What can we have instead of questing? Economy centric gameplay
I think this is the key for a non quest type of game. (loved the rest of your post too, by the way)
It is obviously the key to EVE's success, and I think you have to agree that all "living worlds" have economies of some kind.
By making a game Economy centric, you instantly create a code of conduct of sorts. This prevents the yahoos from completely ruining the game by killing or destroying everything. If you are going to mess with the income someone needs to survive then there are going to be repercussions.
It also gives players their goal, without the need for quests. The goal is get out there and figure out how to create wealth for yourself. A much better goal than simple combat to control a piece of ground. This generally just results in massive anarchy and not sustainable gameplay.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
That is just a wiki guide to doing that particular quest. In actuality how it plays out is this:
You walk into an Inn at a small village and the bartender or someone else (wtihout the use of ? or ! to guide you) tells you that there is a madman in a dungeon outside of town going on about some vast arcane scerecy. Your goal is to find that madman and there may be 5-6 dungeons for you to look into. Each of those may or maynot have other quests or mini bosses in them. Once you find the madman he then gives you some wierd note that you would need to get translated, from there you are told there is a dungeon in the far northern mountains where you can find a statue that the madmans note speaks of. Fro mthere the quest jsut cascades. Or you can be a spoiler and follow the wiki. Its one of the main reasons why I loved TSW's questing (well the investigation missions at least) because you could try and decipher them yourself and that was where the accomplishment and fun came from.
As you may note that you may need certain specific items to get into the dungeon, or you may need lockpicking to open sealed doors or a dodge iniana jones style boulders and traps and jumping plays a role into alot of the quests. Theres so much you can do in this style other then go here, kill that.
Add some multiple solutions to it and I am with you.
I would be happy with bounty type activities.. Before you jump to conclusions about my using "bounty", I'm not talking about bounty hunting.. lol I'm refering to rewards for turn ins.. Examples for this is what EQ1 used to do.. You picked up various items such as Deathfist belts , or gnoll teeth and you turned them for exp and rewards.. I like this format better then quest lines because it allows one to group up with others at will.. NOT having to worry about being on the same questline.. Having questlines IMO seperates the community, not unite it.. But then with questing being an accelerated joke, most don't care.. Bring back the GRIND of leveling..
Originally posted by nariusseldon Just make killing 10 rats fun ... by making combat fun.
Yeah, if you don't have a story and you can't make the actual gameplay fun, its just a grind. And lets face it, gameplay is not the strong suit of MMOs.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
One thing they had in Lineage that actually helped was that they didnt had quests to kill orcs but they had a bounty so if you killed orcs their tribal markings dropped and you could turn that in to a NPC for a reward.
That sure beat killing 10 orcs quests at least.
But I think that quests should stay but they need to be huge and epic instead of menial work. More throwing the one ring in mount doom, less delivering a letter to someone standing 12 feets away.
Quests also need multiple solutions and to stop telling me what exactly to do.
And there needs to be fewer quests, we need something else to point players to menial work than quests. It is a quest to find the holy grail but it aint a quest to go down in a cellar and kill a few rats, not even close. The word "quest" have been missused in MMOs a long time.
Linage did that correct and more games should do that. Quest is an overloaded mmorpg term. We should have quests but they are about significant character progression/story. You can have a whole lot of other game options such as bounties, jobs, tasks, missions, etc each with their own thing.
Wolves get over populated, you can turn in heads for cash. Wipe them out and now rabbits overpopulate eating plants that farmers need to make products to sell on the market. Bam, another bounty. When I was a kid, there were diseased fox that had a $2.00 bounty paid by the county, so it's very real.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
My favorite thing about MMOs is giving myself and others a great world to explore.....I dont need 50 NPCs in each town giving me lame quests...That style of play is so worn out it isnt funny.
Players did not get questing into the games, it was in from Start.
When I logged in to Meridian 59 for the first time in 1996 there was a NPC standing next to me asking me to go to the moat and kill 10 rats in it (true story) and that was the first MMO long before UO and EQ and the game was just out.
Originally posted by Rydeson I would be happy with bounty type activities.. Before you jump to conclusions about my using "bounty", I'm not talking about bounty hunting.. lol I'm refering to rewards for turn ins.. Examples for this is what EQ1 used to do.. You picked up various items such as Deathfist belts , or gnoll teeth and you turned them for exp and rewards.. I like this format better then quest lines because it allows one to group up with others at will.. NOT having to worry about being on the same questline.. Having questlines IMO seperates the community, not unite it.. But then with questing being an accelerated joke, most don't care.. Bring back the GRIND of leveling..
Not a fan of this style either. All it does it promote camping spawns (mob grinding) of mobs like in DAoC or Everquest and I sincerely believe that WoW style questing is superior to this any day of the week. The problem is I am tired of the WoW style of questing as well. GW2's DE (open world quest chazins if you prefer) are a step up from WoW style fed-ex questing because it hides the grind way better. I still prefer the Asherons Call style to all others but GW2's will have to suffice.
Playing: GW2 Waiting on: TESO Next Flop: Planetside 2 Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Questing isn't all bad. The bad thing about it is that is often the same from one game to another. If there were more things like quest givers moving around, branching quest lines, some quests with more urgency or potential for permanent failure, choices that can change other quests, quests that emerge out of dynamic situations, and so on, then they wouldn't be so bad.
I think exploration is great but on occasion there needs to be a reason, a goal, to be there so you feel like you accomplished something and not just slaughtered everything in your path.
Questing isn't all bad. The bad thing about it is that is often the same from one game to another. If there were more things like quest givers moving around, branching quest lines, some quests with more urgency or potential for permanent failure, choices that can change other quests, quests that emerge out of dynamic situations, and so on, then they wouldn't be so bad.
I think exploration is great but on occasion there needs to be a reason, a goal, to be there so you feel like you accomplished something and not just slaughtered everything in your path.
Or they should focus on making killing fun. Quests are just excuse to go out and kill things.
Questing isn't all bad. The bad thing about it is that is often the same from one game to another. If there were more things like quest givers moving around, branching quest lines, some quests with more urgency or potential for permanent failure, choices that can change other quests, quests that emerge out of dynamic situations, and so on, then they wouldn't be so bad.
I think exploration is great but on occasion there needs to be a reason, a goal, to be there so you feel like you accomplished something and not just slaughtered everything in your path.
Or they should focus on making killing fun. Quests are just excuse to go out and kill things.
Or there should be other things to do than killing. Non-lethal takedowns, capturing, negotiating, barter for passage, avoid (stealth) and assist with another job can be viable options that add more depth to gameplay beyond killing things.
Originally posted by Rydeson I would be happy with bounty type activities.. Before you jump to conclusions about my using "bounty", I'm not talking about bounty hunting.. lol I'm refering to rewards for turn ins.. Examples for this is what EQ1 used to do.. You picked up various items such as Deathfist belts , or gnoll teeth and you turned them for exp and rewards.. I like this format better then quest lines because it allows one to group up with others at will.. NOT having to worry about being on the same questline.. Having questlines IMO seperates the community, not unite it.. But then with questing being an accelerated joke, most don't care.. Bring back the GRIND of leveling..
Not a fan of this style either. All it does it promote camping spawns (mob grinding) of mobs like in DAoC or Everquest and I sincerely believe that WoW style questing is superior to this any day of the week. And that would your opinion and preference, but not mine.. I'll take camping any day of the week and twice in Sunday vs the quest grinding.. The problem is I am tired of the WoW style of questing as well. GW2's DE (open world quest chazins if you prefer) are a step up from WoW style fed-ex questing because it hides the grind way better. GW2 is far closer to EQ then WoW.. Tonight during stress test, there were plenty of people camping one or two locations for exp and loot.. Repeatively for 2 hours.. Nothing wrong with that either.. I enjoyed it.. Killed the cave troll 5 times.. lol I still prefer the Asherons Call style to all others but GW2's will have to suffice.
Questing isn't all bad. The bad thing about it is that is often the same from one game to another. If there were more things like quest givers moving around, branching quest lines, some quests with more urgency or potential for permanent failure, choices that can change other quests, quests that emerge out of dynamic situations, and so on, then they wouldn't be so bad.
I think exploration is great but on occasion there needs to be a reason, a goal, to be there so you feel like you accomplished something and not just slaughtered everything in your path.
Or they should focus on making killing fun. Quests are just excuse to go out and kill things.
Or there should be other things to do than killing. Non-lethal takedowns, capturing, negotiating, barter for passage, avoid (stealth) and assist with another job can be viable options that add more depth to gameplay beyond killing things.
non-lethal takedown is just another way of defeating your enemy. Technically not kiling, but still you have the mob put down. I suppose you can have a stealth game too (like Deus Ex) for an MMO.
Still, for those games focuses on combat, there is no need to change anything in questing. just make combat fun.
Quests you are directed to do something or go somewhere.
Exploration you find it yoruself.
In theory the action behind either could be exactly the same. This is why you get different people saying different things about Dyanmic events in GW2. Those who analyze them by the action they accomplish say they are the same those who take into account how you come across what you are doing lean twoards saying the game is very exploration based, add in the other exploration goals (points of interest, vista, hidden open dungeon area with chests, jumping puzzles) and people tend to walk into the DE's as part of exploring type behavior and view them as exploration rather than questing.
But in the end a mission from TSW can be quite complex in its various steps and these steps could line up to DE event steps pretty closely.
Quests can be anything, any of the content already mentioned in this thread. You could have a quest to build something instead of kill 10 rats. In fact EQ2 has a quest to start off your first house and so does LOTRO.
Its about presentation and how people go about finding what to do. Not the individual action itself. This is why sandbox games like UO/EvE/old-SWG are different. They don't give you much direction. They also have no real steps to follow either, you make those up. GW2 doesn't give you a directed quest, but it does give you steps for completing something you found. Quest based games direct you and tell you exactly what to do.
Don't make the mistake that because many people are tired of being told exactly what tasks to do that they therefore want no guidance on the tasks themselves. People in general do want guidance on that and always will. I may not want a list of chores to do but that doesn't mean that when I do the go shopping chore that I don't want a shopping list.
This is the mistake people fall into in believe that the current environment is ripe for so-called sandbox games. The sandbox games lack both direction to and structure in the tasks. GW2 lacks direction to the tasks but keep structure in the tasks. Quest based games both tell you what to do and how to do it.
Simply by removing the direction to the task you radically change the experience. Then by making the task go from anywhere to hugely epic fight to mundane building projects you give people enough variety in their tasks to not get tired. Some people enjoy the complete openness of a sandbox game, but many people simply don't want a laundry list but do not really want to design their own tasks.
NPC kills you and loots all your stuff,maybe even wields and wears some if he/it/she can,loots items from every player it kills and on the process gets more powerfull (1d6 vs int roll if troll,might also wear less powerful items)
And then whoever kills it gets all the goodies.
Edit : 1d6 vs Wis roll,if he cant figure out any use for some items he will leave those to the ground (dont have skill to use them then roll)
Since this is about replacing questing, I'm going to address it from a themepark angle. Sandboxes already have things to do that aren't questing, though I admit there is a lot of room for improvement in non-pvp sandboxing.
User generated content doesn't work well for something like this. It's going to lack quality, because most users are horrible game designers.
I think GW2 is the first step towards something where you actually go out and look around to see what's there. One thing people have to keep in mind, is that you need things for people to do. They need to be interesting and fun things to do. So if you remove quests, then you still need complexity and interesting things out there. Most ideas people propose to replace quests don't satisfy this and hence aren't very good concepts to implement.
I think a step or two beyond GW2 would be to have lots of different factions out there. These factions are organized into groups with a hierarchy. The top level would have a Turn-based Strategy AI or somthing like it. It would make slower moves about gathering supplies, repositioning forces, and what sorts of things to go after. Lower level group AIs would handle how a group goes about that in a given area and how it approachs local threats. The real difficulty with this is ensuring that a zone is filled with enough interesting things so that this doesn't get boring, while ensuring things make sense.
A system like that could generate and potentially even record its own stories. Heck, the game could generate a short newspaper or the like for players summerizing what is going on (or at least what is going on publicly). An evil overlord could spontaneously pop up, start taking over places, and become a threat that the players are encouraged to take action against. Towns could get burned down, people killed, etc, etc, etc. But again, ensuring there's a proper density of stuff to do is the real trick with this. It makes sense while GW2 went with a more handcrafted approach.
I think related to this, procederally generated content that is actually the focus of a lot of effort and development could be quite good. Devs usually give these things little attention. Random quests in Skyrim, for instance, have maybe three random factors (location, task -- kill X or get Y, and enemies). Granted it isn't an MMO, but the point is that's pretty pathetic. A dozen or two random factors and twists in what's going on in a particular area would add a lot of depth and ensure things weren't likely to repeat -- ideally with a focus on random factors changing how a player would approach such things.
That might sound like I'm just talking about quests, but there's a real difference between talking to a bunch of NPCs and picking up quests verses going out into the world and finding fun things to do while you investigate it.
Comments
I think this is the key for a non quest type of game. (loved the rest of your post too, by the way)
It is obviously the key to EVE's success, and I think you have to agree that all "living worlds" have economies of some kind.
By making a game Economy centric, you instantly create a code of conduct of sorts. This prevents the yahoos from completely ruining the game by killing or destroying everything. If you are going to mess with the income someone needs to survive then there are going to be repercussions.
It also gives players their goal, without the need for quests. The goal is get out there and figure out how to create wealth for yourself. A much better goal than simple combat to control a piece of ground. This generally just results in massive anarchy and not sustainable gameplay.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I self identify as a monkey.
Add some multiple solutions to it and I am with you.
Yeah, if you don't have a story and you can't make the actual gameplay fun, its just a grind. And lets face it, gameplay is not the strong suit of MMOs.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Linage did that correct and more games should do that. Quest is an overloaded mmorpg term. We should have quests but they are about significant character progression/story. You can have a whole lot of other game options such as bounties, jobs, tasks, missions, etc each with their own thing.
Wolves get over populated, you can turn in heads for cash. Wipe them out and now rabbits overpopulate eating plants that farmers need to make products to sell on the market. Bam, another bounty. When I was a kid, there were diseased fox that had a $2.00 bounty paid by the county, so it's very real.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
hehehe. Don't hold your breath.
devs hate rats!
EQ2 fan sites
Not a fan of this style either. All it does it promote camping spawns (mob grinding) of mobs like in DAoC or Everquest and I sincerely believe that WoW style questing is superior to this any day of the week. The problem is I am tired of the WoW style of questing as well. GW2's DE (open world quest chazins if you prefer) are a step up from WoW style fed-ex questing because it hides the grind way better. I still prefer the Asherons Call style to all others but GW2's will have to suffice.
Everything you need to know about Elder Scrolls Online
Playing: GW2
Waiting on: TESO
Next Flop: Planetside 2
Best MMO of all time: Asheron's Call - The first company to recreate AC will be the next greatest MMO.
Having grown up on a farm, I have always been comfortable with the dragonslayer's journey beginning with hunting rats.
What can we have instead of questing?
For example.
Random dungeon generator a´la Rogue-likes.
Imagine Orgrimmars dungeon whatever it was,if it was like that.
it gets harder and harder the deeper you go,randomly generated everytime.
Theres a ladder who goes deepest,kills toughest mobs ,imagine is the limit.
Maan i would Sub,even with pandas.
Let's internet
Questing isn't all bad. The bad thing about it is that is often the same from one game to another. If there were more things like quest givers moving around, branching quest lines, some quests with more urgency or potential for permanent failure, choices that can change other quests, quests that emerge out of dynamic situations, and so on, then they wouldn't be so bad.
I think exploration is great but on occasion there needs to be a reason, a goal, to be there so you feel like you accomplished something and not just slaughtered everything in your path.
Or they should focus on making killing fun. Quests are just excuse to go out and kill things.
Or there should be other things to do than killing. Non-lethal takedowns, capturing, negotiating, barter for passage, avoid (stealth) and assist with another job can be viable options that add more depth to gameplay beyond killing things.
non-lethal takedown is just another way of defeating your enemy. Technically not kiling, but still you have the mob put down. I suppose you can have a stealth game too (like Deus Ex) for an MMO.
Still, for those games focuses on combat, there is no need to change anything in questing. just make combat fun.
What makes a MMO is options.
Questing
Grinding
Crafting
Exploring
And more should be ways to lvl up and get XP. Todays MMOs of only one options to level up is a very poor design for MMOs.
Quests you are directed to do something or go somewhere.
Exploration you find it yoruself.
In theory the action behind either could be exactly the same. This is why you get different people saying different things about Dyanmic events in GW2. Those who analyze them by the action they accomplish say they are the same those who take into account how you come across what you are doing lean twoards saying the game is very exploration based, add in the other exploration goals (points of interest, vista, hidden open dungeon area with chests, jumping puzzles) and people tend to walk into the DE's as part of exploring type behavior and view them as exploration rather than questing.
But in the end a mission from TSW can be quite complex in its various steps and these steps could line up to DE event steps pretty closely.
Quests can be anything, any of the content already mentioned in this thread. You could have a quest to build something instead of kill 10 rats. In fact EQ2 has a quest to start off your first house and so does LOTRO.
Its about presentation and how people go about finding what to do. Not the individual action itself. This is why sandbox games like UO/EvE/old-SWG are different. They don't give you much direction. They also have no real steps to follow either, you make those up. GW2 doesn't give you a directed quest, but it does give you steps for completing something you found. Quest based games direct you and tell you exactly what to do.
Don't make the mistake that because many people are tired of being told exactly what tasks to do that they therefore want no guidance on the tasks themselves. People in general do want guidance on that and always will. I may not want a list of chores to do but that doesn't mean that when I do the go shopping chore that I don't want a shopping list.
This is the mistake people fall into in believe that the current environment is ripe for so-called sandbox games. The sandbox games lack both direction to and structure in the tasks. GW2 lacks direction to the tasks but keep structure in the tasks. Quest based games both tell you what to do and how to do it.
Simply by removing the direction to the task you radically change the experience. Then by making the task go from anywhere to hugely epic fight to mundane building projects you give people enough variety in their tasks to not get tired. Some people enjoy the complete openness of a sandbox game, but many people simply don't want a laundry list but do not really want to design their own tasks.
FL NPCs
NPC kills you and loots all your stuff,maybe even wields and wears some if he/it/she can,loots items from every player it kills and on the process gets more powerfull (1d6 vs int roll if troll,might also wear less powerful items)
And then whoever kills it gets all the goodies.
Edit : 1d6 vs Wis roll,if he cant figure out any use for some items he will leave those to the ground (dont have skill to use them then roll)
Let's internet
Since this is about replacing questing, I'm going to address it from a themepark angle. Sandboxes already have things to do that aren't questing, though I admit there is a lot of room for improvement in non-pvp sandboxing.
User generated content doesn't work well for something like this. It's going to lack quality, because most users are horrible game designers.
I think GW2 is the first step towards something where you actually go out and look around to see what's there. One thing people have to keep in mind, is that you need things for people to do. They need to be interesting and fun things to do. So if you remove quests, then you still need complexity and interesting things out there. Most ideas people propose to replace quests don't satisfy this and hence aren't very good concepts to implement.
I think a step or two beyond GW2 would be to have lots of different factions out there. These factions are organized into groups with a hierarchy. The top level would have a Turn-based Strategy AI or somthing like it. It would make slower moves about gathering supplies, repositioning forces, and what sorts of things to go after. Lower level group AIs would handle how a group goes about that in a given area and how it approachs local threats. The real difficulty with this is ensuring that a zone is filled with enough interesting things so that this doesn't get boring, while ensuring things make sense.
A system like that could generate and potentially even record its own stories. Heck, the game could generate a short newspaper or the like for players summerizing what is going on (or at least what is going on publicly). An evil overlord could spontaneously pop up, start taking over places, and become a threat that the players are encouraged to take action against. Towns could get burned down, people killed, etc, etc, etc. But again, ensuring there's a proper density of stuff to do is the real trick with this. It makes sense while GW2 went with a more handcrafted approach.
I think related to this, procederally generated content that is actually the focus of a lot of effort and development could be quite good. Devs usually give these things little attention. Random quests in Skyrim, for instance, have maybe three random factors (location, task -- kill X or get Y, and enemies). Granted it isn't an MMO, but the point is that's pretty pathetic. A dozen or two random factors and twists in what's going on in a particular area would add a lot of depth and ensure things weren't likely to repeat -- ideally with a focus on random factors changing how a player would approach such things.
That might sound like I'm just talking about quests, but there's a real difference between talking to a bunch of NPCs and picking up quests verses going out into the world and finding fun things to do while you investigate it.