Aha! We aren’t ignoring you, but we couldn’t determine a repro until very recently. A fix is in testing, but I don’t have an ETA for when it will reach the live servers.
Long winded explanation:
Basically, there are several dwarven relics scattered across the lake, only one of which is the item you’re looking for. If you pick up 6 relics without finding the scabbard, it will mark it and update the objective to “Pick up the scabbard.” If one of the relics you picked up was the scabbard it would complete the search and move on to the “Escape with the scabbard” step. BUT… If you got close to the scabbard (without picking it up) it would mark the search as complete, but not advance to the “Pick up the scabbard” step. You can swim around and interact with the relics and eventually you’ll find the scabbard, but since it’s not marked it’s very hard to find.
I’ve fixed it so the “Pick up the scabbard” step (and a marker on the scabbard) will correctly appear when you get close to it. This is also why we had such a hard time reproducing it—you have to get close to the scabbard but not have picked up 6 relics in the mean time. Since it randomly changes spawn positions, it’s a matter of luck.
It’s a very hard to repro bug, so it’s been looked at a few times but no one has been able to definitively “fix” it. I’m going to try adding some redundancies to make it more stable overall, especially if any of the NPCs get killed or distracted by combat in the middle of a scene.
I’m looking into this right now. Playing through the entire meta event takes a while, but I’m shoring up some obvious points where the events can stall.
I’m investigating this issue now, the story step hasn’t changed in months so I’m not sure what’s going wrong. (The bug with some story steps stalling was fixed last week, so this appears to be an unrelated issue.)
We’re testing a fix right now, once it checks out we’ll get it into a hotfix as soon as we can. Thanks! (This bug affects many story steps, so it’s a fix that should take care of all the “broken story” posts that popped up today.)
I’m bugging the programmers to see if today’s update changed something that’s broken “defeat X foes” objectives, since there appear to be multiple broken story steps today that haven’t been changed in ages.
Were either of you grouped with other players, or were you running the instance solo? My first guess would be it’s not scaling correctly. (The objective wants you to kill X+scale soldiers, but it’s only spawning X soldiers.)
The issue is that the end of Liberation has a “read your mail” step but the mail is part of the L30 storyline, so it won’t get sent until you’re L30. I looked into removing that story step entirely, but it would cause players on that step to get rolled back on their storyline, so the fix didn’t seem any better than the root bug. Once you reach L30, you’ll get the mail, and once you read it, it will finish out the L20 storyline and start the L30 story.
Move away from the start point and come back. If you’re standing IN the start point when you enter the map it won’t give you a popup—you need to ENTER the marked area. (The same thing happens if you click “no” to the popup. You need to walk way and re-enter the area to get the popup to reappear.)
No, that step is in the middle of the L20 storyline, so it doesn’t require L30. And like I said, I see no case where Fibharr would ever give a “Greet” prompt. (Though if you’re not currently in his storyline, he will just say one line when you “Talk” to him. You only get a cutscene/conversation if you’re currently on the Chapter 2 storyline that he’s in.)
As in my original post, I cannot reproduce this or find any reason why it would fail. Fibharr is sitting and waiting for any player to “Talk” to him, his reaction depends on whether they’re on the story step to talk to him or not. I can’t find any case where he would revert to a “Greet.” Sorry!
Oh! You’re in an instance (the Council Chambers) so it’s marking the instance exit. If you’re not in the same map as the story start, it will mark the route to the correct map. It wants you to exit to Rata Sum so you can reach the story start.
You can still explore, and the vistas/et al are still there, but the icons don’t appear on the map for <L10 characters. Not everyone who plays is an MMO veteran, and can find a multitude of different icons in the first 30s of play kind of overwhelming.
It’s not a bug. Low level characters will not see map icons for vistas, jumping puzzles, et al to cut down on icon overload. They will display for L10+ characters, and once any character on an account is high enough to see the icons, all characters on the account should see them.
:The Ringmaster" is the end of the L20 storyline, The next step is at L30, but an errant step was left in at the end of that storyline that asks you to read mail that you won’t receive until you’re L30. (And reading the mail will officially complete the storyline.) So nothing to worry about, once you hit L30 it will all make sense.
That’s a bug from the story restructuring—the next step (which is the start of Chapter 3) is L30, so you’ll get the mail when you reach L30. The “Read your mail” step was accidentally left in the end of that L20 storyline, though the mail won’t be sent until you’re L30. (It used to be sent immediately on conclusion of the L20 storyline.)
Are you using invisible bags? Items in an invisible bag are not deposited automatically, don’t show up in the list of items you can sell to a vendor, etc.
If you’re L40 or higher, clear out your mailbox. If it has too many letters in it, you won’t receive new mail. Clearing out the mailbox will allow mail that’s been queued up to be delivered after a few minutes.
Did you do the last mission in Chapter 3 with another player? If you accept progress, it will set your next mission to the same as the other player’s, even if they’re in a different order than you are. Once you’re finished with the current storyline, it’ll return to normal (unless you again accept another player’s progress.)
We’re continuing to experiment with improving the way cutscenes work. I won’t go into details, since I don’t want to say “We’re trying out X” or I’ll get asked after every update “What happened to X?”
There’s a bigger technical issue—during “in game” scenes, the NPCs are moving around and things are happening (gadgets might be activating, props may be animating, etc.) and if you just skipped all that, it could lead to some really bizarre behavior. Trying to manually set a “failsafe” to teleport the NPCs, fire off effects, etc. to replicate what the world state is if the cutscene plays is extremely tedious and error prone.
That’s why the old style “dialogue cutscenes” (and the fancy but rare full blown cinematic sequences, like the Order movies and racial intros) are skippable, because we aren’t doing anything to the world while the dialogue plays, so skipping it doesn’t have any effect. We’ve moved away from those, because the in-game scenes are a lot more satisfying, but there’s a trade off.
Some of the story steps were changed from Chapter 8 to Chapter 7. (L80 to L70.) To keep some players from missing any steps (if you completed Chapter 7 before the update, for example) they’ll show up in Chapter 8 for those players.
Maybe just editing the mail text could be an easier fix?
When do you send it? The mail is currently sent at L30 (hence the problem.) If we send it at the end of “The Ringmaster,” players that have are currently on the “Read your mail” step will have already done it, so they won’t get the mail. Text changes also need to go through localization so they’re translated into all supported languages. Like I said, something that sounds simple often isn’t. (I hope I don’t sound argumentative, I’m just trying to point out that small changes can involve bigger issues.)
Sadly, it’s not as easy as it sounds. There is a way to fix the errant step, but a side effect is that any player currently on the “Read your mail” step step would be rolled back to the start of “The Ringmaster.”
Maybe he had to read the mail first to progress that part leading up to the actual instance?
Exactly. The issue is that the mail isn’t sent until L30 (since it starts the Chapter 3 storyline) but the final step of Chapter 2 for that storyline is “Read your mail.” It’s a holdover from before the storylines were divided into 10 level chunks, but once you reach L30 you’ll get the mail and be able to proceed normally.
What do you mean by it “shows up as incomplete”? The Ringmaster is the final story step in the L20 storyline, so the next story step won’t show up until L30. If you’re <L30, you won’t have an active story step.
When you’re on the “Search the area for survivors” step, you need to spend some time searching in the area marked on your mini-map. It doesn’t complete immediately on entering the marked area—it takes a few seconds.
Did you play “Source of Orr” with another player as the person who started the story step, and accept their progress? At the end of “Source of Orr” it does a check to see if the story owner completed “Temple of the Forgotten God” (i.e. they’ve played chapter 8 already) and sends them to the final step IF they already played it. If they haven’t played that step, it sends them to that step so they won’t miss any of the Chapter 8 steps.
You can’t go by the Wiki, since it’s showing the (restructured) story step order. If you were in Chapter 8 when “The Source of Orr” got moved to Chapter 7, you’ll still get that step near the end of Chapter 8.
Your brother (only) can open a support ticket by going to the top of this page, clicking on Support, then Submit a Request. Fill out the form with all the information that he can, and a CS rep will help him out.
Some of the chapter 8 steps were moved to chapter 7, which is why they’re now L70. The game scripts check to see which steps you’ve done, so you don’t have to duplicate steps. Normally, “Victory or Death” might be next, but you never completed “Against the Corruption” so you’ll have to complete it (and any followup steps) before it puts you on the final step. It’s a little odd to go back to L70 steps, but we didn’t want players who were already on Chapter 8 when the steps got moved around to miss any content.
Are you using invisible bags? Items in an invisible bag will not be deposited when you use the “Deposit All” button. Other “special” types of bags might also prevent items in them from being auto-deposited.
When you party with another player, if you choose to accept their progress and stay on their storyline, you will be temporarily moved to their storyline. It will return to your character’s storyline next chapter, if you don’t choose to follow another player’s story again.
The “Read your mail” step is the last step in the L20 storyline. It doesn’t SEND the mail until you reach L30, though, so you can’t complete it yet, so you didn’t receive completion for it. (Your friend might have been L30 or higher already, so they received the mail and were able to finish the storyline.)
What level are you? I believe the issue is that the next story step unlocks at L30, so the mail isn’t sent until then. (There’s a rare bug where the “Read your mail” step sometimes appears at lower levels.) If you’re L30 or higher, your mailbox probably has too much mail in it, and it’s preventing new mail from appearing. Clear out your inbox, and log out/in to resend the mail.
Is your mailbox full? If you have too many messages in it, new mail will be queued up until you make room. Try clearing out your inbox by deleting as much mail as you can.
