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Quest-for-Exp is stupid
Ginkeq
Member Posts: 615
Ok, so this is a thing that is basically in every new MMORPG, questing for exp.
How many new MMORPGs have a ton of NPCs giving out a ton of useless and meaningless quests that no one reads, and for what, to tell the dumb player where to go?
Really, pretty soon 5 year olds will be able to handle MMORPGs. NPC tells you where to go, and you look on your minimap for a freaking arrow, and you assume you have to do something there. Only at that point do you actually even look at what the quest says.
Anyway, the problem with these questing systems is they are totally meaningless. They make you do what the designers want. You can't even roam around in a game like WoW, because you would be wasting time. You can just grind quests where the designers want you to level.
No good quests in a certain area? Too bad, you can't grind there. If you grind there, it'll take you twice as long to level.
There is really no immersion or depth in any game that has this kind of system. Like in Everquest, an MMORPG with no quests, it's like you have no idea at all what to do when you play the game. You do things, like talk to NPCs or players and then you have to actually explore, and figure out where things are and where to go. You have to figure out where to level, what NPCs to kill, where other zones are, etc.
That is how all MMORPGs should be. I'm sick of these MMORPGs assuming players are total retards and leading them around everywhere with markers on minimaps and NPCs that ruin the game for players. Seriously, I don't want some NPC to tell me exactly where something is. And I don't even want the NPC to bother me unless he has some really interesting and meaningful quest (maybe an epic quest or something?)
It's just annoying that newer MMORPGs have no immersion and you always feel out of character. And really, what is the point of levels in WoW, when exping to 75 is so mindlessly trivial? There isn't immersion in trivial bullshit games like that.
How about this, an MMORPG where NPCs don't give out any quests? That way players can think for themselves again and maybe not get dumber by playing your shitty MMORPG?
Comments
Just think of it like this; The quest giver is too weak/busy/whatever to travel far for some reason, and they circle in crayon on your map where they think the stuff/mob is. There, now ever quest has meaning.
Helping the helpless :P
Whether quests are stupid, ok your view.
But you say in EQ people talk to NPC and what? explore the world? Oh wow, what EQ you play back then, back in the days when EQ was the game in the world. What do people do in EQ then? Talk to NPC? For what? A handful quests mostly broken, or that long ass long boring grinding long chain called epic weapon, which is long b/c, for a shaman you need to stay under water for 48 hours to get the spawn. Yeah that is the NPC quest in EQ, which apart from the epic weapon (I was 60 then), no one even think it is funny. I fell asleep underwater after waiting for 31 hours, failed to refresh the water breath and drowned. I have to start all over again.
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Oh yeah you can go explore and figure out where else you can theoretically level. But you cannot solo anywhere, and unless other people are already setting up camps controlling the zone, good luck exploring, and be alone there.
Not all quests are boring. The books 2-7 of LOTRo is really good.
Not all quests are good, not all songs are good. But there are good ones. One good song will give me a life time memory, I hum whenever I hear it again, anywhere. One good questline and I keep recalling them on and off.
People need to reinvent the wheel as far as XP goes, period. Either roll it back to UO-style, or do it however... FFXIV+1 is going to.
The way it is now is either Quest for your level, or camp the shit out of mobs for your level. After 10 years + of the same standards... (for me) the smoke and mirrors fun is gone. Change the combat system all you want, add as many GUI helpers or take them away. It's still bound on the basic concept of find the best way to level, rinse and repeat.
At the very least... sugar coat it. Hide the clockwork by making the game enjoyable beyond all the number crunching. *sigh* Also for Christmas I want a Red Rider BB Gun.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
So what you're saying is you want to explore the world without any help and mindlessly grind mobs for xp instead?
1-60 WOW quests are pretty dull (slightly less dull in areas with more recent quest content.) But 61-80 aren't too bad in terms of being interesting things to do.
Really the only problem I have with WOW-like quest systems are:
But having the developer set a bunch of interesting tasks for me to choose between while I level up? Yeah, I want that. With the right mix of activities (WOTLK's kill-quest-lite mix of quest types,) it's particularly enjoyable.
It's certainly vastly superior to Darkfall, where my character grinds tasks endlessly in the pursuit of decimal point upgrades to my skills. Probably a good 24 hours of gameplay mining to max that skill - as in 24 hours of solid AFKing while your char mines. I'd much rather have the option to gain XP and allocate that XP to mining; basically I want the freedom to decide how I want to earn my XP. Even in quests I get that because any game with decent questing has like 2-3 times as many quests as you need to reach max level. This results in a lot of player choice.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Everquest has no quests?
Everquest had quests AND they rewarded EXP. Are you forgetting orc belt turn-ins used to powerlevel characters? Sure, most of the quests in Everquest were long and hardly worth the EXP they gave so people rarely did them for EXP, but saying they didn't reward EXP (or that Everquest had no quests... huh?) is false.
Edit: Also to the person who said in Everquest you cannot solo that's another completely untrue thing people tend to say. You can solo in EQ (with the exception of Warrior and Rogue who needed amazing gear to solo) with just about any class. Your soloing effeciency was based on your class and gear. Some classes could solo better than most groups could gain EXP. Most people didn't solo even if their class was exceptionally good at it because Everquest was always a game more focused on group content and community play. We all know WoW changed that and gave the solo player a better and more friendly experience as well as appealing to casual gamers who normally wouldn't play those group oriented nerdy MMO games.
It depends on when you play EQ, EQ has been made very easy over the years.
I start EQ the first day the game was launched. I played an Ogre, right outside our dear city, when we were level 1-5, there were back then level 29-33 spectres roaming around and if you kite them back to the city guards (assuming a lvl 5 can last that long), the city guards won't fight the spectres, you will die zoning in.
Back in the first months, only pet classes can solo without cheating. Necro can use the charm exploit but it was fixed eventually, very much later. Any other class will find an equal level mob hitting you too hard to get through. Of course, much later into the game, I have twinked a level 1 shadowknight in full plate from planes. Still it is painfully hard to solo. Snake dots you, you die whatever armor you have. At the same level, you have a hard time healing, dpsing and not running out of mana in time to kill an even level mob. Assuming you can pull a single.
I have been there, the quests are frequently broken. The epic weapon quest is simply a long grind. I never find it worth the trouble to do the other quests on a regular basis. AND, there simply is not enough non repeating grinding quests to level up. Camping an instance was back then the easier way out, not easy, just easier.
My memory, I have left EQ soon after our guild start camping Plane of Air.
I agree ,giving xp for meaningless quests is real dumb,makes zero sense.It would be like your mom sends you to the store,you don't learn anything,you are probably doing it for some reward or you have to.If it was your very first time to the store,you might learn how to handle money,but you really wouldn't continually gain life XP by going to the store over and over.
FFXI was/is the ONLY game to get that part right,you do quests for rewards or fame,that is the design that makes sense.
I think it is the modern era gamer[or so called gamer] that has made questing for xp a joke.This is because all they want from gaming is to level up[or as they call it advancing[not really].If people actually played a game for it's content and of course it's combat,witch EVERY game is designed around,then XP would not matter at all.Level up is usually something PVP players look to more,because they want to gain levels to make them stronger for PVP purposes,imo this is not gaming,this is just PVP plain and simple.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
"You can't even roam around in a game like WoW, because you would be wasting time. "
Why can't you roam around? Cos you will be wasting time, wasting time to do what? Level?
That is entirely up to you, what you do in a game. Ofc you can roam around, you may not be leveling but so what? Unless you are someone that rushes to max lvl.
So really instead of saying Quest for xp is stupid, just say that the person who follows the questing system to the letter is stupid, more so if that is not what they want but still do it lol. Yes i am looking at you OP.
Not all quests are boring. The books 2-7 of LOTRo is really good.
Not all quests are good, not all songs are good. But there are good ones. One good song will give me a life time memory, I hum whenever I hear it again, anywhere. One good questline and I keep recalling them on and off.
I liked the book quests too. It had a nice epic feeling to me. Too bad I didn't enjoy the game more overall.
I can't stand questing as the main mechanic to leveling, but special quests, epics, something worthwhile, I always enjoyed, like the books, or the epic in EQ, the epic armor set in daoc and a few others there were quite enjoyable. Even liked a few in wow such as thunderfury quest.
I guess when I think of doing a quest, it is something special, not mundane like these menial tasks given like get me 10 rat ears. I mean, you don't call going to the store for milk a quest, it is a chore, or task. That is what most "quests" are in MMOs today, chores.
Mainstream MMO's have become like this. I dont like it either, but I am unable to come up with better ideas to how it hsould be though if it wasnt so.
As it is, it works better for me, than back in the old days of MMO's. Personally I dont like classes nor xp. To me, you should be more what you do, not what you choose.
Make us care MORE about our faction & world pvp!
I didn't mind the quest system in WOW, because you could also level by grinding mobs if you chose. Mob xp in WOW is pretty good. At least you have a choice. If I felt like questing I could quest. If I didn't feel like running quests, I could find a good mob spawn area and grind mobs.
What I don't like is games like LOTRO, where the xp from mobs is so low that you are pretty much forced to quest if you want to level at a decent rate.
I also don't like games like DAOC at release, where you had to grind mobs to level up. Yes there were a few quests in DAOC, but they were more for gaining good items, not xp. Grinding mobs hour after hours is tedious and boring.
Give me a choice on how to level, don't force me to level by either questing or grinding mobs.
Currently Playing: DAOC Uthgard
Previously Played: UO, DAOC, Shadowbane, AC2, SWG, Horizons, COX, WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, Vanguard, Rift, SWTOR, ESO, GW2.
I've played this type of game before. It was actually more fun than you'd think. It was called Lineage II (pre expansions). I'm getting a little bit tired of the cookie cutter quest system of MMORPGs as well. I think I'd rather not have it than be pointed around by an arrow and compete for 5 specific mobs or items with the rest of the player base.
If they have quests they shouldn't be for XP, but rather focused on immersion with dialogue consequences for making insulting choices. They should also have cosmetic rewards so the RPG aspect has a point... like a new cloth dress or suit.
youtube.com/gcidogmeat
I understand where you're coming from, though I disagree with the extent to which you take it.
I too miss how expansive EQ felt. You didn't know where to go or what to do. An NPC might have a quest, but it was up to you to figure out how to get that NPC to give you that quest, ussually by saying the right words to them. But deeper than that was the sense of real exploration. Many zones were huge, and you could wander them looking for new places to see and new creatures to kill. Being the first player or group in an area was always fascinating.
But, inevitably, everyone found out where to go and what to do, and before long, everything was camped to hell. People would just go to Alla's to find where to get a quest and where to complete it. Worse still was the insane XP grind that came with EQ. The best way to level was to kill mobs, but even then you'd be at it for a long time. Remember how big a deal it was to have two level 60s? My guild, which had close to a hundred active players in it, had only two people with two level 60s. No one else had the patience to do that grind all over again.
But this isn't about EQ. This is about making game worlds more immersive. And on that note, I do agree that something does need to give. I've tried just about every MMO on the market today, and I still haven't found one that makes you really feel like you are exploring a whole new world. Everything is just linear. And I really fear for what Cataclysm will bring with WoW. If Blizzard decided that the linear path was the way to go, and reworked the old zones to make progression "simpler", than it will get boring fast.
So, yes, I want more immersion. No, I do not want a mindless grind.
Well in any, pretty much, Mmo you can decide what to do. If you want to quest go ahead and do that and if you want to grind do that. Whatever takes the longest is always a debate but the main thing is to have fun right? So do whatever you want.
That games are using waypoints for quests is probably because sooner or later websites will pop up and give you directions to any quests either way. I would like both to exist in games but with quests only giving items and not XP. It would make abit more sense in my book but aslong as the game is fun I don´t care.
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
I had plenty of level 60s in wow... level 65s actually. I never thought it was that bad and much prefer that play style and wish games would go back to group based grinding as that was the most fun in a MMO I ever had. Actually the day Velious came out was the best gaming day I have ever experienced and profited from greatly.
I had not issues with sitting on lists on my Warrior to get into a group to kill kobolds for the next 6 hours... once you got into those groups it was a ton of fun as there was risk to do anything from the pull to one person going afk. Death had meaning in that game and until it does again MMOs will pretty much fail in my eyes. Hell in WoW you can go from 1-80 without a single death with ease.
MMOs today are bland and the adventure has vanished from them.
imo stupid thread, go play some korean mmos.
and LOL at the point you made how quest for xp ruins story line....
may I remind anyone that has this idea, that a game that offers xp from quest YOU can CHOOSE not to do them. YOU can grind all you want, go into instances and grind some more.
I think having the world to change according to your answers (like in DA:O) is kinda hard to implement in an mmo, unless you focus on solo-play. Also you cannot go back to a previous save in case you end up with an unexpected result...
Experience is there to make sure you follow a certain progression with your character. Unless you want to have a FPS-style game, MMORPGs always have some sort of progression. Quests also become some sort of mechanism to make sure your players are spread in your world.
I've played a FFA game without quests and what happened? The best grinding spots became heavily camped by the strongest guilds on the server. If you wanted to reach the highest level, or level up faster, you had to pledge to those guilds. Any outsiders were unwelcome (KOS).
Are quests meaningless? Well, if you don't read them and just skip to the goodies all the time, you're skipping a part of what you've paid for. Also, you cannot force players to read those quests; it's like forcing your playstyle to everybody else. Not all of us want to role-play, pvp, pve ect..
Then there is always the option to opt-out from questing and just keep grinding. Even in WoW. In some games it may end up slower than questing, in others it may end up faster...
Everquest didn't have quests ? What kind of crack are you smoking. EQ's quests are no different from the quests of today only difference was that EQ's usually rewarded crap and required camping something for weeks to get the rare drop off a rare spawn.
The reality of Xping in DaoC simply became finding a spot at one of the recognised prime grinding locations (eg 4 fins) and then repetitively killing the same spawn of mobs until you dropped. I don't see how that is any better or more enjoyable than quest grinding.
No matter what the game, if your only intention is to level as quickly as possible then the chances are you will not always be able to adopt the most enjoyable play-style. Just because an area does not have many quests it does not mean that you can't explore it anyway.
This is all true but the quests which gave worthwhile experience were all at low levels. Past level 10 or so there really weren't any quests worth doing just for the experience. Also, the "quests" like the orc belt / shoulderpad one you mentioned worked differently than modern quests. You didn't even have to "get" the quest before you could start doing it. You didn't even have to know about it before you started collecting the items. The belts and shoulderpads always dropped. So you could be in Crushbone picking those things up and then be told by another player what they were for before you ever even saw the NPC who wanted the items. And it wasn't like modern games where you collect X number and then run back to the quest giver, no, you could turn in as many as you liked as often as you liked.
So even the low level quests which gave good experience weren't like the <run there---get X of that---run back> quests of modern games. It was all much more open ended and gave the player more controll over what he/she did. You could collect a few of the items and then run back to turn them in or you could hang around untill your entire inventory was filled with them and then go turn them in. All of those quests which gave good experience at low levels were more like bounty turn ins than quests.
Later quests which were worth doing were worth doing for the item reward and the experience you got from them was hardly worth noticing. Like the Testament of Veneer (sp?) quest for the +10 wisdom book. I'm sure it gave some experience but nobody in their right mind would have done that quest for the experience reward.
Anyway, I pretty much agree with the OP. I hate quest grinding. But I also know that spawn camping / mob grinding is not ideal either. I would take group mob grinding over solo quest grinding any day but like someone else said what we really need is something new.
When I run quests in an MMO, I want an exp reward. Even if I'm going on the quests for the reward item I still want exp.
I don't want to have to run a quest for an hour or so to get an item and then have to go setup a macro to kill creatures so that I can get high enough level to go on the next quest for the next item.
Why on earth would you NOT want to get exp while questing. You're having fun running a quest, you're getting a reward item that might be useful and you're getting progress in your leveling all at the same time. Yes let's make MMOs less fun.
It's that "having fun" part that's the sticking point. Doing a quest once in a while can be fun. Doing nothing but quests which are really just run-and-fetch chores is definately NOT fun for me. Especially because you will be doing it all alone. Mob grinding may be boring in it's basic nature but most of the time you did it with a group. And most of the time there were other groups around the area. So the whole thing was much more social which made it better. And the way things worked in EQ things could get chaotic enough often enough to keep things interesting and downright fun, especially with a death penalty that actually hurt and gave you something to fear.
I couldn't even begin to count the number of times in EQ when my pulse was pounding, my adrenaline was flowing, and I was actually excited, scared, tense, etc. and then either fist-pounding pissed or feeling relief wash over me. Good or bad at least it made you feel something. These modern quest grinding games are SOOOO f-ing boring. It's like having an endless chore jar filled to the brim and no matter how many chores you complete the jar never runs empty. And the chores themselves are so trivial and boring and there is no risk or excitement of any kind involved in it....it's just horrible. It's like forever being told to take out the trash and shovel the snow off the walk and clean your room and this and that and more and another untill you go mad with the endless tedium of it all because what you really want to do is have fun and adventure but all you ever get to do is chores.