Quest ideas to bring more life to the hamlets

[Wobi]

::This was originally posted on the Zam forums, felt I should bring the idea here as well::

I was pondering ways for them to add more quests and I found it sad that the hamlets are under utilized. I then thought it would be a great idea to have quests in the hamlets that would be open to crafters that you could get the facilities operational in hamlet. Many of them already have what appear to be small guild shops in them, so I felt this would create a great incentive to not just open them but make you do a bit of work for it.

For example, lets say you are rank 20+ LW and you wander close to the Leatherworkers Shop in Quarrymill (iirc) and find out that the local guildmaster there is too depressed to work anymore and you have to help him get out of his funk. Perhaps gather materials to make a fine new pair of shoes or a similar situation. Then once you get them back in business you could purchase goods and obtain perhaps up to Guild level support at the smaller shop in the hamlet.

If this is too involved to do one for each type of shop then perhaps a larger quest to help out the locals there and unlock all of them at once and even some stores that sell local fare that isn't sold in regular shops. Similar to how the stores/AH/etc were unlocked in Tavnazian Stronghold after you got to a certain point in the CoP quest line.

I think this would give people something to work for and offer something that not just anyone that just created a character could have access to.

I'm interested in peoples thoughts on this idea and any embellishments on what I've come up with so far

Addendum: I thought more about a general quest line to unlock the hamlet and came up with the idea that the local populace is in a funk over beastmen attacks on their town or perhaps the last shipment of goods was lost and they have nothing to sell/work with and need you to help them recover it. Possibly a combination of quests in this manner before it's all unlocked. If they add a fame aspect in the game it could also work towards that as well.

Feedback from the original post: It would also be fun to not only turn the hamlets into oporational markets/guilds but maybe after a certain amout of work has been put into any particular one, perhaps through quests, they could evolve into different tiers, culminating into a small town with an adventurers guild offering unique leve's to the surrounding area. Almost like a mini HQ for further end game content. Why they are at it, how about incorparate the idea of company's into the hamlets? Which ever 3-4 LS's that pump in the most achievements through completing quests etc etc can occupy and operate a company in one of the buildings of the hamlet?

[Sephr]

Some neat ideas there! I think they should still add that Hamlet Defense thing they were talking about way back, which I imagine was like small-scale besieged. It would be cool if Hamlets had unique NPCs that gave interesting bonuses to crafting or sold unique items (such as new dyes and things!) who could be kidnapped and you'd have to go rescue them.

They'd need to have some nice incentives for it to be worthwhile of course, if there's no reward people won't do it. This can be seen by the fact that I think there are pretty much no NPCs left in Al Zahbi because people don't go there anymore.

[Wobi]

Please no kidnapping again! That drove me bananas, I wouldn't mind if the environment had parts that could be damaged that you would need crafters to help repair however. That was part of another post I made regarding the hamlet defense battles. I'll have to dig that out out after work and add it to this concept

[Sephr]

Admittedly, chocobo lady kidnappings were less than fun..

[Vassteel1]

Yeah their a little to static. i kinda wish the NPC would call in NPC reenforcment if certian conditions are met or just more of a dynamic combat enviroment