On 8/25/2024 at 11:39 AM, GuardianReaper0 said:the 5 reward options just really aren’t worthwhile.
No, they're not. So, why are they there? Just to point people to POIs they'll see anyway and perhaps be intrigued by enough to enter/clear on their own? They'll very likely do that on their own eventually if not immediately. None of them are hiding anything unique, e.g. a named weapon or unique quest or word wall, for example. I've seen one named weapon in the game, but have no idea who Taza is supposed to be and it was pretty worthless anyway. So, maybe something more unique for the odd jobs had been planned at some point, but even army outposts are generally peppered with generic loot that can be found absolutely anywhere else. I've never seen a more RNG heavy game.
The odd jobs, of course, are a variation on the mindless "radiant quests" I could personally do without in any game and that has taken over video games at large. If they're going to be there, though, the rewards for the odd jobs themselves should be worthwhile and they were already pretty well balanced in A21, imo, in that a slightly better tool than one could yet make, for example, essentially acted as an incentive for the player to engage with the other systems to craft even better items themselves, etc.
I don't think extra dukes would be a decent alternative, as you say. I think the "alternative" is more akin to the incentivizing reward system already in place in A21. Players who would rather engage with the other systems exclusively still could. They don't have to take higher tier weapons and tools and gear as rewards. That decision and the discipline to stick to it is entirely up to them. Min-maxers probably always would, but still, that's entirely on them and no one else. The only thing about it that stands out to me personally right now is that pretty much everyone is going to blitz through those tier 1 "quests" as fast as humanly possible just to get their hands on a bicycle because being on foot in an enormous game world that harbors nothing of interest outside POI filled towns is simply not fun. In between, there's nothing but ground to cover.
It actually pains me to see so many comments in the vein of "people weren't doing this" and "people were doing that" in a game that is supposedly designed to be as play-your-way as possible. Who is anyone to dictate how everyone else is going to play?