Trader quest tier progression is broken

[NewGuy]

In previous Alphas, quest tier progression was logical and worked. You did X number of Tier 1 quests from one trader, then that trader would give you a "Special" quest to establish a trade route, where you would find a new trader that would offer Tier 2 quests. This continued up to Tier 5 or whatever and made sense.

 

Now, in A21 I find this system completely broken after a few playthroughs. Sometimes you go from Tier 1 to a Tier 2 trader, etc... but you may go from a Tier 3 trader back to Tier 1 instead of to Tier 4. Or even more common is just getting a string of Tier 1 traders in a row. It is absolutely killing my desire to explore this new Alpha, not having a  logical and predictable questing progression. I've been wanting to to see what the game has to offer for top tier questing and POI's, but it's too broken to even let me try it out at this point. So fix this, or I might just lose interest and skip a couple Alphas like I did over the last couple years. New content is great, but it's worthless if we can't even experience it because your progression systems are broken.

 

That said, there's a lot I really like about this game after being away from it for a couple years. Please fix this so I can give it a fair shot and give it the praise it would deserve if it were a little more functional.

[Uncle Al]

The trader tier progression hasn't changed. New traders never used to offer higher tier quests when you first meet them, and they still don't.

 

The way it works is you do X Tier 1 quests (7 I believe) and get an 'Opening Trade Routes' quest to find a new trader. The trader you've been working with will also increase to Tier 2, but will only start offering Tier 2 quests the next day. You can shortcut this if you really want to by logging out and back in again.

 

The new trader will start at Tier 1, unless it's the same trader as one you've already worked with. Traders only have one progression, so if there are 3 Jens on the map, and you've unlocked Jen up to Tier 3, ALL the Jen traders will offer tier 3 quests, even if you've only just discovered their location.

[NewGuy]

Ok so I must have remembered this mechanic wrong, I could have sworn new traders would be higher tiers, but I guess not. I did go back to my first trader just now and found that they have increased to a higher tier the next day, but I swear the last time I checked existing traders the next day, they were still the same tier, so I stopped checking and just assumed all previous traders would never offer better quests. Thanks for the correction. I'm glad I can now level up to higher tier questing, but it would make more sense if new trade routes and new traders were higher tiered than the previous trader. Maybe they'll change that in the future or explain it better in the game. Maybe add some dialog like "Check back tomorrow for some even tougher jobs!".

 

Thanks!

Edited November 30, 2023 by NewGuy (see edit history)

[RStarphoenix]

Only time the Quest Tier repeats itself if it is a new instance of the same trader (i've never see it work otherwise since I been playing).
If your map has 3 trader Joel and 1 of each of the others, the others will always be at Tier 1, but if you get directed to a new Joel, it'll remember you have Tier 3 (for instance) with the previous Joel and carry over.

Edited November 30, 2023 by RStarphoenix (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

A20 did change the trader quest progression system though.  Prior to A20, progressing with any trader increase the tier with all traders.  A20 introduced TFP rep system with traders where you only advanced the tiers if you were doing quests for that specific trader.  So now you had to do T1 quests with all traders if you wanted T2 quests from any of them, rather than just spamming quests with your local trader Hugh to raise the quests for Jen, Joel, Rekt, etc.

 

And of course, they now tied in the trader inventory with the quest rep so traders you are going a ton of quests for will have better gear than those you are ignoring.  It is a new mechanic to learn, but it makes more sense now that they are tied to the individual traders rather than traders as a whole.