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So you're tired of kill quests...
mantii
Member Posts: 90
and collect quests, and delivery quests and all the other "crap" in mmo's today. Well I have yet to see a better idea come out of anyone's keyboard on these forums for a better quest. How about instead of bitching and moaning about how much you dislike all the bland mmo content that is offered today you try to come up with a better idea. If you hate all these quests then please...tell us what type of quest you would like to see. Hell...make up the entire quest and post it on here so we can read about how much better of a quest designer YOU are than the people who are currently creating them for our mmos that we play today.
I cannot possibly think of a new idea for a quest. I have tried and put plenty of thought into what would be considered a "cool" new quest. They all boil down to the same exact thing...go here, kill this or collect this, bring it back to me. One of my ideas was to have a character who wanted help building his house. What would be the next thing to do in this situation?
1) collect the lumber, nails, hammer, etc. (however deep you wanted to make gathering all this crap up to be)
2) bring all those items back to the character
3) turn them in, receive xp / loot / whatever you think is cool
Basically it turned into a collect / delivery quest. It's not like your going to actually BUILD the house. You will not sit at your computer to "hammer" each nail in and help this character actually build his house. That would get way old and take an extremely long time.
I'm not exactly sure what you people seem to want, and I don't think the game developers know either because you cannot seem to focus your energies on new ideas; however, you are all pretty much experts in the bitching and moaning skill set.
I'm done ranting...try being productive and help the devs learn what you want instead of bitching about what they put out.
Comments
I agree. I think people whine and moan because they're bored! And to this I must answer "Then do something else!". Seriously folks. If you don't like the quests don't do them. That is what an mmo is all about isn't it? The freedom to do whatever, wherever, in a completely non-linear fashion? So if you're that sick of collection / kill / delivery / protection / escort quests then do something else. Craft. Instance grind. Grind in general. PvP. Whatever. Or take your whining into something constructive like new ideas for questing and such. Instead of saying "this sucks" tell me "this sucks and this is how it can be better and awesome".
I'm done ranting now too.
I don't personally mind kill quests, as long as they are not "kill 30 of these" then go all the way back, to be sent to "kill 30 more".
To see EXACTLY how this should NEVER be done, take a look at SWG's "Legacy Quests" that were added with the NGE.
UGH!!!
How about offering up an idea of how it SHOULD be done instead of pointing me at an example of how it shouldn't.
Its not my job to come up with new ways of doing quest and I'll continue to complain about things I don't like regardless of if I have a better way. If someone sells me something that I think taste like crap I'll express my dislike with the product and won't by it again even if I cannot do a better job with the ingredients. In regards to this specific issue, I say don't make a game evolve around quest, they aren't fun. Time to change the ingredients. Have a minimal amount of quest and offer the player something else to do entirely. There are heaps of ways devs could do this and I really don't want to give an example only to have someone focuss on that specific and miss the entire point.
EDIT PS: I'm sick of people complaining about others complaining and trying to pass it off as being productive or accusing the others of not being productive. Fact is making your dislikes about a product known to those making it is productive and trying to stop people doing it is unproductive.
Small numbers, in the context of a well-written quest, and never in the same location, or for the same mob twice.
Not that hard really.
Or as far as collection style quests...collect ONE....but the drop rate will keep you killing for about 10 minutes.
No need to pad these to take longer...THAT'S what makes them boring.
Delivery / Fedex quests....well, to see how this should be done, take a look at the Fixer Grid quest in Anarchy Online. One of the best quests ever written for a game, IMO.
I could probably write a damn novel on this subject, as I've put a lot of thought into it....for the same reasons as stated in the OP. There's only so creative you can get in a PVE quest-based game.
Its not my job to come up with new ways of doing quest and I'll continue to complain about things I don't like regardless of if I have a better way. If someone sells me something that I think taste like crap I'll express my dislike with the product and won't by it again even if I cannot do a better job with the ingredients. In regards to this specific issue, I say don't make a game evolve around quest, they aren't fun. Time to change the ingredients. Have a minimal amount of quest and offer the player something else to do entirely. There are heaps of ways devs could do this and I really don't want to give an example only to have someone focuss on that specific and miss the entire point.
EDIT PS: I'm sick of people complaining about others complaining and trying to pass it off as being productive or accusing the others of not being productive. Fact is making your dislikes about a product known to those making it is productive and trying to stop people doing it is unproductive.
I agree, it isn't your job to come up with a new way of doing quests; however, it seems to me it would be more productive than bitching and moaning about the same old crap. I have literally been reading these forums for quite some time now and have yet to read (or remember reading) anything that really said "hey, this isn't what we want but here's a great idea you might want to try out: *insert idea*." I see where your going with your food example. I don't want to say it's off base but I feel like it is. Somehow comparing a video game to a food joint, which there are MILLIONS of just doesn't fit for me. (i know you'll probably say there are tons of video games)
Your sick of people complaining about others complaining. See...were both SICK of complaining. Turn it into something positive instead of negative. (yes bitching and whining is negative and i'm very surprised I havent been called negative yet) I agree that making your dislikes about a product known can be helpful to developers but if you dont tell them what you WANT then it's a guessing game. It would be much more helpful to include what you DO like or what you DO want to do instead of just saying "hey, this sucks, do something better."
I hope you see my point as I don't think its a very hard one to understand.
Its not my job to come up with new ways of doing quest and I'll continue to complain about things I don't like regardless of if I have a better way. If someone sells me something that I think taste like crap I'll express my dislike with the product and won't by it again even if I cannot do a better job with the ingredients. In regards to this specific issue, I say don't make a game evolve around quest, they aren't fun. Time to change the ingredients. Have a minimal amount of quest and offer the player something else to do entirely. There are heaps of ways devs could do this and I really don't want to give an example only to have someone focuss on that specific and miss the entire point.
EDIT PS: I'm sick of people complaining about others complaining and trying to pass it off as being productive or accusing the others of not being productive. Fact is making your dislikes about a product known to those making it is productive and trying to stop people doing it is unproductive.
I agree, it isn't your job to come up with a new way of doing quests; however, it seems to me it would be more productive than bitching and moaning about the same old crap. I have literally been reading these forums for quite some time now and have yet to read (or remember reading) anything that really said "hey, this isn't what we want but here's a great idea you might want to try out: *insert idea*." I see where your going with your food example. I don't want to say it's off base but I feel like it is. Somehow comparing a video game to a food joint, which there are MILLIONS of just doesn't fit for me. (i know you'll probably say there are tons of video games)
Your sick of people complaining about others complaining. See...were both SICK of complaining. Turn it into something positive instead of negative. (yes bitching and whining is negative and i'm very surprised I havent been called negative yet) I agree that making your dislikes about a product known can be helpful to developers but if you dont tell them what you WANT then it's a guessing game. It would be much more helpful to include what you DO like or what you DO want to do instead of just saying "hey, this sucks, do something better."
I hope you see my point as I don't think its a very hard one to understand.
Yes I see your point and its a fair point. Thanks for trying to understand mine without resorting to personal attacks too. Now as for the food example, I'll elaborate on it. You acknowledge that most people are complaining are sick of the quest. To me the quest is just a bad and overly used ingredient in a MMORPG. I'm saying instead of thinking of improving the product its time to start thinking of creating a new product. Now I really don't want to give my preferences here because I think it'll just end up sidetracking the real issue. People will tell me they don't like that idea etc but the point is there are many possiabilities to create a non quest centric game.
So rather than fix the core ingredient in mainstream MMO's I believe they should change it.
Well I can put a lot into this so don't get me started. Well to late.
Suppose that you are met by another NPC while you are gathering lumber that says “Hey, I heard so and so has asked you to gather some lumber, nails and a hammer.” “You know I just hate the bastard and I want you to take this crappy lumber to him and I'll pay you double what he offers.” “Seek me out later.”
You have to make a choice here and if you decide to sell out you loose standing with the guy and if you accept you loose standing with the other guy. Choice is yours here. One offers you a double reward and the other is not offering but a normal reward.
Suppose you accept and take the shit lumber and return with it. The guy is pissed off now and does not pay you or give experience. You go back to the other guy offering double and find out you ended up with double the money but no experience gain. However you also lost faction in one house and gained it in the other. Then come to find later the guy you cheated is not giving you a quest you never new about because no one knew it until someone else done it the other way.
Suppose you decline and the guy now offering the quest to get double is angry but you gained experience for declining, gained faction in one house and lost faction in the other. However later you find you can't get that quest for a certain item you want because you pissed off the quest giver. But you go back to the other guy and get both so you gained double experience.
Now suppose that there is the nails involved or the hammer and maybe in some cases nothing changes because at the time you do it the other NPCs are not there. Well to make it interesting maybe there double faction gain in some cases and double faction loss depending on who offers what at what point in the quest you decide to do what. Maybe later since you met no one they all give you a different quest. The NPC Ai played a role in the randomness of the quest.
You see multi-outcome quests are the key to the same old boring shit but with a twist that has cause and effect across the world you are in. No MMO offers that right now. Probably non will ever offer this.
Demc - great idea. I never really thought about it like that before. Having choices while doing quests that lead to other quests/factions/rewards would be great. This is something I look forward to seeing one day in a MMO. I commend you for trying on an example of mine. I do think that it would be viable also to do the hammering and nailing of a house but to make it a short mini game inside the quest itself and depending on how well you do your rewards could be greater, perhaps double xp / money or a bonus item. Awesome! Progress is a good thing.
I think that is a fairly creative idea but the problem as I see it, is the outcomes. The "effect" is just better or worse reward than you'd get otherwise by the sounds of it and if it enables, disables quest because of your faction leaning you'd need to make atleast double the amount of quest to have the same amount of content in game. It'd be awesome if your quest had a significant effect but I really cannot see how to realistically do this.
I think one possiable solution, is the player generated quest. Quest that are made up and given to other players. No need to code factions or anything as the player has a brain and if you did a good job you'd gain favor etc. One of the problems with this is more often than not the story will be completely lacking and the players need to have a good reason to hire others to do what they could do themselves.
I think that is a fairly creative idea but the problem as I see it, is the outcomes. The "effect" is just better or worse reward than you'd get otherwise by the sounds of it and if it enables, disables quest because of your faction leaning you'd need to make atleast double the amount of quest to have the same amount of content in game. It'd be awesome if your quest had a significant effect but I really cannot see how to realistically do this.
I think one possiable solution, is the player generated quest. Quest that are made up and given to other players. No need to code factions or anything as the player has a brain and if you did a good job you'd gain favor etc. One of the problems with this is more often than not the story will be completely lacking and the players need to have a good reason to hire others to do what they could do themselves.
To do a quest like that maybe one could "purchase" some exp or use an item as a reward for the player quest. It would have to be limited on the xp purchasable and not be able to be turned in by the purchaser. Small chunks of exp worth the same or 1.5x a normal quest would seem to be a good standard for player made quests. I dont really see another way a player could actually make a quests and I do agree that it would be lacking story and such. Interesting idea though.
I'd personally like quests to be "larger".
The problem that most people seem to have with "kill 10 boars!" quests is that they feel pointless in the grand scheme of things. Killing the boars doesn't accomplish anything, the boars always respawn and nothing changes from your having ganked 10 of their number.
This is why I'm so enthusiastic about WoW's new phasing technology. You help storm an enemy-held position and from then on out, it's permanently held by your side whenever you go there. The world changes and responds according to what YOU do/accomplish and new quest lines open up because of it.
Unfortunately, there's still no replay value because once the quest is done, it's done.
Oh, and other games should learn from AoC's example in one respect, the ability to choose whether you want to quest in a solo or group based zone, rather than the current MMOG method of just throwing in a few group quests into zones which are essentially purely soloable.
I find this very annoying; if I'm soloing then I run into quests that I can't complete, and if I'm grouping then the solo quests are all incredibly trivial. AoC solved both those problems, and I'd like to see the same incorporated into WoW (and new emergent games) using the phasing technology.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
I think that is a fairly creative idea but the problem as I see it, is the outcomes. The "effect" is just better or worse reward than you'd get otherwise by the sounds of it and if it enables, disables quest because of your faction leaning you'd need to make atleast double the amount of quest to have the same amount of content in game. It'd be awesome if your quest had a significant effect but I really cannot see how to realistically do this.
I think one possiable solution, is the player generated quest. Quest that are made up and given to other players. No need to code factions or anything as the player has a brain and if you did a good job you'd gain favor etc. One of the problems with this is more often than not the story will be completely lacking and the players need to have a good reason to hire others to do what they could do themselves.
I did not want to go on here but now that you brought it up I suppose that what I was working on in design was to lead the PC into a point where he made choices that carried the epic outcome of being known as a neutral, evil or good either critically or some level in between and would gain and loose factions in the world based on his choices including if he got labeled as PvP.
The problem with leaving it up to the players to generate quests is that most times it will never happen. Alternative is to make randomness and allow the program to determine the players attitude toward the world and cause effect across the world as how the NPCs of the world perceive them.
This example was to show how the quest system can be designed to route a role player into their role and allow multi-outcome that effect the PC in the world.
That does sound great. However I'm skepitcal as to how many of these quest there would be and how significant they'd be. I just don't see them replacing the standard quest as the meat of the game any time soon. Hope I'm wrong though.
As for the rest of your post the AoC thing does sound good, AoC is one of the few MMORPG's I haven't played but it does sound like a good feature.
On a different note people are bagging out WAR alot and even though I personally don't like the game either, they did try alot of new ways to the standard questing aspect of a MMORPG.
I think the best 'fix' for quests is one that can only really be done in small community MMOs - bring back the Dungeon Master. While this is a ridiculous idea to even suggest for a large MMO for a strong list of reasons ( abuse, tinfoilhattery, manpower, etc) it could work very well in game worlds where you have much smaller groups of people.
A Smaller Audience
A More Tailored Experience
The Dungeon Master can THINK
When I did quests for an MMO, one thing that our team did was get to know the various player factions on the servers and learned their backgrounds. Knowing the players allowed us to create quests that would fit with THEIR lore because, honestly, that's far more important to the players than anything the developers write.
Now, the big danger is the concern of favoritism. The more you work towards tailoring quests to fit the interests and likes of the playerbase, the higher the chance is of people crying foul. With a small community MMO, it's nothing that can't be worked out.
I think that if you want to see better quests, FOR NOW (who knows what the future will bring) you're only going to see it in smaller MMOs. The manpower required and the support nightmares created for a larger scale MMO just make it highly unlikely that it will happen in a Triple A title.
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I think that is a fairly creative idea but the problem as I see it, is the outcomes. The "effect" is just better or worse reward than you'd get otherwise by the sounds of it and if it enables, disables quest because of your faction leaning you'd need to make atleast double the amount of quest to have the same amount of content in game. It'd be awesome if your quest had a significant effect but I really cannot see how to realistically do this.
I think one possiable solution, is the player generated quest. Quest that are made up and given to other players. No need to code factions or anything as the player has a brain and if you did a good job you'd gain favor etc. One of the problems with this is more often than not the story will be completely lacking and the players need to have a good reason to hire others to do what they could do themselves.
I did not want to go on here but now that you brought it up I suppose that what I was working on in design was to lead the PC into a point where he made choices that carried the epic outcome of being known as a neutral, evil or good either critically or some level in between and would gain and loose factions in the world based on his choices including if he got labeled as PvP.
This example was to show how the quest system can be designed to route a role player into their role and allow multi-outcome that effect the PC in the world.
I cut out the middle paragraph cause I don't really want to talk about player generated quest when talking about mainstream questing (that idea isn't mine and although I like it, its better suited to a completely player driven sandbox world.)
Okay back on topic, I definitely see what you are getting at which is why I said I think its a creative idea. Kind of like the Knights of the Old Republic single player games did but besides from it doubling the amount of quest and such you'd have to do I think it'd be enormously difficult to do in a MMORPG. That is if it were going to be a persistent world. Your talking about having thousands of players if they can all change the world based on the decisions they make during quest or by the choice of which quest to do, well it just gives me headaches thinking about how to do it.
The specific example you give about getting labeled as PVP is a really good idea as it is in determining your faction, rather than just choosing such things during qharacter creation. That said I think you need more of the same calibar ideas to really have an epic outcome. Afterall how many quest would it take before you were labelled as PVP enabled or given your faction? It couldn't take to long before you got these things unless you want a huge grind to enable further game options and if it was to short after its done that leaves the game in the same state people are sick of.
I like that idea too, some muds do it. It'd be much more difficult to do in a 3d mmorpg than a mud and you've already mentioned its main flaw and thats the amount of support required. Personally I still think that's probably the most realistic and consequently the best fix to the standard questing problem.
That said I'd still prefer a game that just got rid of quest or extremely reduced the amount of quest altogether and focussed on other things. Maybe a focus on city building (since that is a hugely popular feature), having a real economy and allowing the majority of players to be in a position of power by enabling them to use NPC's, so you don't need 20 "PC workers" for every PC leader. Since this is just one of many possiabilities I really don't want to go into it here, I think I'll post the idea up somewere else though.
I think that is a fairly creative idea but the problem as I see it, is the outcomes. The "effect" is just better or worse reward than you'd get otherwise by the sounds of it and if it enables, disables quest because of your faction leaning you'd need to make atleast double the amount of quest to have the same amount of content in game. It'd be awesome if your quest had a significant effect but I really cannot see how to realistically do this.
I think one possiable solution, is the player generated quest. Quest that are made up and given to other players. No need to code factions or anything as the player has a brain and if you did a good job you'd gain favor etc. One of the problems with this is more often than not the story will be completely lacking and the players need to have a good reason to hire others to do what they could do themselves.
I did not want to go on here but now that you brought it up I suppose that what I was working on in design was to lead the PC into a point where he made choices that carried the epic outcome of being known as a neutral, evil or good either critically or some level in between and would gain and loose factions in the world based on his choices including if he got labeled as PvP.
This example was to show how the quest system can be designed to route a role player into their role and allow multi-outcome that effect the PC in the world.
I cut out the middle paragraph cause I don't really want to talk about player generated quest when talking about mainstream questing (that idea isn't mine and although I like it, its better suited to a completely player driven sandbox world.)
Okay back on topic, I definitely see what you are getting at which is why I said I think its a creative idea. Kind of like the Knights of the Old Republic single player games did but besides from it doubling the amount of quest and such you'd have to do I think it'd be enormously difficult to do in a MMORPG. That is if it were going to be a persistent world. Your talking about having thousands of players if they can all change the world based on the decisions they make during quest or by the choice of which quest to do, well it just gives me headaches thinking about how to do it.
The specific example you give about getting labeled as PVP is a really good idea as it is in determining your faction, rather than just choosing such things during quest creation. That said I think you need more of the same calibar ideas to really have an epic outcome. Afterall how many quest would it take before you were labelled as PVP enabled or given your faction? It couldn't take to long before you got these things unless you want a huge grind to enable further game options and if it was to short after its done that leaves the game in the same state people are sick of.
Yes it is very complicated and still trying to get it worked out. I been working on the damn thing for a couple years. It won't be hard to program once the rules are worked out though.
How many quest does one do between level 1 and 10? Maybe 100?
By the time the PC had finished the epic he would either be know Neutral, PvP evil or PvP good. After the epic the randomness of quests play no role in faction but play a role in status. A PC that just did not want to be PvP at all would try to answer and do quests to avoid being labeled critical. He could decline a quest starter and not do it at all and would still be neutral though they were leaning more evil or good they avoid being PvP. The starting area of Whren was designed to route the player to their role and did not have near the complicated quest chain I exampled there. Once the PC was labeled such the future factions and status are based on PvP and not NPC interaction. Although reaction from NPCs in their home area they either gain or loose status. Because the quest system is server side generated, there will be more quests and not set in stone so players always would have variety. Of course the main story line would still be there. However if the NPC did not have a good view of the PC he may not give the quest. Status is different in regards to faction and one uses status to buy things such as a mount, special skills. However as an example:
If a critical evil started killing his own he would eventually switch to good but never reach neutral again. He would loose status faster than he gained it and eventually loose his special skills and his mount. Consequences in the world played a big role for actions. He would then be an enemy of his own people and forced to live with the opposition.
Neutral players gain status by doing quests or arena. If they want status they have to interact with with the world. Based on what choice they make determines how NPC perceive them and if they piss off all the NPCs the consequence is no more means to gain status except in the arena. Through arena they could build status that effected how the NPC saw them and then get quests. I keep driving here cause and effect because the world would be much more alive in regards to the PC and the PC had a direct impact on the world.
Oh, Arena is special because no one gains or looses faction they only gain status if they win. Everyone can do arena.
The rules still need tweeked no doubt.
I liked it from the start and l like it even more now you've elaborated. I don't really have much to add other than what I've already said but I wasn't aware you were actually trying to get this done, so I want to wish you the best of luck!
I greee 100% there. Bringing back the GM would actually make all games more interesting. Beats the crap out of anything a computer could do in regards to immersion of content. But why can't mainstream games do it? Even if they rotated through the servers once a month be better to know they were making a effort to interact with the player base. If they did involve the GM or a rep in events like Mythic did back in the early years it be awesome.
Play a Fallout 3 or Oblivion or Mass Effect etc etc.
Thats how I want my quests.
One problem there is if you do it during NA prime time, then the EU crowd will be upset. If you do it during EU and NA times, then people will complain you did it in the day they don't play. If you find the optimal day and time for everyone, you end up with a slideshow because 200 people showed up for your event. Catch-22 there.
Add to that, you have the people that showed for the event for the lore, and the people that showed for the event for phat loot. Two very different crowds. The lore people will get disappointed if it's mindless hack and slash, and the loot crowd gets fidgetty and very antsy if you stop to say more than two sentences of dialog. Whoa... almost forgot... there's the crowd that shows up solely to be disruptive.
There's also the issue of continuity and direction. Someone has to write these quests and they really can't break the game lore or fiction, and they definitely have to take into consideration how the outcome fits with the main plot arc/story.
We've only scratched the surface here, and it's already looking pretty scary. For an MMO with a very large subscriber base it becomes a daunting task with a lot of potential for things to go south.
I'd be willing to bet that a good number of MMO devs would really like to run live events, but the risk and logistics cause them to shy away from the idea.
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Another thing in regards to the GM created/controlled quest is that muds can only do it because they rely on passionate volunteers with good story telling skills. There are only so many of those people and I would think they'll be drawn to raise there hand for a GM position before the game gets large. I don't think if you managed to attract the masses you'd be able to attract the same ratio of talented and willing GM's. So in summery I imagine you'd start running out of GM's.
As for hiring people to do it, I cannot see that being profitable when considering the amount of quest and supervision that'd be required unless ofcourse as mentioned by the above poster you had quest involving hundreds of players which would kind of dillute the effectiveness of the idea. The main sacrafice would be tailor made quest.
It's pretty late and I'm too tired to write a long elaborate post, but I want to throw something out there: What about a combination of player created and GM moderated quests. As a brief example: A player creates a quest and takes on the role of a GM/NPC. He then guides a group of players through the story (instance?). Afterwards, the participating players rate the experience and the creator gets GM XP (or whatever). By accumulating GM XP, that player would gain access to more tools, quest rewards, etc. to create more elaborate quests. This way master GM's would emerge from the community and people would be eager to join in quests created by those renowned players.
However, the previous caveats still apply. Technically, this is of course not trivial. Favouritism could be combatted by laws of diminishing returns (the XP contribution by your rating of a particular GM would decrease with every quest), but is a factor.
I've stated this in other discussions and it's something I'm curious about and fascinated by: Why has no AAA game been released that really harnesses the creative potential of the gaming community? There is some serious talent out there! Build a game and provide a toolset (!) that allows the community to expand the game itself, beyond building mods/addons etc.
The best quests I've ever done in an MMO (other than EQ, but I think that's because it was brand new feeling), was in FFXI. You didn't have a ! or ? over their head and no minimap pointing you where to go. The immersion this caused (you actually had to learn the world and where to go) made the game one of the best PvE games I've ever played, if not the best.
I can't help but notice the lack of "Puzzle" type quests in MMOs. I would like to have my brain tested while playing, instead of mind-numbing, pointless killing of hundreds of monsters.