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Quests are the reason why people rush to cap.
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
I love quests. I love having clearly defned goals and the sense of accomplishment that comes from completing those goals. I also like shiney prizes given to me for menial tasks....
The problem is that Quests create artificial milestones for character progression. This problem is compounded by the fact that players are awarded bonus XP for completing quests, thus allowing them to level even faster. These milestones also set up a race condition where players can compare their progress by way of what quests they have completed and what gear they have acquired. This leaves any players that aren't at level cap feeling as though they have to "work harder," i.e. complete more quests, in order to be at the same level as everyone else. More importantly, there are only so many quests available. Having quests that you haven't completed leaves you feeling as though you are always at a disadvantage to someone that has completed every last one.
We like to flame early Asian grinders for having no content, but they really had a few things correct. No level cap, no party cap and the ability to group with anyone of any level meant that players could focus more on having a good time with other people rather than their character gear and level. Stupid huge parties of 40 or more players could power level across a zone and then go PvP when they got bored and everyone would progress and have a good time regardless. Alas, Asian games are made for PC bangs where gamers gathered in numbers while Western games are made for the home where basement dwellers play alone.
Maybe the problem with modern MMOs is that there is too much content. Maybe the problem is that these games are really just regular Multiplayer RPGs that have plopped down on a persistent server. Maybe what Western gamers really want is Guild Wars or DDO. Funny thing is, I don't see that model as having a whole lot of longevity without microtransactions. A subscription game has to hold people's interest for years. You can't do that when everyone is rushing to end cap within a week or two.
Comments
Quests in the post WoW world are just a way to add task variety to improve the power of your character. What that has to do with the leveless, anyone can team up with anyone structure of your unamed (Lineage?) Asian MMO is unclear.
There difinetly is a contradiction between what is being offered, and what is being incentivized in WoW based MMO's. WoW made quests to build variety into levelling (as opposed to Everquest where quests very rarely rewarded significant EXP), but then they essentially said "levelling is boring" when they doubled the exp gain rate at the lower levels of the game. If levelling is boring, why am I doing it? To help me learn to play my character for end game content? It doesn't work because I don't level in PVP arenas or against PVE raid challenges.
At least WAR's levelling, which people all seemed to hate, was designed to help you train for end game PVP and raiding.
People were rushing, leveling as fast as they could and min/mazing in EQ, DAOC and AO long before WOW existed. /thread
Ealy Asian MMOs had levels, but they didn't have quests of any kind. I remember playing Ragnarok Online years ago and asking a player where I could find a quest and they were genuinely confused by what I meant. RO had no quests. You just wandered around and killed things. That was it. You could socialize with other players while you progressed your character. No story. No lore to speak of. Just a world full of infinitely respawning mooks for you to kill.
L2R
I never mentioned WoW.
I never even implied WoW.
Hell, I wasn't even thinking about WoW when I wrote the original post.
what the hell?!
Seriously...
Just what the hell?.....
I think players have two modes.
.
The first mode is new player mode. New players take a very long time getting to max level. They get lost, they explore, they can't find the quest objectives.
.
The second mode is the experienced player. This person has four or five alts. He knows where all the quests are and the quest objectives. He's explored the area before and seen it all.
.
Noobs take their time, experiences players only want to get to max level.
.
Yah, there are exceptions to this, but I think it's the norm.
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Sorry, let me rephrase my orignal answer. People were rushing to level cap in MMOs before QUESTS became commonplace as an alternative to grinding. Better?
People who want to rush, do. Those who don't, don't. Its very simple actually. If you're compelled to rush, you're not enjoying what you're doing, since rushing through something implies you want to finish it ASAP. Or, you want to get to the "good parts" of the game that apparently aren't playable until you reach the CAP. Some people rush through everything, but thats just an obsessive personality type.
Well, lineage 2 had a cap and people rushed toward it. And though it had quests I think I can speak correctly in saying that in no way, shape or form would one ever call it a questing game.
There are people who will always be the "type of people" who want to make it to the prize first. This happens in real life as well you know.
I can't tell you how many people I've seen graduate from college interested in making as much money as quickly as possible without any real thought to quality of life or what they would even be doing.
Human nature is quite varied and it takes all kinds.
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I'm so happy to say that i've hardly ever quest stacked.
I hated filling up my log, clearing it and doing it over and over and over.
Before I knew it i would be too high level for the area and I only experience about 40% of the zone.
It drove me crazy!!!
So i guess i agree with your title there OP. Quest certainly make a player rush to cap by design.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Yep!
As I tend to mention every few months when these sorts of threads pop up, levelling guides were around long BEFORE MMO's, let alone before quests. PnP D&D was no different, though looking back, the campaigns were best around 5-12th level.
Some people want to hurry to max, for many different reasons. It takes a good MMO to slow them down, to get them to stop and smell the roses.
I don't agree that quests are the reason people rush to cap. They are a means, sure. No, I think it's the concept of "end-game" and the belief that grew primarily with WoW that "level cap is where the game begins" are the reasons for it. Add to that game developers following suit with wow and creating more content for max level characters in the form of raids and PvP/PvE events and relatively speaking neglecting the "middle levels" and it just continues to gloss over "the journey" or those in between levels.
Personally I like the idea of smaller raids, PvP (with a purpose) and PvE events. I just don't like that they aren't equally represented really from early in the game to cap(ish) in volume and importance. Course, that's part of having a level system. In a skill based system it is easier in my estimation not to be focused on applying a barrier to entry like character level on content.
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You get an A for originality but I disagree with your point, I am an avid mmo player with a preference for linear quest based games and I have only even been to level cap in two games before stopping play (a few I made it to only after spending months away and then returning). It's all about the motive of the player in mind and as questing is a natural way to gain experience without so much grind it is naturally going to be the most represented way of rushing to end game.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
It has nothing to do with quests making you level faster. Heck I'll even go out on a limb here and say if there is an alt way to make XP other than from a quest a max level player will do that as it's quicker.
There will always be the e-peen types who have to max just to say they did it in this little amount of time or to lord it over others or that think there's some special shiney just waiting for the top players. These are the kind that will find a good farm spot, plug in a macro and let it run all night. They're not interested in playing the game and when they do max out, they're the first to start crying 'this game sux' because they don't have anything to do now that they've out leveled any interesting content.
Granted there are those games where level start to max is only a long tutorial and the game really doesn't start until you're at cap, but those aren't in the majority. These games are really the only one's where a players thought process goes to 'must level faster' etc.....
For any other game, I never felt I had to keep up with the Jones.
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I disagree.
I think the main reason why so many people rush to cap in so many games, is because for those games it's extremely difficult if not impossible to contribute or experience the overall gameworld until you are max level. This is an artifact of leveling having a drastic impact on what players can and cannot do both in what they can and cannot fight, and the abilities and tools they have access too. There are so many games these days, mostly themepark games, that severely limit what you can do at lower levels.
Games that have much more horizontal progression, meaning skill and/or effort has a much more impact than simply what level you are, do not experience the same level rushes.
Ultima Online is a very good example of this. While skill levels did influence how effectively you did things, players with mid and sometimes even low levels in skills could still contribute. For example, though you couldn't kill a dragon with mid level fighting skills, you could still contribute to a fight against a dragon with a group of friends. On the flipside concerning tradeskills, many of the resources that a low skilled player could obtain were still needed and desired by high level players. Additionally, many low/mid level crafting items still had use, and you may have even had a chance at making an "exceptional" quality version of an item that would be as good as if a max level crafter had made it. The higher level crafters simply had a much greater chance as succeeding to make the item, and the chance of it beign exceptional. In this case, you didn't feel completely shut off from the game economy until you reached max level, you could still contribute needed resources and/or items.
This. However I won't blame WOW for this, DAOC was definitely an MMO with an "end-game" at level 50 that didn't start until you got there, so people ground (instead of quests) as fast as they could so they could get to 'round two' of character progression.
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You have some interesting observations in your post, but I'm not exactly sure where you were going with it. If you were using your post as a grounds to prove your opening thread title, then I have to say it's impossible because your title is patently false.
Games that are chalk-full of quest content evolved as a direct reaction to older MMO games like UO and EQ which had very sporadic, unrewarding and often ambiguous quest lines. In those games people raced to max level just as frequently as they do in more modern titles. Nothing about that has changed in the last decade of MMO gaming. In fact, of all the various community habits and gaming trends that have evolved over the last decade, the one defining and absolute of the MMO universe is there will always be a group that races to end-game as quickly as possible.
Sometimes they do it in PvP games simply to get an edge on the competition. Some do it in PvE for the fame. Others do it simply to feel like they "beat" everyone else to it, but the fact that it happens is not a revelation new to games that have a bevy of questing content. Players are competitive, as you admit yourself, but they're not competiting over who has the most quests finished they're competiting over who gets to slay the first dragon or who has the more powerful character.
As long as there exists progress, there will exist people attempting to progress faster than the rest.
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I don't understand the OP's argument.
So is he saying that doing the quests and content the Devs provided are making players race to cap too fast - i.e. bad
Yet, he gives examples of Asian MMO's where roaming bands of 40 players or more power leveled by grinding mobs - i.e. good
Why is group power level grinding ok but doing quests is bad? I don't get it. Seems to me the power leveling grinding folk are the ones racing to cap....
Exactly.
I often rush when playing, and i simply do it because:
1) Game is actually boring, and i simply want to see if it gets better later on.
2) The only real challenge is to figure out how to do quest chains as quickly as possible.
3) I'm on a trial account -.-
Hype train -> Reality
I do agree.
It's the mentality Josher is talking about Jimmy.
It's why Western games are so solo focused in comparison to many Eastern titles.
It's the American drive to be the best, to have the most stuff, and to brag about it. And Europe has unfortunately lost a lot of its own unique identity and is generally clumped into the West.
It's all about personal goals, inward focused achievement, and is in itself a byproduct of the whole "everyone is special and unique" gossip that we have been spoon fed for decades.
But in the East, group achievement, the good of the people, and conformity are valued characteristics, not communist ideals to be avoided at all costs like in the West.
And their games reflect that.
Obviously there are outliers on both sides of the line, you can't generalize everyone... But there is a lot of truth to these cultural statements and I do see the correlations in game design and social philosophy in MMO titles.
It's not the quests Jimmy.. it's what the quests represent.
People rush to cap because after 10 years of MMO gaming, a lot of people have been there, seen it, done that feeling about leveling. So a lot of people today only play the games for the endgame content, and they despise leveling at all. It has nothing to do with quests, this isn't a quest vs grind thing.
Even in EQ1, since Kunark days, people were rushing to the cap. I remember the rush to be the first few lvl 60's back in the days.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
I think people rush to cap for two reasons.
Leveling up makes you better than you would be if you didn't level up, so the higher the better.
You play with other people.
Since levels give you a clear advantage there is an incentive to gain more and more levels and since you play with other people there is the incentive to keep up with or surpass everybody else. As soon as one guy starts leveling faster than other people everybody else does it too because they all want to be as good or better than that guy. Level cap is just where the leveling ends, but then people will just scramble to get some other form of advancement, like gear.
When you are playing a RPG by yourself it does not matter how fast you level, the game will be there when you get there. In a multiplayer RPG though if you don't level fast enough the community will leave you behind, other players will gank you etc. Whether the motivation is cooperative or competitive as long as some people are leveling fast people feel they have to do it too.
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I disagree. The reason people rush to some sort of cap in MMO's now is because the games are only balanced at that level. This also depends on wether or not there is PVP in the game. If there is PVP, the grind is about class balance, if there is no PVP, you see grinds where you have a lack of content at lower levels.
Even developers admit that balancing classes is one of, if not the single most difficult item to nail down in a game. Now lets multiply that difficulty by the number of levels in the game, lets say 80.
So developers have a choice, spend the time required to balance classes at every level, which then necessitates making sure you stay at some level long enough to justify the amount of time spent balancing... OR
Balance everything for level cap, and make sure that the process from 1 - cap is streamlined enough that the lower level imbalances don't sour subs tastes causing them to leave.
Most, if not all are picking the later option.
For PVE, you get the same kind of dilema, only with content rather than balance. Devs can put in loads of content for a variety of levels, or they can put in minimal content at lower levels, then concentrate everything for higher end fights.
Of course, we the community are just as much to blame. Back in the day when quest grinds simply didn't exist, the largest complaint was lack of quests or some other kind of character advancement that didn't involve the time and logistics that are involved in assembling a levelling group.
The community complained, the MMO companies delivered. If you weren't one of the complainers back in the day, you were in the minority.
Basically, we got EXACTLY what we asked for.
"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." - Henry Ford
In my opinion its all about personel preference. I know I myself rush to the end of the game, not because I dislike quests, but because I am end gamer. I was a guild leader in WoW and in Shadowbane, both of those games didnt really start until you were max level.
Everyone knows what kind of game WoW was, it was a PVE game that started at max level and then it was all raiding. There was very little PVP after battlegrounds and such came out.
Shadowbane was strictly a PVP game. If you werent max level you were getting griefed and couldnt do much in the City sieging part of it.
Those who like the quests are the casual players who read every line and get into the story.
End game PvE, end game PvP, arenas, Normal pvp (ie I'm higher then you while leveling, because I leveled faster, ie I will win more fights), gear, friends playing at end game, tons of content at end game.
All are very valid reasons why people rush to end game. People do not rush to the end because of quests. Quests add flavor to an otherwise bland world of grinding.
Exactly. Couldnt have said it better
Yes, exactly.
Quests are not why people rush to cap. Not at all.
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