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Little things from Skyrim that would make MMOs that much better
DrWookie
Member UncommonPosts: 263
I'd like to think that I'm somewhat realistic. I realize there are a lot of things in SKyrim that would never work in an MMO. THe ability to kill every NPC (without them respawning) which just make an MMO fall apart. However, there are some RPG mechanics that Skyrim includes that CAN work in an MMO and would make them so much more immersive (In my opinion). Feel free to add 
1. Random conversations between NPCs overheard. It's great games like SWTOR have voice acting. Lets take it one step further. I love being able to walk through a town and overhear people just going about their business. Is the system perfect? No. I recognize some of the things people say get repetitive...but it is still really cool. In addition, I love how overhearing about some dungeon/temple/whatever adds a note to your journal...or a possible quest. You don't even need to talk to the person.
2. No quest icons. What is with al the giant question mark signs, or any other symbol? I like that you have to talk to people for quests in Skyrim. Or even better is when the people comfort you...they call you over, or you overhear an argument and you go to investigate. Again, it's great that MMOs have voice acting but this just makes the immersion that much better.
3. NPCs have real lives. They walk around. They aren't static. It seems like practically ever NPC in a town has a house to live in. That iS AWESOME in my opinion.
4. Every building is enterable, even if there is no reason. In addition to the above (Every NPC has a house), I love that you can go in them all. Do they all serve a purpose? No but it makes the villages seem real.
5. All quest items/quest bosses are retrievable/killable BEFORE accepting the quest. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. I hate that I can kill some named guy and not get credit for it, just because I killed him before picking up a quest. And those poor helpless villagers trapped in prisons? Well if you don't have the quest, you can't let them out! Those sorts of situations just seem silly to me and ruin the immersion.
That's all I can think of right now. None of those things would pose any conflict, in my opinion, with the "Massive" aspect of MMOs...it would just make them that much more immersive. They also would all work with theme park and sandbox type mmos.
Comments
As far as #2 goes, do you know horrible this is? The example I will use is FFXI. If the towns are huge, which most are, it makes it even more of a chore. Running around a town, just trying to locate a quest is such a painful chore, you would rather not do them at all. After you do this a few times, you really notice how bad the system is and you wonder why its even in the game.
I agree though, the ! for quests is a bit overkill and the whole system needs to be reworked. They need to take it to the next level and take a page from GW2. The worlds in these games are alive, and should be treated as such. NPCs should walk up to you and ask for your help. Going to them and asking at random if they need help with anything is a old outdated mechanic that needs to be abolished.
I wouldn't say abolished completely, it just shouldn't be the only way. I really like how Skyrim does it. You can ask NPCs "Is there any work that needs being done?" and if they don't have work a lot of them will point you to someone in town who does have a quest to give you. What is so neat is you can get the same quest in multiple ways. You can ask someone like the cantina owner about work in town, or oyu can just stumble across the quest giver and ask them, or sometimes you can overhear two people talking about it...etc...
How does FFXI do quests? I'm not familiar so I don't really know what you don't like about it. All I know is so far in SKyrim I am never struggling for quests to do, and my journal has plenty in it. Getting quests hasn't felt like a chore yet, and really when I compare the number of quests I've done in Skyrim to most MMOs...it is really small, but for whatever reason I don't even notice or it doesn't matter...they just mean more in Skyrim and I think MMOs can learn a lot from it in that regard.
guild wars 2 is taking care of your number 1 and somewhat of your number 2
I have to wait and see for myself. There's a lot of hype for Guild Wars 2, we'll see how it pans out.
FFXI does quests almost how you asked for them. You have to go around town talking to different NPCs to discover them. Problem is people are in a big hurry and only want to do certain quests so they don't like having to go search for the NPC that they need. What ends up happening is people just look it up online and then get upset when they have to look it up online.
Personally I prefer the searching aspect over the "!" quest hub stuff but to each their own I guess.
I think they could alleviate that by creating multiple ways to pick up quests. Like you could go to the first person in town and ask if they know of any work and they could point you to at least one real quest giver, saying "I heard so and so lost their whatchamacallit, they might need help getting it back" and then that pops into your journal as "Go speak to so and so". And then some quest givers as you walk by call out "Please, please can anybody help me!" or something.
Or if a game really wanted to appease the masses, but I guess you are right most people are just in a rush and want to get all the quests without reading them and then finish them all en masse without caring, they could make an OPTIONAL quest icon that you can turn off.
I like the idea behind it, that MMOs become more immersive world than mere theatre stages or themeparks without any feeling to be in a living world. But some of the examples are not so practical IMO.
1 & 3 are great examples. NPCs walking, talking and having a real life simulated. Nothing really is more depressing than these glued to the ground NPCs everywhere. (Hello SWTOR...)
Also 4, yes, there should be more detail in cities.
About 2: we had that once in SWG, DAoC and the early days of EQ2 I think. It was ok back then, but quest givers all without symbols today would be a total hassle. Also daily schedules yes. But shops must be open 24/7 in a MMO, simply because you can't WAIT and advance the time in a MMO.
5 I fully agree and it pissed me off so many times I had to do something twice, because I didn't have the quest when I killed "boss X" or "25 mobs Y" before.
I think it is more the overall level of making a believable world, with weather, day/night + NPC schedules, and detailled world design without barriers, as in Skyrim. In that way, yes, Skyrim should inspire future MMOs. Though I fear since people also buy sterile themepark, the pressure on companies to make such vivid, detailled worlds is low. From my beta experience in SWTOR I can safely say SWTOR is very, VERY far away from being an animated world!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
This is one for me also. In many games, NPCs aren't even mobs. They're no different than a sign object that you talk with, that also happens to have an idle animation.
I test this by kiting a monster into town. If an NPC was at least self-aware it would respond based on its own aggro range. It's amazing how many games have NPCs that aren't self aware and even the monster has no desire to attack them. They don't really exist other than an object to spew dialog.
I'm curious. Do you feel it's a hassle in skyrim to get quests? I haven'et really felt hassled at all, it seems quite natural. I rarely even go around asking people for quests...most just come up naturally (a store owner I went to sell things to, or people who stop me in the streets). So far I haven't been lacking for quests, and I don't miss quest icons.
I think part of what makes it a hassle for people is the mindset we get in when we play MMOs. I know when I play MMOs every time I go to a new city/town I look at all the question marks in town and my first thing is to just run around and mindless pick up every quest so that I can leave and do them all...as if you have to do every single quest in a game in order to advance forward. I'm sure I've missed some quests in Skyrim, but I really don't mind. As long as I'm always busy.
Off-topic: yes Anet is very good at controlling the media and what they show to the public.
On-topic: I love the pure randomness your character finds or stumbles into in skyrim....love it.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Skyrim offers up something unique. What should work in the real world probably does in skyrim as well with exceptions of course. Here is a few nice examples I like to employ.
Whenever entering a new village or town I head to the Inn first. Talk with the Inn keeper they are the center of a town/villages goings on.
Hang around the market area and listen to NPC's going about their shopping. They will without a doubt begin to discuss important things they have heard about life for them.
Skyrim does nothing without a reason. Every cave and bandit camp is there because it is right for it to be in that location. Ask questions about it and usually it will lead onto something else.
Picking up new quests in skyrim is way way way better than the giant "!" above everyones heads. It adds to the grind aspect. I enter a new town in WoW and right away begin grabbing and accepting without reading every single giant "!". Then using the quest helper they all have in now I open the map and run round them in the most logical order blitzing through the REALLY easy content that mobs are these days. I then return once there are no more circles on the map and head back into town and quickly hand in all the "?" floating over everyones heads.
1) Skyrim is not about leveling to me, its about enjoying a storie and being a hero in the world, SW:TOR and GW2 will both add that to the MMO genre in their own way.
2) Because of its targetting system combined with its uncluttered interface the game feels much more alive then tabb and push skillbutton MMO's.
3) The world reacts to my actions, thats just great, feels much better then the faction measured in numbers in most MMO's
4) The companion system works fluently, and a system like this would be welcome in most MMO's. (have 6 or 8 men parties where your companions can join if you don't get enough players)
Things i don't like...
1) there is no consequence to death but a reload.
2)The UI while uncluttered works awkward for an MMO.
3)THere should be more different attacks for Mellee (Lotro Warden would have been an awesome system for mellee)
4)The world is really small and all real important things happen in instances.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I disagree completely, quest icons ruins immersion and makes the game cheap and holds a players hand, jsut another hallmark of a themepark game. If I am going to do a quest, then by god half the fun is trying to find where ones start. There is nothing more suprising and rewarding then to walk across an NPC who jsut happens to catch your eye and you decide to talk to him and he offers you a very detailed, rewards driven, morality based quest with real consequences that has detail, depth and meaning. Now under the guise of a themepark I would agree with you, not knowing which NPC has a quest and you apporaching every NPC and 25% of them offer yousome token XP and gold to go kill 10 rats. To bad Skyrim's quests in particular, and sandbox quests in general are not designed like that.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
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Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
You have the current ! and ? for 3 reasons;
i/ Expectations, mmo players don't expect an immersive world, they expect a massive quest chain (the story of which is irrelevent for nearlly all) which can be trudged through at lightening speed in an effort to reach the end game.
ii/ Poor and lazy design.
iii/ Somethings in Skyrim (with regards to questing) simply would not work in a world with multiple players.
So it's part their fault and part ours. In a sp rpg there is no real end game so there is no 'race', the journy is the game. But we also expect much more and expect to work for it, as such we go looking for it. In an mmo if we have to go look any further than a wiki site we give up or pretty much assume it's just not there.
For the devs it's a hell of a lot easier to have these a - b quests it's just simple, they are trying to diversify with the random area quests but under the hood it's all the same.
It's a shame really because it kind of proves that the audience for a real living mmo world is out there. For my part I think these new big release mmo's on the horizon in the coming months will all be taking a back seat until I've had my fill of Skyrim and who knows how long that will be.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
And how is it any different in SKyrim? i still run mindlessly around trying to strike a conversation with every NPC i see so that they give me a quest? as far as people stoping me in streets to give me quests in Skyrim it does not happen a lot and doesn't help in advancing the storyline any further. In 5 days of playing i got stopped once in Riften and that is it. I swear some of you people just over exxagerate things to make your point.
1 is ok not a big deal to me but yes it gives a game a tad bit more immersion
2 your not kidding,igot this in FFXI a game which is stil lthe best mature design out there no hand holding.I cannot stand fake markers over heads it looks retarded.
3 this was actually done better in the Wizardry and other games of way old.The npcs not only moved around but to other zones/maps.Example in Might n MAgic an Umpani general might be hunting down a T'Rang general and if he kills him he wont be there for yo uto converse with.yes it is very doable,the little detail that i like to see in a game.
4 This ia a huge must for me,i think many people have been playing very cheap efforts because this shouldn't be any surprise,it SHOULD be the norm.Even FFXI a console game of 8-9 years ago had all interiors in buildings.
5 this is a tough area to discuss becuase it adds realism,something i love in games.The downside is that as soon as you fidn this out,it kind of leads you to follow the normal path and never stray until you move forward before coming back.
In all honesty Skyrim is not that great a design,it is old school and anything in the game can easily and has been easily done in mmos.Skyrim is actually a step down in tech and graphics,it is imo way over rated.It shows how bored people are,i actually felt myself getting excited before entering,that sort of feeling can make you feel the game is better than it really is.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Not 1 single time have I searched around talking to everyone looking for a quest, not 1 time.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
So how do you do quests then? because surely not every NPC comes to you and drops a quest in your lap? some of the main questlines are started by talking to NPCS. Other alternate ways is to read every book avilable or just go out exploring and find items which start quests. But majority of quests are started by talking to NPC.
Maybe I can't explain it but for whatever reason the way Skyrim is set up makes me not want to run around and make sure I have every quest. I'm one of those people in MMOs...that makes sure I get every single exclamation point, and then plan out the zone so be as efficient as possible. In skyrim I will occasionally talk to random people, but most of my quests have been from overhearing things, talking to people I was talking to anyway (shop owners etc, inn keepers) or just exploring. In the first main city (i'm blanking on the name right now, I'm kind of sick right now) alone there were at least 3 or 4 quests you picked up just by walking around town. The one guy asks about retrieving his sword, you find out about the family fued etc... They don't actually go up to you and talk to you, but if you play with sound you hear them talking and then it is up to you to go talk to them about it.
I realize that a person could still obsess and run around talking to everyone just to make sure they pick up everything, but for whatever reason (I gues I can't explain it), Skyrim to me just doesn't make you want to do that. The quests are involved and deep enough thtat you don't feel like you need all 50 quests in your journal before setting out and working on some. Yes I've occasionally talked to me wondering if they have a quest, but it has been more because the person looks interesting (is dressed in some cool outfit), or the building was something I wanted to explore (another inn/pub place, or a temple in town or some cool architecture).
Yes you get most quests by talking to people, but you don't go searching and randomly spamming npc's, there's a massive difference. It's called good design, the designers have thought about the fluidity of play, it's the difference between feeling like you are working your way through a line of quests opposed to living in a world and playing your role in it.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
That is all fine but my comment had nothign to do with you were saying. I was commenting on 'quest marks on head' and how it makes you just mindlessly click on every npc to get the quest.
For someone like me who likes to see all the content in every game i play i hate to miss quests and that is why when i enter a new town i talk to every single npc to start conversations and quests. The process of getting quests is the same only difference is that quest markers from haads are missing.
I like fludity of play but that kind of play style will make you miss pelethora of quests and other side and faction quests. I have found a lot of interesting quests and that was only possible because i made an effort to talk to every NPC i see, otherwise i would have most likely missed it if i just ignore NPC and stick to random encounters and main storyline.
i think the best thing is you can pick any single path and you'd still be viable. as a stealther, i'm loving the fact that the game is playable all the way through so far without feeling punished for not playing something a little more "heroic". in a lot of games, you do feel a little punished when you try things a little left of centre. letting you play through with more cohesive thief skills etc is awesome.
i'd love to see this wide-ranging lateral levelling skill systems more often in mmos rather than rigid single-branch trees that make you feel you've arrived to a roleplay session and your game master has politely informed you that tonight you will be playing using characters he's made up - and you'll be playing the baggage pony. yay.
i think the neverending drive to lock people into clearly defined classes has made things boring. being less about classes and more about personality and personal playstyle is definitely the way i want to see things going.
that and the lateral journey - not being forced to follow the path from area to area as you level, but being able to just zip around cruising inns for sniffs of work.
they really need to mmo this.
and quit gimping it for consolers.
I've never felt like I had to talk to every NPC to get quests...and I have at least 15 quests in my "Misc" section, and then like 4 or 5 major quests. That is plenty for me right now, I can't even hope to do them all. Am I missing quests? Sure maybe I'll pick them up later, or maybe on the next playthrough I'll stumble across them.
What would be interesting is to look at how many quests I really did miss. Like once I've decided I'm done with a town (Say Whiterun for instance), I wonder how many quests I didn't pick up. I feel like I'm getting plenty without running around looking for them, but maybe there are a ton more? That is kind of exciting actually. It means there will actually be something to do on a second playthrough.
Obviously one of the cornerstones of an MMO needs to be options, because people want/experience different things. I would be totally okay with an OPTION to turn on a "quest" icon above their heads, as long as their is an option to turn it off and as long as the game was DESIGNED with the option off (not just like any current MMO out there without icons...then you woul have to talk to random people). Like if the game was designed like SKyrim, but you could just turn on a quest indicator...that's fine. If that is what some people want, it doesn't harm me. For whatever reason in MMOs I usually always obsess about doing all the quests, but the sad part is I've realized even though I obsess about making sure I do all the "content" I dont pay half as much attention to that content compared to SKyrim where I know I'm missing some things.
I am not saying you have to..i am just commenting on a simple game feature. Nothign is compulsary really when it comes to playstyle. One doesn't have to click on every npc with quest marker on head too but people do it just like i start conversation with every NPC to get quests when i can easily just stick to 3acts of main storyline and few random quests that i get. But in my opinion i would be missing huge chunk of gaming content that way.
Ya maybe I'm just weird in that if the icons are there...I'm suddenly a "I need to pick up everything so that I do everything", but when the icons aren't there I"m suddenly "Oh well I have enough quests, I'll go do these and maybe talk to some other people later".