If it was possible to make a game, where GOOGLE would be no help to your questing or any website for that matter, to look up information on what you needed to do or where exactly to go... Would you play that MMORPG? Or would it be too hard or boring for you?
Its up to the individual to determine if they need help or not You need to have more self control to know when to say no, this sounds like a problem for alot of people. Its similar to having a cheat mode in single player game and using it to get past a really tough part, some will use it and some will not.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
If it was possible to make a game, where GOOGLE would be no help to your questing or any website for that matter, to look up information on what you needed to do or where exactly to go... Would you play that MMORPG? Or would it be too hard or boring for you?
I wouldn't have even asked this. Personally, I never got why a quest should grant so much more xp than killing oodles of mobs. I would imagine that the act of killing in and of itself helps to improve one's skill. Killing monsters a hero makes...not working for Fed Ex.
I miss being able to relax and just burn down mobs. Being forced to run all over a map and read mediocre storylines is just abysmal and why folks like me will never grind 90 levels in World of Warcraft, or any other game for that matter.
If it was possible to make a game, where GOOGLE would be no help to your questing or any website for that matter, to look up information on what you needed to do or where exactly to go... Would you play that MMORPG? Or would it be too hard or boring for you?
Its up to the individual to determine if they need help or not You need to have more self control to know when to say no, this sounds like a problem for alot of people. Its similar to having a cheat mode in single player game and using it to get past a really tough part, some will use it and some will not.
Is it really Google that's the enemy? How about creating quests or dungeons that aren't completely dumbed down? If they're interesting enough to solve on your own, more people might do it. I seem to remember this old series called Ultima...
Puzzle games are not fun if you just look up the answers.
The problem with google and its relation to puzzle games is puzzle games cannot be competitive anymore. If there is a puzzle involved and there are multiple people in competition to solve something (such as a quest for quick leveling) and it can be looked up then it will be and it is foolish not to.
An example of a puzzle based system destroyed by information technology: Tapers in AC has certain combinations that would unlock spells. Once the forumlas were figured out it was foolish to not look up the spells rather then burn up countless mats in experimentation. Would you really grind for hours to get the materials so they could be consumed as you try to figure out the recipies for your next tier of spells?
Myself, as someone who likes to be competitive and enjoys puzzles will never again be allowed to fufill both desires at the same time. Which is sad.
If you are glad that everything it can be looked up its because you either dislike puzzles or you had some bad design thrown at you where it was needless complexity. But please be able to see it from the other side that puzzles basically cannot exist anymore.
This is just what I was going to post. Playing through a game without looking anything up is fun, but in an MMO you're implicitly in competition with others. I enjoy being competitive and I enjoy puzzles, but I don't think online games are a good place to combine the two. As you say, it's foolish not to look up the answer. You're stuck with the choice of either ruining your experience or handicapping yourself into oblivion.
With Google and YouTube and game-specific wikis being so pervasive, the only way a puzzle could work in an MMO is if it's a one-time thing so that there's a strong incentive to not share information. And then you're stuck mostly catering to uberguilds with the resources to throw 80 people at a zone to hunt down a rare wotzit.
For anyone who is too used to the WoW formula to understand how a quest could be hard or why you might need to Google it, FFXI is still up and running and has some bizarre leaps of logic that you're supposed to make for most of its quests and missions. For example, I just did the second mission from the Crystalline Prophecy expansion the other day. The previous mission ends with someone saying to you: "The Seedspall Roseum, the Seedspall Caerulum, and the Seedspall Viridis... We must recover them, and quickly. Before they fall into the wrong hands... If those nosy Goblins were to stumble across them, one can only imagine what effect the power of the crystal might have..." From just this hint—and nothing else anywhere in the game pointing you in the right direction—you're supposed to go to Rolanberry Downs and fight goblins until one of them drops a Jug of Greasy Goblin Juice. (This is by no means the only place that goblins can be found; they are present in very nearly every zone in the game.) If you then examine a nondescript question mark spot elsewhere in the zone, a goblin spawns who drops one of the Seedspalls. Then you go to two other zones and repeat the process, killing goblins for an item and examining a ??? spot to fight a boss. In each of the zones, the ??? is up on a hill that you can't climb up, so you have to pass through a high level dungeon zone to get to that part of the zone.
It would be possible to play the game for weeks or months without ever stumbling upon the Goblin Juice, especially because Rolanberry Downs is an unpopular low level area. And even if you did, you'd have no reason to suspect that it was related to this mission. And again, even if you thought it was, it might be months more before you ever figured out where to go with it. This might as well have been a one-time event, because the only players who had any fun with it were the ones solving it back when every chat channel was ablaze with conjecture on where you get the seedspalls. In other words, for the couple of hours after the expansion was released. For anyone playing the game long after that point (like me), there's no way I'd just try to figure it out on my own. It would be a futile effort, and it wouldn't even be what the developers intended. They made it fairly mystifying on purpose so that it would be a fair challenge for a whole server, not for one person. You're supposed to either have a whole server backing you up, or a wiki walking you through it. It's only the second mission of that storyline too, so it's not as though they want you to get tripped up on it and fail to solve it for months.
Back in the days of Myst, lots of people tried to solve the puzzles on their own, but around that same time the Bradybooks (or equivalent) would come out with hints, and eventually the full answer. People did pick up the book, but it was always more satisfying to figure out the answer on your own.
But if we're treating the MMO as a competition or a race, I guess I can understand why people wouldn't like doing them. But I guess, I have to ask, is a race to the top all we're looking for anymore in a game? Isn't there some way we can do our progress and have puzzles to solve as well? Maybe if it's not a gate to progress, but rather something can be taken up at leisure?
Is it really Google that's the enemy? How about creating quests or dungeons that aren't completely dumbed down? If they're interesting enough to solve on your own, more people might do it. I seem to remember this old series called Ultima...
You are assuming "solving quests" itself is fun for the players. Often, players just want an excuse to kill stuff. That is why they loko things up. Not that they cannot solve it, just because they want to get to the action faster.
It depends on how the game is entertaining. Look at games like TL or Diablo. They have quests ... with zero difficulties .. because the focus is on combat (which can be very challengin).
Comments
Its up to the individual to determine if they need help or not You need to have more self control to know when to say no, this sounds like a problem for alot of people. Its similar to having a cheat mode in single player game and using it to get past a really tough part, some will use it and some will not.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I wouldn't have even asked this. Personally, I never got why a quest should grant so much more xp than killing oodles of mobs. I would imagine that the act of killing in and of itself helps to improve one's skill. Killing monsters a hero makes...not working for Fed Ex.
I miss being able to relax and just burn down mobs. Being forced to run all over a map and read mediocre storylines is just abysmal and why folks like me will never grind 90 levels in World of Warcraft, or any other game for that matter.
Is it really Google that's the enemy? How about creating quests or dungeons that aren't completely dumbed down? If they're interesting enough to solve on your own, more people might do it. I seem to remember this old series called Ultima...
This is just what I was going to post. Playing through a game without looking anything up is fun, but in an MMO you're implicitly in competition with others. I enjoy being competitive and I enjoy puzzles, but I don't think online games are a good place to combine the two. As you say, it's foolish not to look up the answer. You're stuck with the choice of either ruining your experience or handicapping yourself into oblivion.
With Google and YouTube and game-specific wikis being so pervasive, the only way a puzzle could work in an MMO is if it's a one-time thing so that there's a strong incentive to not share information. And then you're stuck mostly catering to uberguilds with the resources to throw 80 people at a zone to hunt down a rare wotzit.
For anyone who is too used to the WoW formula to understand how a quest could be hard or why you might need to Google it, FFXI is still up and running and has some bizarre leaps of logic that you're supposed to make for most of its quests and missions. For example, I just did the second mission from the Crystalline Prophecy expansion the other day. The previous mission ends with someone saying to you: "The Seedspall Roseum, the Seedspall Caerulum, and the Seedspall Viridis... We must recover them, and quickly. Before they fall into the wrong hands... If those nosy Goblins were to stumble across them, one can only imagine what effect the power of the crystal might have..." From just this hint—and nothing else anywhere in the game pointing you in the right direction—you're supposed to go to Rolanberry Downs and fight goblins until one of them drops a Jug of Greasy Goblin Juice. (This is by no means the only place that goblins can be found; they are present in very nearly every zone in the game.) If you then examine a nondescript question mark spot elsewhere in the zone, a goblin spawns who drops one of the Seedspalls. Then you go to two other zones and repeat the process, killing goblins for an item and examining a ??? spot to fight a boss. In each of the zones, the ??? is up on a hill that you can't climb up, so you have to pass through a high level dungeon zone to get to that part of the zone.
It would be possible to play the game for weeks or months without ever stumbling upon the Goblin Juice, especially because Rolanberry Downs is an unpopular low level area. And even if you did, you'd have no reason to suspect that it was related to this mission. And again, even if you thought it was, it might be months more before you ever figured out where to go with it. This might as well have been a one-time event, because the only players who had any fun with it were the ones solving it back when every chat channel was ablaze with conjecture on where you get the seedspalls. In other words, for the couple of hours after the expansion was released. For anyone playing the game long after that point (like me), there's no way I'd just try to figure it out on my own. It would be a futile effort, and it wouldn't even be what the developers intended. They made it fairly mystifying on purpose so that it would be a fair challenge for a whole server, not for one person. You're supposed to either have a whole server backing you up, or a wiki walking you through it. It's only the second mission of that storyline too, so it's not as though they want you to get tripped up on it and fail to solve it for months.
Back in the days of Myst, lots of people tried to solve the puzzles on their own, but around that same time the Bradybooks (or equivalent) would come out with hints, and eventually the full answer. People did pick up the book, but it was always more satisfying to figure out the answer on your own.
But if we're treating the MMO as a competition or a race, I guess I can understand why people wouldn't like doing them. But I guess, I have to ask, is a race to the top all we're looking for anymore in a game? Isn't there some way we can do our progress and have puzzles to solve as well? Maybe if it's not a gate to progress, but rather something can be taken up at leisure?
You are assuming "solving quests" itself is fun for the players. Often, players just want an excuse to kill stuff. That is why they loko things up. Not that they cannot solve it, just because they want to get to the action faster.
It depends on how the game is entertaining. Look at games like TL or Diablo. They have quests ... with zero difficulties .. because the focus is on combat (which can be very challengin).