh and before I go, the title was a lie, I have one other problem with this update. The new music sample. I was vibing along, thinking "Oh this is awesome", expecting the hardest drop known to man for the motif (you know the one in Play the Saviour and Genesis of the End, hopefully you know what I'm on about) and it was just so underwhelming. Come on guys, this is practically the player's theme song, it should be drums and guitars blazing at rapid speed not slow and quiet, where's the coolness in that! Completely sucked the awesomeness out of it. Please change this. (this is mostly a joke but like come on people)

 

the quests haven't been removed, they're just not required to play the dungeon anymore

 

What I'm guessing is that the team wants to show off the dungeons they worked hard to improve, and that can't happen if all dungeons are gatekept behind quests that your average rando doesn't have the attention span for.

 

oooooh, that makes so much more sense yeah. Is Timelost Sanctum gonna get a quest tho?

 

Yes it is d(^^

 

I feel like it'd still be better if for the first time/class/character, you had to do the quest to unlock the dungeon - otherwise loads of new players will simply skip it (maybe not even noticing it) and miss out on a lot of stuff. Tbh in general I don't understand this change at all, unless it was made for replayability in which case surely a TCC approach would be much better - so that you only have to do it on one character?

 

yeah while it does get quite annoying to redo the quests over and over they just have so much lore to not be needed especially sense a lot of dungeons recommend level was kind of high for the challenge (at least for me) people might legitimately do the dungeon then go oh funny quest and then the order would be flip flopped also I'm pretty sure that some of the quest are at levels with good grinding XP spots and will just never see the light of day.