Uther: Yes, you only need to finish quests for a total of 500.000 qxp instead of 1.000.000. Anything above 500.000 wont help your brute. However it would give you access to other types of rewards instead. (numbers are completely made up).
I still claim all quests are already optional though... until someone provides proof its completely impossible to grow at all if you dont quest... has anyone tried? Would be a fun experiemnt. Create a new char, tag along for terel / mithas trolls or quali elves or something until you hit ext violent. What size are you at then?
Any educated guesses?
And if you keep going at ext violent, how long will it take to hit a reasonable size? (hero/titan-ish)?
I still think the "new" titles and the ever-growing to huge sizes is the heart of this problem as well. If sizes had been kept at what was old champion, quests would have still felt more optional as you could probably have battled your way up to champ with very little quest XP.
Lots of parts of the game is still made for those types of sizes, so is the quest system and brutality.
But... its too late for that now. Now we have to scale up everything, we cant go back. But I think its worth to think about it for the future. Because soon people will be asking for more titles above myth, and more stat-levels above supreme, and off we go again....
I always felt Genesis was most about roleplay, socializing, politics and adventure, not botting / grinding your way to the next level, and the next, and the next.... but thats probably why I enjoy questing more than the grinding part. I do enjoy growing as well, but at some point it starts to take ridiculous amounts of time and thats when it gets dull.
So where am I going with this? Well, I think the NEED to grind is a bigger problem than the need to quest. I'd rather do all the frustrating and typo-buggy quests all over again ten times then I would spend the time needed to grind myself to myth. And that is with maximum quest XP.
So the point is, maybe neither quest nor brute nor grind system really is so flawed, maybe its that the highest reachable level is too high so people feel they need to do all quests and feel they need to grind for years... to be able to play, and keep up...
In the past, the game was about learning the game, questing and grinding, until you hit champ, then it changed shape and became more about politics, RP, and socializing. The grinders could still grind, the questers could still quest, but both activities were _optional_. Now both are needed.
I think that is the real problem. Remove the need to quest? Then we are left with only the need to grind. I am not so sure thats better.